The MAPA Great Famine project focuses on the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, also known as the Holodomor (“death by starvation”), and widely considered in Ukraine and beyond to be a genocide. The project is concerned with the geospatial analysis of Holodomor losses and the factors that may have influenced distribution outcomes.
One of the most insightful and moving eyewitness accounts of the Holodomor, or the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33, was written by Oleksandra Radchenko, a teacher in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. In her diary, which was confiscated by Stalin’s secret police and landed the author in the Gulag for ten long years, the 36-year-old teacher recorded not only what she saw around her but also what she thought about the tragedy unfolding before her eyes.
The MAPA program’s web maps and analysis related to the Holodomor would not be possible without reliable demographic data. To obtain this information, HURI works with a group of demographers and historians at the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies and the Institute of History in Ukraine (Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Pavlo Shevchuk, and Alla Kovbasiuk) and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the U.S. (Oleh Wolowyna).
The Great Famine web map allows one not only to conduct spacial analysis of historical data, but also helps to formulate new questions and, we hope, stimulate new research on the history of the Great Famine.
During the Spring 2018 term, the MAPA team added new variables to the Great Famine web map at the raion level, allowing for a much more nuanced analysis. The new data effectively tripled the number of map layers available in the MAPA atlas for researchers to use, includes population statistics, such as rural population density and ethnic structure; economic indicators, such as grain procurement quotas, planned grain quotas, actual grain quotas, and percentage of fulfillment; geographical information about wheat crops, such as the percentage of land used for wheat, the percentage of crop area owned by independent farmers, collective, or state farms; and collectivization rates.
With these resources in the Famine web map, researchers and other MAPA users can see a more fine-tuned representation of how famine losses varied throughout Ukraine and explore which factors were significant causes of starvation in specific areas.
The Great Famine Story Map Journal combines narrative text with maps and images. It contains entries and sections that users can scroll through. Each section in the Map Journal has an associated map or an image.
Атлас-журнал Голодомору об'єднує наративний текст з картами та зображеннями. Він містить розділи, які користувачі можуть відкрити через ліве меню.
The Rus’ Genealogy component of the MAPA project is part of a larger attempt to shift the perceptions of modern scholars to include Rus’ in the wider narrative of medieval Europe, and to create a picture of the medieval European world that fits the evidence from the primary sources -- one that stretches from the Atlantic in the west to the Dnieper River in the East. One of the chief ways to do this is by looking at the connectivity between Rus’ and the rest of Europe, and one of the richest sources of data is in the arena of dynastic marriage. The ruling family of Rus’, the Volodimerovichi (also known as the Riurikids), had marital connections with the ruling families of most of medieval Europe.
The Rusian Genealogy Web Map is an attempt to render visually the dynastic connections made between the ruling family of Rus’ (the Volodimerovichi) and the rest of medieval European royalty in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The information represented on the map comes from the Rusian Genealogical Database compiled by Christian Raffensperger, with technical assistance by David J. Birnbaum. Both projects highlight the extreme interconnectivity of Rus’ with the rest of medieval Europe and are part of a larger goal of reimagining medieval Europe.