So on Wednesday, I ws invited to academic conference in Toronto, by my Russian history professor. She had handpicked a very small group from her upper-year class on Stalinist history, and had invited me to tag along. I was already friends with the group from the stalinist class, I think that's why she invited me.

This conference was incredible. It was an event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor; the Ukrainian famine-genocide. I was meeting the absolute top scholars on the subject of soviet history - I mean, I was sitting beside Terry Martin and having lunch with Lynn Viola. I was talking with the head of the Ukrainian national archives... It was incredible - these people are like my movie stars, except they're not in movies.

But the conference itself was really interesting besides - the content was less about the holodomor, and much more about the de-classification of Soviet archives and documents, and the difficulties still presented in trying to retrieve research and information. There was in interesting discussion about the historigraphy of this field - about the evolution of Soviet research, how it was done and how it is done, and how difficult is was and is in different ways. A ew of the researchers present had been poisoned, threatened, intimidated, arested, etc by the Russian secret service AFTER 1991, and even recently Lynn Viola was absolutely denied access to the archive where she had been doing research, due to a book which she released.

The most interesting bits, I think, were presente by Terry Martin and Dr. Arel, questioning the political applicability and the scholarly necesity of the term 'genocide' as it applies to the Ukrainian famine, and the political impliations of such a trm. After all, as Dr. Arel did point out, the Ukrainians were as much perpetrators as victims. There were many, many, many good topics and issues raised, and the best part is that it opens up just how many options and debates there are about not just the Holodomor, but soviet history as a whole.

Another interesting bit was the presentation of the head of the Ukrainian national archives. It was like he delivered it in code - he downplayed the importance of documents, and repeatedly stated that there is no smoking gun proving Stalin's intent, and that every major discovery has been made. The code is essentially that we shouldn't make a huge deal of discoveries until we're out of the soviet union. In the 1980's the national archive of the Ukraine was burnt down when someone openly stated that it held a wealth of information concerning x topic. Indeed, when Dr. Viola questioned why this information hasn't been destroyed, it's simply because it hasn';t been brought to attention.

The key? It can still be destroyed.

Then I went to dinner with my professor, friends, and Alexei - a translator at the event, and an academic himself.

Overall, a fascinating event.

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