Polish diplomats were deeply shocked by the famine—so much so that their accounts were dismissed. Stanislaw Kosnicki, the head of the Kyiv consulate, was rebuked in January 1934 for including too much “information about famine, misery, persecution of the population, the fight against Ukrainianness etc.” Polish diplomats, like their colleagues, nevertheless had no doubt that the famine and the repressions were part of a plan: “Mass arrests and persecutions cannot be explained or justified by peril on the part of the Ukrainian national movement…the real cause of the action lies in the planned,
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