What really concerned the Soviet authorities was the political significance of this mass movement of people. All across the Soviet Union, in the far north and far east, in the Ukrainian-speaking territories of Poland and in Ukraine itself, itinerant Ukrainians were not only spreading news of the famine, they were bringing their allegedly counter-revolutionary attitudes along with them. As their numbers increased dramatically, the Soviet government finally declared there could no longer be any doubt: “the flight of villagers and the exodus from Ukraine last year and this year is [being]
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