In reality, both types of document conformed to an identical formula, probably the result of an order from the Ukrainian authorities, and both were intended to destroy evidence of the famine.13 Although mortality numbers compiled at the provincial and national level did remain in statistical archives, at the village level many records were physically destroyed. Eyewitnesses from Zhytomyr and Chernihiv provinces have described the disappearance of death registries from their villages in 1933–4.14 In Vinnytsia, Stepan Podolian recalled that his father had been asked to burn the village registry
...more
