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Program NumberFLS001
TitleHarvest of Despair
PBS Number1645, 1646
Moderator-
HostBuckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008.
Guest(s)1) Conquest, Robert.  - author of The Great Terror, currently affiliated with the Hoover Institution, Harvard

2) Salisbury, Harrison Evans, 1908-  - editor (now retired) for the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winner for his reporting from the Soviet Union in the Fifties

3) Hitchens, Christopher.  - Washington columnist for The Spectator and The Nation

Taped onSept 4, 1986 (New York City, NY)
Broadcast DateSept 24, 1986
Duration120 minutes (or hh:mm:ss)
YouTube Video

no YouTube clip available

SummaryIn 1932-33, somewhere between 7 and 14 million Ukrainians died in a famine engineered by Josef Stalin. To mark the 50th anniversary, a Canadian film company had produced a documentary, Harvest of Despair. It won prize after prize at international festivals, but not a single American television network had seen fit to broadcast it. And so Firing Line undertook a special, with the first 15 minutes devoted to recapping the historical events, the next 55 minutes to viewing the film, and the final 50 minutes to commenting on it. A harrowing but riveting two hours. Mr. Conquest: "There are famines everywhere. But you look at this as the only famine where you don't see relief workers. No food, soup kitchens, nothing. Even in Ethiopia you see relief work." Mr. Kitchens: "I think that probably by 1933 one still hadn't entered the period of the 20th century when people were more inclined to believe the worst-I mean, would naturally believe that an atrocity was most likely to be true. I have a feeling that it was still relatively innocent." Copies of the film "Harvest of Despair" are available from International Historic Films: http://www.ihffilm.com/22377.html
Subject Heading(s)Famines -- Ukraine.
Genocide -- Ukraine.
Political atrocities -- Ukraine.
Soviet Union -- History -- 1925-1953.
Harvest of despair (videorecording, documentary)
Peasantry -- Ukraine.
Ukraine -- History -- 1924-1944.
Collectivization of agriculture -- Ukraine.
Collectivization of agriculture -- Soviet Union.
Famines -- Soviet Union.
Related Document(s)Type(s): Transcript
Type(s): Transcript (2 copies), news releases, clippings, CV, TV guide, sou
Type(s): Transcript
Type(s): Research materials, photo, viewer responses
Type(s): Research materials
Purchase show Program is unavailable on DVD at this time.
Transcript Download transcript (80040_fls001_trans_excerpt.pdf)

 

 

 

 

 

 



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