Daria Mattingly: Culpability of Rank-and-File Perpetrators in the Holodomor

In this episode of Not to Forgive, but to Understand, we are joined by Daria Mattingly, a historian whose work focuses on perpetrator studies and the social and cultural history of the Soviet Union, with particular emphasis on Ukraine. The conversation centers on the Holodomor, examining how famine policies were enforced at the village level by rank-and-file actors and perpetrators rather than solely by state elites.Drawing on archival research, memoirs, literature, and oral history, Daria discusses how ordinary people became involved in famine enforcement, the role of youth and women among perpetrators, the use of euphemistic language to obscure violence, and the moral pressures produced by hunger and scarcity. The episode also explores how these perpetrators have been remembered, silenced, or contested in cultural memory within Ukraine and across the diaspora, based on her dissertation “‘Idle, Drunk and Good-for-Nothing’: The Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine and Their Representation in Cultural Memory” and her forthcoming book Stalin’s Activists.00:00 – Introduction & Guest Background02:35 – Studying Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the Holodomor08:45 – Famine Policies and Legal Enforcement18:34 – Beyond Top Leaders: Grassroots Perpetration26:10 – Youth, Cadres, and Rank-and-File Violence30:11 – Euphemisms, Obedience, and Moral Justifications35:10 – Women Perpetrators and Gendered Representation40:47 – Empathy, Hunger, and Moral Collapse46:05 – Literature, Memoir, and Cultural Evidence49:41 – Memory, Diaspora, and Competing Narratives