The long and extremely creatively rich life of this outstanding student of Soviet totalitarianism (he always defined his research field as “Soviet history”) is a compelling example of human and professional integrity, faithfulness to the researcher’s foremost duty, which is to seek the truth, no matter how harsh it may turn out to be.
Robert Conquest was born on July 15, 1917 in Great Malvern (Worcestershire, UK) to an American businessman and his Norwegian wife. He studied at Oxford, where he received a BA and an MA in Philosophy, and then a doctorate in Soviet history. Conquest joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1937, but soon left it, having realized what kind of a political force it was. He fought in World War Two, and then went on to serve as the press attache of the British embassy in Sofia, which gave him the opportunity to witness firsthand the brutal communization of Bulgaria. Conquest served with the Foreign Office through 1956.
The most famous work of the historian is The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (1968). It was the first truly comprehensive study of the Great Terror in the USSR to be published in the West at that time. Based largely on the reports released in the USSR during the Thaw period (though its sources were not limited to them), it allowed Conquest to determine the total toll exacted by the Stalinist purges, repression, and famines at 20 million lives. This statement, made in the late 1960s, provoked harsh attacks from leftist intellectuals of the time. Conquest, in turn, criticized them for their willful blindness and argued that Stalinism was the logical consequence of Leninism.
In his book Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, well-known in Ukraine, the historian engaged in another bout of intense polemic with the Western left, considering their denial of the true scale of Great Famine in the USSR to be an “intellectual and moral disgrace.” He was a member of the British Academy and prepared materials for Ronald Reagan’s election campaigns. Harvest of Sorrow brought him the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine in 1994, while his services to the study of the Holodomor were honored with the Order of Yaroslav the Wise in 2006.
Conquest died from pneumonia in Palo Alto (California, USA) on August 3, 2015. It was symbolic that a large monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine was opened almost simultaneously in the heart of Washington, in front of the Capitol.
By Ihor SIUNDIUKOV, The Day
“The truth about Holodomor is still topical today”
Stanislav KULCHYTSKY, Doctor of History, professor, head of the Department of the History of Ukraine in the 1920s-1930s at the Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine:
“In his last 15 years Robert Conquest almost never walked out of his university in Stanford due to ill health.
“After he wrote the book The Harvest of Sorrow, which ran into several editions in this country and was translated into all the major languages of the world, the picture of the Ukrainian Holodomor became much clearer for the general public. Even in our country, when we were part of the USSR, we could not speak about the famine at all, as if it had never occurred.
“When Conquest wrote The Great Terror about the year 1937 in the Soviet Union, he became a universally known figure. The Ukrainian diaspora in the US and Canada requested him to write a book on the year 1933 in Ukraine. Conquest agreed to do so.
“The diaspora also came to know about James Mace, a young American researcher of the Holodomor. He was a profound expert in the history of Ukraine. Mace perfectly knew the Ukrainian language as well as the material of study. He in fact supplied Conquest with all the basic information that made part of The Harvest of Sorrow. As a matter of fact, James Mace was a modest coauthor who never emphasized his role.
“Robert Conquest was not only a talented scholar and historian. He was also a high-level poet and prose writer. This ‘cooperation’ made The Harvest of Sorrow a bestseller, a book which could be easily read and understood in spite of its horrible content.
“Conquest’s books made a major contribution to the topics that were blank spots. Naturally, we have now a totally different level of knowledge. We have long surpassed Conquest as far as 1933 and 1937 are concerned. But he was the first in this field, which does him credit after all.
“Has Conquest’s heritage been sufficiently studied in Ukraine? Funny enough, our Institute of the History of Ukraine has a department of historiography and sources research. It deals with 19th-century Ukrainian historiography, Hrushevsky, and God knows who else. It is, of course, good, necessary, and useful for scientific research. But this department does not study our own selves.
“In the past 25 years the Institute of History has done a great deal of research and made a colossal contribution to world historiography. These works are well-known, but their authors remain unknown. The same applies to Conquest. Mace is a little more known only because he worked for a few years as editor of the English-language digest The Day. Both the newspaper and its editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna believe that they owe very much to Mace and cherish his memory by publishing his books at the Den’s Library.
“I conduct a special course on the Holodomor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Master-degree students know quite a lot about Mace but practically nothing about Conquest.”
Alexander MOTYL, professor of political science at Rutgers University, Director of the Central and East European Studies Program, New Jersey, USA:
“More than anyone else, Robert Conquest changed Western views about the Holodomor. Until the appearance of his book, the vast majority of USSR specialists had no knowledge of the famine in Ukraine. Because the book was a seriously researched piece of scholarship written by a person of non-Ukrainian descent, it became impossible to claim that the famine had been insignificant or that his views were ‘biased.’ After Conquest, the famine became an issue that no serious USSR scholar could ignore.
“Moreover, because the book was written in Conquest’s typical literary style, it also found a readership outside of universities and had an important impact on the views of journalists, analysts, and other professionals.”
Interviewed by Ihor SAMOKYSH, Mykola SIRUK, The Day
