Congratulations to History student Dan Piper who came second in the 2021 Holodomor Essay Prize competition, winning £400 prize money half of which is donated to the College. The competition is run by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, in partnership with the Nadia Diuk Memorial Programme. The judging panel for the competition is headed by Dr Olenka Pevny of Cambridge University.
Although the Holodomor is a topic that is taught as part of the A Level History: Democracy and Dictators programme at Godalming College it is not a topic that is generally studied in the UK schools' curriculum. The Competition is designed to inspire academic study of the Holodomor, which was a strategy used by Stalin over an 18 month period in 1932/33 where between 4 - 7 million Ukrainains starved to death.
Dan has a deep interest in History and has the intention of studying the subject at Cambridge next year.
"I have a longstanding interest in Russian history and little-known historical events, and this essay gave me the opportunity to explore these subjects further. While putting together the essay, the firsthand accounts helped to shape my concept of what it must have been like to suffer under the conditions in Ukraine, and then the pain brought about by having that suffering forgotten by the World."
Read Dan's award winning essay Holodomor - a crime of genocde, and a victim of ignorance to find out more about the Holodomor and Dan's critical analysis of it.
The photograph above is of Dan presenting a cheque for £200 to the College Principal, Emma Young and Head of History and Politics, Laurie Huggett-Wilde, to be used by the History Department.