The James Mace Memorial Archive Library Will Open in September 2010 in the Kyiv-Mohyla Ancient Academic Corpus

Writer, poet and journalist Natalia Dziubenko-Mace and Dr. James E.Mace, historian and prominent researcher of the man-made 1933 Great Famine known as Holodomor, professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

The opening ceremony of the James Mace Memorial Archive Library is planned to take place in September 2010.  The exact date and time of the opening will be announced in the near future. 

James E. Mace (February 18, 1952 – May 3, 2004) was an American historian and prominent researcher of the man-made 1933 Great Famine known as Holodomor.  Born in Oklahoma, he held an undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University.  After receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the University of Michigan with a thesis on national communism in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.  Following the advice of Omeljan Pritsak, the director of the Institute, he started doing research for Robert Conquest's book on the Great Famine in Ukraine, The Harvest of Sorrow.

From 1986-90, Mace served as the executive director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine in Washington, D.C.  In 1993 he moved from the United States to Ukraine. Since 1993, he was a Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.  He was a strong supporter of the Academy from the its first years of re-birth after the fall of the Soviet Union, and according to his own written memoirs, he spent the happiest years of his life teaching and researching at the university.  He was a prolific writer, academic and colleague to many.

As many have commented in the past, he was destined to be Ukrainian.  James Mace coined the phrase "YOUR DEAD HAVE CHOSEN ME," when he referred to the victims of the 1933 Holodomor and their memory.  Based on his years of research, he considered the Holodomor a premeditated act of genocide aimed at the spiritual, moral, linguistic, and cultural extermination of the Ukrainian nation. He was arguably the first to stress the need to recognize this man-made famine as an act of ethnocide.  His widow, Natalia Dziubenko-Mace, a distinguished writer, poet and journalist, has dedicated herself to his memory and is a collaborator on the classification of his archival materials and memoirs.

The archives have been donated to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2006.  Since that time, thousands of pages of personal notes, articles, materials and books are being catalogued and systematically digitized at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academic Library.   The entire collection, along with his personal belongings, furniture, photographs and memorabilia from his office have been transferred to the room designated in his memory on the first floor of the Ancient Academic Building.  Work on the archives will continue in the newly assigned separate Memorial Room.  The Academy collected 110,000 hryvni for this purpose.   The first scholarship for research on the collection will be assigned this year, and there are several serious candidates for a grant to work with the archival collection.  Currently, there are plans for publication of a guide dealing with analysis and commentary on the archive.  The Memorial Room will make it possible to view archives, present exhibits of his work, hold round table discussions and work on research of this historic valuable materials. 

The James Mace Memorial Archive Library has been transferred to its new permanent location at the university campus, the Staro-Akademichnyj Korpus, built by Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and reconstructed in 1811.

A Plaque in his Memory will state the following:

Джеймс Ернест Мейс
(James Mace)
18.02.1952—03.05.2004

Історик, політолог, дослідник голодомору в Україні, професор кафедри політології НаУКМА в 1995–2004 роках. Громадянин США, народився в Оклахомі. З 1993 р. жив і працював в Україні. Автор п’яти книжок, понад 250 наукових публікацій, у 1986–1990 рр – виконавчий директор Комісії Конгресу Сполучених Штатів з питань Українського Голодомору, з 1998 до 2004 р.-  автор щотижневих  колонок в газеті “День”, редактор  англомовних перекладів “Політичної думки” та ін.  За його заповітом похований  Києві на Байковому цвинтарі.

26 листопада 2005 року нагороджено орденом князя Ярослава Мудрого II ступеня (посмертно). 2 грудня 2005 року прийнято Розпорядження Президента України про вшанування пам'яті Джеймса Мейса.

Колекція (Бібліотека-Архів) Дж.Мейса в НаУКМА зберігається з листопада 2006 р. довічно.

Published by Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America
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