A Free Online Course on the Holodomor — Now Available Worldwide
The Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, has launched a free online course, Famine as Genocide: The Holodomor in Ukraine, now available globally on Coursera.
The 13-module course draws on genocide studies, Soviet history, archival documents, and survivor testimony to explore one of the twentieth century's most devastating — and most deliberately obscured — episodes of mass violence. It's designed for scholars, students, and general audiences alike, and University of Alberta students can enroll for academic credit.
The timing is significant. The course launches ahead of April's Genocide Awareness, Remembrance, and Prevention Month, placing Holodomor education within a broader global conversation on historical accountability, disinformation, and denial — questions that feel urgently alive today.
Norman Naimark, Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University, calls it "the best I've seen of this genre" — accessible, rigorous, and distilled from a wide body of scholarship into 13 well-paced lessons.
The launch also marks the 50th anniversary of CIUS, founded at the University of Alberta in 1976 — a milestone worth acknowledging.
We encourage our community to enroll, share with students and educators, and engage with this important resource.
