"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary
"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"
"In a shameless deal, Kryvorizhstal, the Kryvy Rih steel mill that is one of
Ukraine's most valuable assets, has been privatized, and right into the
pockets of highly-connected tycoons Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov,
the first of whom is President Leonid Kuchma's son in law. The Ukrainian
people have been swindled by their elite yet again. [article three]
"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 98
Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC), Washington, D.C.
Ukrainian Federation of America (UFA), Huntingdon Valley, PA
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C.; Kyiv, Ukraine, THURSDAY, June 17, 2004
-----INDEX OF ARTICLES-----
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"
1. "UKRAINE'S STEEL DEAL"
EDITORIAL, Financial Times, London, UK, Wed, Jun 16, 2004
2. "A NASTY BUSINESS IN UKRAINE"
By Helen Fawkes, BBC Kiev correspondent
BBC NEWS, UK, Wednesday, June 16, 2004
3. "STEEL MILL HUSTLE"
EDITORIAL, Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Jun 17, 2004
4. UKRAINE PRIVATIZATION CHIEF DEFIANT ON STEEL SALE
Says sale to foreigners would have been unpatriotic
TV 5 Kanal, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian, 16 Jun 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, Wednesday, Jun 16, 2004
5. UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER ADVOCATES POST-SOVIET
ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AND SINGLE ECONOMIC SPACE
One Plus One TV, Kiev, in Ukrainian, 15 Jun 04
BBC Monitoring Service,UK, in English, Tuesday, Jun 15, 2004
6. ARMS AND THE NATO SUMMIT
Focused the spotlight on Ukraine and its controversial arms exports
Jane's Intelligence Digest, Coulsdon, Surrey, UK, Friday, June 11, 2004
7. BORYS TARASYUK: OUR PROBLEMS IN RELATIONS
WITH THE EU ARE CONNECTED TO POLITICS
"Our Ukraine" Press, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 16, 2004
8. "JAMES MACE'S ROLE IN EXPOSING STALIN'S GREATEST CRIME"
By Prof. Stanislav Kulchytsky, D.S. (History), Deputy Director,
Institute of Ukrainian History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The Day Weekly Digest in English, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 15, 2004
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
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1. "UKRAINE'S STEEL DEAL"
EDITORIAL, Financial Times, London, UK, Wednesday, Jun 16, 2004
Ukraine is about to make a big mistake in selling control of its largest
steelworks for $800m (£440m) to a domestic consortium co-headed by Viktor
Pinchuk, the president's son-in-law, despite receiving offers of up to
$1.5bn from foreign bidders. Kiev must reconsider this opaque decision,
which risks damaging the country's economic development and international
commercial standing.
Even by the low standards of the former Soviet Union, this is a blatantly
unfair transaction. The authorities launched the tender for the
privatisation of the Kryvorizhstal company only in early May, giving
potential bidders little time. But so attractive is this well-regarded plant
that Kiev secured five firm offers. London-based LNM and US Steel, two of
the world's largest steelmakers, jointly offered $1.5bn, with two Russian
groups bidding somewhat less. But the government favoured Mr Pinchuk, a
steel pipes entrepreneur who also happens to be President Leonid Kuchma's
son-in-law, and his partner Rinat Akhmetov, a coal and steel tycoon. They
bid $50m more than the only other Ukrainian offer.
The foreign companies knew they stood little chance because the tender
stipulated that bidders must have a record of coke production in Ukraine.
LNM and US Steel tried to comply by striking a deal with a Ukrainian coal
company. But they ran out of time.
To be fair, Mr Pinchuk and Mr Akhmetov have commercial experience having
built considerable industrial empires. But Ukraine is missing a golden
opportunity to bring in flagship international investors. LNM and US Steel
both have successful histories of reviving clapped-out steel plants in the
former Communist bloc, from Poland to Kazakhstan. Messrs Pinchuk and
Akhmetov will struggle to direct as much capital and know-how into
Kryvorizhstal as LNM/US Steel might have done. The jobs of the 56,000
workers will almost certainly be less secure.
Like Russia, Ukraine has developed an economy dominated by a handful of
business oligarchs in which foreign investors play a very subordinate role.
Like Russia, it is now growing fast, fuelled by strong demand from
Russia's energy industry. But both states need foreign capital to create
stable modern economies with a broad base of business owners.
The dangers of relying on a few politically-important oligarchs is amply
illustrated in Russia by the Yukos case, where Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the
founder, and his associate, Platon Lebedev, today stand trial on fraud
charges. Because of the many unclear links between the Kremlin, the courts
and the oligarchs, the Yukos affair has damaged the investment climate in
Russia as a whole. Investors, actual and potential, cannot be sure where
they stand.
Ukraine should not miss this chance to hold back the murky tides of
oligarch-driven business and bring two well-regarded multinationals into its
economy. (END)
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
Current Events Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/events/index.htm
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2. "A NASTY BUSINESS IN UKRAINE"
By Helen Fawkes, BBC Kiev correspondent
BBC NEWS, UK, Wednesday, June 16, 2004
KIEV - If Ukraine wants to send out a danger signal to foreign investors,
it's going about it in the right way. One of Ukraine's most lucrative
privatisation deals has been awarded to the richest man in Ukraine and along
with arguably the most well connected man in the country.
On Monday, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's wealthiest man and businessman
Viktor Pinchuk, the son in law of President Leonid Kuchma, won the tender
to buy Kryvorizhstal, one of the world's largest steel plants. For some
Ukrainians this is being viewed as another cynical example of pro-government
oligarchs profiting at their country's expense.
NO CONTEXT
A consortium of international firms LNM and US Steel had offered $1.5bn for
Kryvorizhstal, but the Akhmetov-Pinchuk partnership won despite bidding half
as much.
The tough rules set out by Ukraine's State Property Fund excluded most of
the proposals - including all the foreign ones. Companies were required to
have a history of producing at least a million tonnes a year of coke in
Ukraine.
While claiming to welcome international bids, this condition meant it was
never going to be an open competition for Kryvorizhstal, which employs
52,000 people, and which last year made a pre-tax profit of around $300m.
FIXED
This has been one of the ongoing problems of Ukraine's privatisation
programme. There have been repeated complaints by foreign investors that
privatisation tenders are frequently rigged in favour of Ukrainian
businessmen often connected with President Kuchma and his associates.
Like in many former Soviet states, business and politics are closely linked.
With just weeks to go until the start of the presidential election campaign,
this deal can also be seen as a significant political manoeuvre on the part
of those in power.
POLITICAL PROBLEMS
In October, Ukrainians go to the polls to elect a new leader.
President Kuchma has said on many occasions he will not run for a third
term - even though the constitution was changed last year to allow him to do
just that. Instead he is backing the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych.
A former governor of the Donetsk region, the industrial powerhouse in the
east of Ukraine, Mr Yanukovych is regarded as a key figure in the business
empire of Mr Akhmetov, one of the lucky winners of the Kryvorizhstal tender.
Commentators have suggested that the Kryvorizhstal privatisation deal could
be part of an agreement reached between President Kuchma and Mr
Yanukovych. If the President does not run, he will want to ensure that he
is given immunity from prosecution.
BACK-ROOM DEALS
During his time in office, Mr Kuchma has lurched from one scandal to
another, including being accused of complicity in the killing of an
opposition journalist, over which he could face a jail sentence if he's
charged and found guilty.
There is a feeling that uncertainty over the outcome of the election could
have prompted the pro-presidential politicians to press ahead with the
Kryvorizhstal privatisation despite legal attempts to stop it.
The opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, who has said he will run as a
presidential candidate, has continued to be a popular figure in the opinion
polls. The opposition has been against selling off the state-run steel plant
and they want the privatisation of strategic enterprises to be halted until
after the elections.
ON THE EDGE
Ukraine, which now borders the EU, is one of the largest countries in
Europe, but its great potential has yet to be realised. Ever since
independence from the former Soviet Union, the pace of economic reform
has been slow. Ukraine's economy remains stoutly agrarian
The country has also been held back by corruption which continues to be
carried out on a massive scale. True, the economy is looking healthy right
now: in the first quarter of the year, gross domestic product increased by
almost 11% year on year. But the gap between the haves and the have-nots
is increasing - outside the main cities, the poverty is hard to miss.
Some people live without basic amenities like running water and a gas
supply, and average incomes are still just $100 a month. If the
Kryvorizhstal sell-off is another step in the consolidation of power, money
and influence in the hands of pro-government oligarchs, matters can only get
worse. LINK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3809057.stm
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
Ukrainian Culture Gallery: http://www.ArtUkraine.com/cultgallery.htm
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3. "STEEL MILL HUSTLE"
EDITORIAL, Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Jun 17, 2004
In a shameless deal, Kryvorizhstal, the Kryvy Rih steel mill that is one of
Ukraine's most valuable assets, has been privatized, and right into the
pockets of highly-connected tycoons Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, the
first of whom is President Leonid Kuchma's son in law. The Ukrainian people
have been swindled by their elite yet again.
With the official announcement June 14 that the State Property Fund has sold
the mill to a consortium associated with Pinchuk and Akhmetov comes the end
to a depressing story that highlights the worst in Ukrainian cronyism and
jobbery. The way that highly-placed tycoons manipulated the Kryvorizhstal
sale is an embarrassment for a country that pays lip service to the idea of
European economic practices. It declares to the world, truthfully or not,
that Ukraine is a legal gray area that foreign capital should avoid. That
capital, which doesn't need Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs it, might take
the country up on the offer.
The facts are familiar. Kryvorizhstal's sale, which could have been
immensely fruitful for Ukraine, was made subject by the government to a
peculiar condition: Any company that bid for the mill had to prove that it
had produced, and in Ukraine, at least 1 million tons of coke - essential to
coal production - every year for the last three years. This condition froze
out foreign steel giants, several of which were interested in Kryvorizhtal.
Among them were India's Tata and LNM, and U.S. Steel.
The benefits to Ukraine had such international giants been allowed to
participate fairly in the Kryvorizhstal tender are obvious. Had one of them
won, a cash windfall would have been fed into this country's economy. Also,
a healthy precedent would have been set for other foreign investors.
But even if a foreign concern hadn't won, their participation in a fair
tender would have pushed the price of the mill up. It has been reported that
the Russian Severstal was willing to pay $1.2 billion. LNM and U.S. steel,
in partnership, were willing to pay an astounding $2.7 billion.
Now the mill has been sold to the Pinchuk and Akhmetov group for the
relatively small sum of almost $800 million, which is $1.9 billion dollars
less than LNM and U.S. Steel would have paid. Yes, you read that figure
correctly: Ukraine's ruling class has cheated the country out of $1.9
billion. Rarely does one come across a more clear-cut example of a national
elite robbing from its own people.
Ukraine's moguls are fond of protesting that they made their money under a
different, earlier set of circumstances, when standards and laws were more
lax. Therefore, the logic goes, they should be given a pass.
Well, now it's 2004, the world's eyes are on Ukraine as never before, and
amoral business titans are still running roughshod across the economic
landscape, robbing their own countrymen. They're doing nothing morally
different from sticking up old ladies in dark lobbies, or burglarizing
impoverished war veterans.
They should be ashamed of themselves. But they won't be. (END)
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
Current Events Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/events/index.htm
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4. UKRAINE PRIVATIZATION CHIEF DEFIANT ON STEEL GIANT SALE
Says sale to foreigners would have been unpatriotic
TV 5 Kanal, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian, 16 Jun 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, Thursday, Jun 16, 2004
KIEV - The head of Ukraine's privatization agency, Mykhaylo Chechetov, has
said he is proud that the Ukrainian steel giant Kryvorizhstal has been sold
to a Ukrainian bidder. His comment comes after Western and Russian bidders
expressed their disappointment at the agency's decision to award victory to
a consortium led by the Ukrainian president's son-in-law, Victor Pinchuk.
They said they were prepared to pay more than the winning price, and alleged
that the terms of the tender discriminated against foreign bidders.
Speaking on Ukrainian television, Chechtov suggested that allowing
Kryvorizhstal to be privatized by foreigners would have been unpatriotic.
The following is the text of report by Ukrainian television TV 5 Kanal on 16
June:
[Presenter] The investors who won the bidding for Kryvorizhstal have come to
the company to stay, State Property Fund chairman Mykhaylo Chechetov has
said. He is proud that the company was bought by a Ukrainian bidder.
[Chechetov, in Russia] I believe that the patriotism of any official is
demonstrated by his deeds, not by the language he uses. [Switches to
Ukrainian] [I] could speak Ukrainian but give the company to the Americans
of Russians. Some patriotism that would have been? [Switches back to
Russian] But I still speak Russian, and I have left the crown jewel of
Ukrainian steel-making to the national investor - and in compliance with the
law, without breaking the law.
[Ukrainian officials have said foreigners were excluded from the final round
as they failed to meet certain conditions, including a stipulation that the
winner must have been a profit-making producer of Ukrainian coke for the
past three years. The Ukrainian winner paid over 800m dollars for
Kryvorizhstal, which accounts for 20 per cent of Ukraine's steel output.]
[Audio and video available. Please send queries to kiev.bbcm@mon.bbc.co.uk]
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
Current Events Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/events/index.htm
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5. UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER ADVOCATES POST-SOVIET
ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AND SINGLE ECONOMIC SPACE
One Plus One TV, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian, 15 Jun 04
BBC Monitoring Service,UK, in English, Jun 15, 2004
KIEV - [Presenter] Deepening cooperation in the CIS and establishing the
Single Economic Space [SES, of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan]
are fully in line with contemporary globalization trends. That was an
explanation of recent steps by the Ukrainian authorities given by Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych at an international economic forum held in St
Petersburg. He believes that the stepping up of integration processes in the
SES will allow an area of sustained development and rapid economic growth to
be created in eastern Europe in the next few years.
[Correspondent] Petrol prices in Ukraine may soon be regulated not only by
administrative methods but also by economic ones. Russia has agreed to
phase out double taxation on its oil exports starting from January next
year.
[Yanukovych, in Russian] We will set up an intergovernmental working group
to monitor the pricing policy - from both Ukraine's and Russia's
perspective - as well as the volumes of supplies in order for us to have a
chance to maintain the fuel balance that Ukraine has and not to create a
deficit of oil products.
[Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, in Russian] We have given the
instruction to experts and, literally in the next few days, they are to look
together at the existing problems on energy markets in order to make sure,
at the very least, that the speculative, artificial factor is ruled out.
[Correspondent] The reason for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's visit to
St Petersburg was an international economic forum held in the Tavricheskiy
Palace. [Passage omitted: background to forum, venue]
[Correspondent] Yanukovych pins his hopes on the SES, which was created
last year by the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan.
[Yanukovych, speaking in Russian from rostrum at forum] Speaking of the
European Union, the pace of economic growth there is likely to become even
more modest in the coming decade. Against this background, GDP growth in
member states of the Single Economic Space, which has reached 8.5 per cent,
looks more than convincing.
[Correspondent] The Ukrainian head of government proposed that the forum
participants next year should discuss the problem of poverty because it is
the greatest woe for the CIS. Also today, Yanukovych flew from St Petersburg
to Moscow, where he is to meet President [Vladimir] Putin.
[1420-1650 Video shows Yanukovych in talks with Fradkov, both prime
ministers speaking at news conference, Yanukovych delivering speech at St
Petersburg forum.] {Audio and video available. Please send queries to
kiev.bbcm@mon.bbc.co.uk] (END)
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
Check Out the News Media for the Latest News From and About Ukraine
Daily News Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/newsgallery.htm
=========================================================
6. ARMS AND THE NATO SUMMIT
Focused the spotlight on Ukraine and its controversial arms exports
Jane's Intelligence Digest, Coulsdon, Surrey, UK, Friday, June 11, 2004
The recent discovery and seizure of a sizeable weapons shipment in Turkey
ahead of a key NATO summit has again focused the spotlight on Ukraine and
its controversial arms exports. JID's regional correspondent reports on an
incident that is raising serious questions in Kiev and much further afield.
The weapons scandal began when a ship sailing under a Maltese flag, but with
six Ukrainians in its crew, was seized by Turkish customs officials in the
port of Ambarli en route to Egypt. Two containers were searched when customs
officials noticed that the ship's cargo was different to that stated on its
manifest.
Advanced radio-guided missiles were discovered in one container that was
labelled 'spare parts'. A second container contained Kalashnikov rifles that
had been declared as 'hunting rifles.' Other discoveries included anti-tank
rockets, artillery shells and a large quantity of ammunition.
So where was this equipment heading when it was intercepted? Turkish
officials suggest that the seized weapons may have been intended for use in
a terrorist attack during the NATO summit in Istanbul on 28-29 June. Another
theory is that if the likely end-users were not militants in Turkey, then
the probable destination would be radical Islamic groups in Egypt or else
for use in the Palestinian intifada.
When news of the Turkish operation became public, the Ukrainian state arms
export agency, Ukrspeteksport, immediately denied that it had any links to
the weapons. This was then contradicted by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry,
which promptly claimed the arms shipment to be "normal cargo". The Egyptian
detention of both the arms and ship used to transport them from Ukraine was
due to "improper seals on some of the shipped containers", rather than the
actual contents being illicit, the Foreign Ministry stated. These
contradictory statements have merely added to the confusion over who
authorised the export of this military equipment and who was to have been
its intended recipient.
Ukrspeteksport and its associated companies, all of which are state owned,
have a monopoly on the export of military equipment from Ukraine. The
enterprise's activities are supposed to be closely supervised by the
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). In view of Ukrspeteksport's control of
the market, one possible explanation for this confiscated consignment of
weapons is that the country's export regulations continue to be flouted by
officials.
This might explain why official sources in Ukraine continue to send out
contradictory signals as to whether the export of the impounded equipment
was actually done via Ukrspeteksport. Recent statements broadcast by those
sections of Ukraine's domestic media, which are known to have close links to
the government (such as the 1+1 television channel), have suggested that
Ukrspeteksport did dispatch the shipment, but added that the exports were
entirely legitimate. According to this explanation of the affair, Turkish
customs officials had confused transformers, stabilisers, relays and plates
as military equipment.
Imaginative as this version of events may appear, it can hardly account for
the Kalashnikovs, anti-tank rockets or artillery shells found in the vessel.
Turkish television has shown customs officials opening a long box from which
they produced a rocket. Other items filmed included a radio-controlled
missile and rocket launcher pads.
Ukrspeteksport's director-general, Valeriy Shmarov, has fallen back on tried
and tested arguments: he claimed that the incident was "simply an act of
provocation" - although why the Turks should seek a confrontation with Kiev
remains unexplained; and Shmarov promised that the Ukrainian Security
Service (SBU) would establish "a commission of inquiry".
Such protestations of innocence will be familiar to those who followed the
Kolchuga radar saga. In September 2002, President Leonid Kuchma was
confronted by the Bush administration with tape recordings - authenticated
by the CIA - which indicated that he had authorised the sale of the highly
mobile radars system to Saddam Hussein's regime. Washington continues to
insist that Kuchma did indeed authorise the sale, even though no evidence of
the system has so far been found by US-led Coalition troops in Iraq. Some
intelligence sources allege that the Kolchugas may now be in Syria.
An international team went to Ukraine in October 2002 to investigate these
charges and found that Ukraine's export controls were poor. Unsurprisingly,
Western governments and intelligence agencies have little confidence in any
commission of inquiry that might be established by the SBU to investigate
this latest incident.
The timing of this affair is doubly unfortunate for Kuchma. He has been
invited to attend the NATO summit in Istanbul where he is scheduled to
participate in a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Committee. If the trip does go
ahead as planned, it would be Kuchma's first meeting with US President
George W Bush who has hitherto declined to meet his Ukrainian counterpart
following the Kolchuga allegations. However, Bush has finally agreed to
receive Kuchma in gratitude for Ukraine's contribution of the fourth largest
contingent of troops to the US-led Coalition in Iraq.
The confiscated weaponry discovered in Turkey is likely to have come from
either Ukraine itself or the separatist Transdniestr region of Moldova. The
Transdniestr is a well-known producer of military equipment, a fact that has
only recently been acknowledged by the region's unrecognised President Igor
Smirnov. However, even if the impounded military equipment did originate in
the Transdniestr, it would have still had to have been exported through the
Ukrainian port of Odessa. (END)
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THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Historical Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/histgallery.htm
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7. BORYS TARASYUK: OUR PROBLEMS IN RELATIONS
WITH THE EU ARE CONNECTED TO POLITICS
"Our Ukraine" Press, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 16, 2004
KYIV - Speaking at the round table, dedicated to the 10-th anniversary of
the Partnership and Cooperation Treaty between Ukraine and the European
Union, Borys Tarasyuk reminded that Ukraine was one of the first states of
the former Soviet Union with which the EU signed such Treaty. The Treaty was
aimed at the development of economic partnership and political dialogue as
well as at supporting Ukraine's efforts in instilling democracy and the
supremacy of law.
"At the same time," according to Borys Tarasyuk, "we have to admit that, ten
years after the signing of the Treaty, the EU is still not ready to look at
Ukraine as a candidate for the EU membership. Our problems in relations with
the EU are connected politics and to that part of the Agreement that focuses
on democracy and human rights. I would like to remind that, in accordance
with the Treaty, Ukraine had to adopt its legislation in the corresponding
spheres to the EU legislation."
Borys Tarasyuk noted that the EU had not yet developed a clear strategy
towards Ukraine: "We do not understand why the EU puts Ukraine together with
Russia and Belorus, which do not express desire to become EU members. We
do not understand why Ukraine is placed in the group of the so-called EU
neighbors along with the North African countries and countries of the Near
East. We do not understand the EU policy, which is called "European
Neighborhood Policy," in which Ukraine is included.
The question is then, if the EU is developing [such] policies towards
Ukraine, it becomes evident that we are not perceived as a country that is a
part of the European continent. Otherwise, this strategy would have been
called "EU Neighborhood Policy." It would have been then understandable
why Ukraine is included in it," noted the parliamentarian.
"Conversely," said Borys Tarasyuk, "we understand that the EU, the Council
of Europe, and the governments of the EU member-countries sometimes cannot
understand the key aspects of Ukraine's foreign orientation. It is difficult
for them to realize that, while the course for the EU and NATO is being
declared, the country is, indeed, being pointed in the opposite direction."
According to the parliamentarian: "As far as Ukraine is concerned, we are
witnessing the dominance of a declarative culture in the executive branch of
the government, weak institutional, functional, and financial stability of
priorities of the European integration policies in the every-day activities
of the executive government."
Borys Tarasyuk is convinced that it depends on the Council of Europe and the
Ukrainian government and on the consistency of actions "whether we will move
from the existing Treaty about partnership and cooperation onto the next
level, which will have to be a Treaty about associated membership, or not.
Decisions have to be made in Kyiv and Brussels only but not in Moscow,
Minsk, or Astana. The future of the Treaty on partnership and cooperation,
the future of relations between Ukraine and the EU depends primarily on the
actions of the Ukrainian government." (http://www.razom.org.ua)
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 98: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
Historical Gallery: http://www.artukraine.com/histgallery.htm
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8. "JAMES MACE'S ROLE IN EXPOSING STALIN'S GREATEST CRIME"
By Prof. Stanislav Kulchytsky, D.S. (History), Deputy Director,
Institute of Ukrainian History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The Day Weekly Digest in English, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 15, 2004
James Mace embarked on the most important project of his life and
accomplished it in the 1980s. Everything he did later pales in comparison
and is starkly contrasted to his time of glory. He burst into Ukrainian
history and will remain there forever. My story is about James Mace in the
1980s. The following is not a memoir, as I met him only in the late 1980s.
It is a study focusing on the scholarly feat achieved by James Mace. In
order to assess what Dr. Mace accomplished, one must try to imagine what our
society knew about the year 1933, at a time when any mention of famine was
prohibited.
On May 14, 2003, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine held a special session to pay
homage to the victims of the 1932-33 Holodomor. A message to the Ukrainian
people was adopted, including the following momentous statement: "Today, we
may state with certainty that the first truthful words about the Holodomor
of 1932-33 played a notable role in the national renascence; they were among
the important factors that led to Ukrainian independence." This statement
should be regarded as the positing of a problem that until now has never
before drawn the attention of historians.
Ukrainian citizens still remember the events of the late 1980s. At the time,
the hair-raising truth about the Holodomor was made public for the first
time. By comparing the scope and sequence of those events, we can see that
information about the 1933 famine and other atrocities committed under
Stalin were a tangible factor in transforming the bureaucratic campaign of
perestroika into a national revolution.
The point is not the famine, a fact known by one and all, but its scope and
causes. The members of the generation that was victimized by the famine
terror had no doubts that they were being taught to do the right things,
according to Stanislav Kosior. After all, the famine terror was perpetrated
precisely in order to teach the peasantry to work well not only on their
private plots but also on collective farms (known as artels). However, the
generation born in the second half of the 1920s, and later, knew nothing
about the causes of the famine. This generation gap first manifested itself
in the years of WWII.
We all know the negative stand taken by a large number of veterans of the
"Great Patriotic War," especially those who head war veterans'
organizations. with regard to the elucidation of facts connected to the war
in modern school textbooks and research papers. This complicates the
practical endeavors of historians who are striving to eliminate Soviet
stereotypes. Modern veterans represent the younger postwar Soviet
generation; these are individuals who were between 16 and 20 years old
during WWII. The middle and older generations in this period, who shouldered
the immense burden of the war, are no longer among the living. However,
owing to their numerical superiority, it is precisely those generations
that determined the Red Army's morale.
Whereas the younger generation was raised in the communist spirit, the
members of the older one mainly abided by their life experience, packed as
it was with ideological terror, mass purges, and deportations - above all by
memories of the horrendous Holodomor. The elders, however, were in no hurry
to share this experience with the youth, as they wanted to protect young
people from the state security [e.g., NKVD/KGB] functionaries. Some,
thinking mostly of defending their Fatherland, rather than the polity,
courageously resisted the Wehrmacht and made Hitler's blitzkrieg impossible.
Others refused to defend the criminal Stalinist regime; those people would
avail themselves of the first opportunity to give themselves up to the
Germans.
Most Soviet officers and men found themselves taken prisoners of war in the
first period of WWII, before November 1942 (the Germans captured a total of
5,200,000 people before November 1944). After the Red Army troops realized
that Nazism was threatening to physically destroy the people, they stopped
surrendering to the Germans and began to fight, not for the Soviet state but
for their homeland.
After WWII, generations that were raised by the Soviet government were
predominant among the USSR citizenry. Three main factors influenced their
mentality and conduct: first, complete dependence on the omnipresent state
that closely monitored everyone, while taking care of all citizens; second,
the upbringing of people and their education, starting from the kindergarten
level, and propaganda, which portrayed this dependence as the greatest
achievement of the new socioeconomic system; and third, fear of the
omnipotent, punitive authorities that were keeping close watch on all their
citizens to make sure that everyone observed the rules of conduct that the
state recognized as the only feasible ones.
These three combined factors operated in a way that people were mostly
unaware of their existence. In fact, the state instilled in the citizenry an
instinctive sense of being subordinated to the state. As a result of this
closed society, almost no one knew that one's daily life could be different.
Those that knew and tried to resist were physically destroyed under Stalin;
later they were branded as dissidents.
Events pertaining to the inter-war period were recounted in keeping with the
canons of Stalin's brief course of training, as laid down in The History of
the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). Any public mention of the 1933
famine in any form (even a notice reading that so-and-so's parents or
relatives died of starvation) was considered an anti-Soviet trick. Under
Stalin, this meant a term in a prison camp; after the liquidation of the
GULAG, it spelled "preventive treatment" by the KGB. Every Soviet citizen
knew only too well that the notions of the 1933 Holodomor and anti-Soviet
propaganda were interrelated. Everyone had an inner censor helping him or
her to survive and stay out of trouble.
In order to understand how information about the 1933 Holodomor existed in
the consciousness of the Soviet people, it is especially important to know
the following: information was fragmentary, incomplete, and unreliable, with
confusing cause-and-effect relations that did not allow one to properly
grasp the very fact of the famine. No one except the architects could
determine its scope.
At the time even communist functionaries outside Ukraine did not have a
clear picture of the Holodomor. Nikita Khrushchev remained silent about the
crimes that he committed under Stalin, but tried to be sincere in his
memoirs. In the early 1930s, he was second secretary of Moscow's city and
regional All- Union Communist Party committees. Referring to that period, he
wrote that bits and pieces of information were reaching Moscow about Ukraine
being in the grip of famine, but he could not personally imagine a situation
like that. He had left Ukraine in 1929, when food supplies were adequate.
Now there was famine. Why?
He could not fathom the number of victims, although some information had
appeared in the "bourgeois press," and now and then the Western media would
carry articles about the Soviet collectivization campaign and how much it
was costing in terms of Soviet lives. He wrote that he could say such things
now, but that he knew nothing at the time; secondly, even if he had known,
there would have been explanations like sabotage, counterrevolution, and
kulak resistance that had to be combated, and so on.
Nikita Khrushchev apparently had his explanations even when the government
was directly responsible for the famine. "Food supply complications" in
1932-33, although acknowledged, were attributed to "kulak resistance,"
despite the fact that the kulaks had been destroyed or deported twice over,
in 1929 and 1931.
In carrying out their social and technical reconstruction programs, the
Bolsheviks resorted to the well-developed pseudo-Marxian phraseology known
at the time as Marxism-Leninism. For all of us raised in the spirit of
Bolshevist ideology, ranging from Nikita Khrushchev to a junior research
fellow (in my case), notions such as kulak, petty bourgeoisie, and class
struggle were ripe with meaning. The kulak was by definition a class enemy.
The enemy had to be destroyed, unless he surrendered. Everybody knew the
axiom introduced by the great proletarian author Maxim Gorky. Socialism was
born in rivers of human blood, but we were convinced that this was normal.
In 1966 I began to study the financing process behind the Soviet
industrialization campaign. Ten years of study allowed me to trace the roots
of the economic crisis accompanying the postwar modernization of the
economy. In the archives of the highest bodies of the state and
administrative authorities, there was no mention of famine (such topics were
dealt with in special hush- hush files to which I had no access). However,
the overall picture of economic devastation, combined with spectacular
progress in carrying out giant industrial projects, was clear enough.
This knowledge was superimposed on information about the 1933 famine, which
was generally known but not clearly outlined. To me, its gigantic scope was
undeniable. Elsewhere I have written that I still have a scrap of paper with
simple arithmetic calculations from the 1960s, which show population losses,
based on a comparison of central and local ministerial statistics. It all
added up to the fact that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had
acquired a population deficit of at least three million in 1932-33. True, at
the time I was unable to distinguish between the Holodomor of Ukraine-Kuban
(where all foods were confiscated) and the famine that befell other Soviet
territories (where only grain was taken away). I had a better idea about the
reasons behind the USSR's abominable economic situation, but it never
occurred to me that my country, ruled by workers and peasants, could ever
resort to a famine terror against its own peasants.
In the Soviet period I would often write reviews of texts dealing with the
Holodomor. Those texts were written by authors who were known in our country
as "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists," or by foreign authors who had written
books commissioned by top- level communist functionaries, in which the
nationalists were branded as falsifiers. It is easy to understand the nature
of my reviews at the time, considering that we regarded members of the
Ukrainian Diaspora as though we were looking at them through a sniper's
scope. However, such propagandistic products were well paid for and of top
quality. One example is William Randolph Hearst's Russian Famine. I still
have a copy of that review (at the time reviewers were not allowed to know
authors' names).
President Roosevelt established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union
in 1933. He took advantage of Stalin to seek new allies after the Nazis came
to power in Germany. Stopping the enmity between the USSR, the UK, and
France was in the US national interests. However, Hearst, the American print
media tycoon and Roosevelt's adversary, chose to accuse the US president of
establishing diplomatic relations with a criminal government that was
killing its own people by means of a famine. He launched his campaign in
1935, and in order to actualize his accusations, re-dated the famine,
declaring that it had begun in 1934, not in 1933. By juggling facts and
allegations, the Hearst-controlled media attacked Roosevelt, charging him
with immoral conduct. Gutter-press journalists illustrated their
hair-raising famine stories with photos depicting the 1921 famine in the
Volga territories, since photos pertaining to the 1932-33 Holodomor were
and still are rarities.
Hearst's mix of truth and untruth about the Holodomor was convincing. For
that reason I wrote in my review that the author had succeeded in carrying
out his principal mission, "to demonstrate a falsification technique in
literature on the so-called famine of 1933, and to expose the nationalist
authors of books on that 'famine' as people with a criminal past,
collaborators who zoologically despise our country."
While studying the Holodomor in the second half of the 1980s, I remembered
my impressions from sources that I first investigated in the second half of
the 1960s. Twenty years later, I was seeing them in a different light. Now I
could see them for what they were; now I understood the kind of society I
was born and raised in. The Soviet government had openly resorted to a
famine terror, begetting the 1933 Holodomor. Local newspapers carried
articles with vivid details of an "organized public" (e.g., committees of
impoverished peasants) searching prosperous farmsteads and confiscating all
the food and grain that were stored for the next harvesting campaign.
Marxist-Leninist indoctrination was not the only factor preventing the
Soviet people from seeing things they were looking at with wide-open eyes.
There was also fear. This fear was vaguely outlined, at the subconscious
level, but quite real. Indoctrination through education merged into a single
whole, together with fear stemming from the purges that were regularly
carried out by the powers that be. There emerged a conceptual and behavioral
stereotype that is incomprehensible to modern youth or to foreign
researchers specializing in our history.
Why should the May 14, 2003 message of the Verkhovna Rada stress that
the truth about the 1933 Holodomor was an important factor in achieving
Ukraine's independence?
Like iron rings, the purges and Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which was
constantly hammered into people's minds, bolstered the communist system
sired by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Mass repressions petered out
after Stalin's death. The doctrine was gradually dying in people's minds.
The Soviet past had a great many skeletons in its closets, which began to
emerge after Gorbachev's announcement about the perestroika, glasnost, and
new-way-of-thinking campaigns. However, none of those skeletons had a
crucial impact on the indoctrinated man's consciousness, as did the truth
about the 1933 Holodomor.
I know from my own experience. When I realized that the Holodomor was the
result of a terror by famine, all of my indoctrination evaporated at once. A
simple question came to mind: Why should life in Ukraine depend on decisions
made outside its borders? There was one lucid answer to that question: No
matter what decisions were made, whether well intentioned or not, one should
not tempt fate but live by relying on one's own intellect.
As Stalin proceeded to exercise his terror by famine, the issue could not be
raised, not even at a sitting of the Politburo or at a plenary meeting of
the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, let alone the
Communist Party of Ukraine. Not because such information could ever become
public knowledge, as all such records were stored as top-secret party
documents. Millions of people knew only too well that they were starving.
Terror by famine could only be implemented by placing a ban on discussions
of the famine. When organs of the party had to operate during the famine,
for example, keeping track of those who were dying of starvation and burying
their bodies, such records were stored in top-secret files.
Stalin's veto on the subject of the famine remained in effect even during
subsequent years. Everyone grew accustomed to the fact that the famine could
not be mentioned by name. At first, this habit was maintained by constant
purges. When they ground to a halt, the habit remained. I can testify to
this through my own life experience.
In the summer of 1966, Yuri Smolych, President of the Ukrainian Association
for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad, commissioned a
colleague of mine and me to write a series of articles on Soviet Ukraine's
economic growth for the newspaper Visti z Ukrayiny, commemorating another
official jubilee. This newspaper was targeted ethnic Ukrainian communities
and was practically inaccessible to the domestic reader. Petro Shelest,
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine,
perused every issue, assigning primary importance to its propaganda value.
He understood that propaganda had to be convincing, so when it came time to
compose such articles, he instructed the authors to mention the 1932-33
famine in the Ukrainian countryside when dealing with the collectivization
period. The manuscript containing the famine paragraph was checked and
rechecked by authorities for a year. No one dared authorize its publication
with or without that paragraph, and none dared to ask the first secretary to
sanction it in writing. The fiftieth anniversary of the Ukrainian SSR was
getting closer. In the end, the newspaper carried the article, without the
explosive paragraph.
Hushing up the famine lasted till the end of 1987. Even as late as November
2, 1987, censors and researchers specializing in social studies were led to
understand that they should act according to Mikhail Gorbachev's jubilee
speech entitled "October and Restructuring." The father of perestroika
declared, among other things, "Taking a sober look at history, considering
all of the internal and external realities, one cannot but ask oneself
whether or not it was possible to set a different course under those
conditions other than the one proposed by the Party. If we want to remain on
the positions of historicism, the truth of life, there can be only one
answer: No, it was not possible." However, the "truth of life" asserted in
the jubilee speech was incompatible with the truth about the famine.
Less than two months later, it came time for CC CPU First Secretary
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky to deliver a speech in conjunction with the 70th
anniversary of the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine. For the first
time in 55 years, a member of the CC CPSU Politburo mentioned the 1933
famine, breaking Stalin's taboo.
How can this difference in the stands of two members of the Soviet political
oligarchy be explained? Why did the liberal Gorbachev turn out to be more
conservative than Shcherbytsky, who was the personification of Brezhnev's
period of stagnation? There is only one answer. A new factor had emerged in
the sociopolitical life of Ukraine, now a stormy sea created by perestroika.
That factor was the North American Diaspora. The impact of the Ukrainian
immigration on the political situation in Soviet Ukraine became possible
because it had succeeded in conveying the truth about the famine of 1932-33
to the governments and public of their countries of residence.
In 1983, a national committee to honor the victims of the genocidal famine
in Ukraine (1932-33) called Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine (AHRU)
was established in the United States. The head of this committee, Ihor
Olshansky, studied the records of the US Congressional Holocaust Commission
and proposed a similar commission to deal with the Ukrainian famine,
primarily for research purposes. New Jersey Senator Jim Florio and Senator
Bill Bradley supported the idea, as there were many ethnic Ukrainians in the
electorate. Florio then submitted a bill.
In many respects, the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor marked a turning
point in the West. For the first time the North American public became aware
of scholarly support. The University of Alberta in Edmonton already had the
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and there was the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute founded by Omeljan Pritsak. In 1983, the University of
Quebec (Montreal) held a conference dedicated to the Holodomor. Mainly young
researchers, Harvard graduates specializing in Soviet Ukrainian history,
prepared the pertinent reports. Bohdan Kravchenko, M. Maksudov, James
Mace, and Roman Serbyn made the most substantial presentations.
North American journalists who queried Soviet officials about the 1933
Holodomor were amazed to discover that they refused even to acknowledge its
existence. Ukrainian diplomats had to alert Kyiv to the situation,
requesting instructions. O. Kapto, CPU CC secretary in charge of ideology,
and S. Mukha, head of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the
Ukrainian SSR, prepared a memorandum under the self-evident heading: "On
Propaganda and Counterpropaganda Measures to Counteract the Anti-Soviet
Campaign Unleashed by the Reactionary Centers of the Ukrainian Emigration in
Conjunction with Food Supply Difficulties in the Early 1930s."
The fiftieth anniversary of the Holodomor thus highlighted the following key
points: whereas the Ukrainian community in the US and Canada launched an
extensive campaign to mobilize public opinion in their countries and
elsewhere in order to be heard, the Communist leadership of the USSR and
Ukraine re-imposed a Stalinist gag order on any information about the
Holodomor. This ban was originally explained by the technology of organizing
the terror by means of a famine and subsequently by the understandable
desire to conceal this crime. The Ukrainian community sought not only to
blow the lid off Stalin's most heinous crime but also to make the US
Congress issue an official statement on this matter. The Communist
leadership in Moscow and Kyiv chose a tactic typical of the period of
stagnation: turn a blind eye to the problem and hope that it will be
resolved by itself.
The report by Kapto and Mukha, which was applauded by Shcherbytsky on
February 15, 1983, proposed utterly ineffective "countermeasures,"
portraying as a major achievement the publication in 1982 of some 150
interviews, articles, reports, and essays about the benefits of collective
farming, the food rationing program, and social development of the
countryside, which appeared in the newspapers Visti z Ukrayiny and News from
Ukraine, in the press bulletin of the Ukrainian Association for Friendship
and Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries, and the bulletin of Ukraine's
Radio and Telegraph Agency. As the authors later wrote with a knowing air,
"In our opinion, it is worth continuing the active propagandization of the
achievements of the collective farming system." This is how they were going
to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Holodomor - by lauding the
advantages of a country that never stopped buying food from the West.
Between 1972 and 1982 the Soviet Union spent 1,937,500 tons of gold on food
imports, as a result of which its gold reserve was reduced from 1,744 tons
in 1972 to 576 tons in 1982 (these statistics were first published by Rudolf
Pikhoya [former director of the Russian State Archival Service - Ed.] in his
book The Soviet Union: The History of Power. 1945-1991, Moscow 1998). A
country that touted its collective farming system was forced to import food
so as to prevent famine. Food was imported in such quantities that the gold
mining industry could not produce enough gold to offset import costs (even
though the USSR had the world's second biggest gold mining industry), and
the gold reserve was being depleted at a catastrophic rate.
The Ukrainian community abroad employed the potential might of historical
science to fight Soviet propaganda in the West. In 1981 the community
sponsored a three-year project to study the Holodomor of 1933 at the Harvard
Ukrainian Research Institute. The English scholar Robert Conquest, who
specialized in researching Stalinist repressions, headed the project. His
book, The Great Terror, earned wide acclaim among both specialists and the
international public. In his search for sources Conquest relied on his
29-year-old assistant James Mace, who had just defended his doctorate,
"Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in
Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933," at the University of Michigan (a book of the
same name was published in 1983 as part of the Harvard Series in Ukrainian
Studies).
Mace explained his involvement in this project by the need to help Conquest
quickly prepare a book about the Ukrainian Holodomor. He knew all the
sources available in the West and the historical context connected with this
research project. He also pursued a new direction in the study of sources
known as "oral history." Interviews with surviving victims of the Holodomor
of 1933, whom fate had brought to the West, proved to be an excellent new
source when organized properly. This was an extremely important undertaking,
given the fact that Soviet archives were inaccessible to Western
researchers.
The passage of bills in the US Congress is a slow process, and most of them
never leave the committees and subcommittees of the House of Representatives
and the Senate, and never become laws. Every two years half of all members
of the House of Representatives face reelection, and all bills that have not
been considered must be resubmitted.
The bill to create a temporary congressional commission on the Holodomor of
1932-33 in Ukraine, which James Florio submitted in November 1983, one year
later bore the signatures of 123 members of the House of Representatives.
However, Democratic Party leaders in the House would not agree to submit
this bill for consideration, asking, "Why spend American taxpayers' money to
shed light on something that happened some fifty years ago?" Then the
Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine (AHRU) launched a campaign with the
motto "Grassroots" in all states with large Ukrainian communities.
Congressmen, chairmen of congressional committees and subcommittees, House
of Representatives Chairman O'Neil, and US President Reagan began receiving
tens of thousands of individual and collective petitions. Never before or
since did American Ukrainians organize such an extensive campaign.
In March 1984 Senator Bill Bradley submitted the same bill to the Senate.
AHRU Deputy Director Myron Kuropas was very influential in numerous
Ukrainian communities in Illinois. At one time he actively campaigned for
Illinois Senator Charles Percy, who later chaired the Foreign Affairs
Committee. Therefore, the passage of the bill in this Senate committee did
not encounter any obstacles. The first hearings were held in August 1984 and
ended on a positive note. Speaking on behalf of AHRU, Ihor Olshaniwsky said
that time does not wait: the surviving Holodomor victims were old and weak,
and it was crucial to collect their testimonies as soon as possible. The
Foreign Affairs Committee - and two days later all the senators -
unanimously approved the bill. The senators, however, deemed the
commission's budget (4.5 million US dollars for two years) too large and
reduced it more than tenfold to 400,000 US dollars.
Meanwhile, the passage of the bill in the House of Representatives
encountered difficulties. Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante Fascell
didn't want to provoke Moscow's wrath, and subcommittee Chairman John Mica
sided with him. There was a danger that the 98th Congress would not be able
to consider the bill before its term ended. Then everything would have to be
done all over again.
The subcommittee chaired by John Mica discussed the bill on October 3, 1984.
It was the penultimate day of the terms of the 98th Congress. Robie Palmer,
who represented the Presidential Administration and the State Department,
took a negative stand. He claimed there was no need for another bureaucratic
committee and that its creation would cause "an avalanche of similar demands
from other ethnic groups." On the contrary, Congressman D. Roth, who
represented the interests of the American Jewish Congress, reminded his
colleagues that the US Congress had a committee on the Jewish holocaust. He
further emphasized: "The two peoples were persecuted for political reasons
and only for being who they were. The US Congress therefore must pay equal
attention to them so that the whole world will learn about those heinous
crimes, so that they will never be repeated."
Yet the Foreign Affairs Committee did not submit the bill lobbied by the
Ukrainian organizations to the House of Representatives. Bill Bradley saved
the day by exercising his right as a senator to amend the budget and append
the funding provision for the temporary commission on the Ukrainian
Holodomor to the Funding Resolution of Congress (namely the budget law).
This proved to be a successful move. Before the end of every session both
houses of Congress must approve - and the president must sign - the Funding
Resolution, which enables the government to spend budget money. Without this
procedure the government would be left penniless. Whenever there are
disagreements between the House of Representatives and the Senate over
budget items, Congress's term is extended until agreement is reached. Both
legislators and representatives of the executive tried to avoid such a turn
of events.
As a result, a funding provision for the Ukrainian Holodomor Commission for
400,000 US dollars was suddenly appended to the budget of 470 billion for
the 1985 fiscal year in the final days and hours of the 98th Congress term.
The House of Representatives, which can veto senators' amendments, agreed
to this amendment without debating it, for lack of time, since the Senate
had already approved this bill. President Ronald Reagan signed the Funding
Resolution on October 12, 1984, and the bill lobbied by Ukrainian
organizations was narrowly passed.
Thus a US Congress commission came into being, whose mission was to
"carry out a study of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 in order to
disseminate knowledge about the famine throughout the world and to
ensure that the American public has a better understanding of the Soviet
system by highlighting the role that the Soviets played in the famine."
Congressman Daniel Mica, the man who opposed its creation in the first
place, chaired the Congressional Commission on the Ukrainian Famine. At the
insistence of AHRU, James Mace was appointed its executive director.
Nobody expected the research team of six Ukrainian-studies scholars headed
by James Mace to obtain convincing evidence of Stalin's greatest crime,
given the commission's short mandate. The team had at its disposal a limited
number of archival documents that the Germans removed from the USSR and
which were brought to the US in the postwar years. But instead of archival
sources the researchers used recollections. The young American historian
Leonid Herets began collecting them in 1984. The methods that he and Mace
developed were a sort of sociological survey turned toward the past.
Superimposed on one another, the testimonies compensated for the subjective
nature of individual recollections. In this way they became a fully-fledged
source.
The research group worked quickly and efficiently. I don't know if the
leaders of Soviet Ukraine saw the commission's first report to Congress,
which James Mace circulated in 1987. In any case, Ukrainian-language
newspapers in North America covered it extensively, and the Communist
leadership in Kyiv was closely following these articles. As I already
mentioned, after this Shcherbytsky was forced to recognize the fact of the
1933 famine. The congressional commission published its second interim
report in early 1988.
At the same time, James Mace prepared a summary of the report and on March
30, 1988 sent it to Oleh Diachenko, first secretary of the Soviet Embassy in
the US. The Foreign Ministry of the Ukrainian SSR received this summary, and
together with a covering letter from Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko
it was handed over to the History Institute of the Academy of Sciences of
the Ukrainian SSR. The Institute in turn began researching the Holodomor on
the basis of archival sources.
In early 1988 the commission prepared its final report and presented it to
Congress on April 22. It was almost entirely written by James Mace. In late
July that year, a 524-page volume in brevier type was printed by the US
Government Printing Office in Washington and began to be distributed
worldwide. Three years of research by the US Congress/Commission on the
Ukraine Famine of 1932-33 were boiled down to nineteen conclusions in this
report. One of them is: Joseph Stalin and his entourage committed genocide
against the Ukrainians in 1932-1933.
In 1990 the US Government Printing Office in Washington printed three
volumes of testimonies, a total of 1,734 pages in brevier type, for the use
of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine. It is a collection of transcripts
of testimonies of 210 surviving victims of the Holodomor. Most of the
witnesses wished to remain anonymous, fearing persecution of their relatives
in the USSR. Every narration was supplemented with bibliographical notes,
which was of great significance when the testimonies were analyzed.
The testimonies were published in the language of the interview, mostly
Ukrainian. Since witnesses answered similarly worded thematic questions, we
can carry out a monographic analysis of every issue behind every question.
Ukraine still has no adequate source of its own based on such recollections,
even though much has been published. Perhaps it will never have one: how
many more people are still among us who have fresh memories of the year
1933?
Addressing a government commission created in advance of the sixtieth
anniversary of the Holodomor, I proposed reprinting the four volumes
produced by James Mace's commission because of their exceptional scholarly
significance. At the time this proposal fell on deaf ears, for everyone
remembers the plight that Ukraine faced in 1993. In 2003, when the
seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor was observed, a new government
commission headed by the prime minister planned many specific activities.
Most of them have been implemented.
In particular, the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of
Sciences of Ukraine managed to prepare and publish a comprehensive
collective study titled The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: Causes and
Consequences under the editorship of Volodymyr Lytvyn, member of the
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. It is a large-format publication of
936 pages, including 48 pages of illustrations. James Mace wrote two out of
the fifty-eight subsections in this unique book.
Arguably the most important undertaking in the commission's plans is the
construction of a memorial complex with a monument to Holodomor victims, as
well as an archive, library, and research center. The commission has already
found money for the memorial, but this year's budget provides no funding for
the other plans. Funds have yet to be found for the publication of the four
volumes that James Mace published in Washington in 1988 and 1990.
The main result of governmental and public activities timed to coincide with
the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor is an understanding of the fact
that the many aspects of this problem should be addressed on a permanent
basis and not only prior to important anniversaries. A major aspect of this
problem is the need to convince the international community of scholars and
the public at large that the famine in Ukraine was an act of genocide.
Professor James Mace is no longer among us, but his works remain. They will
help us to accomplish our goals. (END)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: "DR. JAMES E. MACE MEMORIAL HOLODOMOR FUND"
A special "Dr. James E. Mace Memorial Holodomor Fund" has been
established by the Ukrainian Federation of America (UFA), Zenia Chernyk;
Chairperson and Vera Andryczuk, President.
Donations to the "Dr. James E. Mace Memorial Holodomor Fund" can
be made by making out a check or other financial instrument to the
Ukrainian Federation of America, in U.S. dollars, designating the donation
for the "Dr. James E. Mace Memorial Holodomor Fund," and mailing the
check to: Zenia Chernyk, Chairperson, Ukrainian Federation of America
(UFA), 930 Henrietta Avenue, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania 19006-8502.
Your financial support is needed to continue the important work about the
Ukrainian genocidal famine of 1932-1933, the Holodomor.
For additional information about the special "Dr. James E. Mace
Memorial Holodomor Fund" and the recent meetings in Kyiv with Mrs.
Natalia Dziubenko-Mace and other holodomor scholars, commemoration
leaders, and The Day to establish specific programs in honor of Dr. James E.
Mace, please contact E. Morgan Williams, morganw@patriot.net. (END)
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Checks should be made out to the Ukrainian Federation of America,
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"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"-04 SPONSORS:
.1. ACTION UKRAINE COALITION (AUC): Washington, D.C.,
http://www.artukraine.com/auc/index.htm; MEMBERS:
A. UKRAINIAN AMERICAN COORDINATING COUNCIL,
(UACC), Ihor Gawdiak, President, Washington, D.C., New York, NY
B. UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF AMERICA (UFA),
Zenia Chernyk, Chairperson, Vera M. Andryczyk, President,
Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. http://www.artukraine.com/ufa/index.htm
C. U.S.-UKRAINE FOUNDATION (USUF), Nadia Komarnyckyj
McConnell, President; John A. Kun, VP/COO; Markian Bilynskyj, VP,
Dir. of Field Operations; Kyiv, Ukraine and Washington, D.C., website:
http://www.usukraine.org .
2. UKRAINE-U.S. BUSINESS COUNCIL, Kempton Jenkins,
President, Washington, D.C.
3. KIEV-ATLANTIC GROUP, David and Tamara Sweere, Daniel
Sweere, Kyiv and Myronivka, Ukraine, 380 44 295 7275 in Kyiv.
4. POTENTIAL, the launching of a new business journal for Ukraine.
http://www.usukraine.org/potential.shtml
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Kyiv vs. Kiev-----SPELLING POLICY--Chornobyl vs.Chernobyl
THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" uses the spelling KYIV (Ukrainian)
rather than KIEV (Russian), whenever the spelling decision is under our
control. We do not change the way journalists, authors, reporters, the news
media spell these words or the other words they use in their stories.
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PUBLISHER AND EDITOR
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Coordinator, Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC)
Publisher and Editor: "THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"-04,
www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS), and the
http://www.ArtUkraine.com Ukrainian News and Information Website.
Senior Advisor, Government Relations, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF);
Advisor, Ukraine-U.S. Business Council, Washington, D.C.
CONTACT: P.O. Box 2607, Washington, D.C. 20013,
Tel: 202 437 4707, morganw@patriot.net
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