"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"
An International Newsletter
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"
THE FLAME OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION
"For me, the flame of the Orange Revolution was touched off in St. Michael's
Square, when Kyivans gathered for a mass prayer of commemoration and lit
30,000 candles [Saturday, November 22, 2003]; when an old lady lined up
9 burning candles whispering, "This one is for you, Vania, this one is for
you, Katiusha, and this one is for you, Petryk."
The media were gagged and did not report this event, except for a glimpse
of the square without [Viktor] Yushchenko [who organized the event] and
a few lines in the press. But the residents of Kyiv changed after visiting
St. Michael's Square. They experienced catharsis. Late into the night small
lights flickered in the windows of citizens, who one year later elected the
people's president." [Natalia Dziubenko-Mace, article one]
"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" - Number 433
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, MONDAY, February 21, 2005
-----INDEX OF ARTICLES-----
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"
1. "TO SURVIVE AND TELL THE WORLD"
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on the Holodomor,
archives, and repatriating historical relics
By Natalia Dziubenko-Mace
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 15 February 2005
2. "SPEAKING WITHOUT A MICROPHONE"
A monument to manmade famine victims unveiled in Mariupol
By Halyna Aleksandrova, Mariupol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #34
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 7 December 2004
3. "YALTA CASTS ITS SHADOW 60 YEARS ON"
By Paul Reynolds, World Affairs correspondent
BBC News, London, UK, Monday, February 7, 2005
4. "THE POISONOUS FRUITS OF HATRED"
"Population exchange" in the mirror of historical facts
By Mykola Lytvyn, Doctor of History, Department Chair
I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #36
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 21 December 2004
5. "HOMAGE TO HISTORY OR A RETURN TO STALINISM?"
Yalta city fathers plan a monument to the Big Three
By Mykyta Kasyanenko, Simferopol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #36
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 21 December 2004
6. "STALIN MONUMENT PUT ON HOLD"
Moscow's bid to erect a monument in the Crimea foiled
By Mykyta Kasianenko, Simferopol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, No. 5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, February 15, 2005
7. STALIN MUST NOT RISE IN YUSHCHENKO'S NEWLY FREED UKRAINE
OP-ED, by Peter Borisov, Saturday, February 12, 2005
The Action Ukraine Report, Washington, D.C., Mon, Feb 21, 2005
8.YUSHCHENKO CALLS FOR HELP IN HANDLING CHERNOBYL DISASTER
European integration efforts should be supported by specific projects
New Europe, Athens, Greece, Mon, February 14, 2005
9. EFFECTS OF CHERNOBYL DISASTER STILL FELT IN UKRAINE-
GHOST TOWNS SURROUND SITE, CLEAN-UP EFFORTS CONTINUE
By David Holley, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California, Sunday, February 13, 2005
10. WHO LOBBIED FOR WHOM AND WHERE?
Web site analyses Ukrainian government appointments
By Leonid Amchuk, Ukrayinska Pravda,
In Ukrainian, Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb 8, 2005
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Feb 15, 2005
==========================================================
1. "TO SURVIVE AND TELL THE WORLD"
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on the Holodomor,
archives, and repatriating historical relics
By Natalia Dziubenko-Mace
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 15 February 2005
A documentary on the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine was recently
aired on one of the Ukrainian channels, or so they say. I'm telling you this
because my late husband, James Mace, contributed to this film, and in one
episode I provided a brief history of the making of Famine '33. The People's
Memorial Book compiled by the unforgettable Volodymyr Maniak and Lidia
Kovalenko. It is thus safe to say that I would have heard about any public
response to this truly extraordinary film.
The film's creators have noted that even though it was aired at the UN and
received high acclaim from foreign audiences, bringing it to Ukrainian
viewers has been both a difficult and simple process: the documentary was
aired on the wrong day and at the wrong time, as if someone just wanted to
add another fat checkmark to the make-believe list of "national revival"
efforts.
The same well-wishers went ahead with plans to refashion the legendary
film studio Ukrtelefilm into yet another money spinner. In a bid to save
his studio, general director Oleh Biyma went into hiding to avoid signing
the papers for the sale. I will return to the film and the things that were
captured on screen, and omitted, further down the page.
A small group of cinematographers, writers, and scholars recently gathered
at Kyiv's Cinema House to meet with Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko
and Ukrayina 2000 Fund director Kateryna Yushchenko. The documentary
in question sparked a serious and fundamental discussion of the problems of
culture, the humanities, and the government's policy in the spiritual sphere
in the broadest sense.
Oleh Biyma, who had suddenly "recovered from a protracted illness,"
earnestly shared his impressions of the meeting: "I don't remember ever
seeing even the lowest-ranking officials from the Ministry of Culture at
such gatherings, and here we have the president himself coming to this one.
Too bad those same officials, journalists, famous scholars, or cultural
figures didn't put in an appearance." Indeed.
There was no crowd elbowing its way into the Cinema House, no
representatives of ministries or departments, no humming tape recorders, and
no journalists. We obviously can't keep up with our president. After a whole
day of meeting with ministers, introducing a newly-appointed oblast
administration chairman, and attending various functions, he spends three
hours in the evening sitting in a movie theater watching, listening,
answering, and asking questions. Obviously not everyone will be able to
keep up the pace that the head of state is setting.
This was my first conclusion after a seemingly ordinary event - the airing
of the documentary Portrait of Darkness, directed by Serhiy Dudka and
written by Bohdan Hnatiuk. The film was followed by a discussion; I am
omitting all the remarks, speeches, and comments that bored me stiff.
You've heard it all before: the government is neglecting culture; Ukrainian
filmmaking is in decline; no films for children and youth have been produced
in the last thirteen years; historical monuments are disappearing; churches
are not being rebuilt; what with all those chauvinists, reactionaries, etc.
The president's talk - and that's what it was, a talk, not an official
speech from a person in an official capacity - was brief and concise, and I
suspect that many in the audience were ashamed of their tired harangues,
which were a shameless waste of President Yushchenko's time, especially
considering that he places so much value on it.
If the president's words carry any weight, then Ukrainian viewers will see
this documentary on the right day and at the right time. "We are negotiating
with Russia about the transfer of historical relics that are cherished by
all Ukrainians. We have things to offer the Russians that they cannot
decline. I have proposed to Volodymyr Putin that Russia establish patronage
over the neglected cemetery of the soldiers from the Brusyliv Regiment. This
is the brainchild of a righteous man, who is guarding a Sich Riflemen's
cemetery near Mt. Makivka in western Ukraine.
In return, I will request access to Ukrainian graves in GULAG and Ukrainian
settlements in Siberia. I will request permission to rebury in the Ukrainian
pantheon our hetmans who were murdered in Russia, and Oleksandr
Dovzhenko, who asked to be buried in Ukraine. I'm certain that Symon
Petliura will soon find eternal peace in Ukraine.
With Poland and Sweden we are negotiating the transfer of Bohdan
Khmelnytsky's regalia. We should not be asking for anything. We have
colossal Polish archives. The first thing that Western humanities scholars
asked me during our meetings was to open access to Ukrainian archives;
not tourist venues or scientific know-how, but primarily archives."
(Speaking of archives, I was amazed to learn about a Western scholar's
attempts to purchase or at least copy Prince Kurbsky's letters to his
mistress, which are stored at a library in Lviv. He offered to pay as much
as $300, even though libraries are not specialized archives and are open
to everyone).
The president also touched upon the reconstruction of churches. "The Tithe
Church must be rebuilt. Wherever he went, Hetman Kalnyshevsky would build
wooden churches, miraculous gems of Cossack baroque architecture. It should
be an honor, not a duty, for every oblast state administration head to
become the patron of two or three of these buildings, in Baturyn, Chernihiv.
You don't need any promotion. You have to draft some plans and knock on
the doors of ministries and the president. There is no Ukrainian film
archive. Is everything in Russia? Where? What can the government do? It
can bargain and barter, or even buy, for that matter.
Viktor Yushchenko's feelings about the Holodomor of 1932-33 are a subject
for a separate discussion not suited to a newspaper publication. I will
digress briefly. At countless conferences, lectures, forums, and symposiums,
the late James Mace of blessed memory, consultant and contributor to The
Day, repeated his childishly naive dream as though it were an incantation.
He wanted every Ukrainian to place a lit candle in the window to symbolize
the living spirit of the nation, and to do this on the last Saturday of
November, when people in the West commemorate the victims of the
Holodomor. This idea was met with general approval and nodding heads.
James knew that it wasn't necessary to convince the world that Ukraine had
lived through hell, but only to have Ukrainians realize the scope of our
great catastrophe. And this would be the beginning of the healing process
and realization of our past and future. In this tiny flame he saw the
grandest of national monuments, the blaze of the nation's future
development. After surviving four operations and a near-death experience,
bandaged all over and emaciated, Professor Mace addressed the Ukrainian
parliament. On the following day his speech was published in The Day.
The newspaper launched a nationwide drive with a succession of impressive
articles. It seemed that in those days only one newspaper was bleeding with
pain, attempting to get through to fellow journalists with every issue and
fighting total indifference and officials' total apathy. A little more and
this subject would have been silenced and trampled into the ground. Viktor
Yushchenko, who was then a politician under fire from the country's
leadership, joined in this drive in a manner befitting a statesman.
For me, the flame of the Orange Revolution was touched off in St. Michael's
Square, when Kyivans gathered for a mass prayer of commemoration and lit
30,000 candles [Saturday, November 22, 2003]; when an old lady lined up
9 burning candles whispering, "This one is for you, Vania, this one is for
you, Katiusha, and this one is for you, Petryk."
The media were gagged and did not report this event, except for a glimpse of
the square without Yushchenko [who organized the event] and a few lines in
the press. But the residents of Kyiv changed after visiting St. Michael's
Square. They experienced catharsis. Late into the night small lights
flickered in the windows of citizens, who one year later elected
the people's president.
Without a doubt, the Holodomor is a deeply personal issue for Viktor
Yushchenko. The famine claimed 400 lives in his native village of
Khoruzhivka; the names of only three dozen victims are known. "People
without memory are invalids. I have children. I don't want them to be
invalids. Together we will plant a grove of highbush cranberries by Askold's
Grave with bushes from every village and town. We will revive the
competition for the best monument to Holodomor victims. Ukraine has a
large support group in the West, which includes the most celebrated actors,
filmmakers, politicians, and business people.
We must shoot films that the world will see; we must build a country that
the world will admire. We have people who are willing to undertake the
colossal work of reviving historical memory and historical justice; we have
a government that is willing to provide moral and financial support. We must
coordinate our efforts and focus on the main things, and individually
undertake at least a small share of work and bring it to completion: not
everything at once, but gradually and in concert."
Portrait of Darkness awaits its viewers. But so much has been left off
camera. The American Yevhenia Dallas appears in a brief interview, too brief
to recount how her family died; how she became swollen with hunger in the
famine capital, Kharkiv; how, as a little girl, she was raped by the
director of her children's home. She has published her memoirs in Ukrainian
and Russian with a small press run; they are a ready-made script for an
epic.
The film features accounts by Holodomor eyewitnesses: victims because they
lived in those days, heroes because they survived and told the world. I know
how much selfless work this issue requires. Working on enthusiasm alone, and
owing to their tremendous perseverance and unparalleled talent, Serhiy Dudka
and Bohdan Hnatiuk shot, produced, and edited the film. The documentary
will be subject to a detailed analysis and the scrutiny of filmmaking
professionals. They will be followed by reviews and prizes, without a doubt.
Meanwhile, I have come to another conclusion: we have been taken aloft on
the wings of history. Our flight will be very long and extremely
difficult. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/, article and photos.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"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
For additional information about the special "Dr. James E. Mace
Memorial Holodomor Fund" contact morganw@patriot.net.
==========================================================
2. SPEAKING WITHOUT A MICROPHONE
A monument to manmade famine victims unveiled in Mariupol
By Halyna Aleksandrova, Mariupol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #34
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 7 December 2004
Last Saturday, on the Day of Remembrance to honor the victims of the
Holodomor and political repressions, a monument was unveiled in down-
town Mariupol to those who died during the lawless years of the totalitarian
regime. The monument was built at the initiative of the city's historical
society, Memorial.
The action group For Mariupol! was the first to propose erecting a monument
to the victims of Stalinist terror in this city. The proposal was part of a
resolution passed at a rally held on July 24, 1988, when the public demanded
that the city, then called Zhdanov, who was one of Stalin's ignominious
lieutenants, be given back its original name.
Later, on December 18, at the founding meeting of the Memorial Society the
civic fathers were urged to put up a monument to the victims of political
repressions. Memorial activists launched a fund-raising campaign and on
November 8, 1991, a commemorative sign was installed in a theater plaza with
a small plaque reading "A monument to the victims of political repressions
will be erected here. Memorial Society." An eighteen-ton granite rock
symbolized inconsolable grief over the innocent victims. Numerous
remembrance rallies were held at the site of this rock.
The temporary commemorative sign hung there for almost thirteen years.
During that time a variety of monuments cropped up in the city, but there
was no money for a monument honoring the victims of the Holodomor. But
the Memorial and Prosvita civic organizations constantly reminded the local
authorities of the need to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the
Holodomor and repressions. Addressing a remembrance rally in November
2002, Mayor Yury Khotlubei promised to hold a competition for the best
design.
Six artists competed in the competition, which was held in 2003. The jury
selected Mykhailo Chernyshev's sketch featuring a figurative portrayal of
the Holodomor's sorrowful "harvest." A group sculpture depicting a
famine-stricken peasant family stands against the backdrop of a granite wall
with a bas-relief portraying a wheat field. A lethal scythe is suspended
over the dying people.
Some funds were supposed to be allotted from the budget. Yet neither the
contest winner nor the residents of Mariupol ever saw this concept executed
in granite. Instead, the city's deputy chief architect Volodymyr Zemliany
explained that the municipal treasury would be unable to fund such an
expensive and sophisticated project. Strangely enough, when the competition
was in progress, nobody noticed these "drawbacks." It is equally odd that a
huge industrial city with its half-million population could not shoulder the
cost of one socially important monument.
Meanwhile, the city council managed to find money to fund a "Year of
Spirituality," or rather, a Moscow Patriarchate church in Slavianohorsk.
After rejecting the winner's design, a group of architects, including V.
Zemliany, the city's former chief architect Serhiy Rudenko, and architects
Yury Sahirov and Kostiantyn Okulenko, came up with a new, "more modest
and less expensive," project.
Their concept specified that one composition should comprise two tragic
subjects, the 1932-1933 genocidal manmade famine and the mass repressions
in Ukraine. The monument consists of two granite slabs: a red one and a
black one, symbolizing blood and soil, respectively. The red slab features
intertwined barbed wire and the black one depicts ears of grain. A deep
fault line runs between the two slabs, symbolizing the face-off between
government and society.
The remembrance meeting began with a minute of silence to honor the memory
of the millions of victims of the Holodomor and political reprisals.
Participants unfurled Ukraine's national flag and the banner of the UPA
(Ukrainian Insurgent Army - Ed.). The unveiling ceremony was attended by
local government officials. Halyna Zakharova, chairperson of Mariupol's
Memorial Society, spoke about the organization's activities and the role it
played in initiating the monument. Flowers were laid and sponsors were
presented with mementos.
But when survivors of repressions and relatives of those who had been
rehabilitated got ready to speak, the microphone was removed on the grounds
that the ceremony was over. To the astonishment and indignation of the
audience, the municipal officials promptly walked off with the equipment.
Valentyn Malyshev, the son of the executed sailor Yakiv Malyshev, came to
see the unveiling from Italy, where he now resides, to bow down to the
memory of his parents and to tell young people about those horrible times.
Valentyn was eight years old in 1938, when first his father and then his
mother were arrested. After his parents were executed by firing squad, the
boy was taken to Germany and, after the war, to Italy. It was not until 1991
that Valentyn began visiting Ukraine every year to honor the memory of his
parents at the commemorative plaque in downtown Mariupol. "I particularly
revere this day. A real monument was erected in place of the stone that had
stood there for 13 years," Mr. Malyshev said.
He also noted that, unfortunately, the Ukrainian government has not yet
matured enough to embrace democracy; that it is standing with one foot in
democracy and the other in the Stalinist regime. It was very sad, he noted,
to see that people had to express their feelings without a microphone.
Despite this, Mr. Malyshev expressed his gratitude to Mariupol's mayor
and the city authorities for helping to erect the monument.
There are still many people at various administrative levels, especially
among the communists, who are trying to prevent young people from learning
the true history of their own nation. Among those who spoke without a mike
was this writer, who recounted the selfless activities of the American
scholar and Ukrainian patriot James Mace and his articles in The Day. The
audience observed a minute of silence to honor the blessed memory of James
Mace, who revealed to Ukrainians the truth behind the Holodomor. -30-
[The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/128830
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"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.
For additional information about the special "Dr. James E. Mace
Memorial Holodomor Fund" contact morganw@patriot.net.
=========================================================
3. YALTA CASTS ITS SHADOW 60 YEARS ON
By Paul Reynolds, World Affairs correspondent
BBC News, London, UK, Monday, February 7, 2005
It is 60 years since the three major allied leaders, Roosevelt, Churchill
and Stalin, met to divide up the world in the old summer palace of the tsars
in the Crimean resort of Yalta - and the dark memories of that conference
linger today. It was at Yalta, between 4 and 11 February 1945, that the
first shivers of the Cold War were felt, as the alliance between democracy
and communism began to give way to rivalry and hostility.
In their book Cold War, Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing state: "The Yalta
Conference represented the high-water mark of Allied wartime collaboration."
But they add: "Yalta revealed cracks in the Grand Alliance. Only the common
objective of defeating Hitler had kept it together."
STILL CONTROVERSIAL
Only in the last few years has the legacy of Yalta finally been overcome,
with the re-unification of Germany and the emergence of countries in eastern
and central Europe as members of the European Union. The latest example of
the cloak of history being shaken off has come with the recent elections in
Ukraine, which now owns the Crimean peninsula. Even on the 60th anniversary,
controversy remains.
A row has broken out over the installation in the palace of a sculpture of
the three leaders. Crimean Tartars have objected to the inclusion of Stalin,
who deported them by the tens of thousands for allegedly collaborating with
the German invaders.
The Yalta talks, held at Stalin's insistence in the then Soviet Union and
necessitating a long sea and air journey by the ailing President Roosevelt,
came as the Red Army had broken through on the eastern front and the US,
British and Canadian armies were still west of the Rhine. Stalin therefore
was in a strong position and he used it.
He was determined to ensure that whatever the post-war settlement in Europe,
there should be no threat to the Soviet Union. He intended to carry this out
by placing sympathetic governments in a buffer zone between him and western
Europe, especially Germany.
SOVIET INFLUENCE
For his part, President Roosevelt had two main aims: to get agreement on the
formation of the United Nations, and to get Russia to join the war against
Japan. He was less worried about the future of Europe and felt that Stalin
could be trusted. Winston Churchill felt that Roosevelt was naive about
Stalin.
He tried to resist the imposition of punitive reparations on Germany and
worked to restore the position of France as a significant power to bolster
that of Britain.
Above all, he tried to stop the extension of Soviet influence, especially in
Poland. After all, the defence of Poland was why Britain and France had
declared war on Germany in the first place. But though Churchill spoke with
a loud voice, Britain by then carried only a relatively small stick.
POLAND IN THE MIDDLE
A deal was done. Stalin agreed to fight against Japan (acquiring in the
process islands in Kurile chain near Japan) and he agreed to the UN, having
first ensured that the Soviet Union would have a veto in the proposed
executive body, the Security Council. In return, he insisted on covering the
security of the Soviet Union.
And here he chose Poland, the most contentious issue in the summit, to make
his point and to provide an example of what would eventually happen right
across the Soviet satellite states. First, he ensured that Poland's borders
were to his liking.
So, the Soviet Union acquired much of eastern Poland and Poland was given
tracts of eastern and northern Germany in return. Vast movements of
populations took place. One of the cities gained by Poland was Danzig, to be
re-named Gdansk. The Baltic city provided another example of how fortunes
can change.
World War II started over Hitler's demands for access to Danzig, and it was
in Gdansk that Poland's own modern freedom began, among the shipyard
workers led by Lech Walesa. Stalin then won loose language to describe the
future governance of Poland, which he intended to be of his choosing.
With the Red Army in a powerful position - and having stood by while the
Polish nationalists were slaughtered in the Warsaw Uprising - he had already
installed a provisional government in Poland, ignoring the
government-in-exile which had been operating throughout the war in London.
The Yalta communique said only that this provisional government should be
broadened: "The Provisional government which is now functioning in Poland
should therefore be reorganised on a broader democratic basis with the
inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad."
'FAIR DEAL'
Of course, neither the Americans nor the British could enforce this. It is
true that, for a time, Stalin stuck to the agreement. The Polish leader-in-
exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, became deputy prime minister.
But the communists swept to full power in dubious elections in 1947,
Mikolajczyk was accused of being a foreign agent and had to flee into exile.
Churchill was only too aware of what might happen. After 16 Polish
underground leaders disappeared following a meeting with Red Army officers,
Churchill wrote to Stalin and lamented the way matters were developing.
"They [the British people] can never feel this war will have ended rightly
unless Poland has a fair deal in the sense of sovereignty, independence and
freedom, on the basis of friendship with Russia. It was on this that I
thought we agreed at Yalta," he wrote.
Poland, however, did not gain the sovereignty, independence and freedom
for which the war had been declared until many years later.
The Cossacks are another people with bitter memories of Yalta. Some of them
had been recruited to fight with the Germans and Stalin got Allied agreement
that all Soviet citizens should be returned home. Thousands of Cossacks were
on the Western side of the lines and their return in many cases meant their
death.
Churchill, and particularly Roosevelt, were later criticised for giving way
to Stalin. However, the historian A J P Taylor, in his Oxford English
History 1914-1945, was more understanding.
"Soviet armies controlled most of eastern Europe, and the Western Allies had
no resource other than Stalin's good will," he wrote, "unless they fell back
belatedly on an alliance with Hitler - a course which no-one contemplated."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4241863.stml, with photos
including one of the proposed statue.
=========================================================
4. "THE POISONOUS FRUITS OF HATRED"
"Population exchange" in the mirror of historical facts
By Mykola Lytvyn, Doctor of History, Department Chair
I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #36
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 21 December 2004
A historian is neither a judge nor a prosecutor, just a biased chronicler of
the past. Yet professional documented chronicles can and must serve to
restore historical memory and help governments and honest politicians pursue
a constructive policy. This is precisely what the half a million Ukrainians
whom the totalitarian regimes of the USSR and Poland forcibly deported from
Poland to Soviet Ukraine in 1944-1951 are demanding today.
The new architects of postwar Europe were very well aware of the Ukrainian
national liberation movement or, to use their notorious term, Ukrainian
separatism. Oddly enough, the geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern
Europe in 1944 was such that deportation of socially active Western
Ukrainians was to the benefit of both the London-based Polish government
in exile and the USSR, with its communist client-state in Poland.
The Mykolajczyk government in exile sought to restore the Second
Rzeczpospolita within the borders that had existed between the two World
Wars. The pro-Soviet Polish National Liberation Committee, formed in July
1944 in Moscow with Stalin's approval and 'educated' in the Moscow suburb
of Barvikha, viewed the deportation of Western Ukrainians as a tool to
ensure stability for a new monoethnic state.
Unfortunately, the US and British governments agreed to the "exchange of
populations," including the transfer of Ukrainians and Poles, because they
still considered Poland a sphere of their geopolitical interests. The
Kremlin in turn tried to suppress, by way of deportations, a powerful
bulwark of Ukrainian national liberation movement in the Carpathians,
spearheaded by the exhausted but unvanquished Ukrainian Insurgent Army,
the UPA.
To execute this sinister plan, Stalin attempted to use the obedient Poles.
On July 27, 1944, while the Red Army was stationed on the banks of the Sian
River, the leader of the Polish National Liberation Committee signed a
secret agreement in Moscow about the Soviet-Polish border along the "Curzon
line." The Poles even managed to cajole the dictator into ceding them quite
a large territory east of this line, including the erstwhile princely cities
of Peremyshl (Przemysl), Yaroslav (Jaroslaw), and Kholm (Chelm).
As early as September 9 this same Polish committee signed an agreement in
Lublin with Soviet Ukraine's government on evacuating the Ukrainian
population from the territory of Poland, and Polish nationals from Ukraine.
Clearly, this accord was signed under the Kremlin's watchful eye. The
contracting parties undertook to evacuate from October 15, 1944, until
February 1, 1945, "all ethnic Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and
Ruthenians residing in the Chelm, Hrubieszow, Lubaczow, Jaroslaw, Przemysl,
Liskow, Zamosc, Krasnystaw, Bilgoraj, Wlodawa districts and other areas of
Poland."
This was followed by the cynical statement, "The evacuation being voluntary,
no direct or indirect coercion shall be applied. The evacuees are free to
express their wish both orally and in writing." Yet the harsh reality of the
so-called evacuation eclipsed the "voluntary nature" of the action and
entailed mass-scale compulsory deportations of Ukrainians from such ancient
Ukrainian lands as the Sian, Kholm and Lemko regions. Eastern Halychyna
and Volyn Poles were also forcibly resettled to German ethnic territories.
Today, researchers single out several stages of the 1944-1951 deportations.
During the FIRST stage (October 15-December 31, 1944), the resettlement
of a small number of exhausted people bore some semblance of voluntariness.
Yet the oncoming winter practically put an end to departure requests from
northern Zakerzonnia ("beyond the Curzon line"), while the southern
districts ignored the action altogether.
Then, in response to Polish underground terror and by force of military
circumstances and abuses on the part of the Polish authorities, who would
close Ukrainian schools and transfer churches to the Roman Catholics, 28,589
people left for Ukraine. The then leader of Soviet Ukraine, Nikita
Khrushchev, failed to implement the idea of establishing a separate Kholm
oblast in Ukraine. As is known, many requests of Ukrainians who were living
beyond the Sian to incorporate their lands into Ukraine have been preserved
in archives.
The SECOND, stage of the deportations (January 1-August 31, 1945) was timed
to coincide with the advance of the Red Army, which occupied the Sian and
Lemko regions. This time, the people slated to leave were the Ukrainians
whose houses and property had been destroyed during the hostilities against
the Germans in the Lupkow and Duplian passes and as a result of forays by
the Polish underground. Nevertheless, requests for resettlement in Soviet
Ukraine practically came to a halt in the summer of 1945.
Desperate people fled to the woods and re-formed guerrilla units, while many
youths were mobilized into the Red Army. Some families sought help from
Roman Catholic churchmen and the administration of the Polish schools that
their children were forced to attend. Many people lodged protests at the
time, for example, the residents of the village of Glomcza: "...Our homeland
is here, and we are not going to leave. We think the Ukrainian border should
extend as far as Krynica."
There were also other cries of desperation from Lemko residents: "If the
Soviet Union does not want our land, then it does not want us, so leave us
alone." As these Ukrainian acts of protest were foiling the evacuation
plans, the 3rd, 8th, and 9th Infantry Divisions of the Polish Army marched
into the Liskow, Przemysl, Lubaczow and Jaroslaw districts to help the local
authorities clear the frontier of so- called "Ukrainian nationalists."
Thus, the use of Polish troops signaled the THIRD, stage of deportations
(81,806 people) which lasted, by and large, from September 1 to March 1946.
The Polish troops in conjunction with some NKVD units deported most of the
Ukrainians from Nadsiannia. The slow pace of deportations in the Liskow,
Lubaczow and Sianoc districts triggered reprisals by UPA-West.
The Ukrainian insurgents destroyed communications, fomented protests against
the resettlement, and hampered the work of the evacuation commissions. To
prevent Polish repatriates from settling in the depopulated Ukrainian
villages, the UPA often burned these villages down. Among those who
courageously defended the frontier from the terror of the authorities and
troops were the companies of Burlaka, Hromenko, Krylach and Lastivka,
mostly manned by local residents. Attempts were also made, without
apparent success, to make peace with the Armia Krajowa command.
At the FOURTH and final stage, the deportation of Ukrainians to Soviet
Ukraine assumed the nature of ethnic cleansing, a fact that Polish officials
still do not always accept. In the second half of 1945 and also in 1946, the
Communist government of Poland had no scruples about organizing a new
"pacification," burning dozens of Ukrainian villages and terrorizing
peaceful residents on the principle of collective responsibility. This
forced desperate peasants to leave behind their property and cross the
Polish-Soviet border en masse - illegally, without documents. Many fled to
Slovakia and then to Germany or into Poland's hinterland.
The fourth stage saw 154,000 people deported to the east. On the whole,
the Polish totalitarian government deported about 482,000 Ukrainians in
1944-1946. Apart from ordinary citizens, about 300 priests were also
forcibly deported to Soviet Ukraine. The Polish government interpreted the
arrest and deportation to the USSR of Przemysl bishop Josaphat Kotsylovsky
as the abolition of the Przemysl Diocese. By 1947 there was not a single
Greek Catholic church left in Przemysl.
In 1947-1949 the state nationalized the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church's
property, with many premises being leased out to the Roman Catholic Church.
The overwhelming majority of deportees settled in the western regions, and a
third of them were moved to the eastern and southern parts of Soviet
Ukraine. However, secret documents of the Soviet security forces say that
the flight of "those from behind the Curzon line" from the east to the west
of Poland, where individual farming prevailed, was of a hasty and mass-
scale nature.
This is why the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Ukraine resolved on
October 16, 1945, to ban resettlement in Ukraine's western regions. Yet the
deportees continued to be settled without permission in Ternopil, Drohobych,
Lviv and Volyn oblasts.
Finally, the Polish government's Operation Vistula (Akcja Wisla) in 1947,
when at least 150,000 Ukrainians were deported to northern Poland,
concluded ethnic cleansing in the eastern frontier. In the course of pre-
planned ethnic cleansing of the frontier, the two totalitarian regimes
repeatedly revised the interstate border.
For instance, during the new demarcations of the Polish-Ukrainian border in
1945-1948, Soviet Ukraine and Poland obtained 18.9 sq. km. and 20.5 sq.
km., respectively. Under the Soviet-Polish treaty of February 15, 1951,
Poland received another 480 sq. km. of Drohobych oblast and Ukraine,
a same-sized area of Lublin voivodship.
Clearly, the repressions against and the deportations of the Ukrainians
exposed the anti-people nature of the totalitarian regimes of Communist
Poland and the USSR. The Soviet government failed to fulfill its commitments
to provide the deportees with logistical support. Only 56% of resettled
households were compensated for the property they left behind in Poland.
Sadly, the plans of Warsaw and Moscow reflected the interests of the
government, not the people.
For decades the deported Ukrainians remained a socially unprotected and
psychologically vulnerable part of postwar Soviet society. Today the
settlers hope that the government of the new Ukraine, and in the long run of
post-Communist Poland, will fully share the pain and tragedy of the hundreds
of Ukrainians who were born in the western-most Ukrainian lands and are now
advocating the current cause of Ukraine by word and deed. Victims of the
totalitarian regime are demanding a political appraisal of these past
shameful misdeeds as well as material compensation for the damage done to
their families. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
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LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/129664
=========================================================
5. "HOMAGE TO HISTORY OR A RETURN TO STALINISM?"
Yalta city fathers plan a monument to the Big Three
By Mykyta Kasyanenko, Simferopol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, #36
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 21 December 2004
The park zone facing the palace has been chosen as the preliminary site for
the monument, but the final decision on its location has yet to be approved.
According to Volodymyr Kazarin, vice premier of the Crimean government,
it will be the first monument to Joseph Stalin to be built in the
post-Soviet space after the official denunciation of Stalin's cult of
personality.
This immediately prompted lively debates in the Crimea. News of the monument
reached Moscow and provoked an outcry in the Russian press, especially in
Tatarstan and many autonomous republics of Russia, whose populations were
subjected to Stalinist deportations. The initiative of the Crimean
authorities has also sparked a number of objections.
FIRST, many representatives of the progressive intelligentsia and victimized
peoples oppose the idea of building a monument to the tyrant, even if he is
in the company of Roosevelt and Churchill, in the Crimea, which is believed
to have been hardest hit by Stalinist crimes.
SECOND, objections have been voiced against funding the monument from
the Crimean budget, which does not have enough funds to restore justice
after Stalin's wrongdoings.
In this connection the Crimean governmental press service has even
circulated a special letter refuting "the misleading information published
in the newspapers Poluostrov Krym and Nash Krym, which alleges that budget
funds have been allocated for the construction of a monument to Stalin. The
Ministers' Council of the Crimea is authorized to state that no funds from
Ukraine's budget or those of the Autonomous Crimean Republic have been
earmarked for this purpose. The decision to build such a monument can be
made only at the level of the bilateral relationship between Ukraine and
Russia."
This letter, however, raised many eyebrows. After all, no one is calling
into question the fact that funding has not been earmarked for the monument.
The question is: Will such funding be provided? For there have been
countless cases when funding was provided even though it was never
earmarked.
New details emerged later. FIRST, it was reported that "the monument to the
Big Three - Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt - will be built in Livadiya
with money from Russian investors, and no allocations from the budgets of
Ukraine or the Crimea were planned for this purpose."
SECOND, according to vice premier of the Crimean government Volodymyr
Kazarin, the monument to the participants of the 1945 Yalta Conference will
be three meters high and cast in bronze. Kazarin confirmed earlier reports
that the monument would be created by the Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli.
The idea to erect a monument to Stalin has rekindled fears that it will not
so much symbolize a tyrant as signal a return to Stalinism. Emine
Avamilieva, head of the Inicium League of Crimean Tatar Jurists said, "I
would call the initiative to erect a monument to Stalin a cynical and
blasphemous act with respect to the people who fell victim to Stalinism.
They constitute a majority in the multinational Crimea. It means humiliation
of all those who were deported, persecuted, subjected to hunger, and
terrorized by the system; all those who feared for their families and
friends. I think we must simply find a different way, different setting, and
different concept to commemorate this event."
Yury Polkanov, chairman of the scholarly board of the Association of Crimean
Karaites, said, "I have mixed feelings about this issue. On the one hand, I
can't see anything wrong with commemorating the personages associated with
such a major historical event as the Yalta Conference. But, in my view, in
no case should this be done with government money.
Also, we must not allow this monument to set the pattern for the future
replication of monuments to the 'father of all peoples.' On the other hand,
I believe that the people who survived the horrors of Stalinism will react
negatively to this initiative by the Crimean government, and especially so
in the Crimea, given that hundreds of thousands of people here were
subjected to deportations."
"Without a doubt, Stalin significantly influenced the course of history in
the twentieth century," says Volodymyr Prytula of the Crimean Independent
Center of Political Researchers and Journalists. "But this is not reason
enough to build a monument in his honor. After all, the German corporal
Schikelgruber [Hitler's real name - Ed.] had an equally great influence on
twentieth-century history. Some Germans might even say that it was the
German Reichschancellor who curbed inflation, unemployment, and economic
recession, even thought it was done by means of military industry.
Therefore, a cynic might say that Hitler did much good for Germany, much
like Stalin for the USSR. But this does not change the historical fact that
Stalin and Hitler were the biggest criminals of the twentieth century, each
of whom exterminated millions of people. This is their main historical
significance. The fact that Churchill and Roosevelt shook hands with him
does not mean that our people can forgive Stalin for his wrongdoings.
In my opinion, the debates in our society and historical studies around the
significance of the 1945 Yalta Conference are not over yet. The fact of the
Yalta Conference deserves to be remembered, but not by erecting a monument
to Stalin. Obviously, there are many other ways of doing this, which would
be more humane and understanding of the historical memory of the victimized
peoples. To find them, we must announce a competition instead of offering
obviously unacceptable options, because this very fact contains its share of
Stalinism, which is unacceptable in a democratic society." -30-
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LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/129661
=========================================================
6. STALIN MONUMENT PUT ON HOLD
Moscow's bid to erect a monument in the Crimea foiled
By Mykyta Kasianenko, Simferopol
The Day Weekly Digest in English, No. 5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, February 15, 2005
The 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference was a low-key affair in the
Crimea. There was a rally and a flypast of airplanes from participating
countries at Saki Airfield, two exhibitions at the Livadiya Palace Museum -
"The Diplomacy of a Great Victory" and "The 1945 Crimean (Yalta) Conference
and Founding of the United Nations Organization," - and two exhibitions
called "Saki, the Gateway of the 1945 Crimean Conference" at Saki's
Historical and Ethnographic Museum and "The 1945 Crimean Conference"
at Yevpatoriya's Ethnographic Museum.
Among the more than thirty items on display were photos, copies of
newspapers reporting on the Yalta Conference, postcards, as well as archival
documents and the personal effects of pilot Ivan Poliakh, who patrolled the
skies over Yalta during the conference. He flew one of the warplanes that
guarded the Yalta Conference, 100-170 during the day and 48 at night. After
the war, Poliakh settled in Yevpatoriya and was awarded a medal and citation
for ensuring security during the Yalta Conference.
Meanwhile, the celebration of the anniversary of the Yalta Conference failed
to become a global affair, as the Crimean organizers had hoped, because the
UN, which was founded at the Yalta Conference by the "Big Three," was also
marking its 60th anniversary this year. No foreign ambassadors were present
even for the opening ceremony in Livadiya.
The organizers of the celebration announced that the ambassadors of Russia,
Belarus, the US, Britain, and France to Ukraine could not take part in the
festivities for political reasons (that day Ukraine's new Cabinet of
Ministers was being confirmed in office), and because of bad weather
conditions.
Instead of unveiling a monument to the "Big Three," featuring the figures of
Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin (the latter's
statue, designed by the well known sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, has already
been cast in Russia) the organizers confined themselves to installing a bust
of Roosevelt on a Yalta street named in his honor.
The idea of immortalizing Stalin in bronze had the rabid support of Yalta
communists and the Crimean League of Soviet Officers. After a number of
politicians criticized the project, the Council of Ministers of the Crimea
announced that it had made no decisions on erecting a monument to the
leaders of the anti-Nazi coalition. The announcement led to a number of
public actions in the Crimea, both in protest against the project and in
favor.
The idea to build a monument triggered a vigorous protest among the Crimean
Tatars, both in the Crimea and elsewhere. The Crimean Tatar community of
Moscow issued a strongly-worded statement against erecting a monument to
the dictator, claiming this would signal the revival of Stalinism. "The
attempt to erect a monument to this villain looks especially sacrilegious
where the Crimea is concerned," the statement says, "for during the war it
was Stalin and his henchmen who carried out the horrendous deportation
of more than one-quarter of the peninsula's population: Crimean Tatars,
Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians.
It was Stalin's generals and the would-be generalissimo himself who
surrendered the Crimean peninsula to the enemy at the very beginning of the
war in 1941, in fact abandoning the civilian populace to its fate and later
accusing it of collaborating with the Germans. It should be also remembered
that Stalin was personally responsible for the repressions and purges of the
1920s - 1930s as well as for the manmade famine in the Crimea in the early
1930s.
Therefore, any attempt to put Stalin back on the pedestal, with or without
Churchill and Roosevelt, is intentional or unintentional rehabilitation of
this bloody tyrant, which cannot but arouse righteous indignation not only
in the victims of Stalin's terror and their descendants but also all people
of sound mind."
In the meantime, Volodymyr Kazarin, deputy chairman of the Crimean
government and one of the celebration organizers, announced that the
monument to the "Big Tree" would be unveiled later, in March or April.
Liudmyla Kovaliova, curator of the Livadiya Palace Museum, says that so
far there are no legal grounds for erecting this monument. The monument's
opponents in Yalta and Simferopol have set up Anti-Stalin Committees to
block the transport of Tsereteli's creation to the Crimea and its
installation near Livadiya Palace. -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring]
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LINK: http://www.day/132408
==========================================================
7. STALIN MUST NOT RISE IN YUSHCHENKO'S NEWLY FREED UKRAINE
OP-ED, by Peter Borisov, Saturday, February 12, 2005
The Action Ukraine Report, Washington, D.C., Mon, Feb 21, 2005
Ukrainians and all decent people world wide need to respond with outrage
to the proposed placement of a statue of Stalin at Yalta. The authorities
in Crimea need to be reminded that they are living in Ukraine, not Russia,
and that their President is Yushchenko, not Putin.
Commemorating the butcher of Ukraine, who ordered the slaughter of 18
million Ukrainians, half the population, is equivalent to placing a statue
of Hitler at Auschwitz.
The argument that the statue includes Churchill and Roosevelt and
commemorates the 60th year of the Yalta Agreement is specious sucker bait
for the terminally naive. The Yalta agreement sealed the fate of over 100
million people in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to live another half century
under sadistic dictatorship. Would anyone in his right mind accept a statue
of Chamberlain, Dadalier and Hitler to commemorate the infamous Munich
Pact of 1938?
The sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli - who is also President of the Russian Academy
of Arts - and St. Leningrad's MonumentSculptura factory recently got
approval from Crimean authorities to place this blatant insult to Ukraine's
18 million victims of Stalinist sadism. We must demand to know who
commissioned the work and who paid for it. Together with Tsereteli, these
people, especially any Ukrainians involved, need to be outed and need to
apologize to Stalin's victims, their survivors and all Ukrainians.
Moscow authorities have recently announced they are also putting up a statue
of Stalin. Perhaps Tsereteli and Co. can melt down their Yalta Insult and
instead cast a lovely statue of a kindly Uncle Joe with a young Putin on his
knee, looking up lovingly into his hero's eyes.
We can not stop Russia's path back to its old dictatorial ways. But, we
must stop Russia's efforts to re-write History by portraying Stalin as
anything less than the sadistic genocidal bastard that he was. To do so on
Ukrainian soil, so soaked with the blood of his innocent victims, is Infamy.
Stalin needs to stay in Hell, right next to his soul mate Hitler, and not be
brought back to the streets of Ukraine. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Borisow is President of the Hollywood Trident Foundation, Los
Angeles, California (USA)
============================================================
8.YUSHCHENKO CALLS FOR HELP IN HANDLING CHERNOBYL DISASTER
European integration efforts should be supported by specific projects
New Europe, Athens, Greece, Mon, February 14, 2005
Ukraine needs assistance for resolving problems in handling the consequences
of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, said Ukrainian President
Viktor Yushchenko last week.
Meeting with leader of the French party Union for a Popular Movement Nicolas
Sarkozy in Kiev on February 9, Yushchenko said the Chernobyl disaster was "a
serious trauma for Ukraine and a wound that still hurts," Interfax quoted
presidential press secretary Iryna Herashchenko as saying.
Ukraine will be unable to cope with the problems caused by the Chernobyl
disaster on its own, Yushchenko said. Among such problems, he mentioned lack
of knowledge about what is going on under the shield currently covering the
disaster site, decontamination of the Chernobyl area, and the fact that the
shield "has lived up its life." "Ukraine needs assistance from Europe and
the rest of the world because this was the largest manmade disaster in the
world," Herashchenko said.
One of the subjects of the meeting was Ukraine's European integration.
Yushchenko and Sarkozy agreed that Ukraine's European integration efforts
should be supported by specific projects, in particular, in the education,
economy, and European security policy areas. They shared the view that the
creation of a common Ukrainian-EU market would also facilitate Ukraine's
European aspiration. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
==========================================================
9. EFFECTS OF CHERNOBYL DISASTER STILL FELT IN UKRAINE-
GHOST TOWNS SURROUND SITE, CLEAN-UP EFFORTS CONTINUE
By David Holley, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California, Sunday, February 13, 2005
PARYSHEV, Ukraine - Mariya Shylan, a gregarious pensioner living
alone in the wooden farmhouse where she grew up, is the robust picture
of the simple pastoral life.
She extols the virtues of the vegetables she grows, the local fish she
gets from her neighbors, the wild animals that roam freely all around
her home. "I live in beautiful countryside," she says.
Doubts creep into her voice, however, when she talks about her younger
son, who died last month of liver disease. The doctors said it had
nothing to do with the accident nearly two decades ago. But she will
never know for sure.
Shylan lives 14 miles from the Chernobyl plant, which became a synonym
for nuclear disaster when one of its reactors exploded and burned
April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive waste over a large swath of Europe.
She is increasingly alone. This depopulated village is slowly
disappearing, waiting to join a ring of ghost towns in the
radiation-affected "exclusion zone" that speak of the disaster with
the eloquence of silence.
At the site of the destroyed reactor, the saga of the world's worst
nuclear accident is far from over. In a sense, it has barely begun -
the effort to contain and clean up radioactive materials will go on
for centuries.
"Today the problems are under control, but it's not environmentally
safe from a long-term perspective," said Valeriy Kulishenko, the top
engineer for protective measures at the site.
Twenty-eight donor countries, including the United States, have
contributed $618 million to the cleanup effort. But a plan to create a
new "sarcophagus" to entomb the doomed reactor will cost hundreds of
millions more.
With the inauguration last month of President Viktor Yushchenko, a
pro-Western former opposition leader, new authorities have taken power
in Ukraine who enjoy enormous American and European good will. That
appears to ensure a continuation of outside help to deal with the problem.
"European governments and the major donors ... will certainly be
sympathetic to the new government," said Vince Novak, director of the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's nuclear safety
department. "So at least there won't be any political obstacles there."
Today, radiation levels in the exclusion zone - a radius of nearly 20
miles from the plant - vary wildly, depending on where radioactive
debris fell in 1986. Some places register only natural background
radiation, but driving in a car with a dosimeter, one passes through
places where the reading zooms up to 100 times normal.
Once home to 135,000 people, the zone now has 358 residents like
Shylan, according to official statistics. Such returnees were
originally considered illegal squatters. But restrictions were eased
about a decade ago.
About 5,000 people live in the zone during work shifts of 15 straight
days a month or four successive days a week but spend the rest of
their time elsewhere. And 4,500 people commute into the zone for jobs
such as decommissioning other Chernobyl reactors, the last of which
was shut down at the end of 2000 under pressure from Western nations.
The greatest worry today is that the original sarcophagus, hastily
built in 1986 to contain the radioactive debris of Chernobyl's No. 4
reactor, could collapse in a fresh cloud of radioactive dust should a
moderate earthquake strike, Kulishenko said. Urgent work is under way
to reinforce this leaky and unstable concrete-and-steel structure,
parts of which rest on the damaged walls of the original power plant,
he said.
Plans are moving forward to add a second shelter around the old one.
The "Shelter 2" is a huge 19,800-ton steel arch designed to be
assembled nearby, then slid into place on rails to minimize workers'
radiation exposure. The sarcophagus is designed to last at least 100
years, providing improved conditions for further stabilization work
and eventual cleanup of radioactive debris isolated inside.
The combined stabilization and construction effort carries a $1
billion price tag, before any major cleanup. Removal of approximately
200 tons of uranium-based fuel still trapped inside is likely to be
postponed for many decades, for a variety of technical and practical
reasons including there being nowhere to put it.
"Some of it looks like lava," said Novak, whose bank is coordinating
funding for the project. "This is the material you don't want to
remove until you have facilities to store it in a depository."
Shylan is bitter about the whole idea of nuclear power, despite her
insistence on living in the exclusion zone. "It's a typical example of
how to rob the people," she declared. "People in the neighborhood of
the nuclear power plants get sick."
She noted that Soviet founder Vladimir I. Lenin never endorsed nuclear
energy. When a visitor pointed out that he was too early for that, she
turned the phrase around and replied firmly, "Well, now it's too late."
Nearby Pripyat, about two miles from the plant, was the largest town
to be emptied by the disaster. Today, its central square stands eerily
quiet, overgrown with weeds and overlooked by a vacant lot. The
tree-lined street leading to the square is surrounded by crumbling
apartment blocks, closed storefronts and rusting playgrounds.
Eight-foot-tall trees grow out of the sidewalks in this town, once
home to nearly 50,000 people.
The disaster struck at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, during preparation
for a planned test involving one of the plant's turbine-generators,
according to a Soviet report released that August.
Despite the massive radiation leak, there was no immediate evacuation
of Pripyat, where most of the plant workers lived.
In the days after, however, the government evacuated more than 135,000
people from the area around the plant. By August 1986, 31 people had
died as a direct result of the disaster. More than 200 were diagnosed
with acute radiation sickness, but death statistics after that summer
are not clear.
Experts have estimated that the accident may have caused 6,000 to
10,000 deaths from cancer and other effects of radiation exposure.
Shylan's son, Viktor, a Chernobyl forest ranger who died at 46, was a
crane operator at the time of the accident who helped remove
radioactive debris from Pripyat, she said.
When she first moved back home in autumn of 1987, "the militiamen
said, 'It's forbidden to live here, it's dangerous to live here,'"
Shylan recalled. "Then people from the ecological center took soil
samples and said it's not so dangerous."
"One hundred and fifty people came back here in 1987. There were 40
people here 10 years ago. Now there are 18. They get older, year by
year. And the young people who left this area will never come back."
==========================================================
10. WHO LOBBIED FOR WHOM AND WHERE?
Web site analyses Ukrainian government appointments
By Leonid Amchuk, Ukrayinska Pravda,
In Ukrainian, Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb 8, 2005
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Feb 15, 2005
The list of new cabinet members and, especially, regional governors contains
many little known individuals, and the reasons for their appointment are
obscure, a formerly opposition-minded web site has written. The new
government seems to have been formed according to the principle "who will
visit the president last", according to the web site, which analysed the
appointments in terms of party and group membership and the extent of the
individuals' connections with President Viktor Yushchenko's inner circle.
The web site concluded that they resulted mainly from an attempt to share
out jobs fairly among the members of the Our Ukraine bloc and a reliance on
people who were known to the new authorities.
The following is the text of the article by Leonid Amchuk, posted on the
Ukrayinska Pravda web site 8 February under the headline "Yushchenko's
authorities: who lobbied for whom and where?"; subheadings have been
inserted editorially:
The iron gate in Bankova Street [near the presidential administration] that
had shut off vehicle access from Lyuteranska Street was removed last
Saturday [5 February] as a demonstration of the new authorities' commitment
to democracy. There is just a "No entry" sign hanging there now. The street
in which the Ukrainian president's secretariat is located is now open to
pedestrians, but remains closed to vehicles: there is a barrier at the other
entry point from Instytutska Street. There are now new opportunities: one
can now walk in the roadway of Bankova, photograph the House with
Chimeras from the best angles and touch the walls of the former presidential
administration.
But it looks as though pipe dreams are in no hurry to leave the renamed
building. President Yushchenko has instructed State Secretary [Oleksandr]
Zinchenko to draft statutes on the head of state's secretariat. The document
has yet to be widely circulated, but those who have seen the draft say that
the result is so "splendid" that even [former head of the presidential
administration Viktor] Medvedchuk would have been jealous. It is doubtful
whether Yushchenko himself would support creative work of such a kind.
NEW AUTHORITIES SEEK THEIR OWN STYLE
He spent the first few days in consultations over the formation of the
government, occupying Zinchenko's office on the second storey of the
secretariat. Yushchenko supposedly went up to the president's office for the
first time on Friday [4 February]. The green leather of Kuchma's furniture,
the gilt work and the mahogany had a depressing effect on the state's new
leader. So it is not surprising that the dismantling of the Bankova gate
will be followed by an auction of the furniture from Mr Kuchma's working
chambers.
The new authorities are groping around for a style. On the one hand,
Yushchenko is continuing to demonstrate his commitment to democracy. His
motorcade moves through the streets of Kiev and regional centres without the
traffic being halted. Last week, the president is even said to have become
stuck in a traffic jam.
On Monday [7 February], Yushchenko was an hour and a half late for the
presentation of the Sumy [Region] governor. Several hundred people had
started to gather in the hall of the regional administration building, while
the presidential plane had not yet even taken off from Kiev. Officials
forgot to warn those attending that there was plenty of time in hand.
But, when Yushchenko arrived at the regional administration building, he
ordered the cars to stop next to a spontaneous rally of his supporters and
began to embrace those taking part in it. The people, intimidated by five
years of [ex-governor Volodymyr] Shcherban's rule, hemmed the president in
as a result of the unfamiliar democratic spirit.
All this is very different from the way the authorities looked under Kuchma.
On the other hand, last Friday, Yushchenko splendidly and publicly signed
decrees on the composition of the new government that "will not steal" - but
government jobs were formalized definitively according to the principle of
"who will visit the president last". Neither the president nor the services
answerable to him have explained the logic behind the appearance of unknown
people among the members of the cabinet and, even more so, among the
governors. So we shall have to analyse the reasons on our own.
BREAKDOWN OF NEW APPOINTMENTS: RAZOM GROUP
Among the political forces, the Razom [Together] group is the best
represented in the authorities. It was, of course, formed in 2002 by
businessmen who did not belong to parties inside the Our Ukraine electoral
bloc, but were involved in financing it.
But the Razom group is a club rather than a political force. The massive
awarding of jobs [to its members] has simply confirmed yet again where the
people who enjoy Yushchenko's greatest trust are concentrated. Razom,
though, includes individuals who compete with one another for access to
Yushchenko. Following the large-scale move of Razom members into the
government, it may disappear entirely as an intrafaction element.
Within the new authorities, the Razom group is represented by [Oleh]
Rybachuk, the deputy prime minister for European integration, and [Roman]
Bezsmertnyy, the deputy prime minister for administrative reform.
It is also represented by [Yevhen] Chervonenko, the minister of transport
and communications; [Volodymyr] Shandra, the minister of industrial policy;
[Pavlo] Ihnatenko, the minister of environmental protection; [Davyd]
Zhvaniya, the minister of emergency situations; and [Yuriy] Pavlenko, the
minister of family and youth.
Apart from that, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, the new defence minister, is also close
to the group. Mykola Martynenko, the head of Razom, is a member of the
supervisory council of Hrytsenko's Razumkov Centre.
In addition, Oleksandr Tretyakov, the president's principal aide, is also a
member of the Razom group.
RAZON GROUP GOVERNORS: EDUARD ZEYNALOV (Kirovohrad)
Moreover, several people, unknown to the public at large, who will represent
the new authorities in the regions from Friday onwards, are close to the
Razom group. An example is Eduard Zeynalov, the governor of Kirovohrad
Region.
Zeynalov is an associate of Tretyakov and, under his patronage, was brought
in to help Yushchenko in the 2004 elections in the region. Zeynalov became
the current president's proxy in Kirovohrad Region's notorious constituency
No 100.
Before being elected as an MP, Tretyakov headed the company Atek-95, which
used to sell petrol in the Tiko network of filling stations (it is said
that, ultimately, the current principal aide of the president, sold his
petrol pumps to [Russia's] LUKoil). For his part, Governor Zeynalov is the
head of the RUR Group, which has a [filling station] network in Kirovohrad
Region. Atek-95 was one of the founders of the RUR Group. In 2003, the RUR
Group was taken over by Russia's TNK [Tyumen Oil Company].
In other words, the business partner of President Yushchenko's principal
aide has become the governor of Kirovohrad Region. Is that good or bad? The
man has yet to prove himself in the post. But, since no one among the
authorities has explained why he is the one to head the region, it becomes
stamped on one's memory that he got the job thanks to his friendship with
Tretyakov rather than, for example, to his businesslike qualities or a
successfully conducted election campaign.
OLEKSANDR SADYKOV (Mykolayiv)
Another interesting beginner in public politics is Oleksandr Sadykov, the
new governor of Mykolayiv Region. He is said to be the protege of Vera
Ulyanchenko, Yushchenko's aide of many years' standing, who headed the
secretariat of the Our Ukraine faction before his victory and may now enter
parliament as No 80 on the election list. Or she may occupy a senior post in
one of the bodies attached to the president's secretariat.
Sadykov is a former head of the Unex bank. In the mid-1990s, he helped to
supply fuel to the Mykolayiv area, the bank's customers being Mykolayiv's
Okean Plant, the regional administration (that is the new governor's link
with
the area assigned to him) and the Black Sea Shipping Company [Blasco].
Blasco's Kiev office was then headed by Vera Ulyanchenko. This is the link
that can be traced between him and a person in Yushchenko's entourage.
Unex is not living through the best of times at the moment. Last year, the
NBU [National Bank of Ukraine] entered it on the list of banks whose
activities had been restricted owing to their failure to meet the
regulations. Unex was, thus, forbidden to take in money from the public. As
of 1 October 2004, in terms of its capacity, Unex came 55th in the fourth,
and last, group of banks. Sadykov owns 8 per cent of the shares in Unex.
In 1997, Sadykov was drawn into the scandal over the murder of his former
partner, Yakov Rahozyn. After his death, the bank came under Sadykov's
control, while the current Mykolayiv governor himself was arrested, but
released for lack of evidence. The Unex bank was linked, during those years,
with the Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin.
During the elections of 2004, Sadykov helped Yushchenko in Mykolayiv and...
[ellipsis as published] in Moscow. He won the fight for the governorship
against Valeriy Akopyan, a former member of Regions of Ukraine and now an
Agrarian [i.e. a member of the People's Party].
ARSEN AVAKOV (KHARKIV)
Apart from that, Arsen Avakov, the new governor of Kharkiv Region, can be
regarded as one of those people who came to power with the help of members
of the Razom group. The president's brother, Petro Yushchenko, lobbied for
him. The president's nephew, Yaroslav Yushchenko, and the head of the
Kharkiv headquarters of the People's Strength coalition, Anatoliy
Matviyenko, have good relations with Avakov. Volodymyr Filenko, a member of
the ROP [Reforms and Order Party], was regarded as a second contender for
the governorship.
Avakov has very close contacts with the mayor of Kharkiv, Volodymyr
Shumilkin, and he began to help Yushchenko when many were still afraid of
even hypothetically imagining that he might become Ukraine's president.
Immediately after his appointment as governor, Avakov took a sound step. He
made a declaration on something that other officials who are also
businessmen have so far kept quiet about: he relinquished the management of
the Investor corporation and the Bazis bank.
The governor is thought to own Kharkiv's TETs-3 [heat-and-power station No
3], a firm that packages Ahmad tea, the Investelitbud [invest elite build]
construction firm, two gas wells and the local 7 Kanal [TV station],
possibly the only one that gave Yushchenko broadcasting time during the
harshest times.
Thus, the Razom group has ushered into power seven ministers plus the
president's principal aide, as well as the defence minister, who has quite
good relations with the group's members, and three governors are also
proteges of Yushchenko's business entourage. Plus Prosecutor-General
[Svyatoslav] Piskun, whose return to the post was most actively supported
by the Razom group's leader, Mykola Martynenko.
OUR UKRAINE
The Reforms and Order Party, which has been called Our Ukraine since last
summer, is the second most widely represented party among the authorities.
Four persons have gone into government from the ROP - Deputy Prime Minister
[Mykola] Tomenko, Economics Minister [Serhiy] Teryokhin, Finance Minister
[Viktor] Pynzenyk and Health Minister [Mykola] Polyshchuk. The heads of
Volyn, [Volodymyr] Bondar, and Transcarpathian Region, [Viktor] Baloha, will
also represent the party in their duties as governors.
Apart from Filenko, who "stood" unsuccessfully for a governorship, Serhiy
Sobolev, who counted on becoming the head of Zaporizhzhya Region, also came
to grief.
SOCIALIST PARTY
The third largest representation among the authorities is that of the
Socialist Party [SPU]. It has Interior Minister [Yuriy] Lutsenko,
Agricultural Policy Minister [Oleksandr] Baranivskyy and Education Minister
[Stanislav] Nikolayenko, as well as governors [Stepan] Bulba of Poltava and
[Vasyl] Tsushko of Odessa.
At the last moment, Odessa Region almost went to Petro Poroshenko [head of
the Solidarity group], who was rumoured in the corridors to be preparing to
send Yuriy Karmazin there. The Socialists also gained Poltava Region right
at the end of the struggle for jobs. Hitherto, Valeriy Asadchev of the
Ukrainian People's Party [previously Yuriy Kostenko's Rukh movement] had
been regarded as the prime contender for the region.
The Socialist Party may increase its presence among the central authorities
even more if Valentyna Semenyuk [currently head of parliament's special
supervising commission for privatization issues] is appointed head of the
State Property Fund. But, of course, parliament's consent is needed for her
to be confirmed in the post.
SOLIDARITY PARTY
Like the SPU, Petro Poroshenko's Solidarity Party has five people in power.
There may be more if it becomes clear that he really does hold the post of
National Security and Defence Council [NSDC] secretary. On Monday,
Yushchenko promised that a decree appointing him as NSDC secretary would be
published before the end of the day. By noon on Tuesday, however, there had
still been no official announcements on the subject. Poroshenko is
continuing to fight for [greater] powers in that post, so that the process
of the decree's coming into effect is being delayed.
Apart from Poroshenko, Solidarity has one minister - Culture Minister Oksana
Bilozir. They also have four governors - [Oleksandr] Dombrovskyy
(Vinnytsya), [Pavlo] Zhebrivskyy (Zhytomyr), [Yuriy] Artemenko
(Zaporizhzhya) and [Vyacheslav] Atroshenko (Chernihiv).
The appointment of Yuriy Artemenko (previously editor of the newspaper MIG)
as head of one of the most powerful regions can be seen as a surprise. It is
no secret that, apart from the political register for Solidarity, people
also link Artemenko with the Russian businessman Konstantin Grigorishin.
Grigorishin supported Artemenko at the 2002 elections: his constituency
included the area of the Zaporizhzhya transformer works
[Zaporizhtransformator], which belongs to the Russian. According to
Artemenko, he stipulated one condition for Grigorishin: "We can cooperate,
but I don't like Kuchma, and you associate with [major businessman and MP
Hryhoriy] Surkis and Medvedchuk." Artemenko maintains that Grigorishin
replied that he did not like Kuchma either and that nothing linked him with
Surkis or Medvedchuk. After that, he hung up a streamer at the works saying:
"The Zaporizhtransformator is for Artemenko and [Mykhaylo] Brodskyy."
PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT OF UKRAINE, UKRAINIAN PEOPLE'S PARTY
The People's Movement of Ukraine [PMU] has the same numerical representation
among the authorities as Solidarity - Foreign Minister [and PMU leader
Borys] Tarasyuk, Justice Minister Roman Zvarych and the whole of Galicia:
Lviv Region is governed by [Petro] Oliynyk, Ternopil Region by [Ivan] Stoyko
and Ivano-Frankivsk Region by [Roman] Tkach.
The Ukrainian People's Party [UPP] has been the least successful of the
political forces in Our Ukraine - just Minister of [Labour and] Social
Policy Vyacheslav Kyrylenko and the governors of Kiev Region, Yevhen
Zhovtyak, and of Rivne Region, Vasyl Chervoniy.
This injustice may be remedied when a new deputy speaker is confirmed to
replace Oleksandr Zinchenko [now that he is state secretary]. [UPP leader]
Yuriy Kostenko is said to aspire to that position.
FATHERLAND
Fatherland has two representatives in power (but what representatives!) -
Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] chief
Oleksandr Turchynov. Two less prestigious posts went to their junior
partners, the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs - those of First
Deputy Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh and the governor of Yushchenko's
native Sumy Region, Mykola Lavryk.
Oleksandr Omelchenko also has two posts: he himself was reappointed as head
of the Kiev city administration (it could not, legally, have been
otherwise), and Ivan Plachkov, the head of Kyyivenerho [Kiev electricity
board], has become the fuel and energy minister.
LYTVYN'S PEOPLE'S PARTY
So far, Volodymyr Lytvyn [the parliamentary speaker and leader of the
People's Party] has a representation consisting of two portfolios. On the
last day, he was given the governorship of Dnipropetrovsk for Serhiy
Kasyanov (a member of the People's Agrarian Party [now renamed the People's
Party]) in place of Serhiy Bychkov from the Centre group (who was supported
by the Pryvat business group). Also through the patronage of Lytvyn, Vitaliy
Oluyko has become head of Khmelnytskyy Region (although he is a member of
the PDP [People's Democratic Party], the speaker lobbied for him) [but
Oluyko resigned on 9 February after local protests].
It may be expected, however, that Lytvyn's quota will be greater: he wants
his younger brother Mykola to be left as head of the State Border Service
and [Mykola] Kalenskyy to remain head of the State Customs Service - even
despite the suspicion of corruption.
YABLUKO, CENTRE GROUP
The Yabluko party has one seat in power: Oleksiy Danylov, its chief of
staff, is now the head of Luhansk Region. Cherkasy Region will be governed
by Oleksandr Cherevko, who was also the regional chief of staff and head of
the regional directorate of the National Bank. So he can be regarded as a
man of Yushchenko himself (since Yushchenko is a former National Bank
chairman).
So far, despite optimistic expectations, only MP Serhiy Ivanov has been
appointed to a senior post from the Centre group. He is the new head of the
Sevastopol town council. The governor of Chernivtsi Region is a man of State
Secretary Oleksandr Zinchenko. For him, the Bukovyna is his own area. The
region will be governed by the rector of the regional university from which
Zinchenko graduated and his [former] teacher, Mykola Tkach.
In the overall list, it remains unexplained who proposed Vadym Chuprun to be
the governor of Donetsk and Borys Silenkov to govern Kherson. According to
one theory, Chuprun may have been proposed by Tymoshenko, who possibly
knew him from a visit to Turkmenistan while she was a deputy prime minister,
if from nothing else.
Kherson's governor Silenkov was previously the mayor of Nova Kakhovka and,
before that, the head of a general company, TER Holding, that dealt with
agriculture and fuel supplies. One report suggests that Kuchma's
ex-son-in-law, Ihor Franchuk, was involved in setting up this body. But,
thanks to his participation in trading in petroleum products, Silenkov may
have known Oleksandr Tretyakov.
WHY ARE SO MANY OF THEM RICH?
That is how all the new authorities appointed during the first two weeks of
Yushchenko's presidency look so far. It stands out straightaway that the new
ministers and governors include many people who have money. As a means of
combating corruption, Yushchenko may have chosen to appoint those who will
not be thinking about providing for their old age.
Yushchenko has promised to fire officials who will be lobbying for their own
businesses. But will the president have enough eyes to keep a watch on
everyone? -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
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[Article includes photographs of Yushchenko in parliament, Oleksandr
Sadykov, Eduard Zeynalov, Yaroslav Yushchenko, Arsen Avakov and
Yuriy Artemenko.]
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