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Action Ukraine Report

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR"
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"

GERMANY ASKS FORGIVENESS FROM THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE
FOR SUFFERINGS AND WICKEDNESS INFLICTED ON THEM

KYIV - Germany's Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is asking on
behalf of his compatriots for forgiveness from the Ukrainian people for
the sufferings and wickedness inflicted by the German people during
the Second World War. The press service of President Viktor Yuschenko
reported this, citing Schroeder's letter.

"I would like to assure you: Germany recognizes its responsibility to
Ukraine, which arises from history. We have not forgotten the fact that
the Ukrainian people experienced terrible sufferings during the time of
the Second World War that was unleashed by Nazi Germany.

We also have not forgotten those incredible losses, which [the Ukrainian
people] had to undergo so as to overcome National Socialism together
with the other allies," the press service discloses, quoting Schroeder's
letter. [article one] [see also article twenty-one and twenty-two]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" - Number 480
E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, MONDAY, May 9, 2005

------INDEX OF ARTICLES------
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1. GERMAN CHANCELLOR SCHROEDER ASKING FORGIVENESS
FROM UKRAINIAN PEOPLE FOR SUFFERING AND WICKEDNESS
INFLICTED BY GERMANY DURING SECOND WORLD WAR
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 8, 2005

2. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO CRAFTS WWII VICTORY DAY
COMPROMISE TO PLEASE MOSCOW AND UKRAINE
By Oksana Tsisyk, FirsTnews Website
Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 08, 2005

3. PUTIN CONGRATULATES YUSHCHENKO AND ALL UKRAINIANS
ON 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR VICTORY
Heroic deeds of Russians, Ukrainians and all peoples of the CIS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 8, 2005

4. UKRAINE: REHABILITATION OF CONTROVERSIAL PARTISAN
GROUP IS ON THE CARDS
New Europe, Athens, Greece, Monday, May 9, 2005

5. UKRAINE STRUGGLES WITH WWII LEGACY
By Vladimir Matveyev, Kyiv, Ukraine
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
Republished by Baltimore Jewish Times
Baltimore, MD, Sunday, May 08, 2005

6. FILM ON UKRAINIAN INSURGENT ARMY (UPA) AVAILABLE ON DVD
Newsletter No 5 (21), Ukrainian World Congress (UCC)
New York, New York, May, 2005

7. RUSSIAN JEWS APPEAL TO GOVERNMENTS OF THE BALTIC
COUNTRIES AND UKRAINE TO PREVENT "GLORIFICATION" OF NAZIS
Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1312 gmt 6 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Friday, May 06, 2005

8. AP INTERVIEW: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT URGES REFORMS IN
RELATIONS BETWEEN EX-SOVIET REPUBLICS
Yuras Karmanau, Associated Press Worldstream
Associated Press, Moscow, Russia, Sun, May 08, 2005

9. UKRAINE INSISTS ON GIVING PRIORITY TO THE CREATION
OF A FREE TRADE ZONE FOR THE CIS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 8, 2005

10. YUSHCHENKO AND PUTIN CREATE UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMISSION
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

11. UKRAINIAN NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENCE SECRETARY
POROSHENKO DETAILS ACCORD WITH RUSSIA
Media knows little about the mysterious 13 steps
UT1, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian 1800 gmt 8 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sunday, May 08, 2005

12. UKRAINIAN, TURKMEN LEADERS ASK PUTIN TO SUPPORT JOINT
STATEMENT REGARDING GUARANTEE OF NATURAL GAS SUPPLIES
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1346 gmt 8 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service,UK, in English, Sunday, May 08, 2005

13. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT LUKASHENKA RELEASES ALL UKRAINIANS
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

14. PUTIN SAYS HE DID NOT ENDORSE YANUKOVYCH DURING
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, "THAT NEVER HAPPENED"
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 8, 2005

16. PRES YUSHCHENKO SUPPORTS SAVING CRIMEAN PARKS AND
WILDLIFE RESERVES AND RETURNING STOLEN LAND
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

16. GEORGIAN PRESIDENT SAAKASHVILI DEFENDS HIS BOYCOTT
OF MOSCOW V-E DAY CELEBRATIONS
Saakashvili said Friday "the occupation of Georgia must end."
Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili, AP Worldstream
AP, Tbilisi, Georgia, Saturday, May 07, 2005

17. KREMLIN MISFIRES WITH WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIONS
Gazeta.ru web site, Moscow, in Russian 5 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sat, May 07, 2005

18. IT'S OK TO SCOLD THE BACKSLIDER
Bush must praise the region's emerging democracies
and spank Putin (in private)
OP-ED: By Michael McFaul, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California, Sunday, May 8, 2005

19. END OF ONE NIGHTMARE, START OF ANOTHER
May 9 marked the beginning of Poland's second occupation
COMMENTARY: By Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz
Analyst of Polish-Russian relations
Financial Times, London, UK, Sun, May 8 2005

20. VICTORY DAY IN THE SOVIET UNION: MAY 9TH, 1945:
THE END OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
COMMENTARY: Andrew Osborn, The Independent
London, United Kingdom; Monday, May 09, 2005

21. GERMANS STILL FINDING NEW MORAL BURDENS OF WAR
By Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
New York, New York, Sunday, May 8, 2005

22. GOING TO THE HEART OF THE HOLOCAUST
After Delays and Disputes, Memorial in Berlin to Open
By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Saturday, May 7, 2005, Front Page Article
===============================================================
1. GERMAN CHANCELLOR SCHROEDER ASKING FORGIVENESS
FROM UKRAINIAN PEOPLE FOR SUFFERING AND WICKEDNESS
INFLICTED BY GERMANY DURING SECOND WORLD WAR

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 8, 2005

KYIV - Germany's Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is asking on
behalf of his compatriots for forgiveness from the Ukrainian people for
the sufferings and wickedness inflicted by the German people during
the Second World War. The press service of President Viktor Yuschenko
reported this, citing Schroeder's letter.

"I would like to assure you: Germany recognizes its responsibility to
Ukraine, which arises from history. We have not forgotten the fact that the
Ukrainian people experienced terrible sufferings during the time of the
Second World War that was unleashed by Nazi Germany.

We also have not forgotten those incredible losses, which [the Ukrainian
people] had to undergo so as to overcome National Socialism together
with the other allies," the press service discloses, quoting Schroeder's
letter.

The German chancellor assured Viktor Yuschenko that his compatriots are
today honoring the memory of many Ukrainians and Ukrainians, which lost
their lives and health in the war. Schroeder said that May 9 should be a day
when the peoples of Europe become convince in their common future while
remembering the horrors of the war.

"Only the Europe of partnership cooperation will become a peaceful Europe
for a long time," the press service quotes Schroeder as saying.

Gerhard Schroeder also stressed that he is personally glad that recent
events in Ukraine opened up the chance for even closer cooperation
between our countries and peoples. -30-
=============================================================
2. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO CRAFTS WWII VICTORY DAY
COMPROMISE TO PLEASE MOSCOW AND UKRAINE

Early information as to President Viktor Yushchenko's Victory Day plans
depended upon which day you were listening and to whom you were
listening. However, after what appears to have been more than a little
vacillation, Yushchenko is spending Sunday in Moscow and will put in a
brief Victory Parade appearance there on Monday before rushing home
to join Ukraine's World War II veterans for their traditional march.

By Oksana Tsisyk, FirsTnews Website
Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 08, 2005

KYIV - After a bit of waffling, President Viktor Yushchenko has come
up with a compromise that should keep both the Russians and Ukraine's
veterans all marching the same direction. Yushchenko has a full agenda in
Moscow on Sunday, after which he is scheduled to put in a brief appearance
at the huge Victory Day parade on Monday along with Presidents Putin of
Russia and George Bush of the United States before rushing home to part
in ceremonies in Kyiv.

Stories surfaced at various times and from various "insiders" saying either
that Yushchenko would or would not make the Moscow trip. However,
eventually there was the official announcement of the presidential travel
plans
that included Moscow. The president decided to go because of numerous
requests from Ukrainian veterans, Vice Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko said
on May 5.

However, an expert from the School of Political Analysis, Petro Burkovskyi,
said he doubts that a decision to participate in the parade resulted from
pressure of veterans organizations. "It is not improbable that it was a spin
doctor's plan. judging from publication of the information - first Tomenko
spoke, then Yushchenko's press service did not deny this information - it
all confirms that it was successful political spin."

It may favor relations between the two countries, particularly because there
would be more time for discussions of a Yushchenko-Putin council which was
discussed during Putin's visit to Ukraine in March, he said. "Yet, I doubt
there will be any political fallout from Yushchenko staying in Moscow and
meeting with Putin for one more day."

Attending the parade in Moscow will demonstrate Ukraine and Russia as two
principal nations that played an important role in victory over fascism, and
thus it will show Yushchenko in a more positive light in the eye of veterans
and older people, he added.

Despite Yushchenko's recent call for reconciliation between veterans of
World War II who fought in Soviet army and those who were members of
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Rebel Army, there is no
chance that Yushchenko will speak about recognition of the OUN and UPA
veterans during his visit to Moscow, Burkovskyi said. He pointed out that
this was a divisive issue and "the president has to use those issues that
unite the nation."

Other people from Yushchenko's circle who have pro-Russian sentiment
because of ties to Russian capital, former membership in old Komsomol
structures, or live in the more Russified eastern regions of Ukraine may be
cool to the idea of recognition of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
and Ukrainian Rebel Army, Burkovskyi said. "It is not in their mentality to
embrace this idea; besides, it contradicts their economical interests. They
don't want to aggravate relations with Russia."

Opinion about Yushchenko's visit is divided as is the sentiment about
Ukraine's relationship to Russia. "Ukrainian policy toward Russia should
be as aggressive as possible, to the extent of rebuking it via diplomatic
channels. That's why I disapprove Yushchenko's visit to Moscow although
I understand that he's trying to make that part of Ukraine which has
pro-Russian attitude like him," said a young man who wished to remain
anonymous.

Volodymyr, a 50 year-old computer programmer, said he "did not quite like"
the idea of Yushchenko's visit to Moscow. "He declared one thing but now
some things have changed. I have a pretty composed but somewhat
negative attitude to this. He [Yushchenko] said he'll be here, in Kyiv, on
May 9, with our Ukrainians, with veterans. But I admit there may be some
foreign policy issues that forced him. But I think it's not fatal if he
goes," he concluded. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.firstnews.com.ua/en/politics/politics.html?id=47110&fp=16
===============================================================
3. PUTIN CONGRATULATES YUSHCHENKO AND ALL UKRAINIANS
ON 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR VICTORY
Heroic deeds of Russians, Ukrainians and all peoples of the CIS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 8, 2005

KYIV - Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated President Viktor
Yuschenko of Ukraine and all the citizens of Ukraine on the occasion of the
60th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II). The
press service of the Russian president reported this.

"I ask you to convey happiness, well-being and prosperity to veterans of
the Great Patriotic War, to all the brotherly people of Ukraine," the press
service quotes Putin's words. Putin stressed in his congratulatory message
that this historical victory was obtained by the heroic deed of Russians,
Ukrainians and all the peoples of the CIS.

The Russian president expressed the conviction that Russian-Ukrainian
centuries-long friendship, which has endured extreme tests in the joint
struggle against the conquerors, will in future expand and strengthen to the
benefit of the two states.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the working meeting of leaders of
countries of the Commonwealth of Independence States has started in the
Russian capital, Moscow. Yuschenko will also take part in celebrations in
Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of victory in World War II. -30-
===============================================================
4. UKRAINE: REHABILITATION OF CONTROVERSIAL PARTISAN
GROUP IS ON THE CARDS

New Europe, Athens, Greece, Monday, May 9, 2005

A Ukrainian plan to legalise a controversial partisan group little known
abroad is dominating the former Soviet republic's preparations to mark the
60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Deutsche-Presse-Agentur
(dpa) reported recently. But the last Ukrainian guerrillas laid down arms
against the Red Army only in 1953, seven years after VE Day.

The OUN-UPA (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Revolutionary
Army) was active in Ukraine's fiercely nationalist western Carpathian
districts. The OUN was the political wing, and the UPA the military wing.

Never numbering more than 10,000 active combatants, but widely supported
by ethnic Ukrainians throughout the Carpathian Mountain region, beginning in
the late 1930s, the OUN-UPA fought against the Polish army, Red Army, the
German Wehrmacht, partisans supported by Moscow and Ukrainians
collaborating with the German occupation. In western Ukraine, to this day a
person is considered to be of a more patriotic family if one's relatives
fought for the OUN-UPA.

Even the group's staunchest supporters now admit that OUN-UPA committed
atrocities against Poles and other Carpathian ethnic groups. Polish
historians recently estimated as many as 90,000 ethnic Poles died at the
hands of Ukrainian partisans in 1944 in massacres in Volyn province.

Modern Ukrainian historians were quick to point out that at least some of
the killings were performed by Soviet agents disguised as Ukrainian
partisans. During the later years of the war, as many as 300,000 civilians
died in west Ukraine as a result of partisan fighting - one of the 20th
century's worst cases of ethnic cleansing.

The post-war Soviet government criminalised the group and its leader
Stepan Bandera in no small part because the UPA kept on fighting Russia
years after Germany and Japan capitulated.

For most people living in Ukraine's central and eastern regions in the early
post-war years, the UNO-UPA was guilty of the worst form of betrayal -
fighting the Soviet Union, and other Ukrainians, in support of the Nazis.

As a result, one's attitude towards the UNO-UPA remains a flashpoint in
Ukrainian society. The word "Banderovets" (Bandera fighter) is a dire insult
in most parts of Ukraine and can result in a fistfight if an outsider dares
say it in west Ukraine. Last July the Ukrainian government tried to reduce
tensions by submitting a bill to parliament calling for the rehabilitation
of the now-aged members of the UNO-UPA. It was time, the then
President Leonid Kuchma argued, to let bygones be bygones.

The law would have allowed roughly 1,000 elderly Ukrainians and former
members of the UNO-UPA to collect pensions and senior citizen benefits
similar to Red Army veterans. On average, a former UNO-UPA fighter would
have received about 30 dollars more per month from the government.

The proposal sparked a wave of objections at home and abroad and an
indignant statement from the Russian foreign ministry called the bill, "a
plan to rehabilitate murderers," prompting the Kuchma government to drop
the idea.

Last March Kuchma's successor Viktor Yushchenko said the 60th anniversary
of the end of World War II should "bring national reconciliation." His
government reintroduced the pension bill to parliament, and last month even
suggested a joint march by Red Army and UNO-UPA veterans down Kiev's
main street, the Khreschatyk, as proof that old wounds had healed.

The media firestorm was even worse the second time - the highest-profile
objection came from Russian President Vladimir Putin who, in "unofficial"
remarks receiving wide play in Ukrainian media, described the Ukrainian
wartime partisan movement as "Banderovist bandits."

According to the last report, the government was considering a scaled-down
version of the parade. In April Yushchenko cancelled plans to participate in
World War II victory ceremonies in Moscow - a calculated insult to Russia
considering nearly 20 percent of all soldiers serving in the Red Army in
1945 were ethnic Ukrainians. The pension bill appears to be headed
nowhere.

MP Andriy Shkil', a leader of a political party tracing its roots back to
the OUN, called the idea of conferring veterans' benefits to UPA members,
in comments reported by Interfax new agency, "a huge problem" and one
with which "the present parliament in no way can deal with." -30-
===============================================================
5. UKRAINE STRUGGLES WITH WWII LEGACY

By Vladimir Matveyev, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
Republished by Baltimore Jewish Times
Baltimore, MD, Sunday, May 08, 2005

The upcoming celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in
World War II is bringing issues that long have roiled Ukrainian-Jewish
relations to the surface. In the center of the controversy are two wartime
combat groups — the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists. Both fought for Ukrainian independence against
both the Soviet Red Army and the Nazis during World War II.

According to many reports, these units also were responsible for killing
Jews associated with the Bolshevik administration in Ukraine, although it
is not believed that they specifically targeted Jews.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko proposed a
reconciliation between the members of those two groups and the
Ukrainians who fought in the Red Army.

The idea was supported by some political parties in Ukraine. Backers
included the moderate nationalist Ukrainian People's Party, which earlier
had urged Yuschenko and Prime Minster Yulia Timoshenko to recognize
the fighters from the two anti-Red Army groups as World War II veterans.
That's the status already held by Red Army fighters.

The party, and some Ukrainian intellectuals who share this view, argue that
this year in particular should be marked as well by what supporters call
historical justice toward all Ukrainians who fought in World War II.

Yuschenko's idea was to have a street festival on Kiev's main avenue
celebrating both the veterans of the Soviet army and their one-time enemies
on May 9. That's Victory Day, which marks the German capitulation at the end
of the war. The proposal met with fierce opposition from Red Army veterans,
including Jews.

"The attempts to reconcile the veterans who fought for the Soviet army with
UPA fighters is unreal, because we remember what the UPA did during the
war," said Semyon Nezhensky, a retired Soviet army colonel and the leader
of the Ukrainian Association of Jewish War Veterans. UPA are the
Ukrainian-language initials of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Red Army veterans' organizations still wield considerable clout in Ukraine,
and many expected Yuschenko to trade in his original plan for a Victory Day
military parade in Kiev commemorating the Red Army. That parade was
supported by all the country's veterans' groups.

But last week Ukrainian officials said instead that there would be no
military parade in Kiev this year.

In the meantime, a former UPA leader told a national television channel last
month that his fellow veterans were not eager to celebrate Victory Day
together with the Soviet veterans. This problem — a heated issue in Ukraine
generally — appears to be even more controversial for Jewish war veterans
here.

Many elderly Jews have strong memories of what happened during and after
World War II, when Ukrainian anti-Bolshevik forces formed during the Nazi
occupation of 1941 to 1944 wreaked violence on Russians and Jews in
Ukraine's western regions. Many Ukrainians blamed non-Ukrainians, including
Jews, for what they saw as their role in bringing communism to this part of
Ukraine, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939.

For many Jews, distinctions between those who collaborated with the Nazis
and those who fought for an independent Ukraine are beside the point.
"I cannot support the idea of reconciliation with UPA fighters," said Evadiy
Rubalsky, 87, who was a Red Army soldier during World War II.

"Collaborationists killed 11 members of my own family in Babi Yar: my
mother, sister and other relatives," the pensioner from Kiev said, referring
to the site of a Nazi massacre in the Ukrainian capital.

Some experts agree that the scale of mass killings of Jews could have been
smaller had the Nazis not been helped by local collaborators, many of whom
filled the ranks of Nazi-subordinated auxiliary units.

Another Jewish war veteran was similarly outraged by the idea of
reconciliation. "Now they want us, Soviet veterans, to apologize for what
they consider as a fight against independent Ukraine. But they do not want
to apologize themselves for their crimes against the people of different
nationalities during and after the war," Boris Komsky said. Komsky, another
Red Army veteran, is now editor of Shofar, a Jewish magazine in Lvov in
western Ukraine.

But some Jewish veterans say a distinction should be made between those
Ukrainians who fought for nationalist combat organizations and those who
fought alongside the Germans, most notably in the SS division called
Galicina and in two Nazi-subordinated combat units, Roland and Nachtigal,
that filled its ranks with Ukrainians.

These latter forces are believed to have taken part in special operations
against Ukrainian civil population, including Jews.
Giliary Lapitzky, a veteran Jewish activist, said that though "it would be
impossible for Soviet veterans to shake hands with OUN-UPA veterans,"
they could still be given veteran status. They did not fight on the side of
the Nazis, and they did not participate in Nazi-led killing of civilians to
the same extent as the Ukrainian SS men.

At least one local government has joined the fray. Recently the Lvov
regional council asked Yuschenko to recognize UPA as a legitimate World
War II army. "UPA is the only army in the world that fought during World War
II against the two occupation forces simultaneously, against the [German]
fascists and the Bolsheviks," the statement by the council reads.

In parts of western Ukraine, the anti-Bolshevik nationalist combat units
continued their guerilla warfare, including the killing of Jewish
Bolsheviks, until 1953.

The Lvov council also sent an appeal to the Supreme Court requesting that
it speed up the revision of the bill that provides social service benefits
to displaced rehabilitated Ukrainians. Under the council's proposal, OUN and
UPA fighters, many of whom were tried in Stalin's USSR after the war and
served sentences for their wartime activities, would qualify.

A leading lawmaker told JTA that the bill is being debated in Parliament.
"Common language" on that matter should be found, Gennady Udovenko,
head of the parliament Committee on Human Rights and National Minorities,
said. But many people disagree with Udovenko, saying that such a law would
betray the memory of those who gave their lives to liberate Ukraine from the
Nazis.

"Despite a few conflicts" with the Nazis, "Ukrainian nationalists sided with
the Nazis during World War II, and were supporting Hitler again by 1944," a
Jewish lawyer, Grigory Ginzburg, said.

A compromise may be in the works that would allow some pro-Ukrainian
fighters — those who didn't wear the German army uniform and who never
took part in any of the German-led punitive expeditions against civilians —
to be rehabilitated. But, some say, time may provide a better solution.
"I disapprove the possibility of rehabilitation of UPA fighters in general
but I'm ready to recognize some of them," said Yona Elkind, 81, a retired
Soviet navy colonel.

He added, "Theoretically a peace is better than war, but the idea of making
peace between UPA fighters and Soviet veterans is simply unreal, because
we were enemies. "Better leave it as it is. In two generations the problem
will be resolved by itself." -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.jewishtimes.com/News/4702.stm
===============================================================
6. FILM ON UKRAINIAN INSURGENT ARMY (UPA) AVAILABLE ON DVD

Newsletter No 5 (21), Ukrainian World Congress (UCC)
New York, New York, May, 2005

NEW YORK - The feature film "The Company of Heroes" produced jointly
by a Ukrainian company in Australia and the Ukrainian director Oles Yanchuk
(Famine 33, Assassination, The Undefeated) is available on DVD from the
UWC office in New York.

Kindly make your checks or money orders for 32.98 US$ ($29.99 plus $2.99
shipping and handling) payable to Film Fund and forward to Ukrainian World
Congress, 225 East 11th Street, New York, New York 10003.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TEL. (212) 228-6840. FAX (212) 254-4721
E-MAIL: congress@look.ca, Web: www.ukrainianworldconress.org
===============================================================
7. RUSSIAN JEWS APPEAL TO GOVERNMENTS OF THE BALTIC
COUNTRIES AND UKRAINE TO PREVENT "GLORIFICATION" OF NAZIS

Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1312 gmt 6 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Friday, May 06, 2005

MOSCOW - The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia [FJCR] has
appealed to the governments of the Baltic countries and Ukraine to prevent
the glorification of Nazis. "We can talk a great deal about the negative
consequences of the Victory [in World War II] for the countries of the
Baltic region, but it cannot be denied that the actions of the SS troops and
their henchmen in the territories seized by the Nazis were criminal," says
the FJCR appeal, the text of which was passed to Interfax today.

The authors of the document believe that "even a partial rehabilitation of
Nazism would mean an acknowledgement that the existence and
implementation of any extremist, terrorist ideology is acceptable".

The fact that the authorities in a number of former Soviet republics and
politicians in those states regard it as acceptable to openly support
processions by SS veterans and to erect monuments to Nazis or to revive
openly fascist organizations is, in the view of the FJCR, "the equivalent of
welcoming the activities of contemporary extremist and terrorist groups
whose ideas and methods are just as inhuman and present the world with
no less a threat than Nazism did in its day".

The authors of the appeal recall that the 61st session of the UN Human
Rights Commission adopted a resolution opposing the revival of fascism
and its glorification, and that nearly all European countries voted in
favour of its adoption.

"We express confidence that the adoption of this document will exert the
necessary influence on the position of everyone who is currently trying to
rehabilitate Nazi criminals and their accomplices," the document says.
===============================================================
8. AP INTERVIEW: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT URGES REFORMS IN
RELATIONS BETWEEN EX-SOVIET REPUBLICS

Yuras Karmanau, Associated Press Worldstream
Associated Press, Moscow, Russia, Sun, May 08, 2005

MOSCOW - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko urged reforms Sunday
in an organization of former Soviet states, saying the group should focus
on economic integration and avoid interfering in the politics of its
members.

The leader of the so-called "Orange Revolution" said there was "little use"
for the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose grouping of 12 ex-
Soviet republics. Yushchenko criticized the organization for failing to
making progress on transit, free trade and border issues, in part because
of political interference.

"It is necessary to work on creating a CIS with such structures and
institutions that will not dictate politics, but ... work on economic, trade
and other policies," Yushchenko told The Associated Press.

Yushchenko said he raised his concerns with other CIS leaders who had
gathered in Moscow to join the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the
Allied victory over Nazi Germany. The states held an informal summit
Sunday.

"I announced that thesis No. 1 is the politics of mutual interests,"
Yushchenko said. His remarks after the session contrasted sharply with
those of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said the group had a key
role in combatting the spread of terrorism, extremism and xenophobia.

Western-leaning Yushchenko won a bitterly contested presidential election
in December, defeating Kremlin-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych. The
Kremlin has been accused of political meddling in ex-Soviet countries by
backing friendly governments to the detriment of democratic development.

Yushchenko insisted Sunday that Ukraine was not leaving the CIS. Instead,
he said it would continue discussions on ways to make it work better for all
is members. But he warned that his patience for reform was not infinite. "If
you forcibly damage interests of any country, it could easily reject this
(CIS) project," he said.

The CIS was created after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and its
supporters envisioned close integration between the newly independent
countries. But many of its initiatives have made little progress, such as
efforts to remove trade barriers. Ukraine, together with Georgia and
Moldova, has forged closer ties in a rival group known as GUUAM as they
seek to escape from Moscow's influence. -30-
===============================================================
9. UKRAINE INSISTS ON GIVING PRIORITY TO THE CREATION
OF A FREE TRADE ZONE FOR THE CIS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 8, 2005

KYIV - At the summit of member countries of the Commonwealth of
Independent States, Ukraine spoke in favor of giving priority to the issue
of the free trade zone as the economic basis of the CIS. President Viktor
Yuschenko disclosed this to journalists after the summit.

"Ukraine insists that the free trade zone should become the fundamental
top-priority agreement for economic relations," Yuschenko said. He reckons
that other instruments for economic mutual relations between CIS
participating countries will be created on the basis of the free trade zone.

Yuschenko explained that the current state and prospects for cooperation
were discussed at the summit of CIS leaders. "One of the issues, which were
discussed at the round table today - is the CIS, its history, today and the
future," Yuschenko disclosed. He informed that Ukraine voiced its wish for
the holding of public discussion among the presidents on the vision of the
CIS' future. Ukraine also wished that the work of the Commonwealth would
be more effective and rational.

"I spoke in favor of the fact that this institution would be a source of
policy, at least small successes," Yuschenko articulated his position
concerning the CIS. He also voiced the wish that the CIS would deal with
problems that are relevant for member countries of the organization.

Yuschenko believes that relations between countries, which were previously
part of the USSR, would have been more difficult without the CIS.
"If it didn't exist, the formalization of relations on the territory of the
former USSR would have been considerably complicated," Yuschenko said.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Ukraine believes that the objectives of
the Commonwealth of Independent States have been mainly fulfilled.
Ukraine stated in March that it considers it possible that the Commonwealth
of Independent States might cease to exist if it proves ineffective.

Economy Minister Serhii Teriokhin said that the Russia side did not agree to
the introduction of a free trade zone with Ukraine without restrictions and
exemptions as part of the process of forming the Common Economic Area
(CEA). In the early part of this year, Ukraine reaffirmed its interest in
taking part in CEA together with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

At the same time, it made clear that it views its participation in this
organization only within the format of creating a free trade zone.
Ukraine had insisted in the past on signing an agreement with CEA
countries on abolishing existing restrictions within the framework of a
free trade zone from July 1. Yuschenko empowered Teriokhin in March
to lead inter-governmental negotiations on CEA within the framework of
the High-Level Group. -30-
=============================================================
10. YUSHCHENKO AND PUTIN CREATE UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMISSION

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

KYIV - President Viktor Yuschenko of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir
Putin have created a Ukrainian-Russian intergovernmental commission.

They signed this decision after a bilateral meeting in Moscow (Russia). "We
signed today a statement on the creation of the Putin-Yuschenko Commission
and creation of the committees and subcommittees [of this commission],"
Yuschenko said. He made clear that the committees will form the basis for
humanitarian, economic and other areas of expansion of cooperation between
Ukraine and Russia.

Putin and Yuschenko discussed at the meeting major issues of bilateral
relations - economic cooperation, the free trade zone, formation of a common
economic space and delimitation (documentary affixing) of the state
boundary. "The two presidents agreed today that 2005 will be organized at
the level of the two presidents within the framework of the "road map,"
Yuschenko said.

The main tasks of the commission are: to discuss the state of Russian-
Ukrainian cooperation and to identify the most promising areas for
cooperation; to monitor the condition of the implementation of bilateral
treaties and agreements; to draw up priority programs for cooperation,
planning and ensure the preparation of bilateral agreements; the holding of
consultations on pressing issues of security and foreign policy; analysis
and resolving problematic issues in bilateral relations.

The following committees are being created within the commission:
Committee for Economic Cooperation, which will be headed by the
chairman of the Government of Russia and the prime minister of Ukraine;
the Subcommittee for Security to be headed by the defense ministers of
Russia and Ukraine; the Subcommittee for International Cooperation under
the chairmanship of the foreign ministers of both countries and the
Subcommittee for Humanitarian Cooperation under the chairmanship of
the ministers of education and science of both countries.

The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and the Russian
Security Council will conduct general coordination of the work of this
commission. As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the working meeting of
leaders of countries of the Commonwealth of Independent State got
underway in the Russian capital, Moscow.

Yuschenko and Putin created the Yuschenko-Putin Commission in March
for the purpose of enhancing bilateral relations and they dissolved the
Ukrainian-Russian Commission for Economic Cooperation. -30-
===============================================================
11. UKRAINIAN NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENCE SECRETARY
POROSHENKO DETAILS ACCORD WITH RUSSIA
Media knows little about the mysterious 13 steps

UT1, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian 1800 gmt 8 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sunday, May 08, 2005

KYIV - [Correspondent] A new stage of relations between Ukraine and
Russia was launched today. The presidents signed a statement, set up a
Yushchenko-Putin commission and outlined 15 steps, among which
Yushchenko described the Single Economic Space and a free-trade zone
as priority.

What are the remaining 13 steps? Our guest today is National Security and
Defence Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko. Petro Oleksiyovych, the media
know little about the mysterious 13 steps. What are they and what will they
give to ordinary people who hope for new jobs and improvement in the
economic situation and cultural ties? [Passage omitted: Poroshenko
congratulates veterans on Victory Day.]

[Poroshenko] I can say that these steps are extremely interesting. First of
all, a clear task has been set to clarify and begin settling the problems
connected with the temporary deployment of the Black Sea Fleet in
Sevastopol and payments for this, which have been accumulating for over
eight years.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said clearly that today Ukraine is
interested in the work of the Single Economic space and fleshing it out with
specific projects, which don't contradict the Ukrainian constitution. I am
convinced that this will lead to an increase in trade between our counties,
decrease Ukraine's deficit in trade with Russia, new jobs, new GDP growth
and new revenues to the state budget.

In addition, steps in border relations are also quite interesting. These
include a simplified procedure for crossing the border, an agreement on
readmission - returning people who illegally crossed the border - which
means that we will be able to sign the same agreement with EU countries
and this in turn will lead to a significant simplification of the visa
regime with the EU. I think a complete elimination of the iron curtain is in
the interests of Ukrainians.

Cooperation in the cultural sphere is also important. On request from the
Ukrainian community in Russia, Yushchenko asked Putin to facilitate the
creation of national Russian TV and radio channels in Ukrainian language
and a national newspaper in Ukrainian. President Putin clearly supported
this initiative.

I think that the working group set up by the agreement will begin working in
the next few weeks and Ukrainian citizens living in Russia and Russian
citizens of Ukrainian origin will be able to watch TV and read newspapers in
their native language. [Passage omitted: Poroshenko says the accord was
finalized only late at night yesterday.] -30-
===============================================================
12. UKRAINIAN, TURKMEN LEADERS ASK PUTIN TO SUPPORT JOINT
STATEMENT REGARDING GUARANTEE OF NATURAL GAS SUPPLIES

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1346 gmt 8 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service,UK, in English, Sunday, May 08, 2005

KIEV - The Ukrainian and Turkmen presidents, Viktor Yushchenko and
Saparmyrat Nyyazow, have prepared a statement to Russian leader
Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian president's press service has said.

In the statement, they asked Putin to support a joint statement by the
presidents of Ukraine, Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation on these
countries' concerted actions to guarantee natural gas supplies to each of
the countries, taking into account gas supplies on the countries' market.
The document was prepared at a bilateral meeting between Yushchenko
and Nyyazow in Moscow on Sunday [8 May, during the CIS summit].

The document proposes that Putin should issue appropriate instructions
to implement the agreements. Yushchenko and Nyyazow discussed the
creation of a gas consortium at their meeting, the press service said.
===============================================================
13. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT LUKASHENKA RELEASES ALL UKRAINIANS

Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

KYIV - All four Ukrainian citizens detained by police during the marking of
the anniversary of Chernobyl explosion on April 26 in Minsk, Belarus, have
been released and are returning to Ukraine. According to "LigaBiznesInform",
they have left the prison on the Ukrainian embassy's car and were escorted
by an embassy diplomat to the Belarusian-Ukrainian border.

The Ukrainians were met by more than 100 people, among them Belarusian
opposition supporters and the media. Four Belarusians who also took part in
the protest were released as well.

According to Eduard Bagirov, the chairman of the International League of
Ukrainian Citizens' Rights Protection organization, the Ukrainian consul
refused to speak to the press. According to Bagirov, the consul explained
this with the fact that because of the media reports, he could not free the
prisoners ahead of time. Bagirov also informed that the Ukrainians' health
condition is good and that they will return to Kyiv soon.

At the same time, activists arrested in Moscow while protesting in front of
the Belarus embassy in support of those detained in Minsk were tried at a
Moscow court on Friday. One of them was sentenced to 6 days of
administrative arrest. The detained girl must pay a 500-ruble (US $25)
fine, Channel 5 reports. (translated by Igor Solovey) -30-
===============================================================
14. PUTIN SAYS HE DID NOT ENDORSE YANUKOVYCH DURING
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, "THAT NEVER HAPPENED"

Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 8, 2005

KYIV - The relations with the current government of Ukraine have the
potential to be not worse than with the previous one, Russian president
Vladimir Putin said in an interview to ARD and ZDF German channels,
according to Russian "RIA-Novosti" news agency.

"Let's take the first president of Ukraine [Leonid Kravchuk] - was he less
nationalistic than the current leaders? Even more, I think." "We can without
overstatement say that the relations with the current leaders of Ukraine can
be on the same good level as during Leonid Kuchma's rule. We knew that
for a long time." - he said.

Discussing the Presidential election campaign in Ukraine, Putin emphasized:
"First of all, we did nothing which can be classified as direct interference
in Ukraine's affairs." "Remind me of at least one occasion when I was
endorsing one of the candidates. That never happened," - the Russian
president assured. "Just put yourself in our place for a moment. How could
we accomplish that?"

Secondly, Putin noted that Russia cannot cooperate with the opposition in
any of its ex-Soviet neighbours. "Just as soon as we communicate and work
with the opposition behind the government's back, we will right away be
accused of imperial ambitions. This will happen instantaneously, that very
hour," the president said.

"But most importantly, the issue which troubles me the most, is the use of
illegal methods in political struggle in the post-Soviet countries - I think
it's absolutely unacceptable, because it destabilizes huge territories and
brings chaos to them," - Putin underlined.

In his opinion, the post-Soviet countries are "quite fragile, without
properly formed state infrastructures." Because of that, Putin thinks that
destabilization there can bring about the situation which will "shake all of
Europe." (translated by Igor Solovey) -30-
===============================================================
15. PRES YUSHCHENKO SUPPORTS SAVING CRIMEAN PARKS AND
WILDLIFE RESERVES AND RETURNING STOLEN LAND

Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Sun, May 8, 2005

KYIV - President Viktor Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna together with their
children visited the zoo in Yalta on Thursday. In a conversation with
journalists Yushchenko said he is in a great mood, loves the weather and
savors every minute he spends in Crimea with his family.

Yushchenko confided that he is in love with Crimea and regards it as one of
the best places in the world. "The view, the flora here in Crimea never
ceases to amaze our family," - the press-service cites the President as
saying. The head of the state is confident that this short holiday on the
peninsula will fill him with energy and strength.

Yushchenko assured that he will do everything he can "in order to save
Crimean parks and wildlife reserves and to return to the people of Crimea
all the land which was stolen from them." "When I see the beautiful Crimean
nature, I feel very happy as a human being, but as a president I remember of
all the violations that were going on here," - Yushchenko noted, adding that
all the questions about illegal land grabs in Crimea will be dealt with
soon.

When asked whether Yalta will remain "the southern capital", Yushchenko said
"Definitely, but not in the same way as during the old government's reign."
From now on, according to the country's leader, a visit of the president,
parliamentary speaker, prime minister or any other official will not be
accompanied by holding up of traffic while the motorcades pass, and other
inconveniences for ordinary Crimean's. "We respect Crimea and we love
Crimeans," - he added. (Translated by Igor Solovey) -30-
===============================================================
16. GEORGIAN PRESIDENT SAAKASHVILI DEFENDS HIS BOYCOTT
OF MOSCOW V-E DAY CELEBRATIONS
Saakashvili said Friday "the occupation of Georgia must end."

Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili, AP Worldstream
AP, Tbilisi, Georgia, Saturday, May 07, 2005

TBILISI - Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili Saturday defended his
decision to boycott ceremonies in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary
of the end of World War II in Europe because of an unresolved dispute
over the withdrawal of Russia's Soviet-era military bases in his country.

"When one of the last legacies of the Soviet totalitarian domination in this
part of the world has not been eliminated, I would rather stay with our
veterans to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II here
in Georgia," he told a news conference on Saturday.

Saakashvili refused to attend Monday's commemorations after talks in
Moscow on Friday failed to produce an agreement on the closure of the
two Russian military bases in Georgia - an issue that has increasingly
soured relations between the two former Soviet republics. The Georgian
leader spoke by telephone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on
Saturday.

The Kremlin said in a curt statement that the two men did not discuss
Saakashvili's participation in the Moscow festivities. Dozens of world
leaders, including U.S President George W. Bush, will mark the anniversary
of the Allied victory over the Nazis and pay tribute to the Soviet Union's
huge contribution.

But the Georgian president said that Putin "was understanding" about his
position. Saakashvili is also to skip a Moscow meeting Sunday of leaders
of 12 ex-Soviet states.

The dispute has added to the tension between the countries that has grown
since Georgia gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse. Ties have
soured further since Saakashvili and his pro-Western administration came to
power last year.

Russia has accused Georgia of harboring militants who fight across the
border in Chechnya, and Georgia has accused Russia of fomenting instability
by supporting two separatist Georgian regions. The outspoken Saakashvili
said Friday that "the occupation of Georgia must end."

The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized Georgia for linking the base dispute
to the Victory Day celebrations. The ministry said Russia is determined to
reach an agreement but that it will require "efforts by both sides."

Bush has said he would bring up the issue with Putin when the two men
meet - as Saakashvili has asked - but that the dispute needed to be resolved
between Russia and Georgia. Russia wants four years to complete the
pullout of its soldiers from two Russian military bases left over from the
Soviet era, while Georgia says it must be finished before January 2008 -
less than three years. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
===============================================================
17. KREMLIN MISFIRES WITH WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIONS

Gazeta.ru web site, Moscow, in Russian 5 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sat, May 07, 2005

Moscow's decision to invite foreign dignitaries to the World War II
commemorations on 9 May was misguided, according to an article
on the Russian Gazeta.ru web site.

The Kremlin should have predicted the event would exacerbate long-standing
disputes with the Baltic states over their integration, or annexation, into
the Soviet Union following the end of the war. And meanwhile, the ordinary
Russians whose relatives died in the conflict have been excluded amid all
the pomp and ceremony of the celebrations "for foreign consumption".

The following the text of the report by Gazeta.ru on 5 May:
Russian authorities began preparing for the celebration of the 60th
anniversary of Victory [in World War II] in plenty of time. In 2000 the
committee organizing the event set to work. Vladimir Putin headed it
personally. The decision was made to spare neither effort, nor time, nor
budget funds.

Outwardly it all looked extremely logical. Lots of films and TV series were
shot for the public, and several propaganda manoeuvres were conceived as
well, the most colourful of which was the handing out of St George's ribbons
for automobiles. Money was thrown veterans' way and an effort was made to
surround them with care in general. A plan was drawn up for mass events,
although later it was recommended that Moscow's residents leave town
during the celebrations.

Which is understandable: the main guests at the holiday were to be not our
own citizens, not the victors and their children and grandchildren, but our
invited overseas guests. The event was supposed to be a triumph of Russian
foreign policy, to underscore yet again Moscow's role in the contemporary
world, its full-fledged return to the arena of world geopolitics.

However, by deciding to turn the 60th anniversary of the Victory into a
holiday for foreign consumption, the Russian authorities independently and
without any outside pressure plunged into a whole string of scandals.

Long and protracted was the process of figuring out who would and wouldn't
come to Moscow. This always happens when you invite guests to a big
banquet, although, in the planning, it should have been recalled that many
of those invited have their own opinion about the results of World War II.

This circumstance could have been ignored altogether had the celebration of
Victory Day been organized for our own public. Had the decision not been
taken to tack onto Victory Day a couple of summits, as well as other foreign
policy events. For instance, the signing of an agreement on the borders
between Russia and Latvia.

It's hard to believe the Kremlin didn't know both Europe and the United
States have always taken an unambiguous view of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact and have considered the inclusion of the Baltic countries an
annexation.

That the United States did not recognize them as a legal part of the Soviet
Union and maintained symbolic representations of the independent Baltic
states throughout their forced sojourn in the fraternal family of Soviet
peoples.

Moreover, in the early 1990s, even Russia conceded the fact of the Baltic
states' annexation by the Soviet Union. After the Baltic states and the
countries of Eastern Europe joined the European Union, the view of Europe's
postwar order as a forced Sovietization and limitation on the sovereignty of
the countries liberated from the Germans by the Soviet Army lay, in a
natural way, at the foundation of the European Union's consolidated position
on this issue.

Even if we set aside today the disputes on the essence of the issue, one
can only wonder what the presidential advisers and other responsible
persons were expecting when they decided to invite the leaders of Europe
and America to the celebration while simultaneously putting the stress on
the liberating, civilizing mission of the Soviet army.

One can only smile at the many "perplexed reactions" of officials heard
today concerning President Bush's statements in his letter to the Latvian
president, in which the thesis on annexation was wholly supported.

Bush will confirm this same position at his meeting with Baltic leaders on
the eve of his visit to Moscow and (as he promises) in Moscow itself as
well. Other European Union representatives will undoubtedly find a way to
support the Baltic states and Eastern Europeans, too. The commemoration
of Russia's triumph is threatening more and more to turn into a holiday of
wounded vanity.

In sum, a paradoxical situation has come about. Citizens are planning to
mark the 60th anniversary of Victory independently, without the authorities'
participation, cursing the inconveniences caused them by the
Kremlin-organized holiday for foreign consumption. Though, the invited
guests, too, will be distracted more by the half-historical, half-political
scandal than by the actual celebrations. -30-
===============================================================
18. IT'S OK TO SCOLD THE BACKSLIDER
Bush must praise the region's emerging democracies
and spank Putin (in private)

OP-ED: By Michael McFaul, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California, Sunday, May 8, 2005

Before George W. Bush touches down in Moscow this week, he should
reread his second inaugural address. In that speech, Bush made clear that
advancing freedom and liberty around the world is going to be the foreign
policy focus of his second term. His legacy in foreign affairs will now be
defined by his success in advancing democracy. Russia presents the
greatest challenge.

Lots of ruthless dictators have remained in power during Bush's tenure, but
they were in power before Bush came to the White House. Russia is the
only major country in the world that has, during Bush's time in office,
moved from "partly free" to "not free" (as determined by Freedom House,
the leading institution in the democracy assessment business). Vladimir V.
Putin is also one of the few leaders in the world with whom Bush has
developed a close relationship. If Russian democracy completely breaks
down while Bush is still in office, Bush's decision to invest so much time
and energy in Putin will look like a strategic mistake.

The prospects for democratic renewal inside Russia do not look encouraging
for the remainder of Bush's second term. Boris N. Yeltsin did not leave
Putin with a democratic system of government. And since becoming president
in 2000, Putin has done little to strengthen democracy and much to weaken
it. He has undermined the autonomy of every political institution in Russia
except one. The Federation Council and the State Duma (Russia's two
houses of parliament) are weaker today than they were four years ago. So
are independent media, regional governors, the prime minister's office,
independent political parties and civil society. The presidency is now the
only meaningful center of decision-making in the country.

Under Putin, this centralization of power may have helped advance economic
reform and helped restore the state (though even this cause-and-effect
relationship is debatable). But a leader could also use this centralized
regime to pursue an anti-reform agenda or create a repressive dictatorship.
The struggle to replace Putin in 2008 has already begun, and none of the
likely scenarios look promising for democracy.

Putin's currently favored successor, Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov, has
demonstrated little proclivity for advancing the democratic cause. And many
Russian election experts believe that Ivanov can win only through a
fraudulent vote.

In a truly competitive election, however, a nationalist-socialist coalition
is likely to produce a more popular candidate than anyone put forth from
Russia's democratic movement.

In a third scenario, Putin supporters would amend the constitution,
allowing their candidate to run for a third term. Or they'd give the prime
minister's office more power, and Putin would assume the post.

One of these scenarios will unfold on Bush's watch. None will bolster
Bush's legacy. Nor does Bush have any good tools in his diplomatic
arsenal to alter Russia's political trajectory. Putin is too popular and
Russia is too big for external actors to play more than a marginal role
in influencing internal developments.

At the same time, Bush cannot ignore Russia's democratic backsliding and
must instead use his remaining meetings with Putin, including their meeting
in Moscow on Monday, to discourage his friend in the Kremlin from making
Russia even more autocratic. Bush alone cannot bring back Russian
independent television, reverse the carnage in Chechnya or roll back
Putin's decision to appoint governors. But he can make clear that the
future of Russian democracy will be a central issue in U.S.-Russian
relations for the remainder of his term.

The 60th anniversary of the end of what the Russians call the Great
Patriotic War (and what we call World War II) is not the time to lecture
Putin publicly about his democratic deficits. At the same time, Bush can
signal his commitment to assisting democratic development in Russia in
several, more subtle ways.

In private meetings with Putin, Bush must make clear that a democratic
transfer of presidential power in 2008 is a precondition for cooperative
relations with the United States and for Russia's continued membership
in the G8 group of industrialized nations.

To demonstrate his commitment to a free and fair election in 2008, Putin
must state publicly that he will allow domestic and international monitors
to observe the vote, that he will not limit the opposition's access to
national television (including the ability to buy ads on the state-run
channels) and that his government will not harass or jail business people
who contribute to opposition candidates.

Bush must also tell Russia's democrats that he is committed to their cause.
Bush has pledged his support to democrats in Iran. Why not do the same
to democrats in Russia? He can bolster the meaning of these words by
meeting directly and often with Russian human rights activists, civic
leaders and business people.

And the Bush administration has to speak with one voice. When unnamed
"senior officials" speak on background to journalists, they contend that
pushing Putin toward democracy is a lower priority than winning his
cooperation on Iran and North Korea, and some White House aides
suggest that Russia's backsliding on democracy is less dramatic than it
seems.

Bush must end these mixed messages and his administration also must
work harder to get our Europeans allies on message as well. Putin has
successfully cultivated relationships with his counterparts in France,
Germany and Britain, undercutting what should be a united Western
opposition to Russia's democratic backsliding. In addition, the Bush
administration must reconfigure its foreign aid package to Russia to give
greater support to those activities and organizations dedicated to making
Russia's 2007 parliamentary election and 2008 presidential election free
and fair.

In Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, monitoring
organizations carried out exit polls and parallel vote tabulations that
proved critical to exposing voter fraud. Similar technologies and
organizations must be developed in Russia. Finally, Bush must sustain
what his visit to Georgia on Tuesday will begin: a show of moral and
economic support for the countries in the region that have recently
experienced democratic breakthroughs.

The project of building democracy is far from over in either Georgia or
Ukraine. In contrast to Russia, however, leaders in both of these countries
want to work with the United States to consolidate their democratic gains.
Assisting them in this must be Bush's priority.

The failure of democracy in Georgia or Ukraine will bolster anti-democratic
groups inside Russia, while success will aid Russia's democratic forces.

Getting serious about Russian democracy does not mean isolating or
containing Russia. Nor does a new strategy for promoting Russian
democracy mean that other issues in U.S.-Russian relations need to be
neglected. During the Cold War, U.S. presidents worked toward arms
control with their Soviet counterparts and promoted freedom within the
communist world at the same time.

Bush can work with Putin to fight terror and prevent proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction while seeking to foster democracy in Russia.
There need not be tradeoffs or linkage between these agendas. But let's be
clear. The Russian president has worked with the United States in the war
on terrorism or international nonproliferation efforts only when he thought
that cooperation advanced Russian national interests, and never to do Bush
a favor. Less talk about democracy is not going to make Putin more eager
to cooperate on Iran or North Korea.

Even if Bush fails to help the cause of Russian democracy, he should at
least signal clearly and boldly whose side he is on. At least then, when
historians assess his legacy, they will give him credit for trying. -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael McFaul is a Hoover fellow and political science professor at
Stanford University, and a nonresident associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (CIPE). With James Goldgeier,
his latest book is "Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia
After the Cold War."
===============================================================
19. END OF ONE NIGHTMARE, START OF ANOTHER
May 9 marked the beginning of Poland's second occupation

COMMENTARY: By Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz
Analyst of Polish-Russian relations
Financial Times, London, UK, Sun, May 8 2005

For Wladyslaw Swarewicz, a Polish second world war veteran in his 80s, the
significance of May 1945 does not lie in the victory over fascism. He was in
a Soviet prison camp when the allies defeated Nazi Germany 60 years ago.

He was arrested in August 1944 as he tried to get to Warsaw with his
partisan detachment to help in the Polish capital's uprising against the
Germans. The uprising was the finale of the country's resistance against
Hitler and lasted 63 days before the city fell, drowned in a sea of blood.

The Red Army watched while the Germans destroyed the uprising, only
interceding to arrest resistance fighters. Mr Swarewicz was released in 1946
but his brother and parents did not return from the prison camps until 1956.
The only crime of Mr Swarewicz and many other Poles was that they were
patriots fighting the Germans independently of Moscow's control.

For them, May 9 marked the beginning of Poland's second occupation. After
the Red Army came, the NKVD - one of the most terrible secret police forces
in the world - arrested all those who could endanger Soviet rule in central
Europe. For Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, as one nightmare
ended another began. To many central Europeans, the end of the second
world war came only with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining
of lost independence.

That is why Moscow's celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the victory
over fascism are creating such controversy in Poland and the Baltic
countries. Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland's president, has been severely
criticised for deciding to go to Moscow; the presidents of Estonia and
Lithuania are not going.

The conflict has been sharpened by Russia's dismissal of any but the Soviet
version of history as anti-Russian phobia. Russia's foreign ministry said in
February that the 1945 Yalta agreement of the Soviet Union, Britain and
America brought Poland security, freedom and democracy. That statement
has caused outrage in Poland.

The Balts are demanding that Russia condemn the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, which allowed the USSR and Nazi Germany to slice up central Europe,
erasing the Baltic countries from the European map for 50 years. But the
Russia of President Vladimir Putin does not intend to do so.

Sixty years after the end of the war, there are growing disagreements
between European Union and Nato members and Russia over history, and
the tensions are not only over an assessment of the past but also with the
future.

The Russians have made it clear that with their celebrations they hope to
eclipse last year's 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings and remind
the world who bore the heaviest burden in defeating Hitler. Their real goal
is to highlight a view of international affairs in which Russia is an equal
to the traditional great powers of Britain, France and the US.

The celebrations are for Russia the opportunity to show that it belongs to
the club of global heavyweights that brings Europe stability and peace. At
stake are Moscow's relations with the EU. At present these are dominated by
the interests of France, Germany and Russia, but can they accommodate the
union's new members, such as Poland? For Moscow, the prospect of EU
policy being shaped by its former satellites, which understand the nature of
Russia's imperial politics, is unacceptable.

The conflict over the anniversary is also a sign that the new EU members are
bringing their own understanding of history into the union. Disputes in the
European parliament over how to commemorate the end of the war show
how differently east and west Europe view the recent past. When Gunter
Verheugen, EU enterprise commissioner, called recently for Russia to
condemn the annexation of the Baltic states, Moscow angrily replied that
any attempt to compare the USSR to Nazi Germany was "sacrilege".

Meanwhile central Europeans, whose countries endured totalitarian rule
twice, do not intend to see their suffering sacrificed on the altar of
better EU-Russian relations simply because Mr Putin hopes to create a
spectacle that serves his political interests.

If this battle over history is won, the new members of the EU will have
changed Europe - not only in agriculture and services, but also in political
and historical identities forged over decades. Anyone who thought central
Europe would passively watch while the big powers shaped the continent
is being proved wrong. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer is an analyst of Polish-Russian relations
===============================================================
20. VICTORY DAY IN THE SOVIET UNION: MAY 9TH, 1945:
THE END OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

COMMENTARY: Andrew Osborn, The Independent
London, United Kingdom; Monday, May 09, 2005

In London they danced in the fountains but in Moscow they were too
shell-shocked, too exhausted and too battle-weary to manage such high
jinks. Up to 30 million soldiers and civilians were dead, the Soviet Union
had lost a third of its national wealth, cities such as Stalingrad had been
reduced to lunar landscapes, and an entire generation of men had been
decimated.

That is not to say there was not euphoria though. Sixty years ago today,
searchlights illuminated a city that a few years earlier had almost fallen
to the Germans, cannon-fire and fireworks exploded over the Kremlin and
relieved citizens crowded into Red Square to share their enormous
collective relief.

A large and apparently grateful crowd gathered outside the US embassy in
Moscow and revellers on Red Square danced, kissed, sung and chatted
excitedly. One Soviet captain was overheard saying, 'Pora jit' (It's time to
live).

But Josef Stalin was not in celebratory mood and reportedly became annoyed
when his then underling, Nikita Khrushchev, telephoned him to congratulate
him on his victory. 'Why are you bothering me?' he is reported to have
snapped. 'I am working.' The night before, one of the USSR's most
respected radio announcers had reported the German surrender.

'This is Moscow. On May 8th, 1945, the representatives of the German High
Command signed in Berlin the Act of the Unconditional Surrender of all
German troops. The Great Patriotic War waged by the Soviet people against
Nazi invaders has been victoriously concluded. Germany has suffered a total
defeat. Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the battles for the freedom
and independence of our Motherland. Long live the victorious Red Army and
Navy!'

It would not be until 24 June 1945, that the USSR held a proper victory
parade, in torrential rain. On that day, one by one, soldiers lined up to
toss the defeated German army's banners and standards, including Hitler's
own personal standard, into a sodden mess at Stalin's feet beneath Lenin's
tomb.

The parade was particularly poignant because just a few years earlier, when
it looked as if Moscow itself might fall to Hitler, soldiers had marched
straight from Red Square to the front. The circle was complete. Today
another parade will march in Moscow. It may vary in style and substance
but it will take its cue from that momentous, rain-soaked day in 1945.

Admittedly, Lenin's tomb will be tastefully camouflaged when President
Vladimir Putin hosts a modern victory celebration. He does not want to up-
set invited world leaders when it comes to the photo opportunity, let alone
leave himself open to yet more accusations that he is recreating the Soviet
Union. Equally, Josef Stalin's bones are unlikely to stir from their resting
place at the foot of the Kremlin Wall.

Nor, if weather-obsessed Russian scientists have anything to do with it,
will it rain today as it did 60 years ago, with such complete bleakness
since the clouds have been 'seeded' with dry ice by the Russian air force
to encourage them to drop their precipitation before they reach the capital.
Stalin, a man who believed that nothing was stronger than his own iron will,
would have approved.

But the ideology he defended " communism " and the state he saved from
the clutches of Adolf Hitler " the Soviet Union " have been buried along
with his own reputation as 'the father of the people' and a brilliant
wartime leader. But there is something about today that will bring down the
curtain on a ritual he inaugurated only to later ban because he feared the
growing prestige of his military commanders.

Today, 9 May, is the traditional day when first the USSR, and now its
principal successor state, Russia, marks 'Victory Day', the most sacred of
all public holidays. Moscow celebrates victory over Nazi Germany 24 hours
later than the other Allies because the German high command surrendered
to the Soviets one day later than they did to the Americans and the British.

They hoped they would get better treatment at the hands of the Western
Allies and they were right. But Stalin's ghost is not as disturbing and
threatening as some Western observers contend. Though some claim
Russia is in the throes of a Stalinist revival, pointing to a handful of
towns and cities keen to rename streets after him, or erect a modest bust
to a man whose power was built on the bones and blood of the people he
ruled the reality is starkly different.

Yes, there is nostalgia among older people for the stability and order he
guaranteed at a time when many ordinary Russians are still struggling to
make ends meet after the 1991 demise of the USSR. Yes, what is left of the
Russian Communist party believes that a new Stalin is now needed to save
Russia from money-grubbing oligarchs and corrupt bureaucrats. And yes,
opinion polls show a large number of Russians are of the opinion that his
wartime role was crucial.

But that is not the same as supporting the orthodoxy of Stalinism, and is
countered by a very real understanding among large swaths of the
population of the crimes he perpetrated against his own people, the purges,
the disappearances in the night, the gulag, the mumbo-jumbo show trials
and lunatic conspiracies.

Is Vladimir Putin milking the occasion to bolster his own position,
increasingly assailed as he is by the West for his lack of democratic
credentials? Yes, of course he is, but even he is ready to publicly call a
tyrant a tyrant. Veterans may recall the most tumultuous years of their
youth when they fought in Stalin's name but, above all, today for them is
about sacrifice, heroism and human suffering devoid of dogma. Mention
the Battle of Britain, El Alamein, the Blitz or D-Day to a Soviet veteran
and they will politely raise an eyebrow and form a wry smile before rattling
off the USSR's own finest hours.

The Battle of Stalingrad, the Siege of Leningrad, the Kursk tank battle, the
Defence of Moscow, the Battle of Berlin, the Defence of Smolensk and so
the list goes on. Then conjure up Britain's iconic images of its own wartime
prowess, debonair pipe-smoking fighter pilots, a defiant cigar- toting
Churchill, a sand-blasted Montgomery, groups of troops wading ashore at
Normandy or a 'plucky' armada of fishing-boats and pleasure craft evacuating
the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force and you can bet that the
Soviet veteran holds something entirely different in his mind's eye.

A Red Army soldier raising the Soviet Hammer and Sickle flag over the
captured Reichstag in Berlin, troops marching straight from Moscow's Red
Square to the frontline, the rubble of what used to be Stalingrad, Dmitri
Shostakovich composing his seventh symphony in an encircled Leningrad
or a self-satisfied Josef Stalin sitting beside Winston Churchill and
Franklin D Roosevelt at Yalta.

Curiously, the Soviet veteran will not refer to 'the Second World War'. For
Russians and the citizens of the former Soviet Union the conflict is known
dramatically as 'The Great Patriotic War,' a phrase which in a Russian mind
conjures up immediate associations with Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in
1812. Sixty years may have elapsed but victory over Hitler and fascism
remains modern-day Russia's proudest moment and still plays a significant
role in contemporary life.

It may have been a Communist tradition but young newlyweds still visit their
local town's war memorial after they have been married to lay flowers and
remember those who died so that they could live in peace. It is
unquestionable that Soviet history is far from unsullied. The Baltic states
and Poland have a point when they argue that the end of the Second World
War signified the beginning of almost half a century of Soviet occupation.

Nor, as some of Britain's most eminent historians such as Anthony Beevor
have documented, was the behaviour of the victorious Red Army above
reproach. Atrocities were perpetrated and German women were raped by
a revenge-hungry army on a terrifying scale.

But all that should not prevent us from recognising the Red Army's immense
contribution, a contribution that dwarfs that of Britain and, indeed, the
United States. The Soviet Union lost more soldiers and civilians during the
war than any other country.

It is estimated that between 25 and 30 million died and that the Red Army
did more of the fighting than anyone else, single-handedly destroying 80 per
cent of the German army. If you were to compile a list of the war's most
significant battles, many of them would have been fought and won by the
Soviets, notably the Battle of Stalingrad which reached its bloody
culmination in 1943 and is widely regarded as one of the key turning-points
in the entire conflict.

As historian Norman Davies wrote recently, the Red Army's Marshal
Rokossovsky destroyed a collection of Wehrmacht divisions equivalent to
the entire German deployment on the western front in one single operation
in 1944. To Stalin's delight the Red Army was also the first to reach
Berlin.

Today will see the Red Army's survivors puff out their chests with pride.
Thousands will parade across Red Square in Second World War-era
vehicles as fighter jets roar over Red Square tracing the Russian tricolour
flag in the sky. Looking on will be 53 world leaders including President
George Bush, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schrýder, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi. John Prescott is also expected.

Wreaths will be laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the foot of the
Kremlin Wall before a celebratory evening banquet hosted by President Putin
and his wife Lyudmila. Moscow has been spruced up with 50,000 flags, 125
miles of coloured lights, every cobble on Red Square has allegedly been
individually cleaned and the city's streets have been purged of stray dogs
and prostitutes.

Security will be tight as 9 May is a favourite day for Chechen separatist
rebels to strike. Last year they used the opportunity to blow up Akhmad
Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed president of Chechnya, as he reviewed a
victory parade in Grozny, the republic's capital, and this year, rebel
warlord Shamil Basayev is threatening further terror.

Some will see today as a hideous stage-managed attempt to glorify the
USSR, Stalin and even President Putin. But for many veterans it will simply
be an opportunity to unite around one of the dwindling number of constants
in their lives and to recall one of the few things that modern-day Russians
still feel proud of. It is likely to be the final occasion for such men and
women to feel as though their sacrifice had made a real difference to the
world. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
===============================================================
21. GERMANS STILL FINDING NEW MORAL BURDENS OF WAR

By Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
New York, New York, Sunday, May 8, 2005

ULM, Germany, May 4 - This attractive town on the Danube River is
endowed with dozens of memorials dedicated to those who suffered
in the two world wars, with one memorial in particular, a group of seven
inscribed slabs surmounting a knoll in the main cemetery, serving officially
as Ulm's all-inclusive and all-encompassing memorial to the victims of
Nazism.

But there is a local controversy about these memorials, and it reflects a
larger fact of German life. Even now, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of
the end of World War II, this country still has not settled exactly on how
to remember the victims, or on whose suffering and losses are entitled to
be commemorated.

A small group of young people here has been getting attention in the local
newspapers as it argued, in pamphlets and at public meetings that the array
of Ulm memorials fails to honor one category: those who deserted the
German Army, many of whom were executed during the war.

"It's completely obvious that World War II was a horrific crime," said one
of the young people, Johanna Nimrich, 18. "It's impossible to understand
why people who participated in the war are honored, but those who resisted
participation are not."

Ms. Nimrich and the five other young people, who organized around
opposition to the American invasion of Iraq, want to honor the deserters,
who, in their view and in the view that prevails in Germany, were acting
morally in response to a war defined by its immorality.

Their demand, that a large work by the artist Hannah Stütz-Mentzel honoring
the deserters be displayed permanently in some public place, is certainly a
local issue, given only modest coverage by Germany's national press.

But other thoughts and arguments have emerged in recent years as well,
including an insistence by historians and others that Germany be allowed
to mourn its own suffering in the war, not least the suffering caused by the
Allied bombings.

Meanwhile, also making themselves heard are members of the millions of
ethnic German families who were deported from Eastern European
countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia after the war, and who want
public recognition of what they lost.

"The trauma is too familiar, the moral burden weighed and accepted,"
Jürgen Leinemann, an essayist for the magazine Der Spiegel, wrote
recently. "Now attentions are turning to Germany's own sufferings."

Germany has had a long evolution in grappling with the war. In the early
years, an embarrassed and ashamed wartime generation dealt with
Nazism and the Nazi persecutions very delicately, if at all. "Even the
scholarly scrutiny of the genocide of the Jewish people," Mr. Leinemann
wrote, "was tentative and uncertain during those first three decades."

But in the 1960's and 1970's, powerfully influenced by the war crimes trials
of those years, the generation born during the war began to question its
parents' complicity in the crimes of the Nazis. At the same time, figures
like the novelists Günter Grass and Christa Wolf and student movement
leaders like Joschka Fischer, now foreign minister, demanded a full and
frank accounting of Germany's crimes, especially the persecution of the
Jews.

And by now, it is fair to say, there is very little official denial or even
avoidance of the full horror of the Nazi crimes, which are fully taught in
German schools and chronicled by hundreds of museums and exhibits
throughout this country.

Tellingly in this sense, Germany's end-of-war commemoration is Sunday,
but what is perhaps the biggest related national event will take place
Tuesday when the immense Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
will be officially opened in Berlin. It mainly consists of 2,711 dark gray
concrete steles erected in a cemeterylike field in the heart of reunified
Berlin, little more than a stone's throw from the Brandenburg Gate.

The memorial's size and central location are widely seen here as testimony
to the centrality and uniqueness of the Holocaust among the many crimes
of the Nazis, as well as to the willingness of Germany to accept
responsibility, both moral and material, for the Nazis' crimes.

Also tellingly, in the wake of the decision to build the Holocaust memorial,
several groups, including gays and Gypsies, or Roma, who were also
persecuted by the Nazis, have demanded memorials of their own, as
have members of families deported from the East.

In this sense, the only thing that is different about Ulm, a town of more
than 100,000 people on the banks of the Danube in southern Germany, is
that it seems to be the only place to have given rise to a demand that a
movement to honor the deserters from the Wehrmacht become part of
the public commemoration.

The roots of the Ulm initiative date back 18 years, when a group of people
opposed to the draft in Germany commissioned Ms. Stütz-Mentzel, a local
artist, to create a work dedicated to the deserters. Ms. Stütz-Mentzel
produced a large metal sculpture that showed a series of slabs, from quite
small to quite large, in which the smallest slab initiates a domino effect,
causing the larger slabs to lean over. The idea is that even the smallest
level soldiers can influence higher ones," she said recently, in her studio.

In 1989, Ms. Stütz-Mentzel and her allies placed the sculpture in a public
place on the outskirts of Ulm where some deserters are believed to have
been executed. But the city authorities ordered her to remove it. As a
consequence, for the past 16 years, Ms. Stütz-Mentzel's work has been
stored in the small back garden of a local English teacher, Hildegard
Henseler, where, from time to time, people stop by to see it.

Then, a few months ago, the small group of high school students in Ulm
heard about Ms. Stütz-Mentzel's semi-discarded sculpture. The City Council
has rejected the students' demands that the work be given a public home.
The students and their supporters suspect that is because desertion is still
too delicate a subject, especially in a city like Ulm, home to a large
German Army base. But Ulm's mayor, Ivo Gönner, a 52-year-old Social
Democrat, denies that that is the case.

"The deserters are included already in the general monument as victims
of the Nazi regime," Mr. Gönner said in an interview in his office. "It's
not so much a matter of deserters, as it is a matter of principle, not to
have more memorials." Others, including the students who have reignited
the debate in Ulm about Ms. Stütz-Mentzel's sculpture, disagree.

"The deserter did not fit, how shall I say it, into our unprocessed
history," Manfred Messerschmidt, a professor of military history at Ulm
University, said. According to Dr. Messerschmidt, about 22,000 German
soldiers were executed for desertion during the war. Among the deserters
who survived was Joseph Ratzinger, a young soldier who left in the final
weeks of the war and more than half a century later became Pope
Benedict XVI.

"The deserter, who is a sort of potential conscience, does not fit in here,
and that is disturbing," Dr. Messerschmidt said. "That is why one doesn't
deal with this. That's why no memorials are wanted." -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/international/europe/08germany.html
===============================================================
22. GOING TO THE HEART OF THE HOLOCAUST
After Delays and Disputes, Memorial in Berlin to Open

By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Saturday, May 7, 2005, Front Page Story

BERLIN, May 6 -- Thousands of bullet-gray concrete blocks rise crookedly
from the earth like fresh gravestones along what was once barren no man's
land surrounding the Berlin Wall. Deep underground is the wartime bunker
built for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. The site of the
razed Reich Chancellery, where Adolf Hitler plotted the extermination of
the Jews, is about 100 yards away.

On Tuesday, 60 years after the end of World War II in Europe, Berlin
officials will unveil a Holocaust memorial in the center of the German
capital to remember the 6 million European Jews who were killed.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was built after years of
wrenching argument in Germany over how far the nation must still go to
acknowledge its responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich.

First proposed in 1988, a year before the collapse of East Germany and
the dismantling of the wall, the memorial was delayed by bureaucratic
hurdles, disagreements over its design and outright opposition from many
Germans, including some Jews.

Some critics complained that it was too stark, too visible and too painful a
reminder for a people who had long confronted the Nazi past. Others said
the monument should also commemorate the estimated 5 million other
European victims of the Nazis, including Poles, political opponents,
homosexuals and members of the Roma minority, also known as
Gypsies.

"This is a statement to the world. It is also a very late statement. It
needs to be pointed out that, until now, no central point existed" in Berlin
to commemorate the Holocaust, said Michael May, executive director of
the Jewish Community of Berlin.

"At the same time, this site has nothing to do with subtlety. Here you have
a kind of crystallization of the enormity of the crime in a memorial, and
that in and of itself is very significant," he said. "This cannot be
overlooked."

The memorial is a maze of 2,711 unadorned concrete rectangular slabs that
cover a city block not far from the Brandenburg Gate and the construction
site of the new U.S. Embassy. The slabs tilt slightly at varying angles, and
the ground rises and falls. Visitors must find their way through the
labyrinth, designed to disorient them at every step. Organizers said the
number of slabs had no symbolic significance but was dictated by the size
of the site.

"The power of the field is that you can only experience it by going inside,"
said Guenter Schlusche, a consultant on the project, which was designed by
the American architect Peter Eisenman. "At first, people just see a mass of
concrete blocks," Schlusche said. "It's much, much more. Once you get
inside, you feel alone. You lose your normal ways of orientation."

While Berlin has been rebuilt and rapidly reshaped since 1989, most of the
money and energy has been spent restoring historical landmarks or buildings
that predate the Nazi era. The few physical vestiges of the Third Reich have
largely been erased or covered up, a conscious decision by German
authorities, who have said they wanted to avoid preserving any site that
neo-Nazi groups could use as a shrine.

Only a small fiberglass marker notes the location of the Reich Chancellery,
which has been replaced by an expanse of apartment buildings and a
Chinese restaurant. There is an exhibit at the site of the headquarters of
the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, but it has been undergoing renovations.
Until recently, the main memorial to Holocaust victims in Berlin was a site
near the suburb of Wannsee where the Nazis furthered their plan for the
Final Solution.

"For a lot of people, this is very uncomfortable," said Lea Rosh, a former
TV journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit group that led the drive to
build the monument. "This documents the largest crime in history. They'd
rather have pleasant news to see and read about."

The $35 million project was dogged by bitter disputes from the outset. In
1995, Chancellor Helmut Kohl rejected the original design, a sprawling
tombstone inscribed with the names of millions of Jews killed in the
Holocaust, and tried to persuade the architects to conceal the memorial
behind a border of trees.

In 1999, former Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen almost derailed the project
by insisting on a radically different approach: a single pillar bearing the
words "Thou Shalt Not Kill." He was overruled by the German Parliament,
which voted by a 3-to-2 margin for the current version.

Two years ago, construction was again delayed when it was disclosed that an
anti-graffiti coating for the concrete blocks was manufactured by a German
chemicals company, Degussa AG, with ties to the Holocaust. During World War
II, Degussa held a 42 percent stake in a pesticides firm that made cyanide
gas tablets for concentration camp gas chambers. After an emotional public
debate, board members in charge of the project decided to use the chemical
anyway, saying Degussa had taken major steps to face up to its past.

Rosh said many opponents focused their criticism on tangential issues, such
as minor aspects of the design, rather than arguing openly that they did not
see the need for a memorial. She called this the underlying reason it took
17 years to complete the project. Many Germans are tired of being reminded
of the evils of the Nazi regime, she said. "There are many people who say,
'Sixty years, enough!' "

While public doubts have abated as the memorial's opening nears, some
criticism lingers. In a column published this week in the newspaper Die
Welt, the German author Hannes Stein called the project "monstrous kitsch"
and said the underlying message could be interpreted as: "The German
people give the Jews a graveyard."

Some Jewish residents of Berlin have expressed mixed feelings about the
memorial, said May, the Jewish community leader. "The process was
tortuous and possibly, I should say, shameful," he said.

But he held out hope that the memorial would serve its intended purpose:
to ensure that people always remember the Holocaust and feel its evil.
"The Jews in Berlin are slightly skeptical," May said. "Maybe if they take
the time to wander through it, that skepticism will disappear." -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601318.html
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