ACTION UKRAINE HISTORY REPORT (AUHR) #10
Washington, D.C., Sunday, November 15, 2009
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT (AUR)
An International Newsletter, The Latest, Up-To-Date
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis and Commentary
Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion, Economics,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World
HOLODOMOR: 76th COMMEMORATION
Induced Famine, Death for Millions, Genocide. 1932-1933
Ukraine Remembers - The World Acknowledges! Nov 2009
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT (AUR), Number 941
Mr. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, SigmaBleyzer Emerging
Markets Private Equity Investment Group, www.SigmaBleyzer.com
WASHINGTON, D.C., SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2009
INDEX OF ARTICLES ------
Clicking on the title of any article takes you directly to the article.
Return to Index by clicking on Return to Index at the end of each article
1. STATEMENT BY U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA ON
UKRAINIAN HOLODOMOR REMEMBRANCE DAY
Statement by the President
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary
Washington, D.C., Friday, November 13, 2009
2. 1930s JOURNALIST GARETH JONES TO HAVE STORY RETOLD
Correspondent who exposed Soviet Ukraine's manmade famine focus of new documentary
Mark Brown, Arts Correspondent, Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Friday 13 November 2009
3. DIARY THAT HELPED EXPOSE STALIN'S FAMINE DISPLAYED
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933
By Raphael G. Satter, The Associated Press (AP)
London, United Kingdom, Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Friday, November 13, 2009
The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, November 13, 2009
FoxNews11AZ, Tucson, Arizona, Thursday, November 12, 2009
4. TRUE EXTENT OF UKRAINE FAMINE REVEALED
IN BRITISH JOURNALIST'S DIARIES
By Jack Malvern, Times, London, United Kingdom, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
5. WELSH JOURNALIST WHO EXPOSED A SOVIET TRAGEDY
By Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail, Cardiff, Wales, UK, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
6. UKRAINE FAMINE DIARIES ON SHOW
BBC, London, UK, Friday, November 13, 2009
7. THE STALINIST COLLECTIVIZATION CAMPAIGN
AND THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE OF 1932-3
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Wed, Nov 11, 2009
8. UKRAINIAN CABINET EARMARKS UAH 5 MILLION FOR HOLODOMOR
MONUMENT IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, October 14, 2009
9. UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT ALLOCATES SOME FUNDING TOWARDS
EXPENSES TO BUILD HOLODOMOR MEMORIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), New York, NY, 26 Oct 2009
10. UKRAINE ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION
FOR HOLODOMOR MEMORIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S. Committee on Ukrainain Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-1933
New York, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 28 October 2009
11. REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE
Saskatchewan has played its part in focusing attention on the starvation of
millions of Ukrainians at the hands of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s
The Regina Leader-Post, Regina, SK, Canada, Tue, August 11, 2009
12. PRESIDENT YUSCHENKO HOPES PACE WILL APPROVE DOCUMENT
CONDEMNING UKRAINIAN FAMINE OF 1930S
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, October 21, 2009
13. SBU CHIEF NALYVAICHENKO INFORMS PACE RAPPORTEUR
ON INVESTIGATION INTO CASE ON UKRAINIAN FAMINE
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, October 23, 2009
14. UKRAINE'S SBU PROVIDES PACE WITH HOLODOMOR EVIDENCE
UkrInform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, October 23, 2009
15. SECURITY SERVICE OF UKRAINE (SBU) REQUESTING RUSSIA, BELARUS, MOLDOVA,
KAZAKHSTAN, GERMAN, ITALY, AUSTRIA, POLAND AND USA TO RENDER LEGAL
ASSISTANCE IN INVESTIGATING 1932-1933 GENOCIDE AGAINST UKRAINIAN NATION
Ukrainian News-on-line, Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thu, Oct 23, 2009
16. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT CONDEMNS ATTEMPTS TO REHABILITATE STALIN
5 Kanal TV, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian, Sun, 11 Oct 09
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sun, Oct 11, 2009
17. POLISH, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTS COMMEMORATE VICTIMS OF 1933 FAMINE
PAP news agency, Warsaw, Poland, Monday, 7 September 2009
18. MOMUMENT TO HOLODOMOR VICTIMS UNVEILED IN WARSAW
By Alina Popkova, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, September 15, 2009
19. REGIME ACCUSED: PRETRIAL INVESTIGATION IN THE CRIMINAL
CASE OF THE 1932-1933 HOLODOMOR IS UNDERWAY IN UKRAINE
By Ivan Kapsamun, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tue, Sep 8, 2009
20. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO: RECOGNITION OF HOLODOMOR OF
1932-1933 AS GENOCIDE IS NOT REPROACH UPON RUSSIA
Andrii Vovk, Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thu, Nov 5, 2009
21. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO PAYS
TRIBUTE TO VICTIMS OF FAMINE IN UKRAINE
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thu, Nov 5, 2009
22. SERHIY BUKOVSKY'S DOCUMENTARY ABOUT HOLODOMOR AWARDED
GRAND PRIX OF THE INTERNATIONAL NORTH SOUTH MEDIA FORUM IN GENEVA
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, September 9, 2009
23. UKRAINIAN CHURCHES ANCHORED COMMUNITY IN CANADA
Settlers came for free land, to escape horrors of Stalin and ravages of WWII
By Tymon Melnyk, Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Saturday, Nov 14, 2009
24. MODEL OF HISTORICAL MEMORY OF WORLD WAR II FOR UKRAINE:
IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY AND CONSOLIDATION
Presentation by Vladyslav Hrynevych, Historical Scholar
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta Canada, Thursday, 12 November 2009
25. HOLODOMOR COMMEMORATION: WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV 28
Ukraine Remembers - The World Acknowledges!
Embassy of Ukraine to the United States, Wash, D.C., Wed, Nov 11, 2009
26. CANADA: 2ND ANNUAL HOLODOMOR EDUCATION WEEK
Help Make Holodomor Education Week a Success!
League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
=============================================================
1. STATEMENT BY U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA ON
UKRAINIAN HOLODOMOR REMEMBRANCE DAY
Statement by the President
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary
Washington, D.C., Friday, November 13, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Seventy six years ago, millions of innocent Ukrainians – men, women, and children – starved to death as a result of the deliberate policies of the regime of Joseph Stalin. Tomorrow, we join together, Ukrainian-Americans and all Americans, to commemorate these tragic events and to honor the many victims.
From 1932 to 1933, the Ukrainian people suffered horribly during what has become known as the Holodomor – “death by hunger” – due to the Stalin regime’s seizure of crops and farms across Ukraine. Ukraine had once been a breadbasket of Europe. Ukrainians could have fed themselves and saved millions of lives, had they been allowed to do so. As we remember this calamity, we pay respect to millions of victims who showed tremendous strength and courage. The Ukrainian people overcame the horror of the great famine and have gone on to build a free and democratic country.
Remembering the victims of the man-made catastrophe of Holodomor provides us an opportunity to reflect upon the plight of all those who have suffered the consequences of extremism and tyranny around the world. We hope that the remembrance of Holodomor will help prevent such tragedy in the future.
LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-ukrainian-holodomor-remembrance-day
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
2. 1930s JOURNALIST GARETH JONES TO HAVE STORY RETOLD
Correspondent who exposed Soviet Ukraine's manmade famine focus of new documentary
Mark Brown, Arts Correspondent, Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Friday 13 November 2009
LONDON - In death he has become known as "the man who knew too much" – a fearless young British reporter who walked from one desperate, godforsaken village to another exposing the true horror of a famine that was killing millions.
Gareth Jones's accounts of what was happening in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33 were different from other western accounts. Not only did he reveal the true extent of starvation, he reported on the Stalin regime's failure to deliver aid while exporting grain to the west. The tragedy is now known as the Holodomor
and regarded by Ukrainians as genocide.
Two years after the articles Jones was killed by Chinese bandits in Inner Mongolia – murdered, according to his family, in a Moscow plot as punishment.
The remarkable story of Jones is being told afresh by his old university, Cambridge, which is putting on public display for the first time Jones's handwritten diaries from his time in Ukraine.
They will go on display at the Wren Library alongside items relating to rather better known Trinity old boys such as Newton, Wittgenstein and AA Milne, coinciding with a new documentary about Jones and the famine – "The Living" – which gets its British premiere this evening.
The story of Jones, a devout, non-conformist teetotaller from Barry, often has elements of Indiana Jones and Zelig.
Rory Finnan, a lecturer in Ukrainian studies at Cambridge, called him "a true hero"."He is a remarkable historical figure and it is also remarkable that he is not well known. Jones was the only journalist who risked his name and reputation to expose the Holodomor to the world."
Jones became interested in Ukraine and learned Russian because of his mother who worked as a governess for the family of John Hughes, a Merthyr Tydfil engineer who founded a town in southern Ukraine called Hughesovka – now called Donetsk.
After graduating, Jones was introduced to David Lloyd George and quickly became his foreign adviser, visiting the USSR for the first time as the former prime minister's eyes and ears.
It was in 1932-33 though that Jones would make his name, walking alone along a railway line visiting villages during a terrible famine that killed millions.
He sent moving stories of survivors to British, American and German newspapers but they were rubbished by the Stalin regime – and derided by Moscow-based western journalists, men like the New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who wrote: "There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be," and dismissed Jones' eyewitness accounts as a "big scare story".
The only other reporter writing about the extent of the famine was Malcolm Muggeridge in the Manchester Guardian, although his three articles were heavily cut and not bylined.
In the Ukraine, Jones is something of a national hero and last year both he and Muggeridge were awarded the highest honour Ukraine gives to non-citizens, the order of freedom, for their reporting during 1932-33.
But there is more to Jones's story and a Zelig-like quality to his life. For example, he was once on a 16-seat aircraft with the new German chancellor, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Goebbels, on their way to a rally in Frankfurt. Jones wrote for the Western Mail that if the plane had crashed the history of western Europe history would have changed forever.
Another time, outside the gates of the White House, he saw the one-time American president Herbert Hoover preparing to have his photograph taken with schoolchildren. Soon enough, somehow, Jones is in the photograph.
After his Ukraine articles Jones was banned from the USSR and, in many eyes, discredited. The only work he could get was in Cardiff on the Western Mail covering "arts, crafts and coracles", according to his great-nephew Nigel Linsan Colley. But again his life changed.
He managed to get an interview with a local castle owner: William Randolph Hearst who owned St Donat's Castle near Cardiff. The newspaper magnate was obviously taken by Jones's accounts of what had happened in Ukraine and invited the reporter to the US.
Jones dutifully arrived at Hearst's private station – as Chico Marx was leaving the estate – and wrote three articles for Hearst and used, for the first time, the phrase "manmade famine".
Again the articles were damned and wrongly discredited. Banned from the USSR, Jones decided he wanted to explore what was going on in the far east and, in particular, what Japan's intentions were. The day before his 30th birthday Jones was kidnapped and killed by Chinese bandits. Jones's descendants believe it happened with the complicity of Moscow. "There is no direct proof," said Colley, "but plenty of indirect proof."
Colley is pleased that his great-uncle is getting the recognition he believes is deserved and the family is clearly proud. "I don't know whether he was brave or stupid. He knew the risks he was taking, I think, but because he was a British citizen he thought he was indestructible."
LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/13/gareth-jones-story-retold-documentary
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC): http://www.usubc.org
From 22 to over 100 Members in Two Years, Join Today
========================================================
3. DIARY THAT HELPED EXPOSE STALIN'S FAMINE DISPLAYED
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933
By Raphael G. Satter, The Associated Press (AP)
London, United Kingdom, Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Friday, November 13, 2009
The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, November 13, 2009
FoxNews11AZ, Tucson, Arizona, Thursday, November 12, 2009
LONDON -- The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin's murderous famine in Ukraine are to go on display on Friday.
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of an artificial famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as part of his campaign to force peasants into collective farms. Millions were starving to death as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock.
Jones' reporting was one of first attempts to bring the disaster to the world's attention.
"Famine Grips Russia - Millions Dying" read the front page of the New York Evening Post on March 29, 1933. "Famine on a colossal scale, impending death of millions from hunger, murderous terror ... this is the summary of Mr. Jones's firsthand observations," the paper said.
As starvation and cannibalism spread across Ukraine, Soviet authorities exported more than a million tons of grain to the West, using the money to build factories and arm its military. Historians say that between 4 million and 5 million people perished in 1932-1933 in what Ukrainians called the Great Famine.
Walking from village to village, Jones recorded desperate Ukrainians scrambling for food, scribbling brief interviews in pencil on lined notebooks.
"They all had the same story: 'There is no bread - we haven't had bread for two months - a lot are dying,'" Jones wrote in one entry. "We are the living dead," he quoted one peasant as saying.
Jones' eyewitness account had little effect on world opinion at the time. Stalin's totalitarian regime tightly controlled the flow of information out of the U.S.S.R., and many Moscow-based foreign correspondents - some of whom had pro-Soviet sympathies - refused to believe Jones' reporting.
The New York Times' Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, dismissed his article as a scare story.
"Conditions are bad, but there is no famine," Duranty wrote a few days after Jones' story was published. Other correspondents chimed in with public denials.
With his colleagues against him, Jones was discredited.
Eugene Lyons, an American wire agency reporter who gradually went from communist sympathizer to fierce critic of the Soviet regime, later acknowledged the role that fellow journalists had played in trying to destroy Jones' career.
"Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials," Lyons wrote in his 1937 autobiography, "Assignment in Utopia."
Lyons' admission came too late for Jones, who was killed under murky circumstances while covering Japan's expansion into China in the run-up to World War II.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whom Jones had once served as an aide, said shortly after his death in 1935 that the intrepid journalist might have been killed because he "knew too much of what was going on." "I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many." Jones' handwritten diaries are on display at the Wren Library at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he was a student, until mid-December.
On the Net: Trinity College: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/
Web site devoted to Gareth Jones: http://www.garethjones.org/
LINK: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/11/12/AR2009111210298.html
LINK: http://www.fox11az.com/news/world/69872487.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
AUR ARCHIVE, MORE THAN 900 PUBLISHED
YEARS 2003-2009: http://www.usubc.org/AUR/
================================================
4. TRUE EXTENT OF UKRAINE FAMINE REVEALED
IN BRITISH JOURNALIST'S DIARIES
By Jack Malvern, Times, London, United Kingdom, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
LONDON - Millions of peasants were starving. Children were turned against adults as they were recruited to expose people accused of hoarding grain. Stalin sealed the border between Russia and Ukraine to ensure that news of the famine would not spread, but one journalist was able to break through to discover the truth.
Gareth Jones, who revealed the story of the forced famine that claimed the lives of four million people in Ukraine in the 1930s, recorded the words of Stalin’s victims in his diaries, which he then used to prepare his dispatch.
The public can see the diaries for the first time today as they go on display at the University of Cambridge.
One entry from March 1933 describes how Jones illegally sneaked across the border from Russia to interview peasants. “They all had the same story: ‘there is no bread; we haven’t had bread for two months; a lot are dying’,” he wrote.
“They all said: ‘The cattle are dying. We used to feed the world and now we are hungry. How can we sow when we have few horses left? How will we be able to work in the fields when we are weak from want of food?’ ”
Jones escaped without being detected and sent a “press release” from Berlin, which was printed in Britain and America. The report included an encounter on a train with a Communist, who denied that there was a famine. “I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A fellow passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided.”
Despite his first-hand account of the starvation, the story of what has become known as the Holodomor (Ukranian for “the famine”) was not widely followed because it was disputed by other Western journalists based in Moscow who wished to placate their contacts.
Walter Duranty, a British-born correspondent for The New York Times, opined that Jones’s judgement had been “somewhat hasty”. He suggested that Jones had a “keen and active mind” and that his 40-mile trek near Kharkov had been a “rather inadequate cross-section of a big country”.
Jones, who wrote occasionally for The Times, was forced to leave the Soviet Union and was dead within two years after a mysterious encounter with bandits in China. He was 29.
Jones’s relatives, who discovered his diaries in the 1990s, believe that his kidnap in China may have been arranged by Soviet spies. David Lloyd George, who consulted Jones on foreign affairs after he stepped down as Prime Minister, hinted that Jones was killed because of something he knew. The diaries, which are on display at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge until mid-December, lay forgotten for more than 50 years.
Then Gwyneth Jones, who was 94, discovered a suitcase containing her brother’s belongings. Margaret Siriol Colley, 84, Jones’s niece, said: “I remember when he was captured, and the 16 days of awful agony as we waited to learn whether he would be released.”
Rory Finnin, lecturer in Ukranian studies at Cambridge, said that Jones’s diaries finally give a voice to the peasants who died as a result of Stalin’s collectivisation policies. Grain was requisitioned for urban areas and for export to countries including Britain.
Historians continue to debate whether Stalin was deliberately punishing Ukranian nationalists, but it is clear that he allowed the famine to occur. He sealed the border between Russia and Ukraine and punished peasants accused of “hoarding grain”.
Mr Finnin said: “There were a smattering of stories here and there [but] but I don’t know if Western historians gave [the famine] the serious attention that it receives today.”
DIARY EXTRACTS
“With a bearded peasant who was walking along. His feet were covered with sacking. We started talking. He spoke in Ukranian Russian. I gave him a lump of bread and cheese. ‘You could not buy that anywhere for 20 roubles. There just is no food.’ We walked along and talked, ‘Before the war this was all gold. We had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are ruined. We are the living dead. You see that field. It was all gold but now look at the weeds.’”
“He took me along to his cottage. His daughter and three little children. Two of the smaller children were swollen... ‘They are killing us.’ ‘People are dying of hunger.’ There was in the hut a spindle and the daughter showed me how to make thread. The peasant showed me his shirt, which was home-made and some fine sacking which had been home-made. ‘But the Bolsheviks are crushing that. They won’t take it. They want the factory to make everything.’ The peasant then ate some very thin soup with a scrap of potato. No bread in house.”
“Talked to a group of peasants. ‘We’re starving. Two months we’ve hardly had bread. We’re from Ukraine and we’re trying to go north. They’re dying quickly in the villages.’”
“[In Karkhov] Queues for bread. Erika [from the German consulate] and I walked along about a hundred ragged, pale people. Militiamen came out of shop whose windows had been battered in and were covered with wood and said: ‘There is no bread’ and ‘There will be no bread today’.”
LINK: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6914869.ece
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC): http://www.usubc.org
Promoting U.S.-Ukraine business relations & investment since 1995.
========================================================
5. WELSH JOURNALIST WHO EXPOSED A SOVIET TRAGEDY
By Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail, Cardiff, Wales, UK, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
CARDIFF - THE diaries of a daring Welsh journalist, who alerted the world to famine in Stalin’s Soviet Union, are to go on public display for the first time. Journals kept by Gareth Jones, who travelled through Russia, Ukraine and China during the 1930s, will be on view at Cambridge University.
Jones, who wrote for the Western Mail, uncovered the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine. Millions died, but the Soviet authorities – and some rival journalists in the West – denied the tragedy had even taken place.
Jones and fellow reporter Malcolm Muggeridge are now revered in Ukraine, and both were awarded the country’s Order of Freedom last year.
In March 1933 Jones, working in Russia, gave the Soviet authorities the slip and crossed the border to Ukraine, determined to verify rumours of widespread famine. His diaries, kept as he travelled from village to village, tell of encounters with starving peasants, many saying they’d had no bread for two months.
One entry, written in Kharkov near the Russian border, reads: “Queues for bread. Erika [from the German Consulate] and I walked along about a hundred ragged, pale people. Militiamen came out of shop whose windows had been battered in and were covered with wood and said: ‘There is no bread’.” Jones’ great-nephew Nigel Colley said: “These diaries are the only independent Western verification of what was arguably Stalin’s greatest atrocity.”
Discussion of the famine, known in the Ukraine as “Holodomor”, was strictly suppressed, with many Ukrainians only becoming aware of the truth after the fall of communism.
An estimated four million people died after Stalin’s decision to impose farm collectivisation and then to seal the Ukrainian border to punish peasants for supposedly “hoarding grain”.
Rory Finnin, lecturer in Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge, said: “Jones was the only journalist who risked his reputation to expose Holodomor to the world. His diaries are a stirring historical record of an often forgotten tragedy.”
Jones managed to return from Ukraine to Germany at the end of March 1933, and announced at a press conference in Berlin on March 29 that millions were starving. But several foreign correspondents challenged his version of events, including the now-notorious Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
Duranty had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his own reports on Stalin’s Russia, and dismissed Jones’ as the author of “a big scare story” and insisted there was “no actual starvation”.
Jones was furious at what he perceived as a coterie of compliant foreign correspondents in Moscow unwilling to admit the human costs of the Stalinist regime. Born in Barry in 1905, Jones was regarded as one of the most talented journalists of his generation. As well as writing for the Western Mail, his work appeared in The Times and the Manchester Guardian and the Berliner Tageblatt and American newspapers.
His life was tragically cut short when he was murdered in August 1935 while travelling in Mongolia. He was just 29-years-old.
Mystery still surrounds the exact circumstances of his death; he and a companion were captured by bandits, and held for more than two weeks before Jones was murdered. There are strong suspicions that the Soviet authorities were involved, not least because his unharmed companion, Dr Herbert Mueller, had known Soviet connections.
David Lloyd George – who had employed Jones as an aide – later wrote: “That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue. One or other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too much of what was going on.”
A documentary about Jones by director Serhii Bukovs’kyi will be premiered today as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film. Gareth Jones’ diaries will be displayed at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, from today until mid-December.
LINK: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/11/13/welsh-journalist-who-exposed-a-soviet-tragedy-91466-25156241/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
6. UKRAINE FAMINE DIARIES ON SHOW
BBC, London, UK, Friday, November 13, 2009
LONDON - The 1930s diaries of a Welsh investigative reporter who exposed Stalin's "terror famine" in Soviet Ukraine are to go on public display for the first time. Gareth Jones, who was an aide to David Lloyd George, risked his life to travel into Ukraine via Moscow to verify the reports of a famine.
The Holodomor saw millions of Ukrainians starve to death as a result of economic and trade policies instituted by Stalin. Mr Jones' diaries cover the period from 1932-33.
Despite his stories appearing in newspapers across the western world, revealing the plight of Ukrainian peasants starving to death, he was discredited by other journalists and banned from the USSR.
But his grand-nephew, Nigel Linsan Colley, said Mr Jones had believed in exposing the truth of what was happening to the Ukrainian people.
Two years later, while working in China, Mr Jones was murdered. He was 29.
His diaries had remained largely forgotten in the house of his older sister and were not uncovered until she died in the 1990s. Mr Jones' diaries are now on display in Trinity College, Cambridge.
LINK: To read article and see the BBC video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8359029.stm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
7. THE STALINIST COLLECTIVIZATION CAMPAIGN
AND THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE OF 1932-3
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Wed, Nov 11, 2009
TORONTO - After Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin managed to consolidate his control of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Moscow. One by one he expelled his allies and potential rivals from the Party and then destroyed them.
In the late 1920s he announced the policy of 'socialism in one country,' whereby he abandoned the New Economic Policy and embarked on a program of rapid industrialization and collectivization, which was enforced by means of widespread terror. During the collectivization drive the land of the more prosperous peasants (labelled 'kulaks') was confiscated to create collective farms.
At the same time, impossibly high grain delivery quotas were levied on the peasants; this grain was then sold by the government at high prices in order to pay for the implementation the First Five-Year Plan. When the kulaks and other peasants refused or were unable to meet these unrealistic quotas, practically all their grain stocks were confiscated.
Special detachments of urban activists searched the homes of collective and independent farmers and seized all the grain they could find to fulfill the delivery quota. Peasants were forbidden to save grain for seed, feed, or even human consumption; all of it was removed.
To minimize peasant opposition, a law introduced the death penalty 'for violating the sanctity of socialist property.' This state of affairs led to the terrible, man-made Famine-Genocide of 1932-3, which resulted in several million deaths from starvation and related diseases in Ukraine...
LEARN MORE about the Stalinist collectivization and the Famine-Genocide of 1932-3 by visiting:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/featuredentry.asp or by visiting: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com and searching for such entries as:
STALIN, JOSEPH (real name: Yosif Dzhugashvili), b 21 December 1879 in Gori, Georgia, d 5 March 1953 in Moscow. Soviet political leader and absolute dictator of the USSR. In 1922, as people's commissar of state control and then general secretary of CC of the Russian Communist Party, Stalin
rejected the concept of a union of independent and equal republics and advocated instead the incorporation of the national republics into the Russian SFSR.
Although his idea was rejected, the Russian republic was made the cornerstone of the new union. Stalin relied on the Russian state bureaucracy to convert the Union into a centralized, totalitarian empire.
After Lenin's death he created a mass personality cult that glorified first Lenin and then himself as an all-powerful and all-knowing leader. In the late 1920s he abandoned the New Economic Policy and embarked on a program of rapid industrialization and collectivization, which was enforced by means of widespread terror. Millions of Ukrainian peasants were starved to death during the Famine-Genocide of 1932-3, millions of people were imprisoned in concentration camps, and hundreds of thousands were executed by the secret police...
COLLECTIVIZATION. In Soviet terminology the transformation of agriculture from private-capitalist to collective-socialist production. The All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) introduced forced collectivization because here was not enough capital to fulfill the First Five-Year Plan of rapid
industrialization. Additional capital could be secured only by increasing exports of farm products, and so large quantities of them had to be purchased at low prices.
The Soviet government also wanted to deprive the peasants of their own means of production and to draw excess labor resources from the countryside into the cities. At first the government of the Ukrainian SSR resisted the decisions coming from Moscow about an accelerated, forced collectivization, but in November 1930 it agreed to collectivize 70 percent of the land by the spring of 1931.
The extent of resistance among the Ukrainian peasants can be seen in the official statistics: during 1931 alone arson was reported on 24.7 percent of the new collective farms, poisoning of cattle on 3.8 percent, destruction of machinery on 9.6 percent, and assault on Party activists on 44 percent. Revolts and uprisings broke out in many villages...
COLLECTIVE FARM (Ukrainian: kolhosp; Russian: kolkhoz). In the Ukrainian SSR collective farms were introduced in 1928-33 during the
government-enforced collectivization drive. Collectivization was achieved by the abolition of privately owned farms and the intervention of political and police agencies. Apart from the land, which belonged to the state, members of the collective farms owned their principal means of production in common.
The main purpose of the collective farms in the Soviet economic system was to provide the state with the maximum cost-free capital for developing heavy industry, arming the military, and maintaining the bureaucracy. Taking into account the demand for agricultural products inside the country and abroad, the government assigned maximal delivery quotas and minimal delivery prices.
The government then sold the products delivered by the collective farms at the highest prices, thus reaping a huge profit. The profits of this operation were appropriated by the state treasury through the turnover tax. These profits were to a large extent absolute rents that the state exacted from the collective farms...
KULAK (Ukrainian: KURKUL). A Russian term for a peasant who owned a prosperous farm and a substantial allotment of land, which he worked with the help of hired labor. In the Soviet period the term 'kulak' became an ambiguous Party construct but with a fundamentally negative connotation.
At times it was applied to all well-to-do peasants; at other times it was used to tar all peasants who opposed Soviet rule. Soviet leaders regarded the prosperous peasant strata as their chief internal enemy. Any rural revolt was attributed to 'kulaks.' At the beginning of the collectivization drive in 1929 the Party decided to 'liquidate the kulak as a class.'
The law allowing land leasing and hired labor was abolished and the confiscation of the kulaks' property and their arrests and deportation to Siberia was allowed. Beginning in February 1930, government orders were zealously pursued by special armed dekulakization brigades. Peasants were informed that their property no longer belonged to them and were forbidden to leave their villages without permission.
By 10 March 1930, 11,374 peasant families--one-third of all those dekulakized--had been arrested and deported from the 11 regions targeted for rapid collectivization in Ukraine...
GRAIN PROCUREMENT. The means by which the state obtains large grain reserves to feed the armed forces, the civil service, and the industrial
work force, to use as export, and to be fully able to satisfy the consumption needs of the population. In 1920-1, when the main anti-Bolshevik forces had been defeated, Ukrainian grain deliveries to the Soviet state amounted to 2.6 million t out of a gross harvest of about 8.6 million t.
This expropriation, combined with drought and reduced sowings, led to the famine of 1921-2 and millions of deaths in the five southern gubernias of Ukraine. After collectivization began in the late 1920s, extremely high delivery quotas were levied. When the kulaks and other peasants refused or were unable to meet them, practically all their grain stocks were confiscated.
After the 'liquidation of the kulaks as a class,' the collective farms and state farms assumed the burden of grain deliveries. Peasant opposition to collectivization caused agricultural production to decline dramatically, yet the state continued to demand
delivery of the same and even greater grain quotas. This state of affairs led to the terrible, man-made Famine-Genocide of 1932-3...
FAMINE-GENOCIDE OF 1932-3 (Holodomor). The mass murder by Stalin's Soviet regime of millions of Ukrainian peasants. This tragic event was
(1) a planned repression of the peasants of Soviet Ukraine for massively resisting the Stalinist state's collectivization drive;
(2) a deliberate offensive aimed at undermining, terrorizing, and neutralizing the nucleus and bulwark of the Ukrainian nation and recent Ukrainization
efforts; and
(3) the result of the forced export of grain, other foodstuffs, and livestock in exchange for the imported machinery the USSR required for the
implementation of the Stalinist policy of rapid industrialization.
In 1932 Ukraine had an average grain harvest of 146.6 million centers (15.5 million centers more than in 1928), and there was no climatic danger of famine. Yet, because of onerous forced grain requisition quotas that the Bolshevik state imposed upon the Ukrainian rural population, the peasants already experienced hunger in the spring of 1932.
The grain collections were brutally carried out by 112,000 special Bolshevik agents sent to Ukraine to extract grain by using terror against both collectivized and independent farmers. Consequently mass starvation and disease became rampant, resulting in millions of deaths.
NOTE: The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries featuring the Stalinist collectivization campaign and the Famine-Genocide of 1932-3 were
made possible by a generous donation from ARKADI MULAK-YATSKIVSKY of Los Angeles, CA, USA.
ABOUT IEU: Once completed, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine will be the most comprehensive source of information in English on Ukraine, its history, people, geography, society, economy, and cultural heritage. With over 20,000 detailed encyclopedic entries supplemented with thousands of maps, photographs, illustrations, tables, and other graphic and/or audio materials, this immense repository of knowledge is designed to present Ukraine and Ukrainians to the world.
At present, only 18% of the entire planned IEU database is available on the IEU site. New entries are being edited, updated, and added daily. However,
the successful completion of this ambitious and costly project will be possible only with the financial aid of the IEU supporters. Become the IEU
supporter (http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/donor.asp) and help the CIUS in creating the world's most authoritative electronic information
resource about Ukraine and Ukrainians!
CONTACT: Dr. Marko R. Stech, Managing Director, CIUS Press
Project Manager, Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine
Project Manager, Hrushevsky Translation Project
E-mail: m.stech@utoronto.ca
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
Send in a letter-to-the-editor today. Let us hear from you.
========================================================
8. UKRAINIAN CABINET EARMARKS UAH 5 MILLION
FOR HOLODOMOR MONUMENT IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, October 14, 2009
KYIV - The Cabinet of Ministers has allocated UAH 5 million (USD 1 - UAH 8.0) to erect in Washington a monument to the Holodomor victims 1932-1933 in Ukraine, Ukraine's Culture and Tourism Minister Vasyl Vovkun has announced this during the parliamentary hearings entitled 'Foreign Ukrainians: The Current State and Cooperation Prospects”. Participating in the event are more than 80 foreign Ukrainians from 26 countries.
Vovkun said that a relevant decision has been today made at the Cabinet meeting. According to different estimates, the Great Famine (Holodomor) took from 7 to 10 million lives in Ukraine, including around 4 million children, which was 25% of the country's population at that time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
9. UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT ALLOCATES SOME FUNDING
TOWARDS EXPENSES TO BUILD HOLODOMOR MEMORIAL
IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), New York, NY, 26 Oct 2009
NEW YORK - On October 14, 2009, a government decree, signed by Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was issued allotting five million hryvnias (approximately $625,000) toward expenses for the building, transporting and erecting of a memorial on U.S. federal land in Washington, DC dedicated to the victims of Ukraine’s Genocide of 1932-1933.
With the support of the Ukrainian World Congress, in particular its President and General Secretary, Evhen Czolij and Stefan Romaniw, respectively; the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) Executive Board members, Tamara Olexy, President; Andrew Futey, Executive Vice President; Larissa Kyj, UCCA Board Member; and, Michael Sawkiw, Jr., Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS) Director and Chairman of the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33, have been conducting ongoing discussions with Ukraine’s administration and government to secure funding for a memorial dedicated to Ukraine’s Genocide of 1932-1933.
After months of corresponding with President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and continuous dialogues with various Ukrainian government officials, on October 14, 2009, the Ukrainian government, as part of its law for “Zakordonnoho Ukrainstva” issued an allocation of funds for the Memorial. In August 2009, during the Ukrainian World Congress annual Board of Directors’ meeting in L’viv, Ukraine, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko stated her support of the Ukrainian Holodomor Memorial in Washington, DC and resolved to undertake this endeavor.
Tamara Gallo-Olexy, UCCA President, spoke of the Prime Minister’s commitment to the Holodomor Memorial: “We are pleased to see that the Holodomor memorial is being vigorously pursued by the Ukrainian government. To have received this financial commitment of 5 million hryvnia means the project can move onto its next phase. The Ukrainian community should be proud of its dedication to this worthwhile project.”
In addition, according to the General Secretary of the UWC, during a meeting with Ukraine’s President on October 13th, President Yushchenko stated that he sent the Prime Minister a letter urging her government to support the Holodomor Memorial project in Washington, DC.
The October declaration from the Cabinet of Ministers mentions that the Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Culture and Tourism (MCT) will work together in selecting the best model for the Memorial, based upon a competitive design process. The announcement comes almost three years to the day since President Bush signed into law on October 13, 2006 the authorization for a Holodomor memorial in Washington, DC.
Ever since then, the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33, along with numerous Ukrainian national organizations and the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, DC, has worked diligently to choose a suitable site in the heart of U.S. capital for this solemn memorial.
Following numerous hearings, in October 2008, several federal commissions eventually designated the parcel of land located at intersection of North Capitol Street, Massachusetts Avenue and F Street NW for the Ukrainian Genocide Memorial. An official ground-breaking ceremony was then held in December 2008 with the First Lady of Ukraine in attendance, along with the main congressional sponsor Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) – co-chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus – and hierarchy and clergy of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
The site is prominently located not far from Washington’s Union Station, and is within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol building, the Supreme Court, and the National Mall. The location is highly visible both to tourists and to everyday Washingtonians and offers ample space for erection of a memorial in a dignified setting.
Commenting on the recent allocations decree, Michael Sawkiw, Jr., Chairman of the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33 stated: “The passage of this appropriations bill brings us one step closer to realizing our dreams of further informing the American public about the horrors the Ukrainian nation endured during the Genocide of 1932-19933.
"This memorial will stand throughout the years as a testament to all who perished. We couldn’t have done it without our multi-faceted supporters in the U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration, the Ukrainian community, the Embassy of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government.”
The process to bring this project to fruition has taken many years. The Ukrainian American community promoted this issue in the U.S. Congress for several years. A long-time champion of the Ukrainian American community, a strong supporter of Ukraine’s democratic development, and a co-chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus (CUC) Sander Levin (D-MI) introduced HR562 in the House of Representatives in 2005.
Subsequently, the following year, the United States Senate passed by unanimous consent HR562, a resolution authorizing the Government of Ukraine to construct a monument to the victims of the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-1933. The longtime effort of the Ukrainian American community led by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and its Washington, D.C. office, the Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS), had come to a successful conclusion.
Though the Ukrainian government has secured funding for the Holodomor memorial in Washington, DC, funds are still needed for the payment of various environmental assessments that have been undertaken by the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33. The U.S. Committee appeals to the Ukrainian community for donations to help fulfill our dream of erecting a memorial in our nation’s capital to the 10 million innocent victims of the Ukrainian Genocide.
Tax-deductible donations can be made on-line at the U.S. Committee’s website http://www.ukrainegenocide.org. Please visit this website for updated information, and remember to support the activities of the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33. With your continued help, we can see this important project through to completion.
LINK: http://www.ucca.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
AUR ARCHIVE, MORE THAN 900 PUBLISHED
YEARS 2003-2009: http://www.usubc.org/AUR/
========================================================
10. UKRAINE ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION
FOR HOLODOMOR MEMORIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S. Committee on Ukrainain Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-1933
New York, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 28 October 2009
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a wave of activity regarding the future Ukrainian Holodomor Memorial in Washington, DC, the Ukrainian government announced on October 14th the appropriation of 5 million hryvnias for the Memorial, and now has announced an international design competition.
Dated October 20, 2009, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Ukraine has issued a public notice proclaiming “a competition to design a monument in Washington, DC for the victims of the famine [genocide] in Ukraine in 1932-1933.”
With these welcome words, the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33 is pleased to inform the Ukrainian community of the Ministry of Culture’s intent to proceed with an international design competition. The duration of the competition is fairly short – from October 26, 2009 to November 26, 2009.
Applications and designs must be registered with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and meet all requirements and conditions of the competition. As stated in the Ministry’s announcement, “the project should create a successful and functional space that would fit within this plot prominently located in the nation’s capital.”
The Ministry’s announcement includes information regarding the design parameters and other restrictions, as guided by the U.S. federal agencies responsible for the placement of the memorial. The announcement provides recommendations for incorporating green elements into the project proposals; the use of durable construction materials to endure the climate of Washington, DC; accessibility (openness) for pedestrians; as well as ascertaining the proper dimensions to be esthetically-consistent with the surrounding environs.
Registration of participants and tender documents are to be made at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. For further information, please contact the Ministry at 011 38 044 234-63-88 or 011 38 044 235-23-62. The Ministry’s announcement can be viewed on its website at:
http://mincult.kmu.gov.ua/mincult/uk/publish/article/180585
CONTACT: U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33, 203 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003, (212) 228-6840 (tel), (212) 254-4721 (fax); e-mail: unis@ucca.org, http://www.ukrainegenocide.org, Michael Sawkiw, tel: 202 547-0018, http://ucca.org.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC): http://www.usubc.org
Promoting U.S.-Ukraine business relations & investment since 1995.
========================================================
11. REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE
Saskatchewan has played its part in focusing attention on the starvation of
millions of Ukrainians at the hands of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s
The Regina Leader-Post, Regina, SK, Canada, August 11, 2009
REGINA - More than a century ago, Ukrainian immigrants began bringing their unmatched work ethic and agricultural expertise to Saskatchewan. Throw in a rich heritage of music and dance and a lusty cuisine that included cabbage rolls and perogies and it was the start -- if we can borrow a line from the movie Casablanca -- "of a beautiful friendship".
From their first recorded settlement at Grenfell in the 1890s, Ukrainians came to this province in increasing numbers in the decade before the First World War and then in the 1920s, after the beginning of Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe.
In the 2006 census, more than 129,000 Saskatchewan residents (13.6 per cent) reported Ukrainian ancestry, the sixth-largest ethnic group in the province. Though now firmly rooted in Saskatchewan, Ukrainian Canadians have never forgotten their homeland, in particular the terrible famine of 1932-33, in which as many as 10 million Ukrainians -- a quarter of the population -- starved to death.
The Holodomor ("death by hunger") was no ordinary famine caused by drought, but calculated genocide carried out by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In order to crush opposition to the imposition of state control of the farms and their produce, Stalin's forces seized the harvest and all other food they could find, leaving millions to starve. Stalin's secret police also murdered untold numbers of Ukrainians who tried to resist.
Though long overshadowed by the Nazi Holocaust, in which as many as six million Jews were systematically murdered between 1939-45, the Holodomor has gained international recognition in recent years as a comparable crime against humanity.
Among those spreading the word is Saskatchewan's deputy premier Ken Krawetz, who last year introduced legislation that remembers the victims of the Holodomor on the fourth Saturday of each November. Saskatchewan was the first province to pass such a law. The Canadian Parliament passed similar legislation in 2008.
Krawetz's efforts have been recognized by the Ukrainian government, which will next month award him the highest honour that a non-citizen of Ukraine can receive. And at the weekend, Krawetz received an "Award of Excellence" from the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League of Canada for spreading the word about the Holodomor.
Of Ukrainian descent himself, Krawetz makes the point that "the world doesn't know" about the Holodomor -- and it should.
Shining the light of remembrance on such evil honours the dead . . . and sends a cautionary message to the living.
LINK: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Remembering+victims+genocide+Ukraine/1880452/story.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
12. PRESIDENT YUSCHENKO HOPES PACE WILL APPROVE
DOCUMENT CONDEMNING UKRAINIAN FAMINE OF 1930S
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, October 21, 2009
KYIV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko has said he hopes that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will approve a document that condemns the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine.
He said this at a meeting with PACE Vice President Mevlut Cavusoglu, who is the rapporteur for problems on the famine in the former Soviet Union, in
Kyiv on Wednesday.
"We pin high hopes on the PACE, where you are to present your report [on the famine]. I’m sure that we’ll get what the Ukrainian people expect,” Yuschenko said.
Cavusoglu, in turn, said that the PACE is not opposed to recognizing the famine as a crime against humanity. He also said that the report on the famine in Ukraine would condemn the totalitarian Stalinist regime. Yuschenko said that Cavusoglu would receive all of the necessary documents to draft his report. "We support a political dialog on this issue," he said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
13. SBU CHIEF NALYVAICHENKO INFORMS PACE RAPPORTEUR
ON INVESTIGATION INTO CASE ON UKRAINIAN FAMINE
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, October 23, 2009
KYIV - The Chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Valentyn Nalyvaichenko has informed Mevlut Cavusoglu, the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the problems of famine and mass famine in the former Soviet Union, and on the investigation into a criminal case on genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933, a crime foreseen in part 1, Article 442 entitled "Genocide" of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The meeting between Nalyvaichenko and Cavusoglu was held on October 22, the SBU press center reported on Friday.
"Ukrainian investigators found that the genocide was conducted through the creation of an artificial famine and the use of such schemes as isolating Ukraine with special armed military troops, putting districts and population centers on 'black boards,' blocking them with soldiers, preventing the population from leaving these territories, fully confiscating food and seed reserves, banning trade, and restricting the free movement of peasants to seek food abroad," reads the statement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
14. UKRAINE'S SBU PROVIDES PACE WITH HOLODOMOR EVIDENCE
UkrInform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, October 23, 2009
KYIV -The Chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Valentyn Nalyvaichenko has met Mevlut Cavusoglu, the PACE Vice President and rapporteur for problems on the famine in the former Soviet Union, the SBU press-service reports.
Nalyvaichenko, by authorization of an investigator, informed the PACE official about the progress of investigating into a criminal case on genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933.
The Ukrainian investigation established that genocide was committed by way of creating an artificial famine using such mechanisms as isolation of Ukraine's territory by special armed military units; inscription of districts and localities into the so-called 'black boards', blockade by troops, ban on people's movement outside the bounds of these areas, full seizure of foodstuffs and seed stocks, trade ban; restriction of free movement of peasants with the aim of looking for foodstuffs.
In the course of the investigation, Ukraine received absolute evidences of committing crimes against humanity by the USSR top officials. Genocide in Ukraine in 1932-33 is proved by 3,685 Soviet classified documents, including with Joseph Stalin's signature, and many other papers, as well as 933 mass burial places of genocide victims.
The SBU official also said that in order to collect proofs of genocide of Ukrainians in other countries, in full compliance with the international law, the SBU investigators have submitted petitions on providing legal assistance to law enforcement agencies of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Italy, the United States, Germany, Austria and Poland.
According to different estimates, the Great Famine (Holodomor) took from 7 to 10 million lives in Ukraine, including around 4 million children, which was 25% of the country's population at that time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
Ukraine Macroeconomic Report >From SigmaBleyzer:
http://www.sigmableyzer.com/index.php?action=publications
========================================================
15. SECURITY SERVICE OF UKRAINE (SBU) REQUESTING RUSSIA,
BELARUS, MOLDOVA, KAZAKHSTAN, GERMAN, ITALY, AUSTRIA,
POLAND AND UNITED STATES TO RENDER LEGAL ASSISTANCE IN
INVESTIGATING 1932-1933 GENOCIDE AGAINST UKRAINIAN NATION
Ukrainian News-on-line, Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thu, Oct 23, 2009
KYIV - The Security Service of Ukraine is requesting Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland and the United States to render legal assistance in investigating a criminal case of genocide against the Ukrainian nation in 1932-1933, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the Security Service head, told reporters.
According to the report, on October 22, Security Service chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko met with the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for Famine issues on the territory of former USSR Mevlut Cavusoglu. Nalyvaichenko informed the PACE about the investigation into the criminal case.
The SBU chairman said that the pre-trial investigation found proofs of antihuman crimes committed by the top leadership of the former USSR. He also said that to gather proofs of the genocide of Ukrainian in other countries, the SBU investigators sent appeals on the provision of legal aid to enforcement agencies of the abovementioned countries.
As Ukrainian News reported, Nalyvaichenko voiced hope that Russia's law-enforcement bodies would support investigations into the criminal case of genocide against the Ukrainian nation in 1932-1933.
Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the Party of Regions faction in the Verkhovna Rada, thinks the criminal procedure the Security Service of Ukraine is instituting brings Ukraine into confrontation with Russia. The Security Service launched the proceedings on May 25.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
16. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT CONDEMNS ATTEMPTS
TO REHABILITATE STALIN
5 Kanal TV, Kiev, Ukraine, in Ukrainian, Sun, 11 Oct 09
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sun, Oct 11, 2009
KYIV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has condemned attempts to rehabilitate Joseph Stalin's regime and once again spoken for restoring historical truth about the Communist period in Ukraine. He was speaking at a solemn gathering in the ravine of Demyaniv Laz in Ivano-Frankivsk Region, where the Soviet secret police shot dead local prisoners en masse during the retreat of Soviet troops in 1941.
"The restoration of historical truth and justice is the foundation of our national revival and a cornerstone of my policy as president of Ukraine," he said.
He described as cynical any attempts to rehabilitate Stalin by denying or diminishing the scale of the famine in Ukraine and justifying the large-scale repression campaign of the 1920-50s.
"These attempts will give their authors nothing but shame. We will allow no comeback of pro-Communist and pro-imperial forces," he said. "Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have equally condemned the Stalinism and Nazism at the legislative level. I am confident the time will come and Ukraine will do the same," he said.
Yushchenko said it was time to get rid of the Communist past by "cleansing our land from satanic symbols and once and for all sending idols into the dustbin of history".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
17. POLISH, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTS COMMEMORATE
VICTIMS OF 1933 FAMINE
PAP news agency, Warsaw, Poland, Monday, 7 Sep 09
WARSAW - The Polish and Ukrainian presidents, Lech Kaczynski and Viktor Yushchenko, have unveiled a cross commemorating victims of the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. The cross was unveiled at an Orthodox cemetery in Warsaw's Wola district.
"This famine was to break the nation, it was to break the resistance against collectivization; the methods which were used deserve to be called genocide," the Polish president said. Millions of people died because of the purposefully caused famine, he added ."For many months people were refused hospital treatment," the president said.
The Polish president called for sparing no effort for the "bloody, murderous history of communism to become known to the nations of Europe and America. Even only as a warning." Despite difficult moments in history Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, friendship and reconciliation "is necessary also to prevent such things from happening in the future," President Kaczynski said.
The two presidents also laid wreaths at the monument to Polish and Ukrainian soldiers killed in 1918-20. The 1932-33 famine was part of Joseph Stalin's programme to crush the resistance of peasants to the collectivization of farming. Up to 10m people died during the famine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
You are welcome to send us names for the AUR distribution list.
========================================================
18. MONUMENT TO HOLODOMOR VICTIMS UNVEILED IN WARSAW
By Alina Popkova, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tue, Sep 15, 2009
President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczy ski took part in the ceremony of unveiling a monument in Warsaw to commemorate victims of the 1932–1933 Holodomor. The two heads of state laid flowers and honored the memory of the dead by a minute of silence. The memorial sign was blessed by Metropolitan Savva, primate of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
“I am convinced it is a significant event for our fraternal — Ukrainian and Polish — peoples. Organized by the criminal Stalinist regime, the Holodomor was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humankind. It claimed the lives of 10 million of our compatriots,” Yushchenko said.
He also noted that the world community had marked the Holodomor’s 75th anniversary last year, when the entire world, including Poland, saw the Inextinguishable Candle action under the slogan “Ukraine Remembers, the World Recognizes.”
Yushchenko also said he was proud that Ukraine and Poland are a model for this kind of attitude to difficult common history. “We have gone down the road of national reconciliation, and we regard the pain of the other people as our own,” he said. In his words, the reopening of a Ukrainian necropolis in downtown Warsaw is an important indication of Ukrainian-Polish friendship and mutual respect.
During his two-day visit to Poland, Yushchenko pointed out the importance of Polish support for Ukraine’s European integration course. Addressing the Polish people, Yushchenko said he is certain that Poland should continue to play an active role in shaping European policies in view of its colossal potential.
In his turn, Kaczyski emphasized that Ukraine and Poland are undoubtedly fraternal countries bound together with strategic partnership. He especially stressed the important need to further develop the two countries’ political cooperation, in particular in the context of Ukraine’s European integration course.
Kaczyski said he is certain that Europe should be “a Europe of cooperation, not domination,” and rest on the principles of partnership. In this framework
Polish-Ukrainian relations are “very important and subject to expansion and reinforcement.”
In the course of Yushchenko’s official visit, the Ukrainian and Polish heads of state signed a road map of Ukrainian-Polish cooperation in 2009—2010. Yushchenko and Kaczyski also signed a joint statement on cooperation in the field of energy.
LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/280051/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
AUR ARCHIVE: OVER 900 PUBLISHED
2003-2009: http://www.usubc.org/AUR/
========================================================
19. REGIME ACCUSED: PRETRIAL INVESTIGATION IN
THE CRIMINAL CASE OF THE 1932-1933 HOLODOMOR
IS UNDERWAY IN UKRAINE
By Ivan Kapsamun, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tue, Sep 8, 2009
On August 23, 2009, Europe for the first time honored the memory of victims of Nazism and Stalinism. After the OSCE resolution was issued, the parliaments of the Baltic States one by one adopted decisions to honor the memory of the victims of two totalitarian regimes.
On August 25 a round table “Crime of Genocide–Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-1933” was held by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Law experts provided legal evaluation of the events that took place 76 years ago.
SBU Chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said in his opening address: “Today’s round table is being held on international Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, which is marked by the world community on August 23 every year according to the resolution of the European Parliament. It is significant that in its resolution OSCE equals Stalinist repressions with Nazi crimes. The events of the 1932–1933 Holodomor in Ukraine have already received historical and political assessment, in particular by parliaments of many countries of the world.
“On the legislative level, pursuant to Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine “On the 1932–1933 Holodomor in Ukraine” of Nov. 28, 2006, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine issued recognized the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people. Now it is time for legal assessment of this crime. It was a crime against humanity, against all the people in all countries.”
On May 22, 2009, the SBU opened a criminal case regarding the 1932–1933 genocide in Ukraine under Article 442 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. At the round table it was announced that special investigation groups were formed in 25 oblasts. They are working on different aspects of the problem.
The investigators have already learned about the number of repressed people who were charged with “sabotage and derailment of the grain procurement campaign,” about the struggle of the Ukrainian intelligentsia against Stalin’s regime in 1932–1933, about political repressions led by the GPU’s (State Political Directorate) organs against ranking ethnic Ukrainian officials.
Documents were found that prove that in 1932–33 grain was taken out of Ukraine under the pretence of providing aid to other countries, while Ukrainians were starving to death. At present the SBU regional offices have already studied and entered into the case file 1,378 archive documents, with the SBU’s Specialized State Archive adding 400 more documents.
These archival documents contain horrible facts. Documents in Kharkiv oblast show that every day 130 to 303 corpses were brought to the morgue of the Kharkiv Oblast Forensic Laboratory, and many of these were bodies of children. In 1933 the total of 8,940 bodies were brought to this morgue, and starvation was the cause of death in 6,021 cases.
In Dnipropetrovsk oblast several types of documents were found: government instructions were found about banning trade in grain or any other food products, lists of blacklisted collective farms and village councils, and records on the confiscation of all the foodstuffs, clothes, tools, and furniture from peasants.
At present information about the number of famine victims is being processed regarding every population center, raion, and oblast in Ukraine. Most people died in central and eastern Ukraine. Numerous mass graves of people who had been starved to death were found: 57 in Dnipropetrovsk oblast, 2 in Zhytomyr oblast, 3 in Kirovograd oblast, 90 in Luhansk oblast, 30 in Mykolaiv oblast, 273 in Poltava oblast, 206 in Kharkiv oblast, and 35 in Khmelnytsky oblast. Hundreds of thousands of people were buried there.
There are also documents that prove the fact that the Soviet authorities concealed the information about the famine from the public and the international community.
The witnesses of those events are very important for the investigation. At present investigators are identifying and interviewing people who witnessed the genocide and those who know from their parents, relatives, or acquaintances about the systematic repressions, dekulakization, introduction of in-kind fines, constant searches for and confiscation of all the foodstuffs and possessions from people, the spiking mass mortality caused by the famine, and many registered cases of cannibalism and corpse eating. The total of 533 witnesses were questioned in 17 oblasts.
Importantly, the materials produced by the special US Congress Commission led by the executive director James Mace were entered in the case file. Mace was one of the first people who started to speak openly about the 1932–1933 Holodomor in Ukraine. For this purpose he even permanently moved to Ukraine. For quite a long time he worked in The Day. The Commission collected testimonies of Ukrainian emigrants who survived the 1932–1933 Holodomor in Ukraine.
A great deal of work is also being done through Ukrainian embassies. Petitions and inquiries were sent to other countries through Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs with requests to provide archived diplomatic documents related to the 1932–1933 events in the USSR.
Ukraine’s commissioner in the UN International Court Volodymyr Vasylenko stressed that there are no reasons to doubt the legitimate nature of criminal proceedings instituted by the SBU.
He said: “It is important for us to prove not only an intention to destroy a large number of people but an intention to destroy Ukrainians as a national group. People were killed not just because they were human beings, but because they belonged to a certain ethnic group. In general, the Holodomor was only one stage of destroying the Ukrainian nation. During this operation the engineered famine dealt a crushing blow to Ukrainian peasantry in order to physically eliminate the core part of the Ukrainian nation and thus undermine its liberation potential.”
Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims Bohdan Futey, who was present at the round table, used the examples of the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Serbia and Montenegro to explain why Ukraine can bring accusations against one country — the Soviet Union. True, this state does not exist anymore, but this is a different question.
Futey said: “Ukraine ought to initiate a criminal case, because it is its responsibility before international legislation. Furthermore, the convention on statutory limitations removes any possible domestic legislative limitations on persecution of anyone charged with committing an act of genocide. It is very important that the party that claims that there was genocide prove its intentions with convincing evidence.”
In contrast to this, Ihor Yukhnovsky, acting head of the Institute of National Memory, believes that accusations should primarily be directed at communism rather than the state. That is why it has to be clearly proved that premeditated destruction of the Ukrainian nation was perpetrated, he said.
The main idea of Yevhen Zakharov, co-head of the Kharkiv Human Rights group, was to create a special court — a tribunal with a clear statute. This tribunal should handle the criminal case of the Holodomor. Zakharov also said that Ukraine’s legislation has to be changed for the Holodomor case to be tried in court.
MP Hryhorii Omelchenko, one of the initiators of an appeal to the SBU requesting that a criminal case be opened, disagreed and said: “We should not be elaborating the theory of law here. Our legislative framework, in particular the Code of Criminal Procedure, allows us to consider this case and put an end to it, just like it was done by Estonia, for example.”
Therefore, it appears that every lawyer has his own vision of the ways to investigate the criminal of the 1932–1933 Holodomor, but they all pursue the same goal — a legal assessment of the crimes committed by the totalitarian regime. Claims that there is no longer such a state as USSR and its leaders are gone are not a reason to abandon the case. International legal practice provides numerous examples of similar convictions.
For example, Estonia heard eight criminal cases and convicted the accused — Security Service chiefs and police officers who were involved in the 1949 mass deportation of Estonian citizens to remote parts in the Soviet Union. Eight persons were convicted, deportations were adjudged to be a crime against humanity, and the Soviet Union was proclaimed to be a criminal totalitarian occupation regime.
Ukraine is now slowly moving forward in the direction of bringing USSR crimes to court, and the Holodomor is only one of the numerous crimes committed by the communist regime.
LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/279643/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
20. PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO: RECOGNITION OF HOLODOMOR
OF 1932-1933 AS GENOCIDE IS NOT REPROACH UPON RUSSIA
Andrii Vovk, Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 5, 2009
KYIV - President Viktor Yuschenko of Ukraine has said recognition of the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 as an act of genocide is not any reproach upon Russia. Ukrainian News learned this from a statement by the presidential press service.
"We should do our best to let the world know: this is not a reproach upon any nation, including the Russian nation or Russia," Viktor Yuschenko said during the joint commemoration with President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus of the victims of Holodomor of 1932-1933.
According to the statement, the heads of the two states set pots with wheat and candles at the memorial to victims of the genocide and planted a guelder-rose near the memorial.
Viktor Yuschenko said the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine had its differences from similar tragedies in other countries, including the introduction of the regime of "black boards."
"The Holodomor famine was in Belarus, the Volga region, in the Central Asia. But I want to emphasize the following: only Ukrainians were denied the right to leave the territory. "Black Boards" were here. The famine mowed clean 13,000 villages," said Yuschenko.
President Alexander Lukashenko said in his turn he came to the memorial to honor the memory of millions of victims of the tragedy.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, President Viktor Yuschenko has instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to ensure the holding of events on November 28 commemorating the victims of the Holodomor.
In 2006, the Verkhovna Rada recognized the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation. According to various estimates, the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933 killed between 3 million and 7 million people. President Alexander Lukashenko is on a three-day state visit to Ukraine until November 6.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
Please contact us if you no longer wish to receive the AUR.
========================================================
21. BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO
PAYS TRIBUTE TO VICTIMS OF FAMINE IN UKRAINE
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thu, Nov 5, 2009
KYIV - Belarusian and Ukrainian presidents Alexander Lukashenko and Viktor Yuschenko visited a memorial for the victims of famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 on Thursday.
"There is no politics in the Ukrainian president and my coming here. Some have recognized the holodomor (famine), while others haven't. We have arrived here to pay tribute to people - millions of people - who died, Lukashenko told the press.
"Many people died at that time in our country and in Russia, as well," he also said. Asked, whether Belarus was ready to recognize the genocide of the
Ukrainian people during the famine as a historical fact, Lukashenko said, "We have not come to this problem yet the way you have." The Belarusian and Ukrainian presidents placed baskets of flowers at the monument.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
22. SERHIY BUKOVSKY'S DOCUMENTARY ABOUT HOLODOMOR
AWARDED GRAND PRIX OF THE INTERNATIONAL NORTH SOUTH
MEDIA FORUM IN GENEVA
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, September 9, 2009
KYIV - The Ukrainian documentary film 'The Living', by Serhiy Bukovsky, was awarded the Grand Prize of the International North South Media Forum in Geneva.
A total of 27 documentaries from Great Britain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany have been selected for the documentary film competition being annually held within the Geneva forum.
The documentary 'The Living', gives voice to the last survivors of the terrible famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 (Holodomor). The film puts Stalin's use of famine as a weapon in perspective. "A true cinematic vision and the discerning eye of the author, with a strong narrative and rare testimony; a hidden history which obliges us to stay vigilant", emphasized the jury presided by the director Daniel Schweizer
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), http://www.usubc.org, Join Today
========================================================
23. UKRAINIAN CHURCHES ANCHORED COMMUNITY IN CANADA
Settlers came for free land, to escape horrors of Stalin and ravages of WWII
By Tymon Melnyk, Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Saturday, Nov 14, 2009
WINNIPEG - YOU can find them all over Manitoba in many different rural communities, built in different shapes and sizes. I'm talking about rural Ukrainian churches. These churches have been landmarks of Ukrainian settlement in Manitoba for more than a century, and with their extensive history, they have come to mean a lot to many people.
The first Ukrainian settlers were enticed to Canada with offers of free land to those who could clear and farm it. They took a huge risk, sold whatever possessions they had in Ukraine and moved to Canada in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
Others arrived later, displaced from their homes by the brutal warfare that ravaged their homes during the Second World War. Some even survived through the horrors of the Holodomor, the man-made famine genocide of 1932-33 imposed by Joseph Stalin and his Soviet regime.
Ukrainian culture is almost entirely intertwined with religion. Without having a place to practise their faith, Ukrainian settlers would have found it difficult to carry on the Ukrainian culture at all here in Canada. In building these churches, Ukrainian settlers created the foundation of Ukrainian culture in Canada today.
I, for one, am thankful for that.
My grandmother is one of the few remaining Holodomor survivors in Canada. She was only five years old during the Holodomor, but she remembers how people strived to keep their faith while the Soviets tried their hardest to suppress it.
The Soviets were trying to break the patriotic spirit of the Ukrainian people. They starved them to break them physically. They confiscated all of the food from the people and exported all the grain from collectivized farms. This grain could have been used to feed the people, but instead they were left to starve while the grain was exported to the West to pay for industrialization. To break them spiritually, they destroyed their churches.
After all of the hardships that they, and so many other Ukrainians, suffered through, my grandparents immigrated together to Canada.
When they settled in Winnipeg, my grandparents were more than happy to join the local parish. Members of the Ukrainian community helped them however they could to make their new lives in Canada easier. The whole Ukrainian community was based around the church. The church was a place to meet, a place to hold functions and meetings and a place to worship.
It brought, and still brings, the whole Ukrainian community together. Without the church and its community, life in Canada would be very different for me, my family, and for Ukrainians all across the country.
So when we consider the strong Ukrainian culture and community we have here in Manitoba and throughout the entire country, we have to remember that we owe it all to the Ukrainians who felt it necessary to preserve it all and to pass it on to us. We can see their dedication to this cause in the rural churches they built.
These churches not only stand as the beginnings of Ukrainian churches in Canada today, but also as monuments to everything Ukrainian settlers and immigrants lived through to bring the Ukrainian culture to Canada, and to the faith that helped them persevere though it all.
NOTE: Tymon Melnyk is a 22-year-old University of Manitoba student in his final year of obtaining a bachelor of arts degree. He is considering studying to be a lawyer.
LINK: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Churches-anchored-community-70099702.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
24. MODEL OF HISTORICAL MEMORY OF WORLD WAR II FOR
UKRAINE: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY AND CONSOLIDATION
Presentation by Vladyslav Hrynevych, Historical Scholar
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta Canada, Thursday, 12 November 2009
Vladyslav Hrynevych is a leading scholar on the study of historical memory and the politics of memory with regard to the events of World War II in
Ukraine. A senior research scholar at the Department of the Theory and History of Politics, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, he has written extensively on this subject and, more generally, on World War II in Ukraine.
His most recent major study is Social and Political Attitudes of the Ukrainian Populace during the Years of the Second World War, 1939-1945 (Kyiv, 2007). Dr. Hrynevych served as co-organizer and co-chair of an international conference on "World War II and the (Re)Creation of Historical Memory in
Contemporary Ukraine, which was held from 23 to 26 September in Kyiv.
He was in Edmonton recently on the invitation of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, where he gave a talk November 5 on "A Model of Historical Memory of World War II for Ukraine: In Search of Identity and Consolidation."
The following is the text of his presentation.
In recent times the concept of "historical memory" has become somewhat devalued through overuse. Such memory, like the past itself, does not exist: it is always a particular construction resulting from human intellectual activity. There is a countless variety of memories in society, and memory is plural by its very nature. Its various manifestations conflict with one another; elites and particular social groups contend for memory, that is, for influence on society, given that the formation of memory constitutes the formation of identity.
Of the various existing definitions of the concept of "historical memory," I would like to propose the one given by Maria Feretti: historical memory is the complex of imagination about the past that becomes dominant in a given society at a particular historical moment and creates something in the nature of a "common sense" accepted and shared by the majority, around which a certain consensus develops. Memory is one of the sources of national identity, that is, the sense of belonging to a particular society that, thanks to these commonplaces and common myths, recognizes itself in a shared past, and thus in the present.
Wars have a particular place in human memory, and the creators of national and ideological myths invariably make use of defeats and victories alike,
and even of traumatic and genocidal occurrences.
We live in a world largely shaped by the consequences of the Second World War. These include Yalta (as a particular world order), Nuremberg (as a legal precedent for the punishment of war criminals), and the Cold War (as a political and ideological conflict between East and West, communism and democracy). Practically every state that participated in the Second World War has its own model of memory for that war. This memory is often divided
and contested.
If we ask how the war influenced Ukraine, and whether it was a fundamentally new experience for Ukrainians, the answer can only be that the influence was tremendous and extremely significant. Ukraine considerably extended its borders, increased its territory and population, and became a founding member of the United Nations Organization. At the same time, together with Poland and Belarus, Ukraine shares a sad primacy in population loss.
Irrevocable losses claimed every sixth inhabitant of the country. There is no family that did not suffer in one way or another during the war. Thus, every family has its own experience and memory of the war: Soviet and German (Romanian) occupation, collaboration and resistance to totalitarian regimes,
evacuation behind the Soviet lines and forced labor in Germany, service in the Wehrmacht or in the Red Army, struggle in the ranks of the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (UPA), emigration, deportation, Stalinist and Hitlerite concentration camps, and much else.
Political processes also left their mark on the experience of war. Against the background of a broad spectrum of alternative political models proposed
to Ukrainians at the time, differences of world view deepened between supporters and opponents of the communist regime, sympathizers of the "Soviet project" or of an independent Ukrainian state. The writer Vasyl Barka noted that "Hitler discredited the idea of liberation from Bolshevism." But victory in the war strengthened Stalinism in Ukraine. It seemed all-powerful, omnipresent, and invincible, with no conceivable alternative.
Ukraine became more ethnically homogeneous. The landscape of memory narrowed: Jews, Poles, Germans, Crimean Tatars and their tragedies disappeared from it. Hundreds of thousands of Russians migrated to Ukraine after the war, bringing with them a model of war memory quite different from that of Ukraine. The influence of the war on identity can be characterized as ambivalent: it accelerated Russification while simultaneously helping to strengthen Ukrainian national consciousness.
On the general canvas of war memory, Ukraine played many roles, some of them diametrically opposed: it was the victim of both Stalinist and Hitlerite
occupation; a land of resistance to two totalitarian regimes; both a collaborationist and a victor that cofounded the UN; as well as a country that lost a second battle for independence and national statehood.
Such a plethora of roles currently makes Ukraine a microcosm for the interaction of collective memories of the war and its legacy, as well as a strategic arena of identity conflict. In this plethora, one can distinguish (with certain modifications) two basic contending models of historical memory-Ukrainian sovereigntist and Soviet. (This represents a "contest between victors," so two speak, for both communists and nationalists consider themselves victors-the former over Hitler, the latter in historical perspective.)
Generally speaking, it is countries vanquished in wars that occupy themselves with identity correction-something went wrong and needs to be set right. The Soviet Union, however, was the only country among the victors that aspired to make use of the war to remake its identity. The revolutionary myth of the Great October Socialist Revolution was replaced by the myth of the Great Fatherland War (GFW), with a generous admixture of Russian patriotism/nationalism. The values formed by this myth were by no means democratic. The principles of liberty were replaced by the heroism and sacrifice of the Soviet people.
Even the terrible human losses, for which the Soviet military and political leadership itself was by no means the least to blame, were at first hushed up and then became an object of particular pride-we suffered the world's greatest losses. There were panegyrics to the rebirth of the power and grandeur of the Soviet Union and the infallibility of Stalin himself. The memory of the war did not become the bearer of democratic antifascist values, as in the West, but of traditional nationalist values embellished with socialist rhetoric.
It was the paradox of victory that Stalin exploited it in order to strengthen his regime, while the triumphant struggle of the Soviet people against the fascists led, ironically enough, to even greater suppression of freedom in the USSR. The Russian writer Vasilii Grossman justly termed the great victory "Stalin's victory over his own people." Soviet memory of the war became inextricably associated with Stalinism ever after, and the link between freedom and oppression became just as inextricable.
What is notable about the myth of the GFW is that it was formed from above at the initiative of the authorities who were returning to power and exploited the myth to legitimize that return. The first priority in the creation of the Soviet myth was to cover up negative memories of the war-disloyalty to the Soviet authorities in 1941, mass surrender, desertion, collaboration with the Germans during the years of occupation, the struggle of the [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] UPA, and the like-that had accumulated over the years of warfare.
It is no accident that the authorities began their purposeful campaign of commemoration and memorialization of the war precisely in Ukraine, where the
level of disloyalty was perhaps the highest. Orders and resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CC CP(B)U)
established where, how many, and what kind of monuments to erect, which memorial days to commemorate, which heroes to honor, and which enemies to
denounce.
The apotheosis of the creation of the Soviet myth coincided with the period of high stagnation, which saw the triumph of a completely deformed model of
memory created by party ideologues and their acolytes in the arts and sciences. In its final form, the myth of the GFW was a mixture of half-truths, lies, and gaping blank spots. It is this very legacy that is invoked by present-day sympathizers of the Soviet model of memory.
It would be hard to overlook the role of the diaspora in the creation of alternatives to the Soviet models. On the one hand, anticommunist visions of the war reflected a bipolar world and were an integral part of superpower rivalry. But the anticommunism and anti-Stalinism of the Ukrainian diaspora model of memory was not so much a product of political conjuncture. It was shaped from below by individual and group models of memory preserved among those who had fought against Stalinism during the war and did not accept its ideological myths.
The Kyivan Fedir Pigido-Pravoberezhny, who wrote one of the best Ukrainian memoirs, Velyka vitchyzniana viina (The Great Patriotic War), brought the
very name of the war into question. Vasyl Barka, a former Red Army soldier, wrote in his novel Rai (Paradise) about the equal criminality of the Stalinist and Hitlerite regimes with regard to Ukrainians.
Dokiia Humenna was the first Ukrainian writer to describe Kyiv during the occupation and the tragedy of Babyn Yar, while the Volhynian writer Ulas
Samchuk was the first to describe the struggle of the UPA. Ukrainian writers in the diaspora recreated a Ukrainian memory of the war that was completely
at odds with Soviet memory.
"Perhaps the war will strike like steel or flint until the sparks fly and burn the eyes of those who gaze indifferently at the struggle; they will fall into every corner, forcing people to choose: which side are you on? Which does your soul serve, heaven or hell? And here's the rub: it is hard to choose, for the two boots, those of Moscow and Berlin, make a pair. Any Ukrainian who fights the red death will be right; one who fights the black death will also be right, as will the one who fights both. Only the one who proclaims 'I am not involved' as the summit of earthly wisdom will be wrong" (Barka, Rai).
Despite the presence of elements of ethnophobia and anticommunism in the postwar diaspora milieu, this was a memory that underwent continual change
and transformation, unlike the petrified Soviet myth. It was influenced not only by Ukrainian nationalism but also by Western liberal democracy. It was
the works of historians from the diaspora-Bohdan Krawchenko, Orest Subtelny, Paul R. Magocsi, and others-that became the quintessence of models of this
memory.
It was these works that set the tone for Ukrainian research, especially on the Second World War. >From the previous model of sacrificial Ukrainian
struggle on two fronts against totalitarian empires, which was devoid of any self-critical or negative narrative about oneself, it evolved in the direction of a democratic, sovereigntist, and simultaneously multicultural and polyethnic model.
Ukrainian memory was greatly activized at the moment when the Ukrainian state came into being. It was, indeed, historical memory itself that emerged as a powerful weapon in the struggle for independence. As soon as the influence of communist rule weakened during the period of perestroika and glasnost, alternative models made themselves apparent. The struggle between the old Soviet or post-Soviet models and various national ones, both democratic and undemocratic, has been going on ever since.
The formation of the politics of memory in independent Ukraine has proceeded in stages that are clearly associated with the specifics of presidential
rule.
President Leonid Kravchuk, who formerly headed the department of ideology of the CC CP(B)U, made no small personal contribution to covering up the
Holodomor and discrediting the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UPA. His tactic was the original one of "running between the
raindrops" so as to avoid getting wet-that is, keeping his distance from the extremes of communism and nationalism, as well as seeking to avoid painful
subjects that might upset the northern neighbor, the communist parliament,
or the divided society.
Both the semicentenary of the UPA and the sixtieth anniversary of the Great Famine were practically ignored by the president and parliament. True, at
the level of school textbooks the old model of the war underwent cardinal change, owing particularly to the introduction of the UPA into the discourse
and to the condemnation of Stalinism and Hitlerism.
Just like Kravchuk, President Leonid Kuchma said a great deal about the importance of restoring historical memory, returning to the sources of national identity, reviving national traditions, and the like, but kept for the most part to Soviet commemorative space. What Kuchma called political wisdom was in fact an expression of cynicism and lack of principle.
Instead of institutionalizing traditional Ukrainian holidays and traditions at the national level, the authorities tried to adjust Soviet holidays to Ukrainian ones. Kuchma restored "to the letter," as he liked to say, the commemoration of 23 February (the Day of the Protector of the Fatherland), 8 March, 9 May, and 7 November.
In 2003 he revived the tradition of May Day greetings and introduced a new holiday-the Day of Partisan Glory-on 22 September (it preceded the day of
the formation of the UPA, 14 October). In 2004 the president introduced Veterans' Day on 1 October (on the UN calendar, this is the International
Day of the Elderly-those over 65 years of age).
The myth of the war was Ukrainized by heroizing Ukrainian triumphs and sacrifices, but the OUN-UPA was passed over in silence. Not only was the
cult of victory not abolished, but it obtained legitimizing support when, at the initiative of the communists, a law on the GFW was adopted (it was
intended to prosecute those who "distorted the truth of the war").
In 2004, society showed itself prepared to mobilize on the basis of regional, national, and sociocultural identities. The slogan of the Orange Revolution and Independence Square, where, in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, "nationalism embraced democracy," was "to give Ukraine its first Ukrainian president." Evident in this formulation was an appeal to revive Ukrainian historical memory.
Under President Yushchenko, the politics of memory has not only been considerably activized but has taken on features of a systemic nature. The frequency of the president's historical references is greater than that of his predecessors, and his repertoire of events, facts, and personalities is broader.
He has stressed more than once that "For the first time we have taken a systematic approach to the national revival; we are speaking of the renewal of our historical memory.. In a united state, in independent Ukraine we must remember everyone who brought our independence closer at various times.. The
Ukrainian state arises against the background of this history.."
An emphasis on the activity of the national-liberation movement became the defining feature of the new model of historical memory, with the OUN and UPA as one of its most characteristic representatives. Yushchenko was the first to greet the country with the sixty-third anniversary of the UPA. In this context, the logic of establishing the Museum of the Soviet Occupation in Kyiv and of creating the Museum of the Liberation Struggle in Lviv becomes apparent.
This list can be continued with such events as the Ukrainian parliament's acknowledgment of the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people; the
mounting of an exhibition devoted to the UPA, "The Army of the Unvanquished," by the Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, and so on.
Overall, the Stalinist USSR appears in President Yushchenko's model of memory as a totalitarian empire that did considerable damage to Ukraine. Not
long ago he also acknowledged the colonial status of Ukraine in that empire, characterizing it as a post-totalitarian, post-colonial, and post-genocidal
country.
This year Yushchenko has greeted the nation with the sixty-seventh anniversary of the UPA. He has visited the monument to the Kolky Republic in Volhynia, which was created under the aegis of the UPA on German-occupied territory (the so-called region of liberty). He has also visited the Demianiv Laz memorial museum to the victims of Stalinist persecution, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the reburial of their remains. He has issued a decree conferring official memorial status on the Lacki Street Prison in Lviv.
Against this background, the subject of the GFW becomes quite controversial. On the one hand, the ruling authorities regard the war in light of the heroic liberation struggle of the UPA, as well as through the prism of the crimes of both totalitarian regimes. Auschwitz and the GULAG, the Holocaust and the Holodomor are boldly compared.
A new feature should be noted-the introduction of the Holocaust into the discourse of the war with regard to the Victory Day celebrations of 9 May. Earlier it was mentioned only at ceremonies in Babyn Yar. Moreover, in frequency of historical messages in the president's appeals of 2006, the Holocaust took fourth place, preceded by the Second World War, the Holodomor, and Stalinist persecutions and deportations. (True, the Holocaust is never mentioned in the context of Ukrainian participation in it.)
The president also makes mention of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Polish-Ukrainian encounters at the highest level are intended to discuss the
complex problems of the Volhynian tragedy. Thus the model of historical memory promoted by Yushchenko cannot be called nationalist. This is a model
of an inclusive political nation that is taking shape on the basis of multiculturalism and mutual tolerance. Accordingly, the national narrative is based on historical events meaningful to various national groups residing on Ukrainian territory.
Even so, the current Ukrainian model of memory of the Second World War remains a hybrid, since it includes elements of Soviet heroic rhetoric about
the GFW that are far from a rational consideration of events. Soviet myths-the name of the GFW, the 9 May holiday, the uncritical approach to the Red Army-remain in this model as birthmarks. In his Victory Day speech of May 2005 the president called Soviet veterans "fighters for freedom and democracy" and noted that "they fought for the country clearly desired by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Mazepa, Volodymyr the Great, and Yaroslav the Wise."
In his policy on war memory, Yushchenko is following the well-trodden path of the Ukrainization of the GFW myth. This was particularly apparent in the
posthumous award of the distinction of Hero of Ukraine to Oleksii Berest, a Ukrainian who took part, along with Meliton Kantariia and Mikhail Yegorov,
in a dubious "first" raising of the victory flag above the Reichstag.
(As is well known, this was a staged grouping filmed after the battle for official newsreels.) According to presidential decrees, Soviet symbols are an official component of 9 May celebrations. The St. George ribbon and Russian songs are standard accompaniments. The status of "Participant in the GFW" also remains unchanged.
It is also paradoxical that the term GFW was reinstated in school textbooks after the Orange Revolution (owing to the efforts of the Socialist minister
Stanislav Nikolaienko). In articles for an encyclopedia of Ukrainian history now being prepared by the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences
of Ukraine, the "Great Fatherland War" also remains a fundamental concept. By this logic, Baron Carl Mannerheim, Erich von Manstein et al. were
participants in the Great Fatherland War.
Yushchenko is being criticized today from both left and right, both for radicalism and for lack thereof in forming a model of memory of the Second World War. That formation, one should add, is taking place against the background of internal and external conflicts. The former include, above all, the conflict of various Ukrainian identities that is being exploited by Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian political forces alike.
(An example of the antithesis of the rehabilitation of nationalist heroes is the erection of a monument to the victims of the UPA, "Shot in the Back," in Simferopol. Luhansk, Yevpatoriia, and Kharkiv also want to erect something similar.) Donetsk took a different tack, erecting a monument to General Nikolai Vatutin, "killed by the Banderites."
Objectively speaking, the politics of memory being instituted by President Yushchenko is aggravating relations with Russia. An almost overt information
war is now going on between the two countries with the involvement of their foreign ministries, security services, media, etc.
In actual fact, the opposition to the Ukrainian president's politics of memory is not intellectually powerful. The communists employ nothing but the old Soviet rhetoric, as does the Party of Regions. The latter celebrate the heroic epos of the triumph of good over evil (in their scenario, Stalinism is good) and offer no critique of totalitarianism/Stalinism.
"Counter-memory" in Ukraine (i.e., the "Anti-Orange" Internet sites) plays a destructive role and does not act as a Foucauldian defender of freedom but as a breeding ground for the creation of negative stereotypes and social confrontation.
As for reaction to Yushchenko's politics of memory in Ukrainian society, we have the results of recent sociological surveys. They indicate that change has occurred where purposeful work has been accomplished. By the same token, nothing has changed where nothing has been done.
Thus, Yushchenko has made no effort to displace the GFW narrative, and nothing has happened in that regard. In recent years, there has been practically no change of attitude to Victory Day and the term GFW. More than half the population of Ukraine supports that term and holiday.
But there has been change with regard to the UPA. More than half of those interviewed are no longer hostile to it.
With regard to the Holocaust, there has been a growth of awareness, but it has not become part of Ukrainian memory and is unlikely to do so in the
immediate future.
It is not news-and this was again confirmed by the surveys-that eastern and southern Ukraine, which is under the influence of Russian media and the Party of Regions, does not accept the new model of war memory proposed by the president.
It thus remains an open question which model of war memory Ukraine should choose. The European experience may prove useful here. Social changes under way in Europe since 1989 have been canalized in two directions. After years of communist rule, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe seek to form their memory with an emphasis on the national cultural narrative. Western Europe, on the other hand, basing itself on the legacy of the ideas of the
Enlightenment and humanism, has created a new culture of memory-a "culture of contrition."
While the Holocaust and repentance have become central to the West European concept of identity, a victimizing interpretation of history in the
post-communist countries of Eastern Europe tends to overshadow the centrality of the Holocaust. A scholar from Estonia, Siobhan Kattago, proposes the adoption of a conditional agreement between Western and Eastern Europe-to "agree to disagree," that is, to retain the right to abide by one's own opinion without imposing it on others. And this may be a way out for United Europe.
At the most general level, I see three approaches or models for the formation of a concept of war memory in Europe.
[1] The first-let us call it Baltic (East European)-entails equal condemnation of the crimes of Hitlerite and Stalinist totalitarianism, a radical renunciation of the Soviet legacy, and civilized nationalism.
[2] The second or liberal-democratic (German) model comes down to repentance and the denunciation of war and nationalism as such, with the Holocaust at the epicenter of the model. (The assertion that Germany lost the war but won the war for memory looks attractive but remains contentious, as it is hardly
likely that this model can be imposed on Europe as a whole.)
[3] The third or post-Soviet model is now being actively exploited by the authoritarian regimes in Russia and Belarus. It comes down to the nationalization of the GFW myth, with very little, if any, space for the acknowledgment of Stalinist crimes, and it highlights imperial values (victory fanfares, military parades, excessive heroization, panegyrics to victory and sacrifice, a cult of chieftains, great states, and the like).
Which of these models applies to Ukraine? Despite Yushchenko's radical measures, the Ukrainian model remains somewhere between those of Russia and
Eastern Europe, and very far from that of Western Europe.
The basic questions to be raised in creating a model of historical memory are these: What do we want to remember and forget; what are to be the building blocks of our memory? With what values are we to infuse the commemoration and memorialization of war? It is my firm opinion that these should not be the values of the old Soviet empire. Ukrainians are not its heirs. This (neo-Stalinist) model must be completely eliminated.
For Ukraine, the creation of its own model of memory is not just a question of reviving national identity, as well as democratizing and humanizing society, but also of solving the problem of emerging from under the influence of Russia, for which the GFW is a powerful means of exerting pressure on Ukraine and keeping it within its own geopolitical space.
In my opinion, a combination of the Baltic and German models might prove most useful to Ukraine. From the first we have already borrowed condemnation
of Stalinist and Hitlerite totalitarianism and the maintenance of a cultured, civilized nationalism, and now, from the West European model, Ukraine should take the concept of repentance, humanism, seeking mutual understanding between former enemies and allies, honoring all who perished, and condemning the heroization of war as such.
The foundations of this new model should be the values of freedom and democracy, which have never been part of the Stalinist myth, past or present, and the value of human life, which Stalinism disregarded.
The difficulty of renouncing the GFW myth consists (aside from everything already mentioned) in the fact that Ukraine has not undergone the catharsis
of decommunization. Despite the terrible crimes of Stalinism, which took millions of human lives, we have never had our own version of the Nuremberg
trials, which inoculated the German nation against Nazism by condemning its crimes against peace, humanity, and the laws of war.
However, as the well-known historian Norman Davies has quite justly noted, the supreme leaders of the Stalin regime could have been arraigned at the
Nuremberg trials along with the Hitlerites and charged with the same crimes: against peace-complicity in starting the Second World War; crimes against
humanity-large-scale deportations of peoples; war crimes-the execution of Polish prisoners of war in 1939-40; the mass rape of women by soldiers both
in their own country and in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and so on.
In gravity and extent of crimes, the Stalin regime could well have given the Nazis a handicap, but that regime was never brought to trial. Ukraine has never come to terms with its past; hence freeing itself of the communist legacy is an urgent need.
A principled rejection of the Stalinist legacy and of excessive heroization does not by any means entail forgetting and ignoring the memory of those who
won the victory. But all this should be balanced by sorrow for the victims of Stalinism and denunciation of the crimes committed by the Red Army itself, including its crimes in Ukraine. This is the important aspect missing from our culture of memory.
The path from triumph to trauma is one that every nation must walk by itself. Demythologizing and deheroizing warfare is not a simple matter of replacing holidays, names, and the like. A fundamental rethinking of the whole war narrative is required.
The conception of equal responsibility of the two totalitarian regimes must be balanced by repentance for crimes committed by Ukrainians who fought on
behalf of those regimes, as well as in the ranks of a third force, the UPA.
The West European tendency, which gained its impulse from the Germans-to proceed from covering up and distorting the truth about unpleasant pages of
history to the uncovering and objective interpretation of the dark pages of the war-must become the guiding principle of Ukrainian historians. We should
renounce the mistaken tendency to replace old myths with new ones.
On the contrary, we should proceed from the politics of memory to history. And here it is precisely the task of historians, analyzing the interaction of history with the politics of history, to define clearly "what history becomes and what becomes history" (Richard Ned Lebow).
NOTE: Translated from the Ukrainian by Myroslav Yurkevich
CONTACT: Mykola Soroka, PhD, Development Manager,
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 4-33 Pembina Hall
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H8, Tel: 780.492.6847, Fax: 780.492.4967, msoroka@ualberta.ca.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
AUR ARCHIVE, MORE THAN 900 PUBLISHED
YEARS 2003-2009: http://www.usubc.org/AUR/
========================================================
25. HOLODOMOR COMMEMORATION: WASH, D.C., NOV 28
Ukraine Remembers - The World Acknowledges!
Embassy of Ukraine to the United States, Wash, D.C., Wed, Nov 11, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Embassy of Ukraine to the United States is hosting a 76th Holodomor Commemoration Memorial on Saturday, November 28, 2009 from 4:00 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Commemoration is entitled: Ukraine Remembers - The World Acknowledges! Join us to light a candle to honor the victims of the Ukrainian famine-genocide.
The program will include: [1] a Holodomor documentary; [2] an Exhibition prepared by the League of Ukrainian Canadians, “Execution by Hunger: The Unknown Genocide of Ukrainians 1932-1933 and [3] a candle-lighting ceremony
WHEN: Saturday, November 28, 4:00 - 5:00 pm
WHERE: Embassy of Ukraine, 3350 M Street NW, Washington DC 20007
INFORMATION: Contact Viktor Voloshyn (voloshyn@ukremb.com)
RSVP: cultinform@ukremb.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
26. CANADA: 2ND ANNUAL HOLODOMOR EDUCATION WEEK
Help Make Holodomor Education Week a Success!
League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Fri, Nov 13, 2009
TORONTO - The League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW) and the Ukrainian Youth Association (UYA) are planning to hold Holodomor Education Week from Nov. 23 to Nov. 28, 2009 at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre on 85 Christie Street in Toronto.
The opening ceremonies will take place on Monday, Nov. 23 at 7pm. On 24-28 November, Holodomor Education Week will be open to the public from 10am to 9:30pm. In April of this year, MPPs from all sides of the Legislature made history by supporting the first ever tri-sponsored Private Member’s Bill, Bill 147, in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
MPPs Dave Levac, Frank Klees and Cheri DiNovo, the three co-sponsors of Bill 147 called the Holodomor Memorial Day Act, will attend Holodomor Education Week and address the public at the opening ceremonies.
Holodomor Education Week will feature the newest films on the Holodomor; meetings with survivors; exhibits of Holodomor art, new publications, postal stamps and posters on the Holodomor; lectures, memoirs, prose and poetry readings on the Holodomor; and information kiosks representing a variety of organizations.
The centerpiece of Holodomor Education Week will be a Canadian-made exhibit on the Ukrainian genocide – "Holodomor: Genocide by Famine," produced by the League of Ukrainian Canadians.
In an effort to promote the concept of Holodomor Education Week among GTA elementary schools and high schools, the organizers believe that this Week will deliver the message to the public that recognition of the survivors, studying about and honouring those who perished in the Stalin orchestrated genocide against Ukrainians, is the right and essential thing to do.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has appealed to the Ukrainian Canadian community to organize Holodomor Awareness Week in November of this year. LUC, LUCW and UYA have responded to the appeal with a plan for Holodomor Education Week. This Week is open to the public and free of charge.
HOLODOMOR EDUCATION WEEK PROGRAM
November 23-29, 2009, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
All events take place at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre on 83 Christie Street with the exception of the youth roundtable scheduled for 6:30 pm on Tuesday at St. Vladimir Institute on 620 Spadina Avenue, Toronto.
Monday, November 23 – 7 pm
- Opening Ceremonies for Holodomor Education Week, starting at 7 pm and including Canadian politicians who championed the recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide
Tuesday, November 24 - 10 am - 8:30 pm
- 10 am – 10:30 am - Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (Canadian author for young adults), topic: Holodomor: the Last Forbidden Subject
- 10:30 am – 2:30 pm - Films for elementary and high schools, including Harvest of Despair (English) and Technology of Genocide – Part 2 (English)
- 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Youth Roundtable on the Holodomor hosted by USC at St. Vladimir Institute, 620 Spadina Avenue, topic: Holodomor
Awareness, Recognition and Education: What next?
- The Ukrainian Students Club at U of T, together with other youth organizations from around Toronto, will be hosting a roundtable discussion and debate on the role of Ukrainian youth in today’s efforts to raise and promote awareness, recognition and education about the Holodomor. People of all ages, especially students and Ukrainian youth, are encouraged to come and take part in this constructive and important discussion.
Wednesday, November 25 – 4 pm – 8:30 pm
- 4 pm – 6 pm - Meeting with Holodomor survivors
- 6 pm – 7 pm – Eugenia Sakevych Dallas (Holodomor survivor), reading of prose on the Holodomor
- 7 pm – 8:30 pm - Film "The Curse of Forgotten Memory" (in Ukrainian), produced by Iryna Mahrytska and sponsored by the BCU Foundation
Thursday, November 26 - 2:30 pm - 8:30 pm
- 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm - Mykola Latyshko ( survivor), reading of poetry on the Holodomor
- 3:30 pm – 5 pm – Film "Bread Guillotine" (in Ukrainian)
- 6:30 pm – 6:45 pm – Video presentation by Italian scholar and Holodomor expert Andrea Graziosi
- 6:45 pm – 7:30 pm - Andrew Gregorovich ( Holodomor researcher, bibliographer and editor of FORUM, A Ukrainian Review ), topic:
Holodomor Resources and Research in English
- 7:30 pm – 8:15 pm - Iroida Wynnyckyj ( Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre archivist), topic: UCRDC Holodomor archives and Projects
Friday, November 27 – 10am – 8:30pm
- 10 am – 10:30 am – Orest Steciw ( Holodomor Projects Coordinator, LUC/LUCW), topic: Creation of the Holodomor: Genocide by Famine Exhibit
- 10:30 am – 2:30 pm – Films for elementary and high schools, and general public, including Technology of Genocide – Part 3 (Ukrainian) and The Living (Ukrainian with English subtitles)
- 3:30 pm – 8:30 pm - Films for general public, including "Hunger-33" (in Ukrainian), "James Mace" (Ukrainian), and "Brothers" (in Ukrainian) and "And Then a Shot Was Heard" (in Ukrainian).
Saturday, November 28 - 10 am - 4 pm
- 10 am – 2 pm - Ukrainian Saturday Heritage Schools on the Holodomor
- 2 pm – 4 pm – Film Okradena Zemlya ("The Robbed Land") for parents and students, including introduction of film by its producer and director, Yurij Luhovy
Sunday, November 29 – 3 pm
- Ukrainian Canadian Congress – Toronto Holodomor commemoration, starting at 3 pm
NOTE: The program is subject to change.
CONTACT: Orest Steciw or Volodymyr Paslavskyi, League of Ukrainian Canadians, 83 Christie Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6G 3B1, 416-516-8223, Fax: 416 516 4033, luc@lucorg.com, www.lucorg.com, www.holodomoreducation.org.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[return to index] [Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
If you are receiving more than one copy of the AUR please contact us.
Please contact us if you no longer wish to receive the AUR.
You are welcome to send us names for the AUR distribution list.
If you are missing some issues of the AUR please let us know.
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR
Working to Secure & Enhance Ukraine's Democratic Future
A Free, Private, Not-For-Profit, Independent, Public Service Newsletter
With major support from The Bleyzer Foundation
Articles are Distributed For Information, Research, Education, Academic,
Discussion and Personal Purposes Only. Additional Readers are Welcome.
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT ARCHIVE, OVER 900 ISSUES
YEARS 2003-2009: http://www.usubc.org/AUR/
ACTION UKRAINE HISTORICAL REPORT ARCHIVE:
http://www.usubc.org/AUHR/index.php
===========================================
SigmaBleyzer/The Bleyzer Foundation Economic Reports
"SigmaBleyzer - Where Opportunities Emerge"
The SigmaBleyzer Emerging Markets Private Equity Investment Group and The Bleyzer Foundation offers a comprehensive collection of documents,
reports and presentations published by its business units and organizations.
All publications are grouped by categories: Marketing; Economic Country Reports; Presentations; Ukrainian Equity Guide; Monthly Macroeconomic
Situation Reports (Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine).
LINK: http://www.sigmableyzer.com/index.php?action=publications
"UKRAINE - A COUNTRY OF NEW OPPORTUNITIES"
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE PROGRAM - SPONSORS
Action Ukraine Report (AUR), "Holodomor: Through The Eyes of Ukrainian Artists" and the "Faces of the Gulag: Through the Eyes of Ukrainian Artists" program.
1. THE BLEYZER FOUNDATION, Dr. Edilberto Segura, Chairman; Oleg Ustenko, Executive Director, Kyiv, Ukraine; Washington, D.C., http://www.bleyzerfoundation.com.
2. UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF AMERICA (UFA), Zenia Chernyk, Vera M. Andryczyk, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania
3. KIEV-ATLANTIC GROUP, David and Tamara Sweere, Daniel Sweere, Kyiv and Myronivka, Ukraine, E-mail: david@kau.kiev.ua
4. RULG-UKRAINIAN LEGAL GROUP, Irina Paliashvili, President; Kyiv and Washington, general@rulg.com, www.rulg.com.
5. VOLIA SOFTWARE, Software to Fit Your Business, Source your IT work in Ukraine. Contact: Yuriy Sivitsky, Vice President, Marketing,
Kyiv, Ukraine, yuriy.sivitsky@softline.kiev.ua; Volia Software website: http://www.volia-software.com/
6. U.S.-UKRAINE BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC), Washington, D.C., For information about USUBC please write to mwilliams@usubc.org, USUBC website: http://www.usubc.org.
7. UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF THE USA, Archbishop Antony, South Bound Brook, New Jersey, http://www.uocofusa.org
8. U.S.-UKRAINE FOUNDATION (USUF), Nadia Komarnyckyj McConnell, President; John Kun, Vice President/COO; Markian Bilynskyj, VP/Director of Field Operations; Kyiv, Ukraine. Web: http://www.USUkraine.org
9. WJ GROUP of Ag Companies, Kyiv, Ukraine, David Holpert, Chief Financial Officer, Chicago, IL; http://www.wjgrain.com/en/links/index.html
10. EUGENIA SAKEVYCH DALLAS, Author, "One Woman, Five Lives, Five Countries," 'Her life's journey begins with the 1932-1933
genocidal famine in Ukraine.' Hollywood, CA, www.eugeniadallas.com.
11. SWIFT FOUNDATION, San Luis Obispo, California
12. DAAR FOUNDATION, Houston, Texas, Kyiv, Ukraine. http://www.DaarFoundation.org/home.htm.
13. ArtUkraine.com; www.ArtUkraine.com, to purchase Ukrainian magazines, books, etc. write to ArtUkraine@voliacable.com.
14. DUNWOODIE TRAVEL BUREAU, Specializing in Ukraine travel, Alesia Kozicky, Owner/Travel Agent, http://www.DunwoodieTravel.com;
Dunwoodie@vacation.com
15. LAND OF DILEMMAS, Would You Risk Your Life To Save Your Enemy? Documentary by Olha Onyshko & Sarah Farhat, www.LandOfDilemmas.org.
============================================
TO BE ON OR OFF THE FREE AUR DISTRIBUTION LIST
If you would like to read the ACTION UKRAINE REPORT- AUR, several times a month, please send your name, country of residence, and e-mail contact information to morganw@patriot.net. Information about your occupation and your interest in Ukraine is also appreciated.