Carving out a path to the truth

At a recent meeting attended by the president of Ukraine and civic activists, which was broadcast by three Ukrainian television channels, The Day’s editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna presented Viktor Yushchenko with the latest book from the newspaper’s Ukraine Incognita Series, entitled Why Did He Destroy Us? The book’s author is Stanislav Kulchytsky, a well- known historian and deputy director of the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The president expressed his gratitude and said that he had heard about it and was glad to have a copy. “This book is a major contribution to the evidentiary basis for recognizing the Holodomor as genocide,” he noted.

Last Thursday Professor Kulchytsky took part in an event organized by the indefatigable Vira Soloviova, director of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Publishers: 200 copies of the book The 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine: Documents and Materials were presented to Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will forward them to its diplomatic missions.

Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Publishers issued Kulchytsky’s book to mark next year’s 75th anniversary of the 1932-1933 artificially engineered famine in Ukraine. The archival documents contained in this book, which were studied by experts from the Institute of Ukrainian History, spotlight the causes and consequences of the Holodomor, reveal the personal responsibility of the nomenklatura in Soviet Ukraine and the USSR for the manmade genocidal famine, expose the administrative repressive mechanism of the mass extermination of Ukrainian peasants, convincingly show the communist regime’s deliberate policy of isolating Ukrainian villages, and describe the centralized resettlement of Belarusian and Russian collective farmers to Ukraine.

The ceremony marking the transfer of the books was also attended by acting foreign minister Volodymyr Ohryzko, Serhii Kvit, president of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, historian Ruslan Pyrih, the compiler of the book, Valerii Smolii, director of the Institute of Ukrainian History, and Vira Soloviova, director of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Publishers.