Holodomor-Genocide Remembrance Day in Ukraine
Paying homage also to victims of political repressions
On Nov. 24 people throughout Ukraine lit candles in their windows to pay homage to their millions of brothers and sisters who perished during the Holodomor of 1932-33, engineered by the mustachioed Joseph Stalin, that “leader of all peoples,” assisted by his numerous Kremlin/CPSU CC sycophants and an army of satraps and communist fanatics in Soviet Ukraine. We lit candles not because we were ordered to do this by the government but by our conscience. After having experienced this horror, a nation finds it very hard to follow a path leading to a happier future; nor does it have any moral right to let this horror sink into oblivion — otherwise it will lose its human image, retaining just the outer visage.
Holodomor Remembrance Day is a very personal matter; it takes one’s memory and conscience, or the absence of both. Some cry, remember their family members, victims of that warlord of famine, while others, brainwashed by communist propaganda, say that we are insulting other ex-Soviet peoples by identifying the famine of 1932-33 as the Holodomor, an act of genocide against Ukraine. There are still others — sad but true — for whom this terrible date means nothing whatsoever.
I sincerely hope that there are also people who are completely aware of this nationwide tragedy, who keep asking themselves — and all of Ukraine — painful but absolutely necessary questions, like “What exactly took place on Ukraine in 1932-33?”, “How could this happen in Ukraine?”, “What are the long-term consequences of the Holodomor, in terms of politics, economics, culture, religion, mentality, genetics?”
The heinous crime perpetrated by Stalin and his tyrannical regime was an act of genocide, a deliberate and well planned operation aimed at annihilating millions of people. However, it was a special act of genocide. It was not aimed at shooting or torturing to death all Ukrainians (even a “humanist” like Stalin would not accept such an option), nor was it aimed at passing death sentences or carrying out mass punitive operations against Ukrainians simply because they were Ukrainians (as Hitler did in regard to the Jews or the Turks in regard to the Armenians). What Stalin was after was to destroy all carriers of Ukrainian national identity, primarily peasants and nationally-minded intellectuals. Naturally, it was no coincidence that the mass repressions against the urban intelligentsia gained special momentum in 1933, against people who had the guts to uphold their Ukrainian civic stand in those horrible circumstances. Now we can compare facts and learn a lot of things.
We know what actually happened in the Ukrainian countryside in January 1933. We know the horrible reality behind such documents as the resolution adopted by the Kharkiv oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, entitled “On Measures to Enhance Grain Deliveries from Blacklisted Collective Farms of this Oblast,” dated Jan. 14, 1933. The following is a quote from this document (in Russian, to be sure):
“Despite repeated instructions from the oblast party committee concerning a higher grain delivery rate in the blacklisted collective farms, the raion party committee and oblast committee officials have not secured implementation of this plan... In view of this, the oblast party committee resolves that the secretaries of district party committees and officials of the regional party committee be dispatched to the said blacklisted collective farms and to activist teams from collective farms where the delivery plan has been effectively completed; massive work must be launched in all collective farms, so the farms, after carrying out their grain delivery schedules, demand this from the blacklisted kolkhozes, by siccing on them all conscientious collective farmers.”
And further on: “The blacklisted collective farms are to be administered the regional party committee’s directives (i.e., ones introduced by Stalin and sent down from the Kremlin — Auth.), namely monetary and meat fines, enforced and payable forthwith, repeated meat penalties, confiscation of cattle that they received in the course of the dekulakization campaign (in reality, this draconian system of fines in kind meant death by starvation because the peasants were robbed of every foodstuff — Auth.). You must by no means resort to half-measures in applying repressions. You must assure full-scale grain deliveries after applying such repressive measures.”
They did, at the cost of 10 million Ukrainians killed by the Holodomor.
The horrible history of the Holodomor in Ukraine, the whole hair-raising history of the 20th century proves how right Taras Shevchenko was when he wrote these lines: “So likewise shall our spirit never die / Nor our dear freedom wholly vanquished lie.” This gene of liberty and this freedom-loving nation are indestructible, if we can preserve both. There are quite of a few us who have survived the sufferings and are preserving them.
