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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Remembering Cronkite

28 July, 2009 - 00:00

“Dear Ms. Ivshyna,

As a regular reader of your newspaper in the past few years I would like, first of all, to thank you and you entire staff for meaningful and pressing analytical publications, especially on the problems of Ukrainian history. I am a research associate at the Modern History Department of the Institute of Ukrainian Studies (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), and, just like my colleagues, I am very much interested in reading the publications of well-known historians and your journalists, which address a wide range of problems and are of use to us.

“I am personally pleased to see articles by the authors with whom I have worked in the National Academy system, such as Stanislav Kulchytsky’s contributions on, above all, the 1932–1933 Holodomor, an overwhelming catastrophe of the Ukrainian people. I survived it as a small child, but my father Yelysei Naumenko, manager of the Chervony Mayak collective farm in Barvinkiv district, Kharkiv oblast, was arrested, expelled from the Communist Party, tried, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving, contrary to a strict ban, the collective farmers grain in payment for their work and maintaining a public-catering fund, which, in fact, saved the life of all the 300 villagers.

“In the winter of 1933 Mayak’s messengers visited [Soviet Ukraine’s top officials] Vlas Chubar, Pavlo Postyshev, Stanislav Kosior, and Hryhorii Petrovsky, but only Mykola Skrypnyk helped because he had lived Barvinkiv and graduated from a high school there. He interceded for my father, and he was soon released and reinstated in his office and in the party. So this subject, very close to my heart indeed, prompted me to publish a number of studies for which President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine awarded me the order ‘For Merits’ in the fall of 2007.

“I must say that very much is being said now about the organizers of the Holodomor, or genocide, the mechanisms of its implementation, and its victims. But, unfortunately, the problem of the Ukrainian peasantry’s resistance to the organizers of genocide is being researched very little. So this problem is central in my publications and conference reports, including the one I presented last year in Koncha-Zaspa. For dozens of thousands [of villagers] were repressed and 2,110 executed, including 20 Kyiv and Kharkiv oblast collective farm managers in January 1933.

“It was interesting to see on The Day’s pages an article by Yevhen Stakhiv, whom I repeatedly contacted at Interregional Academy of Management congresses and the Koncha-Zaspa congress. I was saddened to learn from the same issue that Walter Cronkite, a renowned US broadcast journalist whom I knew personally, had departed this world.

“In the fall of 1967 he and a TV filming crew arrived in Volgograd to make a documentary, Comrade Soldier, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Army. An artillery major at the time, I was made part of the liaison group because I knew English, and I spent about three weeks with the Americans. They filmed a ceremonial sendoff of recruits and oath-taking at Mamai Mound, combat training routine, and everyday life of our soldiers.

“Unlike our documentary film narrators of the time, Cronkite was always on the screen: he addressed the audience and told about what was being shot. Wearing a blue sweater and a necktie, tall and slender, he was extremely friendly to us and our soldiers. He smiled as he spoke—in a word, he made a very good impression on us.

“Let me tell you about some interesting points. When we showed the Americans the Guards of Honor Company on a parade ground drill, Cronkite was in rapture. Then he said: ‘What do you serve for, Ivan? We do not know what for, but not for money, for he earns four dollars a month. We are told—for the idea. After all, the commanders are right.’

“During the physical fitness and fire training drills, we showed gymnasts of the division’s sport company and snipers, who performed giant swings on a high bar and shot hitting the bull’s-eye every time, in the guise of ordinary infantry soldiers. Naturally, Cronkite saw through the trick but said to the regiment commanding officer M. Grachov with a good-natured ironic smile: ‘We wish you, Colonel, that all soldiers in your regiment would be exactly like these.’

“During a lunch in the division’s best soldiers’ mess, with tables for four and cookery almost as good as in a restaurant, he said: ‘We hope you will also keep these guys so well-fed after our departure.’ When he was shown how soldiers wrapped their foot cloths, he noted: ‘Undoubtedly, it is better for [your] state to issue foot cloths for six months than for our [state] a pair of socks for a week.’

What made a great impression on Cronkite and his colleagues was the Military Glory Museum of our division, which marched from Stalingrad to Berlin. The museum was designed and built under my guidance by our artist soldiers and some war veterans.

“The Americans bade us a very warm farewell and brought a new two-part TV film three months later. There was no Cronkite, though. During the preview, our general and colonels, especially World War II veterans, said that the film distorted the image of the army. To this a Moscow representative replied: ‘Let the Americans look at our soldiers and see that they are ordinary guys without horns.’

So please express my sincere gratitude to your Summer School journalists Ihor Samokish and Anna Sliesarieva for good words about Walter Cronkite, who left an indelible imprint in my memory and heart.

“I am sorry for such a long letter, but you know that we, elderly people, like recalling the past and telling it to our children and grandchildren. (I am going to turn 79 on Our Savior’s Day.)

“I wish you and all Den’s staff good health, creative zeal, and new successes in the interesting and useful work you are doing for the benefit of Ukraine.”

Kim Naumenko is a retired lieutenant-colonel and World War II veteran who resides in Lviv.

Yours sincerely, By Kim NAUMENKO
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