Ukraine is calling the “Leader” to account,
Or What Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s father spoke about
Memory is not compatible with falsity – especially memory of the tragedies of whole nations. This really needs the unvarnished, concise and simple truth about what the people had to go through, how they had to defend the right of their nation to live, and what price they had to pay for this. The history of World War Two in Ukraine confirms this in the most illustrious way.
On May 9 practically all post-Soviet states will be celebrating the holiday of victory over Nazism. People will be pronouncing correct and exalted words, remembering the fallen friends, shaking hands with the still-living veterans, and looking at each other, unashamed of tears… The program of celebrations in Russia’s largest cities has already been approved. And what about Ukraine – I mean not so much the organizational aspects as the ones that go straight from human hearts and ethics?
Marking the 65th anniversary of the victory over the “brown plague” is a holiday that can in no way stand imperial politico-propagandist extravaganzas, jingoistic spin (of the “Long live” type), or any bombastic breast-beating lies. This would have been buffoonery and an inexcusable insult to those who were killed in action or died of wounds and ailments as well as, in no lesser measure, to the still-living veterans who won that war. And to cynically eulogize “the Leader of the Peoples,” who has millions of deaths of the best and most self-denying people of all ex-USSR nations on his conscience, means to defame the very memory of the victory.
Russian war veterans (at least the best and intelligent part of them) and conscientious individuals in general are very well aware of this. And we really wish the Moscow authorities would heed their voice (as far as we know today, they have dropped the idea of holding a victory parade on May 9 “under the aegis” of a portrait of the mustached generalissimo). But here in Ukraine there is, to put it mildly, a number of problems as far as clearing historical memory of slavish tyrant glorification is concerned – at least, this is the way one can interpret the information on the intention to unveil… a monument to Stalin in Zaporizhia on the eve of Victory Day (see the website podrobnosti.ua).
Meanwhile, we, Ukrainians, have a special, relentless and unquenchable account to square with the Kremlin despot. And by no means should we allow the victorious fanfares of victory celebrations to drown out this account – even on May 9! What is the essence of this account and who could clearly define it? Let us listen to a person who saw all the horrors of the war, suffered from the loathsome Stalinist tyranny, and, being an artist of genius, managed to reproduce and generalize it. It is Oleksandr Dovzhenko. Here are some quotes from his diary.
Dying of hunger in Kyiv in the fall of 1943, when the Germans were still in, Oleksandr’s 80-year-old father Petro “did not believe in our victory and in our comeback. Looking at the colossal German force, he thought that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people had perished for good. He did not hope to see his children again – he thought we would live the rest of our lives in foreign countries. And so he died in utmost despair and great agony. He cursed Stalin for inability to rule and fight, failure to prepare the people for a war, and for throwing Ukraine at Hitler’s mercies after having fed Germany and helping it conquer Europe. His never-ending curses upon Stalin were full of suffering and despair. He held only him responsible for the catastrophe of his people, he saw the collapse of his old-age hopes for good, the collapse of hopes for popular wellbeing after the great sacrifices and labors, and he, undoubtedly, was very well aware, albeit not in scientific terms, of the rottenness of our system and all the nastiness of our moral unpreparedness for war. He died aged 80. Although illiterate, he was handsome, wise and noble, and looked like a professor. The Germans evicted him from my sister’s and my apartment and even beat him up so severely that he wore bruises for a long time. He was robbed and thrown out on the street. My father’s life is a big novel full of historical sadness and pity.”
This is what Dovzhenko wrote in his Diary on November 26, 1943. And now, reader, let us ponder without bombast or false anguish: was there any injustice in those curses of Dovzhenko the father? Incidentally, there is not a word about the Holodomor, repressions, and terror… Tell me, without bombast again: does Petro Dovzhenko, a Cossack-origin Ukrainian from the Chernihiv region, not speak here on behalf of the entire people? And is a monument to the tyrant not a monument to death?
