Ukraine’s Golgotha
On November 24, under the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated October 31, 2000, Ukraine observed for the second time the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Famine and Political Repression. Obviously, repentance comes with age. In the twentieth century Ukraine went through its own Golgotha of the sufferings of tens of millions of people. But it is quite a different thing when millions die in a war, confronted by the enemy, and when — the most horrible and unfathomable thing — millions are wiped out by “their own” authorities.
As a result, in 1932-1933 Ukraine was steamrollered by a government induced famine that claimed an estimated 3.5 to 10 million human lives, mostly of peasants. The famines of 1921 and 1947 took a toll of about 500,000 and tens of thousands of people, respectively. In 1933, the authorities sent in military and police units to block the roads to towns from the emaciated people who wanted to find rescue there. And at exactly the same time, the USSR was boosting grain sales to the West. It is in 1933 that the United States of America recognized the USSR, a new Bolshevik empire. As you see, political expediency comes before moral foundations. The system continued to reap its bloody harvest further on: the 30s-50s mass reprisals, deportations, GULAG, and the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), a war for which the government was unprepared and, as a result, a sizable portion of people did not wish to defend this kind of government in 1941. And only when USSR peoples saw the true beastly face of the invading Nazis did the Moscow empire, a colossus with feet of clay, manage to hold out.
Ethnocide, i.e., premeditated destruction of a whole nation for political considerations, is the most heinous crime against humanity. Ukrainians are among the world’s few nations (along with Jews and Armenians) which experienced ethnocide: in this case it was not a bloody massacre but a manmade famine. Clearly, such boundless tragedies cannot possibly leave a nation unmar ked; they leave deep and festering wounds in its historical memory.
Is it not time the world community pronounced this country a victim of genocide? Geopolitical interests of the thirties made it impossible to admit that Ukraine had suffered from a true humanitarian disaster unparalleled in the history of humanity. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and non-governmental organizations of Ukraine must put it bluntly: are there too few materials and eyewitness reports in this country? What other material evidence is needed?
(Read Stanislav Kulchytsky’s article on the manmade famine in the next issue)
