What is the crux of Ukraine-Russia dispute?

(Continued from issues 3, 4, and 5)

9. RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY’S INVASION OF THE INTERNET

Prior to the consideration of the Holodomor bill at the Verkhovna Ra­da of Ukraine, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Fe­de­ration handed over to Vesti a number of declassified materials from its ar­chives. On Nov. 24, 2006, these documents appeared in print, along with a commentary by the journalist Yele­na Loria who scolded the Ukrainian politicians for demanding recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people, while trying to avoid mentioning the fact that the famine struck the Volga region, the Northern Cauca­sus, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and the Far East. Why? It would seem only natural for Russian scholars and po­liticians to mention the famine in the above-mentioned regions of the USSR. As though forestalling this counterargument, Loria ended her bri­ef commentary with a paragraph worth being quoted in full: “There is one undeniable plus to this attempt of the Ukrainian politicians to ‘privatize’ the tragedy and rewrite history: an increasing number of people in Uk­raine are learning about the Ho­lodomor and remember their history. In Russia’s textbooks this topic re­ceives only superficial treatment, as though seven million people (one-third Russians) never died.” As they say, no comment.

In 2008 the foreign ministries of Russia and Ukraine exchanged un­diplomatically harsh words after the latter tried to draw the attention of international organizations to the Holodomor. In September the Rus­sian foreign ministry’s official website published 197 documents from the Central Archives of the FSB and three other central Russian archives, concerning the 1932-33 famine. In a short foreword the compilers did not comment on the contents, welcoming the readers to figure out everything themselves.

Needless to say, people who compiled these documents had an idea in mind. Sergei Lozunko voiced it in his article published by the newspaper 2000 on October 17: “These documents refute the concept of an ‘engineered genocide against Ukrai­ni­ans.’“ Following the topics covered by the documents, the article consisted of two large sections: “Famine gripped all of the USSR” and “Aid to starving Ukraine.”

There is no denying the fact that the famine gripped all of the Soviet Union, and that aid was given to starving people in Ukraine. Without this aid almost all of the 25 million people who lived in the rural areas of the Ukrainian SSR would have died. Some time after confiscating all their foodstuffs, the government started “hand-feeding” those who were able to work and secure the 1933 harvest.

Every newspaper has its readership, so I prepared my own commentary on the documents from the Russian foreign ministry’s website and sent it to the weekly 2000. They published it in full, for which I am grateful.

The editors published Lozunko’s reply in that same issue. A gifted polemicist, he built his article on misrepresentation, without ever touching on my concept of the Holodomor. Oleg Kachmarsky took notice of this in his commentary published on the website of the NGO “Edinoe otechestvo” on Dec. 13, 2008 and took the field to refute the genocide thesis. I agreed that the grain procurement campaign had a “cover-up” in the form of the government’s obligations to feed the cities and the army and pay on loans for imported equipment, which makes it hard to prove that the confiscation of grain was an act of genocide. In his opinion, it was then reasonable to refuse to qualify the confiscation of non-grain foodstuffs as genocide. He wrote: “Didn’t workers and soldiers eat onions, cabbage, fatback, and beets? One can assume that precisely this food was meant for them, whereas grain was mostly sold for hard currency.” No comment needed here, either.

10. FOR WANT OF ARGUMENTS

I agree with Dr. Viktor Kon­dra­shyn from Penza, who keeps insisting that the famine of 1932-33 was our common tragedy, and that it must unite rather than disunite us. How­ever, the verb “unite” does not mean “dissolve” or “merge” in our per­ception. The party center in the Kremlin did not depend on the will of the population and manipulated the destinies of all peoples of the USSR; it was guided by its own interests in treating each one of them. To avoid head-on collision with the national liberation movement of the op­pres­sed peoples in the former Russian em­pire, the Bol­sheviks built their state-commune on an ethnocratic ba­sis, as a federation of union and auto­nomous republics, ethnic territories, oblasts, raions, and even village co­un­cils. When the Soviet regime be­came firmly establi­shed the ethnic raions and village co­uncils were discarded, but the status of union re­pub­lics and their right to secession remained untouched. The­refore, Dr. Kondrashyn has to understand that the Kremlin was then faced with the task of preventing Ukraine, a “titular nation” with a right to secession and ethnic identity, from turning in­to a polity. Regrettably, many people still do not realize the special character of the Soviet Union’s national and political system or the meaning of the artificial notion “titular nation” that emerged in conditions of the totalitarian regime. This notion is still being used.

For the Kremlin, all nations were equal, except that some were “more equal,” to quote from George Orwell. In the Soviet “parade of nations” Rus­sians came first as the “titular na­tion” of both the Russian Federa­tion and the rest of the country. Uk­rainians and the other nations that gave their names to the union re­pub­lics came second. Moldovans in the Moldavian Autonomous SSR and the rest of the primary nations in the autonomous republics did not have the status of status were on the third rung of the hierarchical ladder. Pe­ople who represented nations outside the USSR were in the worst position. After the sharpening of the international situation Stalin deported the “German fascists” from Puliny ethnic raion and “Polish Pilsudkites” from Markhliovsk ethnic raion.

There is no denying the fact that the Kremlin had its own national policy, and that the Kremlin leadership could demonstrate its attitude to so­me or other “titular nations” in a va­riety of ways. I realize that many people simply refuse to accept such attitude in the form of genocide. The So­viet rule did not change its nature after it built, by means of terror and propaganda, a political system it cal­led socialism. However, it essentially changed its attitude to citizens. The­re was no need for what Lenin called mass-like terror after the citizens of the “world’s first country of socialism” found themselves in the conditions of total economical dependence on the state and after the first generation of people raised in Soviet schools entered adult life.

It is impossible for the current ge­neration to imagine the Soviet re­gime the way it was in 1933 or 1937. One ought to realize, however, that Soviet power had dual nature: it represented workers and peasants but at the same time it was totalitarian to the maximum extent. By rising to the top of the hierarchical ladder, the leader could do whatever he wished to the ruling party and the peoples that inhabited the country. It follows from this that not a single nation can be held responsible for the crimes committed by the leader. All peoples, regardless of their status in the hierarchy of “titular nations,” were victims of a perfidious political system invented by Lenin.

After spending four and a half decades studying national history of the interwar period, I have become con­vinced that there was a very narrow circle of people involved in the Stalin-organized Holodomor: Lazar Ka­ganovich, Viacheslav Molotov, Pa­­vel Postyshev, Vsevolod Balytsky, and Yefim Yevdokimov. The rest of the personae of this drama held mi­nor posts in the pyramid of power bu­ilt by Stalin. The Russian side accuses Stanislav Kosior and Vlas Chubar of organizing the Holodomor, but at the time the leaders of the Ukrainian SSR had virtually no say, so they can only be blamed for complicity in that act of genocide.

Stalin knew better than leave any traces on paper or in people’s memories. Postyshev, Balytsky, and Yev­do­kimov perished in the next purge, whereas Molotov and Kaganovich survived because Stalin trusted them as much as he did himself. He was right. Both wrote memoirs after Stalin’s death (Molotov’s are in the form of dialogues with F. Chuiev who secretly recorded their conversations). However, these memoirs never mention the Holodomor.

After many years of searching, I pieced together a puzzle that was documented proof pointing to Stalin and several of his henchmen as the architects of the Holodomor. I hastened to share these facts with Russian TV journalists. On April 4, 2008, a film crew of the First National Channel that was working on the documentary “Holodomor 1933: The Unlear­ned Lessons of History” recorded a who­le video cassette in my study. Yet there was no trace of it in the film. I am grateful to Andrei Akara who defended me in his commentary on the documentary against journalists who once again accused me of changing my opinions and said that I could hardly be trusted (Telekrytyka, Nov. 12, 2008). What I told them was, in fact, the story about my long and winding road to the comprehension of the Holodomor and, in connection with it, the political system and entire history of the USSR.

When that same channel invited me to take part in the talk show Su­dite sami (Judge Yourself) scheduled for November 27 and dedicated to the Holodomor, I agreed, expecting to ha­ve an opportunity to tell the viewers live about what actually happe­ned in 1933 and who was responsible for the crimes of that government. I was sure it was necessary to counter the accusations of our marginal poli­ticians that were addressed to Russia and were happily picked up there to build a negative image of Ukraine in the Russian public eye. I had enough documented proof: two volumes of the National Book of Memory of Victims of the Holodomor.

On board the jet I spotted an issue of the weekly Stolichnyie novosti, which is published in Kyiv. There was a lead-in to the article “Holo­do­mor 2008” with this caption: “As ad­vised by old Communist Party lackeys, the current government continues to falsify history, confusing the citizens, while many of them don’t give a hoot about budget-financed pompous rituals — they are simply hungry.” The article itself, written by the well-known Vadim Dolganov, ap­peared on the centerfold supplemented with a close-up photo of me and my bibliography and biography. It boiled down to the same thing: previously I said that, now I’m saying this. The author was especially outraged by my article “Holodomor 1933. Stalin’s Plan and Its Ful­fill­ment” and the fact that it has been in­cluded in the Ukrainian grade school curriculum. Was the publication of this article prior to the talk show “Judge Yourself” a coincidence?

Iryna Herashchenko, who also to­ok part in the talk show, later shared her impressions with Den’ (Dec. 5, 2008). There is no use repeating what she had to say in the article “Conversation between a Deaf and a Mute.” I would like to stress that I was the mute. The host, Maksim Shev­chenko, kept trying to find out more about a certain episode in my biography, borrowed from Stolich­nyie novosti, but never let me say anything on the subject being discussed. It was a shame, but I realized one thing: Russia doesn’t want to be drawn into a debate on the Holo­do­mor. Is this for want of arguments?

The organizers of the television project Imia Rossii (The Name of Ru­s­sia) that ended in late December 2008 succeeded in pushing Stalin off the pedestal and placing him third. Russia would look too odious if it identified itself with the name of Stalin.

I cannot understand people in today’s Russia who are scared stiff of discussing Stalin’s role in starving to death millions of Ukrainian peasants. Nor can I understand those of my fellow countrymen who refuse to accept obvious facts simply because they adhere to a certain political line. Quite a few among them lost close and dear ones during the Holodomor. What political line can justify such attitude?