Prague, Czech Republic, Monday, December 08, 2008

9.  ROBERT CONQUEST ON 'GENOCIDE' AND FAMINE 

Russia's UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said after the decision: "this campaign has ended, and ended with nothing." He said Russia had voted against Ukraine's attempts to introduce the issue to the agenda of the 63rd UN General Assembly session, as it did at the session in July.

After the refusal, Ukraine circulated a declaration among the UN members, which according to Churkin was signed by 32 out of 192 member states.

Russia says the famine cannot be considered an act targeting Ukrainians, as millions of people from different ethnic groups lost their lives in various
territories across the Soviet Union - in the North Caucasus, the Volga region, central Russia, Kazakhstan, west Siberia, and the south Urals.

"The Ukrainian government has declared this to be an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people, and is politicizing this issue. We take this as an attempt to bring distrust and hostility into our relations, and to spark a dispute between the peoples of Ukraine and Russia," the Russian diplomat said.

Historians' estimates as to the number of victims in Ukraine during the famine, caused by forced collectivization, vary greatly, ranging from 2 million to 14 million.

Speaking at a ceremony to unveil a memorial in a village in western Ukraine, one of the areas hardest hit by the famine, President Viktor Yushchenko said
last month that "Ukraine does not blame any nation or state for the great famine," but that the "totalitarian Communist regime" was responsible.

 

LINK: http://en.rian.ru/world/20081219/118939994.html

 

Interfax Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, 18 December, 2008  
 
MOSCOW - The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) archives do not contain any documents that could suggest that Ukrainian people might have been subject to genocide during the famine in the southern part of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Gen. Vasily Khristoforov, head of the FSB registration and archives department, said in an interview with Interfax on Thursday.

"Researchers, and not only Russian ones, have proven incontrovertibly that famine did take place in the USSR in 1932-1933. Yes, it did, but not only in Ukraine. Archive documents show undeniably that there was no purposeful genocide against Ukrainian people. We have not found a single instruction that would have even hinted about purposeful genocide against Ukrainian people," Khristoforov said.

A large amount of FSB archive documents related to this problem have been handed over to Russian and foreign researchers, Khristoforov said. All these documents have been published, he said.

"The Holodomor [the definition given in Ukraine to the 1932-1933 famine in the former USSR] is a Ukrainian invention. Ukraine is trying to prove that the 1930s famine was an act of genocide the Stalin leadership committed against Ukrainians," he said.

Khristoforov argued that, while the situation in the Soviet agricultural sector in the late 1920s and early 1930s was difficult, people suffered not only in Ukraine but also in Kazakhstan, the Volga area, the Krasnodar territory, and the North Caucasus.

"I am against attempts to gamble on the numbers of the victims. Ukraine has been inflating the number of these casualties from year to year. This is at least incorrect," Khristoforov said.

 

Reuters, Moscow, Russia, Thursday, December 18, 2008

MOSCOW - A general in Russia's intelligence agency has dismissed as an "invention" Ukraine's call for recognition of a 1930s famine as genocide after Kyiv urged the Kremlin to join in commemorations for millions of dead.

The row over the "Holodomor", or famine of 1932-33, in which historians believe 7.5 million died, is one of many pitting the Kremlin against Kyiv's pro-Western leaders swept to power by mass Orange Revolution rallies in 2004.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stayed away from ceremonies to mark the 75th anniversary of the calamity last month and accused Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of distorting history for political gain.

The two ex-Soviet states are also at odds over payment for Russian gas supplies and Kyiv's drive to secure NATO membership.

"The Holodomor is a Ukrainian invention," General Vasily Khristoforov, head of registration and archives department at the Federal Security Service (FSB), told the Interfax news agency. "Ukraine is trying to prove that the 1930s famine was an act of genocide the Stalinist leadership committed against Ukrainians.

"Archive documents show undeniably that there was no deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. We have not found a single directive that would have even hinted about deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people."

Researchers, Khristoforov told the agency, had proven beyond all doubt that a famine in the late 1920s and 1930s did grip various southern Soviet regions.
"Yes, it did, but not only in Ukraine," he said.

Many of the darkest secrets from the Soviet era remain in the archives of the FSB, the main successor to the KGB intelligence service that played a central role in Moscow's efforts to enforce the communist system.

About a dozen countries have recognized the Holodomor, one of three famines to hit Ukraine last century, as genocide.

Addressing a gathering last month at the opening of a monument to the famine, Yushchenko denied any suggestion Russia was to blame for the famine. But he called on Moscow to denounce Stalinism and join in commemorations for the dead.

Millions were left to starve in their homes throughout Ukraine as Soviet authorities trying to bring independent farmers to their knees imposed impossible harvest quotas and requisitioned grain and livestock.  Soviet authorities denied for decades that the famine had even occurred.

 

 

Rossiya TV, Moscow, Russia in Russian 1700 gmt 14 Dec 08
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Sunday, December 14, 2008 

The newly elected Ukrainian parliament speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn, was interviewed on state-owned Russian television channel Rossiya's "Vesti Nedeli" news and current affairs programme on 14 December. Lytvyn answered questions on the current political situation in Ukraine and Russian-Ukrainian relations. How do you feel being elected speaker for the second time?

"Let me tell you frankly, it is quite difficult, because there is an attempt today to break up the parliament and take Ukraine to elections in the conditions of the deepening crisis," Lytvyn said.When will the collation agreement be signed?

 

"The document [on setting up a coalition of Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defence and the Lytvyn Bloc] has been ready for a long time. The problem is that, as I learnt today, the president of Ukraine does not support the creation of the coalition," Lytvyn said.

 

"I had a long meeting and conversation with the president. Very regrettably, the standoff between the president and the prime minister is quite tense, and society, the country and people remain hostages to this standoff", he added.

 

 

"The [parliament's] conciliatory council has decided to recommend the Ukraine's Supreme Council to consider the report of the investigative commission next week, on Friday, in order to set the record straight on the matter. This decision, in essence, was supported by representatives of all factions. I think this will bring clarity. I am deeply convinced that everything should be done today to establish a normal dialogue between Ukraine and Russia", Lytvyn said.Ban on Russian TV channels

"Obviously, my attitude to this is negative. There can be no ambiguity about it. I believe that people should have the possibility to receive comprehensive information in which they are interested and draw relevant conclusions. Therefore, especially in the conditions of a crisis, when there is no bread, and people feel that their rights are being infringed in the information space too, this creates a sort of cumulative negative charge. I am categorically against this.

 

This issue has already been raised. I think that we will thoroughly study this issue at the level of Ukraine's Supreme Council and we will offer our recommendations", Lytvyn said.

 

"I am categorically against splits that will not leave Ukraine unaffected, I mean splits with Russia in religious matters as well. As regards the topic of Holodomor [the famine of 1932-33] as such, I am categorically against bringing this topic into the dimension of ethnocide. What is being done in Ukraine with respect to this topic is intended for export. I think it would be important for politicians to listen to scientists. The manner in which this topic is being bumped up in Ukraine, it is turning into a farce", Lytvyn said.

 

Will you run for president? "I do not see grounds to raise the issue of an early presidential election in the political context today", Lytvyn said. "A headache should be treated when one has it. We shall see how it works out", he added.

 

 

COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS: By Irena Chalupa

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Prague, Czech Republic, Dec 09, 2008

 

In many ways, Kyiv is a city of contrasts.  On one boulevard you will encounter a rather squat, red granite statue of Lenin, his right hand aloft pointing to the proverbial better tomorrow that, thankfully, after 70 years finally became yesterday. The authorities refuse to dismantle the statue, claiming it has "historic" value. That's the communist touch.

Walk a few blocks down to a short, gray, treeless street called Passage and you will be assaulted by ostentatious conspicuous consumption: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Bally, Ferragamo. That's the nouveau riche, oligarchic touch.

Up the hill from these two telling spots stands a small -- and until, last week, the only -- monument to the victims of the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine. It was erected in 1993.

Together these three points in Ukraine's capital create a kind of historic Bermuda Triangle into which things disappear and people forget. Lenin gave birth to the people who created the famine; luxury goods should make everyone forget the deprivations of the Soviet past and the pain of famine. But today almost 50 million Ukrainians somehow remain held hostage by one, two, or all three of these points of reference.

Ukraine's current president, Viktor Yushchenko, has made remembering the famine a cornerstone of his presidency. In 2006, the parliament passed a law recognizing the famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Yushchenko went to great lengths to ensure that this year's 75th anniversary of the famine be commemorated on a national level. Foreign leaders participated in the commemorations; conferences were held; memorials unveiled, candles lit, and the names of the dead remembered.

In a particularly moving sign of solemnity, the president and the prime minister even suspended their endless bickering for a day to participate in the unveiling of the new memorial complex in the capital.

DEATH OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY 

And yet large swathes of Ukraine remain deeply ambivalent about the famine. Eastern and southeastern Ukraine -- where the famine took its greatest toll -- even today, when the facts about the famine are widely publicized and accessible, has the fewest memorials. The first attempts to commemorate the victims took place very far away from Ukraine in fact; Canadian-Ukrainians erected the first famine memorial in 1989 in Edmonton.

The late historian James Mace, who joined the famine project at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and collected material for Robert Conquest's seminal work "The Harvest of Sorrow," called Ukraine a post-genocidal society.

 

Becoming a famine expert in his own right, Mace made Ukraine his adopted homeland. He believed that what Ukrainians call Holodomor (murder by hunger), maimed Ukraine to such an extent that it created a discontinuity in the normal development of the Ukrainian people.

In the former Warsaw Pact countries, the collapse of communism brought about a restoration of a previous independence. But in Ukraine, the Ukrainian nation -- as a community possessing a clear sense of its identity, history, and cultural values -- remained a national minority in its own country even after independence.

 

The damage from the Soviet legacy was such that Ukrainians lacked a broad consensus concerning their future. All that remained were the surviving structures of Soviet Ukraine. The country was no longer a Ukrainian Soviet republic, but it was also not a Ukrainian Ukraine, in the sense in which Poland is Polish or the Czech Republic is Czech.

The orchestrated famine wiped out millions of nationally conscious Ukrainians. Whether or not one accepts that the famine was genocide, there is little doubt that it was targeted against Ukrainian nationalism, against Ukrainian-ness. Mykola Khvylovy, one of the most popular and talented writers of the period and a committed communist, shot himself in helpless protest.

 

The creative engine of a people was destroyed, slowing down and distorting nation building for decades. The Soviet regime prevented families and individuals from processing both personal and national grief. For more than 50 years, Ukraine could not address this trauma openly.

Ukrainian society, however, was soon to experience new shocks: the purges of 1937-38, war, Nazi occupation and the Holocaust, Soviet reconquest, and the 1946-47 famine. The scars of the Holodomor are overlaid by those of these other tragedies. Yet, under the consequences of these repeated blows, traces of the 1932-33 famine are unmistakable.

 

Without taking it into account, for instance, it is impossible to account for the much weaker -- compared to what happened in 1914-22 -- Ukrainian national movement that arose in the great upheaval of World War II. Western Ukraine, which in 1933 was not part of the USSR, is not surprisingly the exception.

What does it mean to be Ukrainian today? What is Ukraine? What is the Ukrainian idea? Former President Leonid Kuchma at one time created quite an angry backlash by stating that the Ukrainian idea had not worked in Ukraine.

 

If a country called Ukraine endlessly convenes conferences on self-identity, if pundits pontificate ad nauseum on "project Ukraine," if Ukrainians themselves can't define their identity or their values, then one can safely admit that the country has something of an identity crisis.

Is it important to have the world acknowledge the Ukrainian famine as an act of genocide? For the Ukrainian state, yes. But will such recognition help the country itself? Will it ease the effects of the famine trauma? Will it steer Ukrainian society onto a path of self-awareness?

 

Will it compel the eastern Ukrainian citizen, who is descended from the ethnic Russians who were resettled into the towns and villages emptied by the famine, feel a connection to this country?

 

Will it give the inhabitants of the more than 13,000 towns and villages that died in 1932-33 a voice and a name? And, most importantly, will today's diverse Ukrainians, who aren't particularly eager to listen to the stories of their painful past, hear those voices?

It seems to me that James Mace was on to something. The famine is not an only an event in Ukraine's past -- it is an event in its present and its future.

NOTE: Irena Chalupa is the director of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

 

LINK: http://www.rferl.org/content/Holodomor_Is_Ukraines_NeverEnding_Trauma/1357818.html

By Iryna Shtogrin, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)

Prague, Czech Republic, Monday, December 08, 2008

 

Distrust of government and future uncertainty are just two of the most conspicuous features of the post-genocidal syndrome that psychologists have identified in modern Ukrainians some 75 years after the famine of 1932-33.

On a more intimate level, famine survivors still value every breadcrumb, and their descendants greet guests with tables overloaded with a variety of dishes. In one form or another, Ukrainians will universally impress on each other the importance of "having something to eat."

Doctors describe a number of symptoms of post-genocidal syndrome that are unconnected to the trauma directly, but which can still seriously undermine the sufferer's health. Victims feel pain in places that are not supposed to hurt and experience nightmares and hidden anxieties that steal their ability to laugh and enjoy life.

Taras Vozniak, the editor of "Ji" magazine, has described the experience as "such a trauma that for people who survived it is very difficult to remember what happened." He compares it to the effects of rape: "[Victims] don't want to testify, or to remember. They want to erase the tragedy from their memory."

Having survived a famine that was brought about by the policies of the Soviet government, Ukrainians now question the very notion of government. They have -- if not fear -- then a feeling of permanent uncertainty about the future. Under each shift in political direction or change of political leaders, Ukrainians rush to buy the necessary essentials. Just in case.

The memory of their ancestors -- who were robbed of food by their own people on orders from the Kremlin -- forces many Ukrainians always to keep something for a "black day" and never truly reveal themselves fully, even to close acquaintances.

That same instinct compels Ukrainians to stockpile food, and to invite anyone who stops by their home to sit down for a meal. Ukrainians tend to rely on themselves, living by their wits and soothing themselves with the eternal saying, "God willing."

Academician Myroslav Popovych survived the famine and believes that other survivors can never really forget. He says, "conditions then were such that all people who belong to that generation carry this taint." But he also asserts that "personality always wins out in the end -- I wouldn't say that I have become more obedient or completely focused on earthly problems."

But the most important thing that Ukrainians carry from these terrible times is a complete revulsion toward totalitarian regimes.

"Ukrainians still lack a political culture because of their history, but we have a huge drive toward liberty," Popovych says. "I don't know whether you can call this famine memory, but it is certainly a total aversion to totalitarian mentality."

Ukrainian society is highly individualistic, partly because its history has incorporated the terrible experience of death and survival of famine. Old notions such as "my home is my сastle" and "I'm my own boss" have hampered the formation of civil society and a genuine national elite in Ukraine.

At the same time, this attitude turns the average Ukrainian into a libertarian. They view even the slightest attempt by politicians to elevate themselves with sarcasm, and they sense the slightest false note in officials' speeches about their "love of the people" and their promises to solve the problems of average citizens.

One must remember that, aside from the natural psychological reaction to survived horrors, Ukrainians for decades were not allowed to speak about the famine -- it could have cost them not only their liberty but also their lives.

Former dissident and political prisoner Yevhen Sverstiuk recalls seeing fear in countrymen's eyes when he asked them about the 1932-33 famine even after perestroika. People asked whether they would be executed. Many said they still feared being punished for speaking out. That despite the fact that they'd been invited by the village council to speak on the subject, and the entire project soliciting their views had been authorized by the regional government.

Philosopher Yevhen Sverstiuk believes that the time has come when Ukrainians can cry over their painful experiences. They can process the past by talking about the famine, identifying all the villages where people died, naming all of the victims, and taking steps toward closure.

After crying out their trauma, people should wipe their tears and get to work, says Sverstiuk. Otherwise, they risk the danger of becoming spiritual beggars. The world values the brave. By telling the truth, and overcoming their fear, Ukrainians overcome their inferiority complexes.

Writer Ivan Dziuba calls the famine a blow to Ukraine's future. And the only way to fight back is to free oneself of this heavy burden of genetic memory by revealing the entire truth.

The late American researcher James Mace began the process by defining Ukraine as a post-genocidal society. Mace believed Ukraine would be incapable of further development until the entire truth of the famine was told.

That idea has been confirmed by the experiences of other nations that suffered similar traumas, defeats, and the burden of penance. Society returns to successful development through awareness, and acceptance of its national memory and history.

The best that the current government in Kyiv can do to commemorate those killed by famine is to create the conditions so that all Ukrainians could feel certain and security. Little is required in order to achieve this -- just respect for human rights, abiding by the rule of law, and hard work.

NOTE: Iryna Shtogrin is a correspondent with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.

LINK: http://www.rferl.org/Content/commentary_Ukraine_Postgenocidal_Society/1357424.html

 

9.  ROBERT CONQUEST ON 'GENOCIDE' AND FAMINE 
10.  CHICAGO UKRAINIANS CONCLUDE HOLODOMOR 75TH COMMEMORATION