Media reports on famine (10/09/83)

Media reports on famine

Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The Washington Post provided detailed coverage of the weeklong Great Famine observance here with an October 1 article about the activities and extensive coverage of the October 2 rally at the Washington Monument and the march to the Soviet Embassy.

On October 3, the paper ran a full story on the rally and march by staff writer Eugene Meyer under the headline "Ukrainians Commemorate Victims of 1933 Famine."

In the article, which was accompanied by three photographs and began on the first page of the paper's Metro section, Mr. Meyer quoted from President Ronald Reagan's message to the rally and from an address by UNA Supreme President John Flis.

He also spoke with Halyna Hrushetsky, 41, of Chicago, who lost four sisters during the famine.

"I've lived with the famine as long as I can remember," she told the Post, adding that she, her older sister who survived the famine and her mother wound up in a German labor camp during the war and were saved from repatriation to the Soviet Union after the war after Eleanor Roosevelt intervened on behalf of the displaced persons.

"My mother passed away last June," Mrs. Hrushetsky told the Post. "Her last words: 'Don't forget and don't forgive and pass the facts about these atrocities on to your children.'"

Mr. Meyer also provided details of the rally and the march to the embassy, noting that sponsors estimated the crowd to be 10,000 to 15,000.

In the October 1 article, headlined "Ukrainian Americans Commemorate Famine in Homeland 50 Years Ago," Post staff writer Caryle Murphy provided a historical overview of the famine obtained from several experts, including Prof. Omeljan Pritsak of the Harvard Ukrainian Institute and Vojtech Mastny, a specialist in Soviet and Eastern European affairs at Boston University, who said that there is "no debate that this famine was man-made and encouraged by authorities."

The article also noted the recent seminar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, which included presentations by Dr. Robert Conquest, who is writing a book on the famine, Dr. James Mace, who has been doing research for the book, and Dana Dalrymple, an agricultural economist familiar with the famine.

"Hundreds of Ukrainian Americans are in Washington this week to commemorate a famine in their homeland 50 years ago in which millions died and to protest what they say is the Soviet Union's continued refusal to acknowledge the breadth of the famine or the part Soviet policies played in causing it," Mr. Murphy wrote.

Washington Times

WASHINGTON - The Washington Times carried a story on the October 2 famine observances in Washington in its October 3 issue.

In addition, the September 28 issue of the paper had a story on a September 27 press conference here that featured Dr. Robert Conquest, who is writing a book on the famine, and Lev Kopelev, a Soviet author now living in the West who took part in the confiscation of grain in Ukraine.

Writing about the rally at the Washington Monument and the demonstration near the Soviet Embassy, Times staff writer Edmond Jacoby said that the march and the memorial concert at the Kennedy Center "marked the end of a week of events in Washington commemorating the 50th anniversary of a devastating famine that Ukrainians have called 'the forgotten holocaust.'"

In covering the march, Mr. Jacoby spoke with Oscar Kain, a businessman staying at the Capital Hilton Hotel near the rally site at 16th and K streets.

"I've got two Russians who work for me," Mr. Kain told the Times. "They told me what happened to them when they tried to leave the Soviet Union. It makes me believe every word the Ukrainians say. America needs to remember this."

In the article on the press conference, also written by Mr. Jacoby, Dr. Conquest said that the Ukrainian famine provides an accurate barometer with which to gauge the nature of the Soviet system today.

"It is in that crucible that Andropov and other Soviet leaders were molded," Dr. Conquest said, adding that the "Soviet attitude toward human life is not what we in the West expect."

Mr. Kopelev, who was a member of Komsomol, the Communist youth league, when Stalin ordered the requisition of grain from the peasants in Ukraine, said that he took part in the collection of grain.

"I saw the people dying and dead from hunger," he said. "I saw their empty eyes, their eyes with death in them. Our countryside had become Soviet."

Star-Ledger

NEWARK, N.J. - The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, on October 3 carried an Associated Press wire service story on the October 2 famine observances in Washington.

The AP story appeared in several other leading newspapers across the country.

The story quoted several participants of the Washington Monument rally and the demonstration near the Soviet Embassy, including Andrij Bilyk, a member of the national committee that organized the event, Orest Deychakiwsky, who read an open letter to the Kremlin near the embassy, and former Ukrainian dissident Valentyn Moroz, who said that the demonstration was for the American victims of the downing of Korean Air Line Flight 007 as well as for the millions of Ukrainians who died during the famine.

The article also quoted Anthony Luck, 72, a high school teacher in Ukraine during the famine.

"It was a terrible time I'll never forget," he said. "People were swollen (from malnutrition) and dying on the street every day. You could not even recognize your friends."

The AP said that a man at the Soviet Embassy, contacted by telephone, said the press office was closed "but for sure they would have 'no comment' for you."

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