FACES AND PLACES: Ghostbusting in Ukraine (05/26/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Ghostbusting in Ukraine

A funny thing. No sooner does my commentary on Communist ghosts appear in The Ukrainian Weekly than Ukraine responds.

Any connection? In your dreams, Kuropas.

But it's reassuring to learn that 68 democrats in Ukraine's Parliament have neither forgiven nor forgotten the ethnocide perpetrated by the Bolsheviks against the Ukrainian people.

Led by Lev Lukianenko, Yevhen Proniuk and Les Taniuk, the 68 parliamentarians have established Nuremberg II. The purpose, reports Chrystyna Lapychak in a May 6 story carried by the service UNIAR press, is to organize a symbolic international trial on crimes committed by the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Ukraine. "The legislators plan to use the caucus to collect evidence, hold public hearings and conferences, and maintain links with parliaments of other former Soviet republics," reads the release.

It's a brilliant move. Since it's probably unrealistic to assume that, given the present dominance of the Communist nomenklatura, Ukraine will soon, if ever, bring anyone to trial, it is at least possible to document Ukraine's Bolshevik barbarism.

Ukraine needs to authenticate these historical antecedents in some formal way. The recent past needs to be recorded in its entirety for three major reasons: 1) to expose the bestial Bolshevik abominations in all their horror in the hope that they will never be repeated (communism won't go away unless a silver spike is driven through its wretched heart); 2) academics, both in Ukraine and elsewhere, seem to be shying away from writing the truth about Ukraine's Bolshevik past; 3) Ukraine can no longer pretend that what transpired between 1920 and 1991 was a mere aberration in a long history. It wasn't. Before Ukraine can be whole again, past realities, as painful as they may be, must be addressed.

We in North America can assist Ukraine's ghostbusters in a number of ways. Dr. Lev Dobriansky's proposal to establish a Holocaust-type museum that could serve as a reminder of Communist malevolence is an idea worthy of our support.

Another way the diaspora can help is through conferences dedicated to a particular aspect of the Bolshevism. An excellent theme for one of Prof. Dmytro Shtohryn's weeklong, annual academic conferences at the University of Illinois could easily be on Bolshevism in Ukraine.

Publications in the English language are another way we in North America can help. There are countless areas that could use the light of truth. We could begin with the story behind the Russian Bolshevik invasion of Ukraine, its forced incorporation into the USSR, and the subsequent annihilation of hundreds of Ukraine's own nationally oriented Bolsheviks as well as thousands of scholars, editors, teachers and others whose loyalty to Ukraine superseded loyalty to Lenin and Stalin.

Let the chips fall where they may. The inordinate role played by Jews in bringing Bolshevism to power is certainly a topic worthy of further exploration.

Another aspect of this early Bolshevik period was the total destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which resulted in Siberian exile or death for thousands of priests and prelates. This history has yet to be written.

The famine, of course, also requires further research. Yes, there already are excellent publications on the famine, but we need more. There are hundreds of books on the Jewish Holocaust. There should also be hundreds of books on the Ukrainian famine, a malefaction that has no equal in world history.

There are some excellent books on the killing fields of Vinnytsia as well, but more documentation is required. We know that in 1943, approximately 9,000 Soviet citizens were found buried in mass graves in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. It was later established that they were executed by the Bolsheviks during the years 1937 and 1938. Significantly, none of the persons killed had been sentenced to death. "In cases where an official conviction could be linked to a victim," writes Ihor Kamenetsky in "The Tragedy of Vinnytsia," "either through documentary evidence or on the basis of the testimony by relatives, the maximum sentence was a term of 10 years' confinement in a labor camp with the denial of the right to correspondence."

There is also testimony available regarding Soviet butchery of Ukrainian nationalists as the Germans were approaching the city of Lviv in June of 1941. Unable to evacuate the thousands of prisoners incarcerated following the Soviet occupation of Galicia, thousands of Ukrainians were simply massacred in their cells.

The destruction of the Ukrainian Catholic Church by Soviet authorities and the murder and deportation of thousands of Ukrainian clergy and laity is still another subject requiring more research. Members of the underground Church are still alive and could provide excellent testimony.

There are other crimes, some hardly known or mentioned, that need to be exposed by Nuremberg II and by others. We can't pretend that Bolshevism was one, big, misguided but well-intentioned error. 'Mistakes" were made, we are told by devotees of socialism, but the goal was an honorable one. This is the kind of spin the Left in America is already putting on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In an article titled "Socialism Would Strengthen the Republic's Economies," for example, Mike Davidow argues that it was not socialism that destroyed the Soviet empire but "retrogression," which was largely the result of "ideological disorientation." Socialism in the USSR "constituted a higher state in the progress of mankind," he writes. Mr. Davidow mourns the Soviet demise because the Bolsheviks played "a progressive role on the world scene for seven decades" and had "a positive influence on social development." Mr. Davidow and others like him are one more reason for setting the record straight.

Once again our community has an obligation to remind the world that no people, not even the Jews, suffered more during the 20th century than the Ukrainians. And we must do this time and time again. Constantly. Repeatedly. In every possible way, on every conceivable occasion. We must do this because the world has a short attention span.

Like our brethren in Ukraine, we, too, must become committed ghostbusters. Like the Jews, our motto must be "never again."

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