EDITORIAL: A proper memorial (12/08/02)

EDITORIAL

A proper memorial

It is inexcusable that Kyiv lacks a proper memorial to the victims of the Great Famine, the artificially induced mass starvation that took the lives of 7 million to 10 million Ukrainians in 1932-1933. We welcome the recent announcement by the Ukrainian World Congress that it would erect a suitable monument in Kyiv in time for its gathering in Kyiv next August. Yet we believe that the time has come to develop a broader plan and vision.

Seventy years after Stalin and the Soviet regime eradicated a good portion of the Ukrainian population, the world knows little of what occurred and how the nation suffered. Few governments officially recognize that such a tragic event took place, much less label it the genocide that it was. Even in Ukraine most schoolchildren do not know what happened during those years of Stalin's terror.

A commentary appearing in the English-language newspaper Kyiv Post, written by Morgan Williams, a public relations professional living in Kyiv, suggests a broader approach to a memorial to the Great Famine. He believes Ukraine needs an educational and research center in the heart of the country's capital.

Citing the lack of knowledge on the man-made cataclysm of 1932-1933, Mr. Williams states: "The basic plan should, therefore, include the construction of adequate facilities for research, documentation, education and study, including a library and museum. Such a facility would create, for the first time in Ukraine, a suitable venue for scholarly research into the Famine-Genocide and other crimes of communism."

Mr. Williams suggests taking the idea for a memorial and expanding it to include a complex of facilities in the center of Kyiv. He states that the project for a proper Great Famine memorial in Kyiv could be pushed back from a deadline of next year to 2008, which would allow sufficient time to plan the project, gather the funds and build the facility. It would also allow for a memorial complex to open on the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.

We believe this to be not only a superb idea, but one that is long overdue. A research and education center would provide those researchers who have investigated the Great Famine with a facility to continue their work. Such a center would also allow for a concentration of materials and energy, a critical mass of information and documentation that would make it easier to correct the historical record. In addition, the center would become an effective counterpoint to those who would continue to maintain that no Great Famine ever existed or if it did it was either a natural calamity or the result of human error in establishing a collective farm infrastructure.

While it is obvious that such a center would be an expensive proposition, the Great Famine is a historical event of such magnitude that we must do whatever it takes to preserve its memory and enter it into the world's historical record.

While it is open to question to what degree current state and government authorities in Ukraine would actively support and fund such an undertaking, we duly note here that in the past they found sufficient funds in the state budget for such grandiose, and worthy, projects as the rebuilding of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Sobor and the Dormition Sobor in the Monastery of the Caves complex. Yet the government need not be the single or even primary source of the funding for such an undertaking. Many in our diaspora have backed away from financial support for Ukraine in light of the financial abuses and corruption that have marked Ukraine's difficult transformation into a European society. Contributing to a research and education center on the Great Famine would give many of us a way to reignite our efforts on behalf of Ukraine and our nation.

We believe that a Famine Center in Kyiv is a project worthy of the Ukrainian World Congress. The idea deserves serious consideration by the UWC and a public debate within our diaspora on how it might develop.

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