Site and design of Famine-Genocide memorial in Ukraine's capital stir controversy among public

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - After a fiery 90-minute debate during a public hearing in Kyiv dedicated to review the status of a project to finally develop a proper memorial center dedicated to the Great Famine, the consensus seemed obvious: discard it all, including the chosen site, and start from scratch.

Among the members of the planning committee only state and city officials expressed any inclination to disagree with that overriding opinion. Nonetheless, even among them the lasting impression was that officials would have to take a fresh look at how the effort was developing.

"After today and what we have heard, the result will probably be that we have to make some changes and pursue other ways of going forward," acknowledged Vasyl Romanchuk, assistant minister of culture, one of the project's leaders.

Several months after the city of Kyiv and the national government joined forces to develop a site in Navodnytskyi Park, located on the right bank of the Dnipro River below the highest of Kyiv's seven hills - which coincidentally or not lies beneath the long controversial Soviet-era monument to "Rodina Mat" (the Motherland) - a stormy debate has arisen over whether the dedicated plot of land is a suitable site for the memorial.

The voices heard at this special public hearing suggested that the only people who supported the project as it currently looks were those who took part in its design. The three dozen or so participants in the discussion of its merits, including several members of the North American Ukrainian diaspora and a noted Kyivan architect, had only criticism to offer in response.

National Deputy Ivan Drach, a member of the planning committee who also sits on the jury that will pick the final design, vehemently and vociferously voiced his opposition to the site, saying he is "absolutely against" it.

"It simply does not reflect the largesse of the tragedy, which broke the back of the Ukrainian nation in 1932-1933," noted Mr. Drach. "How can we stick this memorial at the bottom of a hill near nothing in particular?"

Mr. Drach also expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the project had moved forward without input from the Verkhovna Rada. The noted poet-turned-politician explained that earlier in the year lawmakers had approved a resolution calling for a memorial complex to be developed in the city center, near the historic Arsenal Factory. He accused the Cabinet of Ministers and Kyiv city officials of ignoring that resolution.

"I am shocked," Mr. Drach stated.

The idea of a famine memorial has gained steam quickly since first being mentioned as a worthy project to commemorate the 7 million to 10 million Ukrainians who died in 1932-1933 as a result of a Soviet policy of food confiscation and forced starvation that was implemented to break the back of the private farmer class in Ukraine and subordinate it to a collectivized system of agriculture, and to break the resistance of the Ukrainian nation.

The idea for the project developed after first being mentioned in an article in an op-ed piece in a Kyiv-based English-language publication. The idea as proposed at the time was that a proper memorial to the victims of the Great Famine should stand somewhere in Kyiv and that there was no better time to begin construction than during the 70th anniversary of the genocide, so that it could be completed in time for the 75th anniversary commemoration.

The plan outlined a complex that would encompass a research center, a conference center, a historical museum and a proper monument to the victims, as well as the tens of thousands of others repressed and displaced by the Soviet regime.

The proposal quickly gained favor and the support of many in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the United States. Then, during a parliamentary hearing on the Great Famine in the Verkhovna Rada in February, Vice Prime Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Dmytro Tabachnyk presented much the same plan as a worthy tribute to those who perished as a result of Stalin's "Holodomor." The Ministry of Culture and Kyiv city planning officials were tasked with developing the project, and a site was chosen in early summer.

A representative from the state construction company, DerzhBud, defended the chosen site as the most suitable. He explained at the public hearing that three sites were initially discussed, but only one met the enumerated criteria. He also underscored that only Kyiv city officials had the right to assign the land under its jurisdiction.

"It is considered an open area, and I can attest to the fact that it is located in what we consider a memorial/museum part of Kyiv," explained Vasyl Prysiazhniuk, assistant director of DerzhBud. "The Monastery of the Caves, the Vydubytsky Monastery and the World War II Museum are all in the same area."

Mr. Prysiazhniuk failed to mention that the 60-meter tall titanium Motherland monument - an ode to Soviet domination over Ukraine stands atop the highest of Kyiv's seven hills next to the World War II Museum - would tower over the memorial complex if it were built where currently planned.

Larysa Skoryk, a former lawmaker who now teaches architecture at the Kyiv School of Design, said the planners had turned everything upside down, almost literally.

"This memorial should not be at the bottom, but at the top of that hill," explained the civic activist, who has criticized several city construction projects in the past.

Ms. Skoryk added that the haphazard way in which city and state officials chose the site showed how little concern they had for the project and the victims of the Famine-Genocide. She explained that the first thought that crossed her mind when she heard where city fathers wanted to put the memorial complex was why 10 million victims of the cataclysm did not deserve a monument in the city center.

She also noted that the site in the city center that the Verkhovna Rada had supported was discarded by city officials not because it would have been difficult to upend a military garrison currently located there, as Mr. Prysiazhniuk had stated, or because the site on the Dnipro River was better, but simply because plans already existed for the private development of a 20-story luxury apartment building on the rejected site.

Assistant Minister of Culture Romanchuk acknowledged that after such vocal criticism of the chosen site a new one would most likely have to be chosen.

"If people truly believe that the site is not suitable, then we should turn to the city to offer alternative sites," said Mr. Romanchuk.

Prof. Roman Serbyn, a noted scholar on the Great Famine from Montreal and another interested participant in the public hearing, said the disagreements were not simply about choosing a site that would be both agreeable and practical, but about developing a project that would express the degree to which the Ukrainian nation recognized the depth of the tragedy.

"The site choice reveals how the government looks upon the event," explained Prof. Serbyn. "The community must now rise to the task. It must become a world-class research and documentation center."

Before the hearing, which was held at the Artists' Union of Ukraine, interested citizens had an opportunity to view 15 projects submitted by Ukrainian artists and sculptors in a competition to determine how the memorial complex should look.

The artistic renderings, many of which invoked religious themes and images, encompassed a wide breadth of architectural styles, from sleek post-modernistic to heavy Soviet monolithic and on to traditional Byzantine cupolas.

One project proposed that the monument should center on a huge, black marble cube, with a huge inlaid cross on each of its four sides. Another offered a full-size pyramid, with grizzly scenes of the victims' sufferings cut into cave-like voids on each of the sides. A third one, a twisted black cornucopia, evoked the feel of a work of Soviet monumentalism, but with a more amorphous touch. Another submission presented a depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding a crucified Christ, which would stand in the Dnipro River and be connected to land via a broad walkway.

Those interested enough to attend the public hearing and view the proposals came away non-plussed by what Ukraine's artists had offered up. The one thought expressed repeatedly was that the projects under consideration did not create the desired response in the viewer.

"There is nothing here that expresses the depth of the feeling, the soul of this tragedy," explained Anatolii Lysyj, a diaspora activist from the United States. Mr. Lysyj suggested that a new competition take place to include Ukrainian designers from abroad as well.

His wife, Daria, was more blunt in her assessment of what form the new memorial should take. She commented that the best way to honor the victims of the Great Famine would be to recycle the Motherland statue that looms over the current proposed site of the famine memorial complex.

"It should be destroyed and the titanium from it should be used to build the new memorial up there on the hill," Mrs. Lysyj stated.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 5, 2003, No. 40, Vol. LXXI

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