Head of Famine Researchers Association says Kyiv falls short in educating public about '32-'33 events (11/23/03)

Head of Famine Researchers Association says
Kyiv falls short in educating public about '32-'33 events

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Levko Lukianenko, head of the Association of Famine Researchers, did not directly suffer the effects of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933. His stomach did not bloat, he did not watch loved ones lay dying in muddy, rut-filled streets. He was not forced to eat rats, mice and grass in order to stay alive.

Mr. Lukianenko, once a political dissident sentenced to death by the Soviet regime and today a lawmaker in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, was 6 years old when the artificially induced starvation raged in eastern and southern Ukraine, reaching into some of the areas of Chernihiv Oblast where he was born and raised, including several neighboring homesteads.

While he did not witness firt-hand the genocide that was ordered by Stalin to pacify the Ukrainian farmer and destroy the country's resistance to collectivization and communism, Mr. Lukianenko remembers his father was frightened by the prospect of their village being affected. Mr. Lukianenko, 76, explained that his father buried potatoes in a secret spot in order to assure his family a food supply. He recalled that in the spring his brother and he ate the partially rotted spuds.

In an interview with The Weekly on the upcoming 70th anniversary commemoration of the Great Famine, Mr. Lukianenko noted that 70 years later the world was finally beginning to understand the magnitude of the man-made disaster that destroyed up to 10 million healthy Ukrainians during those years.

Mr. Lukianenko said his organization would like to take some credit for publicizing the great tragedy suffered by the Ukrainian nation - a fact that had been covered up for decades by the closed Soviet regime and journalists who supported it.

Mr. Lukianenko identified Walter Duranty, the notorious New York Times correspondent who lived a life of leisure in Moscow and reported that little more than a food shortage existed in Ukraine while thousands of innocent people died daily, as one of the central figures in the initial cover-up. The Ukrainian politician said he believes it is imperative that the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty of The New York Times be rescinded.

"We fully support the initiative and have tried to help in any way we could," Mr. Lukianenko said.

He explained that for years the Association of Famine Researchers had struggled - too often in vain it seemed - to inform the global community about the man-made cataclysm and the associated atrocities that had taken place in Ukraine in 1932-1933. While he expressed satisfaction that finally the world was beginning to understand what had happened at the time, he was frustrated that at home the Ukrainian nation remained so badly informed. Mr. Lukianenko emphasized that until five years ago the Ukrainian government had offered no support.

"The only real successes we achieved have come as a result of cooperation with the Ukrainian diaspora, and we are very thankful to them," Mr. Lukianenko acknowledged.

In 1998, after U.S. President Bill Clinton responded to calls by the Ukrainian American community and issued an executive proclamation on the 65th anniversary of the Great Famine, Mr. Lukianenko and his association turned to Ukraine's Minister of Culture Valerii Smolii and requested a similar decree, at the least, from Ukraine's state leader.

President Leonid Kuchma responded by ordering the commemoration of the fourth Saturday of each November as an official Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Great Famine if 1932-1933 and political repression. The presidential decree required that local governments erect monuments to the victims, and hold special commemorative events and informational gatherings.

"This was the first real attempt by the government to honor the victims of the Famine," noted Mr. Lukianenko.

He said that, in similar fashion, the recent decision to build a memorial complex to the Famine victims to include a documentation center and a conference hall, as well as a museum and memorial sculpture, came after the idea was first proposed and initiated by members of the Ukrainian diaspora in North America.

While progress has finally been made - at an extremely slow pace, Mr. Lukianenko underscored - there continues to be a lack of information on the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian people. He said that while institutions of higher learning had begun to gather a sufficient amount of documents and information, elementary and middle schools continued to have far too little available for their students.

"Our society, sadly, is still not fully informed about this tragic event," Mr. Lukianenko noted.

He also termed "too little, too late" preparations by government and state officials for the commemoration of this year's Day of Remembrance, which fell on November 22 this year.

The former political dissident said that, while the requisite requiem concert and placing of a wreath at the current Famine Memorial by government officials will take place, the commemorations should have been broader.

He said he was continuing to push for a national moment of silence, which he hoped would be prefaced with a broadcast appearance by Ukrainian Orthodox Church Patriarch Filaret from St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv on national television and radio and followed by a countrywide work stoppage and the halting of automobile traffic on all roads for three minutes. He also wanted a national effort to have citizens honor the memory of the victims by placing lit candles in their windows and an executive order to have all national flags flown at half-mast on government buildings.

Nonetheless, Mr. Lukianenko expressed little hope that the normally stodgy and snail-paced Ukrainian government could respond to his requests with only two days left to the commemoration.

"Much more could have been done if the authorities had taken this more seriously," said Mr. Lukianenko.

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