FACES AND PLACES: Orange justice: Pora! (04/10/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Orange justice: Pora!

Of all the enduring truths penned by George Orwell, the one that resonates for me today is: "who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

The Soviets were masters of controlling the past by controlling the present. Historical revisionism became an art form with Soviet writers depicting the past in terms of current political orthodoxy as defined by Joseph Stalin. Trotsky was a hero. Trotsky was a traitor. Bukharin was good. Bukharin was evil. Hitler was a socialist ally. Hitler was the fascist enemy.

Confronted by truth from the United States, the Soviets responded in one of two, or both, basic ways: blatant denial or spin projection. The latter ploy involved blaming the accuser of worse sins. The rule was, if you can't refute, attack. Whenever the U.S. brought up human rights violations, for example, the Soviets pointed to our inner cities, to slavery, to detention camps for Japanese Americans, to unemployment, to McCarthyism. Unfortunately, the American Left often bought in to this ruse, preaching moral equivalence.

Following the euphoria of glasnost, when truth-telling was fashionable, Russia today appears to be returning to its time-honored ways. Stalin is making a come-back in Russia, and the past is once again being revised by present needs. There is denial. Neither the mass murder of Poles in the Katyn Forest nor the Holodomor in Ukraine were genocides, argue Russian historians. And there is spin projection. When President George W. Bush asked President Vladimir Putin about his muzzling of the press, the Russian president accused Mr. Bush of forcing the resignation of Dan Rather.

"Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia - the country that inherited the Soviet Union's diplomatic and foreign policies, its embassies, its debts, and its seat at the United Nations - continues to act as if it has not inherited the Soviet Union's history," writes Anne Applebaum in a recent issue of Hoover Digest.

Now that Ukraine has experienced its Orange Revolution, it's time (pora) for orange justice. It's time to revisit the Soviet past and to ferret out those criminals who condoned, encouraged or perpetrated crimes against the Ukrainian people. It's time to indict these degenerates and to put them on trial so that the Ukrainian people are reminded of the horror that existed when Marxist-Leninists were in charge. Are some of these war criminals still alive? No doubt. Are they fearful that they will be forced to answer for their crimes? Not yet.

Some Ukrainians are reticent to bring up the Soviet past. Too many people were involved, they argue. Once you arrest one person, he/she will implicate others who, in turn, will implicate many more others. Pulling one criminal thread out of a largely innocent fabric will unravel the entire garment. You can't put all of Ukraine on trial, we're told.

No one wants to put all of Ukraine on trial. But just because all Ukrainians are not guilty, doesn't mean none are. Some Soviet Ukrainians were especially vicious, egregiously barbaric in their treatment of fellow citizens. Some living Ukrainians are guilty of genocide against Ukrainians, and unless they are brought to justice, Ukraine's past will never be exorcised. The cancer is still there, and ignoring it puts the entire polity at risk.

It is with all of this in mind that the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has inititiated a postcard campaign requesting President Viktor Yuschenko to establish an official Commission of Inquiry into Soviet War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine to investigate not only the Holodomor but Vinnytsia, Bykivnia and other Soviet atrocities between 1917 and 1991.

Joining the UCCLA initiative are the Ukrainian National Association, the Ukrainian American Justice Committee, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations, the Comité pour la Défense de la Democratie en Ukraine, the Ukrainian American Civil Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Civil Liberties Association in Kyiv, and other concerned civic organizations.

No people suffered more during the 20th century than Ukrainians. Enveloped by the twin scourges of Nazism and Bolshevism, Ukraine lost more blood and treasure than any European nation.

How many Soviet war criminals are still alive? No one knows, but since the Soviets were in power longer, it stands to reason that there are more of them than there are Nazi war criminals.

Where are these criminals? Most live in Ukraine. Others are probably in the United States and Canada. And if similar Polish and Lithuanian war crime commissions offer a clue, then some of them could be living in Israel.

Lithuania, for example, has asked the Israelis to extradite former KGB officer Nakham Dushanskiy for trial on nine criminal offenses, including genocide against members of the Lithuanian resistance movement. The Polish government has spent years seeking the extradition of Solomon Morel on charges of genocide for the deaths of innocent prisoners of war in a Communist camp he commanded after World War II. Thus far, Israel has refused to comply with either request.

No nation, not Ukraine, not the United States, not Canada, not Israel, should be a haven for war criminals. So, dear reader, when your neighborhood Ukrainian activist comes around with a postcard to sign, exercise your civic duty. Sign the card and cooperate in an international effort for orange justice.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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