FACES AND PLACES: Lies and delusions live on (10/02/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Lies and delusions live on

During the Great Depression many American intellectuals, media moguls and religious leaders believed capitalism was dead. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was mecca, the center of the future, a harbinger of what should happen next in America. A command economy was the path to compassion, true equality and individual liberty.

During Soviet times, few people in the United States heard of Ukraine's Famine-Genocide and many among those who did hear, refused to believe it, preferring instead to accept the lies of New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty and others like him.

Even today, some Americans remain skeptical. One of the questions I am often asked by teachers and students during presentations on Ukraine's Famine-Genocide is "Why haven't we heard about this sooner?" When I tell them about the cover-up by the Soviet and American press, especially The New York Times, I'm not always certain that all in my audience are convinced. One teacher during a University of Denver seminar, for example, protested that she had taken Russian history courses in college and the topic of Ukraine's Famine-Genocide never came up!

The Soviet cover-up was consistent, complete and masterful. In his book "Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics," for example, Russian writer Felix Chuev records a December 1972 interview with Viacheslav Molotov, once Stalin's closest confidant. Turning to Ukraine, Mr. Chuev comments: "Among writers, some say the famine of 1933 was deliberately organized by Stalin and the whole of your leadership."

"Enemies of Communism say that!" explodes Mr. Molotov. "They are enemies of communism! People who are not politically aware, who are politically blind. No, in collectivization, you can be sure, hands cannot tremble, you cannot quake in your boots, and if anyone begins to shiver - beware!"

"But nearly 12 million perished of hunger in 1933..." continues the interviewer.

"The figures have not been substantiated!"

"Not substantiated?" asks Mr. Chuev.

"No, no, not at all. In those years I was out in the country on grain procurement trips. Those things could not have escaped me. They simply couldn't. I twice traveled to Ukraine ... Of course I saw nothing of the kind there. Those allegations are absurd! Absurd! ... No, those figures are an exaggeration, though such deaths had been reported in some places. It was a year of terrible hardships," said Mr. Molotov.

As Robert Conquest writes in "Dragons of Expectations: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History," however, the truth of the matter is quite different: "We now have a document that records the decision of the Politburo in July 1932, when Molotov, just back from the Ukraine, reported, 'We definitely face the specter of famine, especially in the rich bread areas,' after which a Politburo decision ordered that 'whatever the cost, the confirmed plan for grain requisition must be fulfilled.' "

"Further such evidence," continues Prof. Conquest, "appears in a letter written by Dnepropetrovsk [sic] party secretary Mikhail Khatkevych in November 1932, which states that in order to ensure the state's production future, 'we must take into account the minimum needs of the kolkhozniks, for otherwise there will be no one left to sow and ensure production.' Molotov's answer was, 'your position is profoundly incorrect, un-Bolshevik. We Bolsheviks cannot put the needs of the state - needs precisely defined in party resolutions - in the 10th or even the second place.' "

"Stalin's concern was to make sure the foreign press got no wind of these horrors," writes Donald Rayfield in "Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant And Those Who Killed For Him." According to the book, Stalin wrote furiously in 1933: " 'Molotov, Kaganovich! Do you know who let the American correspondents in Moscow go to the Kuban? They have cooked up some filth about the situation in the Kuban ... This must be put a stop to and these gentlemen must be banned from traveling all over the USSR. There are enough spies as it is ...' "

"Down in the Ukraine what disturbed Stalin was not the deaths of millions of his subjects," continues Prof. Rayfield, "but the vacillating local leaders who grumbled that plans for grain procurement were 'unreal.' 'What is this? This isn't a party, it's a parliament, a caricature of a parliament,' he wrote to Kaganovich," another of his trusted hangmen.

"As for Kaganovich and Molotov, their murderousness ... stemmed not from any inner compulsion to kill, but from a total, doglike submission to their psychopathic master," concludes Dr. Rayfield. According to one American historian, Mr. Molotov "could sign the death warrants of 3,187 people in one night and then watch Western movies with Stalin with a pure conscience."

Molotov was born Viacheslav Skryabin in a small town in the Kirov Oblast in 1890. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1916, taking the party name Molotov (derived from the word for hammer). Despite his humble beginnings, Molotov achieved high party positions following the Bolshevik coup d'état in 1917, including foreign minister. Architect of the infamous Molotov/Ribbentrop pact between Hitler and Stalin in 1939, he was at Stalin's side at Yalta in 1945 when the Soviet leader was awarded Eastern Europe. The "Molotov cocktail," a gasoline-filled bottle hurled at Germans tanks during the war was named after him. Molotov was the only person to have met not only Stalin, but Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Mao Zedong and Kim il Sung.

Described by Lenin as "the best file clerk in Russia," Molotov was one of Stalin's many faithful henchmen. He betrayed close Bolshevik friends during Stalin's many purges, and he divorced his Jewish wife when Stalin demanded it. He died in 1986, praising Stalin to the end.

Has anything changed among certain members of the American media? Consider this: CNN mogul Ted Turner described his recent trip to North Korea during an interview with Wolf Blitzer, claiming he saw nothing amiss. True, the people were thin and rode bicycles, and there were few cars, he noted. Asked about Kim Jong il, Mr. Turner admitted he never met him but from his pictures he concluded that the North Korean tyrant looked pretty normal. Right.

Who said history doesn't repeat?

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

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