Ukrainians mark national Day of Memory

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Tens of thousands of Ukrainians converged on St. Michael's Square on November 25 to place candles, in memory of the up to 15 million Ukrainians who perished during the nation's three disastrous 20th-century famines.

The Day of Memory for Victims of Famines and Political Repressions rose to a new level of stateliness and recognition this year, indicating that it has become a major national holiday for Ukrainian society, observed on the fourth Saturday in November.

For the first time, much of St. Michael's Square was cordoned off by scores of military cadets holding Ukrainian flags for the official ceremony led by President Viktor Yushchenko, Verkhovna Rada Chair Oleksander Moroz and other Ukrainian leaders.

"I don't know what Ukraine would have looked like had they lived," Mr. Yushchenko said of the millions of victims in his address. "I know what Ukraine looks like today."

"And I know what she [Ukraine] could become if she forgets the innocent perished souls of her children because of her trifling, her pitifulness - the type of country that inevitably sells its soul, its language and its memory. She will become a faceless territory with a faceless people," the president continued.

The crowd's size was unprecedented for an event that was initiated by Viktor and Kateryna Yushchenko only three years ago, when they asked Ukrainians to light a candle on behalf of victims of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 and place it at the Holodomor Victims Monument on St. Michael's Square.

An estimated 2,000 Ukrainians came for what was largely a grassroots event that had few formalities.

The Holodomor of 1932-1933 is an event that deeply affected Mr. Yushchenko, his family and his native village of Khoruzhivka in the Sumy Oblast, which suffered nearly 1,000 deaths, more than twice the casualties from all of World War II.

The president's grandfather, Ivan, starved to death. Mrs.Yushchenko's parents experienced the Holodomor and survived.

In 2003 Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and former Rada Chair Volodymyr Lytvyn arrived to place wreaths, but delivered no speeches and didn't stay for the requiem concert or moleben ceremony.

A national event

Mr. Yushchenko had said then that he hoped the commemoration would become an annual national event and, indeed, it has since spread to most major Ukrainian cities.

Now president, Mr. Yushchenko sent letters to Ukraine's oblast administration chairs and mayors ahead of this year's event, asking that they hold wreath-laying ceremonies at oblast Holodomor monuments, and plant guelder-rose (kalyna) bushes as well.

In Odesa more than 200 Ukrainians took part in a panakhyda (requiem) service for Holodomor victims at the former Oblast Committee headquarters of the Communist Party. They advocated establishing a Holodomor victims monument at the same place where a Lenin statue once stood.

In the town of Zhovkva, outside of Lviv, Ukrainians reburied the remains of an estimated 270 civilians murdered by the NKVD after the second world war. Human bones had been discovered in the basement of the Basilian Monastery in 2002. Bullet holes were lodged in most of the victims' skulls.

In a religious ceremony, 56 coffins were carried to a grave where a Christian burial was held and a cross will bear the words, "Victims of the Communist Terror."

Similar ceremonies were held in Lviv for the remains of those tortured by Communists in prison.

In the Russian Federation, Ukrainians held the first panakhydy for Holodomor victims in cities such as Tiumen, Krasnodar and Voronezh. In Moscow a memorial service took place at Epiphany Cathedral.

Events in Kyiv this year were of an unprecedented scale, with tens of thousands in attendance - the daily newspaper Ukrayina Moloda even estimated up to 100,000 participants.

In the morning, Mr. Yushchenko, his family, Mr. Moroz, Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Dmytro Tabachnyk and other government officials attended a moleben service led by Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate at St. Sophia Cathedral.

Leaders of all of Ukraine's major Churches were present, with the exception of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate, which doesn't partake in religious ceremonies with clergy of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

Mr. Yanukovych was noticeably absent as well.

The entourage then traveled to the Park of Eternal Glory to bless a small monument marking the general area where the future Holodomor Historical Memorial Complex and Institute of National Memory will stand.

Ukrainian society is not looking for guilty people to blame in its unfolding social dialogue on the Holodomor, Mr. Yushchenko said. Responsible for the 1932-1933 Holodomor was the totalitarian, Communist, Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union, he said.

"I am convinced that knowing history - true history and not rewritten history - is one of the virtues of the generation that lives," Mr. Yushchenko said.

"We are supposed to know the truth," he said. "Why we buried 10 million of our citizens when 5.5 million tons of grain went through Ukraine to the ports of Odesa, Kerch and Feodosiya. Why did this happen, and what is this called?"

In his address, Mr. Yushchenko cited the example of a single Ukrainian village, Serhiyivka in the Chernihiv Oblast, to exemplify the Holodomor's tragedy.

During the six years of World War II, 488 residents died, compared to more than 1,000 casualties during the two years of the Holodomor. About 650 villagers live there currently.

A symbolic monument

The symbolic monument erected in Kyiv is made of "black boards," or lists that signified the total destruction of a district. During the Holodomor the Soviet government marked 84 districts with black boards.

After Patriarch Filaret led a moleben for the future museum and memorial complex site, the entourage of Ukrainian leaders went to the Dnipro slopes of the Pecherskyi Landscape Park to plant a second row of kalyna bushes, the national symbol of Ukraine which is used also to commemorate Holodomor victims.

Later in the afternoon, political and religious leaders, including the president's family, Mr. Moroz, Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi, Patriarch Filaret and Patriarch Lubomyr Husar of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church led a memorial procession amidst a thick fog from St. Sophia Cathedral to St. Michael Cathedral.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians joined, filling the short boulevard with blue-and-yellow flags.

Organizers created a wide, cordoned central section on St. Michael's Square, which was lined with scores of candles in glass jars placed on black platforms and guarded by military cadets holding large Ukrainian flags.

Each Ukrainian leader held a candle nestled in a pot filled with grain and wrapped by a wreath, which was then placed at the monument, followed by representatives of each Ukrainian oblast.

Although not part of the official entourage, among those attending the ceremony were Foreign Affairs Minister Borys Tarasyuk, Lviv Oblast Administration Chair Petro Oliinyk, Soviet dissident Mykhailo Horyn and rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk.

In his address, President Yushchenko demanded that Ukraine's Parliament recognize the Holodomor, and called on the Russian Federation "to stand by us, and through government recognition of the Holodomor, demonstrate a high example of human empathy deserving of the Russian people."

"Those who deny the Holodomor deeply and convincingly hate Ukraine," Mr. Yushchenko said. "They hate us, our spirit and our future. They don't deny history. They deny Ukrainian nationhood. In the name of the Ukrainian people, I confirm that Holodomor victims should be honored as martyrs of one of the biggest catastrophes of humanity."

Mr. Yushchenko devoted much of his address citing documents, historical facts and statistics proving the Holodomor was genocide.

During the 1932-1933 Holodomor, 17 Ukrainians died every minute, 1,000 died every hour and 25,000 every day, resulting in between 7 million and 10 million deaths, Mr. Yushchenko said.

The average lifespan for a Ukrainian man in 1933 was seven years, and 10 years for Ukrainian women.

The president cited Communist Party documents that confirmed the party forbade trade on Ukrainian territory in August 1932, and then forbade Ukrainians to travel to Russia to try to find food.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine designated 84 Ukrainian districts as "black board" lists, which entailed isolation, total collectivization of food and wheat supplies, and starvation to death.

"It's hard for me to continue this list of crimes, but there is a single essence today: Ukraine is, and Ukraine lives," Mr. Yushchenko said.

A minute of silence was observed at 4 p.m. following the president's speech.

After the official ceremony, St. Michael's Square opened to allow the thousands of Ukrainians who had arrived to place their glass-enclosed candles at the Holodomor Victims Memorial, and through the square. Some formed shapes of crosses and circles out of the scores of candles placed on the square and placed symbolic wheat sheaves in the middle.

For the first time, organizers put up large plasma screens with speakers that displayed Holodomor survivors giving their testimonies.

Among those attending the ceremony was a Poltava village native, Vera Kolomiyets, 55, who said her parents survived the Holodomor only because her grandmother was able to trade the Kozak family gold for five kilograms of grain to feed her family.

Her grandmother, Efrosynia Vasko, told her about her Holodomor experience when Ms. Kolomiyets was nine years old.

She sold the family gold to buy back the very same grain the local Communists had collected - only for a higher price, she said.

Most of these Communists, including the collective farm chair, his deputy and supervisors, were ethnic Jews and survived the Holodomor, Ms. Kolomiyets said.

She is convinced the Holodomor was a genocide against ethnic Ukrainians, particularly the middle-class intelligentsia to which her family belonged. They owned 62 acres of land.

"It was the extermination of the Ukrainian nation," Ms. Kolomiyets said. "Not of the Ukrainian people, because a lot of nations belong to the Ukrainian people, but the Ukrainian nation."

As a result, a disturbing number of Ukrainians citizens deny the Holodomor was genocide because many aren't ethnic Ukrainians themselves, particularly in eastern Ukraine, said Oksana, her daughter.

"God forbid any nation live through such a horror," Ms Kolomiyets said. "Because this genocide was the biggest in the world and that's why I think people have to unite against this evil."

The president's entourage and family attended an evening concert of Verdi's "Requiem" at the Shevchenko National Opera and Ballet Theater.

Patriarch Filaret said the Holodomor's goal was to destroy the Ukrainian people, and succeeded in eradicating the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church because it was Ukrainian.

Ukraine's population declined by 7.5 million between 1929 and 1939, while the other Soviet republics experienced population growth during that time.

"The Bolshevik regime not only destroyed the Ukrainian nation, but the Ukrainian spirit," the patriarch said. "Having obtained nationhood from God, Ukraine wants spiritual rebirth and wants to tell the truth about its history."

Other memorial events

Throughout late November, numerous Holodomor-related events took place in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine.

An American businessman and advocate for recognition of the Holodomor, Morgan Williams, organized a November 29 ceremony at which the National Academy of Arts presented awards to students for their submissions to the Holodomor Poster Art Program.

Since 1988 Mr. Williams has amassed the world's largest collection of Holodomor-related artwork - about 300 pieces - a significant part of which are posters created in the last two decades because virtually no original artwork from the 1930s has remained to this day.

The Alex and Helen Woskob Foundation based in State College, Pa., provided the financial awards to the contest winners, which included $300 for first place, three $200 second-place awards and four $100 third-place awards, as well as $50 to remaining participants.

National Academy of Arts fifth-year student Yulia Kunshykova, 21, won first place for her poster, "Speechless Misery in the Yard."

In blood red and black colors, the poster depicts a fence made of horizontally arranged branches, the prototypical symbol of the Ukrainian village, leaning against a wood pillar. Higher up, a row of branches bears a slightly lighter tone than its neighbors, forming the image of a cross and symbolizing the deaths that occurred behind fences.

Mr. Williams was in Kyiv for the November 25 commemoration and subsequent parliamentary vote, which he said deeply impressed him, particularly the unexpected support from Mr. Moroz and the Socialist Party of Ukraine.

Mr. Williams' latest advocacy is the immediate construction of the Holodomor Memorial Historical Complex so that it's ready in time for the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Famine-Genoide in 2008.

Construction of the complex endured years of delay in selecting a site and architectural design, as well as a lack of government financing.

The complex's leaders told The Weekly that progress has been made in recent weeks to obtain financing from a coalition government that is largely hostile to the Holodomor's memory, particularly on the part of Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Tabachnyk, who holds Russophile views.

The 2007 budget will contain about $20 million in financing for the complex, said Roman Krutsyk, an Our Ukraine national deputy who is a leader in the complex project.

Originally, the coalition government had excluded any 2007 funding for the complex, but Mr. Yushchenko and the Presidential Secretariat successfully lobbied for its financing.

Meanwhile, the Institute of National Memory will receive $400,000 in funding from the 2007 budget, said Director Ihor Yukhnovskyi, compared to the $3 million he said is needed.

Mr. Tabachnyk has been hostile to financing the Institute of National Memory, Mr. Krutsyk said.

Until two weeks ago, the institute has been merely an idea, existing without an office or any salaried employees.

Recent amendments to the 2006 budget provided $183,000 in financing for the Institute, which must be spent by the year's end, forcing Mr. Krutsyk and Mr. Yukhnovskyi to work long hours in order not to lose the money, Mr. Krutsyk said.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 10, 2006, No. 50, Vol. LXXIV

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