Ukrainians have mobilized to include the word “Holodomor” and its definition in major English-language dictionaries, including Oxford, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com, as a start for this effort. According to Deeptruth.ca, the broader goal of this initiative is to “help raise awareness of the Holodomor, increase the number of countries that recognize it as an act of genocide, and unmask the truth about modern-day genocides that continue to be perpetrated around the world today.” Currently, Ukraine and 15 other countries recognize the Holodomor as genocide.
The organization Deeptruth.ca on July 21 posted an online petition to have Holodomor recognized by the aforementioned dictionaries. The website also features a clever video (https://youtu.be/Gfuue2nP_Ro) using “deepfake” technology from the very man who perpetrated it – Joseph Stalin – to tell the truth about the Holodomor, the Famine-Genocide of 1933-1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. (The video was posted two weeks before the publication of this newspaper issue.)
The 75-second video is produced by Toronto-based ad agency Mixtape (MXTP.ca) in collaboration with Paul “The Fakening” Shales (fakening.com), a world-leading pioneer of deepfake technology whose vignettes involving politicians, business leaders and entertainers regularly go viral. With access to rare color film footage of Stalin, Shales used Artificial Intelligence to map the Soviet dictator’s features onto the face of a modern-day actor and bring Stalin back to life. In the video, Stalin declares himself the true originator of “fake news” for having covered up the magnitude of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine and concealed from the world the engineered murder of millions of innocent men, women and children.
The Deeptruth.ca campaign and website were conceived by the Holodomor National Awareness Tour of Canada, the organization credited with the very successful Holodomor Mobile Classroom (https://holodomortour.ca). The Holodomor National Awareness Tour is a project of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.
This new initiative urges action by individuals and organizations to promote the campaign among English-speaking countries, including Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Australia. Since 2008, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain has continued to work for inclusion of “Holodomor” in the Oxford English-language dictionary.
Stefan Romaniw, first vice-president of the Ukrainian World Congress, and the co-chair for government relations of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations (AFUO), spoke on July 21 with Bogdan Rudnytski on the Internet radio station SBS Ukrainian (sbs.com.au) and noted the 22 member organizations of AFUO are coordinating their efforts with the Ukrainian World Congress (www.ukraianworldcongress.org), where information and links for the online petition can be found.
Similar petitions can be found on the change.org website, (www.change.org/p/merriam-webster-dictionary-help-us-get-the-word-holodomor-included-in-all-major-english-dictionaries).
The word “Holodomor” is derived from the two Ukrainian words “moryty” and “holod” – murder or killing, and starvation. When combined, it literally means “to kill by starvation.” Although usage of the word began to increase after the 1970s thanks to diaspora publications in North America, the word’s early usage was documented by Ukrainian diaspora publications based in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s to describe the genocide. The first official use of the word in Ukraine was in 1987 after the introduction of the Soviet policy of glasnost (openness). “Holodomor” was included in Ukrainian dictionaries in 2004, which describe it as “artificial hunger, organized on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country’s population.”
Recent scholarly treatment of the Holodomor by authors such as Prof. Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum has increased awareness of the Holodomor not only within scholarly circles, but also throughout political circles, which continue to discuss the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide. The foundation of such work can be credited to Robert Conquest, author of “Harvest of Sorrow,” Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide,” and James Mace, executive director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine.
This latest effort to raise awareness of the Holodomor follows the success of the film “Mr. Jones,” by director Agnieszka Holland and screenwriter Andrea Chalupa, that offers the lesser-known perspective of Holodomor reporting by Welsh journalist Gareth Jones.
The U.S. National Holodomor Committee is expected to announce additional measures and efforts to push for “Holodomor” to be included in English dictionaries. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) have also joined the campaign.
Additional information on this campaign may be obtained by contacting Roma Dzerowicz, executive director of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, at 620 Spadina Ave., Second Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2H4; telephone, 416-966-9800; website, www.cufoundation.ca.