EDITORIAL: Legacy of death (07/28/02)

EDITORIAL

Legacy of death

The new discovery of a mass grave in the town of Zhovkva, 25 kilometers north of Lviv, underscored yet again the Soviet regime's horrific legacy, as the scene revealed the skeletal remains of over 230 people - one-third of them infants and children.

Experts believe the dead are post-World War II victims of the Soviet secret police, persons probably killed in the campaign to crush the populace of this staunchly patriotic Ukrainian region after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Dr. Yuri Shapoval, an authority on the history of Communist rule in Ukraine, recently wrote that "state terrorism in Ukraine from the 1920s to the 1950s was invariably 'anti-nationalist.' Bolshevik security organs consistently regarded Ukrainians as potentially subversive..."

Speaking of the latest gruesome discovery in Zhovkva, Mykhailo Pavlyshyn, a leader of Memorial, a civic society founded back in 1989 at the time of glasnost and perestroika (perebudova), told The Weekly: "This was state terror, these are crimes against humanity." Yevhen Hryniv, a local activist, told The Washington Post, "We must confront the past for the sake of the future. ... Right now it's fashionable to talk about terrorism. That's what it was - terrorism against the people. Here almost every place is connected to tragedy, to death."

If only his words were not true... But there are mass graves of this sort all over Ukraine.

There is the vast burial ground in Vinnytsia, where the remains of nearly 10,000 people were found in three mass graves unearthed by the German occupation forces in 1943. The dead were all arrested and shot by the NKVD in 1937 and 1938, at the height of the Stalin Terror. The Soviets claimed the victims had actually been killed by the Nazis - and that was the official line until 1989 when local residents and Memorial decided it was time to learn the truth and fill in the "blank spots" of history.

Similarly, there is the Bykivnia Forest outside of Kyiv, a vast killing field encompassing more than 500 graves scattered over 11 acres with nearly 200,000 victims killed between 1929 and 1941. Bykivnia was part of the "Big Lie" formulated by the Soviets, who erected a monument at the site that said "6,359 Soviet soldiers, partisans, members of the underground and peaceful citizens" had been killed there by "the Fascist occupying forces in 1941-1943."

And then there are numerous smaller sites, such as Demianiv Laz, a nature preserve near Pasichna, south of Ivano-Frankivsk, where in 1989 some 500 bodies were exhumed along with documents proving they were victims of the NKVD.

The hope is that someone will be found who knows what happened in Zhovkva at the monastery that was turned into the local NKVD headquarters after World War II. However, as our correspondent in Ukraine reported, few experts believe the details will ever become known or those responsible identified. Many archives of the former Soviet secret police in Ukraine are inaccessible; still other archives of the secret police were removed to Moscow; and many are believed to have been destroyed in order to forever hide the truth about the brutality of the Soviet regime.

And yet, the activists of Memorial and others continue their work in the hope that, in the end, the truth will come out, that the truth will help heal Ukraine's deep scars. In the meantime, we pray that these unknown victims of the Soviet regime may rest in peace. Vichnaya Pamiat.

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