Ukrainian lawmakers call on government to build Famine memorial complex in Kyiv (02/16/03)

Ukrainian lawmakers call on government to build Famine memorial complex in Kyiv

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Various members of Ukraine's Parliament called on the Ukrainian government on February 12 to build an extensive memorial complex in the center of Kyiv to the millions of victims of the artificially induced Great Famine of 1932-1933.

The lawmakers also demanded that the government turn to the United Nations to officially acknowledge the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 as genocide. The comments came at a public hearing held in the Verkhovna Rada as part of commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Great Famine.

"The first thing that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych needs to do is to have the Famine recognized as genocide at the international level," said National Deputy Levko Lukianenko, a lawmaker and head of the Association of Famine Researchers. Mr. Lukianenko, along with several other politicians present, called for construction of a famine memorial center in downtown Kyiv to include a memorial to the victims, a museum, a library and a research center. The idea has recently gained enthusiasm within the Ukrainian diaspora, which has already begun a fund-raising drive.

The participants of the hearing also issued several resolutions, including a demand that the Cabinet of Ministers turn to the United Nations with a call that it recognize as genocide the murder by hunger of between 7 million and 10 million Ukrainians in its central and eastern lands during 1932-1933 through a deliberate and planned Soviet policy of forced starvation.

First Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, who spoke first at the hearing, called the Great Famine of 1932-1933 "the greatest tragedy of the Ukrainian nation," "a crime against humanity" and "genocide." He indicated that the current government was considering the proposal to build a famine memorial center as envisioned by Ukrainian leaders here and abroad.

Mr. Tabachnyk spoke before a series of politicians and academics who acknowledged that the 1932-1933 famine was indeed masterminded by Stalin and carried out by his henchmen in Kyiv with the intent to wipe out Ukrainians who were opposed to being ruled by Moscow and to force agricultural collectivization on the largely peasant citizenry. The first vice prime minister noted that at the time peasants were not allowed to leave their villages to seek food after their own stores were confiscated and were turned back to their barren homes when they fled to the cities.

"Ukraine reflected a military reservation at the time," explained Mr. Tabachnyk, who also referred to documented incidents of cannibalism in the countryside. He said that 70 percent of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast was starved.

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn, who directed the proceedings, called for an effort to identify by name all the victims in order to properly memorialize them. Prof. James Mace, whose seminal research was central to U.S. congressional hearings in the 1980s that recognized the Great Famine as genocide, also spoke in support of a proper memorial, as did Prof. Stanislav Kulchytsky, Prof. Ivan Kuras and National Deputies Viktor Yushchenko, Hennadii Udovenko, Ivan Pliusch and Levko Lukianenko.

Yet unanimity of feeling and intent did not rein at the hearing. National Deputy Petro Symonenko, chairman of the Communist Party of Ukraine, raised a ruckus when he asserted, while giving his take on the Great Famine, that it came as the result of a severe drought and was part of a cycle of starvation, albeit worse than previous ones, that Ukraine had regularly experienced every 10-11 years since the latter part of the previous century. Mr. Symonenko blamed the famine not on Soviet leaders, but on the remnants of the capitalist system, which he said was responsible for the earlier famines and which still had not been fully excised by the first part of the 1930s.

National Deputy Pliusch, former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, spoke after Mr. Symonenko and immediately fired a sharp response to the remarks. His voice filling with emotion, Mr. Pliusch looked sternly at the Communist leader and retorted: "It was godless Bolshevism that destroyed a whole generation of our best sons and daughters. And it cannot be forgiven for this."

In a milder tone, former Soviet political prisoner and current National Deputy Lukianenko, speaking earlier in the hearing, referred to several dozen Communist adherents who stood outside the Verkhovna Rada building as the hearing took place and said they must be understood as unfortunate people, misguided by Soviet policies and still twisted by its revanchist history. He added that they should be invited inside the Rada chambers to listen to the truth.

Mr. Lukianenko underscored that the Communists must seek repentance and ask for forgiveness for their transgressions, many of which they still fail to understand.

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