LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (03/16/03)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Great Famine and Joseph Stalin

Dear Editor:

This year, the world community, but especially we Ukrainians, are reminded of two connected historical events. The terror Famine in Ukraine 70 years ago (1932-1933) and the death of Stalin 50 years ago on March 5.

When the 17th Communist Party Congress met in Moscow in January-February 1934, Stalin boasted that the party had routed its enemies. There was "no one to fight." But the delegates of this "Congress of Victors" knew the truth, or some of it. The human cost of collectivization and the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, had been beyond comprehension.

Historian Robert Conquest in his book "Harvest of Sorrow" gives estimates of between 6 million and 8 million men, women and children of rural Ukraine starved to death in this man-made tragedy.

Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist who at the time was a dedicated socialist, upon hearing of starvation in Ukraine, bought a ticket from Moscow and traveled to Ukraine. What he saw terminated his affair with communism. In the early summer of 1933 Muggeridge reported: "on recent visit to Ukraine and Caucasus I saw something of the battle that is going on between the government and peasants. On the one side millions of starving peasants, their bodies often swollen from lack of food; on the other, soldier members of the GPU carrying out instructions of dictatorship of the proletariat. They had shot or exiled thousand of peasants, sometimes whole villages, they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to melancholy desert..."

George Orwell complained of England that "huge events like the Ukraine famine, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of majority of English Russophiles, but also of a large and influential body of Western thought."

Vasily Grossman wrote: "the degree required that the peasants of the [sic] Ukraine, the Don and the Kuban be put to death by starvation, put to death along with their little children."

However the pro-Soviet New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty in November 1932 reported that "there is no famine or starvation, nor is there likely to be." Talking about Duranty, Muggeridge said that he is "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."

Patrick Buchanan, political writer and former presidential candidate, wrote a commentary in The Providence Sunday Journal on September 26, 1993 (on the 60th anniversary of the terror Famine in Ukraine) titled: "The Times should renounce its blood-soaked Pulitzer of 1932." In his concluding paragraph Mr. Buchanan writes: "On this 60th anniversary of the Forgotten Holocaust, The New York Times would do well to renounce Duranty's Pulitzer, apologize to the people of Ukraine, and admit on page one what the world now knows."

The Ukrainian community should make Mr. Buchanan "man of the year" and express our deep appreciation for his act in challenging one of the most powerful newspapers in America for our cause.

We have to thank and congratulate the editors of The Ukrainian Weekly for publishing the journalistic/historiographic "The Ukrainian Weekly 2000," Volume I (1933-1969) and Volume II (1970-1999). Under the heading "The 1930s: A Neophyte newspaper and the Great Famine" by Roma Hadzewycz are articles by Ukrainian American journalists who were trying to bring to the attention of the U.S. government and the world the naked truth about the Soviet government and the horrible crime of the Stalin-perpetrated Famine-Genocide in Ukraine.

Even now, well over a decade after the fall of communism, many people still do not know or realize the scope of Stalin's blood-stained brutal reign of terror.

German communist poet Erich Meusam, "a guest" in one of Hiltler's camps and whose wife was in the gulag, called Stalin "Hitler plus Asia."

Stalin, the Russified Georgian, who for nearly a quarter of a century wielded more power than anyone in history, was a pupil of Lenin who "improved upon" his methods of ruthless extermination and introduced his lawless terror in which millions of people perished.

It is ironic that on this 50th anniversary of Stalin's death, many befuddled people, especially in the former Soviet Union - including Ukraine, are still commemorating this monster.

Dr. Gregory M. Burbelo
Westerly, R.I.

Bush administration is orchestrating war

Dear Editor:

It is frightening how easily the Bush administration has orchestrated America's imminent war of aggression against Iraq, and how easily Bush and company have persuaded many Americans that war is necessary and vital right now.

To accept the Administration's claims that Saddam Hussein's regime presents an actual, present or imminent threat to the United States is an exercise in willful self-deception and the suspension of reason and common sense.

The Iraqi regime has been closely monitored and successfully contained during the last decade, and there is no reason to believe that this cannot continue indefinitely. Current U.N. inspections are continuing, and the Iraqis are being forced to expose and destroy their arsenal of offensive weaponry. What is it about Saddam Hussein's present conduct, what is it about the present circumstances that justifies or requires war?

President Bush's, Donald Rumsfield's and Colin Powell's continuing efforts to "make the case" for war have been lacking in candor, honesty and convincing evidence. The administration's argumentation is simply a barrage of propaganda. It is the practiced, cynical propagandist's confidence that the frequent repetition of a message or slogan - no matter how spurious or untrue will eventually be believed by the public, if repeated a sufficient number of times.

The administration's consistent and ever-louder drumbeat and its feeble "arguments" to justify war are embarrassing in their crudity and its efforts to bully, threaten and insult longtime friends of the United States into supporting the administration's policy (and to purchase the support of wavering nations by offering bribes or withholding aide, are reprehensible, and damage America's standing in the world.

Unfortunately, much of our mass media has all too happily jumped on the president's bandwagon in the clamor for war, probably looking forward to the opportunity of presenting "exciting, live coverage" to the public and fearing being labeled "unpatriotic."

President Bush should not be supported in his aggressive plan to force a "regime change" upon Iraq and, it now appears, upon the rest of the Arab world. Rather, he should be censured in the strongest terms for unleashing an unnecessary, unjustified and immoral war which will result in the deaths of totally blameless men, women and children; which will give the Muslim world even greater reason to hate America; which will bankrupt the American treasury; and which will establish a dangerous precedent likely to haunt the United States in the future when other nations may desire, and have the power, to change our regime.

Where are those who were so eager to impeach Bill Clinton for his stupid but comparatively harmless indiscretions now, when a bullheaded president is forcing an unjustified and immoral war upon us, and endangering America's future in the process?

Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility and committed a grave error when it approved the resolution giving President Bush carte blanche to initiate war against Iraq. Those senators and representatives who voted to do so should be held accountable in the next election.

American military superiority and technological wizardry will undoubtedly defeat the forces of Saddam Hussein and succeed in installing a compliant regime in Iraq, but the eventual cost to the United States - long after George Bush and his oil industry cronies have left office - will prove to be very, very high.

Michael J. Berezowsky
Troy, Mich.

The Ukrainian Weekly welcomes letters to the editor and commentaries on a variety of topics of concern to the Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian communities. Opinions expressed by columnists, commentators and letter-writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either The Weekly editorial staff or its publisher, the Ukrainian National Association.

Letters should be typed (double-spaced) and signed; they must be originals, not photocopies. The daytime phone number and address of the letter-writer must be given for verification purposes.

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