Lobbying by diaspora changes Holodomor stamp's design (11/30/03)

THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

Lobbying by diaspora changes Holodomor stamp's design

by Ingert Kuzych and Morgan Williams

SPRINGFIELD, Va. - Concerted pressure from Ukrainian Diaspora groups in the United States and Canada - led in no small part by the Ukrainian Philatelic and Numismatic Society (UPNS) - caused Ukrposhta, Ukraine's state postal service, to withdraw the design for a postage stamp commemorating Ukraine's Great Famine of 1932 and 1933.

Marka Ukrainy, Ukrposhta's printing house, canceled plans in late September to issue the stamp because it not only erroneously showed victims of an earlier famine in 1921, but also depicted victims who were Russian, not Ukrainian.

The stamp was intended to commemorate the genocidal famine referred to as the "Holodomor" (death torture by forced starvation). During the Famine, millions of peasants starved to death while Western markets were flooded with confiscated Ukrainian grain in order to fund the Stalin-era industrialization of the Soviet Union.

The stamp's introduction was originally planned to coincide with the Famine-Genocide commemorations that take place during the fourth weekend of November every year. Postal officials had to scramble during October and early November to redesign and print a new stamp in time to meet a November 21, 2003, release date.

Morgan Williams, UPNS member, senior advisor of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF), and publisher of the www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS), obtained a copy of the stamp from an undisclosed source. Several things immediately caught his eye. The first was that three Ukrainian famines were being commemorated on a single stamp (1921-1922, 1932-1933, and 1946-1947). Such a grouping it was felt would dilute the real reason for issuing the stamp: to concretely recognize the immensity of the Holodomor of the 1930s that was imposed on Ukraine - a tragedy that to this day continues to be glossed over by many Soviet-era holdovers still in government positions. Additionally, the design was terribly cluttered with the word "Holodomor" repeated three times.

What was really troubling about the image, however, was the starving peasants on the left side of the stamp. Mr. Williams recognized the figures of three women, a baby and a girl with a swollen belly as having come from a 1921 famine photograph. He then asked two prominent scholars, Dr. James Mace at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Dr. Roman Serbyn of the University of Quebec at Montreal, to confirm his discovery. Both men have extensively researched the famines that occurred in Soviet times. Not only did they agree that the photo was taken more than 10 years before the 1930s famine, but they also indicated that it pictured Russian peasants from Buzulak in Soviet Russia, not Ukraine.

Mr. Williams sent e-mails to anyone he could, alerting them to the error and trying to get the printing house to contact Marka Ukrainy and have them change the design. On September 29 he contacted Ingert Kuzych, president of the UPNS, with details of the planned stamp (including the stamp design) and with information about its erroneous depiction. That same evening, Dr. Kuzych sent out a letter - with copies of Mr. Williams' message - to over 100 UPNS members who have e-mails urging them to contact Marka Ukrainy and express their concern (see accompanying box).

On the following day Mr. Williams was able to set up a meeting at his Kyiv office with Valentyna Khudoliy, director of Marka Ukrainy. Also present at the get-together - called with just a three-hour notice - were Ross Chomiak, an American journalist living in Kyiv; Dr. Anatol Lysyj, president, Minnesota Chapter, Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine; and Dr. George Krywolap, Secretary, Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. (Dr. Mace, internationally recognized expert on the Holodomor, was tied up teaching a class at that time period.)

During the meeting, the gentlemen tried to convey their profound concerns about the stamp design. Ms. Khudoliy, however, informed them that it was too late to change the stamp's design since it had already received government approval. In addition, she was skeptical of Mr. Williams' claim that the stamp could be traced to 1921 and Soviet Russia since Ukrinform, the state information agency, had been commissioned to provide a historically accurate photo. Ms. Khudoliy also mentioned that the photo had recently been published in a book on 20th century Ukraine, where it had been labeled as being from Ukraine, albeit from 1921. She did not realize that very few images are available from the 1933 famine because of the clampdown on any photographs being taken that could verify the tragedy that was taking place.

Mr. Williams understood how crucial it was to use an image from the proper famine. In an otherwise excellent 1986 documentary on the Holodomor, "Harvest of Despair," the filmmakers had erroneously used photos from a Russian famine. This oversight gave some Russians a pretext to deny that the Holodomor had ever occurred. The fear was that similar allegations would arise if the stamp design in question was used.

Recipients of Mr. Williams' and Mr. Kuzych's e-mail campaign responded quickly. Ms. Khudoliy later affirmed that Marka Ukrainy started receiving messages at about the time that residents of North America's East Coast were waking up on September 30. By 4 p.m. that day, just hours after her meeting with Mr. Williams, she called to tell him that the stamp would be held up and that Marka Ukrainy would try to find a new photo.

Ms. Khudoliy acknowledged that pressure from "our Ukrainian diaspora" was the primary reason for the decision to hold up the production and sale of the stamp. She admitted that Ukrposhta was "surprised but unimpressed" that the stamp's design had been leaked before its scheduled release date, an action she called a gross violation of the designer's rights.

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