LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (10/22/06)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Famine memorial's conceptual confusion

Dear Editor:

A monument is effective only if it represents a clear conception. Judging from the report on the planned Famine commemorative complex in Kyiv and Morgan Williams' comments (September 17), there is some conceptual confusion about the project. Should it focus on the victims or the perpetrators? Should it be religious or political? Is it a commemoration or a condemnation?

Underlying these uncertainties there is, I think, a deep ambivalence. On the one hand, we want to build a monument that will symbolize the suffering, death and resurrection of the Famine victims of 1932-1933. This calls for a mood of compassion and contemplation. On the other hand, we want to condemn the genocidal policies of the Soviet Communist state. That requires a bold political indictment.

Can a single monument do both? Can we reconcile mourning with outrage? Or does spirituality mute the impulse to political action? And does the triumphant narrative of resurrection blunt the tragedy of death? If we cannot answer these questions, we cannot create a conceptually coherent monument to the Famine.

Yet we can answer these questions. Just as faith and joy in the Resurrection hardly diminish our horror at Christ's torments, so our prayers for the Famine victims need not deter us from condemning the crimes of its perpetrators. Nor should anything hold us back from exposing the nihilistic ideology which, with inexorable logic, led to a policy of annihilation.

But how can we embody such a complex conception in a concrete memorial? As described, the monument will have a binary symbolism, tracing a path downward to death, then upward to renewed life - a universal narrative (and, incidentally, not an exclusively Christian one).

The facilities for the study of the historical Famine - the narrative of death - would belong to the first part. They should include the museum, library, archive, genealogical and research center. The chapel would naturally belong to the second part - the narrative of resurrection.

Of course, many visitors might simply walk through the complex without pausing. There must be some way to convey the message to them. Here, as Mr. Williams suggests, the Holocaust Museum in Washington could provide some guidance. Perhaps engraving the walls with the names of depopulated villages, together with their death tolls, would be a fitting way to touch even the most casual visitor.

But these are matters for the planners and architects to decide. I am confident that Mr. Haidamaka and his associates will do so with feeling and imagination.

Andrew Sorokowski
Rockville, Md.

About Ukraine's right to be part of Europe

Dear Editor:

The Ukrainian Weekly on September 3 printed "Europe - my neurosis," the acceptance speech of Ukrainian writer Yurii Andrukhovych for this year's Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, which was delivered on March 15. The book is Mr. Andrukhovych's novel "Twelve Rings," which was published in German translation. It deals with what the title of the Leipzig Book Prize addresses, namely "European Understanding."

After expressing his gratitude to the jury for awarding him the prize, thanking his friends and readers of his book, Mr. Andrukhovych turned his attention and speech to the relevant matter, which was the statement of Guenter Verheugen on February 20 published in the popular German newspaper Die Welt. Mr. Verheugen, who is one of the commissioners of the European Union, and who is described as "superofficial superperson" when asked by a journalist about the future of United Europe stated: "In 20 years all European states will be members of the EU, with the exception of the successor states to the Soviet Union that are not yet part of the EU."

Most of us sympathize with Mr. Andrukhovych and share his neurosis concerning the place of Ukraine among EU nations, especially since the Orange Revolution. Mr. Andrukhovych, when addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg in December 2004, was appealing for a chance for Ukraine to join the EU and quoted Ivan Franko: "We too are in Europe."

In addition, in his March 15 speech, Mr. Andrukhovych charges the EU for its attitude towards Ukraine, singling it out by disguising it in general terms: "the successor states to the Soviet Union." Mr. Andrukhovych writes: "In the former USSR there is only one country with a European dream" - Ukraine. He also mentions the fact that not a single German intellectual or any other member of Germany's elite questioned the validity of Mr. Verheugen's statement.

It is also ironic that the pronouncement that Ukraine is not eligible to join the EU was made by Mr. Verheugen, a German whose compatriots during World War II on one side and Soviet Communists on the other side were responsible for the death of millions of Ukrainian people and the horrible devastation of their country. One would rather expect a helping hand on the part of Germans to bring Ukraine into the EU as a moral obligation.

Kudos to Mr. Andrukhovych, who represents the finest of the new generation of writers in present-day Ukraine for his impassioned involvement and his defense of the right of Ukraine to be in Europe.

Myroslaw Burbelo, M.D.
Westerly, R.I.

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