Is this a Human Rights Museum or a Holocaust memorial?

A nice bit of holocaust denial appeared in the form of an "advertisement" on page A5 of the National Post in their Apr.23, 2011 issue. Apparently, Izzy Asper's vision for a Human Rights Museum for Winnipeg has devolved into a holocaust-focused museum - which is fine, as long as we understand which "holocaust" is being focused upon here.
It appears to me that the holocaust deniers who signed this "ad" want to portray this holocaust as a Jewish-only horror - in other words,  no other WWII victims can be included in that definition for their narrative to work.
If so, then this version should be trademarked as a capital-H "Holocaust TM ", so people can differentiate that they are talking only and specifically of Jews - to the exclusion of all others - who died from nazi atrocities. Karen Silverstrim clearly emphasized this very sensitive and extremely nuanced point in her detailed article "Overlooked millions: Non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust".
Millions of non-combatant Jews were part of the holocaust, as were millions of other non-combatant victims (labelled by the nazis as 'subhumans'); eliminated under a pre-planned, politically-motivated, state-run agenda. Manipulating the narrative to exclude non-Jewish victims of nazi atrocities is a frankly distasteful denial of this holocaust.
Unfortunately for those today trying to peddle a type of  'exclusionary' capital H trademarked view, Jews WERE NOT the only ones to be targeted, gassed and burned in Hitler's ovens: the real holocaust was not exclusively Jewish - it was a shared monstrous fate. Acknowledging this fact should in no way demean nor undermine the extent of Jewish suffering.
Anyone who understands this context will then see the disingenuousness of this National Post "ad", which purports that the Ukrainian community is illegitimately agitating against Jews, by inflating the number of people killed in Stalin's earlier Holodomor genocide to artificially supersede that of the Jewish-only victims, part of  Hitler's holocaust several years later.
The hypocrisy of this "ad" is that this demeaning accusation is made against the Ukrainian community [specifically vis a vis the Holdomor: feh: 'only three million' died...(and weren't any of those victims also Jewish Ukrainians?)] while in the very next moment, this "ad" then talks of how many more Jews perished in the holocaust - thereby justifying their top place in the pantheon of victimhood - and deserving a permanent HRM exhibit!
This duplicitous "ad" is exactly what it pretends not be be: this "ad" is all about establishing and maintaining the hierarchy of suffering; about placing Jewish suffering above all others, as if WWII  had had no other victims, at least, none worthy of elevated 'permanent status'... I dunno: how many more Ukrainians should have died for Kaganovich, Stalin, Hitler and the holocaust-denying holocaust-deniers to be happy? How many more Ukrainians should have been murdered by marauding Polish paramilitary while under nazi occupation? Too bad for the victims of the holodomor that Stalin's murderous commies weren't as meticulous record-keepers as Hitler's murderous fascists...
This "museum" should instead be appropriately renamed as a center of Holocaust Remembrance, funded privately, and allowed to pursue its selected (and selective) narrative agenda.
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As the UCCLA notes, it is unfair and unacceptable that HRM exhibits with privileged partiality be funded from the public purse.
The HRM's 12 proposed galleries "should all be inclusive, comparative and thematic in their treatment of the many episodes of genocide and crimes against humanity that have befouled human history - before, during and since the Second World War."
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The Human Rights Museum's Holocaust exhibit must not be exclusionary

In view of the recent Human Rights Museum controversy regarding Stalin's Holodomor vs. Hitler's Holocaust, let's remind ourselves - AGAIN - that the Holocaust was not exclusively a Jewish horror, but included millions of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, White Russian and Gypsy victims, all labelled as subhuman and killed-off by the nazis.
It is worth asking what is the exact definition of the Holocaust which is being contemplated as a permanent exhibition (to the exclusion of others) at the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg. If the Holocaust is being presented as a solely Jewish-focused exhibit, then that is in itself an act of holocaust denial. Those desiring to challenge this fact might read "Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust" by Karen Silverstrim.
Ukrainians were targeted in both horrors.
To dismiss and deny that Stalin's Holodomor was a genocide - and then, to further demean Slavs by diminishing their extermination in Hitler's Holocaust as being of a lower degree of importance than the Jews' - is beyond the pale, plain chauvinistic anti-slavism.
If such is the position ultimately presented by the HRM, then this Canadian tax-payer-funded human rights museum is about human rights propaganda; about a selected hierarchy of suffering.

The Ukrainian Weekly reported on Aug.17, 1986 (pg.4):

"The Other Holocaust: Many Circles of Неll" by Dr.Bohdan Wytwycky was one of five books reviewed together recently in The New York Review of Books in a lengthy article dealing with the Holocaust.
In the review, Gordon A. Craig discussed the main points of the five books: the Jews' plight in Europe and Hitler's plans to eliminate them, the little-discussed fact that millions of Slavs and Gypsies also perished, the German attempt to destroy Polish identity and liquidate the nation, the press's virtual disregard of the slaughter of millions of human beings and the world's disbelief, sometimes deliberate, that such atrocities could occur.
Mr. Craig emphasized that when talking of the Holocaust, one cannot forget about non-Jews who died as a result of the Nazi machine.
"It by now reasonably well known that 6 million Jews died as a result of the policies of Adolf Hitler, but far less so that the total number of non-military victims of Nazi genocidal policies was
probably between 14 and 16 million.
The discrepancy between the two figures has led some students of the second world war to question current usage of the term 'Holocaust' which is usually taken to mean the destruction of the European Jews, and the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz has expressed concern lest this exclusivist usage tend to make people forget that millions of Poles, Russians, and prisoners of other nationalities suffered the same brutal end," he wrote.
"One can acknowledge that too little attention has been paid to the fate of these other victims without ceasing to believe that there are sound reasons for treating the Final Solution as a special case."
On Dr. Wytwycky's book Mr. Craig commented:
"Meanwhile, as the Jews died, their fate was shared by other people, and it is the unique service of Dr. Bohdan Wytwycky that, in a monograph of less than a hundred pages, he has for the
first time brought together in English the basic facts about the horrors suffered
by Gypsies, Poles, Ukrainians. Byelorussians, Russian prisoners of war; and Ostarbeiter sent to Germany, as well as a list of useful sources for further study of this other Holocaust. Dr. Wytwycky is clearly appalled by the story that he has to tell, which will be understandable
to anyone who reads his description of the terrible scenes that accompanied the final liquidation of the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz in 1944, of the brutalities of Erich Koch, the Nazi commissioner for the Ukraine, who told his staff in April 1942, 'Strickly speaking, we are here among Negroes,' of the arbitrary nature of Nazi terror in the villages of Byelorussia, and of the deliberate mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war, who were worked to death on a regimen of one ladle of beetrot of water a day."
In his book, Dr. Wytwycky expresses horror that the Holocaust occurred:
"One cannot even begin to understand how or why any of this was possible ... In the pronouncements of the Nazis, Jews and Gypsies and Slavs were explicitly described as 'subhumans ... social and psychological inhibitions which normally operate to restrain men's savage impulses were unleashed, and millions of Jewish, Gypsy and Slavic innocents were victimized."
Dr. Wytwycky estimates that as many as 50,000 Gypsies, 3 million Polish Christians, which included half of the educated classes, 3 million Ukrainians, plus 1 million Ukrainian Jews, and one out of four persons comprising the Byelorussian population were exterminated by the Nazis."

How many officials over at the HRM have even read that book? Will the HRM's proposed Holocaust-focus include acknowledging all these victims, or will it be skewed to a Jewish-centric focus?
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Wasn't the Holodomor a holocaust?

Peter Worthington wrote in Stalin's starvation of Ukraine omitted (Toronto Sun, Dec.22, 2010):
"With Christmas just two days away, this may seem an odd topic for the season of goodwill and joy. Then again, maybe not.

The question begs: How can you have a federally-financed museum of human rights that does not included the Ukrainian Holodomor, the starvation of some seven million Ukrainians in 1932-33 by Stalin?

The answer is you can't, not if it's going to truly be a museum that "increases understanding and awareness about human rights," as it promises.

At this moment, the celebrated Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, the brainchild of the late Izzy Asper and energized by his daughter Gail, has only two permanent galleries: A Holocaust gallery and an Aboriginal Peoples gallery.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) is upset there's little mention of the Ukrainian famine, perhaps the only man-made famine in history, that Stalin implemented to bring Ukraine to heel and to eliminate a huge proportion of Ukrainians who resisted collectivization and communism.

It was genocide of the first order.

It succeeded.

It scarred the conscience of Ukrainians, and every civilized person who was aware of it.

At the time, the New York Times correspondent in the Soviet Union, Walter Duranty, believed Stalin's propaganda and was an apologist for the system. He never identified the famine for what it was, and was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize, which many have urged be revoked in light of his deceit and abandonment of journalistic integrity.

There are some 1.2 million Ukrainian Canadians, most with distant connections to those who died in the Holodomor. By contrast there are some 325,000 Jews in Canada, many with links to the Nazi Holocaust. In actual numbers, Jews are the 15th largest "ethnic" group in Canada (assuming that term is applicable, which I'm not sure it is), while Ukrainians are the ninth largest ethnic group.

Ukrainians feel their Holodomor should be acknowledged in the CMHR, since the federal government contributed $100 million, to go along with the $115 million raised by private contributions, and $40 million by Manitoba and $20 million from the city of Winnipeg.

If the museum is to be national in character, it's essential the Ukrainian genocide be included, if only to alleviate criticism the initial intention of the museum was to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust.

While every ethnic or national group cannot get equal exposure, Ukrainians have a valid cause as a designated target of Soviet repression.

The internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War was a human rights violation, but it gets almost greater exposure in the National War Museum in Ottawa than the Japanese abuse of Canadians prisoners of war captured at Hong Kong.

Some see that as misguided political correctness.

The first of the "modern" holocausts, or massacres, was of Armenians between 1915-18, when Turks sought to eliminate them. Deported or massacred, the death toll is uncertain but estimates range between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

But Armenia isn't a high priority in Canada, though it gnaws at the conscience of an estimated 50,000 Canadians who are of Armenian origin.

Although the permanent galleries have already been announced, Angela Cassie, spokeswoman for the CMHR, has been quoted saying "the content of the museum is not set in stone," which is an indication common sense will prevail and the Ukrainian Holodomor will somehow be included."
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It simply is astounding - here, in Canada, in 2010 - that the Holodomor genocide could still be overlooked and relegated to the status, not of a massive politically-orchestrated human rights horror - but of just some unfortunate old famine.

What must we do - still - to make common sense prevail?
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'Soviet-created famine' was a planned genocide

above: Ukrainian World Congress Committee for International Holodomor Awareness and Ukrainian Canadian Congress card asking Ukraine's own President, Viktor Yanukovych (see photo at bottom for an explanation) to publicly recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

[Also see http://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/]

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Don Fraser wrote in "A tale of famine survival" (St.Catharines Standard, Nov.24, 2010):

"Intense hunger had driven the Neufeld family in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, to the brink.

Every grinding day brought an overwhelming need to find something to fill their stomachs.

Jacob Neufeld was born during those awful times of the Holodomor in 1933.

That year and the year before, a Soviet-created famine likely killed between seven million and 10 million people in the Ukraine.

People on Soviet-controlled collective farms starved and died as food was confiscated and exported from the region.

Countless others were executed or exiled to the Gulags for food possession, private land owning or farming crimes and trumped-up political charges.

It is an atrocity, recounted by Neufeld's late parents Jacob and Helen, that the St. Catharines resident will never forget.

"It all led to an unbelievable path of misery and suffering," said Neufeld, whose Mennonite German family were longtime inhabitants of that part of Ukraine. "Men, women, children all died by the millions."

His father was a bookkeeper and the family of one sister and three brothers lived decent lives.

Things went downhill after Jacob Sr. was arrested by the Soviets as an enemy of the state and sent to a slave labour camp in Siberia. This was also during the Holodomor.

Helen, who lost her privileges to work in a collective farm because of her husband's "crime," acted heroically to keep the family alive.

In an interview inside his home, Jacob Jr., 77, grows quiet and steels himself for an intense story of survival, family separation and finally emigration to St. Catharines.

"Hunger set in, we lived very poorly," he said. "My mother went from door to door to ask for milk.

"It was difficult for our family and there were millions of others that went through hard or harder times -- many died."

He remembers the kindness of the Ukrainian village baker Anton, who saw the family's plight and slipped them a loaf of bread every so often.

"That was a fantastic deed," he said. "We have to remember there were many people who were also very compassionate."

Neufeld is still in contact with the late Anton's family.

In the end, only nine-month-old twin brother John died of unknown causes. Years later, Jacob Sr. was released, a physically broken man.

By the early part of the Second World War, there were more family arrests and the conscription of his mother and sister to dig trenches.

The turning point came as an eight-year-old, then living in the care of two women.

He remembers strolling inconsolably through his farmhouse.

"I walked through that empty house," Jacob said. "I sat down on the front porch and cried. I wondered what had happened to my family; where they had gone to."

At that moment, his father and brother Andrey -- unexpectedly freed following an arrest -- returned to the home. His mother and sister soon followed.

In 1949, the family immigrated to Niagara -- all except for Andrey, who was arrested again by the Soviets, sent to a Gulag and reappeared 13 years later in Kazakhstan. Henry now lives in Hamburg, Germany.

Jacob Jr. created a new life in Canada as a home builder. He is married to Frida, and the couple have three adult children.

They, too, will be remembering National Holodomor Awareness Week, which continues until Sunday. Numerous events, including some in St. Catharines, will mark the 77th anniversary of the famine genocide.

Neufeld says one very proud moment was being part of the 2009 Ukraine memorial set up by Canadian Mennonites to also remember those who died in Soviet times.

"We must never forget what has happened," he said, his voice thick. "Our children will learn from that, and they do."

People should appreciate living in Canada, he added.

"We have had many Thanksgiving days, where we thank God we're able to live in this country and have the freedom that thousands still don't have."

Alexandra Sawchuk, a local representative of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, said it's essential to pass on these stories.

Otherwise, its true horror gets lost and diluted through the passage of time and the loss of survivors.

"It's very important for us to always remember them," she said.""
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Yet, George Bernard Shaw - socialist hero; Stalin admirer - denied that any genocide happened in the Great Soviet Socialist Experiment.
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Also noteworthy is that on Jun.2, 2010, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously passed a bill which recognizes that the Holodomor was an act of genocide.
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Below is an excerpt from The Ukrainian Weekly, Jun.13, 2010, of Stephen Bandera's take on Yanukovych being the first Ukrainian president to DENY the Holdomor:.

More propaganda glorifying George Bernard Shaw

The St. Catharines Standard's Cheryl Clock wrote an interesting piece (Nov.5, 2009) titled "Up to scatch; Scott McKowen is the talent behind scratchboard art created for Shaw Festival and others".

Interesting, because, oddly, McKowen and Clock both fail to mention how George Bernard Shaw, that socialist Fabian bag of crap, denied that there was a hunger famine in Soviet-terrorized Ukraine; and they both overlook Shaw's despicable role as a willing Stalinist bootlick.

'Scratch' artist McKowen had access to all these cute pictures of Shaw from the London School of Economics (retch) to help him glorify Shaw's image; did McKowen happen to stumble upon any photos of Shaw walking by dying people trying to scratch food from the dirt as the Great Stalinist Future was being thrust upon them, with enablers such as Shaw acting as cheerleaders?!

That would a nice image for McKowen to cook up.

Ironic how on the opposite page from Clock's story was a large detailed sketch of the Berlin Wall, showing... umm... that the Socialist Dream was so Great, that so many Westerners wanted to join the Great Socialist Soviet Revolution, that a wall had to be built to keep all the Westerners out of the Utopian Iron Curtain (!)

Border guards were ordered to Shoot On Sight: Shaw would have loved the kind of socialism that built the Berlin Wall.

George Bernard Shaw: rot in hell, scumbag.
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Canadian PM Brian Mulroney stood up against communism

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(for more on the Holodomor, see also: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/perspectives-on-famine-terror-in-soviet.html)

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Tara Deshpande wrote in "A very good PM", (National Post, Jun.19, 2009):

"Re: The Final Chapter, Guy Pratte, June 13

Three things stand out prominently for me about the prime minister-ship of Brian Mulroney. First, he displayed courage to confront British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in opposing apartheid in South Africa.
Two, he implemented free trade with the United States, thereby immensely helping our economy. And finally, he showed his humane nature by granting convicted killer David Milgaard a review of his case, leading to his exoneration and subsequent release from jail.
Mr. Mulroney has already acknowledged his error in judgment in his dealing with Karlheinz Schreiber. I don't think he should be subjected to further indignity."

*****

About two weeks after I read Deshpande's above letter, I read “Cross of the Sickle”, (National Post, July 4, 2009) and found the theme (regarding communism) relevant to Deshpande's earlier thoughts of Mr. Mulroney.

As I read (in Cross of the Sickle) about Canada's proposal to build a monument to the forgotten victims of communism, and reading of how China accused Americans of “provoking confrontation between ideologies” over the Goddess of Democracy statue, I thought I'd add two more of Brian Mulroney’s notable accomplishments:

I recall Brian Mulroney’s principled speech at a Ukrainian World Congress memorial service held in 1983 at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, when Mr. Mulroney, then Conservative Opposition leader, admonished the Soviet communist regime for creating the famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine. The Soviet propaganda machine, not used to having its murderous ideology provoked, responded by filing an official protest with the Canadian government, calling Mr. Mulroney’s statements a "anti-Soviet", "provocative", and a “one hundred percent lie”!

Later, in 1991, under Prime Minister Mulroney, Canada became the first western nation to recognize Ukraine’s independence after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Mr. Mulroney’s unwavering determination to stand up to the brutal reality of communism is in itself monumental, and should not be forgotten.

I want to say to Mr. Mulroney: Thank-you, Sir, for seeking the truth and speaking out on behalf of Ukraine when it was most needed.

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To see the news reports of this incident at the time, let's look back to this Dec.5, 1983 Globe and Mail report "Mulroney address sparks ire of Soviets":

"A Toronto speech by federal Conservative Leader Brian Mulroney has been branded "an anti-Soviet and provocative undertaking" by a Soviet official.
Alexander Podakin, a press attache at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, said in an interview that his Government has filed an official protest with the Department of External Affairs about Mr. Mulroney's speech yesterday at the fourth World Congress of Free Ukrainians.
Mr. Podakin said Mr. Mulroney repeated "a 100 per cent lie" when he said between seven and eight million people died in 1933 in a deliberately created famine in the Ukraine, a republic within the Soviet Union.
Mr. Mulroney told about 7,000 delegates at Maple Leaf Gardens: "The famine that swept the Ukraine in 1933 was man-made, orchestrated and directed from Moscow, and enforced by a regime dedicated to creating a new Soviet order." Mr. Podakin called Mr. Mulroney's statement "a lie picked up by the Opposition party, for what purpose I do not know; a 100 per cent lie picked up by the Leader of the Opposition for his own purposes only, which is one of (the) anti-Soviet and provocative campaigns unleashed in the West under the slogan of 'The Campaign against Communism.' " Mr. Podakin said the Soviet Union regards Mr. Mulroney's speech as a breach of the agreements that were signed between the Eastern and Western powers in Helsinki eight years ago. Canada was one of the signatories. "The whole thing of giving support or taking part in a gathering like (the Ukrainian congress) by any official or by the Leader of the Opposition of (Canada) is a gross violation of the Helsinki agreement," he said. "The Helsinki agreement says that the countries would refrain from rendering direct or indirect support to terrorist or any other subversive activities aimed at overthrowing a legal and legitimate government of a member state." Mr. Podakin said the World Congress of Free Ukrainians "exactly aims at overthrowing the legal and legitimate Government of my own country, the Ukraine, and at my other country, the USSR." Mr. Podakin said not only the Ukraine but all of the Soviet Union had serious food shortages in 1933, as did Western countries such as Canada and the United States.
Mr. Mulroney's staff would not allow a reporter to interview the Tory leader yesterday about the Soviet protest.
An External Affairs Department official said he was aware from past experience "that the Soviet Union and other countries keep a close eye on these things and they have, on occasion, complained if Government officials participate in such events." As Opposition Leader, Mr. Mulroney is not a Government official. "They might consider Mr. Mulroney, as leader of the Opposition, somehow a Government official, or a Government official-to-be, perhaps," the spokesman said."

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The Globe and Mail also ran this editorial, "A 100 per cent truth", (Dec 16, 1983):

"Between three million and 10 million Ukrainians are believed to have died in the great Ukrainian famine of 1933. The famine is reported by historians, newspaper accounts and survivors to have occurred and to have been deliberately created by Stalin to impose collective farming upon the Ukraine and to defeat Ukrainian nationalism.
As people starved, Stalin requisitioned all grain for export. Or, as Conservative Leader Brian Mulroney told the World Congress of Free Ukrainians marking the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy, "The famine that swept the Ukraine in 1933 was man-made, orchestrated and directed from Moscow, and enforced by a regime dedicated to creating a new Soviet order." Alexander Podakin, a press attache at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, has said that Mr. Mulroney was repeating "a 100 per cent lie." He said that an official protest has been filed with the Department of External Affairs charging that Mr. Mulroney is guilty of a breach of the agreements signed between the Eastern and Western powers in Helsinki eight years ago, with Canada as a signatory. Mr. Mulroney's speech, said Mr. Podakin, "exactly aims at overthrowing the legal and legitimate Government of my own country, the Ukraine, and my other country, the USSR." Curiously, Mr. Podakin provided some supporting evidence for Mr. Mulroney's statement. He told an interviewer that other countries, including Canada, had experienced famine at the same time the Ukraine did. But his country, the USSR, denied from the beginning that any Ukraine famine occurred in 1933 and rejected offers of aid from international relief organizations. Western reporters were conducted on carefully controlled tours which exhibited nothing but plenty. But then, as now, some Western reporters avoided the official tours, walked the land of the Ukraine and came back with photographs and reports of the dead and dying.
Mr. Podakin does not understand the workings of a free press. Nor, apparently, the workings of a free parliament. He presumes that the Department of External Affairs can chastise the Leader of the Opposition for the statements he makes. It would be amusing, except that nothing about the deaths of three to 10 million people can be amusing.
The Soviet Union was so little concerned about the Ukraine famine that it did not even count the dead."

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Y. R. Botiuk wrote in "Ukrainian famine", (Globe and Mail, Dec 16, 1983):

"In Mulroney Address Sparks Ire Of Soviets (Dec. 5) Alexander Podakin, the press attache of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, accused Tory Leader Brian Mulroney of having repeated "a hundred per cent lie" when he said that between seven million and eight million people died in 1933 in a deliberately created famine in Ukraine.
In fact, the Great Famine of 1933 is a historical reality that even Stalin and Khrushchev found impossible to deny.
It may be of some interest to Mr. Podakin that on Nov. 15, the United States Senate Agriculture Committee conducted a hearing on Soviet agriculture and focused its attentions on the artificial famine of 1933.
On that occasion, addressing a packed hearing room, Senator Jesse Helms said: "The Communist Government in Moscow adopted a deliberate and diabolical plan to starve the Ukraine into submission. Despite abundant harvest in 1932, the Soviets stripped the Ukraine of its food, removing more than four million metric tons of grain alone. In the winter of 1932- 1933, more than six million persons died in this holocaust."

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John Antoniw wrote in "More than one holocaust", (Windsor Star, Sept.8, 1987):

"Most people seem to agree that the TV movies about the Holocaust were important to remind ourselves and kids of the events that led up to the Nazi genocide policies. "We must never let such a thing happen again," is a common response.
It is this observation that needs examination. We assume, by being horrified and angered at the Nazi atrocities that we are vaccinating ourselves against a repeat. The unfortunate, unfair and maybe even dangerous thing is that there have been other holocausts going on in the world today, yet it is neither fashionable nor profitable to examine them.
For example the holocaust in the Ukraine, where, in 1932 Stalin unleashed history's first and only man-made famine in order to bring Ukrainians to heel and to collectivize the farms. The world ignored this famine, which was denied by the Soviet government. Some seven million died from hunger and disease, plus those executed by Stalin, who later told Winston Churchill that collectivization cost 10 million lives.
Who recalls the holocaust of the Soviet Union's genocide of seven national groups, before and during the Second World War? It is virtually ignored, but people from these groups were imprisoned, deported or liquidated because their loyalty was suspect.
Those who say the showing of movies and pictures will help ensure that there will be no repeat of holocausts are deluding themselves and others. And that is dangerous and hypocritical for it increases complacency, encourages selective indignation against injustice and guarantees repetition and perpetuation of the Holocaust mentality."

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Let's go forward twenty-one years after John Antoniw's above 1987 letter, when Lubomir Luciuk wrote in "Ukraine must pursue perpetrators of Holodomor", (Edmonton Journal, Jun.4, 2008):

"They lied to live.

They had to, just to survive.

Most were peasants. From antiquity, they husbanded Ukraine's rich black earth. Their land was known as "the breadbasket of Europe," coveted by more powerful neighbours. Ukrainians often found themselves in bondage, against which they rebelled. War ravaged their country, invaders coming to enslave or exterminate them, some denying the very existence of their nation. Yet they endured. Their national anthem heralds a deeply entrenched cussedness -- Ukraine Hasn't Perished.

In 1917, in the midst of the Great War, they tried to re-assert independence, and failed. Most of Ukraine came under Soviet rule. Soon their very earth was taken away as they were forced onto collective farms. Those resisting were branded "kulaks" and liquidated as a class.

Moscow imposed ever-increasing grain quotas in 1932-33, as roving gangs of Communist militants pillaged the countryside, searching for hidden stores of food, and Soviet Ukraine's borders were sealed. No one could escape or relieve the resulting man-made hunger.

Aid from abroad was rejected, as the Kremlin denied what was happening, well-served by fellow travellers, the most notorious of whom was Walter Duranty of The New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his supposedly objective reporting on Soviet affairs. Publicly, Duranty ridiculed famine reports. Privately, on Sept. 26, 1933, he informed British embassy officials that "as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year." That vital intelligence was suppressed. Molly-coddling Moscow was more important. For some it still is.

How many perished during the Great Famine, which Ukrainians call the Holodomor? No one knows, but, certainly, many millions. Not all were Ukrainians, just as Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. And those who survived still had to live through the Second World War, during which Ukraine lost more people than any other nation in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the 20th century Ukraine was truly made into a Golgotha, a "place of skulls."

Yet, even after the war, these witnesses to a Soviet crime against humanity -- arguably the greatest act of genocide to befoul modern European history -- did not speak out. Several million Ukrainians were in western European refugee camps in 1945. Many had been herded into the Third Reich as slave labourers or POWs. Lucky to be alive and far from the Soviets, they may have thought they were finally free. They would be disillusioned.

REPATRIATED, BUT NOT 'HOME'

According to the Yalta agreement, everyone who had been within the borders of the USSR on Sept. 1, 1939, was a "Soviet citizen" and must be repatriated. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were forced to return whence they came, often at bayonet point.

Prof. Watson Kirkconnell, president of the Baptist Federation of Canada, protested to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King that "to hand them over to the Red Army and NKVD is to murder them," pleading that we should play no role in this crime against humanity. Canadian troops did.

To avoid being sent "home" tens of thousands of these displaced persons pretended to be what they never were -- citizens of prewar Poland or Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Romania. Schooled in how to pull off this deceit by their countrymen, who coached "Eastern Ukrainians" about the day-to-day minutiae of life in western Ukraine, they sometimes fooled Allied and Soviet repatriation and immigration screening commissions. Again, the victims lied to live.

Even after being resettled few spoke out. To admit that you survived the Great Famine meant acknowledging you were once a "Soviet citizen." Obviously, you had not gone "home," as required, which meant you misrepresented who you were and secured your new citizenship falsely. The legal remedy for that crime is denaturalization and deportation. So if you denounced the Soviets for what they had done, you could end up being returned to them. Understandably, few were brave enough to risk that.

Only as the Soviet Empire exfoliated could the truth about the Holodomor be addressed openly. By 1991, however, many survivors had died. And, to this very day, some in post-Soviet Ukraine defend the Soviet past, so obfuscating their own complicity in the many crimes of Communism.

Nevertheless, efforts have been made to recover Ukraine's true historical memory. The fourth Saturday of every November is now a national day of mourning in Ukraine. And President Viktor Yushchenko's government has sought international support for the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide, a campaign furthered during his recent Canadian visit when our Parliament passed a bill doing just that.

This is all good but also off-point. For Kyiv is ignoring a far more pressing duty. Just as Holodomor victims remain alive, so do some of the perpetrators. If Ukraine allows those real liars to pass away unpunished, then all of the above is nothing but an unforgivable hoax, a falsehood that could never be forgiven. "

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Lubomyr Luciuk also wrote in "A genocide long ignored", (Winnipeg Free Press, Nov.22, 2008):

" Ukraine's suffering gaining recognition

Those who survived knew that the famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine was a deliberate, politically engineered catastrophe whose victims numbered in the many millions, yet few dared even whisper about this devastation of their nation to others in the generations following.

It was not until the late 1980s, as the Soviet empire stumbled into the dustbin of history and an independent, internationally recognized Ukraine re-emerged in Europe, that restored freedom allowed for the truth to be set free. Until then, those who had endured the horror now known as the Holodomor remained trapped in the very place where it could not be spoken of.

Meanwhile, those in the Ukrainian diaspora who had grasped the terror-famine's mainsprings and weight found their admonitions largely ignored, completely unaware that intelligence reports about conditions in the USSR, compiled by several governments, often corroborated their understanding of the causes, course, and consequences of this man-made famine.

Yet knowing what they did, those very same Western governments sent no relief and lodged no formal protests with Moscow, even as millions starved. A British foreign office mandarin confided why: "The truth of the matter is, of course, that we have a certain amount of information about famine conditions... and that there is no obligation on us not to make it public [but we] do not want to make it public... because the Soviet government would resent it and our relations with them would be prejudiced."

Brave, and few, were the survivors who, just after the Second World War, tried to remind the West of this atrocity, expecting their witnessing to find fertile soil during the Cold War. They were mistaken. Ukraine's genocidal Great Famine was not accepted as a reality and remained mostly unknown as a subject of historical inquiry until quite recently.

Indeed, those attempting to till its memory were subjected to a barrage of defamation, denounced as embittered emigres -- either Nazi collaborators or apologists for such miscreants. Echoes of those prejudices persist.

Where testimony could be given about the famine, it was usually rejected or ridiculed.

A noticeable resurrection in the debate over the causes and impact of the famine was precipitated in 1984 by the film Harvest of Despair, followed in 1986 by the release of Robert Conquest's book Harvest of Sorrow, by the 1988 Report to Congress of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine and, in 1990, by the Final Report of the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine. Even so, for almost a decade after Ukraine's independence was secured in 1991, no more than token initiatives were made to commemorate the Great Famine.

Succeeding Ukrainian governments likewise demonstrated no interest in bringing the perpetrators and enablers of Communist war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice, a negligence sometimes excused by reference to the post-genocidal nature of post-Soviet Ukrainian society.

This indifference persisted until November 2004 when, as the world watched, democracy prevailed during Ukraine's Orange Revolution. But what also then became apparent was just how fragile the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity are.

Ukraine played no official role in the 2003 campaign to have Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize revoked because of his mendacious reporting on the famine -- an effort that unexpectedly harvested extensive and overwhelmingly positive coverage internationally.

But by 2006 Ukraine's parliament had, at President Viktor Yushchenko's urging, promulgated a law defining the Holodomor as an act of genocide.

Kyiv then undertook diplomatic efforts to build international recognition for this position. One modest success was achieved earlier this year when Canada formally recognized the famine's genocidal nature.

Yet as more archival evidence about the Holodomor and its authors began emerging from long-sealed repositories, voices of protest were heard from the Russian Federation.

While its advocates no longer deny that a famine occurred, they claim it had no particularly Ukrainian focus, that argument being as credible as insisting that because millions of non-Jews perished during the Holocaust the Shoah's Jewish dimension is somehow exaggerated.

Contemporary Ukrainian efforts aimed at enshrining the Holodomor as a foundational experience in Ukrainian history while gleaning international sympathy for Ukraine as a victim nation reflect Kyiv's gradual awakening to a critical geopolitical certainty: Ukraine may be in Europe but its place there and perhaps even its right to exist are far from secure.

Just how many perished during the Great Famine may never be calculated precisely but that millions were scythed down as Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule was consummated is no longer in doubt. Even if the victim total was "only" 2.6 million -- and it was likely much higher -- the intensity of mortality in Soviet Ukraine over a duration of less than a year confers upon the Holodomor the unenviable status of being a crime against humanity arguably without parallel in European history.

That is not well understood, but someday it will be, everywhere."

*

The Winnipeg Free Press wrote this editorial, "Famine was genocide", on Nov.22, 2008:

" No one will ever know for certain how many people were killed by the deliberate starvation of Ukraine ordered by Stalin in the 1930s, but estimates run as high as 20 million, which was the figure used by the scholar Robert Conquest, who did more than anyone to expose to the world the horrors of the Holodomor, as Ukrainians refer to the Famine.

In his book about the Famine, Koba the Dread, British author Martin Amis quotes from Mr. Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow to emphasize the magnitude of the slaughter: "We may perhaps put (the Famine) in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about 20 human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book." Harvest of Sorrow is 411 pages long.

It has been said that the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million a statistic. And one can argue which 20th century legacy is the greater enormity, the Holocaust or the Holodomor, but while the individual horrors, the tragedies, that each accumulated can perhaps be counted, they can never be measured in any meaningful way.

They can, however, be remembered and those who refuse to remember them, or even acknowledge them, become accomplices in the original crime. The Holocaust that Nazi Germany waged against the Jews is well-documented and well-remembered. It is ingrained in the conscience and the consciousness of the world, or at least of the Western world, to the point that Holocaust denial is a crime in many countries. Deniers are regarded as accomplices. The world is a better and safer place for that memory.

It is a worse and more dangerous place, however, because of the continuing refusal of many people, many governments even, to acknowledge that the Ukrainian Famine occurred and that it was a deliberate act of genocide committed by Stalin and the Soviet government against the Ukrainian people.

Only in recent years has the Holodomor come to gain some acceptance in mainstream Western thought. Previous to that, Western intellectuals, leftists, writers, journalists and general public opinion subscribed to the Soviet propaganda that it was a natural famine of far smaller proportions.

So confused have these lies left the world that estimates of the victims of this genocide range from an absurdly low 2.5 million to Mr. Conquest's credible 20 million and far beyond, with the most accepted figure being a compromise of a still staggering 10 million victims.

There is, and never was, any rational reason for accepting the Stalin line on the Ukrainian Famine, yet the West eagerly bought into it, and many people still do. The time has past, however, when honest denial of the Holodomor is possible, just as honest denial of the Holocaust is no longer possible. The Famine, too, should be engrained in our conscience and our consciousness lest we remain its accomplices."

*
On May 29, 2008, Stephen Harper's Canadian Conservative federal government, with all-party support, received royal assent on Manitoba Conservative MP James Bezan's private member's bill, allowing Canada to officially recognize the Holodomor as a genocide.

*

Ed Schultz, ignorant lefty buffoon

This afternoon, Jun.29, I listened to American radio broadcaster and lefty windbag Ed Schultz on 1520 AM. Eddy was blabbering about having Democrats ask Republicans to go to Canada on a field trip to examine our health care system. Eddy urged them to go to Winnipeg, or Toronto, to experience our health care Utopia. Sure, they can visit Liberal Ontario, home of the 24 hr. emergency room wait!
Oh, while you're here, make sure you get some union tour guides wearing Tommy Douglas T-shirts to show you the sights (like the Soviet tours that George Bernard Shaw - Stalin's bootlick - got!! ("Hey - this is a beautiful country! No one's starving! Hunger? What? What famine... there's no stinkin' famine... just beautiful socialism!!)
This nutocrat buffoon’s ignorance seemingly knows no bounds, when he asks 'where are the health care protests?' - apparently he hasn’t heard of Quebec’s Chaoulli decision; and hasn’t the faintest #@* clue about the McCreith/Holmes health care challenge in Ontario. That's how we protest against socialist, state-run, single-payer health care monopolism - at the Supreme Court.
It’s apparent this Yank has never read what Dr. Ouellet, head of the Canadian Medical Association, has written about.
Hasn't this raging dork heard that even his own president, Democrat Obama, has said he does NOT favour Canada’s failing single-payer health care monopoly as a model template for the States?
This divisive demotard has no clue that many Canadians are forced to go TO THE STATES for treatment, because our health care monopoly can’t provide treatment when necessary: it’s all well and good to preach universality, Eddy, but, as it was stated in Quebec's Chaoulli court decision, access to a universal waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care.
It's a leftist Utopian fiction, a deceptive con.
Americans should take the time to carefully understand the implications of Quebec's Chaoulli court decision as it relates to the false premise of 'single-payer universality', especially when ignorant, regressive agitprop regarding Canada's health care spews from the pieholes of clowns like Ed Schultz.
It’s obvious Schultzy hasn’t read Froma Harrop’s writings on Canada’s health monopoly, or David Gratzer’s, for that matter.
Obviously, Schultzy couldn’t be bothered to read the health care horror stories, and appreciate the foreshadowing therein, found in Liberal Healthcare Duplicity. (see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
Schultz, foaming at the mouth about Big Pharma, doesn't seem to even know what a health monopoly is. Idiot-savant rhetorician Schultzy moronically asked ‘what’s wrong with the public option of socialized medicine?’ Leftards, get your terms and definitions straight – socialism does NOT give you an “option” – there is no "option" in a single payer monopoly. What "option" are you talking about!?! In Ontario, we have no choice in a single-payer monopoly. Do you not comprehend that?
Canada sends heart attack patients, women in labour, infants, cancer patients, burn victims, you name it…all kinds of patients, including emergency patients, are exported to the United States for medical care that our illusory health care system fails to provide here in Canada.
Canada is looking to hybrid parallel systems such as those in Europe, where publicly funded and privately-accessible health care co exist. That's your best choice.
Only a clueless partisan moron, a sicko Moore -ist , a Schultzopath, would believe that Canada's single-payer monopoly is any answer.

The Walter Duranty WIGUS Hall of Shame

Borys Sydoruk of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote in "Ukrainian famine not 'alleged' ", (National Post, Jun.16, 2009):

"Re: Harper's Risky Foreign Habits, May 15.

By deploying the word "alleged" when referring to the genocidal nature of the Great Famine in Soviet Ukraine, this article displays partisanship. Since Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term "genocide," felt that the famine was genocidal, who cares what the ex-KGB men of the Kremlin think? Kudos to the government of Canada for standing on the side of truth despite the bleatings of the perpetrators' descendants."

*

Can you imagine the uproar if one were to say the nazi Holocaust was "alleged"? Or that Poland started WWII, because they didn't, well, "accommodate/acquiesce to" Hitler's plans?! When is Canada going to start deporting all the KGB, Cheka, GPU, Smersh and NKVD - ist Kremlinites who may still be enjoying their stay in Canada? Those still lusting for the good ole days of Soviet imperialist terrorism, still denying the Holodomor, even now, in 2009, should be nominated for the New York Times ignoble Walter Duranty WIGUS (willfully ignorant/utterly stupid) Hall of Shame.

(see :http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/10/gbshaw-walter-duranty-dupes-denied.html)
*

Remembering the 75th anniversary of Ukraine's holodomor

The above ad commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Holodomor appeared in the Nov.28, 2008 St. Catharines Standard.
The original colour oil painting was created by artist Bohdan Pevney in New York in 1963, who wrote:
"My best known work is entitled "Zemliia" (Earth), it is dedicated to the memory of the 1933 famine in Ukraine, and based on a landscape clip from Oleksander Dovzhenko's film on the same subject. This painting is now part of the collection of the Ukrainian Orthodox Community Museum in South Bound Brook, N.J."
(Mr. Pevney wrote about his art and influences at: http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/famine09.htm)

Here’s a further thread of stories regarding the topic of the Holodomor:

Mike Zettel wrote in “Survivor recalls living through man-made famine, Ukrainians mark 75th anniversary of the Holodomor-Famine Genocide of 1932-33”, (Niagara This Week, Nov.7, 2008):

“The details of suffering through years of food shortages and witnessing outright starvation do not make for children's stories, so for years Ivan Glasko, who lived through such misery, avoided telling them.


Glasko was born in 1923 in a Ukrainian settlement near the Caucus mountains in south-western Russia. While still a young child, he and his family endured what is now called one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century, the Holodomor-famine genocide of 1932-33. The famine, and other famines which affected other Soviet satellites around the same time, was the direct result of government actions to confiscate agricultural harvests, and led to the deaths of millions.


Though Glasko's daughter, Maria, knew that her father lived through the famine, it was only in her 20s and 30s that she learned the scope of what he went through. She recalls one conversation which occurred about a year ago after the airing of a television campaign to assist starving children in Africa. Pointing to images of children with extended bellies and twig-like limbs, her father told her that was exactly what he looked like at one time.


"When he told me that, it just stopped me in my tracks," she said. "I was shocked."


Glasko's family were wealthy farmers, the type of people targeted by Soviet authorities. In 1929, when he was only six, Glasko, along with his mother, five-year-old sister and three-year-old brother, were sent to a Siberian village, which had been emptied of residents and turned into a prison work camp.


There until 1933, Glasko had to look after his younger siblings while his mother was sent out to work in the bush.


"Nobody attended to us," he said. "Nobody looked after us. We just waited."
And hungered. With no food in the house, the children had to wait for their mother to bring food rationed to her, so she could work.


"She saved it for us," he said.


When that wasn't enough, they improvised, eating wild berries and grasses in the summer and hunting "anything that crawled" in the colder months. Sometimes, his mother would send him out to collect horse manure to separate and wash the undigested barley, so she could make soup.


Their father, after he found them, arranged for their return in 1933, and for the years leading up to the Second World War, they settled in a village near their hometown.


Though records show the famine ended in 1933, times were still tough for the next three years and there were still food shortages.


This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor-famine genocide of 1932-33. To mark the date, there will be a commemorative program Sunday afternoon at the Ukrainian Black Sea Hall. It begins with a prayer service, after which survivors will hold memorial candles. Afterwards, there will be a documentary shown about the famine.


The program begins 2:30 p.m. at the hall, located at 455 Welland Ave.


On Nov. 22, the world-wide Holodomor memorial day, there will be a morning ceremony beginning at 9 a.m., when people will be standing with candles on the Niagara Street overpass over the QEW. Similar ceremonies around the world are scheduled to take place at exactly the same time.”

 

 

****************************************

Maria Munoz wrote in “Famine-genocide coverage appreciated”, (Niagara This Week, St. Catharines-Thorold edition, p.15, Nov.28, 2008) :

“Thank you for the recent piece entitled: ‘Survivor recalls living through man-made famine’. I read the story to my grandmother who also lived through that experience. Her family was part of a rather large minority group living in Ukraine, called the Germans from Russia.


She was only five years old at the time when Stalin ordered the harvests to be confiscated. I asked my grandmother how well she remembered the famine and she replied, “You can’t forget a thing like that.” She told me that their family survived partly due to her grandmother, who rationed the family’s meager food supply (they lived on a “soup” made of hot water, a little flour and a few beans).


Not an easy time by any stretch of the imagination. And that was really only the beginning of their troubles living under Stalin’s rule. My grandmother saw both her father and grandfather taken away to prison in the late 1930’s and early 40’s. Her grandfather’s crime? Speaking the Lord’s Prayer at a gravesite.


I’ve been engrossed in these histories for the past year or so. We are actually making an independent feature film based on the life of that grandfather. While the film is not about the famine per se, it is about the culture of fear and persecution set up by the Stalinist regime. And it makes me think… We really do have it good here in Canada.

I am also working on an oral history page about the 1932-33 famine on our film website: http://www.cubecity.org/ujl_oralhistory.htm ”

I wish Munoz well with her film and famine documentary projects.

 

 

****************************************

Ian Hunter wrote in “Telling the truth about the Ukrainian Famine”, (National Post, Nov.22, 2008):

“Today at Westminster Cathedral in London, England, two journalists will receive the Ukrainian Order of Freedom. Both men are dead. What did they do to deserve this posthumous honour?


They told the truth when all around them their press colleagues were inadvertently (or, in one case, deliberately) misleading the public.


Gareth Jones was born in Wales in 1905. He worked as a reporter for several papers before travelling through Russia and Ukraine-- where his mother had lived--in 1932. Jones found people starving everywhere he went, and he wrote about it. The Western press corps, mostly confined to Moscow, was manipulated by the Communist authorities into believing that all was well, and they rejected Jones's reports.


As the world now knows (although it took more than half a century and the opening of Soviet archives to confirm), approximately 10 million people were deliberately starved to death by the collectivization policies pursued by Joseph Stalin.


Malcolm Muggeridge was a largely unknown journalist when in 1932 he went to Moscow as a stand-in correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. By this time, Stalin's twin manias -- collectivization of agriculture and dekulakization of peasants -- were at their bloodthirsty zenith, but few knew this because of the sycophantic foreign reporting.


The Moscow press corps was then led by Walter Duranty of The New York Times. For two decades, Duranty had been the most influential foreign correspondent in Russia. His dispatches were regarded as authoritative; indeed, Duranty had helped to shape U. S. foreign policy. His biographer has demonstrated that Duranty's reporting was a critical factor in FDR's 1933 decision to grant official recognition to the Soviet Union. When the Pulitzer Prize committee conferred its prize on Duranty (in 1932, at the height of the famine), they cited his "scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity."


Duranty, an unattractive, oversexed little man with a wooden leg, falsified facts, spread lies and half-truths, invented occurrences that never happened and turned a blind eye to Stalin's man-made famine. When snippets of the truth began to leak out, Duranty coined the phrase "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" -- meaning that the supposed benefit of communism justified the cruelty meted out by Stalin and his minions. This phrase, or a variant thereof, has since proved useful to a variety of tyrants and ideologues who contend that a worthy end justifies base means.


Meanwhile, in the spring of 1933, young Malcolm Muggeridge did an audacious thing; without permission, he acquired rail tickets and set off on a train journey through what had formerly been the breadbasket of the Soviet Union: Ukraine and North Caucuses. What Muggeridge witnessed, he never forgot.


In a series of articles smuggled out in the diplomatic pouch, he described a man-made famine that had become a holocaust: peasants, millions of them, dying like famished cattle, sometimes within sight of full granaries, guarded by the army and police. At a German co-operative farm, an oasis of prosperity in the collectivized wilderness, he saw peasants kneeling down in the snow, begging for a crust of bread. In his diary, Muggeridge wrote: "Whatever else I may do or think in the future, I must never pretend that I haven't seen this. Ideas will come and go; but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood."


Few believed him. Muggeridge's dispatches were cut. He was sacked by the Guardian and forced out of Russia. He was vilified, slandered and abused. Walter Duranty's voice led the chorus of denunciation and denial, although privately Duranty told a British foreign office acquaintance that at least 10 million people had been starved to death -- adding, characteristically, "but they're only Russians."


Beatrice Webb -- Muggeridge's aunt by marriage, and a longtime Soviet apologist -- said that Muggeridge's famine reports were "base lies." The very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Anglican Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, from the pulpit praised Joseph Stalin's "steady purpose and kindly generosity." George Bernard Shaw made a whirlwind tour of Russia and pronounced himself satisfied that there was ample food for all in the worker's paradise.


Vindication for both Jones and Muggeridge was a long time coming. In 1990, Walter Duranty's biographer, Susan Taylor, wrote: "But for Muggeridge's eyewitness accounts of the famine in the spring of 1933 and his stubborn chronicle of the event, the effects of the crime upon those who suffered might well have remained as hidden from scrutiny as its perpetrators intended."


Today, 75 years later, vindication is complete, as Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge posthumously receive the Ukrainian Order of Freedom. If there is a comparable Award for journalistic integrity, they deserve that too." "


(Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Western Ontario [Canada] and wrote the first biography of Malcolm Muggeridge)

 

 

**************************************

Denis Walsh wrote in “A tale of two famines”, (National Post, Nov.25, 2008):

“Re: Telling The Truth About The Ukrainian Famine, Ian Hunter, Nov. 22.

Ian Hunter accuses Joseph Stalin of the "crime" of creating a famine in Ukraine. So was the famine illegal?

The Irish famine of the mid-19th century resulted in enormous numbers of deaths, mass peasant evictions and desperate emigration in coffin ships. This cut Ireland's population in half in only 10 years. And it occurred in the backyard of the richest, most powerful, most advanced and most civilized empire the world had known. But it was all perfectly legal.

I suspect Stalin's was, too.”

Why, sure, … it was 'all legal' – to a Stalinist. Were Irish farmers forced to hand over their harvest to the government at gunpoint?

Brian McGurrin replied in “Two famines II” (National Post, Nov.26, 2008):

“Re: A Tale Of Two Famines, letter to the editor, Nov. 25.

Letter-writer Denis Walsh argues that the 19th-century U. K. government was as blameworthy for the Irish potato famine as was Stalin for the Ukrainian famine of the 20th century. The principal difference between the two, of course, is that the Irish famine was precipitated by a fungal disease and the Ukrainian famine by government fiat.

Mr. Walsh is correct in describing the British Empire as rich and powerful, but otherwise displays a lack of respect for what has been called the "many-sidedness of historical experience." For instance, in 1845, Tory prime minister Sir Robert Peel purchased a large shipment of maize from the U. S. in order to feed the starving Irish. But a few months later, thanks to the opposition of the Irish nationalist MPs, led by Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell, the Tories were defeated and replaced by the more doctrinaire Whigs; and for the duration of the famine, says Irish historian Gearoid O'Tuathaigh, "the disciples of laissez-faire ruled the roost." Moreover, declares another Irish historian, Colm Toibin, "severe economic recession in Great Britain itself during 1847 ... limited sympathy for Ireland's problems, as did the apparent ingratitude for help given ... and the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848."”

 

 

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Laurel Myers wrote in “Ukrainian community remembers man-made famine,” (Northern Life, Nov.26, 2008):

“The Ukrainian community of Sudbury united at Tom Davies Square Saturday afternoon to commemorate a devastating time in its cultural history: 75 years ago a genocide by starvation wiped out as many as 10 million Ukrainian men, women and children.

Between January 1932 and July 1933, countless people starved to death during a man-made famine. The Holodomor, or hunger plague, was a famine engineered by the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin — a communist dictator — as part of a series of actions, including mass executions, designed to destroy the Ukrainian nation, according to holodomor.org.uk.

The government confiscated all agricultural food sources, including grains and livestock. Massive amounts of grain were sold to foreign markets to build factories and provide weapons for the military, leaving the Ukrainian villages barren and hungry. The Ukrainians were also kept from leaving their homes.

For years, the Holodomor went unrecognized as an act of genocide, and the mere existence of the famine was repeatedly denied by the Soviet governments.

On Saturday, the League of Ukrainian Canadians, in partnership with the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, joined in a ceremony being held in countries across the world, to pay tribute to those whose lives were lost and to bring awareness to a topic that has been long swept under the rug.

“The Holodomor was a very tragic period of time. I still can't talk about this without getting choked up,” said Steve Ostafichuk, president of the Oshawa branch of the League of Ukrainians, and keynote speaker for the ceremony.

“The term humanity is a bit of an oxymoron — we're humans but we're the most inhumane beasts on the planet,” he continued. “This particular atrocity that happened to our people was a political and economic atrocity, and the way to break the backs and spirits of an emerging country and culture.”

He stressed the importance of spreading the word about the famine-genocide, to recognize it happened and to prevent it from ever happening again.

“Anything we can get into future generations about what genocide is all about, gives us an opportunity to hopefully evolve humans into a better class of humans so that we might actually live up to the term humanity, which is something we fall short of these days,” Ostafichuk said.
Orest Staneckyj, a member of the league of Ukrainian-Canadians in Sudbury, said the genocide has become a matter of education, and getting the word out that it happened.

“The famine-genocide in Ukraine was the direct result of the Soviet policy that crushed the nationally-conscious Ukrainian people,” he said. “In the early 1930s, the very part of Europe, in a region considered to be the Soviet Union's bread basket, established a communist regime and committed a horrendous act of genocide against millions of Ukrainians.

“They were subjected to starvation — one of the most ruthless forms of torture and death,” he continued. “It is our hope that starvation will never again be used by any government in the world to physically destroy and annihilate any of its people.”

He said the effect the Holodomor had on him was not having “the comfort of knowing my roots and a lot of family members. That's taken away from me.”

Last spring, Canada was one of the first countries to recognize the Ukrainian Famine as an act of genocide. In May, the government passed a motion to establish a Holodomor Memorial Day, to be held on the fourth Saturday of every November. It wasn't until November 2007 that the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill branding the Holodomor an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people as well.

As part of the commemoration ceremony, a travelling exhibit was displayed in Tom Davies Square, including 101 posters covering every aspect of the Holodomor. Ostafichuk is largely responsible for the ever-growing reach of the exhibition — there are now 250 exhibitions booked around the world, in schools, churches and city halls.

When he first came across the exhibition in Toronto, the first generation Ukrainian-Canadian said his ignorance of his own heritage made him mad.

“I thought I was well-educated, only to see all this information about the Holodomor that I knew little or nothing about,” he said. “I resolved to make sure this became an education program so people like myself in Canada, ... would know what happened to our own people.

*********************************


For more information, visit www.holodomoreducation.org.”

see also:

- The principle of Genocide by Famine

- Perspectives on the Famine - Terror in Soviet Ukraine

- Competitive martyrdom

- Walter Duranty hall of shame

*

Perspectives on the Famine-Terror in Soviet Ukraine

(above) Orange Revolution supporters gather in front of the Russian Consulate on Bloor St. in Toronto. Photo by R. Bobak, Nov.30, 2004.

***

I recall the whisperings back in the 1970’s in Canada as the word of Stalin’s famine terror began to grow more pronounced. It was as if a deeply-held, terrible secret desperately wanted to let itself be known, yet was somehow suppressed from belief, not only obviously from within what was then the USSR, but even within the western mainstream press.

Here are two articles from the early 1980’s which show the ‘view of the day’ then of the Holodomor, as it was developing into a larger issue and how it had to battle to gain wider recognition and acceptance within a cold-war era western establishment.

*

The Ukrainian Weekly wrote in “1983: A LOOK BACK, Great Famine memorial observances” (Dec.25, 1983):

“It was a year during which solemn commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-33 overshadowed all else in the Ukrainian community as Ukrainians on the local, state or provincial, national and international levels concentrated their energies on organizing various events in order to ensure that the world would become aware of this unknown holocaust.

Dozens of local committees were formed from San Francisco to Detroit to Albany, N.Y., in order to commemorate the tragic anniversary; scores of feature articles and news stories appeared in the press throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in England, France and Australia; hundreds of events - demonstrations, rallies, memorial services, food drives, lectures, seminars - were held; many special publications, ranging from leaflets to books, appeared to memorialize the 50th anniversary; and countless public officials on all levels of government recalled the famine's 7 million victims in addresses, resolutions and proclamations.

Details of the myriad observances and press coverage could fill volumes. What follows is a brief run-down of the major events.

In the United States, anniversary commemorations got rolling with the formation on January 29 of a national famine committee called the National Committee to Commemorate Genocide Victims in Ukraine 1932-33, whose motto became "Let us remember and make others aware." The committee included representatives of over 50 Ukrainian organizations and local communities and was headed by Dr. Peter G. Stercho of Philadelphia. The conference at which the committee was formed was called on the initiative of Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan Mstyslav who had organized a preparatory committee to mark the famine anniversary five years earlier.

The national famine committee organized two major events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Great Famine during 1983. The first, a memorial service at the Ukrainian Orthodox Center of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle, was held on St. Thomas Sunday or "Providna Nedilia" (Seeing Off Sunday), a day traditionally set aside by Ukrainians to honor the dead.

Some 13,000 persons participated in the day's events which began with an archpastoral divine liturgy inside St. Andrew's Memorial Church and continued with an outdoor ecumenical requiem service on the church's steps offered by Ukrainian Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant hierarchs and clergy. A memorial concert at the Home of Ukrainian Culture capped the commemoration.

The national famine committee's second major event, held in Washington on October 2, attracted 18,000 Ukrainians from all over the United States and Canada. They came to attend a rally at the front of the Washington Monument, a march through the nation's capital, a demonstration near the Soviet Embassy and a memorial concert at the Kennedy Center in order to mourn the 7 million famine victims and to renew their pledge to never allow the world to forget the holocaust inflicted upon the Ukrainian nation by the Soviet regime. The rally participants were addressed by various government officials, religious and ethnic leaders, and Ukrainian community leaders.

The October 2 events were the culmination of a series of events held in the capital during the Great Famine Memorial Week beginning September 25. Other events were: candlelight vigils near the Soviet Embassy, exhibits about the famine and the destruction of Ukrainian churches by the Soviet government, a scholarly symposium at the American Enterprise Institute, a press conference featuring eyewitnesses and scholars, a special order in the House of Representatives, a reception on Capitol Hill, statements in the U.S. Senate, special liturgies and a ceremony before the Taras Shevchenko monument that stands in Washington.

On November 17, the bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States gathered at their national meeting issued a condemnation of the 1933 forced famine. In a statement endorsed without opposition by some 300 bishops, the National Catholic Conference of Bishops said that the Stalin-perpetrated famine was motivated "by the desire of the Soviet Union to destroy the national identity of the Ukrainian people." The statement was submitted by Bishop Basil H. Losten of the Stamford Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy, who had earlier sent letters and information packets about the famine to members of the bishops' conference.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the first international symposium on the Great Famine in Ukraine was held in Canada at the University of Quebec at Montreal on March 25-26 with 14 top scholars from Canada, the United States and France participating. Seventeen papers were delivered at the symposium which was sponsored by the Inter-University Centre for European Studies, which encompasses the University of Quebec, the University of Montreal, McGill University and Concordia University, and the Canadian institute of Ukrainian Studies based in Edmonton.
The Ontario Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee marked the famine anniversary with a five-day, 230-mile bike-a-thon from Toronto to Ottawa. Thirty-seven Ukrainian students pedaled the distance in order to draw public attention to the Great Famine of 50 years ago and to raise funds for refugees from Afghanistan and Kampuchea. Along the way the students, clad in highly visible blue and yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the words "In Memory of the Millions" and "Artificial Famine in Ukraine 1933," distributed leaflets outlining the purpose of their trek. The bike-a-thon concluded with a demonstration organized by the Canadian Ukrainian Students' Union (SUSK) near the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. The bikers raised over $3,000 and presented this sum to the International Red Cross during a luncheon at the Fourth World Congress of Free Ukrainians.

Edmonton's Ukrainian community decided to observe the Great Famine anniversary by erecting a monument to its victims. A design called "The Broken Life Cycle" by artist Ludmilla Temertli, whose mother had survived the famine, was selected; dedication ceremonies took place on October 23. The monument stands on city land in front of Edmonton City Hall.

Canadians also led the way in preparing documentaries about the Great Famine of 1932-33. Radio-Quebec TV, Quebec's educational television network, presented a documentary titled "10 Million Victims: Ukraine 1933 - The Unknown Holocaust" on its "Planete" series. Researcher-consultant Taras Hukalo, director Claude Caron and "Plarlete" executive producer Karel Ludvik were each given awards for their outstanding work on the half-hour film by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee.

CBC-TV's award-winning series "The Fifth Estate" presented a 20-minute probe into the events surrounding the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 on its April 27 broadcast. The producer of the segment was Oleh Rumak.

The Ukrainian Famine Research Committee in Toronto was in the process of preparing a one-hour documentary film on the famine. The committee engaged Slavko Nowytski as producer-director, Yuriy Luhovy as associate director and editor, and Marco Carynnyk as chief researcher. The project was initiated by Mr. Carynnyk, and the committee operates under the auspices of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee.

At the end of the year, there was more good news from Canada, as the Toronto Board of Education announced that it was preparing a teaching unit on the Ukrainian famine. Directed at students in grades 11 to 13, the unit will be prepared by Dr. Orest Subtelny of York University.
An international commemoration of the Great Famine anniversary was held in conjunction with the Fourth World Congress of Free Ukrainians in Toronto. A mammoth ecumenical service and rally were held at Maple Leaf Gardens on December 4 with some 10,000 persons - Toronto area residents and WCFU delegates from around the world - in attendance. The requiem service was offered by some 20 hierarchs and clergy of the Ukrainian Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches.

The keynote address was delivered by Brian Mulroney, leader of the Progressive Conservative opposition in the Canadian Parliament, who scored the Soviets for creating the famine that killed 7 million men, women and children in Ukraine. The Soviet Embassy responded to Mr. Mulroney's speech by filing an official protest with Canada's Department of External Affairs and calling Mr. Mulroney's statement that 7 to 8 million had died in a man-made famine a "hundred percent lie."”

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Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was 100% correct then, and should forever-more be recognized as having stood up to rightfully scorn and confront the Soviet terror-propaganda machine’s lies.

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Another story was from the National Review, Apr.11, 1986, written by Peter Paluch, “SPIKING THE UKRAINIAN FAMINE, AGAIN”:

“ASIDE FROM the climate, the 28th International Film & TV Festival of New York was as lush and glamorous as any Hollywood bash. The festival is one of the most highly regarded in the world, with 44 countries represented in 1985. The two thousand people seated for the awards-presentation banquet in the Imperial Ballroom of the Sheraton Centre hotel represented 5,313 entrants and the cream of the industry. The BBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS were there in force. So were HBO and Turner Broadcasting.

The gold medalist in the TV Documentaries category was announced halfway through the braised beef borderlaise--Harvest of Despair, a 55-minute Canadian production disinterring the story of the man-made Ukrainian famine buried half a century ago beneath layers of Soviet propaganda and Western venality. After the presentation of the gold medals in the ten categories included in the overall TV Entertainment Programs and Specials Group, it was time for the ice-cream log assorti in meringue crown and the announcement of the winner of the Grand Award Trophy Bowl. Again, it was Harvest of Despair, judged the "most outstanding entry" of all 837 films in the group. These two awards gave the film enough points in international competitions to make it eligible for an Oscar, although too late for this year's Academy Awards.

This was last November 15. Ten months earlier, Peter Foges, Public Affairs Programming Director at New York's PBS affiliate, WNET, was pressed to explain why he had rejected the film. After a long silence he replied that it was "technically deficient" and of "dubious quality," and that it did not meet PBS's "production standards." Pressed for an explanation of what that meant, Foges stumbled for a moment and said, not entirely convinced himself, that the sound of horses' hoofbeats should have been dubbed into a still scene showing human corpses being carted away. (Those effects are included.)

These two incidents typify the whipsaw reaction to an extended effort to call to the American media's attention the untold story of how Soviet authorities deliberately starved to death at least seven million people in the traditional "breadbasket of Europe." Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute recently concluded a monumental three-year research project on the subject, headed by British Sovietologist Robert Conquest; the resulting book will be published this spring by the Oxford University Press. The Harvard project coincided with the production in Toronto of Harvest of Despair, a private effort that soon attracted the attention and support of the National Film Board of Canada. Independent of each other, the Canadian film and the Harvard study were simultaneous firsts concerning a subject that Harvard's James Mace said "remains as the least understood cataclysm of this century, a tragedy that has disappeared from the public consciousness so completely that it represents the most successful example of the denial of genocide by its perpetrators."

The importance and timeliness of the issue seemed obvious enough, and any one of the several threads in this story would make it a natural for broader dissemination.

There is most obviously the purely human-interest aspect--nothing less than the systematized murder of seven million human beings in less than a year, three million of them children under the age of seven. That is the conservative figure, extrapolated from Soviet statistics. That the actual number is significantly higher must be assumed, since the compilers of the first Soviet census after the famine was lifted were summarily shot for "undermining Socialism by deliberately undercounting the population." A "correct" census was immediately prepared. It is on the "corrected" version that the seven-million figure is based. The true extent of the human cataclysm is perhaps more accurately suggested by Dr. W. Horsley Gantt, a British physician who was in the Soviet Union at the time and who relayed private estimates by Soviet officials of as many as 15 million killed, fully half the Ukrainian nation, and equal to the population of all of Central America today.

In testifying before the Senate shortly after the destruction of KAL flight 007, Robert Conquest remarked that Soviet policy in Ukraine druing 1932-33 could be placed in a clearer perspective by recognizing that Soviet MiGs would have a shoot down a 747 airliner every day for seventy years in order to approximate the death toll in Ukraine.

The novelty in all this is that the famine in Ukraine was modern history's first example of "famine on command." It was not brought about by drought, or crop activitists, brought in for the task from Russia, physically removed virtually all of the food from the region. Dogs and cats vanished from the streets, as the state abruptly realized a need for their skins. Ukraine's symbol, the nightingale, was trapped and slaughtered en masse by the secret police. The famine was the realization of Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov's dictum, "Food is a weapon." It was also the precursor of starvation politics in Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

The second thread of the story, which the producers hoped the media half a century later would have the integrity to address, was the Western media's responsibility for spiking the story originally in order to curry favor with the Kremlin. Among the luminaries of the time, Walter Duranty of the New York Times was the acknowledged dean of Western reporters in Moscow. He categorically denied the existence of any famine, prompting Stalin to compliment him--"You have done a good job in your reporting of the USSR"--and to reward his efforts with the Order of Lenin.

Pulitzer Journalism

THE PULITZER PRIZE Committee was of like mind and bestowed its own coveted award upon Duranty for his "dispassionate, interpretative reporting . . . marked by scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment, and exceptional clarity . . . excellent examples of the best type of foreign correspondence." In order to promote such journalism, Duranty was permitted by Soviet authorities to accompany Litvinov on his triumphant trip to the United States, when we negotiated the diplomatic recognition of the USSR at the very height of the famine.

To be sure, a few European papers, such as France's Le Matin, decided to publish the truth. But the American media were damningly silent, both about the genocide and about Soviet manipulation of the foreign press.

The third thread of the story is summed up in George Orwell's observation, "We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." It may sound tautological to repeat that "the Soviet Union" is not "Russia," but it is nonetheless necessary to do so. The USSR is a multinational federation of formerly independent nations. It is not a monolithic state, any more than is any empire. An Uzbek in Samarkand or a Latvian in Riga has about as much similarity to, or affinity for, a Russian in Leningrad as does an Afghan in Kabul. The Red Army's occupations of Lithuania and Georgia were little different from its occupation of Afghanistan, with the exception that with the passage of time the former have been absorbed into a "Soviet Union" as constituent republics. Afghanistan may yet become the 16th installment. In this light, the man-made famine in Ukraine speaks volumes about Moscow's relationship with the non-Russian nations of the USSR, which account for 50 per cent of its population. That event thus offers the West a glimpse into the practical consequence of the structuring of the Soviet Union and the centrifugal forces in it.

None of these issues has proved attractive to the media in the United States. At this writing Harvest of Despair has been shown only on two small U.S. television stations; and virtually no press attention has been given to the discoveries of the Conquest group. This has not been for lack of trying by either the Harvest producers or the Harvard Institute. But all their efforts have been met with the sort of embarrassingly inarticulate--or silent--rejection that suggests people are unwilling to explain their reasons for not doing the obviously right thing.

Thus, for instance, the three commercial television networks did not see fit to articulate any reason whatsoever for their rejection of the story. We have reason to believe that, at least in the case of one of the networks, a fawning concern, at the highest level, with maintaining the good graces of the Kremlin led to the network's self-censorship.

When we approached the major news weeklies, Time, for example, answered that "at the present time" it was not planning any stories on the subject. Asked when would be a more opportune occasion than the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy, Time (after repeating that it "is not considering such an article at this time") made an abrupt change of course and said that its mandate was only to cover immediate news. This was immediately followed by another twist--"We do occasionally report historical events when they bear directly on current news . . . or if the event itself becomes the subject of renewed controversy or discussion."

The repetition of the Ukrainian pattern in Cambodia, or Afghanistan, or Ethiopia did not qualify. Nor did the recent establishment of a Joint Congressional Commission to investigate the famine and its coverup. As to waiting for a "renewed controversy or discussion," that was a rather incestuous excuse, since a discussion cannot be renewed when the story was never reported in the first place. The disclosures of the Harvard project shatter some long-held assumptions concerning the formative years of the USSR. That, certainly, should satisfy even Time's tortured criteria. Presented with these arguments, Time made no response.

The Harvard group hoped the release of Harvest of Despair might make a difference. A recognized film-distribution firm in Washington, D.C., viewed the film and expressed enthusiastic interest in serving as its exclusive agent in the United States and Canada. But after the firm discussed the matter with its industry contacts on the East and West Coasts, a wall of silence descended. No explanation. No replies to inquiries. Nothing.

And then there is PBS. Its legislative mandate requires that it serve as an accessible alternative to commercial broadcasting, to provide an outlet for productions that couldn't win a place in the ratings game. Controversy, the unknown, the unorthodox were to be PBS's mainstay.

The initial reaction of PBS, summarized above, came before Harvest of Despair was awarded the gold medal in the first of what soon became an unbroken succession of international awards. In a follow-up discussion, the reason given for WNET's rejection predictably changed. Now, the film was "inadequately documented." This is hardly less transparent than was Foges's first excuse. It is also untoward, given that the production has been critically acclaimed as "exceedingly well documented." More than one and a half million feet of rare archival film footage were viewed, of which 720 feet were incorporated into the production. The critics wrote that "the historical documentation has been vividly assembled. One can see that tremendous research was part of making Harvest of Despair."

So, when we asked what "inadequate documentation" meant, WNET said the film lacked "journalistic integrity." When we asked what that meant, we finally got to the heart of the matter--the "other side" of the story was not presented. We replied that this was the other side of the story. PBS's airing of Harvest of Despair would be the first time, after half a century, that the "other side" of the story finally was made available to the American public, in fullest accord with PBS's own mandate. Alas, to no avail.

In a remarkable parallel, on November 5, 1985, WPBT, the PBS affiliate in Miami, also rejected the film on the grounds that it has "a perceived bias in terms of the viewing public." (WPBT did acknowledge that the film was "interesting and well produced.") The film was submitted to WPBT after that station broadcast a documentary on Stalin covering the period from 1934 onward. Harvest of Despair treats the period through 1933 and seemed a logical adjunct. A request to Candace Carlisle, WPBT's Director of Program Acquisition, for an explanation or example of the film's bias has remained unanswered.

Finally, after a ten-month blackout, and on the heels of WPBT's rejection, the main office of PBS in Washington opined that the film presents only "one point of view" and that it is "subjective." This, of a film that now is in the running for an Academy Award as a documentary. Unembarrassed, a few weeks ago the PBS affiliate in Boston, WGBH, also fell into line.

PBS thus remains adamant. Harvest of Despair is fatally flawed because it violates Solomonic impartiality by not giving equal time to Moscow's point of view. But what would the Soviets say? Perhaps, like those who deny the Nazi Holocaust, they would claim the famine never occurred. But no one suggests that Holocaust films be routinely accompanied by a rebuttal from the editors of Spotlight. Or perhaps they would use the war criminal's lament: It happened, but it was nobody's fault.

Indeed, in a Canadian television production shown on April 27, 1983, the Soviet Union was given equal time and said absolutely nothing new. CBC's Fifth Estate series, Canada's answer to 60 Minutes, produced a twenty-minute segment on the Ukrainian famine, a full 18 months before the public release of Harvest of Despair. Aleksandr Podakin, from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, appeared in the segment and was cool, calm, and collected, countering with sober reflections on the tribulations of Americans and Canadians during the Depression. The day after the broadcast of the Fifth Estate Program, the Soviet Embassy put out a virulent three-page press release "On the So-Called 'Famine' in Ukraine," replete with the predictable litanies. In December of that year, Aleksandr Podakin finally lost his cool, after Canadian Conservative leader Brian Mulroney mentioned the Ukrainian famine in a speech. The Soviet Embassy filed a formal protest with the Department of External Affairs, branding Mulroney's speech "a 100 per cent lie." It accused Canada of violating the Helsinki Accords by attempting the overthrow of the Soviet government.

There was nothing to prevent PBS or any of the U.S. networks, for that matter, from similarly airing Harvest of Despair and then having a post-mortem with a Soviet representative. Certainly, the Soviet Embassy in Washington will not broach the issue so long as, in the U.S., it remains submerged.

Lost in America

PERHAPS THE strangest aspect of the story is the contrast between the silence of the media in the United States concerning Harvest of Despair and the critical acclaim elsewhere. In addition to its sweep in the international film competitions, the film has been lauded as "a searing 55-minute documentary," "powerful," "an eye-opener," "an important film . . . it should be seen by everyone," "an unquestionably sobering film which rightfully deserves wide distribution on television," "A riveting account," "a superb chronicle," "un film eminemment necessaire." CBC broadcast the film throughout Canada last September, and European, Australian, and Japanese rights are being negotiated.

The only important exception among the critics is the New York Times's Vincent Canby. Writing on the occasion of the screening at the New York Film Festival last October 10, Canby defended the Times's Walter Duranty. He did not deny that Duranty lied; he criticized the film for not explaining why Duranty did it. He excused Duranty's perfidy by explaining (citing Harrison Salisbury) that Duranty was not a Communist ideologue but merely a "calculating careerist," as if that were a valid defense for fraud.

Canby continued: Harvest of Despair was visually "full of generalities." An astonishing statement. The New York Times first censors the printed news and then, fifty years later, complains that the visual record is too general. The remarkable thing is that there is any visual record extant in the West. (Shoah, the recent documentary of the Nazi Holocaust, was applauded by the critics even though it runs for nine and a half hours without using any archival footage.)

Canby ruled, ultimately, that Harvest of Despair is a "frankly biased, angry recollection" of a "hugely emotional subject." "Biased" is a serious charge to hurl at a documentary. But what does it mean here? That the producers disapprove of genocide" Or that they twisted the facts to make genocide appear where there was none? If it was the latter, Canby gave not a single example, nor the slightest substantiation. A letter requesting substantiation remains unanswered.

What is to be made of the particular resistance of the U.S. media? The story is clear enough. After 15 years of trying, Moscow had been unable to solidify Communist rule in Ukraine, the largest non-Russian republic in the Soviet Union. Soviet reaction to Ukrainian opposition was simple--starve the opponents. A quarter, perhaps half, of the population was driven to madness, cannibalism, and death. During the whole process, Moscow was able to muzzle the Western media, enthrall Western intellectuals, and entrance Western governments. For half a century the story remains entombed. Then, a major university study and an award-winning film expose the genocide and its cover-up, and the U.S. media do not respond. Why?

Lap Dogs of the Press

AS ONE OF the few Western journalists who remained true to his public trust, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote at the time that "the man-made famine in Ukraine is one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe it ever happened." But, of the myriad excuses given by the American media, disbelief was never even intimated. Nor would we expect to see the line of demarcation between belief and disbelief to be so sharply drawn between the United States on the one hand, and Canada, Western Europe, and Australia on the other. Quite beyond Harvest, over the last three years, the famine itself has been the focus of extensive editorial and reader discussion in the major publications of those countries.

Part of the reason must surely lie in the American media's refusal publicly to admit to its especially disgraceful delinquency. But the ultimate reasons can only be the same ones that prompted the media to spike the story in the first instance. One of those is a fawning concern to maintain their good standing with the Kremlin. An indirect example of this is found in the Wall Street Journal, which does not maintain an office in Moscow and whose editorial policy has earned Moscow's ire. Moscow thus has no leverage on the Journal, and the Journal has publicized the direct connection between the man-made famine in Ukraine and present-day developments in Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

The other, more important reason is the pervasiveness of the very political bias that PBS was so quick to ascribe to Harvest of Despair. It isn't simple conscious complicity, but unknowing gullibility, that is behind the acceptance of Soviet horrors. Because this bias is often subliminal, it is all the more insidious. David Satter wrote in the October 22, 1985, Wall Street Journal: "The Soviet authorities understand that concessions to their view of reality weaken an adversary's ability to insist on the absolute value of anything. This is why the effort to induce the world to take their ideological lying literally is not just a question of prestige for the Soviet leaders but also a matter of political strategy. The Soviet authorities do not expect Western journalists to believe Soviet propaganda, but only to repeat it uncritically, without any effort to analyze what it means, so that, over time, the Soviet Union's ideological lying and officially sanctioned misuse of language, enhanced by the credibility of important American publications, begin to have the same numbing effect on Westerners as on Soviet citizens."

Were, say, ABC to air Harvest of Despair or its own documentary on the subject, it would freeze for an hour the Soviet phantasmagoria. The new image: The famine in Ukraine was not the unfortunate but unintended by-product of the overall collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union, as soporifically recited by those in the West who even concede its occurrence. In Ukraine, collectivization was completed long before the Central Statistical Office ceased publication. Long before doctors were forbidden to record deaths as due to starvation. Long before holod, the Ukrainian word for famine, was outlawed. Long before the Ukrainian-Russian border was sealed, preventing anyone from leaving Ukraine for Russia in search of food. Ukrainian villages starved. Russian villages a few hundred yards across the border did not.

The ensuing half-century of worldwide silence testifies to the effectiveness of the Soviet disinformation effort on a global scale. Eugene Lyons wrote bitterly that "the most rigorous censorship in all of Soviet Russia's history has been successful. It had concealed the catastrophe, until it was ended, thereby bringing confusion, doubt, contradiction into the whole subject." Concurrently, the Soviet Union achieved its greatest foreign-policy goals--America extended diplomatic recognition and the international community invited it to join the League of Nations.

Soviet brutality has never been exploited by its enemies as a way of undermining Soviet power. Indeed, its brutalities have increased its might, helping to transform it into a global superpower. "The Soviet Union is not only the original killer state, but the model one," wrote Nick Eberstadt of the Harvard Center for Population Studies.

For American newsmakers, such an image remains awkward, untimely, impolitic, inexpedient. Yet the man-made famine in Ukraine represents, as much as any one event can, the USSR's most precarious fault lines, domestically and globally. That event, half a century ago, today bears directly on issues of national self-determination, land and social reform, and indigenous cultural and religious values that are of burning concern in those areas of the world that lie in the path of Soviet influence. An understanding of the Ukrainian famine may well be the critical first step in a popular assimilation of the interaction between Soviet domestic and foreign policies, American media coverage of the Soviet Union, and our own consequential formulation of policy toward the Soviet Union.

Until that step is taken, Mikhail Gorbachev has good reason to be pleased. True to form, his cover-story interview in the September 9, 1985, issue of Time magazine began with Time's own insights: "Gorbachev looks well tanned, just a bit ruddy in the cheek. . . . He laughs easily . . . . [His eyes] are an intense dark brown. . . . The voice is extraordinary, deep but also quite soft . . . low and melodious." That voice then broadcast to us his concern about the "hundreds of millions of people going hungry . . . We, all of us, just have no right to ignore the situation." So spoke the man who forged his career in the crucible of the once heavily Ukrainian North Caucasus.”

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It is no wonder that several years later, this socialist dream of population control disintegrated in a collapse of its own lies and contradictions.

The wonder is that the murderous socialist charade lasted as long as it did.

What do we say to the millions of souls who perished?

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