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By Prof. James Mace
Consultant to The Day
The Day, Kyiv, Ukraine
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
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The February 12 Verkhovna Rada hearing on the Holodomor , the Great
Ukrainian Manmade Famine of 1932-33, was a triumph not of any one person,
but of historical justice for millions who perished - not only in the
countryside but for the Ukrainian people as a whole, for a nation literally
dismembered by terror against those who had taken part in the earlier policy
of Ukrainization and suppression of what they had done, dismembered by being
cut off from much of its own history and culture, which were fed them in
such a distorted form that the very word, Ukrainian, seemed to become second
rate, an object of derision for a people that seemingly could not become a
nation and could not quite make it to a supposedly superior Russian culture.
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ERECTING MONUMENTS IS AN OFFICIAL ACT, LIGHTING A CANDLE IS A PERSONAL ONE
Photo by Mykola Lazarenko, The Day
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The five minutes I was given to describe the work of America's Ukraine
Famine Commission did not suffice for even a fraction of what I should have
said, other than that we did the best we could with what we had. Ukraine,
with a few exceptions like Communist leader Petro Symonenko, has now come
to basically the same conclusion we did in 1990: that Ukrainians had been
the
victims of genocide in the 1930s and were crippled to an extent that many of
the shortcomings of their contemporary state directly result from the lack
of what could otherwise have been.
As a foreign citizen I am far from comfortable making policy recommendations
even in the face of catcalls from some Communists that I would do better to
go back to my American Indians. Yet, the years I have spent researching this
tragedy compelled me to try to give one piece of advice that I am not
certain was understood.
As one who unsuccessfully attempted to establish an institute for the study
of genocide a decade ago I can only welcome the current initiative by
various political figures to establish an institute to study the famine.
The call by Communist Borys Oliynyk to name the names of all the guilty
and all their victims, while far easier said than done, is also commendable
as is the belated movement to erect a monument to the victims.
I attempted only to counsel an act of national memory accessible to
everyone - that on the national day to commemorate the victims of 1933
(fourth saturday of November) a time be appointed when each member
of this nation where almost every family lost loved ones will be invited to
light a candle in their window in memory of those who suffered.
It would be only a fitting response to the words of Father Oleksander
Bykovets, son of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox priest who himself
became a priest in America: Everybody worried about one thing - everybody
was ready to be a martyr and knew that if not today they would be destroyed
tomorrow but they worried whether the world would know about this and
whether the world would say something. And there was another problem of a
still more intimate character: Would there be somebody to pray for those who
were perishing?
Even after seven decades, lighting a candle in the window seems to me a
fitting answer.
The Day, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Photo by Mykola Lazarenko, The Day
http://www.day.kiev.ua/DIGEST/2003/06/issue.htm
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