ZGram - 7/26/2002 - "More on the Russian Famine" _ Part II

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

July 26, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

This is Part II of a three-part ZGram:

The following essay was taken from a highly informative Ukrainian 
website, UKAR, at www.ukar.org  My readers would be well advised to 
visit and get a feel for the early thirties in that part of the world 
- and the horror that came with Bolshewism - financed by Jewish 
banking oligarchs in New York and carried out by mostly Jewish 
revolutionaries.

Please remember that it was written from the Ukrainian point of view.

This is Part II

[START]

The elimination of a people

Excerpt from

THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1932-1933 IN UKRAINE: A PRESENTATION AT PENN 
STATE UNIVERSITY

by Mykola Riabchouk

     This horrific event, whatever we call it - the Ukrainian 
holocaust, man-made famine or famine-terror - has two different 
though equally important aspects that should be examined in order to 
understand properly what happened in 1932-1933 in Ukraine.  What is 
the main message of the famine, to us, born in much luckier times?

     First, the political aspect seems to be quite apparent.  As 
Prof. Naydan aptly expressed it, the Communist regime did its best to 
eliminate Ukrainians as a nation, not only from political maps, but 
also from history - from people's memory, from human consciousness.  
It did its best to turn Ukrainians into a "hidden nation," as Adrian 
Karatnytcky properly named his book a few years ago.

     How could it happen that about 10 million people were starved to 
death in Europe, in the 20th century - almost unnoticed, 
"unregistered," as Robert Conquest says, in Western public 
consciousness?

     There were two large-scale holocausts in the 20th century 
Europe, one of them implemented by the Nazis against the Jews, and 
another one by the Bolsheviks against the Ukrainians.  One of them is 
well-known, broadly covered and recognized, while another one is 
almost unknown, uncovered and, until recently, unrecognized.  Really, 
who cares about some kind of "Ukrainians;" and who the hell are those 
people anyway?  Even now many "post-Sovietologists" strive to discuss 
not the hidden "holocaust" but "class struggle;" not the genocide 
committed by the Bolshevik-Russian regime against the Ukrainians but 
about the "terror" of the Soviets against their own(?!) people - like 
that of China of the 1960s or Kampuchea (Cambodia) of the 1970s.

     Of course, neither Nazis nor Bolsheviks regarded genocide as 
their main aim; it was only one means, among many others, to realize 
their utopian social projects.  In both cases totalitarian regimes 
strove to find a "final solution" of national questions in their 
empires - the "Jewish question" in the Third Reich and [the] 
"Ukrainian question" in the "Third Rome."  The Prussian and Russian 
approaches, even though different in form, were quite similar in 
their essence.  Khrushchev had witnessed Stalin's complaint: 
"Ukrainians, unfortunately, are too numerous to be deported to 
Siberia."  So they were killed in their own villages.

     The reasons for Nazi hatred of Jews are rather well-documented - 
one of the best explanations can be found in Hannah Arendt's book 
"The Origins of Totalitarianism."  The reasons for Bolshevik hatred 
of Ukrainians are not as clear: "class struggle" is only a bleak 
euphemism for a much more profound and essential process in Soviet 
Russia (or the so called "Soviet Union") - re-establishment and 
expansion of the old Russian empire.

     Ukrainians have been considered the main obstacle to this 
process: firstly because they were the most numerous minority in the 
Russian (and Soviet-Russian) empire.  Secondly, they possessed the 
most important (in economic and geopolitical terms) territory; and 
thirdly, they were regarded as a main, if not the only, rival and 
competitor to Russians for the legacy of Kyyivan Rus'.  The last 
point is the crucial one; I dare say it is a key to an understanding 
of the entire problem, which otherwise appears too irrational and 
implausible.

     Ukrainians, by their very existence as a separate nation, 
challenge the most fundamental myth of Russian self-consciousness, 
self-awareness - the myth about a 1,00-year-old state, a 
1,000-year-old culture, the "sacral" millennial reich.  Russian 
imperial identity is badly damaged because of the very existence of 
some "indigenous" Ukrainians on the territory of post-Kyyivan-Rus', 
in its geographical and historical space.  Who on earth are they, and 
where are they from?

     For centuries Russians had claimed that Ukrainians were only a 
branch of the Great Russian tree, merely a south-western ethnic group 
with its provincial "Little-Russian" dialect.

     But as soon as the modern Ukrainian nation emerged (in the 
1920s, this process came close to fruition, the various obstacles 
notwithstanding), the Russian empire in its Bolshevik hypostasis 
intervened radically.  It was not a matter of Ukrainian nationalism 
only, nor even of "separatism."  It was and still is a matter of the 
very existence of the Russian empire with its mythological 
cornerstone.  The "Kyyivan Rus' legacy" could not be shared or given 
up.  If this concept finally is laid to rest, the Russian claim to a 
temporally expansive empire will lose all validity.

     In fact, Russians have only two alternatives: to create a modern 
nation-state or to recreate an old-style empire.  In the first 
variant: they can change their identity, abandon imperial ambitions 
and stereotypes, and leave Ukrainians as they are and where they 
are.  This is a painful but promising way, supported by a handful of 
Russian and Western liberals, one of which recently has been 
articulated as follows: "An independent Ukraine, by ending the 
Russian empire, creates the real possibility that Russia, as a nation 
and as a state, will become both democratic and European" (Zbigniew 
Brzezinski).

     The second way is probably easier or, at least, more traditional 
historically and, hence, more plausible.  But to follow this path, 
Russians have to eliminate Ukrainians - both from History and from 
geography.  It had not been easy before, it would not be easy now.  
Since Ukrainians have ceased to be a "hidden nation," the only way to 
eliminate them now would be to kill them.  This is like a gothic tale 
about an illegitimate son who strives to kill his legitimate brother 
in order to inherit his father's property and, most importantly, his 
father's title.

     The Ukrainian holocaust of 1932-1933 is horrific, but, in fact, 
only partial proof of the fighting that still is being conducted 
today.  As long as Russians tend to build their identity on the basis 
of historical myths and rebuild the empire on the basis of an 
"illegitimate legacy," Ukrainians can never be secure.  There is no 
room for a Russian empire and a Ukrainian nation on the same map.

     The second aspect and second lesson of the Ukrainian holocaust 
of 1932-1933 could be called "human" or "humanitarian."  
Paradoxically enough, those events gave us not only the evidence of 
brutality, hatred and bestial conduct, of inhuman and anti-human 
behavior, including cannibalism; those events also gave us exciting 
examples of human sympathy, solidarity and sacrifice.  We have all 
too little factual material about the famine because of the Soviet 
cover-up of the Ukrainian holocaust, but we need to learn more about 
simple peasants who secretly helped their fellows - the "kulaks" - 
despite the strongest prohibitions by the authorities; or about 
soldiers, some Komsomol members and Communists who were not as eager 
to confiscate grain as their bosses demanded, or about city-dwellers 
who, their own poverty notwithstanding, tried to rescue exhausted 
Ukrainian peasants, especially children, who were able to reach the 
cities despite police blockades.

     There were different people, of different nationalities - 
Russians, Jews, Russified Ukrainians - but all of them should be 
honored since they, risking their own lives, saved Ukrainians from 
the Bolshevik terror.  All of them should be recognized by Ukrainians 
as "the Righteous" (just as the Jews recognize "Righteous Gentiles") 
- it would be the most appropriate Ukrainian government action to 
commemorate their courage.

     One more aspect could be mentioned here, even though it is 
rather metaphysical and hardly verifiable.  The more I think about 
the tragedy, the more I feel that it has some "hidden" meaning.  To 
some extent it might be considered God's trial of the Ukrainians - 
like that of the Biblical Jonah.  But to us mere mortals, it looks 
more like God's revenge or, rather, a "payback" by history to 
Ukrainian peasants who lost their chance in 1917-1920, who, for the 
most part, betrayed the Ukrainian revolution and the Ukrainian 
government - with a naive belief that all those bloody events in the 
cities were in no way relevant to their rural life.

     I do not know any family in eastern Ukraine that was not touched 
by the famine.  My mother, who lived in the Kharkiv region, lost all 
her brothers and sisters in 1933; my mother-in-law, from the Kyyiv 
region, also lost her entire family.  But I know also that before our 
parents died in 1933, our grandparents en masse deserted from the 
Ukrainian National Army in 1918-1919, leaving the Ukrainian National 
Republic defenseless against the Bolshevik invasion.  Fifteen years 
later the Bolsheviks repaid them and their children for everything.  
We pay this price and our children will probably pay it as well.  I 
do not believe in revenge, but I believe in historical lessons.  I 
certainly do not know what price we would pay if we lost our 
opportunity today for freedom, but undoubtedly we would pay a high 
price as all losers are condemned to do.

[END]