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11/22/2003 | Englishman
Ukraine Marks Famine That Killed Millions
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By ANNA MELNICHUK, Associated Press Writer
KIEV, Ukraine - Increased international recognition of a forced famine that killed up to 10 million Ukrainians brought bittersweet relief Saturday to elderly survivors marking the 70th anniversary of a dark chapter in the history of Soviet communism.
AP Photo
Related Links
∙ Artificial Famine in Ukraine (infoukes.com)
Gathering at a cathedral in the now independent Ukraine, survivors recalled their desperation during a famine historians say was provoked by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as part of his campaign to force peasants to give up their land and join collective farms.
"This year is of particular significance for Ukraine, because the world has recognized the crime against the Ukrainian people," said E. Morgan Williams, senior adviser of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.
Two weeks ago, some 30 countries signed a joint statement to commemorate the memory of the millions of men, women and children who suffered because of the "cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime in the former Soviet Union." The U.N. statement became the first, significant international recognition of the famine, which was denied by the Soviets for decades.
Marking the day set by the government as an annual memorial for the famine, some 2,000 people gathered at the golden-domed St. Michael Cathedral in the capital Kiev to light candles at a memorial dedicated to the victims, estimated at between 7 and 10 million.
Dozens of elderly survivors, many leaning on crutches, were helped by younger relatives as they shuffled under flags with black ribbons and the cathedral's bells chimed in mourning.
"My grandfather cut and dried loafs of bread and hid them in sacks to his dying day many years after the famine," said Lidia Kolysnichenko, 67, from the village of Irpin near Kiev.
Historians say that Stalin deliberately provoked the famine by having harvests taken out of Ukraine and having secret police confiscate whatever scarce grain reserves farmers tried to hide.
Even according to the most conservative figures, some 25,000 people died every day in Ukraine, or 17 people every minute, in 1933. Cases of cannibalism were widespread.
"Our neighbor killed his wife, dismembered her body and was seen to make soup of her," said 82-year old Volodymyr Pianov, his hand trembling. "It was not the only case when people ate each other in our village."
His village of Kriuchki in the eastern Kharkiv region, one of area's most devastated by the famine, died out almost entirely.
Earlier this year, Ukraine declassified more than 1,000 files documenting the famine, and Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma signed a law establishing a day of remembrance for famine victims.
In a related development, the Pulitzer Prize Board said Friday it would not revoke a prize awarded in 1932 to a reporter for The New York Times who was accused of deliberately ignoring the famine in Ukraine to preserve his access to Stalin.
The Pulitzer board said there was not clear evidence of deliberate deception.
Walter Duranty covered the Soviet Union for the Times from 1922 to 1941, earning acclaim for an exclusive 1929 interview with Stalin. Duranty was later criticized for reporting the Communist line rather than the facts.
The board's decision was immediately criticized by Ukrainian groups, who sent more than 15,000 letters and postcards to the Pulitzer committee demanding the prize be withdrawn.
"We certainly will continue to press for revocation," said Victoria Hubska of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America." "Duranty misled international community. The lie should be punished."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=6&u=/ap/20031122/ap_on_re_eu/ukraine_famine
Відповіді
2003.11.23 | Andrij
Комітет Пуліцера відмовився забрати премію в сталініста Дюранті
Але ж які мерзотники з комітета Пуліцера. Черствість та байдужість цих людей до трагедії іншої нації вражає. Накласти на себе вічну пляму заперечників геноциду зважиться не кожний.Пані та панове, дуже прошу, напишіть про ваші думки за цією адресою
pulitzer@www.pulitzer.org
Нижче наводжу мій власний лист, котрий я відіслав навесні цього року. Вже не певний про звертальну форму та перший параграф з цього листа.
Esteemed Members of the Pulitzer Prize Board,
Being the people who cherish truth and humanism in
journalism, it is your duty to rescind the 1932
Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty of The New
York Times.
Duranty willingly falsified the truth about the
murders and repression in his reports, following and
reinforcing Stalinist propaganda. The people of
Ukraine suffered immensely from these lies, as the
attention of the world was averted from the suffering
and subsequent genocide of the Ukrainian population.
Some facts about Ukraine Duranty never has mentioned
in his dispatches. The following quotes are taken from
Encyclopedia Britannica.
"Repression of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox
church culminated in the liquidation of the church in
1930 and the arrest and exile of its hierarchy and
clergy."
"Arrests, followed by imprisonment, exile, or
execution, decimated the ranks of intellectuals,
writers, and artists; some, like Khvylovy, committed
suicide. In all, some four-fifths of the Ukrainian
cultural elite was repressed or perished in the course
of the 1930s."
"In 1928 the regime introduced special measures
against the kulaks (arbitrarily defined "wealthy"
peasants). These progressed from escalating taxes and
grain-delivery quotas to dispossession of all property
and finally to the deportation, by the mid-1930s, of
some 100,000 families to Siberia and Kazakstan.
Wholesale collectivization began in 1929, under duress
from party activists and under threat of economic
sanctions. The percentage of farms collectivized rose
from 9 to 65 percent from October 1929 to March 1930
and exceeded 90 percent by the end of 1935."
Dear members of the Board, innocent people were
murdered, sent to labor camps in Siberia, repressed
and forced into the "collective farms", where they
became 20th century slaves, without property and even
personal IDs, paid with "working day points" instead
of money. Has Walter Duranty ever mentioned any of
that in his reports from the USSR?
Duranty was a cynical liar. He proved this when he
claimed in March 1933, "there is no famine" when
speaking of the genocide of unimaginable proportion in
Ukraine. He repeated this lie in August 1933, writing,
"any report of a famine is today an exaggeration of
malignant propaganda". Duranty later admitted
privately, "it is quite possible that as many as ten
million people may have died directly or indirectly
from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past
year." The latter statement was confirmed by Josef
Stalin himself in his conversation with Winston
Churchill.
It is a tragedy that a person like Walter Duranty
continues to represent the Pulitzer Prize Award.
Please, have mercy on the innocent souls lost because
of the secret mass slaughter, which Duranty helped to
keep secret. Find the courage to do the right thing.
Thank you,