A memorial to the famine, right, opposite a revered cathedral, was dedicated last November in Kiev. A museum is planned there. Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York TimesFrom The New York Times:
KIEV, Ukraine — A quarter century ago, a Ukrainian historian named Stanislav Kulchytsky was told by his Soviet overlords to concoct an insidious cover-up. His orders: to depict the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as unavoidable, like a natural disaster. Absolve the Communist Party of blame. Uphold the legacy of Stalin.
Professor Kulchytsky, though, would not go along.
The other day, as he stood before a new memorial to the victims of the famine, he recalled his decision as one turning point in a movement lasting decades to unearth the truth about that period. And the memorial itself, shaped like a towering candle with a golden eternal flame, seemed to him in some sense a culmination of this effort.
Read more ....
My Comment: 75 years later, the Russian and Ukrainian relationship is still influenced by this event. But what is not commonly discussed is that many Russians who lived in the Ukraine during this time also suffered and died during this forced famine. My own father grew up in the Ukraine during this time, and even though the family was Russian, the Communist authorities did not discriminate.
