On this day: Genocide deniers in America in 1933

In a photograph dated the 17th of December, 1933, American communists attack a group of Ukrainians in Chicago, USA. The Ukrainians were demonstrating to raise awareness of the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocide of millions of people in Ukraine.

Between 1932 and 1933 Soviet authorities confiscated the food and crops of millions of ethnic Ukrainians, deliberately starving them to death. A similar genocide was also committed in Kazakhstan, where 42% of the ethnic population was killed and replaced with Russian colonists.

Unlike the Holocaust, there was very limited Western media coverage of the Holodomor, despite conservative estimates putting Ukraine’s death toll on par with it, and other estimates putting it even higher. This was because prominent journalists were either friends of Stalin or communists themselves, and they refused to report on it.

Amongst these genocide deniers was The New York Times’ Walter Duranty, while Welsh reporter Gareth Jones risked his life to get the truth out.

On this day: Genocide deniers in America in 1933

In a photograph dated the 17th of December, 1933, American communists attack a group of Ukrainians in Chicago, USA. The Ukrainians were demonstrating to raise awareness of the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocide of millions of people in Ukraine.

Between 1932 and 1933 Soviet authorities confiscated the food and crops of millions of ethnic Ukrainians, deliberately starving them to death. A similar genocide was also committed in Kazakhstan, where 42% of the ethnic population was killed and replaced with Russian colonists.

Unlike the Holocaust, there was very limited Western media coverage of the Holodomor, despite conservative estimates putting Ukraine’s death toll on par with it, and other estimates putting it even higher. This was because prominent journalists were either friends of Stalin or communists themselves, and they refused to report on it.

Amongst these genocide deniers was The New York Times’ Walter Duranty, while Welsh reporter Gareth Jones risked his life to get the truth out.

Holodomor Awareness

This time in November is typically designated as an awareness week for the Holodomor, Stalin’s forced famine-genocide of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s.

Above is the Lavra monastery complex in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. The golden tower/flame on the right is the memorial to the genocide.

The deaths of tens of millions in the Soviet Union should serve as a reminder why communism should never again be revived or allowed to thrive – something generations born after the fall of the USSR seem unable to fully understand.

Holodomor Remembrance Day

Today is Holodomor Remembrance Day, an international day to remember Stalin’s atrocities in Ukraine in the 1930s. The peasants’ food and grain were confiscated and the borders were closed as millions of ethnic Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death.

The dead were replaced with Russian settlers, creating a situation that still has massive repercussions today.

The genocide is still denied by Russia.

The Holodomor, Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine that killed millions in the 1930s.

‘At that time I lived in the village of Yaressky of the Poltava region. More than a half of the village population perished as a result of the famine. It was terrifying to walk through the village: swollen people moaning and dying. The bodies of the dead were buried together, because there was no one to dig the graves.

There were no dogs and no cats. People died at work; it was of no concern whether your body was swollen, whether you could work, whether you have eaten, whether you could – you had to go and work. Otherwise – you are the enemy of the people.

Many people never lived to see the crops of 1933 and those crops were considerable. A more severe famine, other sufferings were awaiting ahead. Rye was starting to become ripe. Those who were still able made their way to the fields. This road, however, was covered with dead bodies, some could not reach the fields, some ate grain and died right away. The patrol was hunting them down, collecting everything, trampled down the collected spikelets, beat the people, came into their homes, seized everything. What they could not take – they burned.’

(From the memories of Galina Gubenko, Poltava region)

 

 

Independence Day

The 24th of August is Ukrainian Independence (such as it is now) Day.

Here is the tryzub – the trident of Ukraine – printed over a Russian stamp during Ukraine’s struggle for independence during the fall of the Russian Empire and the formation of the Soviet Union. Circa 1918.

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105 Years Ago

Ukrainians are photographed harvesting in Separator, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1915.

At this point in time Ukrainians were forced to register as “enemy aliens”, and many were put into concentration camps to perform forced labour during World War One.

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Happy Ukrainian New Year!

Happy Ukrainian New Year! As Ukrainian Christmas doesn’t happen until the 6th – 7th of January, New Year happens in the middle of the month.

Soviet New Year postcard of a boy in Ukrainian national dress. 1965.

Merry Christmas – again.

Today is Christmas Eve according to the old calendar, and tonight millions of people (including Ukrainians like me) celebrate with a twelve-dish dinner.

With the disaster surrounding us and a house full of smoke, this is going to be an odd one.

Universal Children’s Day

Today is Universal Children’s Day. The 20^th of November is also the date when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959. Additionally, the UN General assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on this date in 1989.

In an age where Russia had whitewashed Stalin’s image and the nation now reveres him almost as a God, and at a time when young people – ignorant, or perhaps wilfully ignorant of recent history – embrace communism (if I see one more “social justice warrior” with a hammer and sickle avatar…), I’d like to share some pictures.

These aren’t children in a Nazi concentration camp; they’re Soviet children in communist gulags during Stalin’s reign.

The problem with 20^th century history taught in schools is that it stops with Hitler. Few seem aware that Stalin had the deaths of tens of millions on his hands.

The communist utopia teens and twenty-somethings in the West seem to dream of these days? This was the reality of it.

Eighty Years Ago

Source

This image is taken from Soviet footage in the city of Lviv, made on the 28th of September, 1939. The communists parade through the streets following a successful invasion. Lviv, in Ukraine, changed from Polish to Russian governance at this time.

Control of western Ukraine changed hands a number of times during the Second World War. It was the site of the beginning of the Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

1940 Soviet stamps celebrating the 1939 “liberation” of Ukrainian and Belarusian people from the Polish regime.

At the end of the war, world leaders including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were responsible for the region falling behind the so-called Iron Curtain, trapping ethnic Ukrainians in the USSR.

Today, Lviv is one of Ukraine’s most patriotic cities.