harvests of those years were confiscated by the Soviet Red Army under orders from Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator. Under the new policy of Soviet agricultural collectivization in the 1930s, all grain from collective farms in Ukraine was shipped back to Russia, leaving millions of Ukrainians to starve to death. It was part of a brutal campaign by Stalin to force Ukrainian peasants to join collective farms while local farmers resisted all such collectivization. It was an era when almost all food disappeared from the rural areas of Ukraine. Children disappeared as cannibalism became widespread. About a quarter of Ukraine’s population was wiped out.
The Ukrainian famine, or Holodomor , was one of the largest national catastrophes of the Ukrainian nation in modern history. While the famine in Ukraine was a part of a wider famine that also affected other regions of the USSR, the name Holodomor was specifically applied to the events that took place in territories populated by ethnic Ukrainians. It was sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide, implying that the famine was engineered by the Soviets, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity. Some modern-day revisionists and apologists suggest that natural causes such as weather, inadequate harvest, and insufficient traction power were also among the reasons that contributed to the origins of famine and its severity. Yet the truth was that Moscow initiated a policy of death by forced starvation, all for the greater glory of the godless Soviet Communism.
To Alex it was just one more example of the suffering and atrocities of that part of the world. The Nazis had killed nearly one and a half million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly thirty-four thousand Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history had gone untold. Alex shuddered. So much of the twentieth century had been a testament to man’s inhumanity to man, a complete loss of any moral compass.
Thinking about all of this today in a room with Michael Cerny, Alex felt her indignation rising, three quarters of a century later. Anyone could say or think whatever they wanted about Christians, but true Christians sent missionaries all over the world to help feed people, not starve or murder them.
“ Holodomor in Ukrainian means ‘death by hunger,’ ” said Cerny, bringing it back to the 1930s. “In central Kiev there is a monument to those who perished in the Holodomor . The president of the United States is going to lay a wreath at the base of that monument.”
“In my humble opinion, long overdue,” Alex said.
“It’s also a controversial gesture. The Russians still deny that the fake famine was official policy. Never mind the fact that there are documents in Moscow above Stalin’s signature ordering the Red Army to shoot anyone caught hiding food.”
It was hard to comprehend. The Soviet policy of that era was as mind numbing and satanic as the extermination camps of Nazi Germany or the attacks on the civilians at the World Trade Center on September 11.
Cerny leaned down to a briefcase beside him. “I’m glad you seem to be a sympathetic soul,” he said. “I’m going to give you some reading. For right here, right now,” he said. “The first thing you need to know is the current political situation vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. Under Vladimir Putin, who’s basically a gangster, Russia is under its worst dictator since Stalin.”
“You think he’s that bad? Worse than Khrushchev?”
“ ‘Vlad the Impaler Lite,’ we call him. Look, you be the judge,” Cerny said. “Putin has allowed Gazprom, the state gas company, to raise its own army. He had the editor of Izvestia fired for publishing accurate accounts of the Beslan school hostage crisis. And now he’s founded these ideological youth groups called
The Ukrainian famine, or Holodomor , was one of the largest national catastrophes of the Ukrainian nation in modern history. While the famine in Ukraine was a part of a wider famine that also affected other regions of the USSR, the name Holodomor was specifically applied to the events that took place in territories populated by ethnic Ukrainians. It was sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide, implying that the famine was engineered by the Soviets, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity. Some modern-day revisionists and apologists suggest that natural causes such as weather, inadequate harvest, and insufficient traction power were also among the reasons that contributed to the origins of famine and its severity. Yet the truth was that Moscow initiated a policy of death by forced starvation, all for the greater glory of the godless Soviet Communism.
To Alex it was just one more example of the suffering and atrocities of that part of the world. The Nazis had killed nearly one and a half million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly thirty-four thousand Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history had gone untold. Alex shuddered. So much of the twentieth century had been a testament to man’s inhumanity to man, a complete loss of any moral compass.
Thinking about all of this today in a room with Michael Cerny, Alex felt her indignation rising, three quarters of a century later. Anyone could say or think whatever they wanted about Christians, but true Christians sent missionaries all over the world to help feed people, not starve or murder them.
“ Holodomor in Ukrainian means ‘death by hunger,’ ” said Cerny, bringing it back to the 1930s. “In central Kiev there is a monument to those who perished in the Holodomor . The president of the United States is going to lay a wreath at the base of that monument.”
“In my humble opinion, long overdue,” Alex said.
“It’s also a controversial gesture. The Russians still deny that the fake famine was official policy. Never mind the fact that there are documents in Moscow above Stalin’s signature ordering the Red Army to shoot anyone caught hiding food.”
It was hard to comprehend. The Soviet policy of that era was as mind numbing and satanic as the extermination camps of Nazi Germany or the attacks on the civilians at the World Trade Center on September 11.
Cerny leaned down to a briefcase beside him. “I’m glad you seem to be a sympathetic soul,” he said. “I’m going to give you some reading. For right here, right now,” he said. “The first thing you need to know is the current political situation vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. Under Vladimir Putin, who’s basically a gangster, Russia is under its worst dictator since Stalin.”
“You think he’s that bad? Worse than Khrushchev?”
“ ‘Vlad the Impaler Lite,’ we call him. Look, you be the judge,” Cerny said. “Putin has allowed Gazprom, the state gas company, to raise its own army. He had the editor of Izvestia fired for publishing accurate accounts of the Beslan school hostage crisis. And now he’s founded these ideological youth groups called
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