Ukraine Remembers Victims of Famine 75 Years Later | Voice of America - English
Leaders from around the world Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the famine that the ripped through the Ukraine in the early 1930s, as Ukrainian leaders seek to bring more attention to the plight of the millions who died from hunger. But conspicuously missing from the honoring of Holodomor , or "death by hunger," were leaders from Moscow, who have objected to recent calls for the deaths to be labeled as genocide.
Theanniversary of Holodomor is traditionally marked in late November, whenthe food shortages began resulting in the death of millions. It wasorchestrated by dictator Josef Stalin to force peasants to give uptheir land and join collective farms. Ukraine, known as the breadbasketof the Soviet Union, suffered the most. Only recently, at theencouragement of the Western-leaning Ukrainian politicians, havesurvivors' harrowing tales of cannibalism and other desperate attemptsto stay alive come to light. Ukrainians say collectivizationcarried out in their country was an attempt to break the back ofUkrainian nationhood, and stamp out opposition to Soviet rule. Atthe opening of an 80-foot tall monument to mark the 75th anniversary,Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko paid tribute to those who fellvictim to the 1932 famine, which lasted until 1933. "We bow ourhead in fraternal respect before all who suffered as we did fromStalin's regime - Russians, Belorusyns, Kazakhs, Crimean Tatars,Moldovans, Jews, and dozens and dozens of other nationalities," he said. Moscowconsiders the intensified spotlight on the famine part of Ukraine'scontinued efforts to stick a wedge between Kyiv and Moscow. ButUkrainian officials say that Moscow is not being accused of engineeringthe famine. Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, Ukrainian Ambassador toRussia, speaking Saturday evening at the Ukrainian Cultural Center inMoscow, said that Ukrainians want to reflect on the past together tobuilding a more just and more modern world together. "We do notconsider that Russia and the Russian people - who themselves sufferedhuge losses; were also victims of Stalinist terror; and lost millionsof individuals then - are in anyway to blame for this tragedy," he said. RussianPresident Dmitri Medvedev turned down an invitation to attend the Kyivceremonies, instead sending a letter that was posted on the Kremlin'sWeb site. He said that the events of the early 1930s, "are being usedto achieve immediate short-term political goals," adding that, "Inthis regard, the thesis on the centrally planned genocidal famine ofUkrainians,' is being gravely manipulated." Still, he said, "The mostdifficult pages of our common history undoubtedly need to be fullyexplained."