This weekend Kyiv will witness what has in the space of a few years grown into one of the key memorial events on the national calendar, when thousands of coloured lamps are placed on Myhailovskiy Square to honour the victims of the 1932-33 Holodomor terror famine. This memorial event is currently being advertised all over the capital city on posters featuring appeals to citizens to light a candle on November 24 in memory of the untold millions who perished in the Stalinist atrocity.
The candle-lighting ceremony will be just one of a number of memorial services and exhibitions dedicated to the memory of the Holodomor victims, with events planned across Ukraine and elsewhere throughout the world to usher in a year of memorials to mark the 75th anniversary of the famine.
A key role in identity politics
Along with his support for democratic elections and free speech, President Yushchenko has made addressing the crimes of the Soviet era one of the cornerstones of his presidency. Since taking office in 2005, he has made sure that the annual Holodomor memorial events held each November have grown from low-key wreath-laying ceremonies into an eye-catching spectacle that is both a fitting tribute to the scale of the massacre and a media-friendly way of grabbing the world’s attention.
Previous Ukrainian governments had shied away from the Holodomor issue, largely due to the ambiguous attitudes that prevailed towards both Russia and the Soviet past. While such attitudes remain very much alive and well among sections of today’s society, attempts to place the Holodomor at the centre of a new, post-Soviet Ukrainian national identity continue to gain momentum.
In the immediate aftermath of last November’s memorial services, Yushchenko succeeded in getting the Ukrainian parliament to pass a bill classifying the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Opposition came from the Communist Party and the Party of Regions, which called for the word genocide to be removed and suggested characterising the famine as a tragedy of the Ukrainian people, but the bill eventually passed with the support of the formerly Orange coalition member Socialist Party.
Calls for international recognition
The President has since redoubled his efforts to gain support from the international community for Holodomor recognition, and used a recent state visit to Israel to discuss ways in which the two countries could cooperate in the sphere of genocide recognition and remembrance. Other high profile efforts have included a large mutli-media exhibition at the European parliament drawing parallels between the crimes of Nazi Germany and the Stalin regime with the focus very much on the Holodomor as one of the great crimes of the 20th century.
A number of countries including Canada, Italy, Paraguay and Peru have already passed legislation recognising the Holodomor as an act of genocide, but among the wider global population the Holodomor remains one of the last century’s least known holocausts. Efforts are underway for the European parliament to pass a bill acknowledging the Holodomor as genocide, but the situation has been complicated by fears that any form of recognition would be interpreted as an anti-Russian move by Moscow.
In Ukraine itself, the Yushchenko regime has had considerable success in promoting awareness of the Holodomor in the public consciousness. A huge memorial complex close to the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra is now in the final stages of planning and is expected to open in time for next year’s memorial events, while a similar centre in Kharkiv, the capital city of Ukraine at the time of the famine, is also set to open by November 2008.
A national book of memory has also been commissioned, with regional authorities being asked to collect local data and eye-witness accounts to preserve the memory of the famine for future generations.
Until the collapse of the USSR, official Soviet denial and censorship made such measures impossible, but there remains enough evidence in state archives and among Holodomor survivors to compile a meaningful record of the atrocity. .
In the light of Yushchenko’s initiatives, public attitudes towards the Holodomor have undergone a major revision, with those who previously sought to deny the leading role of the state in the famine and label it a natural disaster now frequently resorting to claims that it was not an exclusively Ukrainian genocide and should not be used for political purposes.
The President, however, remains undeterred and recently criticised government officials for not doing enough to promote awareness of the Holodomor in Ukraine, commenting, “I hope the Education Ministry will come to understand that this subject is very important for shaping outlooks among the young.”
Russia’s selective memory
Unsurprisingly, the most vocal opposition to efforts towards Holodomor recognition has come from Moscow. Russia has long played a double game when it comes to accepting responsibility for the actions of the Soviet government, trumpeting triumphs like the victory over fascism in World War II while denying any historical responsibility for horrors like the Gulag, the Holodomor and the mass ethnic deportations of the 1940s.
While Putin is comfortable adopting the Soviet national anthem as a suitable tune for his resurgently nationalistic Russia, he has sought to foster a renewed sense of national pride by denying that there is anything much to be ashamed of while commissioning a series of school textbooks that whitewash the horrors of Stalin’s rule and refer to the blood-drenched Soviet dictator as ‘the most successful ruler of the USSR’.
This trend towards downplaying the atrocities of the Stalinist regime stands in stark contrast to the process of open evaluation currently on-going in Ukraine. However, while opinion polls generally reflect support for an honest appraisal of Soviet crimes, a number of leading political and academic figures remain concerned that the Holodomor issue is becoming overly politicised and has become hostage to the political battles currently being fought in the country.
Yushchenko recently signed a bill making it a criminal offense to deny the Holodomor in Ukraine. This bill will be up for consideration before the new parliament, which is expected to convene later this month, so the political dimension of this historical drama looks set to remain very much in the spotlight.
