President holds meeting on the status of investigation of Holodomor

[stepanstas]

Letter of the day: Yanukovych denies Holodomor

According to media sources in Ukraine, (such as Kyiv's korrespondent.net), one of Viktor Yanukovych's first acts as Ukraine's president was to abolish the official website on the Holodomor, the genocidal famine in which Stalin deliberately starved 10 million Ukrainians to death in 1932-33 (sometimes called "the Ukrainian Holocaust").

This shows his true colours, in that he is prepared to deny, excuse and cover up this horrible crime against humanity.

By seeking to deny the Stalinist famine, he is not only alienating the Ukrainian-speaking, pro-western half of the population, but also his own constituency of russophone Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, many of whom married Ukrainians.

Hardly anyone today seriously believes that the genocide-famine didn't happen. Anyone who still denies it, fully knows he is lying.

What Stalin did to Ukraine and Ukrainians is exactly why Ukrainians hate the Soviet Union so very much, and why many would fight tooth and nail against any attempt to revive the U.S.S.R. in any form, or even to whitewash its legacy -- such as their new president's crude attempt to erase the memory of his nation's greatest collective tragedy.

[sjoyce]

I read in yesterdays Kyiv Post that the new president also intends to close the KGB file archives that told the names of many of the people who were murdered at Stalins orders. A sad day for a great country. I believe the story of the Holodomor is now a world story so if the presidents web site has been changed, it does not mean the story will go away. We will not forget.

[stepanstas]

Originally Posted by sjoyce

I read in yesterdays Kyiv Post that the new president also intends to close the KGB file archives that told the names of many of the people who were murdered at Stalins orders. A sad day for a great country. I believe the story of the Holodomor is now a world story so if the presidents web site has been changed, it does not mean the story will go away. We will not forget.

To think, how much evil he has planned (and done) in so little time. What lies ahead?

[stepanstas]

He has gone nuts.

Yanukovych reverses Ukraine's position on Holodomor famine

It is "unjust" to call the Stalin-era famine that killed millions across the Soviet Union a genocide of the Ukrainian people, President Viktor Yanukovych said on Tuesday.

Yanukovych's statement to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) marks a complete reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, who sought international recognition of the 1932-1933 Great Famine, known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor, as genocide.

PACE will discuss on Wednesday a report commemorating the victims of the Soviet famine that includes an amendment recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

"We consider it incorrect and unjust to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people," Yanukovych said, calling it "a common tragedy" of the Soviet people.

The Ukrainian president said not only Ukrainian, but also Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh people starved during the famine.

"Those were consequences of Stalin's totalitarian regime, his attitude to people," he said.

More than 3 million people perished in Ukraine due to the famine, and Ukrainian nationalists say Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility. Yushchenko, who was known for his anti-Russian policies as president, led Ukraine's efforts to secure international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide.

Yanukovych was elected in February to succeed Yushchenko and swiftly aligned Kiev closer to Moscow, including by agreeing to extend Russia's lease on a naval base in Crimea.

Russia says the famine cannot be considered an act that targeted Ukrainians, as millions of people from different ethnic groups also lost their lives in vast territories across the Soviet Union.

A draft PACE resolution on the famine says it was caused by "cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime" responsible for the deaths of "millions of innocent people," not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia. Relative to its population, Kazakhstan is believed to be the worst affected Soviet republic, the document says.