LETTER
Yanukovych
has to Apologize for Denying Ukraine’s Holodomor
Dear
Editor:
According
to media sources in Ukraine, (such as Kyiv’s korrespondent.net), one of
Yanukovych’s very first acts, in his first day in office as Ukraine’s
President, was to abolish the official website on the Holodomor, the famine
genocide in which Stalin deliberately starved 10 million Ukrainians to death in
1932-33 (sometimes called “the Ukrainian Holocaust”).
This shows his true colors, in that he is
prepared to deny, excuse, and cover up this horrible crime against humanity.
It is Soviet-style historical revisionism at
its worst; the whole world needs to be made aware of this!
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, &
ethnic Russians (many of whom married Ukrainians).
The
fact is, that every single ethnic-Ukrainian family, without exception, east of
the river Zbruch (including my own, from
Thus, Yanukovych has gravely insulted most of
his own supporters, who lost relatives in Stalin’s genocide, and must
apologize.
Hardly anyone today, seriously believes
anymore that the famine genocide didn’t happen. Anyone who still denies it, fully
knows he is lying.
What Stalin did to Ukraine and Ukrainians is
exactly why Ukrainians (especially Western & Central), hate the Soviet
Union so very much, and why many would fight tooth & nail, against any
attempt to revive the USSR in any form, or even to whitewash its legacy - such
as the new President’s crude attempt to erase the memory of his nation’s
greatest collective tragedy.
This all shows how seriously misplaced his
priorities are - instead of using his first day in office to do something positive
to help the people of Ukraine, he instead chooses to try to save the historical
reputation of his Communist friends.
Ralph Watzke, B.A., LL.B.