Monument to Victims of the Famine Unveiled in Zaporizhzhia

By Orest Zakydalsky

On November 29, 2007, a monument to the victims of the Holodomor was unveiled in the centre of the City of Zaporizhzhia, on Oleksandr Polyak Square, on Prospect Lenina. The monument was built at the initiative of the Head of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast State Administration, Governor Evhen Chervonenko, and is a 6-metre marble cross with the dedication – “Zhertvam holodu i stalinizmu”- “To the Victims of the Famine and Stalinism.”

Governor Chervonenko delivered the opening address. Also present were the Mayor of Zaporizhzhia, Evhen Kartashov, Head of the Oblast Council, Oleksandr Nefyodov, and many other politicians. Clergy of all denominations were present, and blessed the monument. Several hundred residents of Zaporizhzhia attended, despite the fact that the unveiling took place on a working day. Only Communist politicians stayed away.

The unveiling of the monument, though long overdue, is a significant event, not only for Zaporizhzhia. It points to an increasingly growing consensus about the issue of the Holodomor in Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia is located in Southeastern Ukraine, traditionally a bastion of support for politicians who first denied the very existence of any famine and then argued that the famine could be explained through natural causes, “overzealous” collectivization, or other such evasions.

The simple fact is that the Holodomor of 1932-33 was a calculated, concerted effort by Moscow to destroy the last vestiges of resistance to Soviet power in Ukraine, and to ensure any future resistance was impossible. The Holodomor was not only political, but also national in character, as it was the Ukrainian peasantry that was the piedmont of the Ukrainian Nation and the source of any possible future resistance. The Holodomor, then, properly understood, was genocide of the Ukrainian People.

Last year, the Supreme Rada of Ukraine passed a bill recognizing the Holodomor as genocide, and President Yushchenko has worked tirelessly to ensure this message is spread throughout Ukraine and abroad. The opening of the monument in Zaporizhzhia shows that slowly and painfully, Ukrainian citizens are coming to grips with the reality of this great tragedy. Bit by bit, the myths about the famine propagated by Soviet apologists are being dispelled, and the truth is being accepted.

It is only when a people have accepted the real nature of its past that they can truly develop as a nation and a society. The opening of the Holodomor monument in Zaporizhzhia points to the fact that Ukrainians are moving gradually, but inexorably, in the right direction.