The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a complex crisis, but the answer lies in history. Who knows that Kiyv once was more powerful than Moscow? It was also a time when Ukraine and America were adversaries.
Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is also seen in the Moldova archaeological sites (43,000 – 45,000 BC) which includes a dwelling constructed from mammoth bones. The territory is also considered to be the likely location for the human domestication of the horse.
So, there is no doubt that Ukraine is something special. But what is it? Alexandr Solzhenitsyn criticized the Allies for not opening a new front against Nazi Germany in the west earlier in World War II. This resulted in Soviet domination and control of the nations of Eastern Europe.
Solzhenitsyn claimed the Western democracies apparently cared little about how many died in the East, as long as they could end the war quickly and painlessly for themselves in the West. In 1978, he called the United States «Dechristianized» and mired boorish consumerism. Wow, that`s a long time ago, and we have the same going on even today.
He also accused the Western news media of left-wing bias (Wow! Really?), of violating the privacy of celebrities, and of filling up the «immortal souls» of their readers with celebrity gossip and other «vain talk».
He also said that the West erred in thinking that the whole world should embrace this as a model. While faulting Soviet society for rejecting basic human rights and the rule of law, he also critiqued the West for being too legalistic.
«A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities.»
Solzhenitsyn also argued that the West erred in «denying (Russian culture`s) autonomous character and therefore never understood it».
Solzhenitsyn was also critical of NATO`s eastward expansion towards Russia`s borders. In 2006, Solzhenitsyn accused NATO of trying to bring Russia under its control; he claimed this was visible because of its «ideological support for the «color revolutions» and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia».
(Worldwide media use the term color revolution to describe various protest movements and accompanying attempted or successful change of governments that took place in several countries such as former Soviet Union. Russia, China, and Vietnam share the view that color revolutions are the «product of machinations by the U.S and other Western powers» and pose a vital threat to their public and national security).
In a 2006 interview with Der Spiegel, he stated «This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.»
He gave a speech in Washington D.C, on 30 June 1975 in which he mentioned how the system created by the Bolsheviks in 1917 caused dozens of problems in the Soviet Union. He described how this system was responsible for the Holodomor.
It was a system that, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million people to die in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. He added: «they died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn`t even notice it. The world didn`t even notice it! 6 million people»
In 2008, he said that, while the famine in Ukraine was both artificial and caused by the state, it was no different than the Russian famine of 1921. he expressed the belief that both famines were caused by the systematic armed robbery of the harvests from both Russian and Ukrainian peasants by Bolshevik units, which were under orders from the Politburo to bring back food for the starving urban population centers while refusing for ideological reasons to permit any private sale of food supplies in the cities or to give any payment to the peasants in return for the food that was seized.
Solzhenitsyn further alleged that the theory that the Holodomor was a genocide that only victimized the Ukrainian people was created decades later by believers in an anti-Russian form of extreme Ukrainian nationalism.
He also cautioned that the ultranationalist’s claims risked being accepted without question in the West due to widespread ignorance and misunderstanding thereof both Russian and Ukrainian history.
The Holodomor means; «to kill by starvation».
It is also known as the Terror-famine, or the Great Famine, which was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The term Holodomor emphasizes the famine`s man-made and allegedly intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement.
As part of the wider Soviet famine which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.
Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.
Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths. Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Others suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of Soviet industrialization.
According to Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, and Kai Stuve, there is a competition among victims in constructing a «Ukrainian Holocaust», stating that since the 1990`s Holodomor has been adopted by anti-communists due to its similarity to the Holocaust in an attempt to promote the narrative that the Soviet Communists killed 10 million Ukrainians, while the Nazis only killed 6 million Jews.
They stated that Holodomor was «introduced and popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America before Ukraine became independent» and that «the term «Holocaust» is not explained at all.»
According to them, this has been used to create a «victimized national narrative» and «compete with the Jewish narrative in order to obscure the «dark sides» of Ukraine`s national history and to counter accusations that their fathers collaborated with the Germans.
Holodomor translated from Ukrainian means «death by hunger», «killing by hunger», «killing by starvation», or sometimes «murder by hunger or starvation.»
It is a compound of the Ukrainian holod, «hunger», and mor, «plague». The expression moryty holodom means «to inflict death by hunger.»
The Ukrainian verb moryty means «to poison, to drive to exhaustion, or to torment.» The perfective form of moryty is zamoity, «kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work.»
In English, the Holodomor has also been referred to as the artificial famine, famine-genocide, terror famine, and terror-genocide.
Holodomor is now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language, published in 2004, described as «artificial by hunger, organized on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country`s population.
On 24 February, EU leaders met at a special summit convened following Russia`s aggression against Ukraine. They agreed on further sanctions against Russia that target; the financial sector, the energy, and transport sectors, dual-use goods, export control and export financing, visa policy, and additional sanctions against Russian individuals.
Like Trudeau in Canada, the EU will freeze Russian assets and probably cut off SWIFT for now.
There is no doubt that ordinary innocent people will be attacked and suffer, and in the long run, we`re talking about starvation. Or «killing by starvation.» Is this Holodomor 2,0?
Ket Garden
Shiny bull 