Holodomor Then and Ukraine Now

 It's not often that I begin a blog this late in the day but I was out the door to cycle to the gym before 7 this morning and I've finally stopped moving. 

I've been thinking of late about Russia's unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine and the endless lies of Vladimir Putin and his minions to justify it to his own people. The toll on Ukrainians is unspeakable but thousands of young Russians are dying as well. Have Canadians been distracted from this tragedy by events at home, and has the media become less interested? 

Yesterday we followed up on a local news article about a travelling display about the Holodomor, the famine created by Russia in Ukraine by Josef Stalin in 1932 and 33. In a cold-blooded strategy to crush the spirit of Ukrainians and subjugate them, crops of wheat and other produce were taken by force from farmers and sold. The result was starvation on a mass scale with an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians perishing. Children were reduced to eating grass. The dead were buried without benefit of religious ritual and in fact Ukrainian clerics were persecuted, as were tens of thousands of the intelligentsia and leaders in society. Many fled before the borders were closed and some ended up in Canada.

The exhibit was in a full-sized motor coach on the grounds of Glanmore House in Belleville. We walked in to find a screen which took up an entire side of the coach while two dozen theatre seats were facing on the other side. We were the only people there to watch two fifteen minute films about this atrocity and they were quite moving. We learned that most governments were aware of what was transpiring but largely turned a blind eye. Newspapers in Europe and North America often published reports which were little more than Russian propaganda. One of the few reporters brave enough to spend time in Ukraine and offer the truth was a young Canadian woman with a disability named Rhea Clyman.

We were not aware that Canada and Ontario have declared the Holodomor to be a genocide, as have many other nations and jurisdictions. A Canadian declaration of 2008 declared the fourth Saturday in November to be Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day.

We left both better informed and deeply unsettled. It's important that we know this history, especially in light of what is unfolding in Ukraine today, and because of the significant Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. I believe that Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Russia is stealing Ukrainian grain in 2022 and selling it on international markets. 

The mobile exhibit will be at Glanmore on Saturday and Sunday before moving on.