BRAMA, Oct 31, 2003, 9:00 am ET
Press Release
Florida Ukrainians to commemorate Famine Genocide of 1932-33
The horrendous crime perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and his henchmen seventy years ago, which resulted in between seven and ten million deaths from starvation in an area heretofore known throughout the world as "The Breadbasket of Europe", long ignored by the Western world as a result of propaganda cleverly conceived by Stalin and his Kremlin cohorts and disseminated by most newspapers including The New York Times (reports of Walter Duranty, eventually recognized as "Stalin's apologist") is being finally recognized for what it was, the mass murder by hunger. The United States House of Representatives recently approved unanimously the House Resolution 356 recognizing the manmade famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 as an act of genocide as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention. A Senate Resolution 202 regarding the genocidal famine was introduced and will be voted on.
Other countries, including Argentina, Canada, and others, including the United Nations, have approved or are considering legislations and/or resolutions commemorating the millions starved to death and condemning the dastardly act perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and his coconspirators and enforcers.
Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Communist Russian empire, by then using the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had two major problems at the end of 1920s: how to finance his ambitious plan to industrialize the empire with hardly any industry to speak of, and how to pacify Ukraine, the largest non-Russian "republic" recently forcibly incorporated into the USSR after the army of the independent Ukrainian National Republic was defeated by the Russian Communist forces led by Leon Trotsky. To finance the industrialization he needed hard currency which would be possible to obtain by exporting grain. To pacify Ukraine, where resistance to the Russian occupation continued unabated Stalin decided to confiscate all privately owned land and to establish collective farms, a common practice in Russia but alien to the freedom loving and individualistic Ukrainians. Next step was to confiscate all grain kept by farmers for both the consumption and for sowing, and to sell it abroad for hard currency. Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich were personally commissioned by Stalin to organize the horrors that were committed in Ukraine and Kuban, a territory whose population up until then was predominantly Ukrainian. On August 11, 1932, Stalin wrote a letter to Kaganovich that Ukraine could be lost and had to be turned into the most inalienable Soviet republic. On October 22, 1932, Molotov and Kaganovich were named to take direct control of the grain seizures in Ukraine and the Kuban.
The heretofore wealthy peasants were de facto sentenced to death by starvation while the Ukrainian grain was being shipped abroad to earn hard currency for the governmental projects and to demonstrate to the world that all is well inside the Soviet Union, which most westerners desperately wanted to believe.
To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of this genocidal famine the American Ukrainians of North Port and surrounding communities will hold a candlelight vigil in North Port's Veterans Park Saturday evening, November 15, 2003. More details will be made public within the next few days. Similar commemorative assemblies, marches, and prayer services will be held throughout the world. We are inviting our non-Ukrainian friends and neighbors to join us in honoring the memory of seven-to-ten million victims of this crime. It has been said that the silent treatment accorded by the free world the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine did in fact gave Hitler, Stalin's partner in launching W.W.II, the "green light" for planning and carrying out the Holocaust.
Let us all say with one voice: NEVER AGAIN!
Atanas T. Kobryn, Publicity Chrmn.
Coordinating Committee of American Ukrainian Organizations
of North Port and Surrounding Communities
North Port, FL
Tel./FAX No.: (941) 423-9499
E-mail: atanask@aol.com.
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