Putin asks young Russians to observe Orthodox Christmas

Well over a dozen?

The last time you told this lie, it was only half a dozen. "...you made the claim that I was also Destro, Mount Athos and a half dozen other Freepers" - posted on 01/08/2006 by jb6

That was only yesterday.

Your lies just get more and more ridiculous and exaggerated every time you tell them.

You are like a one-person grapevine whose tall tale just gets more and more ludicrous with every retelling.

Of course you can just prove that you are not the lying two-bit smear artist we all know you are by linking my posts accusing you of being "well over a dozen different Freepers."

But you can't.

Oh btw, I am also Gregorz, lukasz, lizol, vox_PL, Reactor, kozak, mazepa, gslob. The list goes on and on. I live only to read your posts and flame you.

"Well, I guess we're perpetually damned for Slavery and the Indians too, applying your (lack) of logic."

No real American would ever compare slavery and indians to the Genocide of 100 million in the last 70 years by the communists.

Unless he was a Russian Orthodox priest or such. Besides that, I have only heard this from avowed marxists.

You show your true stripes

Where were all the Russians from 1921 to 1991?

Interestingly you omit the 1918-1921 years.

Coffee Break?

You call living under Soviet rule a coffee break?

Actually, that should have been half dozen.

Prove it.

"Bull, you've accused me of being well over a dozen different Freepers."

I can think of at least 3, and more than one will cause you to get banned for life.

In Memory Of The 50 Million Victims Of The Orthodox Christian Holocaust
Compiled by Rev. Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
Boise, Idaho
U.S.A.
October 1999

Written by Reverend Father Raphael Moore
(Reprinted from Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church Sioux Falls, SD., Protopresbtyer Benjamin Henderson, Priest)

History Of Asia Minor: 1894-1923

During 1894-1923 the Ottoman Empire conducted a policy of Genocide of the Christian population living within its extensive territory. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, first put forth an official governmental policy of genocide against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894.

Systematic massacres took place in 1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the provinces. Massacres recurred, and in 1909 government troops killed, in the towns of Adana alone, over 20,000 Christian Armenians.

When WW1 broke out the The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turk" dictatorship which allied itself with Germany. Turkish government decided to eliminate the whole of the Christian population of Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Nestorians. The government slogan, "Turkey for the Turks", served to encourage Turkish civilians on a policy of ethnic cleansing.

The next step of the Armenian Genocide began on 24 April 1915 with the mass arrest, and ultimate murder, of religious, political and intellectual leaders in Constantinople and elsewhere in the empire. Then, in every Armenian community, a carefully planned Genocide unfolded: Arrest of clergy and other prominent persons, disarmament of the population and Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, segregation and public execution of leaders and able-bodied men, and the deportation to the deserts of the remaining Armenian women, children and elderly. Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that "the crime was concerted very systematically for there is evidence of identical procedure from over fifty places."

The Genocide started from the border districts and seacoasts, and worked inland to the most remote hamlets. Over 1.5 million Armenian Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed in this step of the Genocide.

The Greek Christians, particularly in the Black Sea area known as Pontus, who had been suffering from Turkish persecutions and murders all the while, saw the Turks turn more fiercely on them as WW1 came to a close. The Allied Powers, at a peace conference in Paris in 1919, rewarded Greece for her support by inviting Prime Minister Venizelos to occupy the city of Smyrna with its rich hinterlands, and they placed the province under Greek control. This action greatly angered the Turks. The Greek occupation was a peaceful one but drew immediate fire from Turkish forces in the outlying areas. When the Greek army farmed out to protect its people, a full-fledged war broke out between Greece and Turkey (the Greco-Turkish war).

The Treaty of Sevres, signed in 1920 to end WW1 and which provided for an independent Armenia, was never ratified. The treaty's terms changed not long after the ink dried as England, France and Italy each began secretly bargaining with Mustafa Kemel (Ataturk) in order to gain the right to exploit oil fields in the Mozul (now Iraq). Betrayed by the Allied Powers, the Greek military front, after 40 long months of war, collapsed and retreated as the Turks began again to occupy Asia Minor.

September 1922 signaled the end of the Greek and Armenian presence in the city of Smyrna. On 9 September 1922, the Turks entered Smyrna; and after systematically murdering the Armenians in their own homes, the forces of Ataturk turned on the Greeks whose numbers had swelled, with the addition of refugees who had fled their villages in Turkey's interior, to upwards of 400,000 men, women and children.

The conquering Turks went from house to house, looting, pillaging, raping and murdering the population. Finally, when the wind had turned so that it was blowing toward the sea so that the small Turkish quarter at the rear of the city was not in danger, Turkish forces, led by their officers, poured kerosene on the buildings and homes of the Greek and Armenian sectors and set them afire. Thus, any remaining live inhabitants of the city were flushed out to be caught between a wall of fire and the sea. The pier of Smyrna became a scene of final desperation as the approaching flames forced many thousands to jump to their death or to be consumed by fire.

The Allied warships and shore patrol of the French, British and American military were eyewitnesses to the events. George Horton, the American Consul in Smyrna, likened the finale at Smyrna to the Roman destruction of Carthage. He is quoted in Smyrna (1922, written by Marjorie Dobkin) as saying: Yet there was not fleet of Christian battleships at Carthage looking on a situation for which their governments were responsible." This horrible act unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Christians of Turkish Asia Minor.

On 9 September 1997, a series of speakers and memorial services, honoring the memory of the 3.5 million Christians who were murdered by Turkish persecutions from 1894-1923, were held in the greater Baltimore Washington area. The memorial service was conducted by the choirs of St. Mary's Armenian Church, St. Katherine's Greek Orthodox Church, Fr. George Alexson of St. Katherine's, Fr. Vertanes Katayjian of St. Mary's and other Orthodox clergy.
The 75th anniversary of the Christian Holocaust was memorialized on 9 September 1997, the date in 1922 of the destruction of the city of Smyrna. This memorial honors the memory of over 3.5 million Christians who were murdered by Turkish persecutions from 1894-1923. Not only was this the memorial of the Holocaust of Smyrna (now Izmir) and the martyrdom of Smyrna's Metropolitan Chrysostomos, but also of the 3.5 million Christians who perished during the first Holocaust of this century. But the events of 1922 are not an isolated incident. The atrocities committed by Turkish forces against a civilian population began before WW1 and have never ended. This event seeks to expose the continuum of a Turkish campaign of persecution, deportation, and murder designed to rid Asia of its Christian populace.

GREEKS
1914	400,000	conscripts perished in forced labor brigades
1922	100,000	massacred or burned alive in Smyrna
1916-1922	350,000	Pontions massacred or killed during forced deportations
1914-1922	900,000	perish from maltreatment, starvation and massacres; total of all other areas of Asia Minor
TOTAL:	1,750,000	Greek Christians martyred 1914-1922
ARMENIANS
1894-1896	300,000	massacred
1915-1916	1,500,000	perish in massacres and forced deportations (with subsidiaries to 1923)
1922	30,000	massacred or burned alive in Smyrna
TOTAL:	1,800,000	Armenian Christians martyred 1894-1923
SYRIANS AND NESTORIANS
1915-1917	100,000	Christians massacred

The native population of Asia Minor traces its Christian roots to the early days of Christianity. the Armenians, an ancient people, trace their origins back 2500 years. In 301 AD. the Armenian King Dftad declared Christianity as the kingdom's official religion, making Armenia the first Christian political state in the world. The migration of Greek tribes to Asia Minor began just before 2,000 BC and the Greeks built dozens of cities such as Smyrna, Phocaea, Pergamon, Ephesus and Byzantium (Constantinople). The native inhabitants of Asia Minor, among the first to accept the message of Christianity, were later to be persecuted and uprooted from their lands because of that same faith. Turkish tribes plagued the region. Later another tribe, the Oyuz Turks who embraced Islam and ultimately produced the Ottoman Turks, conquered Persia, the Caliphate of Baghdad, and then the whole area presently occupied by Syria, Iraq and Palestine.

Under the Ottoman Empire the Christians suffered a steady decline. Forced conversions to Islam, the abduction of children to serve in the fanatical Janissary corps, persecutions and oppression reduced the Christian population. Oppression intensified, leading to Genocide. Christian clergy were a constant target of Turkish persecution, particularly once the 1894 policy of Armenian genocide had been declared by sultan Abdul Hamid.

Victims of horrible torture, many Orthodox clergy were martyred for their faith. Among the first was Metropolitan Chrysostomos who was martyred, not just to kill a man but, to insult a sacred religion and an ancient and honorable people. Chrysostomos was enthroned as Metropolitan of Smyrna on 10 May 1910. Metropolitan Chrysostomos courageously opposed the anti Christian rage of the turks and sought to raise international pressure against the persecution of Turkish Christians. He wrote many letters to European leaders and to the western press in an effort to expose the genocide policies of the Turks. In 1922, in unprotected Smyrna, Chrysostomos said to those begging him to flee: "It is the tradition of the Greek Church and the duty of the priest to stay with his congregation."

On 9 September crowds were rushing into the cathedral for shelter when Chrysostomos, pale from fasting and lack of sleep, led his last prayer. The Divine Liturgy ended as Turkish police came to the church and led Chrysostomos away. The Turkish General Nouredin Pasha, known as the "butcher of Ionia", first spat on the Metropolitan and informed him that a tribunal in Angora (now Ankara) had already condemned him to death. A mob fell upon Chrysostomos and tore out his eyes. Bleeding profusely, he was dragged through the streets by his beard. He was beaten and kicked and parts of his body were cut off. All the while Chrysostomos, his face covered with blood, prayed: "Holy Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Every now and then, when he had the strength, he would raise his hand and bless his persecutors; a Turk, realizing what the Metropolitan was doing, cut off his hand with a sword. Metropolitan Chrysostomos was then hacked to pieced by the angry mob.

Among the hundreds of Armenian clergy who were persecuted and murdered were Bishop Khosrov Behrigian and Very Reverend Father Mgrdich' Chghladian.

Bishop Behrigian (1869-1915) was born in Zara and became the primate for the Diocese of Caesarea/Kayseri in 1915. He was arrested by Turkish police upon his return from Etchmiadzin where he had just been consecrated bishop. Informed of his fate, the bishop asked for a bullet to the head. Deliberately ignoring his request, the police tied him to a "yataghan" where sheep were butchered an then proceeded to hack his body apart while he was still alive.

Father Chghladian was born in Tatvan. In May 1915, as part of the campaign of mass arrests, deportations and murders, the priest was tortured and displayed in a procession, led by sheiks and dervishes while accompanied by drums, through the streets of Dikranagerd. Once the procession returned to the mosque, in the presence of government officials, the sheiks poured oil over the priest and burned him alive.

Four of the martyred bishops who were murdered between 1921-1922 are today elevated to sainthood in the Greek Orthodox Church: They are, in addition to Metropolitan Chrysostomos, Bishops Efthimios, Gregorios and Ambrosios.

Bishop Efthimios of Amasia was captured by the Turkish police and tortured daily for 41 days. In the last days of his life he chanted his own funeral memorial until finally dying in his cell on 29 May 1921. Three days later a written order for his execution arrived from Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk).

Metropolitan Gregorios of Kydonion remained with his church until the end, helping 20,000 of his 35,000 parishioners escape to Mytilene and other free parts of Greece. On 3 October 1922, the remaining 15,000 Orthodox Christians were executed; the Metropolitan was saved in order to be buried alive.

Metropolitan Ambrosios of Moshonesion, along with 12 priests and 6,000 Christians, were sent by the Turks on a forced deportation march to Central Asia Minor. All of them perished on the road, some slain by Turkish irregulars and civilians, the remainder left to die of starvation. Bishop Ambrosios died on 15 September 1922 when Turkish police nailed horseshoes to his feet and then cut his body into pieces.

"I was five or six years old in 1922, and I still remember the songs of Akrita and the mourning of the Greek women who carried baskets full of severed heads down from the mountains. I will never forget the women who suddenly realized that one of the heads in the basket she carried was that of her son." - Constantine Koukides, refugee from Pontius

"I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity, men, women, and children belonging to the Polish speaking race. It is only in this manner we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" - Adolf Hitler, 22 August 1939

THE UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST OF 1932-33

Sixty-five years ago, between seven and twelve million Ukrainians were systematically and deliberately starved to death in Ukraine, the "Bread Basket of Europe".

Long before there was a Russia, Kyivan Rus' (Ukraine) was a free and fiercely independent nation. Indeed, it was to Ukraine that Christianity was first delivered by St. Andrew - the First called Apostle - and only much later, from Ukraine, on to Russia. In the 13th century Kvivan Rus' was decimated by invasions from Asia; and by the time the invaders were driven back, the base of power had shifted North to Muscovy. For centuries thereafter, Ukraine was subjugated to Tsarist Russia. Then in 1918, following the murder of the Tsar and his family by the Communists, the Ukrainians declared Ukraine a free and independent country, just as it was centuries before there even was a Russia.

Communist forces eventually recaptured the land and once again, as in the time of the Tsars, Ukraine would become little more than a part of a larger whole. But as never before in their long history, Ukrainians would be forced to pay a dreadfully high price in their survival as a people. Probably more than other Bolsheviks, Stalin had an exceedingly low opinion of peasants; for he considered them to be incurably conservative and a major barrier to revolutionary change. And because Ukrainians were an overwhelmingly peasant people, among whom native nationalism was on the rise, they were doubly vulnerable to his designs. Ukraine continued to be a land of innumerable villages of peasants working the land, with the Orthodox Church and traditional values dominating their lives. Perhaps most galling for the Bolshevik revolutionaries was the fact that the peasant showed little inclination for sharing their dreams of a Communist utopia.

Stalin's plans for industrial expansion were based on the state purchasing cheap grain, from the peasants, which would be sold abroad at a profit; the proceeds would then be used to finance the industrialization of the nation. But the prices that the state offered, often at one eighth of the market price, were so low that the peasants refused to sell their grain. Infuriated by what he called "sabotage". Stalin ordered an all-out drive for total collectivization. All land and all property, including livestock, were to be taken away from private ownership and given over to the state. Small farms were to be incorporated into huge Collectives. The plan was accompanied by such brutality and horror that it can only be described as war waged by the regime against the peasantry. It was to be one of the most traumatic events in Ukraine history.

Those who resisted most stubbornly were shot. Others were deported to forced labor camps in the Arctic and Siberia. The rest were deprived of all their property - including their homes and personal belongings - barred from the collective farms, and told to fend for themselves. In the winter of 1929-30 hundreds of thousands of peasants and their families were dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped thousands of miles to the north where they were dumped amidst Arctic wastes, often without food or shelter. In this way a large part of Ukraine's most industrious and efficient farmers ceased to exist.

When even these severe measures failed to have the desired effect, the government dispatched thousands of urban workers to implement its policies in the villages. Their efforts produced pandemonium and outrage; often officials were beaten or shot. The most common form of protest, however, was the slaughter of farm animals. Determined not to let the government have their livestock, peasants preferred to kill their animals instead. Between 1928 and 1932 Ukraine lost about 50% of its livestock. Because of poor transportation facilities, much of the grain which was produced either spoiled or was eaten by rats. Even more serious was the lack of draught animals, many of which had been slaughtered earlier. Government officials were confident, however, that they could provide enough new tractors to replace the missing horses and oxen. But the production of tractors fell badly behind schedule, and a very high percentage of those which were delivered broke down almost immediately. As a result, in 1931 almost one third of the grain yield was lost during the harvest. To make matters worse, a drought hit southern Ukraine in 1931.

The Ukraine continued to resist and to dream of a free and independent nation; and since Joseph Stalin could not kill that dream, he first decided to deport all Ukrainians to other parts of the Soviet Union. Discovering that there were too many of them to move, Stalin decided to kill the dreamers instead; and his weapon of choice was a man-made, artificial famine which was designed to eliminate the troublemakers and force the survivors into total, complete submission. The famine which occurred in 1932-33 was to be for Ukrainians what the Holocaust was to the Jews, and what the Massacres of 1915 were for the Armenians. A tragedy of unfathomable proportions, it traumatized the nation, leaving it with deep social, psychological, political, and demographic scars that it still carries to this very day. The central fact about the famine is that is did not have to happen. Food was available; but the state confiscated most of it for its own use. All crops were requisitioned by the Soviet government and shipped elsewhere. This confiscation of food included seed which was intended for spring planting. Any man, woman or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a government silo could be, and often was, executed. In Moscow a law was enacted stipulating that no grain could be given to the peasants until the government's full quota had been met. Gangs of party activists conducted brutal house-to-house searches, tearing up floors and delving into wells in search of any grain which remained. In fact, if a person did not appear to be starving, he was suspected of hoarding food.

Famine, which had been spreading throughout 1932, hit full force early in 1933. Lacking bread, peasants ate pets, rats, bark, leaves, and the garbage from the well provisioned kitchens of Communist Party members. Whole villages were erased and people were dying by the tens of thousands. Cannibalism existed. At first cannibals were shot on the spot, but later were thrown into concentration camps. The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon like abdomens. Cordons of troops prevented peasants from entering cities; those who managed to break through wandered about until they fell in the streets. Such people were loaded onto trucks, together with the corpses, and dumped into pits outside of the city.

With the climbing death rate during the famine, the publication of death statistics was forbidden by the Soviet government. When deaths due to famine took on major proportions in Ukraine in 1932-33, physicians certifying the cause of death were forbidden to name the killer - starvation. The word "holod" (hunger) was decreed as counter-revolutionary, and no one valuing his own life and those of his relatives dared use it publicly. When the results of the census of 1937, for example, revealed shockingly high mortality rates, Stalin had the leading census takers shot.

Elsewhere there was no famine - much of Russia proper barely experienced it - but the borders of Ukraine had been sealed by the secret police; there was no escape. The Ukrainians had been sentenced to death. And thus, the greatest genocide in history was systematically accomplished. A noteworthy aspect of the famine was the attempt to erase it from public consciousness; the Soviet position was to deny that it had occurred at all. To curry Stalin's favor, for example, Walter Duranty - the Moscow based reporter of the New York Times, repeatedly denied the existence of a famine in his articles (while privately estimating that about ten million people may have starved to death). For the "profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity" of his dispatches from the USSR, Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

Yet, even to this very day, there are those who deny or minimize the Ukrainian Holocaust to such a degree that it is being referred to as "the hidden holocaust of the twentieth century". In 1984, for example, a documentary film entitled HARVEST OF DESPAIR was shown on Canadian television. This film won numerous prizes at World Film Festivals and a 1986 Academy award nomination; yet all three top commercial networks in America refused to show it. As recently as 1994, the New Jersey state legislators were being pressured to exclude the Ukrainian Holocaust from Resolution A-589 (The Holocaust Education Bill). Media coverage has been just as one-sided about the Greek, Armenian, Syrian and Nestorians Holocausts of 1984-1923 and, more recently, the Serbian Holocaust. The atrocities against Christians - especially Orthodox Christians - continue to this day!

ORTHODOX PERSECUTIONS TODAY

Of all the Christian confessions, it has been the Eastern Orthodox Church which has suffered the brunt of persecutions in the 20th century.

In the first two decades, there were massacres of Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, and Armenians in the Ottoman empire, culminating in the 1915 genocide of the Armenians in Anatolia and the near destruction of the ancient Assyrian community in Iraq. In 1923, the entire Orthodox population of Asia Minor was forced to leave their homes, bringing to a close a 2000 year Christian presence.

During the Second World War, two groups of Orthodox Christians were especially targeted for genocide by the Nazis and their allies - the Gypsies and the Orthodox Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia, while the population of Greece, Serbia, European Russia, and Ukraine were designated by the Nazis to serve as slave labor for the Third Reich. By special order of Heinrich Himmler (21 April 1942), clergyman from the East (as opposed to their counterparts from Western Europe) were to be used for hard labor.

At the same time the Orthodox suffered in greater proportion to any other Christian group at the hands of the Communists, who sought to completely eliminate religion.

First in Russia and Ukraine, then in Eastern Europe, in Greece during its civil war (1945-49), and in Ethiopia, the Orthodox Church was the principle target for attach, subversion, or destruction.

Finally, the Orthodox of the Middle East have found themselves caught in the crossfire of the conflicts between Muslim and Jew in Israel and the West Bank, and the civil war between Maronites, Muslims, and Palestinians in Lebanon.

Between the tolls exacted from prisons, concentration camps, forced marches and exiles, warfare, famine, and brutal military occupation, it is reasonable to conclude that up to 50 million Orthodox Christians have perished in the first eight decades of the twentieth century.

Even in the United States, where so many Orthodox have found refuge, the Orthodox Native Americans of the Aleutian Islands were forcibly interned during World War II and many of their churches deliberately destroyed by the U.S. Army.

Unfortunately, the depth and range of the Orthodox suffering throughout the world in this century, remains largely unknown and unappreciated in the West.

1987 - 1997

Harassment of the Orthodox Church in the former Soviet Union continued through the Gorbachev era. Many of the churches supposedly returned to the Orthodox between 1988 and 1990 were in Western Ukraine. This was part of an attempt by the KGB to sow open discord between Orthodox and Catholics - only 100 churches were returned in Russia itself. The KGB continued to target Orthodox clergymen involved in the struggle for religious freedom and democratization; in 1990 several prominent priests, among them Fr. Alexander Men, were murdered. It was only under President Boris Yeltsin that full freedom was restored to the Orthodox and other Russian based confessions. In other parts of the former Soviet Union, notably in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, the governments have continued to limit the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities.

The triumph of democracy in Poland has not led to full religious freedom for members of its 1 million strong Orthodox minority. Although the height of anti Orthodox activity seems to have peaked in 1991 after several Orthodox churches and an historic monastery were vandalized, Orthodox continue to be viewed as second-class citizens in Poland; where they are described in a secret Foreign Ministry report as an "alien body in Poland's state organism." Laws on religious education in the schools have virtually established the Roman Catholic Church to the detriment of both the Orthodox and the Lutherans; and Orthodox believers continue to complain of petty harassment endured at the local level.

In Slovakia, the government in 1991 announced its intention to review ownership of the country's 125 Orthodox parishes. Since that time, over 90 church buildings have been taken away from the Orthodox and given to the Catholics; and the Orthodox have been blocked by local officials from constructing new edifices, opening schools, or holding services. Even the official policy of the vatican announced 16 July 1990, which counseled Slovak Catholics to share disputed properties with the Orthodox, has been ignored.

The wars in the former Yugoslavia have been disastrous for the Orthodox. The Croatian government has all but liquidated the Orthodox Church in its territory, beginning with the dynamiting of the residence and library of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Zagreb on 11 April 1992. Following the Croatian offensive of fall 1995 and the departure of over 200,000 Orthodox Serbs in Diocese in Krajina. (which brought a total of over 800,000 displaced Orthodox Christians), four dioceses of the Serbian Orthodox Church ceased to exist. In Croat controlled territory in Bosnia, the Orthodox Bishop of Mostar was driven from his see, and most of the Orthodox population was expelled. Estimates are that over 154 Orthodox churches in the territory of Bosnia and Croatia were deliberately destroyed. On March 25, 1999 NATO began bombing of Kosovo in Serbia. It is one of the tragic ironies of History that Western "Christian" nations have joined forces to eradicate Serbs in Kosovo who are accused of "Ethnic cleansing". History repeats itself ----Kosovo was the site 500 years ago of the Christian Resistance to the Turks.

In Turkey and Turkish occupied Cyprus the position of the Orthodox continues to deteriorate. Despite international guarantees contained within the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish government continues to enforce the closure of the famous Halki Orthodox Theological Academy in Istanbul. Families of those Orthodox illegally expelled in the 1950's and 1960's have never been allowed to return to their homes, again in contravention of the 1923 treaty guaranteeing their right to do so. On Cyprus, 450 Orthodox Churches on the northern part of the island have been desecrated; some have become night clubs while others have been turned into public toilets. Other churches and historical monuments, some dating back to the 5th century, have been looted and left to rot away. There is a sustained campaign to remove entirely the last traces of the 2000 year old Orthodox presence from occupied Cyprus.

In Egypt, the Orthodox continue to suffer from the many restrictions placed on their ability to function in the economic and political life of the country. There are many rules hindering their ability to build and repair churches, and they are increasingly becoming targets for armed attacks by Muslim extremists. In the past two years, dozens of Orthodox villagers in Upper Egypt have been murdered by Islamic gunmen.

In India Orthodox Christians report increased harassment on the part of both Hindu and Muslim extremists, with isolated attacks and vehement rhetoric demanding their removal from the Indian landscape.

THE CURRENT ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

The government of the United States prides itself on its commitment to defending religious liberty. In the Middle East and Eastern Europe, however, the United States is seen as supporting only those churches who possess sufficient "influence" in Washington, while ignoring the plight of the Orthodox. Events over the last ten years have tended to confirm that assessment.

During the 1980's, the Immigration and Naturalization Service gave refugee status to any Soviet citizen who applied on religious grounds - except for members of the Orthodox Church. The very church which had suffered the most under Soviet rule, whose churches continued to be closed and her clergy arrested until 1988, was not considered to be a "persecuted" church by the American government.

After 1989, Orthodox Christians in both Poland and Slovakia warned the United States government that they were "at risk" as religious minorities. In 1991 the Congress of Russian Americans prepared two reports for the Commission of security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE: July & september 1991) warning of the dangers and asking that guarantees be obtained for the rights of the Orthodox in those nations. No action was taken, and at this time there is no indication that the US has pressed to secure the rights of these minorities in either Poland or Slovakia. There is also no indication that the US has ever linked economic assistance to either country or entry into the NATO alliance with improvements in the situation of their religious minorities.

Despite the large amount of economic and military assistance received by Turkey, there is no indication that the US has ever been prepared to use this leverage to secure the rights of the Orthodox minority, even though Turkey is bound by its own constitution and its international obligations to allow the Orthodox to maintain schools and other institutions. In contrast, US senators have often publicly and vocally called for American assistance to Russia to be made conditional on Russia's acceptance of American Protestant missionaries.

Persecution and harassment of the Orthodox continues because of a belief that the United States is not interested in their fate, and that America will not undertake any effort (other than occasional lip service) to secure religious freedom for the Orthodox. I turn, Orthodox leaders around the world are watching closely to see whether or not future initiatives on religious freedom which emanate from the US are truly based on principle, or whether American policy will be selective in terms of who is faulted and who is exonerated.

The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church has suffered greatly in this century, and continues to be a martyr church in many parts of the world. If the US chooses to ignore this fact for political gain, then the cause of religious freedom - for all - will be gravely compromised.

This information was borrowed from:

The Library of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church USA - Ukraine, A History
Ukrainian Orthodox League of the USA - Ukrainian Affairs Committee
3. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies - University of Toronto
4. Ukrainian Orthodox League Bulletin - October 1998
5. Greek Orthodox Diocese of Denver Diocesan News: Dr. Nicholas Gvosdev - August 1998
6. Federation of Hellenic Societies of the Greater Baltimore Washington Region: Heritage Publications - 1997

(Editors Notes: We cannot even well imagine but "50 Million Victims Of The Orthodox Christian Holocaust" is not the correct number, as we have learned from Alexander Solzhenitsyn that more then 66.5 million Orthodox Christians also perished from 1917 and onward during the times of the Soviet Union. Secondly the New Martyrs of Serbia are increasing, the killing of innocent people, the destruction of Churches, Monasteries, Cemeteries, and homes, as well as a massive killings of Serbian Orthodox Christians, and countless missing people.)

Holy New Priest
Martyr Stefan of Kosovo,
Pray Unto GOD For Us!

Holy New Martyrs, and
Confessors Of Holy Orthodox Faith,
Pray Unto GOD For Us!

GLORY BE TO GOD FOR ALL THINGS!

"Ukranian losses in army are lesser then russians."

This is a lie that is being revealed to the world for the first time in 60 years and there is nothing that you can do about it. ==

PLZ read my previous post. I already did say you that I agree that CIVILIAN losses of Ukraine is bigger then russian because of german occupation of Ukraine.
But the MILITARY losses of ukranians lesser then russian since the number of them in soviet army was lesser then russians.

Now its Russia turn to face its past - which it refuses to do as so aptly demonstrated by the Russophiles on this page.==

Soviet Union wasn't Russia. It even was named differently.

Elsewhere there was no famine - much of Russia proper barely experienced it==

It isn't true. There was famines in Russia inspired by same commies. In transVolga region. In 1922 and 1933.

"There was famines in Russia inspired by same commies. In transVolga region. In 1922 and 1933."

Yes there was hunger there but the deaths were in the areas targeted by Stalin against Ukraine, Mennonites, and Cossacks.

And when the public clamor for the passage of food relief was too great for Russia ot ignore, it sent the food everywhere but Ukraine - where people were still forced to give up all their food for relief in Russia as they starved to death

The point of the article is not to discuss the famine it's to discuss what Stalin and the Muslims have done to the Orthodox church.

And when the public clamor for the passage of food relief was too great for Russia ot ignore, it sent the food everywhere but Ukraine - where people were still forced to give up all their food for relief in Russia as they starved to death==

Nonsense.

Hey....get your populace to celebrate Christmas...ie gift giving and boost your domestic economy...Putin is not stupid!

The Russian administration has stated previosuly they feel promoting religion is a good buffer to terrorism.

Russian famine of 1921
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Russian famine of 1921, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a true famine: hunger so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten. At one point, relief agencies had to give grain to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved. Russia was experiencing one of her intermittent droughts, but there had been droughts before.
George F. Kennan attributes responsibility for the famine to the doctrinaire mismanagement of the Bolsheviks, and to the six and a half years of war Russia had suffered without break. The last years of the First World War in the East were fought inside Imperial Russia. Modern war strains any economy; but for much of the period, Russia had been cut off, not only from trade with the Central Powers, but, with the closing of the Dardanelles, from the rest of the world. The end of grain export would at least have meant full granaries, if it were not for the peculation and corruption of Imperial Russia.
All sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918-20 - the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities - provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik efficiency at this is confirmed by their recently uncovered records; it doubtless contributed to their victory. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. In retaliation, Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain. The American Relief Association, which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of WWI, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all; Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.
This famine, the Kronstadt rebellion, and the failure of a German general strike convinced Lenin to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy on March 15, 1921. The famine also helped produce an opening to the West. Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time; fortunately war relief was no longer required in Western Europe, and the A.R.A. had an organization set up in Poland, relieving the Polish famine which had begun in the winter of 1919-20.
Contents
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1 The international relief effort
2 The post-relief period
3 See also
4 References
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The international relief effort

Although no official request for aid was issued, a committee of well-known people without obvious party affiliations was allowed to set up an appeal for assistance. In July 1921 the writer Maxim Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, claiming that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. At a conference in Geneva on 15 August organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies, the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICCR) was set up with Dr Fridtjof Nansen as its High Commissioner. The main participants were Hoover's American Relief Association, along with other bodies such as the American Friends Service Committee and the International Save the Children Union, with the British Save the Children Fund as the major contributor.
Nansen headed to Moscow, where he signed an agreement with Soviet Foreign Ministry Georgy Chicherin that left the ICCR in full control of its operations. At the same time, fundraising for the famine relief operation began in earnest in Britain, with all the elements of a modern emergency relief operation - full-page newspaper advertisements, local collections, and a fundraising film shot in the famine area. By September, a ship had been despatched from London carrying 600 tons of supplies. The first feeding centre was opened in October in Saratov.
The ICCR managed to feed around ten million people, with the overwhelming bulk coming from the ARA, funded by the US Congress; the International Save the Children Union, by comparison, managed to feed 375,000 at the height of the operation. The operation was hazardous - several workers died of cholera - and was not without its critics, including the London Daily Express, which first denied the severity of the famine, and then argued that the money would better be spent on poverty in the United Kingdom.
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The post-relief period

The Bolsheviks permitted the relief agencies to continue distributing free food in 1923, while they sold grain abroad. The net effect, since grain is fungible, was that they received money for nothing from capitalist philanthropy. When this was discovered, foreign relief organizations suspended the aid. Lenin's first heart attack was in the spring of 1922, and he had aphasia in 1923; the extent of his responsibility for the grain sales is therefore unclear. However, exploiting gullible capitalists would have accorded with his expressed policies.
François Furet estimated there were five million deaths in the famine; for comparison, the worst crop failure of late Czarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. That failure followed years of normal and bumper harvests, with the resulting buildup of reserves; the harvest of 1888 had been "excellent beyond even the more optimistic hopes". Also, that was in a time of peace, international commerce, and good order; there had not been war throughout Russia before 1917.
Some anti-Communist rhetoric declaims that Lenin was responsible for, and desired the famine; for example, this website, which misstates even the years of the famine. If Lenin had intended mass murder, he missed an obvious opportunity to increase his kill: he failed to keep the A.R.A. out, which he had done two years before when the Bolsheviks were in a worse military and political position.

"Some anti-Communist rhetoric declaims that Lenin was responsible for, and desired the famine; for example, this website, which misstates even the years of the famine. If Lenin had intended mass murder, he missed an obvious opportunity to increase his kill: he failed to keep the A.R.A. out, which he had done two years before when the Bolsheviks were in a worse military and political position."

Your words appear to sound like a pro-Lenin wail.

My words? I cut and pasted from Wikipedia!

Further; Lenin, the 3/4 tatar, with scarely a drop of Russian blood, and his comrades from Ukraine, Germany, and Turkey led the Red Army that ceased supplies from the citizens.

Also from WIki:
The White movement, whose military arm is known as the White Army (????? ?????) or White Guard (????? ???????, ?????????????) and whose members are known as Whites (?????, or the derogatory ??????) or White Russians (a term which has other meanings) comprised some of the Russian forces, both political and military, which opposed the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and fought against the Red Army (as well as the nationalist Green Army and the anarchist Black Army) during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921.

Further who were the founders of the Soviet Union? More from Wiki:

MARX
Karl Marx was born into a progressive and wealthy Jewish family in Trier, Prussia. His father Herschel, descending from a long line of rabbis, although harboring many deistic tendencies, converted to the Christian religion, joining the relatively liberal Lutheran denomination, in order to become a lawyer. The Marx household hosted many visiting intellectuals and artists during Karl's early life.

MARTOV
Julius Martov or L. Martov (??????, real name Yuli Osipovich Zederbaum (???? ???????? ?????????)) (November 24, 1873-April 4, 1923) was born in Constantinople in 1873. The son of Jewish middle class parents, he became the leader of the Mensheviks in early twentieth century Russia.

LENIN
Born in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831 - 1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for increased democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835 - 1916). Lenin was of mixed ethnic ancestry. In addition to being Russian, he also had Kalmyk ancestry through his paternal grandparents, Volga German ancestry through his maternal grandmother (who was a Lutheran), and Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (who converted to Christianity). The matter of Lenin's nationality became relevant not long before and after the disintegration of the USSR, whereby the neo-nationalistic policy of some newly independent republics advertised him as a "Russian" terrorist, which was one of the reasons for the persecution of Russian commonages by the misguided local public. In fact, Lenin was only fractionally Russian and directly disdained the root nationality of Russia in his works.

TROTSKY
Trotsky's date of birth is October 26 (Julian calendar) or November 7 (Gregorian calendar), 1879, the day of the October revolution of 1917. Trotsky was born in Yanovka, Kherson Province, Ukraine, a small village 15 miles from the nearest post office. He was the fifth child of a wealthy but illiterate Jewish farmer, David Leontyevish Bronstein (or Bronshtein, 1847 - 1922) and Anna Bronstein (d. 1910). Although the family had Jewish ancestry, it was not religious and the languages spoken at home were Russian and Ukrainian instead of Yiddish. Trotsky's younger sister, Olga, married Lev Kamenev, a leading Bolshevik.

STALIN
Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, to a cobbler named Vissarion Jughashvili. His mother, Ekaterina Geladze, was born a serf. Their other three children died young; Joseph, nicknamed "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for Joseph), was effectively the only child. Vissarion Ivanovich Djugashvili was a former serf who, when freed, became a cobbler. He opened his own shop, but quickly went bankrupt, forcing him to work in a shoe factory in Tiflis (Archer 11). Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry (Hoober 15). Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority. He also said that anyone with power over others reminded Stalin of his father's cruelty.
One of the people for whom Ekaterina did laundry and housecleaning was a Gori Jew, David Papismedov. Papismedov gave Joseph, who would help out his mother, money and books to read, and encouraged him. Decades later, Papismedov came to the Kremlin to learn what had become of little Soso. Stalin surprised his colleagues by not only receiving the elderly man, but happily chatting with him in public places.
In 1888, Stalin's father left to live in Tiflis, leaving the family without support. Rumors said he died in a drunken bar fight; however, others said they had seen him in Georgia as late as 1931. At the age of eight, Soso began his education at the Gori Church School. When attending school in Gori, Soso was among a very diverse group of students. Stalin and most of his classmates were Georgian and spoke mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to use Russian. Even when speaking in Russian, their Russian teachers mocked Stalin and his classmates because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants.

ORIGIN OF THE BOLSHEVIKS:
At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, held in Brussels and London in August 1903, Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a small core of professional revolutionaries, leaving sympathizers outside the party, and instituting a system of centralized control known as the democratic centralist model. Julius Martov, until then a close friend and colleague of Lenin's, agreed with him that the core of the party should consist of professional revolutionaries, but argued that party membership should be open to sympathizers, revolutionary workers and other fellow travellers.

"The Russian famine of 1921, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a true famine: hunger so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten."

Umm - it says severe HUNGER - the genocide of millions was in Ukraine.

The Soviet government’s famine-relief activities through 1921 were limited to the Volga region. In fact, Moscow was unwilling to recognize the situation in Ukraine. Soviet Ukrainian officials, who had been instructed that famine relief in Russia was an absolute priority, did not broach the issue of famine in their republic until late in 1921. In Ukraine most of the relief work was done by civic and co-operative organizations. The clergy, which had been deprived of civil rights, participated in this work. The Soviet government confiscated church valuables under the pretext that they were needed to help the hungry. Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky issued a special appeal from the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church for help to the famine victims. In Lviv the National Committee for Relief to Starving Ukraine was active. Similar committees were formed by émigrés in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and North America. Foreign philanthropic institutions—the American Relief Administration, the Nansen International Office for Refugees, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the Czechoslovakian Red Cross—also furnished aid. Their activity throughout 1921 was limited to the famine in the Volga region. Only in 1922 were they afforded access to Ukraine. Under Fridtjof Nansen's instructions, Captain V.A. Quisling toured Ukraine at the beginning of 1922 and later published a report on the famine.

The famine continued beyond the summer of 1922. The harvest that year was again poor (approx 40 percent of the 1916 crop), but not as bad as during 1921. It would have sufficed for Ukraine’s own needs, but again onerous requisitions for grain to be shipped to Russia were placed on the republic. Moreover, Soviet authorities also ordered that grain from Ukraine be exported abroad in order to raise hard currency. This again led to famine conditions, although not ones as severe as in 1921. The existence of continued famine in Ukraine was hidden by Soviet authorities, who claimed that the 1922 harvest had eliminated the crisis.

Calculating the number of victims of the Famine of 1921–3 is problematic, as no systematic records of mortality for this period exist and the demographic upheavals accompanying the years of war and revolution in Ukraine render an analysis of the 1926 Soviet census figures unfruitful in this regard. The scope of the tragedy is suggested by a count done by medical personnel in the Ukrainian SSR, which established that 235,000 persons died in the winter of 1921–2 in the five hardest-affected southern gubernias. The figure is certainly substantially lower than the actual number, as the survey was by no means exhaustive. Moreover, it is limited to a single period of the famine (albeit when it was at its height). As such, the scale of the mortality for the entire course of the famine is in the range of many hundreds of thousands, with a distinct possibility that it could have reached a million or more.