Posted on 03/07/2014 4:46:21 AM PST by Bill Russell
Words have meaning. Sometimes even the small ones by their inclusion or omission can have a huge impact. Most readers in their first glance at the title of this article thought the word the was mistakenly dropped from in front of Ukraine. Over the last century, we have become used to referring the nation of Ukraine as the Ukraine. This writer has been guilty of the mistake, even in recent writings.
The inclusion or omission of an article of speech like the conveys the difference between a sovereign, independent nation of Ukraine and a region or territory claimed by Russia and the Soviet Union. Certainly, Vladamir Putin wants us to keep using the when referring to Ukraine, especially when he has invaded its sovereign territory.
But there are words Putin does not want us to use either. Holodomor is one of those words. The term Holodomor derives from Ukrainian words referring to death or execution by starvation. It is a word for the genocide of the Ukrainian people that has remained buried behind a massive wall of Soviet propaganda and western under-reporting for over 80 years.
During the years of Soviet domination of Russia and Eastern Europe, the Kremlin did its best to bury the truth of the Holodomor and its role in implementing it. Thanks to laudatory stories of Stalins Soviet Union written my New York Times reporter Walter Duranty during Stalins reign of terror, and the work of Soviet spies like Alger Hiss (a senior State Department official under President Franklin Roosevelt), the atrocities committed against the people of Ukraine by the Soviets have never been widely publicized in the west.
In 1932 -1933, during Stalins great terror, approximately 25% of the Ukrainian nation was starved to death on a grand scale. Through systematic Soviet theft of all the grain from the farmers, to include the seed grain stores, in an area known as the bread basket of Europe, resistance to the Soviet seizure of independent farms in Ukraine was crushed. Stalins point man in charge of the murder of over 8 million Ukrainians was the Great Reformer and Stalins successor, Nikita Khrushchev.
Khrushchev made extensive use of the NKVD (previously known as the Checka and OGPU, later known as the KGB, today referred to as the FSB ) in seizing grain stores and shooting any farmers who hid grain to plant or feed their families. Stalins proletarian socialist (Communist) genocide of the Holodomor and Gulag system was in full swing, and served as the model for Hitlers Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) concentration camp system and Final Solution when it was just beginning. The very real Holocaust of the Holodomor in Ukraine was perpetrated by the same organization which gave birth to Vladimir Putins career.
The world turned a blind eye in witness to the Ukrainians who had their churches destroyed and many of their family members (often their entire families) starved to death on their farms, or executed if they tried to leave in search of food. The Soviets were all too happy to allow the horrific images of the Nazi death camps and testimonies of the Nuremberg Trials to obscure the suppressed truth of the Holodomor.
It is important for the world to recognize and stand with Ukrainian defiance against domination from post-Soviet Russia. The same organizations and philosophical rationalizations for domination which existed in Stalins Russia are alive and well in Putins; they just have different names. - In which case, perhaps, words have no meaning.
Your tag line is sadly true. The world is littered with the tortured corpses of America’s former allies. We’re loyal until we decide to move along to the next war or interlude, and then you’re left to face our vengeful former enemies alone. Perhaps if America didn’t get into so many fights, it might not be so quick to abandon its former allies de jour. It is a sad legacy of much honorable service.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.