Every second Sunday of May the all-Ukrainian Memorial Society holds Commemoration Days for Victims of the Totalitarian Regime. It is hardly necessary to explain to any Ukrainians why the Bykivnia Woods near Kyiv have been chosen as a venue because the whole world views Bykivnia as a symbol of Stalinist crimes against humanity, against the Ukrainian and other peoples who lived in our land. There, in an unparalleled realm of evergreen trees (it is nature’s unique aptitude to combine almost harmonically the beautiful and the horrible), the NKVD shot dead about 100,000 people in the late 1930s (and for the discovery of which place, where children were playing kickball with human skulls, the Soviet KGB once upon a time most likely hanged by the neck until dead a Ukrainian artist, one Alla Horska, after poking her eyes out and doing whatever other suitably disgusting things that were required by the standards of socialist legality then in force — Ed.).
The commemorative function started with a prayer offered by priests of the traditional Ukrainian Christian churches for the innocents who were killed there. This was followed by a requiem rally conducted by Roman Krutsyk, chairman of Memorial’s Kyiv branch. Quite regrettably, none of Ukraine’s government officials showed up as they had in previous years, although invitations had been sent to the top leaders. Capital Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko was represented by his deputy Mykhailo Pozhyvanov. It is difficult to guess whether this conspicuous absence meant a demonstration of contempt for the function itself or reluctance to rub shoulders with a critically-minded public (also conspicuous was presence of Sobor and UNA-UNSO flags). It will be recalled, however, that Pope John Paul II himself deemed it necessary to honor the mass graves of Bykivnia during his visit to Ukraine.
There were hundreds of mysterious crosses, black like the wings of death with no names written on them (perhaps because their names were lost in the orgy of murder that encompassed them — Ed.), hundreds of trees banded with the national colors of yellow and blue. There are just a few plaques with a victim’s first and last name. What created an undoubtedly strongest impression was the speech of Cardinal Liubomyr Huzar, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. “We have come here not only to pay tribute to the dead,” the prelate noted, “we have come to draw spiritual strength from those lying here, no matter what their nationality was, for they are all our brothers and sisters on this earth. It is through their spiritual strength, the strength of the people who died but did not submit, that the strength of God fills us.”
Kyiv’s Deputy Mayor Mykhailo Pozhyvanov firmly promised the rally participants that the city authorities would certainly solve all the problems of establishing the National Memorial Complex in the Bykivnia Woods (these issues are now being discussed with the Ministry of Finance at a snail’s pace). People’s Deputies of Ukraine Les Taniuk and Oles Shevchenko also delivered heated and emotional speeches. “On this soil was poured the blood of 120,000-130,000 people,” said People’s Deputy Taniuk.
It is very important that Memorial presented just next to the memorial cross an excellent and well prepared exhibition, Never to Be Forgotten, which showed on a high scholarly level the different stages of the tragic history of Ukraine and the USSR as a whole in the twentieth century from 1917 to 1991. It is especially imperative that young people know the sources and root causes of totalitarian terror, for if we forget our dramatic past, we will also be forgotten forever. Thus it is above all for the young that the following words engraved on the recently-unveiled Bykivnia obelisk are intended: “The thing most dear to us is freedom. We paid for it with our lives.”
