On April 28, 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on “Commemorating the victims of the Great Famine (Holodomor) in the former USSR.” While the resolution condemned the horrifying crimes against humanity, and acknowledged them as being deliberate consequences of the actions of the totalitarian Soviet regime, the assembly failed to recognize the acts committed as genocide against the Ukrainian nation, or that the Holodomor was linked to repression suffered by the Ukrainian intelligentsia and religious authorities.
Some in the audience saw the resolution as an exemplary and balanced denunciation of the crimes against humanity perpetuated by the Soviet regime. It was not. Twenty-five members of the United Nations, including the United States, Italy, Spain, and numerous countries in Central-East Europe and Latin America, have already accepted the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The UN intergovernmental commission has confirmed this as well. Already in 1988, a US commission found that, despite having occurred in many areas of the former Soviet Union, the invasiveness of the famine in Ukraine was “paralleled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus.” While stopping short of the genocide, the commission recognized the policies which led to the famine were directed against the Ukrainian people. Yesterday’s resolution failed even in this respect.
One cannot deny that other peoples died as a result of the 1932-33 famine. Ukrainians, Belarussians, Kazakhs, Moldovans, Russians, as well as many other nations present in those regions, all perished under horrendous circumstances. Yet the murder of nationals of one nation does not lessen the significance of the killings of a different one. That Auschwitz claimed the lives of countless Poles or Roma does not suggest that the Holocaust was not the genocide of the Jewish nation. Moreover, as Mr. Zingeris aptly put it during the session: “Each nation has the right to its own history, and thus, the Ukrainians commemorate the Holodomor. All the [Lithuanian] parties support the historians from Kyiv. And when the Kazakhs will want to commemorate the genocide commited against them, we will support them also.”
The recognition of the Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian nation was also obstructed by the argument that, as the policies were primarily directed against the peasantry, the crimes were classed-based, rather than oriented against a given nation. This is partially true. However, it ignores the fact that most farmers in the regions affected were Ukrainian. It also turns a blind eye to Stalin’s letter of August 11, 1932 to Lazar Kaganovich, the erstwhile Secretary of the Communist Party, in which the “Father of the Nation” stated that “if we do not start rectifying the situation in Ukraine now, we may lose Ukraine.” Prior to that time, Ukraine and other Soviet republics had experienced korenizatsiya – a process of so-called indigenization, during which greater local autonomy was granted, publications in languages other than Russian were allowed, and national cultures revived. A decree signed on December 14, 1932, officially brought an end to this period. The brilliant poet and writer Mykola Khvylovy, shot himself on May 13, 1933, was the epitome of the Ukraine literary movement that became known as the rozstriliane vidrodzhennia – the renaissance killed by firing squad.
This misunderstanding of class and nationality was confirmed by Mr. Vareikis, a Lithuanian deputy from the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrat Party, who had voted for the inclusion of the term genocide. “Crimes are made in a specific place, and nations live in a specific place. When you say that the idea was to exterminate farmers, you cannot overlook that it was done in Ukraine and the farmers there were Ukrainians,” the deputy claimed. “If you go to ex-Yugoslavia, say that you are against Catholics but not Croatians, and start shooting Catholics, you are still killing Croatians. Thus, you can say that you are not against Ukrainians but against farmers, but in reality you are killing Ukrainians. So it was against Ukraine.”
It is interesting to note that in a very slippery mix-up, Mr. Vareikis’ statements from the assembly meeting – which echoed his subsequent comments, had been reported in the French account of the session as claiming that “this does not constitute a crime against Ukrainians in particular.” This was already the second piece of shady translation pertaining to the Holodomor subject. A day earlier President Yanukovych’s remark, about the famine being a general Soviet phenomenon and that it would be wrong to see it as directed against a specific nation, had been considerably softened. Mrs. Herasymiuk, a deputy from Our Ukraine, claimed that this was due to pressures from Yanukovych’s office, and that the incident had incensed the Russian lobby.
As one amendment after the other was raised during the session – most of which concerned no more than a couple of words – the importance of detailed phrasing became apparent. This was confirmed by the socialist deputy from Switzerland Andreas Gross: “If at the beginning [the discourse of Ukrainian politicians] would be less nationalistic, genocide would have passed. But because genocide was linked to Ukraine, the term was refused. For the argument of my British colleague, that the Polish intellectual who invented the term genocide used to describe the Stalinist famine, was the most convincing argument.”
Mr. Gross also deplored the blind nationalism of many deputies: “[The failure of recognizing the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people] is exactly the mistake of some of my Ukrainian colleagues. We have too many people here who are nationalistic, and they only come here to defend national issues or build national issues. The Stalinist, politically-produced famine was not targeted against the Ukrainian nation, but was targeted against many farmers in the former Soviet Union, touching many of today’s countries. It is a mistake that some Ukrainian politicians want to misuse this horrific act for today’s nationalist tendencies against the Russian Federation.” Asked about why the Ukrainian strategy failed the deputy responded, “It’s partly due to the fact that too many people in young democracies think too nationalistically. I often say that we have too many defense and ‘truism’ ministers, and not enough European politicians.”
Mr. Gross’s observations were partially correct. The periodically jingoist trends present in much of the continent’s Eastern half make their supporters lose sight of reality, and harm their own cause. However, one cannot help but feel that many Western politicians fail to appreciate the importance of nation-building in many East European countries, something that is almost inevitably linked to a nationalist interpretation of history. Such tendencies can and should be moderated, but attempting to suppress them will only result in knee-jerk reactions as populations are reminded of communist repression. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of the proposed amendments to the text were shot down by the Political Affairs Committee in an ominously clockwork manner.
Mr. Paul Rowen, a UK deputy who was the rapporteur for the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee addressing the issue, was one of the main proponents of the amendments to the resolution. In particular, he advocated the use of the term genocide and recognizing that the Ukrainian nation had been specifically targeted. Mr. Rowen agreed to share his opinions on the session in an interview for The Day.
The text adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stops short of using the word genocide, it disregards the fact that the manmade famine campaign specifically targeted the Ukrainian people, the question of persecution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia was ignored. This is huge disappointment for many Ukrainians.
Paul Rowen: “I am not Ukrainian, and therefore I approached the many comments that were made from an independent point of view. I looked at the evidence myself, and found the copies of the work done by the Ukrainian secret service and the Polish secret service in translating communist party documents to be very convincing. This is why I quoted the letter from Stalin to the communist party secretary. In my view, there was clearly a deliberate attempt to suppress the Ukrainian people. This was not just about collectivization.
“Therefore I am very disappointed. Hiding behind the argument that genocide didn’t exist when this was going on – from a modern perspective, we look at history, and we judge them by our standards. And, by any stretch of the imagination, the deliberate destruction of between 7 and 10 million people is genocide. I think the Russians have been very well organized today, and they were determined not to lose this argument.
“But it is clear that the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, which is the Council of Europe’s foremost committee in terms of human rights, has taken a completely different view. And it was not subject to political inclemency. It has been very strong on the legal facts that were presented. I found that the report presented by the rapporteur [Mr. Memlut Cavusoglu, the incumbent President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. – Author] was far too one-sided, and I wanted to see a better balance.”
Why was the Political Affairs Committee so responsive to the “Russian” point of view?
“I think they [the Russian lobby. – Author] were very well organized. I think there was an admission in the report that this was a human tragedy, and people are not ready to accept that this was perpetrated just against one nation, even though the majority of people who were murdered were Ukrainians. That were the semantics they were hiding behind.”
The link with the destruction of the intelligentsia and the repression of religious authorities was disregarded...
“Yes, it was a whole process. Because until that time there had been a measure of Ukrainization, and as pointed out in one of the other statements, this was followed by a whole series of bans. I was present in Ukraine, in Lviv in 1992, when the Ukrainian Catholic Church was allowed to celebrate that they fought both against the Russians and the Nazis. There was a complete suppression. And, I saw churches that were used as museums or storage places. There is a complete denial of this, and they are trying to re-write the Ukrainian people’s history and culture.”
Still, the fact that these acts constituted genocide, or at least that they were directed at the Ukrainian people, has already been recognized by numerous organizations, including a UN commission and US commission. But it was not accepted by the Council of Europe – the European “champion” of human rights, democracy, rule of law...
“The Council is subject to political pressures. The reality is that the Human Rights Committee views the evidence as genocide, and that view is important for the judgment of history.”
How do you view the fact that the Council of Europe, which defends human rights in so many nations of Europe, places such an emphasis on “compromise.” Can you compromise on human rights? Are there not certain issues upon which one cannot compromise?
“I think that on a whole range of issues you will find that the Council of Europe has compromised. Whether its territorial disputes between Greece and Turkey, whether its Russia-Georgia... You will find that you can have fine principles, but at the end of The Day it comes down to a political compromise.”
Would you say that the “reset” in international relations mentioned by the President Obama has spread among European nations, which now focus on pragmatic issues, and which have understood that there are no economic or political gains in taking a stand?
“I think you have to differentiate between what is currently happening and what has happened. What plenty of the people were trying to do is to say that this was being used for political purposes. I don’t think it’s the function of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee to play politics with people’s lives. In that sense this is quite an important historically recognizable proof. If we move on, then yes, we are trying to have relations with Russia, Ukraine etc. They may well be rebalanced. There’s a new so-called glasnost on the way. The new Ukrainian President is clearly rebalancing Ukraine’s relationships. Whether it will stay like that is for Ukraine’s people to judge.”
And in regards to the Ukrainian president. Very many deputies of the Council of Europe welcomed the new “stability” in Ukraine. They condemned the actions of the opposition. While those may be condemnable and inappropriate, does this not overlook the fact that a huge part of the country feels that its sovereignty is at stake, that its constitution has been violated, and that they can only resort to drastic measures?
“That would be very tragic. The Orange Revolution lost the election because they were spilt. And the lesson of history has to be: one, that you can’t have politicians that make promises they can’t keep; and two, that if you are going to move forward in a certain direction, you ought to be united in that. Because the forces of the opposition will be equally determined in taking the country in the opposite direction. And I regret that Ukraine will now probably be moving in a more pro-Russian direction. But that’s what the vast majority of people in Ukraine wish to see. It is now incumbent upon the politicians of the Orange Revolution to put aside their differences and to start working for the nation, not for themselves.”
What is your outlook for Ukraine’s development?
“The UK is hugely positive about continuing to develop good relationships between the two countries. Obviously, we are concerned about some of the changes that are happening. What we don’t want to see is backsliding on some of the progress that Ukraine has made: towards Westernization, towards opening up markets, towards a development of the market economy. We see what is happening in Russia, and that is a very retrospective stand. And we would hate to see Ukraine go in that direction.”
