The session of the Political Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Paris late on December 15 discussed and passed the report on the need for international condemnation of the 1932 —1933 Holodomor in Ukraine. The report had been drafted in a very short term by Mevlut Cavusoglu, Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly, who has recently visited Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus.
The reader will remember that this report is the result of two resolutions prepared separately by Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian side submitted the draft resolution on preparation of the report entitled “The need for international condemnation of the 1932 — 1933 Holodomor in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, the Russian side tried to make the question less acute with its draft report entitled “Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the mass famine on the territory of the Soviet Union.”
How did the session of the PACE Committee for Political Affairs manage to achieve the approval of the draft resolution on condemnation of the Holodomor? What is the special significance of this report? When can one expect it to be passed at the session of the PACE? The answers to these questions are given below by Olha HERASYMIUK, a member of Ukraine’s parliamentary delegation to the PACE.
“An information war has been waged for a year. The Russian government went all out to depreciate the topic. I should say that this work was conducted by a very powerful propaganda machine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians have commemorated the memory of the victims, opened the archives, and made efforts to prove that they are right. This report has eventually been issued. And it can be called a remarkable step in the history of the PACE, because when back in 2006 the Assembly was adopting the report on condemnation of the crimes committed by totalitarian Communist regimes, the question of the Holodomor, or famine in the Soviet Union, was eliminated from there. Its consideration was even unofficially tabooed.
“Four years later this step – the decision to prepare a report on the Holodomor – can be called a remarkable step on the way to establishing the truth. The word ‘Holodomor’ is now used by all European MPs as a definition of the crime committed by the Stalinist regime. People have acquired some understanding of this topic. In the past four years this is a very important step towards establishing the truth within the PACE.
“The report is well-balanced. First, it offers to recognize that the famine organized by Stalin was based on political grounds. Second, this crime is severely condemned as a crime of the Stalinist regime. The report says that in Ukraine this crime has been recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people on the level of legislation. The PACE has not dared to discuss the question of genocide, but at the same time it is important that the report contains a large chapter entitled ‘Ukraine is the biggest victim of the Stalinist regime.’
“It is also important that the resolution distinguishes this crime among other crimes of famine committed on the territory of the Soviet Union; the so-called black boards were applied only against the Ukrainians. The boards listed population centers that were doomed to total annihilation. This is the determinative feature of the crime committed on our territory against Ukrainians to destroy them as a nation.
“The resolution calls for opening all archives and making them accessible to researchers, including foreign ones. Of course, this report will receive confirmation at the PACE spring session. By that time we will have made some amendments and held debates. This is very important to us, as the debate will be held in the plenary hall. I believe that we will be able to advance on the way of making our knowledge of this crime more precise for the Europeans. This period of time will feature many events and revealing additional facts.
“The rapporteur has offered to establish that the PACE regards the Holodomor as the most terrible tragedy and most cynical crime in the contemporary European history. The report notes that of all the peoples who have suffered from the famine (Kazakhs, Belarusians, and Russians), the Ukrainian state has made the greatest advance on the way of establishing the truth, commemorating the memory of the victims, recognizing it as a crime of the totalitarian regime, and pondering its causes and consequences.
“The report calls upon the governments of other countries to follow the example of Ukraine’s consistent struggle for establishing the truth. The document emphasizes that Ukrainians initiated these talks and in such a way opened a stratum of recent forbidden history to be studied in other countries that suffered from the famine, but are not paying equally serious attention to this topic.
“Ukraine has in no way been seeking to stand out as the greatest victim of the famine. We are calling [on others] to commemorate the memory of all, without exception, innocent victims of the dreadful Stalinist regime, no matter what their nationality is and on whose territory it occurred. We are calling upon all the governments to unite in order to truly highlight this problem, without concealing any facts about what happened.
“Today we are not seeking which of the present-time players in the international arena are to blame for this crime. We are against the whitening of the Stalinist regime like some people are trying to do. We are calling upon Russians, too, to carry out similar work: set up monuments, open archives, make them available, and commemorate the memory of the victims, rather than waste all their time to fight against Ukrainians, who are allegedly giving too much political meaning to the question. The report urges us to use this topic in our studies not to disunite the peoples, but on the contrary, to unite them for the sake of establishing the truth.”
Ms. Herasymiuk, what is the ground for your confidence that the report will be passed at the PACE spring session? Russians are usually quite skillful in using every possibility to prevent such documents from being passed at the Council of Europe.
“They have already spent a lot of time to have the preparation of the report delayed. Over this period the rapporteur has changed and many books have been published. The Russian propaganda machine has conducted serious work against our proposal to pass this very resolution on drafting the report. Russians have gone all out to prevent this topic from being voiced. But the very fact that it has been voiced is already a serious step.
“I would avoid using words like ‘victory’ and ‘defeat.’ Who has defeated whom? The process of establishing the truth is a complicated matter. Remember how Jews were fighting to have the Holocaust recognized as the tragedy of their people? It took them 50 years to achieve their goal. Therefore, we prefer to hold serious, very sensitive, and well-thought-out talks, which are step by step revealing the truth.
“My data indicate that the report will be considered at the PACE spring session. With the Political Committee’s standpoint recorded and report approved, now everyone has the right to suggest amendments. In other words, there is no doubt that the committee will pass the report. The rapporteur upholds it in a most clear-cut way and recognizes that it has been one of the most sensitive and difficult topics in the last year.
“We will continue to work, and our efforts will be aimed at constructiveness. We are not waging war against anybody. We are not attempting to call our neighboring countries our enemies, as one of such states takes the liberty of doing. We reject all aspirations to be singled out from among other victims. We, Ukrainians, honor the struggle and memory of all those who perished in this struggle. We have also found many adherents in European countries. Many Europeans who used to mix up Ukraine with Russia now distinguish pretty well between the Holodomor and what Stalin’s satraps did to Kazakh nomads. It is important to go at a steady pace because we are right.”
Will the split among the Ukrainian elite concerning the recognition of the Holodomor have an impact on all this, as well as the January presidential elections?
“Our way to democracy is nonreversible. And one of the main democratic principles that we have acquired after joining the Council of Europe consists in condemning all crimes against the fundamental human right to life and preventing them from happening in the future, regardless of when these crimes are committed. I strongly believe that we are following the right path and will proceed at a steady pace.
“Indeed, some people are making use of the fact that Ukrainians fail to clarify their views concerning the Holodomor. But the rapporteur gave possibility to each political faction of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada to present their views of these events. The Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense faction has recorded the stands of Ukrainian scholars concerning the Holodomor as well as those that are regularly declared and upheld by the newspaper Den in its publications.
“The BYuT faction has also submitted a similar opinion. The standpoint of the Party of Regions contained certain discrepancies, which were connected with the need for further research of the subject of genocide, because it has not been completed. However, their main points coincided with ours, specifically the opinion that this was a dreadful crime against humankind which needs to be condemned and prevented from happening in the future.
“So, I emphasize that it is wrong to say that Ukraine does not have a unanimous attitude to what was done to our past generations and to the consequences we have now. Despite having certain discrepancies, Ukrainian politicians are unanimous in recognizing it as a terrible crime which should be internationally condemned and must never occur again.”
