The Crimean Academic Ukrainian Music Theater premiered the play Stalin’s Itinerary, which is dedicated to the history of the Holodomor. “This play is about a tragic page in our history. We are not holding any events in this connection and no one has helped us in this cause in any way. We have simply staged this tragic play,” says Volodymyr Zahursky, director of the theater.
“We had received about 20 plays that pertained to the Holodomor and rejected them because many authors wanted to earn points for themselves by exploiting this topic. So we chose Stalin’s Itinerary authored by the Crimean playwright Harold Bodykin,” Zahursky explained. In his opinion, Bodykin was successful in achieving the most objective possible depiction of the 1932-33 events.
The pro-Russian organizations in the Crimea were up in arms about the play. Rumors were circulated that numerous provocations were being prepared, tickets were purposefully purchased in large numbers, and protests were being planned. Some of the Crimean mass media reported: “All the tickets for the play have been bought but the theater’s administration conjectures that this has been done by certain political forces.” Zahursky indeed believes that certain parties are involved in the buy-out scheme. All the tickets were purchased in advance for the November 22 matinee, just like for the premiere The Day before. However, some tickets were bought just in time for school students, who are required to watch the play as part of their school curriculum.
Zahursky warned the actors that the situation with the premiere was “tense,” but no one withdrew.
In the words of Bodykin, in writing the play he was guided by his relative’s memories of the famine — they lived in Kharkiv oblast in 1933-33. Borys Martynov, the stage director of the play, says that Stalin’s Itinerary has the target audience of 14 and up. He warned teachers had to prepare the school students psychologically before the play.
Despite all the threats regarding the play that came from pro-Russian forces, there were no accidents. In addition to ordinary theater-goers, nearly a hundred activists from the Crimean Ukrainian national-cultural organizations came to watch the play. Of Kyiv guests there was only MP Olha Herasymiuk. The activists of the Progressive Socialist Party expressed their surprise at the “passive reaction of the Communists and pro-Russian organizations to a play that humiliates the Russian Crimea.”
The Crimea’s Council of Ministers informed The Day that a series of events commemorating the victims of the Ukraine Holodomor took place across the entire peninsula, including book and informational exhibits. Memorial signs were unveiled in the villages of Tselinnoie, Mirnovka, Pobiednoie, Yasnaia Poliana, Pakhariovka, and Izumrudnoie (all in Dzhankoi raion), while Orthodox churches held liturgies, Muslim mosques offered salats and prayers for the dead, and schools organized lessons commemorating the Holodomor victims. Viktor Plakyda, head of the Crimea’s Council of Ministers, took part in one event saying that in 1932-33 the peninsula became a saving harbor for many people who managed to escape from the famine-stricken oblasts of Ukraine and provided them with shelter and food.
On November 22 a memorial sign dedicated to the victims of the 1932-33 Holodomor was solemnly unveiled on the territory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Transfiguration Church in Rozdolne raion.
A rally-cum-requiem dedicated to the Holodomor’s 75th anniversary took place in Sevastopol, involving over 300 people-party activists, the staff of the city administration, servicemen of Ukraine’s naval forces, and city residents. “Any policy that requires human victims is immoral, antipopular, and criminal,” said Serhii Kunitsyn, head of the Sevastopol City Administration, in his speech at the rally.
