« »

24 November 2006 15:27

Kateryna Yushchenko Takes Part in Opening the Unclassified Memory Exhibition of Documents from the Archive of Ukraine’s Security Service on Holodomor of 1932-1933

November 24, 2006, Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the opening of the Unclassified Memory exhibition of documents from the archives of Ukraine’s Security Service on Holodomor of 1932-1933. This event was dedicated to the Day of the Memory of the Victimims of Famines and Political Repressions.

Also present at the ceremony were President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, Head of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Moroz, Head of the SSU Ihor Drizhchany, Minister for Culture and Tourism Yuri Bohutsky, and Minister for Family and the Youth Yuri Pavlenko.

The exhibition presents around 5,000 pages of documents on the Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 from the archives of Soviet security bodies, unclassified by the Security Service of Ukraine. Among them are orders and directives issued by the State Political Administration of the Ukrainian SSR, classified records and statistics on repressions in the country, criminal cases on the victims of the Communists’ retributive policy, witnesses’ accounts, materials related to the inspection by Cheka members of the countrymen’s, Red Army soldiers’, and other Ukrainians’ correspondence.

Since 2003 the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund is being carrying out the Lessons in History: Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 program, whose objective is present to the Ukrainians and the international community an accurate  account of the tragedy of 1932, creating a fundamental base for scholarly research of various aspects of the Holodomor Manmade Famine; create favorable conditions for its political and legal evaluation by the state and international institutions as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Within the framework of this program, the Fund has initiated the Light a Candle annual countrywide action and created Ukraine’s first website dedicated to the Famine. The Fund had supported shooting two documentaries on the events of the 1930s: Holodomor: The Techniques of Genocide (2005, directed by Viktor Deriuhin), and Banned from Living (2005, directed by Viktor Pidlisny).

The priorities of the Ukraine 3000 Fund in the Lessons in History: Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 program for the next few years are: publishing scholarly and popular works on the Holodomor history; collecting witnesses’ accounts; involving as many people as possible into commemorating of the victims of the famine terror, etc.

In 2006, the Fund financed a reprint of one of the first fundamental collections of articles on Holodomor,  Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (compiled by Nadia Diuk), first published in the United States in 1985. This collection can be viewed as a symbol, since at that time in Ukraine it was forbidden even to mention the Famine of the 1930s.

The work continues on the three books to be published in 2007. The first, a collection of documents from the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, will be published as a part of a joint Ukraine 3000 Fund – SSU project. Another is a collection of witnesses’ accounts recorded in various Ukraine’s regions under the guidance of Ph.D. in History, professor with the Kyiv Shevchenko National University Valentyna Borysenko. The Fund is also preparing a reprint of The Harvest of Sorrow by renowned researcher Robert Conquest. The book has already been translated into Ukrainian with the support of the Embassy of the United States to Ukraine.

All the publications mentioned above will be passed over to Ukrainian libraries free of charge.

In 2007, the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund will hold the Second Candle in the Window Poster Contest dedicated to Holodomor. In the first contest organized by the Fund in 2003, 402 works by 132 artists from 19 Ukraine’s regions took part.

Besides, next year the Fund will hold the Second All-Ukrainian Contest for Best Coverage of Holodomor among Journalists. Its goal is promoting close and impartial coverage of the history of the Manmade Famine in the national and local mass media. The first contest took part in 2003, with 84 journalists from 18 regions taking part in it.

We are convinced that aggressive research of the Holodomor History in Ukraine and condemning this crime globally will help to achieve the main objective: to prevent such tragedies to occur in the future in any form.