Below is the World Bank's report on the disappearance of Gongadze (Honhadze).
(Abstract and Full Text are available for the 100-page report).
Abstract
The news media can play a critical role in holding governments to account , thereby promoting good governance and helping to curb corruption. Investigative Journalism in particular shines the spotlight on malfeasance, abuse of power and systemic malfunctioning. The spotlight can have great impact when the reporting is professionally conducted. When the guilty are exposed, punishment often ensues, reform is instituted and civil society is re-assured that its institutions are capable of responding vigorously to guard against similar recurrences.
However there can be grave danger in carrying out investigative reporting. The environments of some countries, and their institutions are not sufficiently robust to ensure that corrective measures will flow from the media's expos?s. Worse, in some developing nations and emerging democracies, in which impunity prevails and rule of law founders, journalists are the casualties. Indeed, thirty-seven journalists were killed in 2001 because of their work, twenty- four in 2000. Some were killed while covering conflict, others in apparent retribution for digging out the truth.
This case study is about Ukrainian Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze,
and his yet unsolved 2000 murder. The study of this infamous case is meant
not only to highlight the importance of Gongadze's investigative work in
attempting to uncover wrongdoing, but also for journalists to realize the
very real dangers he knowingly faced as he went about his mission, and
for journalists everywhere to pause and reflect on how to best assess and
minimize the risks in taking on investigative projects.
U.S. GRANTS RUSSIA MARKET-ECONOMY STATUS... The U.S. government recognized Russia as a full-fledged market economy on 6 June, Western and Russian news agencies reported. U.S. President George W. Bush informed President Vladimir Putin of the decision by telephone. According to AP, the Russian government estimates that the U.S. decision will increase Russian exports to the United States by about $1.5 billion annually. Speaking on RTR television, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref expressed hope that the decision will lead the United States "to reconsider all the previously introduced antidumping procedures" that have been initiated, ITAR-TASS reported. "The step also opens new opportunities for investments in Russia, making them more predictable as products produced in our country can be supplied on major world markets on a competitive, nondiscriminatory basis," Gref said. The European Union announced a similar decision on 29 May (see " RFE/RL Newsline," 31 May 2002). RC
...AND WESTERN MARKETS RESPOND. The U.S. decision to grant Russia market-economy
status is producing a sharp increase in demand for shares in Russian companies,
ITAR-TASS reported on 7 June. An unnamed source in a Western bank told
the news agency that many Western investment funds are buying up Russian
blue-chip stocks in order to increase the share of Russian securities in
their portfolios. RC
Such agreements were originally signed in the early 1990s with central-eastern European postcommunist countries and the three Baltic states from the former Soviet Union. Each was negotiated on an individual basis, and signified that the country intended to eventually join the EU, whether on a slow or a fast membership track.
Since then, however, the situation has changed. It is, in the mind of Brussels, a totally different era. The agreements made in the early 1990s were made in part to show solidarity with the new post-communist regimes. The EU has never expressed any interest in returning to that formula simply in order to sign an association agreement with Ukraine. A different era yields different needs and requirements.
Stumbling Blocks
The EU has regularly complained about "guns, drugs and bugs" and migrants
moving from east to west through Ukraine. It has sought to stem this tide
by tightening the former Soviet border with Central and Eastern Europe.
The only exception to this is the Baltic states, where the new EU border
would be between Russia and the three Baltic states. Some 15 million Russians,
Ukrainians and Belarusans cross into Poland each year. In February, Poland
submitted a 92-page document to Brussels detailing tougher measures on
its eastern border, which include additional border troops and equipment.
The Ukraine-Russia border has not yet been demarcated. Russia refuses to
do so.
Another thorny issue involves both religion and psychology. It took decades for the EU to accept that a Muslim country, Turkey, could participate as a compatible and active member in a largely Christian Europe. It may take just as long with the eastern Slavic countries.
The EU and the Council of Europe have tended to place Ukraine and Russia in one group on questions of membership, despite the fact that Russia has never raised the question of an association agreement with the EU. A 2000 policy paper by the French Foreign Ministry argued that the EU should not consider Ukraine a potential EU member because doing so would isolate Russia. On a visit to Moscow in May, the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, said that neither Russia or Ukraine would become EU members in the foreseeable future.
The EU is now developing a joint strategy towards Ukraine and Belarus. This would appear to be inherently faulty, given that the two countries have different domestic and foreign policies. Prodi has hinted that Ukraine would be do better integrating within the CIS, which in turn might then be considered as a regional group for future association. Notably, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma met Prodi in Brussels in May just prior to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Kuchma then, at the Sochi summit, announced Ukraine's intention of joining the Eurasian Economic Community as an associate member.
Because these three eastern Slavic states--Belarus, Ukraine and Russia--all have different strategic objectives, the EU would do better to treat them individually. It is still not clear whether the EU sees the CIS as part of Europe or of Eurasia. This is the same conundrum that bedevilled it for so many years vis-a-vis Turkey.
Another factor working against Ukraine is its record on political and economic reform. Oligarchic centrist political forces, who control the government and parliamentary leadership and are allied to the executive, espouse the rhetoric of reform and integration into Europe, but are not willing to undertake the domestic reforms prerequisite to membership. No association agreement has ever been in near enough view that the EU has made such demands in so many words with any specific deadline. A March report by the Polish Stefan Batory Foundation concluded that after Kuchma was re-elected in 1999 none of the measures adopted immediately or soon afterward "indicated that the European option for Ukraine was treated by Kyiv as any tangible political priority. [Furthermore,] the proclaimed declarations were not substantiated by any readiness for tangible action."
As the newspaper 'Ukraiina moloda' (April 10) pointed out, "Double standards, of which Ukraine often accuses the West, are most often actively used by Ukraine itself. They lie in the striking difference between the authorities' words and deeds. Their words are intended to be used abroad and their deeds are to be used at home."
Ukraine's leaders have repeatedly claimed that its foreign policy is neither pro-Western or pro-Russian, but pro-Ukrainian. Given that Ukraine's foreign policy is best understood as Kuchma's foreign policy, this claim holds little weight. It is difficult for Ukraine to have a foreign policy while the current president is in power because it is de facto already semi-isolated in the West. Kuchma's last invitation to visit a Western country came from Germany in January 2001. It had been sent before the Kuchmagate scandal that broke in November 2000.
Kuchma has expressed a strong interest in visiting the United States to meet President George W. Bush. Washington has conditioned such a visit, however, on two issues: free and fair elections in Ukraine, and resolving the September 2000 murder of opposition journalist Grigory Gongadze.
The March 31 elections of this year were only partially free and fair. Kuchma's conduct since then--forcing businessmen to join his United Ukraine faction to make it the largest as a way to have the head of the presidential administration elected parliamentary speaker--have only served to confirm the view that Kuchma's domestic policies are at odds with his pro-EU rhetoric. As the French newspaper Le Monde (April 2) pointed out, "It is constantly repeating its desire to draw closer to Europe, but is not taking the measures to implement the reforms such a partnership requires." Other issues besides the dubious March elections are in play--high levels of corruption, arms trafficking, charges against Kuchma found on the Kuchmagate tapes and one of the worst records in Europe of attacks on the media.
Ukraine is the only CIS state that has consistently lobbied the EU for an association agreement. It has rightly argued that some of those with aspirant status are in no better economic shape than Ukraine (Romania and Macedonia, for example). Ukraine has also argued that high public support of EU membership should stand in its favor. A May poll by the Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies found that 57.6 percent of Ukrainians supported this goal. Nevertheless, few Ukrainians really understand what the EU is and merely associate it in a positive way with higher living standards.
Ukraine's de facto isolation in the West is not likely to be resolved until after Kuchma retires from office in October 2004. The newspaper Ukraiina Moloda (April 10) rightly sees the victory of center-right former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko as Ukraine's best hope for nearer-term integration into Trans-Atlantic and European structures: "He is about the only Ukrainian politician the civilized world fully trusts."
EU-Ukrainian Relations in Crisis?
The EU-Ukrainian relationship is in dire need of an overhaul. Brussels
has still to recognize Kyiv's desire for EU membership. Foreign Minister
Anatoly Zlenko complained in April that "The EU is thinking about how to
support Ukraine's reforms, but at the same time giving no promises that
it will become a member of the EU."
The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) signed in 1994 and ratified four years later and the 1999 EU Common Strategy on Ukraine are both inadequate. Much is vague on both sides. Clarity seems a long shot unless a pro-Western figure, such as Yushchenko, is elected president in 2004. If that were to happen, the EU might then begin to act seriously on Ukrainian aspirations. Until then, neither side is taking the other seriously.
Four areas need urgent attention. First, Ukraine should resolve all problems related to joining the WTO by 2002-2003. Second, a free trade regime and customs union should be negotiated between Ukraine and the EU between 2004-2007. Third, Ukraine should complete the demarcation of its border with Russia. Fourth, Ukraine should be offered an association agreement on condition that it pursues the radical reform criteria laid out by the EU for aspirant members--including a serious battle against corruption, legislation brought into line with EU standards, and transparency in its economy and budget.
If such a strategy is developed, and Ukraine's next president is committed
to reform rather than rhetoric, Ukraine could achieve membership by 2011.
The alternative is another decade of drift.
The policies of these three groups can be also easily divided according to their support for three parts of a single programmatic package -- national revival (identity, language, culture); democratic and market reform; and cutting ties with the Soviet past and replacing Soviet and Eurasian values with European ones through "returning to Europe." As one moves from the extreme left to the center-right in Belarus and Ukraine, support for these three parts of a single programmatic package increases.
The strongest support for democratic reform and integrating into Europe is therefore to be found among center-right national democrats. It is no coincidence that support for these three aspects of a single program are also backed by political parties who draw upon those sections of the Belarusian and Ukrainian populations who have higher national consciousness and promote national revival and nation building. National identity, reform, and a pro-European orientation are intimately linked in Belarus and Ukraine.
National democratic parties in Belarus and Ukraine are usually negatively depicted as extreme, anti-Russian "nationalists" by the Western media, scholars, and policy makers. One reason for this is the continued location of Western journalists in Moscow (as in the Soviet era), who write about the non-Russian former Soviet republics from this Russian vantage point or after occasional forays into Belarus or Ukraine. Moscow-based journalists and Western scholars with a Russophile Soviet-studies background have also tended to reinforce the stereotype that nationalism in Belarus and Ukraine is negative, especially when it attempts to provide affirmative action for Belarusian and Ukrainian language and culture subjected to centuries of Russification.
In Belarus and Ukraine the center-right national democrats are akin to center-right parties in earlier periods of the West. (Scholars have still to provide any theoretical evidence to differentiate between civic nationalism and patriotism.) In Belarus and Ukraine, nationalism is of a civic, patriotic variety that seeks to implement the necessary political, economic, and administrative reforms oriented toward radically breaking with the Soviet past and thereby integrating these countries into Europe.
The tsarist and Soviet historical experience is understood as a negative aberration that placed Belarus and Ukraine outside European and Western developments. Not surprisingly therefore, the extreme left are their arch opponents because they say the exact opposite. For Lukashenka, the Soviet experience was the most important historical event for Belarus in its entire history. As this was undertaken together with Russia as the "elder brother" of the USSR, then it is only natural for Belarus and Russia to be in union. Likewise, the Communist Party of Ukraine led by Petro Symonenko has been the only strong supporter of Lukashenka's regime in Ukraine.
Pan-Slavists agree with the communists and Sovietophiles that "White Russia" (Belarus) and "Little Russia" (Ukraine) should orientate themselves wholeheartedly to Russia. Where pan-Slavists and communists/Sovietophiles disagree is how their prescription for the present is based on their past understanding. Pan-Slavists look to the pre-Soviet era as their "golden age" and therefore see no problem in Belarusians and Ukrainians becoming part of Russia. Communists and Sovietophiles see the Soviet era as their "golden age" and therefore would not accept anything other than a union of sovereign republics. Pan-Slavists can be best depicted as Russian nationalists and communists/Sovietophiles as Soviet nationalists.
In Belarus and Ukraine, centrists and national democrats are allied against the extreme left. In Belarus this was clearly seen in the September 2001 presidential elections when the majority of national democrats and centrists allied together into an election bloc led by Uladzimir Hancharyk, head of the Belarusian Trade Union Federation, to oppose Lukashenka's re-election. In Ukraine, the equivalent head of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, Oleksandr Stoyan, was a high-profile member of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc. In Ukraine, all centrist parties oppose Ukraine's membership of the Russian-Belarusian union.
Centrist parties in Belarus and Ukraine are at once the easiest to define and the most difficult to categorize. Centrists tend to have their origins in the Soviet higher nomenklatura who abandoned the Communist Party in favor of "sovereign communism" in 1990-91 and then altogether when the party was banned after the August 1991 putsch. Centrists at first created no political parties but used their patronage networks to establish a nonconstituted "party of power." From the mid-1990s the "party of power" transformed itself into regional mini-"parties of power" in Ukraine as economic gains made in the reform process were transformed into political power. This happened to a greater extent in Ukraine than Belarus, because reforms were speeded up after 1994 whereas in Belarus Lukashenka's election in 1994 led to the gradual re-introduction of a neo-Soviet regime. Centrists were able to become oligarchs only in Ukraine.
Because of their link to the Soviet past, centrists and oligarchs straddle the Soviet Eurasian past and the European future. Their past ways of operating in a nontransparent, corrupt fashion using patronage networks have been continued in Ukraine in the post-Soviet era. During the Brezhnev "era of stagnation" they learned to pay lip service to officially espoused rhetoric, then in the march from "developed socialism" to communism and now for "reform" toward "integrating into Europe." Centrists and oligarchs prefer not to completely break with the Soviet past and hence prefer "third-way" populist alternatives.
In the foreign policy arena they will espouse integration into the EU, and less so into NATO, but still prefer to remain active in the CIS. Hence, "multi-vector" foreign policies are preferable. Decisiveness in domestic or foreign policy is therefore not one of their strong points.
As centrists originated in the largely Russified former Soviet nomenklatura, it is not surprising that their strongest support comes from the Russophone population. Hence, centrists are supporters of state building and independence but lukewarm on nation building, something that divides them from national democrats. In Belarus, most national democrats are willing to overlook the division with centrists on the national question because of their commonly perceived threat from Lukashenka. Russophones are the most passive and least active in civil society as well as being the most amorphous both ideologically and in national consciousness. Ideologically driven parties in Belarus and Ukraine only exist on the left and right.
In conclusion, if Western policy towards Belarus and Ukraine aims to
strengthen the reform movement, then it has little choice but to support
these very same national democrats whom it has often criticized in the
past.
The creation of an intergovernmental commission of Ukrainian and Russian historians on 24 May in Moscow has aroused a storm. Deputy Prime Minister for the Humanities Volodymyr Semynozhenko, who oversaw the establishment of the commission from the Ukrainian side, is no stranger to controversy. His openly Russophilic views fit in well with the reorientation of Ukrainian foreign policy according to the "To Europe with Russia!" drift that gathered speed after 2000, when the West began to shun President Leonid Kuchma. Not surprisingly, Semynozhenko is behind the decree to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the 1654 Pereyaslav Treaty (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 7 May 2002) as Kuchma's parting gift to Ukraine in 2004. Semynozhenko is also heavily involved in the 2002 "Year of Ukraine in Russia" and 2003 "Year of Russia in Ukraine" festivities.
It was Russia that suggested the idea of a joint commission of historians. Two historical episodes are covered negatively in Ukrainian historiography, the Russian side complained to Semynozhenko at the Moscow meeting. These deal with the 1932-33 artificial famine in Ukraine which left between 5 million and 10 million dead (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 12 June 2002), and the war between Bolshevik and White Russian armies and the independent Ukrainian People's Republic in 1917-21.
This attempt at agreeing on joint Russian-Ukrainian historical interpretations is not a new development. Two years ago, a special issue of the Moscow-based illustrated historical journal "Rodina" entitled "Rossiya i Ukraina: Vekhi istorii" was published with a congratulatory preface by Kuchma. The issue had 150 A4 pages divided into three sections: "Kyiv Rus and Novgorod Rus," "Russia + Little Russia = Empire," and "Ukrainian SSR-Russian SFSR, Ukraine-Russian Federation." All three sections of this special issue of "Rodina" fall in line with the "To Europe with Russia!" foreign-policy ideology favored by Kuchma and oligarchic centrists. That is, Russia and Ukraine were always together in the past and therefore should continue to be in the future.
Opposition soon grew to the joint Russian-Ukrainian historical commission from the cultural intelligentsia, academics, national democratic parties (Republican Party Sobor, a member of the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc), parliamentary factions (Our Ukraine), and women and youth NGOs. An open letter was addressed to government ministers and the president attacking the very idea of a historians commission with Russia. A Committee in Defense of Ukrainian History was set up to coordinate the protests led by well-known historian Yaroslav Dashkevych.
Young people have been particularly active in the protests, as they were in the "Kuchmagate" crisis of 2000-2001. The maidan.org.ua website, which grew on the strength of youth activists within the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement, actively promoted the campaign. Government e-mail addresses were flooded with standardized electronic protest letters. Young Rukh, headed by Our Ukraine deputy Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, launched pickets of the Kyiv government building from 11 June.
Ukraine already has two intergovernmental commissions of historians with Poland and Romania. Of these two, the Polish-Ukrainian has been by far the more successful. One of the products of this research is the publication of large volumes of documents on Polish-Ukrainian relations in the 1930s and 1940s, such as "Polskie Podziemie 1939-1941. Lwow, Kolomyja, Stryj, Zloczow." These hitherto unpublished archives are taken from both countries' Interior ministries and security services.
The Polish-Ukrainian commission has built on a process of normalization between Poles and Ukrainians that began in the late 1940s in the diaspora. This process was supported by Pope John Paul II and by Solidarity and the Polish anticommunist opposition during the 1980s. Nobody has therefore complained about the very idea of the Polish-Ukrainian historians commission because there is evidence on both sides of the desire to overcome past problems.
In principle, there is nothing wrong with coordinating the revision of national histories. Such a process has been taking place in Europe since 1926, when the League of Nations established a voluntary committee of historians. Since 1951, such a coordinating committee has functioned at the Brunswick International Schoolbook Institute.
Nevertheless, the Russian-Ukrainian commission is problematic because it talks of "harmonization" of historical facts at a time when Ukrainian-Russian reconciliation and normalization remains decades behind that undertaken by Poles and Ukrainians. Ukrainian opponents of the commission are well aware that Russia has avidly supported Belarus and Moldova in reintroducing Soviet-era textbooks. "Harmonization," Ukrainians opposed to the commission believe, seems to indicate reintroducing the Russian imperial viewpoint.
In addition, Dr. Stephen Velychenko, a historian and Toronto-based expert on Russian and Polish historiography of Ukraine, pointedly asked, "What is the point of involving the state in history writing? There is no CPSU any more to whom historians have to make petitions."
The creation of the Russian-Ukrainian historians commission will also be challenged by a growing body of Russian historians who are more willing than Kuchma or Semynozhenko to move away from "harmonization" toward the reconciliation and normalization work undertaken by Poles and Ukrainians. Writing in the April issue of the journal "Nations and Nationalism," Professor Vera Tolz surveys the decline in attempts by Russian historians to associate the Russian tsarist empire or the USSR with "Russia," or to see Kyiv Rus as the first "Russian" state. Kyiv Rus is now portrayed with three capitals (Kyiv, Novgorod, and Lagoda), while Ukraine and Russia signing the Pereyaslav Treaty in the 17th century are described as different in culture, language, political traditions, and customs.
This development is the first attempt, Tolz believes, whereby Russian historians are in the "process of inventing a truly national tradition" outside the imperial past. Attitudes toward Ukraine are evolving from the pure derision aimed at the very idea of an independent Ukraine to gradual acceptance, particularly after the signing of the Russian-Ukrainian treaty in 1997.
After less than two weeks of protests, Semynozhenko backed down, claiming that no joint Russian-Ukrainian textbooks will be published. He passed the buck by claiming that textbooks lie within the competency of the Ministry of Education. The problem is unlikely to go away anytime soon, however. Education Minister Vasyl Kremen, a member of the oligarchic Social Democratic Party-united, supports the creation of the joint commission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Taras Kuzio, resident fellow, Center for Russian and East European
studies at the University of Toronto
Dr. Kuzio's article concerns a discussion on H-Net Russia, which began when in response to a question, I sent in a list of my recent publications (listed below) and summarized their main points. These points were that the 1933 famine was not limited to Ukraine and resulted from a shortage due to natural disasters that no other scholars have investigated. Dr. Kuzio's article distorts this discussion and misrepresents Western scholarship and my works in particular, which were the main ones at issue but which apparently almost none of my detractors had read.
Dr. Kuzio claims that Western scholars refuse to compare Soviet and Nazi crimes, and are Russia-centric. On the first point, he quotes other scholars' statements that any questioning of the Ukrainian genocide argument is "immoral and absurd." On the second point, he cites my doubts concerning Ukrainian memoirs and asserts that no one questions similar accounts of the Holocaust. He refers to my criticism of Robert Conquest's work and cites James Mace's dismissal of my work as "baseless statistical circumlocutions" and "garbage." He asserts that Western scholars ignore Ukrainian sources and publications, and that the famine left no "memory" in the Russian consciousness. Here I will briefly respond to these claims.
With respect to memory of the famine in Russia, Dr. Kuzio seems unaware of such publications as "Tragediya sovetskoi derevni," a massive five-volume collection of documents published in Russia with the support of the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, which evidences the severity of the famine in Russia as well as Ukraine, and the imprint of the famine on the consciousness of all the Soviet peoples. Dr. Kuzio's point is also problematic because Ukraine is a multinational state, all of whose citizens -- Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Poles, Tatars, and others -- were victims of the famine, as documented in recent Ukrainian publications. Dr. Kuzio is wrong to characterize me as a Russia-centered Western scholar. I use Ukrainian sources, I have worked in Ukrainian archives, and I have published a study of the Ukrainian famine of 1928-1929 that the Ukrainian scholar S.V. Kulchytskyy described as one of the "blank spots" to which Dr. Kuzio refers. I published this in a collection of articles on Soviet history in the national republics ("Provincial Landscapes," listed below) by a group of scholars, and this publication is not unique. Dr. Kuzio's criticism of U.S. scholarship, therefore, at least as it refers to me, my associates, and many other Western scholars, is unjustified.
On the question of statistics, James Mace and other advocates of the genocide argument insist that the famine was "man-made" on the basis of Soviet official statistics that the total grain harvest in 1932 was 68.9 million tons and testimonies and memoirs from decades after the event that the harvest was excellent. Their argument therefore rests on the statistical claim that no genuine food shortage prevailed in the USSR in 1932. If it can be shown that such a shortage prevailed, this argument has to be rejected.
The official statistics, however, show that the procurements taken from the 1932 harvest were less than the procurements in any other year in the 1930s (and archival documents show that the data actually overstate the amount procured). In other words, the rural remainder for the whole USSR in that year appears larger than any other year in the early 1930s, so there should not have been a famine by those statistics. Several other scholars noted this before me, including the Ukrainian emigre scholar Dmytro Solovey. These are not "baseless statistical circumlocutions" but a fundamental problem in the evidence, which Conquest, Mace, and other recent Ukrainian scholarship never mention.
Yet there was a famine, and as the archives document exhaustively, people were dying of starvation all over the country (see the article by Wheatcroft in Getty and Manning, "Stalinist Terror," Cambridge University Press 1997). So that harvest statistic is wrong. As I show, the harvest figure that Mace and others rely on was a biological yield projection, not harvest data, and was imposed on Soviet statistics by Stalin in 1933. I obtained the archival annual reports from the collective farms themselves, including those from more than 40 percent of the collective farms in Ukraine (the remainder of the farms did not complete and submit annual reports, apparently because of the crisis). These data show that the 1932 harvest was at least one-third below the official figures. These are data from the farms, including Ukrainian farms, data gathered and prepared by Ukrainian peasants and other villagers at the time that the famine took place. I also show that even these data, which imply in Ukraine a harvest of less than 5 million tons instead of the 8 million-ton official figure, overstate what must have been a famine harvest. I show that these annual-report data are the only reliable data on Soviet grain production in the 1930s, and that peasants used them to resist outside officials' demanding high procurements based on Soviet biological yields.
So while Mace stands by Stalin's false statistics, backed up with memoirs written decades later, to argue that a small harvest did not occur, my evidence (which Mace calls "garbage") -- desperately put forward by Ukrainians and other peasants themselves, which Soviet leaders received and rejected -- documents incontrovertibly that the country had a famine harvest. This is why I question Ukrainian memoir accounts. Their insistence on the false assertion that the harvest was good undermines their credibility. It is also a general principle of evidence that contemporaneous evidence concerning an event is considerably more reliable than reports decades after the event: The memoir and testimony sources on the famine date from the 1950s to the 1980s and later. Substantial critical literatures in history and psychology have demonstrated the problems of memoirs and oral history, which contrary to Dr. Kuzio's claim have been applied extensively to the literature of Holocaust memoirs and testimonies.
The evidence that I have published and other evidence, including recent Ukrainian document collections, show that the famine developed out of a shortage and pervaded the Soviet Union, and that the regime organized a massive program of rationing and relief in towns and in villages, including in Ukraine, but simply did not have enough food. This is why the Soviet famine, an immense crisis and tragedy of the Soviet economy, was not in the same category as the Nazis' mass murders, which had no agricultural or other economic basis. This evidence also explains why it is false to describe me and other Western scholars as "deniers" of the famine. There is nothing "immoral" or "absurd" about this evidence, which comes directly from Ukrainians and other villagers at the time, and it is in no way comparable to a denial of the Holocaust.
Mace, Krawchenko, and Kuzio responded to careful research that tests received interpretations, certainly accepted scholarly practice, with derogatory comments, misrepresentations, and moral condemnations, without apparently having read all of the publications they attacked. Perhaps this is why they have encountered some opposition to their views in the United States. This kind of ad hominem attack only makes it more difficult to get at the truth behind the tragedies in Soviet history.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Mark B. Tauger, "The 1932 Harvest and the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933," Slavic Review v. 50 No. 1, Spring 1991;
Tauger, R.W. Davies, and S. G. Wheatcroft, "Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932-1933," Slavic Review v. 54 No. 3, Fall 1995;
Tauger, "Natural Disaster and Human Action in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933," The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, No. 1506, 2001 (65pp);
Tauger, "Statistical Falsification in the Soviet Union: A Comparative Case Study of Projections, Biases, and Trust," The Donald Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Washington, No. 34, 2001 (82pp);
Tauger, "Grain Crisis or Famine? The Ukrainian State Commission for Aid to Crop Failure Victims and the Ukrainian Famine of 1928-1929," in Donald Raleigh, ed., "Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power," 1917-1953, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ROMAN SENKUS / POMAH CEHbKYCb Director,
CIUS Publications Program
(CIUS Press and www.encyclopediaofukraine.com [forthcoming])
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies,
Toronto Office
1 Spadina Crescent,
room 109,
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, M5S 2J5, Canada
This article by Professor Mark B. Tauger (mark.tauger@mail.wvu.edu),
Ph.D., associate professor at West Virginia University, responds to the
article by Dr. Taras Kuzio in "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report"
of 12 June 2002.)
Ukrainian World Congress
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Askold@erols.com
Via e-mail: magazine@nytimes.com
Letters to the Editor, Magazine
The New York Times
229 W. 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036
Dear Editor:
Reading "What Happened to Uncle Shmiel," I was struck, in particular, by Daniel Mendelsohn's statement that "thanks to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact," the Soviets took over western Ukraine in 1939 and "the Jews there had two years of relative security." While the statement lends credibility to Mendelsohn's overall diatribes, it needs further clarification.
The Soviet occupation of western Ukraine in 1939 brought about the arrests and internments of tens of thousands of Ukrainians accused of patriotic activity. When the Soviets were forced to retreat from the invading Nazis in June 1941, they slaughtered their prisoners. This was accomplished with the assistance of local Communists, primarily of Jewish ethnicity. Unfortunately, this slaughter was not an aberration of Soviet activity in Ukraine. Earlier in 1932-33 in eastern Ukraine, the Soviets murdered some 7 million Ukrainian men, women and children through a strategically planned forced famine-genocide. The man entrusted by Joseph Stalin to carry out this crime was a Jew, Lazar Kaganovich.
Norman Davies, the renowned British historian has concluded that no nation lost more people in the 20th century than the Ukrainian. To a large degree this was a result of both Communist and Nazi activity in Ukraine. The Russians and the Germans were savage. But the Jews were the worst. They betrayed their neighbors and did it with such zeal!
Askold S. Lozynskyj
President, Ukrainian World Congress
Letters to the editor New York Times re: Daniel Mendelsohn's article
From: Marta Olynyk <marta.olynyk@sympatico.ca>
From: "Simon Kouklewsky" <nomis2001@sympatico.ca>
Dear Sir:
Daniel Mendelsohn's article ["What Happened to Uncle Shmiel?" 14 July]
is a perfect illustration of how easy it is to instill prejudice in someone,
particularly a child. The author, who grew up hearing his grandfather say
that the "Germans were bad, the Poles were worse, but the Ukrainians were
the worst of all," then sets out with his siblings to the fourteenth-century
town of Bolekhiv in western Ukraine to find out who "betrayed" his uncle.
It's not enough for him to know and state unequivocally that it was the
Germans who destroyed the Jewish population of this ancient town in two
major sweeps in 1941 and 1942. No, he has to find a Ukrainian culprit for
his uncle's disappearace so that it will tally with his grandfather's vile
pronouncement. In Mendelsohn's view, one fictitious Ukrainian "betrayer"
is worse than the Germans conducting two Aktion to liquidate the Jews of
Bolekhiv. Despite encountering only friendly, open Ukrainians of all ages
willing to help provide what little information they have about his family,
Mendelsohn repeats his evil mantra, "the Ukrainians were the worst," without
ever providing any examples of their supposed misconduct. His vendetta
against Ukrainians is so irrational that he fails to see that he is at
best nothing more than a spiteful churl when he accepts the sincere hospitality
and generosity of the Ukrainians he met in Bolekhiv, all the while secretly
wondering how they would treat him "if given a chance."
Mendelsohn's failure to find any "information that corroborated the stories we had heard" frustrates him. I wonder if his frustration will lead him in his turn to instill his rabid prejudice against Ukrainians in his own children and grandchildren. This seems to be a multi-generational phenomenon.
-- Marta D. Olynyk
Sirs,
It was with great joy that I read Daniel Mendelsohn's story regarding his uncle Shmiel. Mr. Mendelsohn travelled to Ukraine, expecting to find monsters. For many years Jews have labeled Ukrainians as such. The voices of accusations were so loud that Jews couldn't even bring themselves to acknowledge the fact that Ukrainians and Jews actually lived relatively harmoniously together for centuries and that many Ukrainians risked their own lives to save their neighbors during WW2. The leader of the Ukrainian Catholics, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky saved thousands of Ukrainian Jews. Rabbi Dr. David Kahana also survived thanks to the Metropolitan's intervention. Later he drew up a list of over 240 Ukrainian Catholic priests who saved Jews. Even though statistically Ukrainians are in fourth place at Yad Vashem, Metropolitan Andrey is not one of them.
People like Simon Wiesenthal know these historical truths, however many Ukrainians cannot be forgiven for welcoming the Nazis as their liberators from the Soviet killing machine and the repressive Polish regime. A Ukrainian saved Mr.Wiesenthal's life during WW2!
The genocides before 1939, during which well over 10 million Ukrainians died under Lenin and Stalin was all too fresh in their relatives' memories. Ten million Ukrainians paid with their lives for their "participation" in WW2. Another 2 million were killed after 1945. It was a messy war with many fronts and much confusion. Ukrainians and countless others had to contend with the Soviet, and for a brief but also bloody period, Nazi reality.
Genocides and crimes against humanity were committed by the Kremlin leaders, which have been ignored by the West.The Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine is not a very well known historical fact, for example. Nazi atrocities are better documented than those committed by the Soviet regime. Many were drafted and forced to work for the Nazis or Bolsheviks under threat of death to family members. Ukrainians have not been in control of its people's destiny for most of the 20th century.
During its brief period of independence after the Russian revolution of 1917, the leader of the Ukrainian government, Symon Petliura, put out an edict forbidding inciting pogroms against its Jewish population, which was punishable by death. Pogroms took place on Ukrainian territory, because Jews of the Russian Empire were not permitted to live in Russian proper. A ministry of Jewish affaires was created and the currency included Yiddish among other languages. Considering the degree of animosity directed towards Ukrainians, it is surprising that the "disease" of anti-Semitism has not consumed them. Mr. Mendelsohn experienced generous Ukrainian hospitality towards Jews first-hand. Nobody made themselves scarce when he presented himself - doesn't that say something?
The question begs to be asked, if the Ukrainian is not the enemy, who is?
-- Simon Kouklewsky
Pierrefonds, Quebec
"What Happened to Uncle Shmiel?" - Daniel Mendelsohn repeating his story
on CNN
From: "Zurba, Roman" <ZURBA@CIBC.CA>
Excerpts from CNN Interview with Daniel Mendelsohn, aired Saturday,
13 July 13, 18:18 ET
Catherine Callaway, CNN anchor: Let me ask you about when you were
there in the village where he lived, where your uncle lived, along with
his daughters, and you were meeting these Ukrainians who really just opened
their homes to you. What was that like for you?
Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Times Magazine: Well, it was peculiar because it's one of the facts of the history of the Holocaust is that quite a number of Ukrainians had turned on their Jewish neighbors with terrible ferocity. And what -- one of the problems in a sense, that I had, was reconciling that knowledge with the very warm welcome that we got from the Ukrainians who still live there, who were trying to help us in our search. And it was a very peculiar and moving experience.
Callaway: And, did you wonder -- I know you did because you wrote it in the article, which is amazing to me -- that when you were meeting these Ukrainians, you wondered twenty years ago, what would have happened. Would they have been this nice, would they have ratted on you? Would they have turned you in? All those thoughts.
Mendelsohn: It was impossible not to think about and it's one of the
peculiar aspects of making a trip like this. You have to balance what you
know about the past with your own place in the present, and it was that
sort of strange balance that I wanted to write about. It was a very peculiar
experience for us to have.
Taras Kuzio
Turkey was one of the first countries to support Ukraine's 23 May announcement that it will seek NATO membership. That expression of support came during an 11 June visit to Ukraine by Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem. Turkey has historically seen Ukraine as a strategic partner. In 1918-21, the governments of independent Ukraine had good relations with the new Turkish state as both countries perceived Russia as their main threat.
In the years immediately following the demise of the USSR, Ukraine and Turkey similarly had a very close geopolitical outlook in the Black Sea and CIS regions because of their common hostility to what they perceived to be Russian expansionism and intervention in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. In addition, Ukraine and Turkey shared similar views on the return to the Crimea of the Tatar community deported to Siberia in 1944, and Ankara backed Ukraine in its Black Sea Fleet dispute with Russia. "However, the initially promising relationship failed to produce the expected results," according to Suat Kiniklioglu of the Center for Russian Studies at Bilkent University in Ankara. One reason was because of socioeconomic collapse in Ukraine. "Ukraine simply did not live up to the high expectations that were propagated in the immediate aftermath of disintegration," Kiniklioglu added. Since the mid-1990s, greater pragmatism in Russian policies, increased attention on domestic Turkish problems, and the international isolation of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma after the "Kuchmagate" crisis all lessened Turkish interest in Ukraine. The death of Turkish fishermen at the hands of Ukrainian border troops and high-profile Turkish media reports blaming Slavic women for bringing a potential AIDS epidemic to the country have also not helped matters.
During Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz's visit to Ukraine in February 1998, then-Prime Minister Valeriy Pustovoytenko claim that, "We are planning to transform our relationship to the level of a strategic partnership," was typical hyperbole, given that Ukrainian leaders have defined relations with almost 20 countries in such terms without any factual basis for doing so. But despite the unfulfilled nature of their relationship, Ukraine and Turkey share four strategic objectives.
First, "The Turkish security establishment views Ukraine as an invaluable partner with which it shares a common outlook to the region," Kiniklioglu believes. The fact that Ukraine has preserved its independence and sovereignty, while remaining outside the Russian sphere of influence is also important to Turkey. "Turkey views the viability and constructive role of Ukraine as an important factor of the geopolitical landscape," Kiniklioglu said.
Second, the territorial integrity of states as a principle in international relations is of special concern to Turkey because of its Kurdish secessionist conflict. That concept is also important to Ukraine because of insecurity over its borders. Both countries are therefore status quo powers. Turkey strongly backed Ukraine in its dispute with Russia over the Crimea between 1992-97. Visiting Ukraine in 1994, then-Turkish President Suleyman Demirel condemned Russian expansionism, expressed support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and Moldova, and warned Russia that the "Crimea is Ukraine's internal affair." Turkey and Ukraine have also supported the territorial integrity of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova bilaterally, in international forums, and through Turkish diplomatic support for the GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) regional group. Turkey and GUUAM jointly opposed Russia's attempts to revise upward its flank limits in the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty). Nevertheless, the high hopes that Turkey had for GUUAM as a counterweight to Russia have not materialized. And the creation of such a counterweight has also become less important as Turkey and Russia have improved their relations, as testified by the "Action Plan" they signed in November 2001 in New York. Unfortunately, "Ukraine has been unable to communicate effectively its policies on the Caucasus and its relationship to Turkey in this regard," Kiniklioglu points out.
Turkey and Ukraine both see Georgia as geopolitically important and would like to devise ways to break the deadlocked Abkhaz conflict. One way to achieve this would be to "internationalize" the conflict as President Eduard Shevardnadze has demanded through the introduction of Ukrainian, Turkish, and other peacekeeping forces under a UN or OSCE mandate. Ukraine has already offered to provide peacekeepers to serve in such a UN-mandated force.
Third, the Tatar issue. Turkey backed Ukraine's territorial claims to Crimea because it strongly opposed the idea of the Crimean Tatars -- of whom there are some 5 million to 7 million in Turkey, where they are called "Crimean Turks" -- returning to Russian rule. Turkey is unhappy that the election law has been amended to abolish the guaranteed representation that Tatars had in the 1994-98 Crimean Supreme Soviet. Turkey is helping to finance the construction of mosques and accommodation for returning Tatars through the Turkish Agency for International Cooperation, which has operated an office in the Crimea since 1998. Turkey also provides Tatars with scholarships for higher education in Turkey. Fourth, security cooperation. Ukraine and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement in July 1994 on cooperation in the field of military training, technologies, and science. The agreement provided for the joint training and education of servicemen, exchanges of information, and joint scientific research in the military sphere. Further agreements on cooperation in their defense industries were signed during then-President Suleyman Demirel's visit to Ukraine in May 1998.
Turkey's support for Ukraine's NATO membership represents a natural continuation of their joint cooperation through NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) and "In the Spirit of PfP" exercises organized by the United States. Both countries have provided bilateral military support to Georgia together with the United States and Germany. Turkey and Ukraine have also taken part in joint peacekeeping exercises organized by NATO, such as the "Peace Bridge-98" exercise held in Topkule, Turkey. Turkish military units have taken part in NATO exercises at the Yavoriv training ground near Lviv. Both countries have also regularly taken part in the annual "Sea Breeze" exercises organized by the United States "in the spirit of PfP." Ukraine and Turkey have always held close views on the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) organization, because it is one forum that Russia cannot dominate. Unlike Russia, Turkey is not perceived by Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan as a hegemonic regional power. Ukraine also potentially has much to gain if Turkey is admitted, after a decades-long wait, into the European Union. Turkish membership in the EU would go far to allay perceived fears regarding Ukraine's admittance to the EU -- including the union's ability to "digest" Ukraine as a new member.
Turkey is largely Islamic, lies mainly in Asia Minor, and has a larger
population than Ukraine. Unlike the three Baltic states, Ukraine lacks
allies to lobby on its behalf its integration into trans-Atlantic and European
structures, with the possible exception of Poland. Turkey could certainly
become an important such lobbyist if the much talked about "strategic partnership"
is finally allowed to develop.
MD source: RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 6, No. 127, Part I, 10 July 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
07/11/2002 02:05:01 Interfax:
Russia worried about Ukraine curbing Russian speakers' access to information
MOSCOW. July 9 (Interfax) - Russia is worried about an order from Ukraine's National Council on TV and Radio Broadcasting, which gives the country's TV and radio organizations until the end of the year to start using only the Ukrainian language in their programs.
"This step essentially reduces the potential for the several million individuals in Ukraine's Russian-speaking population and numerous Ukrainians for whom Russian is their mother tongue to use their right to receive information in their native language," Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry told a briefing in Moscow on Tuesday.
That action is inconsistent with the spirit of Russian-Ukrainian humanitarian ties and international standards for the promotion and protection of minority rights, he said.
Moscow expects Ukraine to consider Russia's worries regarding the issue, Yakovenko said.
On the other hand, Russia respects the desire of Ukrainian authorities to develop the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture in the country, he said.
"Efforts are made in Russia to meet the language needs of Ukrainians within the Russian Federation," Yakovenko said.
This is the goal of numerous events in the framework of the Year of
Ukraine, now underway in Russia, he said.
The biggest budget Ukrainian feature film since independence is also set to be the most controversial. While the historical epic A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa has been seen in its entirety only by a handful of festival audiences, it has generated hostile criticism wherever it has been shown, faces a semi official ban in Russia, and has even been dragged out as a weapon in political disputes back home.
Completed last winter, the film has so far only been shown at international movie festivals. It is scheduled for general release in September.
Focusing on a controversial episode in Ukrainian history, the film has been attacked for its unbalanced treatment of historical events and personalities, as well as its excessive violence and nudity. According to numerous news reports, when the film was first shown at Berlin International Festival earlier this year, many viewers walked out of the hall in disgust.
The 154 minute movie is set at the turn of the 18th century when Russia and Sweden were battling for supremacy in the Northern War (1700 1721). When the Swedish King Charles XII led his army into Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian leader Hetman Ivan Mazepa (familiar from the Hr 10 banknote) broke with his former ally Peter the Great and sided with the Swedes. The joint Ukrainian Swedish army was crushingly defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.
Russian media have attacked the movie for what they see as its uncritical adulation of Mazepa – a figure generally depicted as a traitor in Russian historiography – and its extremely negative portrayal of the Russian Czar Peter the Great. The opening scene of the film, for instance, shows Peter raping a soldier. Throughout the film, the Russians are referred to exclusively by the derogatory nickname moskali.
After a wave of hostile criticism in the Russian media, Russian Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoy said earlier this month that the film threatens Ukrainian Russian relations.
"To a certain extent, the movie distorts history, and it will not further Russian Ukrainian relations," he said.
Shvydkoy said that while he did not have the right to prevent Russian film distributors from buying and selling the movie in Russia, he would recommend companies not to show it in the country. He said the ministry was planning to "hold talks" with local film distributors on the matter.
The film, which stars former Culture Minister Bohdan Stupka in the title role, received about Hr 12 million in funding from the government of Viktor Yushchenko. During the parliamentary election campaign earlier this year, TV channels hostile to Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc repeatedly aired some of the film's more disturbing erotic scenes in a clear attempt to embarrass Yushchenko's supporters and discredit the bloc.
The film's director 65 year old Yury Ilyenko, a veteran Ukrainian filmmaker several of whose works were blacklisted by the Communist regime for their anti Soviet content, has denied distorting the historical record and insists he simply tried to present the events as they happened.
"In the times of Mazepa, there was no Russia," Ilyenko said in a May 15 interview with Russian daily Izvestiya. "There was Muscovy [Moskoviya]. The people who lived there were called Moskali, and that's what they are called in my movie."
Describing Peter as "a sadist, a tyrant and a sodomite," Ilyenko said the film was intended to destroy false idols. He said that while the movie's depiction of the czar went against the official Russian "historical brand," it was in line with the findings of Russian writers Lev Tolstoy and Aleksandr Pushkin, who researched this period of Russian history in detail. The movie was also intended to inspire Ukrainians to look afresh at their history, he added.
"The film is a system of shocks," he said. "There is no other way to shake up the Ukrainian swamp that has put up with its secondary status for so long and has learnt to enjoy it."
Ukrainian Culture Minister Yury Bohutsky said the film accurately presented events and urged Russian film distributors to seek rights for showing the Prayer. Bohutsky said the official Russian indignation at the film would only serve as an unintended advertisement for it.
Ihor Didkovsky, the film's producer, said he gave Ilyenko the maximum degree of creative freedom in shooting the film, supervising only the financial aspects of the project.
"I wasn't playing the role of an American producer," he said. "I didn't interfere in the film, and the director was able to film all he wanted in the way he wanted."
Didkovsky denied the movie was intended to stir up anti Russian sentiment, and he dismissed the Russian Culture Ministry's recent statement as a "political trick." He did say he hoped the movie would help Ukrainians rediscover their national identity.
Didkovsky is doing his part to keep viewers in suspense. He has refused to distribute copies of the film for review, saying he fears pirated copies would appear prior to the film's official release in the fall.
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