Noticed a great article in the Toronto Star:
MOSCOW – Lyudmila Alexeyeva has spent decades grappling with the ghosts of history.
A schoolgirl in the days of Stalin’s terror, she helped send food parcels to starving friends and relatives in famine-struck Ukraine and distant parts of Russia. But her experiences were airbrushed from the official record as the country raced toward the bright communist future, divorced from its dark past.
It pointed out how Russia was turning back the clock to the Soviet days of oppression, creating laws restricting speech on its terrible past with harsh penalties, revising textbooks with propaganda (such as blaming Poland for WW2 by not giving into Hitler’s demands) and closing its state archives. While the article did a great job I though I should point out one error I thought was worth mentioning:
This spring the State Duma drafted a law that would hand out fines and jail terms to anyone who published accusations of wartime atrocities or illegal occupation by the Red Army. The bill urged cutting ties with countries that officially revised World War II history, as well as barring their leaders from Russia. It followed Ukraine’s efforts for recognition of the Holodomor – a famine that killed millions under Josef Stalin’s rule – as a genocide, as well as condemnation in Baltic countries of the Soviet Union’s post-war occupation.
Am I reading this correctly, that the Russian Duma (Senate) wants the Holodomor recognized as genocide? I turned to Russia’s state run newspaper Russia Today for answers, but could find nothing to support those claims. Nothing for condemning the Soviet Union in the Baltics either.
I think it was the writer making a parallel between what Russia is doing to preserve its history with what Ukraine has done vis-a-vis the Holodomor. Or else, just a chronological listing of legal efforts along that line in that part of the world.
If your reading is correct, then the world should be looking to Hell for relief from global warming… 🙂
Yeah, you definately misunderstood something, if you think Russia is not trying to CYA its way out trouble, because in this case it was not just negligence that killed and starved 7 million Ukrainians to death, it was Communist planning, along with Communist Red Soldiers who murderred anyone who tried to help the sufferring in Ukraine, because this way, if the Ukrainians were starved to death, they would not be able to put up a fight against Stalin's plans for Collectivization and to move 10 million Russians onto these Ukrainian lands that would continue speaking Russian instead and hurt Ukrainian nationalism, by killing Ukrainians and replacing them with Russians loyal to Moscow's dictates, who did not mind the food they recieved cause of so many Ukrainians starved to death! So, if you think Russia won't look for ways to meddle, replace Yushchenko with a crony who does not even know how to speak Ukrainian, think again! And whoops, guess I'm too late with this info, cause the election already got stolen from Tymoshenko, but the sad thing this time is that it seems that Yushchenko helped to steal it for Yanukovitch, and the Oligarchs, instead of seeking to help the Ukrainian People! Someone please tell me why Yushchenko would choose to dislike Tymoschenko so much that he would start to support one of Russia's cronies? At least Tymoshchenko took time to learn her Ukrainian language skills, to reach people in their home tongue! God bless Ukraine, and have mercy on Ukraine's people, especially for having such rude and obnoxious neighbors to the East! God bless!