from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24th 2. grieve 2011
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the long overdue departure initiated by the Soviet myths. The focus was on the run with Stalin famine in 1932/33. The new government tried to downplay the issue. rummage
By Gerhard Gnauck
In the diplomatic bag at Wikileaks is not only amusing, it is also instructive. From this source can be a historical-political chess game reconstruct the last few years: it concerns the Stalin-era famine in Ukraine. If we are a "confidential" report of 29 give faith in October 2008, Russian President Medvedev several colleagues wrote letters on this matter. In it, he warns them against the famine - as desired by the Ukraine - as "genocide" to condemn. Turning to the President of Azerbaijan, said Medvedev to, then, when this approach is different, his country would write off the occupied territory of Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia once and for all. Clear message from Moscow: shoulder to shoulder in the historical debate against (if any) support in a territorial dispute.
Why the dispute at the highest level at an event of 1932/33? The famine of that time has become Ukraine's most important focal point of collective memory. She urged estimated three to six million victims, it was a result of Stalin's brutal durchgesetzter Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft bei gleichzeitig forcierten Getreideexporten, womöglich auch der Nationalitätenpolitik in einer «unzuverlässigen» Region. Die Hungersnot, auf Ukrainisch «Holodomor» (wörtlich Hunger-Massensterben), war keine Naturkatastrophe.
Nach der prowestlichen «orangen Revolution» schrieb die neue Regierungsmannschaft das Gedenken an den Holodomor auf ihre Fahnen. Der bis 2010 amtierende Präsident Juschtschenko liess in Kiew am Hang über dem Dnjepr Bäumchen pflanzen, eines für jedes von der Hungersnot hinweggeraffte Dorf. Der Geheimdienst öffnete seine Archive, um die Dokumente seiner sowjetischen Vorläufer sprechen zu lassen. Gegen Stalin und seine Führungsriege wurde sogar ein Gerichtsverfahren angestrengt - vermutlich das erste seit seinem Tod; da die mutmasslichen Täter nicht mehr lebten, musste es bald eingestellt werden.
Höhepunkt dieser Offensive war es, die Hungersnot zum gegen die Ukrainer als Nation gerichteten sowjetischen «Genozid» zu erklären. Kiews Diplomaten warben weltweit für diese Sichtweise. Der amerikanische Kongress verurteilte 2008 in einer Resolution den «ukrainischen Hungersnot-Genozid». Das Europäische Parliament avoided this stimulus word, but lamented a "terrible crime against the Ukrainian people and against humanity."
as a year ago, the "orange" forces lost the election, it was so over. The Holodomor first disappeared from the site of the new, pro-Moscow Yanukovich. Now is to apply a visual way that is digestible for the official Russia. This is, interestingly, not the denial of the crime, but the emphasis on the fact that organized by Stalin famine victims demanded elsewhere, so in the southern Russian regions and especially in Kazakhstan (only there for two million deaths). Als habe man eine panische Angst davor, eine einzelne Opfergruppe hervorzuheben - und damit eine unerwünschte Zuordnung von Schuld zu erleichtern. Das erinnert an Putins als bahnbrechend gefeierten Besuch im westrussischen Katyn 2010, als er des Massakers an den polnischen Offizieren gedachte. Doch Putin erwähnte die Polen erst an zweiter Stelle nach den sowjetischen Opfern Stalins, denen er den grösseren Teil seiner Rede widmete. Die russische Unfähigkeit zu trauern führte immer wieder zu merkwürdigen Sprachregelungen: In den Gedenkstätten der einstigen Sowjetunion traten nicht Juden, sondern «Sowjetbürger» als Opfer des Holocaust auf.
Doch die Konkurrenz der Opfer verläuft by their own laws, and the genocide debate continues. The Kiev journalist Mykola Rjabtschuk refers back to an array of 22 Stalin January 1933, in which the "mass emigration of peasants" from Ukraine to the north in search of bread is criticized. This would leave "by enemies of Soviet power, organized by social revolutionaries and agents of Poland". The institutions are instructed to arrest fleeing peasants and "to read the counter-revolutionary elements, the other to transport to their homes." The partitioning of the Soviet internal borders with Ukraine, the increasing control of Ukrainian culture, the rapid settlement of tens of thousands of Russian peasants in the depopulated Areas, all this points, so Rjabtschuk, pointed to the deterioration of a specific ethnic group: thus not (only) a crime against a social class, but genocide.
This debate about the exclusivity of suffering seems rather academic. However, the Holodomor in Ukraine has long been the point of identification. Even after the change of power last year introduced the state mapping service in Kiev a map. In her 7100 Holodomor monuments, memorial plaques and crosses are recorded from many villages in the Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. With figural representations, the artists have often turned to the subject of the Pietà. Meanwhile has also the president second thoughts and presents on its website a selection of documents and historical photographs on famine. For Holodomor Remembrance Day on 27 November, he spoke not of genocide, but of apocalyptic "Armageddon."
total contrast to the memory of the Second World War. This memory divides the country. This is particularly true for the heritage of the nationalists, their organizations and the OUN affiliated partisans of the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA). The Nationalists had hoped the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, and immediately declared a state which supports their leadership under Stepan Bandera was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The UPA was regarded as self-protection of the Ukrainians in 1944 and turned against the advancing Soviets. As in other Eastern Bloc partisans also fought here for years against the new rulers. Soviet reports after, the number of guerrillas killed in operations against Ukrainians about 100 000, with the loss of the security forces were less than 10 000.
The pictures are circulating of this UPA partisans could not be more: some writing on the Soviet enemy, that the "Banderisten" fascists and Nazi collaborators, were the others they bring into heroes in the "national Liberation struggle "against the Soviets. That in the Ukraine were many such collaborators is undisputed, that some of them, like the one in Munich Ivan Demjanjuk on trial, only in the face of starvation in the POW camp to have been sometimes gets out of sight. Given the overwhelming numbers, it should be banned, easily finished to make judgments: During the German occupation, according to historians, Ukraine has lost three to eight million civilians (the Holocaust victims are still not included).
The "orange" government approaches, after all, did the trick to bring veterans of the UPA and those of the Red Army into a joint memorial service at a table. "A good but also very naive idea," refers Rjabtschuk. "This reconciliation had failed. Not to the old men with white hair, and veterans of the profession and association officials" That may be further argued. Especially over Bandera, the outgoing President appointed "heroes of Ukraine", which has since been reversed. An important forum for debate is, however, face an uncertain future: The Institute of National Remembrance (UINP), previously the model of the German and Polish authorities modeled Stasi files, has been dissolved and re-established in heavily modified form. Then the civil rights organization "Memorial", the talk on the outskirts of Kiev is already a museum, the creation of a separate institute announced.
lose Meanwhile, scientists in the labyrinthine discussions. The historian Vitaly Nachmanowytsch has his heart in the Kiev magazine Krytyka "made air. "I do not drive up the question as to why they Bandera Stern gave the hero. But drives me to why after twenty years of independence, democracy and apparently still golden sowjetische Sterne verliehen werden.» Und wenn schon Sterne: Hätte man nicht die ukrainische Dichterin Olena Teliha ehren können, die in Babij Jar ermordet wurde? Oder einen Bürgerrechtler?
Larysa Iwschyna, Chefredaktorin der Kiewer Tageszeitung «Den» (Der Tag), hat einen Vorstoss in dieser Richtung unternommen. Ihre landesweit gelesene Zeitung hat Bücher zu den ukrainisch-russischen und ukrainisch-polnischen Beziehungen ediert. Sie startete auch eine Kampagne mit dem Ziel, der staatlichen Universität in Donezk im Osten der Ukraine, wo das sowjetische Erbe stark nachwirkt, einen Namenspatron zu verschaffen: den 1985 im Gulag gestorbenen Bürgerrechtler und bedeutenden Lyriker Vasyl Stus. But in the crucial vote at the College won the opponents, so the university is nameless. Iwschyna scoffs: "The opponents argued that the former student of the University Stu have been nothing. One can see it. He built, in fact, not a hall of residence "
0 comments:
Post a Comment