Culture and History

The heat came on in our apartment this week. In each of our three rooms there is a radiator, and each radiator is now warm to the touch instead of ice cold. We’re not being blasted by the heat, but it’s enough to keep the apartment warm, with only occasional supplementation by our electric heaters. Don’t get the impression that we have ever been anything but comfortable. Even before the heat came on, with snow falling outside, an additional sweater or the electric heater was all that was needed to keep us cozy.

In our city there are two movie theaters plus one theater for dramatic and musical productions. We have seen a movie at each of the “kinoteatres,” and decided to check out the other one this week. When perusing the posters and information posted at the theater, we learned that there are different types of productions, which change each night. (Perhaps they travel from other nearby, larger cities?) We were pleased to see that the next night’s performance was an evening of Edith Piaf songs, and bought tickets for $4 each, which got us seats in the fifth row.

So this past Sunday we were treated to a wonderful evening of familiar music, sung half in French and half in Russian by a tiny woman with a powerful voice, just like Ms. Piaf. The staging was stark but clever – they managed to suggest an Eiffel Tower with only a few metal bars – plus there were nine modern/ballet dancers behind the singer who added a very French feel to the production. It was a real treat, and we left with “La Vie en Rose” playing in our heads.

This week Ukraine is marking the 75th anniversary of its “Holodomor.” We’re chagrined to have known nothing about this horrific episode in Ukraine’s history prior to arriving here. Holodomor means the Great Starvation, and it refers to the 1932-33 period when between 3 and 10 million Ukrainians died in a man-made famine. (The actual number is unknown, and scholars disagree.) Stalin responded to Ukrainians’ resistance to forced collectivization of their farms by instituting severe policies. A few quotes from Ukraine’s President Yushchenko:

Holodomor “was a state-organized program of mass starvation that in 1932-33 killed an estimated seven million to 10 million Ukrainians, including up to a third of the nation's children. With grotesque understatement the Soviet authorities dismissed this event as a "bad harvest."

“Stalin's cruel methods included the allocation of astronomic grain requisition quotas that were impossible to meet and which left nothing for the local population to eat. When the quotas were missed, armed units were sent in. Toward the end of 1932, entire villages and regions were turned into a system of isolated starvation ghettos called "black boards." Throughout this period, the Soviet Union continued to export grain to the West and even used grain to produce alcohol. By early 1933, the Soviet leadership decided to radically reinforce the blockade of Ukrainian villages. Eventually, the whole territory of Ukraine was surrounded by armed forces, turning the entire country into a vast death camp.”

”During the long decades of Soviet rule it was dangerous for Ukrainians to discuss their greatest national trauma. To talk of the Holodomor was a crime against the state, while the memoirs of eyewitnesses and the accounts of historians like Robert Conquest and the late James Mace were banned as anti-Soviet propaganda. Yet each Ukrainian family knew from bitter personal memory the enormity of what had happened.”