Open Letter to the President of the Russian Federation
To the President of the Russian Federation, D.A. Medvedev
Dear Mr President,
Your address, the Kremlin, Moscow, is famous to Ukrainians from back in the times of five-year plans and socialist realism. Everybody wrote there and waited for justice and mercy since any higher authorities had been abolished by the Kremlin.
Thank God we have returned to the Highest Authority before whom man, and that includes you, should confess their sins. We are returning to the Bible where on the very first pages a double sin is described: the first being that of Cain in murdering his brother and the second – lying to God and proud refusal to admit the deed committed.
In your letter to Ukraine’s President Yushchenko you refuse to take part in remembering those killed by Holodomor. This is profoundly regrettable since there could be no more favourable opportunity to express sympathy to the Ukrainian people from the present-day Kremlin and clearly articulate that truth that the Russian people were not implicated in the organization of Holodomor since Stalin did not consult them, just as Hitler did not consult with the German people regarding the Holocaust. Moreover, both leaders left no direct evidence and therefore history works with the testimony of living victims.
It is strange that in denying the well-known truth about which free journalists passed on information to foreign consulates back in 1933 and books have been written by authoritative researchers, you are effectively repeating Stalin’s lie about political dividends for the moment, about political gain and even about cynical slander.
At the same time you speak of somebody’s intention to divide our peoples. It is well-known that people and nations are united by respect for the truth and for the law. And by mutual sympathy. We have grounds for sympathising with other peoples and hope for the same from them. After all they all understood that at the foundation of the 91% vote for Ukraine’s independence lay the memory of Holodomor.
It is historians who should write about the suffering of the peoples of the “free republics”. Yet conscientious historians will not generalize the tragedy but will honestly gather and research the facts which trace how Ukraine ended up on the “black board”.
It is ones duty before humanity to tell the truth and a cultured world will always be grateful to those who, in spite of political benefits, make public crimes against humanity.
Without this database, without the foundation of truth, Mr President, post-communists remain bankrupts and the heirs to moral bankrupts.
Yours sincerely,
Yevhen Sverstyuk
President of the Ukrainian PEN Club