Ukrainian Guide » Joseph Stalin

Come To Yalta

Victoria — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:37:05 +0000

There are so many places to visit in Ukraine that you’re never sure where to start. Considered the jewel of the Crimean peninsula, Yalta is one of those cities you have to experience for yourself. It’s a seaside resort town on the Black Sea that is surrounded by steep mountain peaks and beautiful blue waters. It was also the home of famous writer Anton Chekov. With beaches, resorts, museums, and a friendly population of about 80,000, you can see why it has been compared to Carmel, California, Greece, and the French Rivera.

If the name Yalta is ringing bells in your head but you’re not sure why, think back to your World War II history lessons. Yalta was the city in which Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt held their ‘Big 3’ conference to discuss the war that they were all involved in. Livadia, the Romanov vacation home that was used for the conference, is open to visitors, as is the home turned museum of Anton Chekov. The Nikitsky Botanical Gardens located just outside the city is beautiful with their 1,600 rose varieties and you could enjoy a good meal while looking out over the sea and the gardens from this elevated location.

If you are going to tour Yalta, take a two day, three night trip so that you can enjoy everything the city has to offer and the beautiful beaches to relax on.

3 Contradictory Facts of Ukrainian History

admin — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 05:48:02 +0000

For me the school history lessons were themselves a contradictory fact – on one hand they teach you Ukrainian history, on the other hand they kill all your love for this history. So, where was I? Telling you of the facts one could contradict!

1. The Holodomor

Photo Credit: Andrew J.Swan

Holodomor was a disastrous famine in the Ukrainian SSR in 1932–1933. Millions of people starving to death as a result of the policies introduced by Joseph Stalin, including the family of my grandpa who was smoking since he was 6 and eating nothing but garlic for days (no evil spirits in him since then!) and my grandma whose mother was planning to drawn herself along with my grandma, the youngest of three kids, my great-grandpa having fun in Sybir for owning a horse! Unlike the famine in other Soviet republics there were no natural causes for the famine in Ukraine, the crops of wheat were unusually reach in 1932. The estimated number of starvation deaths ranges from 2.6 to 10 million people. The root of Holodomor is still in debate, though in legal terms there are evidences that Holodomor was designed as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and thus falls under the legal definition of genocide.

Thanks to Viktor Yushchenko in March 2008, Ukraine and nineteen other governments have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide. The fact is contradictory for Russians mostly. Who would accept killing so many people, right?

2. Who betrayed the Treaty of Pereyaslav?

Photo Credit: Silanov

The Treaty of Pereyaslav was signed between Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Russian tsar Alexey I in Pereyaslav (modern Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky) in 1654 stipulating the protection of the Cossack Hetmanate by Tsar and a number of liberties granted to the cossacks. Time passed, the Russian throne was succeeded by tsar Petr I and Ivan Mazepa became the Cossack Hetman. And everything was great until the Cossack Hetmanat was ordered to send their forces to fight in Livonia and Lithuania, instead of protecting their homes against Tatars and Poles. At that point Ivan Mazepa, being a Ukrainian Hetman, allied himself with Swedish and Polish armies in October 1708 and fought on their side in the contradictory Battle of Poltava in 1709. This made Mazepa a symbol of traitor in Russian and Soviet history, and the Russian Orthodox Church even anathematized him for political reasons. Good for him! Nowadays Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s rating is the highest among the Ukrainian Hetmans: 6 sculptures, 17 literature masterpieces, 22 musical compositions, 42 paintings and 186 gravures.

3. Orange Revolution

Photo Credit: neiljs

(aka Pomarancheva Revolutsiya) Mass rallies, pickets, demonstrations of mass protests in Ukraine, organized by adherents of Viktor Yushchenko, the main oppositional candidate on the presidential elections in 2004 after the announcement of preliminary elections’ results by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. According to these results the victory was granted to his main rival – Viktor Yanukovych. The campaign began on November 22. The main participants of the joint opposition were citizens of Western and Central Ukraine, while East and South supported Viktor Yanukovych. The public opinion in most of the Western European countries and the USA were on the democratic side of the opposition.

The main result of the Revolution was the decision of the Supreme Court which stated that it was impossible to establish the elections results and therefore stated that the elections should be re-run, wasn’t it? NO!!!!! The main result is that now THEY KNOW ALL OVER THE WORLD that there is a Ukraine, Ukraine is an independent country, the people of which have an idea of what they want, though unable to ever get it thanks to local politicians. And in due course of the re-run, held on December 26 Yushchenko won the Presidential elections with over 51% of votes. Sorry he did not have a chance to implement all his romantic hlechyk policies!

Well, hoping you at least heard of these first to points in our contradictory Ukrainian history and sure there’s something you have to say on the third point! Feel free to contradict, I love debate!

Ukraine Asks For Commemoration Of Great Famine

Victoria — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 07:16:04 +0000

Between 1932 and 1933 the country of Ukraine experienced ‘Holodomor’ or Great Famine that was said to cause by ‘Joseph Stalin’s agricultural collectivization policies’, the perfect example of what happens under a totalitarian regime. This genocide is getting ready to mark its 75^th anniversary and the General Assembly of the United Nations has been asked by Ukraine to commemorate this dark time in Ukrainian history.

Says Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Yuriy Sergeyev, “The Holodomor, which literally meant killing by hunger, had been caused by Joseph Stalin’s agricultural collectivization policies, because human life [meant] nothing compared to the gigantic economic and military plans of the regime.” Of course there is strong objection to the request coming from Russia as a tactic of the country to direct attention away from Ukraine’s current political situation.

Sergeyev, like many Ukrainians, feel that the event was important enough to warrant a commemoration in an effort to help show the cruelty of this type of regime and to prevent something similar from happening in the future. More than 10 million people from Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union died of starvation in Volga Region, the Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and other parts of the Soviet Union. The countries request is not unusual and there has been precedence set for this type of commemoration in Spain and other European countries already.

You can read more about the Great Famine at circleof13.blogspot.com