Amidst an uprising raging in all but two provinces of Ukraine, dissidents inside and outside the beleaguered nation are pushing an effort to immortalize the crimes they suffered at the hands of Communism, leading Ukrainian-American scholars working with the dissidents told Breitbart News.
They are renewing their push to have the Communist Terror-Famine in the Ukraine (known as the Holodomor) branded as “genocide” by the United Nations.
Central to this effort is the text of a long forgotten 1953 speech by Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and dedicated his life to bringing the crime to an end. In this speech to the Ukrainian community of New York commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Soviet-orchestrated Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 that left somewhere between seven and twelve million dead, Lemkin addressed “the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification – the destruction of the Ukrainian nation:”
As long as Ukraine retains its national unity, as long as its people continue to think of themselves as Ukrainians and to seek independence, so long Ukraine poses a serious threat to the very heart of Sovietism. It is no wonder that the Communist leaders have attached the greatest importance to the Russification of this independent member of their ‘Union of Republics,’ have determined to remake it to fit their pattern of one Russian nation. For the Ukrainian is not and has never been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion – all are different. At the side door to Moscow, he has refused to be collectivized, accepting deportation, even death. And so it is peculiarly important that the Ukrainian be fitted into the Procrustean pattern of the ideal Soviet man.
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