Iuliia Zubrytska for New pathway, Ottawa.
A 5-year old child putting his ear to the ground on the grave of his skinny mother (buried without a coffin, merely covered in soil) stood strong not to show a tear. He probably showed off his resilience to his two younger sisters who were hardly able to walk, as their father buried his wife by himself, with their village deserted and many inhabitants starved to death… All of this unfolded in the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine – a country with the richest soil.
This heartbreaking scene from the “Bitter Harvest” movie kept me awake for several nights, as my own family has been marked by the 1932-1933 horrors. I am just starting to recover from the death of my dearest grandmother Hanna who passed away this past winter, and joined her brother Fedir who luckily survived the genocide of Holodomor in Poltava oblast’, Ukraine. They were never privileged to grow up with their youngest sister Natalka who perished in the Holodomor.
I wish my grandmother Hanna was still alive… If only we could have at least one more conversation about her favourite food, the house she was born in, and the bread they used to bake in the outdoor oven on summer days. I feel desperate not being ever able to ask her more about her life as a miner in the Donbas prairies, and that romantic twist in her life that brought her to the mountain town of Drohobych where I would be born years later.
“Bitter Harvest” George Mendeluk's genius brings the memories of my grandmother’s family back to life. Resilient Ukrainian farmers have remained a primary target of Russian and Soviet genocidal policies for several centuries now. Mr. Mendeluk’s movie graphically shows that flagrant attack on the Ukrainian way of life and Christian values. The film also shows the bitter destiny of the Orthodox Church under the Soviets – Soviet officers abusing the priests and destroying the village church and icons. Russian speaking officers remind the viewer of the official bans of Ukrainian language in the Russian empire, of which there have been over 130.
I believe that the Holodomor falls under the category of genocide, the term, coined by a Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who drafted the UN's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Holodomor was immediately preceded with what Jerzy Giedroyc called “executed renaissance” (“rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya”) – which stands for extermination of Ukraine's cultural elite by the Soviets. In the film, George Mendeluk excellently introduced an astonishing image of Yuri’s best friend, Mykola, – a charismatic and educated Ukrainian leader who shot himself. Mykola’s part directly mirrors the life of Ukraine’s prominent expressionist writer Mykola Khvylovy who committed suicide in the spring of 1933, in protest against mass arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia and the artificial famine.
In the film, the main character Yuri suffered from the pressure on the part of his professor at the Fine Arts Academy to find inspiration in the social realism, and from not being able to freely examine the Western art of the time and follow his own inspiration. Stalin exterminated tens of thousands of young talents like Yuri and Mykola. These actions reflect the first element of genocide – “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” which in this case is the Ukrainian people.
The graphic scenes of violence by Bolsheviks against the Ukrainians and of the crushing of the opposition were one of the most touching. Thousands of resilient Ukrainian farmers revolted against the collectivization and attack on their private property and civil rights. As many as five thousand protests took place all over Ukraine in 1932-1933 as an attempt to fend off the “new order” and unjust deprivation.
Lest we forget that the Russian artocities against Ukraine continue as we speak! More than 9 thousand people have died and over 1,5 million people have found themselves internally displaced because of the current Russian war against Ukraine in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia is intentionally destroying prospects of lives for many of Ukraine’s fittest and most resilient men, women, and children every day.
Finally, I find the movie's subtle message that the Ukrainians will revive their national life, damaged by the long history of Russian oppression, in all its beauty, to be particularly inspiring.
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