ပဋိပကၡေတြနဲ႔ ခ႐ုိင္းမီယား ရာဇ၀င္
ယူကရိန္းႏုိင္ငံ ခ႐ုိင္းမီယားေဒသမွာ ႐ုရွားႏုိင္ငံက လုံၿခံဳေရးတပ္ေတြ ၀င္ေရာက္လာရာက ႏုိင္ငံတကာ ျပႆနာတခုအျဖစ္ ႀကီးထြားလာေနပါတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ ခ႐ုိင္းမီယားေဒသဟာ သမုိင္းတေလွ်ာက္ စစ္ဒဏ္ခံခဲ့ရတဲ့အတြက္လည္း ထင္ရွားခဲ့တာပါ။ ခ႐ုိင္းမီယားေဒသ ရာဇ၀င္သမုိင္းေၾကာင္းကုိေတာ့ ဗြီအုိေအသတင္းေထာက္ Katherine Gypson သတင္းေပးပုိ႔ထားတာကုိ ဦးေက်ာ္ဇံသာက တင္ဆက္ေပးထားပါတယ္။
VOA
History
One of the major keys to understanding a person or people group is to understand their past and the events that shaped who they are today. The people of Kharkov are no different. Here is an overview of a few events that have impacted them in significant ways.
The area of the current Kharkov Oblast, in northeastern Ukraine, was not heavily populated until the 1630. Settlers, fleeing from conflicts in the Dnieper region between Cossacks, Poles, and Tatars, came north to the area and established a new fortified city called Kharkov in 1656. Over the next 340 years the area became heavily Russified. The city was incorporated into the Muscovy (ruled by the Tsar in Moscow) and subsequently the Russian Empire.
Kharkov became one of the main cultural and administrative centers of the Russian Empire in the mid-1700s and served as the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from 1919-1934, before the Soviets moved the capital to Kiev.
Holodomor (Murder by Famine) and the Great Purge
In the 1930s, through a fake famine engineered by Stalin to break the will of the Ukrainians and force them to accept collectivization, the population of Ukraine was decimated. The government increased required food production quotas by 44% (an impossible amount) and the workers were not allowed to keep any food until quotas were met. Therefore, all wheat and other food crops produced in Ukraine were exported to other parts of the Soviet Union or to Europe and nothing was left for the Ukrainians. Workers on collective farms who were caught hiding food were ordered to be shot and their belongings confiscated. Starving, many people fled to the cities in search of food. Those who didn’t appear to be starving were suspected of hiding food and were harassed and labeled as enemies.
At the famine’s height, 25,000 people per day were dying. There is documented evidence of widespread cannibalism during the Holodomor. The Soviet regime of the time even printed posters declaring “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” As the winter wore on, Ukraine became a panorama of horror. The roadsides were filled with the corpses of those who died seeking food. The bodies, many of which snow concealed until the spring thaw, were unceremoniously dumped into mass graves by the communists.
Estimates of the lives lost during this time range from three to eight million (depending if one counts only official starvation deaths or adds in deaths by typhoid and other rampant diseases at the time because of the weakened physical condition of the people due to starvation). In the case of Ukraine, the policies of Stalin brought an end to independent cultural and political life, and in 1932-1933 resulted in the death by famine of one fifth of the Ukrainian nation. To this day it is practically a cultural sin to waste bread and other food because of the cultural memory of so many who died from the lack of it.
Also in the 1930s hundreds of Ukrainian writers, intellectuals and cultural workers were executed by the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB secret police) as part of what is known as The Great Purge under Stalin’s regime. Even blind street musicians in Kharkov were gathered and murdered during these purges carried out by the Soviet Government.
World War II in Kharkov
During World War II Kharkov Oblast, together with Kiev Oblast, were the two regions of Ukraine to suffer the most. Before the war the population of Kharkov was up to between 900,000 and 1.4 million and was the third most populous city in the Soviet Union. And it became the largest Soviet city captured by the Nazis. During the war, between 1941 and 1943, there were four major battles fought between the Nazis and the Soviets for control of Kharkov. Each time, occupation of the city changed hands, more and more people died. By the end of the war, seventy percent of the city was destroyed and only around 450,000 civilians remained. That means between one-half to two-thirds of the people of Kharkov died.
Katyn Massacre
During April and May 1940, a time during which Kharkov was controlled by the Soviets, about 3,800 Polish officers were executed in the Kharkov NKVD (secret police) building as part of the Katyn massacre (directly ordered by Stalin to kill over 22,000 Polish prisoners held in several different POW camps). They were later secretly buried in the Pyatykhatky forest near the grounds of housing for NKVD workers. The site also contains the bodies of Ukrainian cultural workers who were arrested and shot in the 1937-38 Stalinist Purges. The site was left unmarked and the actual events denied for decades.
At this site in 1969, three school children playing in the area discovered bones and Polish military styled buttons. Authorities were notified and the head of the KGB in Kharkov ordered the area filled in with lime and the bones recovered. A guard of 21 men was stationed to protect the area and Soviet leadership continued to promote disinformation about the area.
Only after the breakup of the Soviet Union has information about the Katyn massacre been discovered in the Soviet archives showing what actually took place. The Polish government funded a memorial at this site. It contains a bell set into the ground that chimes on the hour. Individual plaques for each of the Polish officers murdered at the site, including their name, rank and city of birth are laid out row after row after row. The names of Ukrainian intellectuals, primarily Ukrainian writers, dramatists, musicians, professors, lecturers are carved into a memorial wall made of steel that in the moist rain is constantly rusting, giving the impression of constantly bleeding. It is intended to be peaceful and reflective site to contemplate the aftereffects of a brutal totalitarian regime.
Drobitsky Yar
Between December 1941 and January 1942, a time during which Kharkov was controlled by the Nazis, an estimated total of 30,000 people (slightly more than half Jewish) were killed. On December 15, 1941, when the temperature was only +5 °F, around 15,000 Jews were shot and buried in a mass grave by the Germans in a ravine just outside of the southeast Kharkov city boundary line. The ravine is now named Drobitsky Yar. In December of 2002, the president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, opened a memorial on this site.
The beginning of the road leading to the site is marked by a large black menorah. The main part of the memorial is a small building on which a monument stands symbolizing a synagogue with tablets resembling the Ten Commandments. On the tablets are inscribed the words “Do Not Kill” in many different languages. Inside the building is just a small room called the “Room of Tragedy” with the names of the known victims who died there.
The Memorial Complex of Glory
The Memorial Complex of Glory, locally known just as “Memorial,” was opened in 1977. It is a memorial to the courage of the people of Kharkov when they fought against the Nazis.
At Kharkov’s northern city boundary, the Nazis executed tens of thousands of Soviet war prisoners, partisans, members of underground resistance, and patriots who had not submitted to the enemy. Three memorial steles (blocks of stone) with lowered cast metal flags tell the story of Kharkovites’ contribution in the Soviet people’s battle with the hateful enemy.
The people of Kharkov displayed great courage and heroism in battles with the Nazis. Two hundred and thirty Kharkovites were given the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands have been awarded with orders and medals. One of the steles reminds visitors that 186,306 Soviet soldiers died in the battles of Kharkov.
A majestic stele at the center of the Memorial tells about the struggle, suffering, and joy of victory. A symbolic figure of Motherland stands nearby in mournful silence. The Eternal Flame burns at the foot of the sculpture. Gray granite bears gold lettering: “Heroes never die. They become immortal and stay forever in our memories, in our achievements, in great deeds of future generations. Their descendants owe them their lives.”
Every year on May 9th, Ukrainians celebrate the end of the Great Patriotic War (known to Westerners as WWII). The Germans capitulated to the Allies on May 7th on the Western Front but the next day, outside of Berlin, they also met with representatives of the Soviet Union to ratify their surrender. While it was May 8th in Germany, it was already May 9th in Moscow. And thus, the official end to the war from the perspective of the Soviets. The day became a holiday and most of the Soviet Republics began to recognize it in the 1960s as a non-working day. It was always a day of parties and military parades. Today, in Kharkov it is still a holiday. On this day people still flock to local war memorials to lay down bouquets of flowers and pay their respects to those who lost their lives during the Great War. Veterans and survivors who earned medals during the war proudly wear them on this day and are honored by all who greet them.
Credit @ Ko Nge
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