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Saturday, May 24, 2008
Remembering the Holodomor horror
Quote: With each passing year, the evidence grows. Previously suppressed census data, photographs of soldiers guarding grain stores, accounts of local uprisings -- all add more depth and detail to the horrendous story of the Holodomor, the name Ukrainians have given to the famine that killed seven to 10 million in 1932-33.
"There is a wealth of documentation coming out," says historian Roman Serbyn of this dark chapter in the history of the Soviet Union. "Historians have trouble keeping up," adds the retired professor, who continues to research the Holodomor.
Information has been emerging since the demise of the Soviet Union, he says. A significant trove came to light last year when another cache of Soviet secret police (KGB) files was released.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
As part of the campaign to increase Holodomor awareness, the International Remembrance Flame is expected to arrive in Ottawa on Monday, the last of 16 stops in Canada. The flame's journey through Canada is organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Embassy of Ukraine. Stefan Horlatsch, an 87-year-old Holodomor survivor, is accompanying the torch on its Canadian journey. As a child he watched as Soviet authorities seized his family's land, livestock and grain. He lost 11 family members to starvation.
The Remembrance Flame then travels to the United States as part of a world tour that includes 33 countries.
Stalin's intention was to pay for industrialization by the export of grain. "Ukraine was the granary of Russia," says Mr. Serbyn.
In 1929, the drive to collectivize agriculture began. This process was viewed as essential to the development of a Communist state. Mr. Serbyn sees it differently. Collectivization, he observes dryly, "is a more efficient way of confiscating food for export."
At first, resistance was fierce. "Literally millions of people were involved in strikes and local uprisings," says Mr. Serbyn. "Soviet administrators were chased from the villages."
The bulk of the resistance came from a class of landowners known as kulaks. Because of their opposition Stalin set out to destroy them. Their land was seized and they were not allowed to join the collectives. Many were shot or deported to northern Russia. This process, known as dekulakization, deprived villages of their leadership. With resistance quashed, quotas were established and the peasants had to deliver the grain themselves.
At the height of the famine, it is estimated that 25,000 Ukrainian villagers a day were dying. At the same time, it is now known that there were 1.8 million tons of grain in state reserves. "We have photographs of guards guarding the locations," says Mr. Serbyn.
"All the government had to do was to stop exporting and release the grain," he says. "Instead they denied people were starving."
With most of the deaths in isolated villages, there is no way of knowing how many died, but the long-suppressed census figures of 1937 reveal that the number of Ukrainians within the Soviet Union was 26.4 million, almost five million less than in 1926.
In 1929, a number of Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested and blamed for organizing the peasantry. There were show trials, said Mr. Serbyn, "staged in a theatre, very symbolical."
About 45 academics and political leaders were executed, exiled, or imprisoned.
In 1931, the Ukrainian language was outlawed.
On Jan. 22, 1932, with famine raging, the borders of Ukraine were closed to prevent the starving from going in search of food.
The eight million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine were also targeted. The Kuban, an area in the Northern Caucasus populated by the descendants of Ukrainian cossacks, was also cordoned off. Entire cossack settlements were deported to northern Russia.
In Ukraine in 1932-33, any photographs were taken clandestinely. The Soviet government denied the famine, refused foreign aid and ordered members of the foreign press to remain in Moscow.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a9f07ec6-737d-40ad-9781-1a504e2ca5fe&p=3
.
"There is a wealth of documentation coming out," says historian Roman Serbyn of this dark chapter in the history of the Soviet Union. "Historians have trouble keeping up," adds the retired professor, who continues to research the Holodomor.
Information has been emerging since the demise of the Soviet Union, he says. A significant trove came to light last year when another cache of Soviet secret police (KGB) files was released.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term Holodomor is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek recognition for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
As part of the campaign to increase Holodomor awareness, the International Remembrance Flame is expected to arrive in Ottawa on Monday, the last of 16 stops in Canada. The flame's journey through Canada is organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Embassy of Ukraine. Stefan Horlatsch, an 87-year-old Holodomor survivor, is accompanying the torch on its Canadian journey. As a child he watched as Soviet authorities seized his family's land, livestock and grain. He lost 11 family members to starvation.
The Remembrance Flame then travels to the United States as part of a world tour that includes 33 countries.
Stalin's intention was to pay for industrialization by the export of grain. "Ukraine was the granary of Russia," says Mr. Serbyn.
In 1929, the drive to collectivize agriculture began. This process was viewed as essential to the development of a Communist state. Mr. Serbyn sees it differently. Collectivization, he observes dryly, "is a more efficient way of confiscating food for export."
At first, resistance was fierce. "Literally millions of people were involved in strikes and local uprisings," says Mr. Serbyn. "Soviet administrators were chased from the villages."
The bulk of the resistance came from a class of landowners known as kulaks. Because of their opposition Stalin set out to destroy them. Their land was seized and they were not allowed to join the collectives. Many were shot or deported to northern Russia. This process, known as dekulakization, deprived villages of their leadership. With resistance quashed, quotas were established and the peasants had to deliver the grain themselves.
At the height of the famine, it is estimated that 25,000 Ukrainian villagers a day were dying. At the same time, it is now known that there were 1.8 million tons of grain in state reserves. "We have photographs of guards guarding the locations," says Mr. Serbyn.
"All the government had to do was to stop exporting and release the grain," he says. "Instead they denied people were starving."
With most of the deaths in isolated villages, there is no way of knowing how many died, but the long-suppressed census figures of 1937 reveal that the number of Ukrainians within the Soviet Union was 26.4 million, almost five million less than in 1926.
In 1929, a number of Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested and blamed for organizing the peasantry. There were show trials, said Mr. Serbyn, "staged in a theatre, very symbolical."
About 45 academics and political leaders were executed, exiled, or imprisoned.
In 1931, the Ukrainian language was outlawed.
On Jan. 22, 1932, with famine raging, the borders of Ukraine were closed to prevent the starving from going in search of food.
The eight million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine were also targeted. The Kuban, an area in the Northern Caucasus populated by the descendants of Ukrainian cossacks, was also cordoned off. Entire cossack settlements were deported to northern Russia.
In Ukraine in 1932-33, any photographs were taken clandestinely. The Soviet government denied the famine, refused foreign aid and ordered members of the foreign press to remain in Moscow.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a9f07ec6-737d-40ad-9781-1a504e2ca5fe&p=3
.
Gazprom to Narrow Streams
Quote: The EU Industry Committee has discussed this week the proposals for gas market liberalization. The majority of the European Parliament members supported the third option that specifies creation of a supranational authority, Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), which will be in charge of the transmission network operation, focusing mostly on restricting the access to the EU market for the U.S. and Russian companies.People in Gazprom said yesterday that the EU hadn’t given detailed explanation about the actual operation of ITOs (Independent Transmission Operators) and about the procedures to raise funds with restricted efficiency. “The aftereffects from the market changes will be unpredictable. We are to understand whether the denial of a Transmission Operator to provide transport facilities in the stipulated dates and size will be viewed force majeur for a supplier with the possible non-execution of delivery contract,” said Stanislav Tsygankov, who heads the foreign economy department at Gazprom. “Today’s procedures enable big suppliers to build logistic chains inside the companies. Should the new regulations hinder implementation of investment projects, big suppliers may revise their investments in the infrastructural projects.” The novelty will adversely affect Gazprom profits generated by the existing Yamal-Europe gas pipeline and the effect on Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines running from Russia to Germany and Italy is yet unclear. “Gazprom will be able to own shares in Latvijas Gaze, Lietuvos Dujos and Eesti Gaas, but it won’t be represented in the BODs of those companies,” said East European Gas Analysis Director Mikhail Korchemkin. Russia won’t seal the new energy package with Europe on the terms offered by it, the State Duma Vice Speaker and Russian Gas Society President Valery Yazev made clear in Berlin. “The Europeans are mistaken when they think that we will tolerate it. More and more often, national gas monopolies tend to eye growing energy demands of Asia, India and Japan. Our country will always find a sales market,” the official pointed out.
http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=895194
Now they're seeing that they might not be the only supplier of energy, and that their attempt at a monopoly of the market will be in vain, and deservingly so.
http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=895194
Now they're seeing that they might not be the only supplier of energy, and that their attempt at a monopoly of the market will be in vain, and deservingly so.
Ukraine in the postcommunist world
Holodomor problem discussed at Columbia University
Quote: The Harriman Institute is one of Columbia University’s most authoritative institutions. It was founded in 1946 by William Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1943-46. The objective of this institution was to carry out in-depth studies of the USSR and to train specialists who were required to substantiate US policy in Eastern Europe. Harriman, after whom the institute was named in 1992, declared time and again: “I want to stimulate and encourage the advanced study of Soviet affairs. To base policy on ignorance and illusion is very dangerous. Policy should be based on knowledge and understanding.” The renaming of the Russian Institute was not only a sign of recognition of the founder’s achievements and gratitude to the Harriman family for its multi-million-dollar endowment for the development of the Institute. The new name was necessitated by the changes that had emerged in the geopolitical situation. Whereas previously Americans identified all things Soviet with Russia, starting in the 1990s it became necessary to study the 15 post-Soviet countries after the USSR’s collapse. Ukraine also became the focus of attention, especially after the institute’s directorship went to Mark von Hagen. The scholarly merits of this youngish and dynamic Ukrainian Studies specialist were recognized when he was elected president of the International Association for Ukrainian Studies (replaced at the last MAU congress by Yaroslav Yatskiv of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). In the fall of 2007 von Hagen was appointed chairman of the Department of History at the University of Arizona. Ukrainian Studies at Harriman Institute continue unimpeded. 2. A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SCHOLARLY CONFERENCE In the 1950s research centers specializing in the study of Soviet and Eastern European history appeared in the West. One such center was founded at Columbia University in 1954. By the 1990s it had evolved into a large institution focused on Central and Eastern Europe. In 1997, in collaboration with the Harriman Institute, it established the Association for the Study of Nationalities. Its goal was to organize annual ASN conferences dealing with politics, economics, social, and cultural aspects of the post-Soviet countries. These conferences focus on the current situation in these postcommunist countries, and many historians participate in these scholarly gatherings. To comprehend the logical aspects of escaping the dead-end in which these countries found themselves as a result of the forcible implementation of the communist doctrine, it is necessary to study their recent past. This year’s ASN conference at the Harriman Institute took place on April 10-12. There were 11 panels, each lasting two hours. In view of the brief time allotted to the conference, strict time-limits were imposed on every presentation and debate. None of the sessions was clearly defined either thematically or regionally. I was amazed by this when I first attended the ASN conference a few years ago, and it took some time for me to figure out the secret. Each ASN conference has a clear-cut albeit invisible structure. Between eight and twelve thematic and regional panels take place during the conference, and sometimes films are screened or books discussed. The panels take place according to a certain chronology, so each expert specializing in a “narrow” field has an opportunity to take part in discussions of a topic that particularly interests the participant, who does not have to rush from one panel to the next. This year’s conference was attended by 594 scholars. Papers were submitted to the organizing committee in advance, and their topics were circulated among the participants of the various panels, so that they would be prepared to hold substantial discussions on a given subject. This took up at least one-third of the allotted time. Most of the conference participants were young people. Remarkably, a large number of representatives of Western universities and research centers hailed from postcommunist countries, judging by their surnames. This is further proof of the ongoing “brain drain.” As a rule, conference participants’ expenses are remunerated by the institutions where they are employed. For the most part, Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences cannot afford to send its research associates to international conferences. My expenses were covered by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America (NTSh). The hundreds of papers that were heard and discussed were well worth the money that was spent on a conference of this scope. The presentations reflected the broad range of changes that have taken place in the postcommunist world. The leaders of the “golden billion” countries led by the United States are following these changes with concern. They long ago realized that it is impossible to isolate oneself from the problems of postcommunist countries, so they want to figure them out, at times more so than the political elite of these countries. Harriman’s thesis that policy should be based on knowledge and understanding is still valid. 3. DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS The panel on the Holodomor was one of 117. Other sessions that I attended attracted audiences that hardly surpassed the number of speakers. The spacious conference hall was packed for the subject of the Holodomor, which interests many people today. Before the session was called to order, one American scholar said that he had learned on the Internet that Olha Ginzburg, the chairperson of the State Archives Committee of Ukraine, had been relieved of her post. The audience responded instantly with applause. The Herostratus-like reputation of this communist member of the Ukrainian government is known halfway across the world. The Holodomor panel was chaired by Dr. Henry R. Huttenbach, a noted Holocaust researcher. The presenters, including me, were Oleh Wolowyna, Taras Hunczak, and Roman Serbyn, all professors of Ukrainian parentage, from North American universities. I got the impression that after James Mace no American or Canadian has become an expert in this field. A group of Canadian researchers from Toronto and Edmonton took part in the debate: Wsevolod Isajiv, Anna Procyk, Roman Senkus, Larissa Onyshkevych, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Yuriy Sergeev, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine’s Mission to the UN, and his predecessor in this post, Professor Valeriy Kuchinsky of Columbia University, and others. 4. WHY ONLY NOW? Soviet Ukrainian history in its undistorted form was returned to our children a long time ago. Despite the appeals of Petro Symonenko’s party to stop the “rewriting” and “smearing” of the Soviet past, Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has refused to endorse old textbooks. Pavlo Poliansky, who had been in charge of school curricula and textbooks, was relieved of his post during the period when socialists were dominant in the education ministry, but later returned after being promoted to the rank of deputy minister. As for those who completed their education under the Soviets and are now under the spell of Russia’s television series, nothing has changed. We live in cities and walk down streets named after those who shed rivers of blood in the comparatively recent past. We walk past monuments to people who destroyed their fellow human beings, guided by the Inquisition’s merciful principle “with no bloodshed,” except that they used famine, not fire. We have grown accustomed to paying homage to the victims of Soviet repressions and the famine once a year, a tribute to our own conscience, without realizing that the past has us firmly gripped by the throat. At least this is what the situation was like until recently, when President Yushchenko of Ukraine suddenly began signing one edict after another dedicated to historical problems. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory was founded as a state committee with branches in regional centers. Ukrainian diplomats began using every opportunity to broach the subject of the 75- year-old Holodomor in their dealings with colleagues. As though in response, President Putin of Russia also started issuing statements, and Russia’s State Duma passed resolutions on the same historical issue, but they had a completely different content. Have Ukraine and Russia opened a new front of struggle in their common past? Is this so? We were asked these questions by various conference participants. Yuriy Sergeev offered the most convincing answers. In reality, there is no struggle. It is just that Russia and Ukraine are moving at different speeds in understanding the history of building the communist system between 1918 and 1938. There is an objective reason for this: Ukraine suffered incommensurably more because it wanted to remain Ukraine. I asked my colleagues, “Suppose three and a half million of your fellow countrymen were killed by famine. Wouldn’t you want to know what caused that famine?” No one contradicted me, but I was asked another question in response: “Why is the Ukrainian government so insistently placing this issue before the international community?” The government is doing this probably because it is a Ukrainian government, not a Soviet or post-Soviet one. We owe a debt of gratitude to the top-level Soviet functionaries, who finally allowed people to call the famine a famine 55 years after it took place in 1932-33. We should actually thank James Mace’s working group in the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine and the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States, which succeeded in having this commission established. 5. WHY GENOCIDE? This question remained foremost. There were many objections: e.g., it was not an act of genocide, the Russians suffered equally during the famine, so they cannot be held responsible for the Holodomor in Ukraine, etc. Such objections are heard in both Russia and Ukraine. They sound convincing to those who identify Soviet power with the Russian government and the Soviet Union with Russia. After all, few people in the West called the USSR by its official name. Harriman called his institute “Russian,” not “Soviet.” I think that Ukrainian and Russian scholars will have to work long and hard to distinguish the Soviet part of our past from the Russian past, and vice versa. This is the only way for our society to comprehend the true nature of the Holodomor and many other phenomena in our shared history. In the course of communist construction the Kremlin used the “nationalities policy” as an effective means of overcoming the resistance of a multinational society to the forcible imposition of unnatural production relations. Everything stated above helps us to understand our opponents’ stand but does not offer rebuttals to their objections. Did the Russians suffer as much? Should they be held responsible for the Holodomor in Ukraine? These questions are not interrelated, so there should be separate answers to each of these questions. First, let us consider the national aspect of the mortality rate. There are statistics for 1932-33, including regions and nationalities, but they are incomplete. During the conference at the Harriman Institute Oleh Wolowyna presented a paper on the reconstruction of demographic statistics. He has many authoritative predecessors in this field. In particular, Stephen Wheatcroft of the University of Melbourne submitted his article “On Demographic Evidence of the Tragedy of the Soviet Village, 1931-1933” as a supplement to the third volume of the five-volume document collection/monograph entitled Tragediia sovetskoi derevni (The Tragedy of the Soviet Village, 1927-1939, Moscow, 2001, p. 866-887). The crux of his article lies in its closing lines, where the author writes that an additional 3 to 3.5 million deaths occurred in Ukraine alone, which probably brings the USSR’s total to 6-7 million. These figures tally with statistics published earlier in Ukraine. On April 2, 2008, Russia’s State Duma adopted the resolution “In Memory of the Victims of the Famine of the 1930s on the Territory of the USSR,” which boils down to refuting all attempts of the Ukrainian side to have this tragedy recognized as an act of genocide. The resolution, however, contains Wheatcroft’s calculations of direct losses inflicted by the famine: seven million people. This alone is indicative of colossal headway compared to the Russian Federation’s earlier official stand. If one takes into consideration the sharp decline in the birth rate during the famine years, this figure will rise to at least 10 million. Does such a number not provide enough grounds to talk about the genocide that was perpetrated against Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Russians and all the other peoples who were devoured by the state terror machine? The authors of the Duma resolution, including Konstantin Zatulin, babbled something about drought. There are preserved archival weather reports for this period, as well as Stalin’s statement of 1933, in which he resolutely denies all talk of drought. Russian politicians and researchers themselves must determine whether the man-made famine of 1932-33 was an act of genocide in the Russian Federation. That is their prerogative. Ours is to assess the tragedy of the Ukrainian people by using international legal categories, all the more so as a closer look at the famine statistics shows that the Holodomor in Ukraine was qualitatively different from the all-union famine in 1932-33. There were two regions in the Russian Federation, Kuban and Kazakhstan, which suffered terrible losses during the famine. These losses had a significant impact on the all-Russian mortality picture. The famine in Kazakhstan was caused by the forcible settlement of nomads and the confiscation of most of their cattle for state meat deliveries. The heavy consequences of the famine in Ukraine and the Kuban had the same causes: the confiscation of all foods under the guise of state grain deliveries and the blockade of these two Ukrainian territories. Elsewhere in the European regions of the USSR the death toll from the famine was considerably lower (by 10 to 20 times) because it was caused either by the confiscation of grain (in grain-producing regions) or by the stoppage of state grain deliveries (in grain-consuming regions). If only grain had been confiscated, one can speculate that the state was forced to sell grain abroad in order to raise funds for an accelerated modernization. But when the state confiscated all foods that keep for a long time from areas that were already starving as a result of the grain confiscations, then blockaded these regions, and banned the word “famine,” one must speak about the deliberate creation of conditions for the population, which were incompatible with its physical survival-in other words, genocide. None of our opponents at Harriman Institute could refute these simple and logical conclusions. Did the Russians have anything to do with Stalin’s policy of terror? Such allegations are heard every now and then in Ukraine, and they are instantly picked up and capitalized on by the Russian media. One should not pay attention to marginalized politicians and scholars who are carrying out their orders. The terror by famine was perpetrated by a narrow circle of the Communist Party and Soviet leadership: Stalin and his team. The Russian people, just like all the other nations of the totalitarian Soviet Union, have nothing to do with the Kremlin’s policy of terror that commenced in December 1917, with the rout of the Constitutional Democrats, and ended in March 1953, with the Doctors’ Plot. The international scholarly community has begun to treat the Holodomor in Ukraine as an actual phenomenon that must be studied. After returning to Kyiv, I received an invitation from Stephen Wheatcroft to take part in a comparative study of various forms and types of famine in the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, and other countries of the communist bloc. It is necessary to ascertain how the weapon of famine was used in the process of the state’s enslavement of society. Only one conclusion can be made: it will not be possible to conceal the horrific history of communism from international scholarship.By Stanislav KULCHYTSKY, THE DAY
http://www.ukrainians.ca/content/view/918/2/lang,en/
.
Quote: The Harriman Institute is one of Columbia University’s most authoritative institutions. It was founded in 1946 by William Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1943-46. The objective of this institution was to carry out in-depth studies of the USSR and to train specialists who were required to substantiate US policy in Eastern Europe. Harriman, after whom the institute was named in 1992, declared time and again: “I want to stimulate and encourage the advanced study of Soviet affairs. To base policy on ignorance and illusion is very dangerous. Policy should be based on knowledge and understanding.” The renaming of the Russian Institute was not only a sign of recognition of the founder’s achievements and gratitude to the Harriman family for its multi-million-dollar endowment for the development of the Institute. The new name was necessitated by the changes that had emerged in the geopolitical situation. Whereas previously Americans identified all things Soviet with Russia, starting in the 1990s it became necessary to study the 15 post-Soviet countries after the USSR’s collapse. Ukraine also became the focus of attention, especially after the institute’s directorship went to Mark von Hagen. The scholarly merits of this youngish and dynamic Ukrainian Studies specialist were recognized when he was elected president of the International Association for Ukrainian Studies (replaced at the last MAU congress by Yaroslav Yatskiv of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). In the fall of 2007 von Hagen was appointed chairman of the Department of History at the University of Arizona. Ukrainian Studies at Harriman Institute continue unimpeded. 2. A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SCHOLARLY CONFERENCE In the 1950s research centers specializing in the study of Soviet and Eastern European history appeared in the West. One such center was founded at Columbia University in 1954. By the 1990s it had evolved into a large institution focused on Central and Eastern Europe. In 1997, in collaboration with the Harriman Institute, it established the Association for the Study of Nationalities. Its goal was to organize annual ASN conferences dealing with politics, economics, social, and cultural aspects of the post-Soviet countries. These conferences focus on the current situation in these postcommunist countries, and many historians participate in these scholarly gatherings. To comprehend the logical aspects of escaping the dead-end in which these countries found themselves as a result of the forcible implementation of the communist doctrine, it is necessary to study their recent past. This year’s ASN conference at the Harriman Institute took place on April 10-12. There were 11 panels, each lasting two hours. In view of the brief time allotted to the conference, strict time-limits were imposed on every presentation and debate. None of the sessions was clearly defined either thematically or regionally. I was amazed by this when I first attended the ASN conference a few years ago, and it took some time for me to figure out the secret. Each ASN conference has a clear-cut albeit invisible structure. Between eight and twelve thematic and regional panels take place during the conference, and sometimes films are screened or books discussed. The panels take place according to a certain chronology, so each expert specializing in a “narrow” field has an opportunity to take part in discussions of a topic that particularly interests the participant, who does not have to rush from one panel to the next. This year’s conference was attended by 594 scholars. Papers were submitted to the organizing committee in advance, and their topics were circulated among the participants of the various panels, so that they would be prepared to hold substantial discussions on a given subject. This took up at least one-third of the allotted time. Most of the conference participants were young people. Remarkably, a large number of representatives of Western universities and research centers hailed from postcommunist countries, judging by their surnames. This is further proof of the ongoing “brain drain.” As a rule, conference participants’ expenses are remunerated by the institutions where they are employed. For the most part, Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences cannot afford to send its research associates to international conferences. My expenses were covered by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America (NTSh). The hundreds of papers that were heard and discussed were well worth the money that was spent on a conference of this scope. The presentations reflected the broad range of changes that have taken place in the postcommunist world. The leaders of the “golden billion” countries led by the United States are following these changes with concern. They long ago realized that it is impossible to isolate oneself from the problems of postcommunist countries, so they want to figure them out, at times more so than the political elite of these countries. Harriman’s thesis that policy should be based on knowledge and understanding is still valid. 3. DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS The panel on the Holodomor was one of 117. Other sessions that I attended attracted audiences that hardly surpassed the number of speakers. The spacious conference hall was packed for the subject of the Holodomor, which interests many people today. Before the session was called to order, one American scholar said that he had learned on the Internet that Olha Ginzburg, the chairperson of the State Archives Committee of Ukraine, had been relieved of her post. The audience responded instantly with applause. The Herostratus-like reputation of this communist member of the Ukrainian government is known halfway across the world. The Holodomor panel was chaired by Dr. Henry R. Huttenbach, a noted Holocaust researcher. The presenters, including me, were Oleh Wolowyna, Taras Hunczak, and Roman Serbyn, all professors of Ukrainian parentage, from North American universities. I got the impression that after James Mace no American or Canadian has become an expert in this field. A group of Canadian researchers from Toronto and Edmonton took part in the debate: Wsevolod Isajiv, Anna Procyk, Roman Senkus, Larissa Onyshkevych, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Yuriy Sergeev, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine’s Mission to the UN, and his predecessor in this post, Professor Valeriy Kuchinsky of Columbia University, and others. 4. WHY ONLY NOW? Soviet Ukrainian history in its undistorted form was returned to our children a long time ago. Despite the appeals of Petro Symonenko’s party to stop the “rewriting” and “smearing” of the Soviet past, Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has refused to endorse old textbooks. Pavlo Poliansky, who had been in charge of school curricula and textbooks, was relieved of his post during the period when socialists were dominant in the education ministry, but later returned after being promoted to the rank of deputy minister. As for those who completed their education under the Soviets and are now under the spell of Russia’s television series, nothing has changed. We live in cities and walk down streets named after those who shed rivers of blood in the comparatively recent past. We walk past monuments to people who destroyed their fellow human beings, guided by the Inquisition’s merciful principle “with no bloodshed,” except that they used famine, not fire. We have grown accustomed to paying homage to the victims of Soviet repressions and the famine once a year, a tribute to our own conscience, without realizing that the past has us firmly gripped by the throat. At least this is what the situation was like until recently, when President Yushchenko of Ukraine suddenly began signing one edict after another dedicated to historical problems. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory was founded as a state committee with branches in regional centers. Ukrainian diplomats began using every opportunity to broach the subject of the 75- year-old Holodomor in their dealings with colleagues. As though in response, President Putin of Russia also started issuing statements, and Russia’s State Duma passed resolutions on the same historical issue, but they had a completely different content. Have Ukraine and Russia opened a new front of struggle in their common past? Is this so? We were asked these questions by various conference participants. Yuriy Sergeev offered the most convincing answers. In reality, there is no struggle. It is just that Russia and Ukraine are moving at different speeds in understanding the history of building the communist system between 1918 and 1938. There is an objective reason for this: Ukraine suffered incommensurably more because it wanted to remain Ukraine. I asked my colleagues, “Suppose three and a half million of your fellow countrymen were killed by famine. Wouldn’t you want to know what caused that famine?” No one contradicted me, but I was asked another question in response: “Why is the Ukrainian government so insistently placing this issue before the international community?” The government is doing this probably because it is a Ukrainian government, not a Soviet or post-Soviet one. We owe a debt of gratitude to the top-level Soviet functionaries, who finally allowed people to call the famine a famine 55 years after it took place in 1932-33. We should actually thank James Mace’s working group in the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine and the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States, which succeeded in having this commission established. 5. WHY GENOCIDE? This question remained foremost. There were many objections: e.g., it was not an act of genocide, the Russians suffered equally during the famine, so they cannot be held responsible for the Holodomor in Ukraine, etc. Such objections are heard in both Russia and Ukraine. They sound convincing to those who identify Soviet power with the Russian government and the Soviet Union with Russia. After all, few people in the West called the USSR by its official name. Harriman called his institute “Russian,” not “Soviet.” I think that Ukrainian and Russian scholars will have to work long and hard to distinguish the Soviet part of our past from the Russian past, and vice versa. This is the only way for our society to comprehend the true nature of the Holodomor and many other phenomena in our shared history. In the course of communist construction the Kremlin used the “nationalities policy” as an effective means of overcoming the resistance of a multinational society to the forcible imposition of unnatural production relations. Everything stated above helps us to understand our opponents’ stand but does not offer rebuttals to their objections. Did the Russians suffer as much? Should they be held responsible for the Holodomor in Ukraine? These questions are not interrelated, so there should be separate answers to each of these questions. First, let us consider the national aspect of the mortality rate. There are statistics for 1932-33, including regions and nationalities, but they are incomplete. During the conference at the Harriman Institute Oleh Wolowyna presented a paper on the reconstruction of demographic statistics. He has many authoritative predecessors in this field. In particular, Stephen Wheatcroft of the University of Melbourne submitted his article “On Demographic Evidence of the Tragedy of the Soviet Village, 1931-1933” as a supplement to the third volume of the five-volume document collection/monograph entitled Tragediia sovetskoi derevni (The Tragedy of the Soviet Village, 1927-1939, Moscow, 2001, p. 866-887). The crux of his article lies in its closing lines, where the author writes that an additional 3 to 3.5 million deaths occurred in Ukraine alone, which probably brings the USSR’s total to 6-7 million. These figures tally with statistics published earlier in Ukraine. On April 2, 2008, Russia’s State Duma adopted the resolution “In Memory of the Victims of the Famine of the 1930s on the Territory of the USSR,” which boils down to refuting all attempts of the Ukrainian side to have this tragedy recognized as an act of genocide. The resolution, however, contains Wheatcroft’s calculations of direct losses inflicted by the famine: seven million people. This alone is indicative of colossal headway compared to the Russian Federation’s earlier official stand. If one takes into consideration the sharp decline in the birth rate during the famine years, this figure will rise to at least 10 million. Does such a number not provide enough grounds to talk about the genocide that was perpetrated against Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Russians and all the other peoples who were devoured by the state terror machine? The authors of the Duma resolution, including Konstantin Zatulin, babbled something about drought. There are preserved archival weather reports for this period, as well as Stalin’s statement of 1933, in which he resolutely denies all talk of drought. Russian politicians and researchers themselves must determine whether the man-made famine of 1932-33 was an act of genocide in the Russian Federation. That is their prerogative. Ours is to assess the tragedy of the Ukrainian people by using international legal categories, all the more so as a closer look at the famine statistics shows that the Holodomor in Ukraine was qualitatively different from the all-union famine in 1932-33. There were two regions in the Russian Federation, Kuban and Kazakhstan, which suffered terrible losses during the famine. These losses had a significant impact on the all-Russian mortality picture. The famine in Kazakhstan was caused by the forcible settlement of nomads and the confiscation of most of their cattle for state meat deliveries. The heavy consequences of the famine in Ukraine and the Kuban had the same causes: the confiscation of all foods under the guise of state grain deliveries and the blockade of these two Ukrainian territories. Elsewhere in the European regions of the USSR the death toll from the famine was considerably lower (by 10 to 20 times) because it was caused either by the confiscation of grain (in grain-producing regions) or by the stoppage of state grain deliveries (in grain-consuming regions). If only grain had been confiscated, one can speculate that the state was forced to sell grain abroad in order to raise funds for an accelerated modernization. But when the state confiscated all foods that keep for a long time from areas that were already starving as a result of the grain confiscations, then blockaded these regions, and banned the word “famine,” one must speak about the deliberate creation of conditions for the population, which were incompatible with its physical survival-in other words, genocide. None of our opponents at Harriman Institute could refute these simple and logical conclusions. Did the Russians have anything to do with Stalin’s policy of terror? Such allegations are heard every now and then in Ukraine, and they are instantly picked up and capitalized on by the Russian media. One should not pay attention to marginalized politicians and scholars who are carrying out their orders. The terror by famine was perpetrated by a narrow circle of the Communist Party and Soviet leadership: Stalin and his team. The Russian people, just like all the other nations of the totalitarian Soviet Union, have nothing to do with the Kremlin’s policy of terror that commenced in December 1917, with the rout of the Constitutional Democrats, and ended in March 1953, with the Doctors’ Plot. The international scholarly community has begun to treat the Holodomor in Ukraine as an actual phenomenon that must be studied. After returning to Kyiv, I received an invitation from Stephen Wheatcroft to take part in a comparative study of various forms and types of famine in the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, and other countries of the communist bloc. It is necessary to ascertain how the weapon of famine was used in the process of the state’s enslavement of society. Only one conclusion can be made: it will not be possible to conceal the horrific history of communism from international scholarship.By Stanislav KULCHYTSKY, THE DAY
http://www.ukrainians.ca/content/view/918/2/lang,en/
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Friday, May 23, 2008
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Analysts foresee `new world energy order`
Quote: Market analysts call the Paris-based IEA the world`s most reliable independent source of oil information and welcomed its decision to undertake a deep study of oil supplies.
But the IEA`s new forecasts are likely to further upset markets. Oil prices hit an all-time high Thursday above $135 a barrel before falling back.
Less oil would mean even higher prices for everything from gasoline to food. Already, airlines squeezed by jet fuel costs are bleeding profits and predicting cutbacks and industry upheaval. Ford Motor said Thursday it was cutting production of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and forecast more rough times ahead.
Birol said the IEA study, whose results will be released in November, was prompted by concern about the volatility of world oil markets and uncertainty about supply levels.
"The prices are very high, and demand did not respond in the last few years as much as one would have expected," Birol said. "The growth in terms of production was not great. We did not see enough investment."
The spurt in oil prices Thursday came after a report in the Wall Street Journal that the IEA was planning to lower its forecast for long-term world supply.
Birol would not speculate on whether the forecast, which will predict supplies through 2030, could go sharply downward. "We will see," he said.
The IEA`s past forecasts put oil supply at about 116 million barrels a day in 2030, up from 87 million barrels a day now.
"Although the agency`s official assessment isn`t expected until later this year, the market`s interpretation is that global supply may be significantly tighter than previously projected by the major oil market monitors," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy trading advisory service Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois.
Birol said oil companies and governments have been cooperative with the IEA experts preparing the report, but added, "It is not an easy task. It is the first time this is being done in the public domain on such a scale."
Simon Wardell, oil analyst at Global Insight in London, was skeptical that the IEA would get a complete picture from "countries that are very closely guarded" such as Saudi Arabia, the No. 1 producer.
That is important because Birol said one of the key shifts coming up is that the world will become increasingly reliant on national oil companies instead of multinational ones.
"Up to now, we have seen that the international oil companies were responsible for bringing a big chunk of the oil to the markets. Now, in many cases, since existing reserves are declining, a big part of oil will need to come from national oil companies. And they have their own conditions, their own context."
Birol called for greater investment everywhere.
Wardell said the IEA report would have limited effect on investment. "It`s not like oil companies aren`t already looking around," he said.
But he said governments could take notice and "start thinking of policies that would ensure more oil."
Birol noted that, "Both on the demand side and supply side, we have new actors who change the rules of the game."
He said most demand now and in the coming decades will come from China, India and the Middle East. That is a stark shift from past decades, when the U.S. and Europe were demand-drivers.
The IEA is part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which brings together 30 rich nations. It has no links to OPEC, and its review may challenge the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries` view that the world is well-supplied with oil.
Birol said the report is looking at onshore and offshore supplies -- including hard-to-reach wells in the deep sea.
He noted that Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said Thursday it has struck more oil in waters near the huge offshore Tupi field -- but remained cautious about how much "good oil" such fields would produce.
Fears about fuel prices helped send shares in Europe`s largest airline, Air France-KLM, down 9 percent Thursday after it announced a quarterly net loss and said it expects the coming year to be "challenging."
CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta said the soaring cost of fuel means the industry is in for a "profound transformation," predicting capacity reductions, the acceleration of mergers and the exit of some players from the market.
http://unian.net/eng/news/news-252620.html
.
But the IEA`s new forecasts are likely to further upset markets. Oil prices hit an all-time high Thursday above $135 a barrel before falling back.
Less oil would mean even higher prices for everything from gasoline to food. Already, airlines squeezed by jet fuel costs are bleeding profits and predicting cutbacks and industry upheaval. Ford Motor said Thursday it was cutting production of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and forecast more rough times ahead.
Birol said the IEA study, whose results will be released in November, was prompted by concern about the volatility of world oil markets and uncertainty about supply levels.
"The prices are very high, and demand did not respond in the last few years as much as one would have expected," Birol said. "The growth in terms of production was not great. We did not see enough investment."
The spurt in oil prices Thursday came after a report in the Wall Street Journal that the IEA was planning to lower its forecast for long-term world supply.
Birol would not speculate on whether the forecast, which will predict supplies through 2030, could go sharply downward. "We will see," he said.
The IEA`s past forecasts put oil supply at about 116 million barrels a day in 2030, up from 87 million barrels a day now.
"Although the agency`s official assessment isn`t expected until later this year, the market`s interpretation is that global supply may be significantly tighter than previously projected by the major oil market monitors," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy trading advisory service Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois.
Birol said oil companies and governments have been cooperative with the IEA experts preparing the report, but added, "It is not an easy task. It is the first time this is being done in the public domain on such a scale."
Simon Wardell, oil analyst at Global Insight in London, was skeptical that the IEA would get a complete picture from "countries that are very closely guarded" such as Saudi Arabia, the No. 1 producer.
That is important because Birol said one of the key shifts coming up is that the world will become increasingly reliant on national oil companies instead of multinational ones.
"Up to now, we have seen that the international oil companies were responsible for bringing a big chunk of the oil to the markets. Now, in many cases, since existing reserves are declining, a big part of oil will need to come from national oil companies. And they have their own conditions, their own context."
Birol called for greater investment everywhere.
Wardell said the IEA report would have limited effect on investment. "It`s not like oil companies aren`t already looking around," he said.
But he said governments could take notice and "start thinking of policies that would ensure more oil."
Birol noted that, "Both on the demand side and supply side, we have new actors who change the rules of the game."
He said most demand now and in the coming decades will come from China, India and the Middle East. That is a stark shift from past decades, when the U.S. and Europe were demand-drivers.
The IEA is part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which brings together 30 rich nations. It has no links to OPEC, and its review may challenge the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries` view that the world is well-supplied with oil.
Birol said the report is looking at onshore and offshore supplies -- including hard-to-reach wells in the deep sea.
He noted that Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said Thursday it has struck more oil in waters near the huge offshore Tupi field -- but remained cautious about how much "good oil" such fields would produce.
Fears about fuel prices helped send shares in Europe`s largest airline, Air France-KLM, down 9 percent Thursday after it announced a quarterly net loss and said it expects the coming year to be "challenging."
CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta said the soaring cost of fuel means the industry is in for a "profound transformation," predicting capacity reductions, the acceleration of mergers and the exit of some players from the market.
http://unian.net/eng/news/news-252620.html
.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
PACE Begins Preparing Report On Holodomor Of 1932-33 In Ukraine
Quote: Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has decided to begin preparing a report on the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Ukraine.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry press service Vasyl Kyrylych has announced this to journalists.
The PACE political committee held a meeting on May 16 in Stockholm, Sweden, where they decided to start drawing the report to discuss the Holodomor.
Next they will determine key topics of the report and call a rapporteur, Kyrylych says.
"It is expected, according to experts, that before late in autumn the report may be ready and discussed by PACE," said Kyrylych.
So, by 2009 PACE may consider the report and take a decision.
http://www.ukranews.com/eng/article/123867.html
.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry press service Vasyl Kyrylych has announced this to journalists.
The PACE political committee held a meeting on May 16 in Stockholm, Sweden, where they decided to start drawing the report to discuss the Holodomor.
Next they will determine key topics of the report and call a rapporteur, Kyrylych says.
"It is expected, according to experts, that before late in autumn the report may be ready and discussed by PACE," said Kyrylych.
So, by 2009 PACE may consider the report and take a decision.
http://www.ukranews.com/eng/article/123867.html
.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
EBRD cuts forecasts for three key states
Quote: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on Sunday cut growth forecasts for Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania – three key countries for emerging markets investors – because of difficulties arising from the global credit crunch and mounting inflation.
While the EBRD, the multilateral bank for eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, raised its 2008 growth forecast for the region as a whole, saying it was pulling through the global turmoil better than expected, it singled out the three countries, plus impoverished Tajikistan, for significant reductions.
In a report issued at the start of its annual meeting in Kiev, the EBRD warned that Kazakhstan was suffering from “the impact of inflation and credit stagnation” and reduced expected gross domestic product growth from 8.5 to 5.1 per cent. Romania’s growth forecast was cut from 6.5 to 5 per cent, on the grounds of “rapid monetary tightening”, with the central bank raising interest rates to counter inflation.
For Ukraine, the growth forecast was reduced from 6 to 5.5 per cent, as the EBRD warned of the impact of inflation which last month hit an annual rate of 30 per cent, the highest in Europe and among the highest in the world. Tajikistan’s GDP growth prediction was slashed from 9 to 4.1 per cent, because of the country’s exceptionally severe winter, power shortages and a serious accounting dispute with the International Monetary Fund which is hitting Dushanbe’s access to foreign credit.
The bank’s concerns about Ukraine were echoed by David McCormick, the US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, who said he had raised the inflation issue in discussions with Ukrainian officials. “It’s a very significant issue . . . there’s a recognition here that we require an integrated combination of both monetary and fiscal policy.”
Erik Berglof, the EBRD chief economist, said: “We are in a global slowdown that is quite difficult . . . What’s coming up as the major concern in the region is inflation. It is related to a weaker fiscal stance in many countries.”
However, he emphasised that the region as a whole was growing faster than expected, with the bank raising its forecast average GDP growth rate from between 5 and 5.5 per cent in January to 6 per cent. This is still down on last year when the region grew 7.3 per cent, but is far ahead of western Europe, eastern Europe’s biggest economic partner.
The EBRD blamed the expected slowdown on the global credit crunch, a forecast weakening in export markets in western Europe, and counter-inflationary measures in many countries.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/110d0692-2518-11dd-a14a-000077b07658.html
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While the EBRD, the multilateral bank for eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, raised its 2008 growth forecast for the region as a whole, saying it was pulling through the global turmoil better than expected, it singled out the three countries, plus impoverished Tajikistan, for significant reductions.
In a report issued at the start of its annual meeting in Kiev, the EBRD warned that Kazakhstan was suffering from “the impact of inflation and credit stagnation” and reduced expected gross domestic product growth from 8.5 to 5.1 per cent. Romania’s growth forecast was cut from 6.5 to 5 per cent, on the grounds of “rapid monetary tightening”, with the central bank raising interest rates to counter inflation.
For Ukraine, the growth forecast was reduced from 6 to 5.5 per cent, as the EBRD warned of the impact of inflation which last month hit an annual rate of 30 per cent, the highest in Europe and among the highest in the world. Tajikistan’s GDP growth prediction was slashed from 9 to 4.1 per cent, because of the country’s exceptionally severe winter, power shortages and a serious accounting dispute with the International Monetary Fund which is hitting Dushanbe’s access to foreign credit.
The bank’s concerns about Ukraine were echoed by David McCormick, the US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, who said he had raised the inflation issue in discussions with Ukrainian officials. “It’s a very significant issue . . . there’s a recognition here that we require an integrated combination of both monetary and fiscal policy.”
Erik Berglof, the EBRD chief economist, said: “We are in a global slowdown that is quite difficult . . . What’s coming up as the major concern in the region is inflation. It is related to a weaker fiscal stance in many countries.”
However, he emphasised that the region as a whole was growing faster than expected, with the bank raising its forecast average GDP growth rate from between 5 and 5.5 per cent in January to 6 per cent. This is still down on last year when the region grew 7.3 per cent, but is far ahead of western Europe, eastern Europe’s biggest economic partner.
The EBRD blamed the expected slowdown on the global credit crunch, a forecast weakening in export markets in western Europe, and counter-inflationary measures in many countries.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/110d0692-2518-11dd-a14a-000077b07658.html
.
Visit our new Ukraine English News site
A vast amount of Ukraine news from several different news sites. Also a world news and a Ukrainian language news page. Also includes a new forum. Join us now.
http://www.ukraine-english-news.com/
.
http://www.ukraine-english-news.com/
.
Ukraine's PM backs new law strengthening president's powers
Quote: Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko voiced support Sunday for legislation strengthening the powers of the president with whom she has been at loggerheads, saying her government backed the law for the sake of democratic unity.
"At the president's request, our political team voted for a new law on the cabinet, reducing the government's powers.. and increasing those of the president," she told a press conference.
"We supported (the legislation) for the sake of the unity of the democratic coalition."
President Viktor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were allies who led the 2004 Orange Revolution that peacefully overturned a rigged election originally awarded to a Moscow-backed candidate.
But relations between the two have since cooled.
Nevertheless on Sunday Tymoshenko defended the unity of the democratic coalition with Yushchenko's party, saying she hoped the new arrangements would "harmonise our activity and provide the government with the possibility to work".
On Saturday Yushchenko approved the new legislation strengthening his authority over the government by allowing him to install pro-Western figures in key posts.
It gives him the power to block prime ministerial candidates and leaves the nomination of foreign and defence ministers in his hands alone.
The law, overturning a 2007 decree which clipped the president's wings and asserted governmental control through parliament, won the votes of 245 pro-Western members loyal to Yushchenko -- 19 more than the legal minimum.
After things cooled between them, Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko as prime minister in 2005, and political analysts said the split between Ukraine's two most prominent politicians appeared to be worsening because both were likely to contest a presidential poll in 2009 or 2010.
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007539&docId=l:793225126&isRss=true
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"At the president's request, our political team voted for a new law on the cabinet, reducing the government's powers.. and increasing those of the president," she told a press conference.
"We supported (the legislation) for the sake of the unity of the democratic coalition."
President Viktor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were allies who led the 2004 Orange Revolution that peacefully overturned a rigged election originally awarded to a Moscow-backed candidate.
But relations between the two have since cooled.
Nevertheless on Sunday Tymoshenko defended the unity of the democratic coalition with Yushchenko's party, saying she hoped the new arrangements would "harmonise our activity and provide the government with the possibility to work".
On Saturday Yushchenko approved the new legislation strengthening his authority over the government by allowing him to install pro-Western figures in key posts.
It gives him the power to block prime ministerial candidates and leaves the nomination of foreign and defence ministers in his hands alone.
The law, overturning a 2007 decree which clipped the president's wings and asserted governmental control through parliament, won the votes of 245 pro-Western members loyal to Yushchenko -- 19 more than the legal minimum.
After things cooled between them, Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko as prime minister in 2005, and political analysts said the split between Ukraine's two most prominent politicians appeared to be worsening because both were likely to contest a presidential poll in 2009 or 2010.
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007539&docId=l:793225126&isRss=true
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