Below please find
an open appeal in connection with a decision of the municipality of the city of Yalta to erect a monument to Joseph Stalin.
The text below is rendered in three languages: English, Ukrainian and Russian. The three texts are identical. Inquiries should
be forwarded to info@grigorenko.org.
An open appeal to President of Ukraine Victor Yustshenko and members of Ukrainian
Parliament.
Dear
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen, deputies of Verkhovna Rada,
Disturbing news has just reached us. It has
been made known to us that the municipal council of the city of Yalta has adopted a resolution to erect a monument to Joseph
Stalin. The erection of a monument to the bloodiest tyrant in human history is already sacrilege in itself. But erecting it
in Ukraine and especially in Crimea is a double sacrilege. Let us remind you of just a few facts of the history of Ukraine
in connection with the man who neo- communists try to portray as a great hero of the Second World War.
As a member
of Lenin's government, Stalin shares responsibility with Lenin, Trotsky and others for the installation of a pro-Moscow puppet
government in Ukraine. He declared the city of Kharkiv the capital of Ukraine at a time when the legitimate Ukrainian government
in the historical capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, was struggling against invading forces. As a result of an international-socialist
invasion, the unification of Ukraine, which took place January 22, 1919, was annulled and most of her territory annexed and
incorporated into the Soviet Empire.
In the 1930's, Stalin and his clique orchestrated show trials against the Ukrainian
intelligentsia, starting with the infamous case of "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" (Spilka Vizvollennya Ukrainy). Other
well-known atrocities include the deportation of the so-called "kulaks", and of course, the organizing of outright genocide:
the artificial starvation known as Gladomor (1932-1933). The later tragedy was reflected in the folklore epic "Duma pro Golod"
(¡°The Ballad about Starvation¡±) sung by predominantly blind traveling bards, called "kobzars". To erase the people's memory,
the kobzars were exterminated by a direct order from Stalin, and a centuries-old folklore tradition died with them.
In direct violation of the Versailles treaty, Stalin's government trained officers of Hitler's Wehrmacht in its military schools
and conspired with the Nazis to instigate the Second World War. Despite what many historians presume, the Soviet Union entered
into the Second World War not on June 22nd of 1941, but on September 1st of 1939, when it transmitted radio signals from city
of Minsk, effectively guiding German bombers to their destination in Warsaw. A couple of weeks later, on September 17, 1939,
the Soviet Army crossed the Polish border and stabbed the already bleeding Poland in the back.
Under Stalin's rule,
the Soviet Union entered into the Second World War as an aggressor and ally of Nazi Germany, and until June 22, 1941 remained
as such. The photograph depicting Soviet foreign minister Molotov embracing and kissing his Nazi counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop
is well known throughout the world. Furthermore, Stalin labeled any anti-fascist activity before June 22, 1941 a crime and
many anti-fascists ended up in the Gulag, where they perished.
The invasion of Poland was the first, but hardly the
last aggressive act of the USSR during the course of WWII. Following the invasion of Poland, the USSR invaded Finland, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and Romania and annexed the three Baltic states and large portions of Finland and Romania. In 1944, without
much ado, the USSR also annexed Tuva (Tannu Tuva), the country situated between Russia and Mongolia.
Stalinists are
trying to convince us that the USSR was surprised by the German attack. But in doing so, they fail to explain how the German
army managed to capture over two million prisoners of war in just a few hours and then proceeded to march into Soviet territories
without a visibly organized resistance. They also have no explanation as to how it happened that the well-known song "The
Holy War" was written by Stalin's order before the German invasion, or why millions of copies of the famous placard
"Your Native Country calls" were printed also before the German invasion. The answer to these questions is simple:
Stalin and his generals did not plan to defend the Soviet Union, on the contrary, they had planned their own invasion, but
neglected to anticipate the possibility of similar treachery on the part of the Germans. For their leaders' criminal overconfidence,
Soviet citizens paid with millions of needlessly lost lives. The conduct of Stalin and his clique was no less than high treason.
But shortly after this first act of treason, Stalin committed a second one: denying the rights of prisoners of war to Soviet
soldiers captured abroad. Captured soldiers of all other armies, including the armies of countries occupied by Germany, were
treated as POW's, all except Soviet soldiers, and Stalin bears direct responsibility for this. The third treason was Stalin's
military "doctrine": do not spare anyone. The later caused an unforgivably high level of casualties
At the conference
of Yalta (February 4 - February 11, 1945), Stalin managed to convince Churchill and Roosevelt to deport all refugees, displaced
persons and POW's from Western countries to the USSR. Upon their return, the vast majority of these unfortunate people were
integrated into the Soviet slavery system of concentration camps, where they, like so many others, perished without a trace.
This same Yalta conference also laid the foundations for the Cold War and the subsequent Iron Curtain that was to divide Europe
As a final accord to the war, mislabeled as the "Great Patriotic War", Stalin proclaimed May 9 as a G Victory Day while
it was, in reality, May 8. By misplacing the G Victory Day, Stalin effectively separated the population of the Soviet Union
from the rest of the world.
But for Ukraine, the guns did not fall silent on G Victory Day. A guerilla war against
Soviet occupation lasted eleven more years, until 1956, and caused thousands of further casualties. In the summary repressions
against Ukrainian resistance, Stalin's government deported several million Ukrainians to Siberia and the Far East.
On
May 18, 1944 in Crimea, Stalin and his international-socialist clique committed the most gruesome crime against humanity:
genocide ¨C the killing of a nation. On that day the deportation of Crimean Tatars brought the Crimean nation to the brink
of total annihilation. Half of the Crimean Tatar population was exterminated, all traces of their culture were eradicated,
and historic geographical names changed for Russian ones. Along with the Crimean Tatars, Greeks and Armenians were also deported
and all trace of their cultural presence in Crimea also eradicated.
Stalin and the post-Stalin Soviet government
knowingly suppressed the knowledge of Nazi atrocities against the Jewish and Gypsy populations of Ukraine. Furthermore, he
instigated an ugly anti-Semitic campaign, labeled as a struggle against the "cosmopolites", in preparation for the deportation
of Soviet Jews in much the same manner as it was done with the Koreans of the Far East (1937), Volgo-Germans (1941), Pontian
Greeks (1942), Karachais (1943), Kalmucks (1943), Chechens (1944), Ingushs (1944), Balkars (1944), Crimean Tatars (1944),
Turks (1944), Kurds (1944), Khemshils (Armenian Muslims) (1944), Meshetians (Georgian Muslims) (1944), Armenians and Greeks
of Crimea (1944) and many others.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the attempt of neo-communists to erect a monument
to Stalin is nothing less than a desecration of the graves of deportees, prisoners of the Gulag and veterans of the Second
World War. We ask you to stop the provocateurs. Do not let Crimea slip into turmoil, for there may well be no resolution.
There must be no place on Earth for monuments to criminals against humanity!
Andrew P. Grigorenko, President
of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation, New York USA
Vladimir Bukovsky, Writer, Cambridge, UK
Victor Suvorov,
Historian, London, UK
Elena Bonner, Chairperson of The Andrei Sakharov Foundation, Boston, USA
Fikret Yurter,
President of Crimea Foundation and Association of Crimean Tatars in the USA, Commack, USA
Mustafa Dzhemilev, Member
of Ukrainian Parliament
Les Tanyuk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykhaylo Pozhyvanov, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Yaroslav Kendzor, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksandr Tkalenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Bohdan Kostynyuk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykola Kulchynskyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yuriy
Klyuchkovskyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yuriy Kryvoruchko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Serhiy Slabenko,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykola Chechel, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Valeriy Lebedivskyy, Member of
Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksiy Kozachenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksandr Omelchenko, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Olena Bondarenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykhaylo Kosiv, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Serhiy Zhyzhko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ivan Drach, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yuriy Karmazin,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Viktor Korol, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ivan Ivancho, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Volodymyr Yavorivskyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yuriy Kostenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Stepan Davymuka, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ivan Zaets, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksandr Slobodyan,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksa Hudyma, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykola Kruts, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Oleksandr Ustenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Pavlo Movchan, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ivan Tomych, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yaroslav Dzhodzhyk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykhaylo
Ratushnyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Andriy Shkil, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ryfat Chubarov, Member
of Ukrainian Parliament
Stepan Khmara, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleksandr Chornovolenko, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Valeriy Asadchev, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Pavlo Kachur, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ihor Hryniv, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Hennadiy Udovenko, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Levko Luk'yanenko,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykola Martynyuk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Vadym Trofymenko, Member of
Ukrainian Parliament
Borys Bespalyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleh Bilorus, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Serhiy Sobolev, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Oleh Lukashuk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Viktor Teren,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Kostyantyn Sytnyk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Volodymyr Onopenko, Member
of Ukrainian Parliament
Valentyn Zubov, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykhaylo Hladiy, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Kseniya Lyapina, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Vitaliy Korzh, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Ihor Nasalyk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Leonid Derkach, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Borys Zahreva,
Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Evhen Hirnyk, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Mykola Zhulynskyy, Member of Ukrainian
Parliament
Oleh Tyahnybok, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Vasyl Bartkiv, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Liliya Hryhorovych, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Yuriy Orobets, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Leonid
Chernovetskyy, Member of Ukrainian Parliament
Pavel Litvinov, Soviet Human Rights Leader, USA
Martin Dewhirst,
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, Scotland, U.K.
Vladimir Gershovich, Professor, Hebrew University,
Jerusalem. Israel
Yuri Orlov, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
All signatures are in
the order they were received. The collection of signatures is continued. Please join us.
The signatures list is continued on the next page>>>>> 
