Word of His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr on the Commemoration Day of Political Repressions and Holodomor Victims

In the 20^th century the Ukrainian nation had survived through one of the most awful tragedies in its history - Holodomor. Ukraine, which had always provided the bread to the whole world, had experienced mass famine.  The famine brought about a considerable number of victims and brought much desolation. It had both subjective and objective origins and consequences. The artificial famine of 1932-1933 was planned by the Bolsheviks in order to accelerate the forceful collectivization, to liquidate the kulaks (better-off peasants) as a social class, to annihilate the "hostile elements". 

But still there is a factor, uniting this social cataclysm and the rest of the repressive actions of the totalitarian Soviet rule.  It is a radical change of worldview - disavowing God and Man Christ and Christian morals while choosing the new faith - the faith of Man-God, the Antichrist.  The adepts of this religion wished to build paradise on the earth, to achieve the radiant future for the humanity - but the future without God. Their light was in fact the darkness.  Their worldview was based on the principles of the eternal darkness, since it is only God who is the source of light.  Their ideology brought about evil instead of good, since it is only God who is the Creator of all good.  Where the paradise without God is built - there the hell appears. Instead of the promised paradise life the nation, tangled by the Soviet ideology, underwent infernal sufferings.     

The history of our Motherland had known much hard time.  Natural disasters, wars, social-political controversies and other troubles resulted in various crisis phenomena, among which there were "extinction, hunger and sword" (Isaiah 51: 19).

But in the 1930-ties it was for the first time that Ukraine experienced artificial famine, mass cynical, purposeful and cruel murder of millions of her citizens. Such  genocide might have taken place only in a God-hating and man-hating environment.  Millions of people died in terrible agony on the rich Ukrainian black earth.  This Famine was an attempt to exterminate the very soul of the nation, to carry it to complete spiritual slavery.  It became an instrument of diabolic revenge for the impossibility to eradicate the filial memory of God, the Love of God, faithfulness to God and faith in God from the conscience of our wise people, instinct with high virtue.  This faith could be destroyed only through the physical annihilation of its carrier.  Therefore the God-fighting power, having created the spiritual hunger, foredoomed the nation to physical starvation.  

The people were taken away the bread the same way as the daily bread had been taken away beforehand.  The fruitful crop field gave enough bread to conscientious toilers.  But all the bread sprinkled with the sweat of the peasantry was eliminated. Every last grain that could support life was withdrawn. Those who collected spikes were shot. The agony of hunger was really infernal. They hardly managed to bury the dead. Many were buried alive in the communal tombs. The children suffered worst of all.  Moloch of bolshevism devoured these innocent victims with devilish heartlessness. 

Ukraine had lost millions of its children that time. All of them had suffered severe pains and awful death. Those who survived had forever remembered what the paradise on the earth without God was like.   

75 years have passed since. The time heals the wounds of soul, but the wound in the soul of Ukraine cannot be healed. It will always remind by insatiable pain of the times when the devil dominated Ukraine and other nations of the Soviet communion.

Our family had suffered from Holodomor too. I remember my mother crying bitter tears recalling 1932-1933. Then one of my brothers was born. A baby also became an objective of sacrificial love. My mother exchanged some ancient silver spoons for a glass of wheat. It was an only thing she hoped to feed the child with for a few days. The last chance to save him from the starvation death. And the soldiers of the Red Army broke into the house.  Not having found anything except misery, they grasped the baby at his leg, threw him out of the cradle and took away the wheat my mother hid under the child.  This action cannot be called human.   

It is with a deep sorrow that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church prayerfully recalls the victims of Holodomor and other repressions of the Soviet totalitarian rule.  The number of victims totals tens million people - all those shot, murdered in prisons, tortured by various moral and physical tortures, deceased because of the pains of hunger. There was no such number of victims even in the war times.  Indeed, the power led a bloodshed war with its own people. 

The Church severely condemns the factors that caused this tragedy. There is no justification for that. The history has passed its own sentence.   No repressions could save the state political system based on sin and God-fighting, neglecting the fundamental moral principles of humanity - love, faith and hope.   "Woe to them that devise iniquity "(Micah 2: 1). "I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes" (Psalms 101: 3). " Whose end is destruction " (Philippians 3: 19).

The Church warns against such defective and inhuman ideology that caused such a tragedy and calls to penance all those who has not yet understood and haven't disavowed theomachy in all its forms. 

The Church calls to rejecting the extremism, intolerance, revenge, hate of one's neighbour, self-non-self discrimination self-non-self discrimination. God has no strangers. The time of the spiritual reunion of the Ukrainian nation, of return to the basic moral values has arrived.  The history has manifested what the result of the renouncement of the Christian principles was.   Only the holy faith, the firm hope and overwhelming love will help to build the worthy future and prevent the errors of the past.  

The Church discloses the truth of the eternal life of those who had been martyrised during the Holodomor. As loving Mother, the Holy Ukrainian Orthodox Church prays for their repose in the abodes of the righteous and announces their eternal memory.  

Their souls will dwell amid good things. Their memory is from generation to generation.