Ukrainian Canadian

For your weekend listening pleasure, the BBC has published a two-part documentary podcast on ‘useful idiots’ – a phrase coined by Lenin about Westerners who endorsed the Soviet Union and its Communist ideologies, usually in the press.

Part One – 22 minutes

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and American journalist Walter Duranty were some of those people who also visited the Soviet Union. They mingled with political leaders, were escorted into the countryside by Joseph Stalin’s secret police, and returned home to speak and write of ‘a land of hope’ with ‘evils retreating before the spread of communism’.

However as stories mounted of mass murder and starvation in parts of Russia and the Ukraine, reporters such as Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge investigated and reported on ‘the creation of one enormous Belsen’. Duranty responded with an article in the New York Times headed ‘Story of the famine is bunk’, and got an exclusive interview with Stalin.

Soon after, Jones died and Muggeridge’s career nose-dived. Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer.

How can intellectual curiosity transform into active promotion of a dangerous lie? Why so many ‘useful idiots’?

Part Two – 22 minutes

BBC – Useful Idiots

From the Mark News:

Between 1914 and 1920, thousands of Canadians of Ukrainian and Eastern European descent were imprisoned in internment camps across Canada, simply on the basis of their origins. For decades, their stories were buried under fear and shame. The Canadian government has finally recognized the internment operations, and yet it remains an unknown chapter in our nation’s history.

Read more

I stumbled upon a few really good Holodomor testimonies that I thought I’d share with you. These interviews were conducted in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, and was conducted by the DNK Group and Mark Silberman.

Olga Kamnads’ka Holodomor Testimony

This is testimony of Holodomor survivor Olga Kamnads’ka. The Holodomor genocide occured in Ukraine in 1932-1933. Pani (Mrs.) Olga Kamnads’ka was born in 1926. She and her family left Ukraine at the time of the Holodomor in order to escape from hunger and repressions.

Mykola Antonovich Mykolaenko Holodomor Testimony

This is testimony of Holodomor survivor Mykola Antonovich Mykolaenko. The Holodomor genocide occured in Ukraine in 1932-1933. Pan (Mr.) Mykola Antonovich Mykolaenko was born in 1919. He is a writer and a poet, and is a member of the National Writers Union in Ukraine. He lived in Kryvy Rih at the time of the Holodomor.

Grygory Oleksiyovich Simak Holodomor Testimony

This is testimony of Holodomor survivor Grygory Oleksiyovich Simak. The Holodomor genocide occured in Ukraine in 1932-1933. Pan (Mr.) Grygory Oleksiyovich Simak was born in 1919. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists in Ukraine. He lived in the Spasske village (Dnipropetrovsk region) at the time of the Holodomor.

Raisa Pavlovna Radchenko Holodomor testimony This is testimony of Holodomor survivor Raisa Pavlovna Radchenko. The Holodomor genocide occured in Ukraine in 1932-1933. Pani (Mrs.) Raisa Pavlovna Radchenko was born in 1919. She was a sciescientist and a professor. She lived in the Sukhaya Balka village at the time of the Holodomor.

Just came across this video, thought I’d share. Vera Farmiga is an Ukrainian-American award winning actress who’s recently starred in such films as Up in the Air, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Departed. These movie clips are from Touching Evil (2004).

This quick excerpt is from the pilot of the hit series Breaking Bad.  Thegroup toasts the lead character Walt for his birthday with a hearty ‘Na Zdrovya’ (to your health)!:

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White’s releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

Not really sure why this was written into the episode, they’re three seasons in and it hasn’t come up again since.