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17 May 2009 13:39

Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Presents Broken Fates: Communist Terror in Ukraine in 1920-1950 Exhibition

May 17, 2009, as part of the events dedicated to the Day of the Memory of the Victims of Political repression, the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation presented the Broken Fates: Communist Terror in Ukraine in 1920-1950 historical documents exhibition. The presentation was held at the Bykivnia Graves National History Memorial Preserve.

The exhibition was prepared by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation as part of its History Lessons program jointly with the Branch Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine and Vasyl Stus Memorial Educational Human Rights Charitable Organization. Its objective is informing the global and Ukrainian community on the repression system by the Communist (Stalin) regime in the 1920s-1950s.

The exhibition features 24 posters. Its first part presents to the viewer Ukraine’s situation on the moment of the collapse of the Russian Empire and in the following years of its fight for its statehood. The second part showcases the mechanism of repressions against all strata of the Ukrainian society: peasants, intelligentsia, the army, political elite, clergy, etc. Several posters cover the history of Western Ukraine in the 1940s, after is annexation by Soviet Ukraine, in part, the forced NKVD repressions against the national liberation movement (OUN, UPA) and the civilians, as well as forcible people’s  deportation to faraway USSR regions to destroy their national identity and diversity of the Ukrainian ethnos. The exhibition narrates of the post-war repressions against Ostarbeiters and former POW, shows the places where the victims served their terms. It also contains information on the biggest labor camps mutinies. The final part of the exhibition shows the biggest places of mass burials of the repression victims, along with the consequences of the terror, and honoring the memory of the innocent victims in the Independent Ukraine.

The Broken Fates: Communist Terror in Ukraine in 1920-1950 exhibition is planned to tour all Ukraine’s oblasts. Additionally, its materials will be translated into several languages and distributed among Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in various countries.

This isn’t the first time that Ukraine 3000 Foundation turns to the theme of political repression and takes part in actions to commemorate its victims. Since 2007 the Foundation has been organizing actions to clean up the Bykivnia Graves National History Memorial Preserve grounds. In 2007, the Foundation carried out the Memory Above Time patriotic action together with the PLAST National Scouting Organization, cleaning up mass burial places of Ukrainian intelligentsia from 1937 and the site where Soviet soldiers coming back from German war prisons were shoot in 1945. A memorial plaque was erected at the mass shooting site.

In 2008, the Ukraine 3000 Foundation members again took part in cleaning up the Bykivnia Graves grounds, putting in order a part of the mass burial places of Ukrainian intelligentsia from 1937.

In 2009 the Foundation once again initiated a Bykivnia Graves cleanup, which took place May 16.