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27 May 2009 16:35

Broken Fates: Communist Terror in Ukraine in 1920-1950 Exhibition On Display in Soviet Occupation Museum

Since May 26, 2009, the Broken Fates: Communist Terror in Ukraine in 1920-1950 historical documents exhibition is on display at the Soviet Occupation Museum at the Vasyl Stus All-Ukrainian Memorial Society Kyiv city organization.

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.

Recall that the exhibition was first presented May 17, 2009, at the Bykivnia Graves National History Memorial Preserve, as part of the events dedicated to the Day of the Memory of the Victims of Political repression. 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.