18 February 2015—An event held on 4 February at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), drew some five hundred people interested in learning more about the devastating famine created by Bolshevik leaders intent on breaking Ukrainian resistance to the Kremlin’s forced collectivization drive and preventing the real or imagined threat of Ukraine ever separating from the Soviet Union.
Organized by the CMHR and the Holodomor Awareness and Education Committee of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), Manitoba Council, “Covering or Uncovering the Truth: Media Reporting on the Holodomor,” examined how a free press could both alert the world and document human rights abuses, while at the same time contributing to their cover-up.
The evening began with a screening of the documentary film, “Covering the Holodomor: Memory Eternal,” currently showing at the Museum’s “Breaking the Silence Gallery,” followed by an introductory presentation by CHMR historian-curator, Dr. Jeremy Maron.
Jars Balan of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies then shared some of the preliminary findings from research done by the Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at CIUS under the auspices of the on-going Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, funded by the Temerty Family Foundation. In his presentation, Jars discussed the extensive coverage given to developments in Soviet Ukraine during Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, including the Great Famine of 1932‒33 in Ukraine. He showed how attention was deflected away from one of the twentieth century’s greatest crimes against humanity by the Kremlin’s propaganda and by Canadian fellow-travellers and apologists for Moscow who knowingly or unwittingly facilitated its spread.
He also spoke about some of the Canadian journalists who reported from the Soviet Union during the period of mass starvation, among them Rhea Clyman, a Toronto-born correspondent for the London Daily Express and the Toronto Telegram. In the fall of 1932, the twenty-eight year-old Clyman made a 5000 mile road trip by car that took her from Moscow through eastern Ukraine and the Kuban region to Tbilisi, Georgia, where she was arrested by the secret police and subsequently deported for “defaming” the Soviet Union with her first-hand accounts about “uprisings and hunger rebellions” and the “nationalization of women.”
Complementing the presentations was a major exhibit obtained from Kyiv’s National Museum commemorating the Holodomor, being shown for the first time outside of Ukraine. Organized by Irka Balan and Valya Noseworthy of the Holodomor Committee, Manitoba UCC, the displays included thirty-three panels in Ukrainian and English depicting various aspects of the man-made famine. Also on view were memorial books listing known victims of the Holodomor by oblasts.
While in Winnipeg, Jars Balan gave interviews on the CBC radio drive home show hosted by Ismaila Alfa, and on CJOB’s Nighthawk program with Geoff Currier. In the days following his talk he participated in an informal “meet and greet” with representatives of the Mennonite Heritage Centre who are active in charitable projects in Ukraine, and authored an op-ed piece for the Winnipeg Free Press titled “Soviet-style Propaganda Still in Use,” published on 9 February.
