Illnyk, Ukraine
Posted on 06/07/2002 8:18:18 PM PDT by JMJ333
Illnyk, Ukraine
Landscape near the Carpathian mountains.
Then, at the beginning of 1930, they began to round up the families too. This was more than the GPU could accomplish by itself.All Party activists were mobilized for the job. They were all people who knew one another well and knew their victims, but in carrying out this task they became dazed, stupefied. They would threaten people with guns, as if they were under a spell, calling small children “kulak bastards,” screaming “Blood–suckers!” And those “bloodsuckers” were so terrified they had hardly any blood of their own left in their veins. They were as white as clean paper. The eyes of the Party activists were glassy, like the eyes of cats. They were in the majority after all, and they were dealing with people who were acquaintances and friends.
True, they were under a spell—they had sold themselves on the idea that the so-called “kulaks” were pariahs, untouchables, vermin. They would not sit down at a “parasite’s” table; the “kulak” child was loathsome; the young “kulak” girl was lower than a louse. They looked on the so-called “kulaks” as cattle, swine, loathsome, repulsive: they had no souls; they stank; they all had venereal diseases; they were enemies of the people and exploited the labor of others. . . . And there was no pity for them. They were not to be regarded as people. . . .
The [Party] activist committee included all kinds—those who believed the propaganda and who hated the parasites and were on the side of the poorest peasantry, and others who used the situation for their own advantage. But most of them were merely anxious to carry out orders from above. They would have killed their own fathers and mothers simply in order to carry out instructions.
And the worst were not those who really believed the destruction of the kulaks would bring about a happy life. For that matter, the wild beasts were not the most poisonous among them either. The most poisonous and vicious were those who managed to square their own accounts. They shouted about political awareness—and settled their grudges and stole. And they stole out of crass selfishness: some clothes, a pair of boots. It was so easy to do a man in: you wrote a denunciation; you did not even have to sign it. All you had to say was that he had paid people to work for him as hired hands, or that he had owned three cows. . . . . . .
What torture was meted out to them! In order to massacre them, it was necessary to proclaim that kulaks are not human beings. . . .
And so, at the beginning of 1930, they began to liquidate the kulak families. The height of the fever was in February and March. They expelled them from their home districts so that when it was time for sowing there would be no kulaks left, so that a new life could begin. That is what we all said it would be: “the first collective farm spring.” It is clear that the committees of Party activists were in charge of the expulsions. There were no instructions as to how the expulsions should be carried out. One collective farm chairman might assemble so many carts. . . .MORE
"Kulak" or "bourgeois" were usually synonymous with "Christian." Everyone knew who the targets were. Over 7 million dead and some in the west still claim the famine was mostly the work of bad planning and weather.
Óæãîðîä: êàôåäðàëüíûé ñîáîð 1646 ã. [ Uzhgorod Cathedral]
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No, the kulaks were the farmers who had privatized. They were budding capitalists.
I also think of the Orthodox Russian saint known as St. Elizabeth the New Martyr. How Christians have suffered, but how glorious their fidelity to Christ.
I have become very interested in the messages of Our Lady of Soufanieh and her calls for unity among Christians and for a united date for Easter. In the days to come whether we call ourselves Catholic, Orthodox, or by some other name, we will find in facing the world and the State that we have great need of each other in withstanding as Christians.
I am not familiar with these apparitions/messages. But a united Easter would be a wonderful place to start!
It is also very moving that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople just celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Catholic Cathedral in Ravenna, Italy. The first time that has happened since 1054. We must be one, because Jesus told us to be one, but we cannot do it by lowest common denominator theology. There is sacrifice, humbling ourselves, and learning from each other on the road ahead if we are serious about fulfilling Jesus' prayer we may be one.
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