Battle for Crimean minds

+ Stalin rehab alert

A mother found the following version of history in her son's grade 8 notebook from a lesson delivered by a teacher (identified only as Alexandr A) at Simferopol's Lyceum No.1 in Crimea earlier this month:

"The word Ukraine is derogatory, it means 'borderland.' The word Ukraine was made legal in order to divide [the country]. We do not live in Ukraine, we live in Russia. Rus was baptized, not Ukraine. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities, not Ukrainian. In order to maintain unity of the Russian people, we should not recognize a state such as Ukraine. The Ukrainian people and language do not exist."

In Sobytiya's "Schoolchildren are taught to hate Ukraine," Crimean newspaper journalist Lana Myrnaya found officials at the school and in the autonomy's education ministry dismissed the need to take immediate action against the historian who's merely providing 12 year-olds with "his own point of view."

But an article about Russia's New History in the Sept. 20 edition of Dzerkalo Tyzhnia suggests that teacher Alexandr A. is merely following the history educational guidelines approved by the Kremlin.

In the article history PhDs Ihor Hyrych and Olena Radzyvill review resurgent Russia's rewriting of history in "New Russian Stalin, or constructors of the 'bright past'." According to a speech delivered by Moscow Memorial head Arseny Rohynsky in Paris, December 2007, the new Russian history textbooks and teachers' guides admit Stalin was bad, but spend more time focusing on the positive aspect of Stalin's thirty decades of bloody rule. Here's how the Holodomor in Russia is explained away:

"Yes, many villagers (peasants) died or were subject to other repression during collectivization, but an agricultural economy was given an industrial base; yes, industrialization was conducted on account of the peasantry and using violent methods, but in place of agrarian Russia there came an industrialized USSR; yes Stalin organized mass repressions, but he won the war…" and "Stalin was an effective 'manager'"

This whitewashing of Stalin for the Holodomors, purges, terror, Molotov-Ribbentrop, Katyn and demonization of Ukraine and Poland is part of the new Russian Ministry of Education's State Standard for teaching history.

This standard, used for all textbooks for all grades has resulted in "the latest Putin-era textbooks treating Russia's history from a position of strength, justifying militarism and the Russian state's aggressive designs. They include xenophobic treatments, demonize other nations and formulate a clear image of the enemy, thus recreating the old bipolar model of the world from the times of J. Stalin to L. Brezhnev."

Concerning the enemy "what is good and positive from Europe and North America's point of view is not good for Russia, it's negative," according to the authors.

The "Third Rome's" geopolitical designs include the Balkans and Asia Minor.

As for Molotov-Ribbentrop and two years of joint Nazi-Soviet collaboration, Russian teachers tell their students that Stalin was forced to do so, otherwise Hitler would have strukh a deal with Great Britain to attack Soviet Russia.

On Sunday afternoon, with just under 22.5 million votes, nameofrussia.ru had Stalin in second place, 300,000 votes behind Alexandr Nevsky and less than 100,000 votes ahead of Peter I. I was able to cast a vote for Mendeleev from the list of twelve, but only after correctly answering a multiple choice history question – a clever filter to make sure that only Russians can vote for their greatest.

Links:

Schoolchildren are taught to hate Ukraine by Lana Myrnaya (Russian, Sobytiya, Sept. 12, 2008):
http://www.sobytiya.com.ua/index.php?number=136&doc=1221207546

New Russian Stalin, or constructors of the 'bright past' by Ihor Hyrych and Olena Radzyvill (Ukrainian, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Sept. 20):
http://www.dt.ua/3000/3150/64125/

Will the tongue lead to Moscow? by Valentyna Samar (Ukrainian, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Sept. 20):
http://www.dt.ua/1000/1550/64140/

Russian Education Ministry's History Standard:
http://history.standart.edu.ru/

"Greatest Russian" project website:
http://www.nameofrussia.ru/

Crimea on my mind

One can only hope that the warmongers and analysts are wrong and that the Kremlin’s keepers, drunk from “victory” in Georgia, are not seriously considering an invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea. But the situation in Crimea is very different and a South Ossetia scenario seems unlikely. First, Southern Ossetia was de facto a war zone before the events of 8-8-8. Second, Ukraine’s president has been called a lot of thing, but "hothead" is not one of them. The only way Russia could conceivably justify invading Crimea would be if Russians began being killed. Rumors abound that the FSB is preparing cells of jihadists in the peninsula to provide the pretext for military annexation. In may well be in the realm of fantasy, but Moscow has resorted to similar trickery in the past. Recall the NKVD units that posed as UPA soldiers during WWII and killed innocent civilians disguised as nationalist freedom fighters.

This of course does not mean that the situation in Crimea does not warrant attention. Last week, I had the opportunity to talk about Crimea with Oleksandr Skipalsky, a 40-year veteran of Soviet and later Ukrainian intelligence services and Boris Kozhin, the first commander of independent Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet. Both men cautiously praised president Yushchenko’s words and actions vis-à-vis Georgia but warned of the problems posed by the country’s increasingly dysfunctional state apparatus.

Vice admiral Kozhin spoke frankly about Ukraine’s ability to prevent Russian ships from returning to Sevastopol. He said that Ukrainian forces are incapable of physically blocking the Russian boats with ships, mines or bombs of their own. But Ukraine was right in making the declaration and sending the right signals through diplomatic channels: “Now the world knows our position.”

Concerning Crimea, Kozhin said that twenty to twenty-five thousand of the peninsula’s residents have already been already granted citizenship and passports by Russia. Skipalsky said that in comparison to South Ossetia, Russia has completed about 50 to 60 percent of the groundwork in Crimea. He said that the Kremlin’s Crimea-based initiatives are systemic in nature and worked down to the nitty-gritty details: when Russia opens a school in Crimea, the event is not just about a school-opening: it’s a military event, a media event, an intelligence event, all geared towards creating “positive influence” in Crimea. He criticized the Ukrainian government for failing to take a systemic approach to affairs in the peninsula.

I asked Skipalsky about the last time the specter of Crimean separatism reared its ugly head and the formula for success in its defeat. It was the year 1994 and Kyiv was embroiled with its own economic and political problems as “nationally-conscious” president Leonid Kravchuk was in the process of being replaced by “pro-Russian” president Leonid Kuchma. Crimea elected its own president in February of 1994 – vehemently pro-Russian Yuri Meshkov, who campaigned on promises of holding a referendum on Crimean independence and joining Russia, introducing Russia’s ruble as the peninsula’s currency and dual citizenship. “Meshkovshchina” is the term used to Crimea separatism of that vintage and many of the same faces were around then that are around now, including Konstantin Zatulin. Skipalsky said that the separatist movement was funded by a drugs-for-cash spetz-operation to Turkey organized by Russian intelligence. Meshkov lasted in office for a little over a year until the presidency was abolished

With the political mayhem in Kyiv and the country’s hyper-inflated economy in general, it would seem that Crimean separatism had very high chances of succeeding in 1994-1995. How was it averted back then?

Some Ukrainian politicians take credit for avoiding the loss of Crimea to Russia. But Skipalsky said that ultimately it was Russian president Boris Yeltsin that put the kibosh on Crimean separatism in 1995. "Yeltsin stopped it. Yeltsin did not want it." The problem today is that Yeltsin is no longer the Kremlin’s keeper.

Kremlin neuters UN on Mugabe, Stalin

Russia’s torpedoing of sanctions against Zimbabwe wasn’t the only outrage Moscow engineered in the UN late last week. On July 11 the ambassador of the world’s largest country to the 192-nation organization lobbed the latest news bomb in the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation war concerning the artificial famine it organized over 75 years ago. Thus official Russia continues to protect the legacy of a dictator from the past (Stalin) and the regime of a dictator from the present (Mugabe).

“UN denies Ukraine's genocide claim” read the headlines of reports based on comments made by RF ambo Vitaly Churkin that were initially disseminated by the RIA Novosti news agency and promptly parroted by Ukrainian and international media outlets.

“We believe it would be a disservice to the memories of hundreds of thousands of people who died of hunger in other countries and regions of the former Soviet Union to raise this issue at the UN, in relation to only one of the regions that suffered,” Churkin said.

“Churkin said it wasn't only Ukraine that starved in what he called ‘a tragic page in the shared history of the peoples of the Soviet Union,’ but also Belarus, the Volga area, the Black Sea area, the Don area and the North Caucasus,” according to UPI report from New York.

The original RIA Novosti report offered an expanded list of areas that “went hungry from 1931… northern Kazakhstan, the southern Urals, and western Siberia.”

But reporter Dmytri Gornostaev’s original Russian language report includes Churkin’s outrageous claim that “there was also famine in Western Ukraine that was part of Poland.” Something must have been lost in translation, because there is no mention of famine in Western Ukraine in RIA’s English language report that merely states “Moreover, part of present-day western Ukraine was then Polish territory, he [Churkin] said.”

Western Ukraine was annexed by Soviet forces in 1939, when Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23 of that year. With Stalin’s support, Hitler was free to wreak havoc in Western Europe.

RIA’s original report contains additional gloating on the part of Russia that was left out of subsequent reports:

“The UN General Assembly backed Russia's recommendation not to include Holodomor in the current session's discussions. The decision was made at a plenary meeting on Friday [July 11].”

and:

“Earlier this month the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe adopted a resolution condemning the famine, but falling short of recognizing it as an act of genocide.”

Meanwhile, the UN’s department of public information had this to say about Churkin’s July 11 actions during the General Assembly meeting:

“Only one Member State had opposed the proposal to commemorate the Holomodor during the current session and that Member had alluded to the broader suffering during that period of famine.”

“While Ukraine shared the sorrow of others who had also suffered, the fact must not be watered down that the case of Ukraine had differed from that of others, he said.”

“The Assembly approved the [General] Committee’s recommendation to not include the item on the agenda of the current session.”

“The representative of the Russian Federation then said that the famine had been a tragically black period for everyone throughout the Soviet Union and had been the result of faulty agricultural management. It was incorrect, inaccurate and improper to isolate Ukraine’s situation and to bring up the issue from the perspective of just one party.”

The UN’s current, 62nd session, will soon come to an end, and the next, 63rd, session is set to open in a little over two months’ time. According to the UN website, the deadline for the provisional agenda of the 63rd session is July 18. The supplementary list of agenda items is due August 27.

Thus, while Russia has managed to avoid international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide, there is still hope of scoring a victory for truth in the year to come.

If Churkin and the Kremlin are really interested in helping the international community understand exactly what was going on in the USSR in 1932, they could start off by answering 3 simple questions.

1. Why did Stalin and his henchmen single out the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic for covering up the real state of affairs in July 1932?

In a July 6 telegram to Stalin, Soviet Prime Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Communist Party Secretary Lazar Kaganovich wrote:

“Criticism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (bolshevik) of Ukraine work should emerge during the Ukrainian conference for shortcomings which have led to grave conditions in several districts. The question of treating this issue in the press arises. In order to avoid feeding the foreign press, we feel it necessary to maintain a reserved tone in our exposition of that criticism without publicizing the facts about the state of affairs in the bad districts. Please provide your thoughts to Kharkiv. Molotov, Kaganovich, Skuratov Station, Kursk Railways, 6.VII.1932. 8:38 AM.”

Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, (Moscow, 2001, 798 p.), Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepyska. 1931-1936, pp.218-219.

2. Why did the Soviet Union’s highest policy-making body, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party single out Ukraine and Ukrainians living in the Northern Caucasus in its October 22, 1932 “Resolution on grain procurements in Ukraine and North Caucasus”?

Distrustful of local leaders, Stalin dispatched Molotov and Kaganovich to Ukraine and the “ukrainianized” North Caucasus with this resolution. Using wide-ranging methods of repressions, they managed to extort all grain and food reserves, resulting in millions of deaths.

Source: Famine of 1993-1933 in Ukraine: through historian eyes, in the language of documents. (Kyiv, 1990, 606p.) Holod 1932-1933 rokiv na Ukraini: ochyma istorykiv, movoyu dokumentiv, p. 238.

3. Why didn’t Stalin order similar measures against the populations in Belarus, the Volga area, the Black Sea area, the Don area, northern Kazakhstan, the southern Urals and western Siberia? Or did he?

It’s too bad the UN can’t order Russia to open up its archives from that period and even worse that Russia has not done so voluntarily.

As for Ukraine’s claim of genocide, official Kyiv is not denying that genocide took place in other parts of the Soviet Union during the evil empire’s seven decades of bloody rule. But Ukraine
can’t make that claim on behalf of other countries. Ukraine for its part has already declassified all archival documents from that period that show the unique nature of forced famine within the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet republic. Seventy-five years after the terror famine, Ukrainian society is only beginning to come to terms with this darkest of pages from her history. Russia, meanwhile, is going in the opposite direction and resurrecting the cult of
Stalin.

Maybe a UN resolution could condemn the Kremlin for that? Probably not. God forbid the sexagenarian international organization upset Moscow. Robert “let me be Hitler tenfold” Mugabe. Josef Stalin. Russia is protecting a dictator from the past and a dictator from the present. And the UN doesn’t seem capable of doing anything about that.
=========

RIA Novosti’s Russian report:
http://rian.ru/world/20080712/113816252.html

RIA Novosti’s English report:
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080712/113827915.html

UPI report:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/12/UN_denies_Ukraines_genocide_claim/UPI-96751215891521/

UN General Assembly July 11 press release:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10728.doc.htm

Vlad’s Half-year Gloat

Had the Kremlin decided not to shut down The eXile – English “mankind’s only alternative” in Moscow since 1997 – one of Vlad Kalashnikov’s Daily Gloats over “American dumbf*ckers” would likely be about the “recessionary state of American economies” controlled by “bastard slave-holders and sleazy businessmen” and a declaration of victory for the wise ways of the Russian command economy run so efficiently by the state and how “together with China, they’re going to kick American economic ass!"

Even hockey star Pavel Bure has seen the light and is ditching the NHL for the Russian league. "Gluttonous American pigs forced to diet" will remember 2008 as the year of Russia’s comeback: Dima Bilan’s Eurovision victory, St. Petersburg Zenit’s winning of the UEFA cup, landing the 2014 Sochi Olympics and victory over "American Canadians" in the world hockey championship! Not bad for the first half of the year!” Kalashnikov might gloat.

If the Kremlin has its way, Vlad Kalashnikov may soon be gloating over Russia's economic conquest of Ukraine that forced “uncle-Sam serving orange fascists to their knees and out of office.”

The final stages of that conquest are not limited to charging world energy prices to one of the world's least energy efficient countries. The Kremlin's official roadmap to victory was succinctly outlined in the top story in this week’s Dzerkalo Tyzhnia on the June 28 Moscow meeting between prime ministers Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Putin.

During talks Russia, “a country on the march to making the ruble a freely convertible currency,” suggested that trade with Ukraine – worth $7 bln last year – be conducted on the basis of ruble payments. “Simply speaking, it’s pure water YEP” she wrote, referring to the fruition of the Kremlin’s Single/Common Economic Space wet dream of an economic union of Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus. In other words it’s a done deal “We will chase your blood-covered American dollars into the Black Sea and sink them with your Colorado potato beetles and NATO corvettes!” Vlad might gloat.

The other issues on the Tymoshenko-Putin agenda were:

• Russian interest in Odesa Portside Factory privatization
• Creation of joint state-owned aviation holding
• Ukraine’s purchase of nuclear power assemblies from TVEL (Russia)
• Ukraine’s non-purchase of nuclear fuel from Westinghouse (US)
• Joint oil and gas extraction (“including 17,000 square kilometers of Black Sea Shelf that greedy snake oil Vanco barons want all to themselves!” Vlad might write)
• Ukraine should abandon the goal of creating a closed cycle of uranium enrichment (“You say no to Iran, we screw Ukraine,” according to Vlad.
• Moscow’s “sensitivity of interests to uranium reserves in Ukraine’s Zhovti Vody (Yellow Waters): Where uranium ore has been mined and enriched since the early 1950s and “where the combined forces of Orthodox Cossacks and Muslim Tatars kicked sorry Catholic Polish ass in 1648!”

The issues of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic vector and the post-2017 fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet were also discussed by Tymoshenko and Putin, but the author dares not provide details “because we cannot confirm the quotes. We hope that source simply did not fully understand…” reports DT.

Vlad, meanwhile, might as well be gloating over victory in putting a damper to Ukraine’s hopes of seeing a MAP from NATO later this year: Even “American imperialist capitalist boss” Henry Kissinger” recognizes that the Western security system belongs behind the Elbe, not Moscow River!

Too bad The eXile is not around, because Vlad sure has a lot to gloat about.

=========

Fresh installments of Vlad’s Daily Gloats are no longer available at The eXile’s website:
http://www.exile.ru

“About political gas and gas politics” by Alla Yeremenko in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia at:
English: http://www.mw.ua/1000/1550/63489/, Ukrainian:http://www.dt.ua/1000/1550/63489/

"Unconventional wisdom about Russia"
By Henry A. Kissinger Published: July 1, 2008 International Herald Tribune
“The issue of relations with Ukraine goes to the heart of both sides' [US and Russia’s] perceptions of the nature of international affairs. Genuine independence for Ukraine is essential for a peaceful international system and must be unambiguously supported by the U.S. But the movement of the Western security system from the Elbe River to the approaches to Moscow brings home Russia's decline in a way bound to generate a Russian emotion that will inhibit the solution of all other issues. It should be kept on the table without forcing the issue to determine the possibilities of making progress on other issues.”

1933 Timoshenko denounces Holodomor

Winnipeg Free Press
Monday, December 25, 1933

SOVIET METHODS ARE

DENOUNCED BY

UKRAINE SPEAKER

Prof. V. P. Timoshenko Says

Peasants Endure Enslavement

Worse Than in Czarist Rule

Forced methods of collectivization of farm lands in the Ukraine by the Communist regime in Soviet Russia have reduced the peasantry to enslavement worse than they had ever endured in the past 70-years even under the czarist rule, declared Prof. Vladimir P. Timoshenko, author of several studies and now lecturer in economics and statistics at Michigan University, when addressing a Ukrainian audience In the Ukrainian Greek-Orthodox cathedral, Saturday night.

Sunday night Prof. Timoshenko was the guest of the Ukrainian Students' club "Prometheus" at a banquet in his honor at the Picardy hall, where a hearty welcome was extended to him by a number of well known Ukrainians in the city. These included Rt. Rev. S. W. Sawchuk. head of the Ukrainian Greek-Orthodox church in Canada; W. Swystun; M. Stechishin, editor of the Ukrainian Voice, and D. Maksemiuk, who spoke on behalf of the Students' club.

The Soviet government in the winter of 1929-30, eager to inaugurate the collective farm system on a large scale, and to exterminate the well-to-do peasantry as a class, had resorted to administrative coercion and pressure because this class of people was considered a menace to the Communist regime, Prof. Timoshenko told a packed meeting Saturday night.

Not only had the property of these peasants been confiscated, including buildings, machinery, equipment and livestock, the speaker went on, but the wealthier peasants were forbidden to join the collectives, and had not been accepted as simple workers on collective farms even after the wholesale confiscation of their property, he said.

Compares Economic Status

Comparing the economic status of the Ukraine during the time of the czar regime and today under the Communist rule, Prof. Timoshenko stated that the people had enjoyed greater autonomy under the absolute monarchy of the czar than they have today under the republican constitution.

Refering to the industrialization of the country under the five-year plan, Prof. Timoshenko stated that the Ukraine benefitted nothing from the industrialization as the gigantic factories were built in the areas outside of Ukraine. The reason for this was, he said, the Communist regime fears that one day the Ukraine may secede from Russia, possibly by intervention, and the industries be used against them.

Saturday afternoon Prof. Timoshenko had a brief interview with Premier John Bracken. The interview centred around his recent book on "Agricultural Russia and the Wheat Problem."

1933 Big Four Wheat Talks Fail

Winnipeg Free Press
Friday, September 29, 1933
====================

“BIG FOUR” WHEAT TALK WITH

SOVIET PROVES FRUITLESS

Russia Insists on Exporting

About Double Amount Allotted to It

(Associated Press Cable)

London, Sept. 29 — Another meeting between wheat representatives of the "big four" exporting nations and the Russian delegate, at Canada House, held Thursday in an effort to solve the problem arising from the Soviet government's demand for the right to export about double the amount allotted to it, broke up with an official statement that "no definite conclusions have been reached."
The Russian, Abraham Gourevitch, told the press that his government had not changed its position. "Why should we?" he asked.
The official statement said that "further negotiations will be carried on between the governments."
The Soviet delegate, who left the meeting before its conclusion, said that the representatives of the big powers might meet again early in November.
Under the international wheat agreement drawn up at the World Economic Conference, Russia would be permitted to export 37,000,000 bushels.
At Thursday's meeting, Russia turned down a conditional offer from Canada and the United States to increase the Soviet Union's allotment for the coming year by 22 per cent.
A reservation was made in this offer that there was to be no increase unless world demand justified extending the 560,000,000 bushels limit for world exports tentatively adopted at the recent wheat conference.
This would have meant a direct sacrifice by Canada and the United States, it was said, as the original agreement was that these two countries were to share any possible extension in the world quota.
The Russian delegate insisted that his nation must have twice the present tentative allotment of 37,000,000 bushels to satisfy her needs.
Although a brief communique at the close of the session said the "chief exporting nations" were represented, it was learned later the Argentine and Australian delegates did not attend. It was explained that this was because only Canada and the United States were concerned, as any concession would be at their expense.
The conditional increase offered to Russia was 8,000,000 bushels, which would place her practically on an equal basis with the United States, whose allotment is 47,000,000.
Thursday's action by Soviet union (sic) will probably end efforts here to bring Russia into the world wheat agreement at least until November.
The Russian delegate said when he left Thursday's meeting that he had not been in communication with Mos­cow before he conferred with the other delegates. Previously, however, it had been understood by other dele­gates the meeting had been called to hear Moscow's response to the in­crease offer.
All of the delegates have been consulting their home governments at length, it was said.

OCR-ed in Kyiv, June 2008

1933: The Toronto Daily Star

The Toronto Daily Star

Monday, November 13, 1933

====================================================

Soviet grain tax blamed for hardship of peasants

Farmers facing another year of food shortage in Ukraine, critics are ousted

BY: Pierre Van Paassen

Kieff, Oct. 25. — In spite of the abundant harvest this year, the Russian people are facing another winter of great hardship. Old peasants who have survived the famine of last winter feel certain that a new ordeal "even more terrible" than last year stands before the door. Certain responsible members of the Communist party, after making sure that they were not overheard, admitted that famine conditions were certainly inevitable for the 1933-1934 season.
The reason for this strange anomaly, famine in the midst of plenty, is the manner and method in which the government collects the grain tax. By far too much is taken away to leave the rural regions of the Ukraine to subsist on. Protests avail nothing. High officials of the Communist party in the Ukraine, who have taken their courage in their hand and who have ventured to point out that the new system of grain collections ruins the farmers and drives them to starvation and destitution, are simply deprived of their posts. Zaslavsky, Karachewitsch and Rybak are names on everybody's lips in Kieff. They are three officials who, at the risk of their lives, advised Moscow of the ruinous practices of the grain collectors.
They have been removed from office for their pains on the accusation of being Trotskyist counter-revolutionaries. A host of lesser officials has followed. Tens of thousands of members have been ousted from the Communist party in the Ukraine by order of the Stalinian autocrats in Moscow during the last few weeks. The charges may be summarized in one word: criticism. Alarmed over the prospects of another winter of famine they had ventured to question the methods of grain collection.

Plan Contains Joker
As the non-conformist peasants, that are those not in collective farms, feared right along the new favorable decree on grain collection which is being enforced this year contained a joker. The joker did not become apparent until the collectors arrived on the spot. The decree provides for the collection of a fixed tax, amounting to about thirty per cent of the harvest. This would leave the peasants seventy per cent of their harvest for their own use and for seed grain, while any surplus might be disposed of by selling it in the open market. The announcement of these new conditions this spring produced a feeling of optimism, which was encouraged by the press and the Stalinian statement that the time of hardships for the peasants was over.
It is becoming apparent now that the harvest is in full swing that the decree does not leave the peasants seventy per cent, of their grain, but only twenty, fifteen, ten and even five per cent, or nothing at all, according to different districts. The collectors are not proceeding according to the volume of the harvest, but according to the plans of sowing which were drawn up long ago in the offices of the grain trust. As far less was sown in many districts than was officially planned, but the estimates of collection are nevertheless to be fulfilled, the peasants come out in a miserable manner.

Government Blamed Kulaks
The government put the blame for the discrepancy between grain estimates and actual harvest on the enemies of the regime, Kulaks and wreckers. Those people are charged with purposely sowing less than was officially anticipated. Fact of the matter is that in many regions the peasants were decimated by famine and that the survivors were too weak to put the stipulated area under crop.
Yet the grain-tax now being collected is as large as if every acre had yielded the full quota estimated by the planners. What the peasants thought to be their own, to be disposed of at will, is again taken by the collectors who carry out the decree to the letter. In view of the fact that collectors are all devoted party members and every party member sees in every peasant an avowed or secret opponent of the regime, it stands to reason that there is little gentleness in seizing the grain.

Peasants Desert Farms
It should be added that the collective farms make no exception. The toll there is also taken on the planned crop and not on the amount of wheat actually harvested. A member of the party, a reliable old revolutionary from Moscow, who was in prison for twenty years under the czar and who visited every part of the Ukraine as an official inspector of farms told me that as a result of the ruthless grain collections many collective farms were already deserted, the workers leaving in disgust "There are villages where not a human being remains," he said. "All the houses are empty." This statement was confirmed by several others, whose word I have no reason to doubt.
On the other hand the authorities when questioned affirm that everything is proceeding, smoothly and quite according to schedule. To come with objections, baaed on personal observations on definite statements by men who ought to know and on all sorts of sinister rumors arouses suspicion. "Our enemies are active in poisoning public opinion," it is said.
Whatever view is taken by the government officials, however, the fact remains that the peasants feel certain that the stocks left them after paying their taxes and back-dues for loans in the past, will be wholly inadequate in the coming winter. And that they do not say this for fun is evidenced by the fact that a new exodus of tens of thousands from the farms to the cities is already on the move. Unless the government checks this outpour, the rural regions will be depopulated next winter and spring and the sowing campaigns will again fall short of the plan.

OCR-ed in Kyiv, 2008.

Cosmic elections or astronomical farce?

Courtesy of M. F.

Voter turn out was unexpectedly low in Sunday’s local government election: initial reports quoted 48%, but the Kyiv Territorial Electoral Commission was saying more than 53% by March 28. The TEC has 5 days after E-Day to establish official results (presumably by Friday). This posting is based on preliminary returns from 964 of 1,026 polling stations.

Blocs/parties in Kyiv Rada	May '08 Seats*	March '06 Seats	Difference
Leonid Chernovetsky Bloc	43	21	22
Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc	32	41	-9
Vitaly Klitschko / Pora PRP	15	14	1
Volodymyr Lytvyn Bloc	11	6	5
HAK Hrom. Aktyv	8	7	1
Party of Regions	6	9	-3
Mykola Katerynchuk Bloc / Nasha Ukrayina	5	15	-10
* Source: Ukrayinska Pravda.com.ua , 964 of 1026 poll stations reporting

An alarming majority of apathetic, inebriated or otherwise incapacitated voters opted out of the electoral process. As a result, 1% in the final election tally equaled 10,000 votes, according to Ukrayinska Pravda. With that math, a party/bloc needed to “organize” only 30,000 ballots to secure a spot in the city council sun. The fact that more than 30 parties and electoral blocs split 15% of the popular vote also made life easier for the 7 political forces that qualified for rada with at least 3%.

4 more years of “Cosmos”?
Kyiv mayor L. Chernovetsky appears to have come away the big winner from Sunday’s snap election in Ukraine’s capital city: he bested his March 2006 mayoral results by more than five to 37 percent in May 2008.
The anti-Chernovetsky vote was efficiently split, most notably by Yu. Tymoshenko Bloc mayoral candidate O. Turchynov (19%) and V. Klitschko (18%). (One for the “told you so” files). Klitschko’s support fell from 24% fourteen months ago, but the former heavyweight boxing champ will still have a 15-member caucus in the Kyiv rada. His bloc has vowed to prove electoral law violations and challenge the results in the courts.

Kyiv Rada math
Chernovetsky’s eponymous bloc gained 17% and 22 seats in the Kyiv Rada and will now have 43. His will be the largest caucus and best suited to court coalition allies in the 120-seat chamber.
Reports suggest that L. Chernovetsky bloc will likely find common ground quickest with the V. Lytvyn Bloc and the Hromadsky Aktyv Kyeva, because they are political projects financed by business partners V. Khmelnytsky and A. Ivanov, with whom the mayor has done business. Together, these 3 caucuses have enough for 62 seats.

Coalition Combos for 120-seat Kyiv Rada*
Chernovetsky + Lytvyn + HAK	62
Chernovetsky + Lytvyn + HAK + Regions	68
Tymoshenko + Klitschko + Katerynchuk	52
* Source: Ukrayinska Pravda.com.ua , 964 of 1026 poll stations reporting)

The Party of the Regions’ 6 seats could further solidify the majority. One analyst suggested that the Mykola Katerynchuk Bloc could join to form a “grand coalition” in the council. That would leave the Y. Tymoshenko and V. Klitschko blocs with less than 50 seats; M. Katerynchuk’s 5 seats are not enough to form anything resembling an orange/democratic coalition.

Full party lists:
http://kiev.pravda.com.ua/publications/4839d358c201e/

“Leonid Chernovestky vyhrav match na svoyemu poli,” Ukrayinska Pravda.com.ua, 26.05.08:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2008/5/26/76527.htm

2: Exit Poll on May 25

This reporter is hightailing out of the crazy capital city for all the chaos of the Kyiv city council and mayoral elections this Sunday.

Not to worry – all the ground work on Election Day will be completed by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS) who is fielding 200 interviewers to poll 10,000 voters as they leave 100 of Kyiv’s 1,000+ polling stations. KIIS says the coverage should result in an error rate in the 3% range.

The interviews will be conducted between 8 AM and 10 PM Kyiv time (EST+7), and the results will be announced on ICTV’s Fakty news program shortly after 10 PM: http://www.ictv.ua

On the web, the exit poll results will be made available by Democratic Initiatives Foundation at the site: http://www.exitpoll.org.ua

KMIS/KIIS website: www.kiis.com.ua

BBC's "Greatest" goes sour in Ukraine

cover of Segodnya issue with Tabachnyk interview

The scandal surrounding the Ukrainian version of BBC’s popular 2002 “Greatest Britons” popular history TV project is being portrayed by Ukrainian media as a battle between supporters of 10th century Kyivan-Rus ruler Yaroslav Mudry and 20th century Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who finished first and third by the time more than two million votes were counted on May 16.

However the supporters who should be most upset are those of football legend Valery Lobanovsky and of 18th century wandering philosopher Hryhori Skovoroda.
An investigation into the daily vote totals from the project’s last week shows that over 5,500 (5, 577) votes of support for the two “greats” vanished from the final total.

Meanwhile, a half million votes of support for Yaroslav Mudry were generated in the project’s final days causing media watchdogs to cry foul over the use of technology to dump votes in favor of one candidate over another for political purposes.



Stuffing Great Ukrainians

Final ranking	Top Ten "Great Ukrainians"	Interim Results 13.05	Final Results 16.05	Difference
2	Mykola Amosov	124,938	322,321	197,383
3	Stepan Bandera	208,926	261,247	52,321
6	Valery Lobanovsky	54,181	51,564	–2617
8	Hryhory Skovoroda	31,050	28,090	–2960
9	Lesia Ukrayinka	23,295	26,590	3,295
10	Ivan Franko	22,205	24,247	2,042
5	Bohdan Khmelnytsky	52,127	64,931	12,804
7	Vyacheslav Chornovil	36,661	42,743	6,082
4	Taras Shevchenko	93,354	150,873	57,519
1	Yaroslav Mudry	63,442	648,443	585,021

Source: Vakhtang Kipiani, “Yak vkraly “Velykoho Ukrayinstya’” (How the “Great Ukrainian” was stolen), Ukrayinska Pravda website (Ukrainian lang.), May 20, 2008 Link to original: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2008/5/20/76074.htm

SMS vote stuffing
Both Mudry and Bandera supporters organized multiple voting by fan clubs, as did the Communists (for Lenin as a “Great Ukrainian) and student clubs.

But Party of Regions’ ideologue Dmytro Tabachnyk managed to organize 585,021 votes of support for Yaroslav Mudry in the last three days of the “Great Ukrainians” project.

Mudry won with 648,443 votes. The shows presenters claimed that “Great Ukrainians” broke world records for participation with 1.6 million unique voters, who sent, phoned and texted over 2 million votes for their historical heroes.

At the after show party Tabachnyk reportedly boasted that he wanted to “screw Bandera” and told the Segodnya newspaper: “all the nationalists needed for victory was six hundred generous banderites” implying that at Hr 1 per vote, Bandera was Hr 600,000 or $120,000 short of victory. (Photo of newspaper cover above).

According to the show's chief editor Vakhtang Kipiani, 348,017 votes were cast for Mudry between May 15 and 16 and 64% of votes for the Rus rulers came in the last three days of the project (see table).

Investigation
Veteran journalist Kipiani exposed the fraud. In addition to being the chief editor of the “Great Ukrainians” project he also took part as Bandera’s celebrity endorsement and author of the 10-minute movie about the man killed by Moscow by 1959.

According to telephone company records Kipiani obtained, 15,454 SMS were sent from a single phone number “in packets” over the course of 18 hours the night before the final program aired.

“After the scandalous final I obtained a certain portion of insider information and can confirm: the announced results, allegedly based on 1,621,049 viewer votes, are a mass-scale manipulation of public opinion,” Kipiani wrote.

Tabachnyk’s past screwings

Tabachnyk has been involved in vote falsification in the past, most notably in the publication of falsified electoral results of the second round of the 2004 presidential elections (also electronically-manipulated by “transit servers”) in the parliamentary Holos Ukrayiny newspaper.

On a personal note: In this reporter’s opinion the top three should have been Taras, Ivan and Lesia. It was honor enough to see Bandera make the top ten: a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll from December 2007 showed Bandera ranking 14 of the top 20, among 60% of respondents who said they could “name a great Ukrainian.” In that poll, Taras Shevchenko was the hands-down country-wide winner from Lviv to Luhansk.

4: Vote-buying bonanza!

Make money with your vote, but make it count using your mobile phone camera and cellophane

Vote-buying for the imminent Kyiv mayoral and city council elections is “massive,” according to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a veteran elections watchdog NGO.

“We are receiving many reports of vote-buying in Kyiv. And it is occurring on a massive scale, with tens of thousands of votes already being bought,” said Ihor Popov, CVU head at a May 20 press conference at the UNIAN news agency.

Popov said the vote buying bonanza will last right up to the elections. The CVU report “urges law-enforcement authorities to detect every such a case.”

But the NGO also offered some very practical advice “if a voter wants to make money by providing mobile phone-photograph evidence of their ballot. The CVU suggests placing transparent cellophane on top of the ballot and marking the names of candidate and political forces names that are parties to the ‘purchase’ agreement … on the actual ballot place the mark in the row that corresponds to the voter’s real choice.”

The CVU said that several political forces are active on the retail electoral market and that the practice of signing “social agreements” with voters who provide passport data for material remuneration has been employed for at least five years in Ukraine.

The practice “has proven successful in the past: according to the organizers of these crimes, around half of the people who received funds voted for their political force,” Popov said. But it will not be as effective in Kyiv this time around.

“Our data shows that students living in student housing have sold their votes three-four times and are waiting for the next client. I think that they will destroy this practice, as control is impossible,” Popov said.

The CVU expects a voter turn-out between 55-60% this Sunday. In the Sept. 2007 snap Rada elections, voter turn-out was over 63%: of 2.2 million eligible voters, 1.4 million ballots were cast at 1,028 stations.

Seventy candidates and more than 35 political parties and blocs are in the running for the post of capital city mayor and 120 seats in the Kyiv Rada.

UNIAN report: http://www.unian.net/news/print.php?id=252034
Committee of Voters of Ukraine: http://www.cvu.org.ua/

Criminality of Holodomor denial

Ukraine’s first president recalls how his job was once to deny the Holodomor and dispels drought myth

In the chapter “Peredden” (The day before) of his autobiography, President Leonid Kravchuk recalls the shake-up that occurred in the Communist Party of Ukraine after Volodymyr Ivashko was elected leader and replaced Volodymyr Shcherbytsky in Sept. 1989. Seventeen years of zastoi-ful rule under Shcherbytsky – Leonid Brezhnev’s fellow Dnipropetrovsker – brought humanity many memorable moments including Shcherbytsky’s denial that a nuclear disaster had occurred at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April, 1986. The Communists were experts at denial and the disinformation campaign against the Holodomor spanned decades. Earlier in his career as a communist ideologist, Leonid Kravchuk was responsible for countering the Ukrainian Diaspora’s public education campaign of the 1980s, marking 50 years of the Soviet terror famine in 1983. That’s when Kravchuk, by his own words, first learned the truth of the matter:

“Thanks to the position of the new leader of the republican communist party, Ukraine saw its first book on the Holodomor. That was, without exaggeration, a bold move. I do not want to speak ill of Shcherbytsky but I could not imagine a similar publication appearing when he was first person of the republic. Ivashko instructed me to collect the necessary materials. I was already familiar with this bitter subject. In the early 1980s many publications began appearing in the Western press on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most horrific tragedies in the history of our people. A counter-propaganda machine was put into motion, and I was one of its “wheels.” It was then, in 1984 I believe, that I first had an opportunity to study a small selection of archival materials. What I read and saw astonished me. It was total terror and I constantly chased away the idea that these pitiful people were doomed to torture by design. That understanding came several years later.”

“When Ivashko instructed me to find materials for the future book, I do not think he could imagine the scope of this tragedy. He had perhaps heard something, but I think he believed that it was nothing but rumors. Volodymyr Antonovych probably thought the publication would dispel those rumors.”

“It soon became apparent that neither Ivashko nor I (already somewhat familiar with these materials) could grasp the entire scope of the evil. With an opportunity to study the materials more closely, I felt a second shock, far more powerful than the one experienced in 1984. The crime was so horrible and the Communist Party’s guilt so apparent, that I lost the ability to think about anything else. I had always enjoyed a strong sleep, even in hostile conditions. But now I first encountered insomnia: the faces of the children killed by famine stood before my eyes constantly. I began to feel remorseful as I realized that I belong to an organization that can justifiably be called criminal. At the same time I did not want to associate the monsters guilty of murdering millions of my countrymen with many of the honest and respectable communists whom I knew and worked with.”

“The selected materials and photographs (one and half thousand, I believe) were passed on to the first secretary. Ivashko telephoned me soon thereafter. His voice was trembling: ‘This can’t be so!’ He refused to believe and I understood why. He ordered a publication ban until such time that evidence was found that the famine was not artificial. Ivashko ordered me to see if there were droughts in Ukraine in those years. I sent a request to the republican Hydromedtsentr state hydrological center but they did not keep those kinds of records. I sent requests to appropriate services in Moscow and they provided very detailed information. It showed that rainfall levels for those years were not lower than acceptable norms. This was a very serious argument and Ivashko decided to raise the issue at a meeting of the politburo. The discussion was not easy, but thanks to the principled nature of the first secretary, the book’s publication was approved. Many were understandably displeased with the decision. However, the most terrifying photographs were not approved for print, and their number was reduced from 1,500 to around 350.”

Kravchuk, Leonid Mayemo te, shcho mayemo: spohady i rozdumy, Kyiv, 2002, Stolittya (392 p.) ISBN 966-95952-8-2 , pp. 44-46, English translation mine

Holodomor-denial on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_denial

Uke Aussie Football Legend

Austrian-born Australian Ukrainian Alex “Jezza” Jesaulenko was made “Legend of the Game” by the Australian Football Hall of Fame in Melbourne on May 8. It is the highest honor in the game and has only been bestowed 21 times before Jezza was made.

Jezza was born in end-of-WW2 Salzburg, Austria to Ukrainian parents, Vasyl and Vera. They immigrated into Australia in 1949. In 2002, Jesaulenko was inducted into the Ukrainian Sports Hall of Fame.

Must-see Footage of Jesulaenko’s Mark of the Year in the 1970 Grand Final of Australian Rules Football:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3WDa96XYog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H8MbFVJHUw

UCSJ Bigotry Monitor Headlines

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL URGES BELARUS TO RELEASE AILING U.S. NATIONAL

SUSPECTED NEO-NAZI DOUBLE MURDER IN MOSCOW

NEO-NAZI ATTACKS RESULT IN HIGH HATE CRIME FIGURES FOR APRIL IN RUSSIA

GIRL, 16, JAILED FOR BEATING FEMALE KENYAN STUDENT AND STABBING ARMENIAN MAN (Russia)

COLLEGE STUDENT CHARGED WITH PRODUCING NEWSPAPER INCITING ETHNIC HATRED (Russia)

GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ATTACKED (Russia)

OPPOSITION GROWS TO NEW RESTRICTIONS IN MEDIA LAW (Russia)

JEWISH CEMETERY VANDALIZED IN GEORGIA

BIGOTRY MONITOR, A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe, EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, http://www.fsumonitor.com/

2008 Foreign Troops in UA

Nearly 3,000 foreign troops (2,940) will spend more than three months (142 days) on the territory of Ukraine throughout 2008. But Russia will still maintain the largest foreign troop presence in Ukraine, with its Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea.

Back in April, the Rada approved the multinational list of joint military exercises to be held in Ukraine throughout the year. An April issue of the Army’s Narodna Armiya magazine published details of the exercises, including a sample of the modern military hardware Ukrainians will see: 60 light wheeled vehicles, 15 ships, 12 airplanes, 12 helicopters and 2 submarines. This list is far from complete, as details of the armaments and hardware are only provided for 4 of 11 exercises (see second table).

Conspicuously missing from the report are the names, dates and numbers for bilateral air defense exercises with the Rossiyska Federation. So who knows how many Russian airplanes and pilots are in Ukraine at any one time? Not to mention the 25,000 service men of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and its 388 maritime vessels (including 14 submarines).

2008 months	Country	Exercise	# Foreign troops, days
ongoing	Russia	air defence	unspecified
May-July	Belgium	tactical	300, 20 days
May-Aug.	Moldova	South-2008	30, 7
unspec.	Belarus	tactical	50, 7
July	US	Sea Breeze	1,000, 25
July-Sept.	US	Combined Effort (aviation)	100, 14
Aug.-Sept.	US	Rapid Trident (command)	750, 15
Aug.-Sept.	Slovakia	Slavs for Peace	30, 7
Aug.-Oct.	Romania	tactical	30, 7
Sept.	multi	SOFEX	300, 15
Sept.-Nov.	Poland, Canada, Lithuania	Maple Arch	350, 25

Exercise name	Foreign troops (#)	Military Hardware
Sea Breeze	1,000	40 vehicles, 15 ships, 2 submarines, 4 airplanes, 4 helicopters
Combined Effort	100	10 vehicles, 4 airplanes, 2 helicopters
Rapid Trident	750	10 vehicles, 2 airplanes, 2 helicopters
Sofex	300	2 airplanes, 4 helicopters

17: Dr. Ironfist’s $17 bln blow

Specialists from the Klitschko Bloc estimate that each Kyivan has lost around Hr 25,000 ($5,000) in a year of rule under Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky. The Bloc’s press service told LIGABiznesInform that the value of land that was sold off “dirt cheap to various structures amount to, at a minimum, to Hr 85 billion ($17 bln).
During the scandalous Kyiv Rada session of Oct. 1 2007 alone, 4% of city land was doled out, with a market value of Hr 50 billion.
“The city budget received crumbs from that amount with most of the money sitting the the pockets of the dealmakers. If that wealth was distributed among all Kyivans – from children to pensioners – than every capital city resident would get close to 25 thousand hryvnia.”
The Klitschko Bloc promises to increase per resident wealth from several hundred hryvnia to several thousand hryvnia per year, if their man and political force are elected on May 25.

http://news.liga.net/news/N0822038.html

17: Fake Byut tents and newspapers

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc charges that a fake issue of the Vechirny Visti newspaper is being circulated in the capital city and that false campaigners working out of Byut tents are gathering signatures from citizens, promising them an “honorarium” if Byut does well in the snap municipal poll. Prime Minister Tymoshenko has asked prosecutors to lay criminal charges on the people who paid for the fake interviews with her and Vice Premier Oleksandr Turchynov – also Byut’s mayoral candidate. Turchynov said that his fake interview contained false financial promises, reports LIGABiznesInform.

http://news.liga.net/news/N0823850.html

4 Kyiv mayors in 4 elections since '94

A look at the battles for capital city chief, their victors and second-place finishers. Two-round mayoral elections are nothing new to Kyiv - that's how Leonid Kosakivsky beat Volodymyr Cherniak from Rukh in 1994. There have been two mayors named Leonid, and two Hryhoris who failed in their electoral bids.

Year	Winner	%	Runner-up	%
1992	Ivan Saliy		appointed
1994*	Leonid Kosakivsky	30	Volodymyr Cherniak	22
1996	Oleksandr Omelchenko		appointed
1999	Oleksandr Omelchenko	76	Hryhori Surkis	17
2002	Oleksandr Omelchenko	73	Hryhori Omelchenko	18
2006	Leonid Chernovetsky	32	Vitaly Klitschko	24

* - Election was held in two rounds. Round one: Kosakivsky 17%, Cherniak 15%, Saliy 13%

18: $100 x 2 million voters

The Gorshenin Institute’s Kost Bondarenko offered an estimate of the dollars being spent per vote in the Kyiv mayoral campaign. Bondarenko said that most election headquarters are resorting to the outright purchasing of votes – up to $100 per vote.

“This means that in Kyiv there is no competition between political programs or personalities, representatives of various political forces. At this moment the Kyiv campaign has been reduced to a battle of technologies with direct purchasing of voter votes,” said Bondarenko, according to the May 6 UNIAN commentary.

Meanwhile, the Kyiv Territorial Election Commission announced that there will be 1,026 polling stations open across the capital city on May 25.

In the Sept. 2007 snap Rada elections, voter turn out was over 63% in the seven electoral districts across the capital city: of 2.2 million eligible voters, 1.4 million ballots were cast at 1,028 stations.

Thus, the $100 per vote value would place the campaign in the $140 to $220 million range. That seems high, but is another reason why elections should be held more often – say once a year, with voters getting paid at the polling station upon casting their ballot. Such a measure could arguably help counter falsification, as voters would be sure to show up to collect at least a hundred bucks, in their hryvnia equivalent, naturally.

Poll gives Chernovetsky convincing lead

Two media outlets quoting presumably the same polling results reported drastically different numbers in the race for Kyiv mayor. The reports conflict on whether incumbent mayor Leonid Chernovetsky’s rating is 34.6 or 47.2 percent. The numbers for number on contender Vitaly Klitschko cover a five point spread.
On May 6, Ukrainian News reported numbers from Ukrainian Sociology Service’s poll of 1,500 respondents that was conducted in two phases between April 19 and 30 and has an error margin of 2.6%.

Candidate	%
Chernovetsky	34.6
Klitschko	15.5
Turchynov	5.7
Omelchenko	4.1
Katerynchuk	3.9
Against all	2.7
Pylypyshyn	2.3
Tiahnybok	1.5
Horbal	1.2
Other parties	2.3
Undecided	15.5
Will not vote	7.9
Sums up to only	97

Poll of 1,500 respondents, April 19-30, statistical error: 2.6%
Source: http://uv.ukranews.com/k8/

Meanwhile, the same day a LIGABiznesInform correspondent reported slightly different numbers quoting respected sociologist Oleksandr Vyshniak, the head of Ukrainian Sociology Service.

Most notable is the 12.6% difference in support for incumbent mayor Leonid Chernovetsky. The spread on Klitschko is 5%.

Candidate	%
Chernovetsky	47.2
Klitschko	20.5
Turchynov	7.9
Omelchenko	4.9
Katerynchuk	5.7
Sums up only	86.2

Poll of 1,500 respondents, April 19-30, statistical error: 2.6%
Source: http://news.liga.net

That leaves 14% for the 72 other candidates, the undecided, against all, etc.

Who to believe?

DPA source of UNIAN’s distortion

UNIAN, 21.04.2008 17:29
Report: Hitler doll to sell in Ukraine
“A Ukrainian manufacturer is preparing to sell dolls of the former German dictator Adolf Hitler in local toy stores, the Zerkalo Tizhden' newspaper reported Monday, according to DPA. The 40-centimetre figure will first be available in the capital Kyiv, and like the similar-sized Barbie doll wear clothes the owner may change, according to the article.”

DPA presumably stands for “Deutsche Presse-Agentur” from the land that made the Third Reich possible in the first place.


Timeline: Date, media, title

19-25 Apr, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, UNDRESS HITLER, OR BARBIFUHRER AS A GIFT

21 Apr, UNIAN, HITLER DOLL TO SELL IN UKRAINE citing DPA

23 Apr, Russian Channel One TV, EVERY UKRAINIAN CHILD TO BE GIVEN THE HITLER TOY

23 Apr BBC TV HITLER DOLLS ON SALE IN UKRAINE

23 Apr Daily Mail, ADOLF HITLER DOLL COMES WITH CHANGE OF CLOTHES

23 Apr Telegraph ADOLF HITLER DOLLS GO ON SALE IN UKRAINE

24-29 Apr --- HOAX EXPOSED --- BBC pulls report off website

Apr 30 onwards LIES CONTINUE TO BE PERPETUATED by JTA and other media

====

BBC narrator Jane Haddon: The toy is not due to go on sale till the summer, but this footage which looks like it was filmed secretly in a shop selling collectibles, shows it's already available. The sales assistant points out the various medals and accessories that come as part of the Hitler doll set.

So what, someone showed up off the street to BBC’s offices with a video that “looks like it was filmed secretly” and the news corporation passed it off as fact? Can we be sure the footage was actually filmed in Ukraine? The only clue is that the shop worker speaks Russian.


UNIAN Report:
http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-247645.html

For media tracking: http://www.ukar.ca/shevchenko/buzyna/hitler.html

21: Katerynchuk’s 38% potential

Mayoral candidate Mykola Katerynchuk estimates that 38% of the vote in the capital city is still up for grabs. His electoral math, according to a May 3 report on UNIAN, can be summed as follows:

Chernovetsky 25%
Klitschko 20
Turchynov 10
Omelchenko 7
===========
Only 62%!

“The absolute majority of the remaining 38% of voters have not made up their minds. I consider this to be my reserve,” said Katerynchuk, whose Ken doll face adorns the European Party of Ukraine’s propaganda together with EU’s yellow stripes.

Media reported Katerynchuk as promising to extend metro subway operating hours until 2 AM if elected mayor. Mayoral and city council elections in Kyiv will be held in three weeks: on Sunday, May 25.

22: Polls mix messages

Two recent public opinion poll results paint two very different pictures of the pre-electoral preferences of capital city residents. Both were paid for press releases that appeared on the last day of April.

I. New Image Marketing Group

Mayoral candidates
Chernovetsky 31.2%
Klitschko 18.5
Katerynchuk 16.5
Turchynov 9.3
Undecided 9.3
Omelchenko 5
Against all 4.8
Horbal 1.7
Pylypyshyn 2.2
Others 1.5

Parties/blocs
Byut Tymoshenko 23.2
Chernovetsky Bloc 22.4
Klitschko Bloc 12.6
Undecided 12.1
Regions Party 8.4
Nasha Ukrayina-NS 6.5
Katerynchuk Bloc 5.1
Omelchenko Bloc 2.2
Other parties 2.1
Lytvyn Bloc 2.1
Communists 1.5
GAK Hrom. Aktyv 1.3
Socialists 1.1
Party of Greens 0.4

New Image Marketing Group
April 25-28
1,200 telephone poll of 18+
“theoretical” error: 2.8%
Representation: Andriy Prokopenko, Dmytri Gromakov, http://newimage.org.ua/


II. Sociological Forum research group

More than 60 percent of capital city residents will take part in the snap Kyiv city elections and nearly a quarter of the vote is still undecided about the vote, according to poll results presented on the last day of April. More than 14% said they will not cast their ballots on E-Day May 25.

Kyivan concerns
77.4% of respondents said they are unpleased by the city government’s allocation and management of land resources, 71.3% complained about car parking, 67.6% about the roads, 66.9% about medical services in Kyiv, 65.5% about Zhek communal utilities, 64.5% about law enforcement, 54.2% about public transport.

Mayoral candidates
Klitschko 32.8%
Chernovetsky 21.9
Undecided 11.6
Turchynov 7.2
Katerynchuk 5
Omelchenko 4.1
Pylypyshyn 4.1
Against all 3.9
Tiahnybok 1.3
Horbal 0.6 %

If the election was held in two rounds – a cause being championed by opposition forces – Klitschko would score 51.7% to incumbent Chernovetsky’s 23.8%, the poll found.

Parties/blocs
Klitschko Bloc 24.7%
Chernovetsky Bloc 16.6
Tymoshenko Bloc 15.2
Undecided 14.9
Lytvyn Bloc 5.1
Against all 4.4
Regions Party 3.9
Nasha Ukrayina-NS 3.8
Katerynchuk Bloc 3.4
Omelchenko Bloc 2.7
GAK Hrom Aktyv 1.2
Communists 1.2
Svoboda 0.9
Socialists 0.2
Others 0.2

Sociological Forum research group
4,000 apartment interviews from April 19 to 26, 400 in each of Kyiv’s 10 raions
Error: 1.5%
Rep: Volodymyr Kosenko, http://www.socio-forum.net

The discrepancies between the polls are significant in their support findings for political parties and blocs:

Bloc name, New Image, Sociological Forum
Klitschko 12.6, 24.7%
Byut 23.2, 15.2
Chernovetsky 22.4, 16.6
Regions 8.4, 3.9
Katerynchuk 5.1, 3.4

23: Clones and 1m ballots

With 37 parties and electoral bloc running for seats in the Kyiv Rada and nearly eighty candidates vying for the mayoral post in the capital city, voters will have to wrestle with meter-long ballots when they show up to vote on May 25.
The party/bloc ballot will not exceed 80 centimeters, according to the head of the territorial election commission Halyna Bilyk. It will be green in color, reported LIGABiznesInform on April 29.
But with 79 names on the mayoral ballot, voters will have to find their candidate’s name on a sheet of paper nearly 100 centimeters long. The hopefuls’ names will be listed alphabetically.

Clones & jokers
Electoral blocs numbered 30 and 23 both bear the name “Oleksandr Omelchenko” – the name of the man who served as Kyiv mayor for a decade while Leonid Kuchma was president of the country and during the Orange events. There will also be two Omelchenkos on the mayoral ballot: Oleksandr Oleksandrovych (former mayor) and self-nominated Leonid Vladimirovich Omelchenko.
The Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (#25) is challenging a last-minute change of the “Kyivsky Proryv” name (#17) to “Bloc Tymoshenko Kyivsky Proryv.” The second Tymoshenko bloc is comprised of the municipal branches of the Slavic Party and the Union of Anarchists.
Byut’s man for mayor Oleksandr Turchynov said that his political force will turn to the courts if the Territorial Electoral Commission allows the additional Tymoshenko name on the ballot and in the campaign.

For the list of 37 party and bloc names see: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822574.html
All 79 mayoral candidates: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822379.html
Byut’s beef: http://news.liga.net/news/N0822677.html

BBC Bullshit!

My-oh-my! It appears that Her Majesty’s secret “news” service has pulled its story “Hitler dolls on sale in Ukraine” that originally appeared on BBC’s website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7362161.stm

Now the link reads:

404 - Page Not Found

We’ll see if the esteemed Telegraph will do the same:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/22/whitler122.xml

The fact is that the doll is not made in Ukraine, but in Taiwan, as Dzerkalo Tyzhnia accurately reported over a week ago (not last Monday, you lame Kim-Philby-limeys!):

http://www.dt.ua/1000/1550/62775/

I bet that more have been sold in UK and Russia than in Ukraine, via a website in South Dakota, USA, for $175 (plus shipping and handling):

http://www.pzg.biz/figure_hitler.htm

For those who saw the BBC’s report (before it was pulled, but not after the damage was done), the report featured “journalist” Oles Buzyna, the same person who wrote that bard Taras Shevchenko “was not a genius or a Saint, but an alcoholic and green with envy.”

http://ukrstor.com/ukrstor/buzina_wurdalak.html

I wonder whether the BBC would lend the same credence to an analyst who claimed to know for a fact that Lord Byron was into bestiality?