The annual commemoration of the Holodomor (extermination by [man-made] famine) takes place on the fourth Saturday of November. Any consideration of present-day relations between Ukraine and Russia remains incomplete without taking this tragic chapter fully into account.

For additional context see Anne Applebaum’s October 2017 article at The Atlantic, How Stalin Hid Ukraine’s Famine from the World with the complicity of the Western media.

Mass graves near Kharkiv during the Holodomor

Memory eternal. Вічная пам’ять.

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Famine-Genocide of 1932–33

Famine-Genocide of 1932–33 (Голодомор; Holodomor). The mass murder by Josef Stalin’s Soviet regime of millions of Ukrainian peasants. In recent years this national tragedy has become widely known as the Holodomor (from moryty holodom ‘to kill by means of starvation’). This tragic event was (1) a planned repression of the peasants of Soviet Ukraine for massively resisting the Stalinist state’s collectivization drive; (2) a deliberate offensive aimed at undermining, terrorizing, and neutralizing the nucleus and bulwark of the Ukrainian nation and recent Ukrainization efforts; and (3) the result of the forced export of grain, other foodstuffs, and livestock in exchange for the imported machinery the USSR required for the implementation of the Stalinist policy of rapid industrialization. In 1932 Ukraine had an average grain harvest of 146.6 million centers (15.5 million centers more than in 1928), and there was no climatic danger of famine. Yet, because of onerous forced grain requisition quotas that the Bolshevik state imposed upon the Soviet Ukrainian rural population (see Grain procurement), the peasants already experienced hunger in the spring of 1932. The grain collections were brutally carried out by 112,000 special Bolshevik agents sent to extract grain by using terror against both collectivized and independent farmers. To minimize peasant opposition, on 7 August 1932 a law introduced the death penalty ‘for violating the sanctity of socialist property.’ Read More

I commend Orthodoxy in Dialogue for once again offering an opportunity for your readers to give alms to the homeless during this Nativity Fast through your 3^rd Annual Feed the Homeless on Christmas Campaign. All of us Orthodox Christians certainly understand the importance of ministering to the homeless as emphasized in the Gospel from St. Matthew (25:31-46) on the Sunday of the Last Judgment.

I thank you also for your gracious offer to allow me to write about another ministry to the homeless, one that I hope other Orthodox churches will consider exploring. The opportunity presented itself to our St. Mary Church (AOCA) in Wichita a few years ago. Read More

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Grant rest eternal in blessed repose, O Lord,

to the souls of Thy servants who have fallen asleep,

and may their memory be eternal.

Memory eternal. Αἰωνία ἡ μνήμη. Вѣчная память. Veșnica pomenire.

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople

On October 31, 2019 Theodore Kalmoukos reported for The National Herald that the Trump administration has invited “Green” Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to speak at a conference on “the protection of the Natural Environment” in May 2020. (Read the report at the source.) Surely this move must come as one of the greatest twists of irony—or sheer cynicism—in a presidency that has done everything in its power to sabotage decades of progress in…”the protection of the Natural Environment.” 

The report goes on to say, “His All Holiness will be granted a private audience by President Donald Trump at the White House between May 12 and 14.” Read More