Words and Reality. Reflections on Hromadske Radio’s Broadcast. By Dr Marta Dyczok

Canada officially recognized the Holodomor as a genocide back in 2008. This year, on the official commemoration day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement in which he said, “On this sombre day, let us join with Ukrainians in Canada and around the world in remembering the victims of this genocide.” He also said, “We continue to stand with the people of Ukraine in the face of the Putin regime’s illegal occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and its military aggression in Eastern Ukraine.” (See more at: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/11/22/statement-prime-minister-canada-81st-anniversary-holodomor#s….

Earlier that day I had listened to the official spokesman of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council give his daily update on the situation in the Donbass. “Terrorist fighters are intensifying shelling against the positions of the Ukrainian forces in the ATO,” Colonel Lysenko told reporters, and provided details. Official Ukraine continues to describe the war in Donetsk and Luhansk as an Anti-Terrorist Operation, while they document the numbers of Russian military convoys crossing into Ukraine.

On Sunday, while listening to Hromadske Radio’s live broadcast, I heard a caller talking about ‘the junta.’ When journalist Andriy Kulykov asked her what she was referring to, she answered, ‘the Maidan.’ This was a few days after many in Kyiv, and the world, commemorated the beginning of the Ukrainian protests that took on that name and toppled a corrupt president. And the new president officially named those killed during the protests as national heroes. The official narrative from Moscow continues to refer to the Maidan protests as a coup, a junta. The infamous Russia Today recently ran an op-ed on the “Euromaidan 1st birthday: How the Kiev coup grew.” (http://rt.com/op-edge/207667-ukraine-anniversary-maidan-coup/)

Words coming from official sources affect people in different ways. But I have noticed that over the past number of years, fewer of my students are challenging whether the Holodomor was a genocide.