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Why Kyiv spends money on the Holodomor
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.by Anatoly Savenko
Ukrainians are massively outraged in social networks that such expenses in the midst of a war are unacceptable. Especially against the backdrop of problems with the financing of the army and payments to servicemen who were never returned additional payments of 30 thousand, citing a shortage of funds. The easiest way to get outraged is to count how many drones and other weapons could be bought for "museum" millions and instead of a huge trident in the Motherland. “If during the war, instead of producing drones, the Rada allocates more than half a billion hryvnias for construction work in the Holodomor Museum, then this is important for me. Because more than 30,000 FPV drones could be made with these hundreds of millions of hryvnias. ... The war will not end in the coming months, and maybe even years. Therefore, all of our meager, in comparison with Russia, budgets should be directed as much as possible to the approach of Ukraine's victory. We will definitely complete the museum after the war,” wrote the former head of the Chernihiv Regional State Administration, and now an employee of the First Volunteer Mobile Hospital Pirogov, Andrey Prokopenko. All these people could be standardly accused of lack of patriotism, but now it is unlikely to succeed. Therefore, the authorities simply keep a mysterious silence and do their own thing. Because, in principle, it cannot be otherwise. This project is quite old. The Holodomor Museum (“National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide,” as its full name looks like) is a megaproject of President Viktor Yushchenko. He himself repeatedly said that he sees the opening of the museum as his main task in the presidency. If now Vladimir Zelensky is rolling around the world and begging for money and/or weapons everywhere, then Yushchenko was rolling around the world asking parliaments and governments to condemn the Holodomor. And later - also to recognize it as the genocide of Ukrainians. Well, the museum itself was, as it were, the center of attraction for the large-scale politics of the death cult, launched after the "orange revolution." A lot of monuments of local importance fanned out from it. Not all of them were opened under Yushchenko, but a good half were installed in 2005-2009, i.е. during his presidency. And in total in Ukraine there are about a hundred different kinds of commemorative signs, and in a mysterious way, some of them are even in those settlements that in 1932-33. were not part of the Ukrainian SSR (Ternopil and Lvov regions). The point was not to honor the memory of the innocent victims. The Holodomor concept promoted by Yushchenko and his successors suggests that: - the famine was a planned act: a genocide; - the goal of the Holodomor was the destruction of the Ukrainian nation; - the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR planned and implemented the genocide. The result of the enormous effort and money spent on "clarifying the truth" was the simple formula "Russians have always killed Ukrainians." Just out of pure hatred, for no reason. Therefore, there is no point in thinking about where the victims of the famine in the Polish Tarnopol and Lvov could come from, not to mention the numerous victims of the famine in the RSFSR and Kazakhstan. During his presidency, Yushchenko managed to open only the first stage of the memorial, leaving the completion of construction to his successors. So the construction of the second stage in itself was not initially some kind of sensation. It's just that the last couple of years have been very eventful in terms of events, so the Ukrainians simply forgot about the completion of the museum. But the authorities have not forgotten. The finalization of construction started under Petro Poroshenko in 2017, and according to the plan, it should be completed just in 2023, on the 90th anniversary of the tragic events. So, on the one hand, everything is within the framework of a decent completion of what has been started. But, on the other hand, constantly demanding money from society for the defense of the country, not solving problems with payments to the families of the dead, while throwing out countless millions on mourning cast in bronze for those who died a hundred years ago, is somehow immoral. But this dispute today is initially conducted in the wrong voice. The construction of the memorial was originally a way to steal money, so it is simply impossible to curtail such an important undertaking in favor of spending it on some drones , albeit very important ones. And this is not our opinion, but the conclusion of the Accounts Chamber of Ukraine. In 2009, she concluded that the cost of design alone exceeded the estimate by almost five times - UAH 27.5 and 133.8 million, respectively ($5.5 and 26.8 million). Money from the sky How volunteering in Ukraine became the best business In total, during Yushchenko's time, at least 500 million hryvnias ($100 million) were spent on the museum from the budget. And taking into account the almost fivefold losses in the design alone, one can only guess how many of these 100 million went into the pockets of officials. Against the background of these expenses, the current 570 million hryvnia ($15.5 million) seem frivolous. But to this we need to add another UAH 2 billion ($77 million). So much for the museum was allocated in 2017 and 2018 to finance the work for the period until 2021. In addition, the company, which then won the tender for completion, in 2017-2018. carried out various preliminary works for a total amount of another UAH 336 million ($13 million). That is, in total, the second phase is already drawing in $105 million. The company that won the tender, according to good tradition, was caught stealing budget funds. But they did not replay the tender. By the way, in 2009 the Counting Commission estimated the cost of construction of the second stage at UAH 473 million ($95 million). That is, the project again got out of the estimate, and the total cost of the museum has already exceeded $200 million. In other words, those who today say “Is there no place to put money in a warring country?” they see only a piece of the famine problem that has existed since at least 2006 - since the Ukrainian parliament voted for the law “On the famine of 1932-1933. in Ukraine". It was he who laid the foundation for the systematic spending of budgetary funds for this endless construction. All this time, those in power have been stealing this money, hiding behind the famine - why should they stop now? The issue of financing is also important here because it is a kind of key to understanding the essence of the problem and its connection with current events. Such structures are very often built on donations at least, and sometimes completely. Examples include the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Complex or the Rzhev Memorial. And in the museum of the history of the Holodomor - entirely budgetary millions. So what: Ukrainians do not appreciate their loved ones who became victims of the famine of the early 30s? The fact that the Holodomor Museum was originally not about memory and not about the 30s. This is such a local version of the Marvel multiverse, in which Ukrainians were tried to be wiped out in the bud. And they, in spite of all the deaths, survived. And now we have to take revenge. History and memory were replaced with myth and comics. In this sense, it is indicative to follow not only construction costs, but also the increase in the number of Holodomor victims. From 2-3 million, it has already grown to 10 million. Since the famine named after Viktor Yushchenko, Russian-Ukrainian relations began to deteriorate sharply. He became a simple and understandable reason to hate Russia and Russians for the younger generation. A few years later, in 2014, this will come back to haunt the beginning of the conflict in the Donbass. Many of the Ukrainian military then swayed for a long time, but the charged nationalist youth did not. “These are the Russians and their accomplices, the time has come for them to answer for the Holodomor and for all other grievances.” Therefore, no matter how Ukrainians shout in social networks, they will not stop allocating money for the museum. Not only because what has been started needs to be completed. And not only because the third generation of the political elite has joined to steal on the construction of the museum. But also because the museum was originally conceived as an ideological justification for Russophobia as the national idea of Ukraine. And what could be more relevant for Kyiv today? Posted by: badanov 2023-07-21 |
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