TALLINN, Jul 09, BNS – The millions of victims of the famine created by the Soviet Union in Ukraine in 1932-33 will be remembered in Estonia on Wednesday.
In that connection there will be a memorial service in Tallinn’s episcopal Toomkirik conducted by Archbishop Andres Poder.
The memorial service will take place in cooperation with the Ukrainian embassy in Estonia.
The Ukrainian embassy told BNS that a symbolical memorial candle would Wednesday arrive in Estonia in the framework of the international action.
The candle will arrive from Sweden and its festive reception will take place in the Greek Catholic Ukrainian Church in Tallinn, where another memorial service will take place. The fire from that flame will be sent also to other churches throughout Estonia.
On Friday the candle will move on from Estonia to Latvia.
The year 2008 has been pronounced the year of the remenbrance of the Ukrainian famine, golodomor, of 1932-1933.
The action started in Australia in April and the memorial candle will pass through 33 countries before it arrives in Kiev in November.
In addition to the Wednesday events there will be exhibitions devoted to golodomor in Rakvere, Narva and Parnu this year.
The Ukrainian famine, mainly provoked by Soviet mismanagement, was one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in history, and more than ten million people died as its result, the Ukrainian embassy said.
According to historians’ calculations 25,000 people daily died of hunger.
The Russian embassy made a statement on Wednesday in Tallinn underlining that the famine of 1932-1933 was not an action intentionally directed against the Ukrainian people.
The embassy said that the hunger struck also Northern Caucasus, areas around the Volga River, the Russian black-soil belt, Southern Urals, Western Siberia and other territories.
According to the Russian embassy about eight million people died as a result of the famine in the Soviet Union, less than half of them, 3-3.5 million people, in Ukraine.
The Russian embassy also said that the causes of the famine were not Stalin’s collectivization campaign alone but were largely due to natural circumstances.
Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8831, [email protected]