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In some ways, we see history repeating itself. We watched the spark that burned brightly during the Orange Revolution, and then we began to see a Verkhovna Rada too timid and too divided to take advantage of this spark and build it into a strong and steady flame: a unified national consciousness and a resolute focus on nation building. And yet, despite the faltering steps and the continuing economic and political problems that beset Ukraine, the flame of independence has endured for the past sixteen years. And this alone is a hopeful sign for the country’s future. I close this month’s message with a brief reminder to UNWLA members that in 2008 we com memorate the Great Famine Genocide of 1932-1933 perpetrated by Stalin against the Ukrainian people. I ask that every UNWLA regional council, branch, and member honor the victims of the famine by making certain they are not forgotten. Please share information about the famine with local libraries, municipal officials, and local schools and school boards and write to us about your successes. The Ukrainian government has recently published a booklet on the famine; please let us know if you would like to have a copy. With Your Shield Or On It Tamara Stadnychenko No volume of world history is complete unless it chronicles the story of the 300 Spartans who perished at Thermopylae in 480 BC, guarding a mountain pass against a much greater Persian force intent on conquering the Greek city-states. Led by King Leonidas, the Spartans were well-trained soldiers, experienced in the art of war and raised in a social environment that placed a premium on honor on the field of battle. Their stand at Thermopylae was a suicide mission, a military tactic designed to give the Greek city-states time to prepare a unified defense against the military might of King Xerxes. What occurred at Thermopylae has been called by at least one writer “the most heroic resistance in history,” an observation that sadly underscores how little the world knows the history of Ukraine. For in most of those same weighty volumes that purport to describe the history of the world, there is no mention of a battle that took place at a railroad station 130 kilometers northeast of Kyiv on January 29, 1918. The Battle of Kruty, much like the battle at Thermopylae, pitted 300 soldiers against a far greater military host, a 4,000-man Bolshevik army advancing on Kyiv. But unlike King Leonidas’s Spartans, the 300 Ukrainian soldiers at Kruty were students from the Khmelnytsky Cadet School, schoolboys whose military training had consisted almost entirely of classroom lectures or drills performed in the schoolyard. Led by Captain A. Honcharenko, most of these 300 young men were mercilessly slaughtered. Like their historic predecessors, however, they held the enemy forces at bay as long as they could, dying with honor in defense of a divided homeland that was attempting to assert it sovereignty in a chaotic world too self-absorbed or politically naive to understand what was at stake. According to some Ukrainian historians, their sacrifice delayed the Bolshevik advance into Kyiv long enough to allow the fledgling Ukrainian government to negotiate a peace treaty with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria), which officially recognized the Ukrainian National Republic as a sovereign state on February 9, 1918. Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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