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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 2009 20 membered the tragic events that followed well. He was 24 when Stalin unleashed his murderous policy of collectivization in Ukraine. The purpose, osten- sibly to modernize agriculture, was “to teach the Ukrainian peasants a lesson”— to punish them for their patriotism and resistance to russification. Stalin ordered the requisition of all grain and food products for the peasants, and the order was carried out by some 20,000 Russians or russified “activ - ists”— many of them hardened criminals. Ap- proaching their task with utmost brutality, they even prevented the starving peasants from searching anywhere for food or work. Foreign aid was refused. Barka was one of the millions trapped in the famine. He saw his family, his neighbors, and his friends suffer in agony for months while dying of hunger. He was traumatized by his own suffering and by that of the people around him. Having survived, Barka vowed to bear witness and tell the world of what he had lived through and the millions who had perished. At the age of 91, with a voice still trembling with the horror of what he had witnessed, Barka told me: “Mr. Jean -Pierre, I swear I tried as hard as I could, [but] . . . certain forms of suffering and emotions cannot be described. I did not find in my head or in my heart the means to express suffering of that kind by so many, for so long.” After the Famine, Barka studied European medieval literature, especially Italian and French, at Moscow State University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Dante’s Divine Comedy . With a touch of grim satisfaction, the old poet told me that he had managed to weave the theme of the Famine- Genocide into the tissue of his analysis of Dante’s “Inferno.” A couple of years later, in 1941, Barka was fighting against the Nazis who were trying to destroy communism while killing as many Slavs as possible to create the Lebensraum that Hitler hoped to settle with Germans. Gravely wounded in 1943, Barka was taken to Germany as a prisoner of war. Liberated at the end of the war, he was faced with a new worry — being sent back to the Soviet Union and the prospect of living again under Stalin’s brutal tyranny. Like many others, Barka managed to avoid this fate and emigrated to the United States in 1949. By this time, the cold war had already begun, and the United States was already engaged in countering the barrage of lies launched by the Soviets against American democracy and the free world. One of the most effective ways of doing so was by communicating with people behind the Iron Curtain directly, in their own languages. Barka was one of the writers and journalists selected to write and edit for Radio Liberty and Voice of America. In his spare time, he wrote several poetic works of considerable length and importance. By 1962, he had also completed The Yellow Prince , the book I later discovered in Paris. Titled Zhovtyi Kniaz in Ukrainian, it is a book that describes the Famine-Genocide comprehensively and profoundly. No phase, no aspect of the human catastrophe is omitted. No subsequent accounts or testimonies add significant information that is not contained in Barka’s masterpiece. The structure of the narrative creates poignant suspense; the reader does not merely want to know what happens next, he is worried about what might happen next. During our visit, Barka explained to me that he was much more preoccupied by the need to bear witness, to tell the whole truth, than by the desire to create a great novel. Nonetheless, the reader realizes that the story is told by a true storyteller, by a great poet inspired by profound feelings. Barka was widely admired in the Ukrainian community in New York, and many people knew the book he was working on was about the Famine- Genocide. At one point, a member of the Russian Mission to the United States contacted Barka and urged him not to “defame the Soviet Union” by writing about the famine. Even decades later, the Soviets wanted to keep their horrendous crime against Ukrainians from being revealed. Barka refused to be intimidated, but kept a low profile to prevent unwelcome attention from the Soviets determined to stop him from writing about things they wanted buried and forgotten. Some time after the 1968 publication of Zhovtyi Kniaz in Ukrainian, Barka was persuaded by his friends to take refuge in the Pocono Mountains, at the Ukrainian resort of Verkhovyna. It was there that he spent the last three decades of his life, his freedom restricted even in the free country he had made his home. But even under these conditions, he continued his work with Radio Liberty and Voice of America as well as writing. In 1981, an excellent translation of Zhovty i Kniaz appeared in French as Le Prince jaune , which 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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