Toporivtsi, a Village in Ukraine: And Still the Ukrainian People Survive as a Nation by Ronald Galagan essentially started out as a personal voyage of discovery for the author. He pondered if any Galagans still remain in Ukraine after all these years and what had their Canadian ethnic Ukrainian families “missed” as a result of our grandparents immigration from Ukraine to Canada in 1900?
However, this book soon evolved into trying to understand how Ukrainian society had managed to survive through years of despotism and imperialism
The lives of the relatives that he discovered, and the conditions under which they had survived these many years provided a window into the lives of many other people in Ukraine; and to the unknown Ukrainian relatives of many Canadians of Ukrainian descent
For those readers who have never been to Ukraine, this book is a window into the history, economics, societal progress and evolution of a whole nation.
A nation whose current working age generation, upon new independence in 1991, had never experienced a free market economy, human rights, real ownership of land, rule of law. Basically, freedoms that we in the west all take for granted.
This book will be of interest to:
- Those who have and or believe they have relatives in Ukraine that are unknown to them.
- Those who retain a cultural attachment to the customs, religion and language of Ukraine
- Those who have an interest in learning about Ukraine and Ukrainian society
Excerpt from Toporivtsi, a Village; And Still the Ukrainian People Survive as a Nation in Ukraine by Ronald Galagan:
“In East Ukraine, the famine program was carried out under the direction of the Soviet Communist Party.
One obvious purpose was to ensure the acquiescence of and the compliance of peasants to the objectives of the collective farm program.
Arguably, there was one much more Machiavellian and evil objective to this famine program, that being a societal reordering by way of a population reduction and the shifting of rural populations away from agriculture and into heavy industry.
One should also read The Prince, written by Niccolo Machiavelli in 1513 A.D., to appreciate the application of Machiavellian objectives.
All despots follow his rules to a greater or lesser extent in acquiring and maintaining power.
Regardless of the reasons given, the objective of the famine itself was the confiscation of food in order to starve the peasants onto collective farms, into agriculture diversity and industry, and/or settlement/exile into the hinterlands. Plus, eliminate excess population and national identity.
The starvation resulted in the expropriation of peasants’ and kulaks’ (the Soviet terminology for wealthier peasants with larger land holdings, who may have also on occasion employed other peasants and resisted collectivization) land without payment,…”
