Air raid sirens are sounding again in Kyiv.
In September alone, Russia launched 5,638 drones and 185 missiles against Ukraine.
Our team in Toronto continues work on the documentary series “GULAG. Witnesses.” We are recording the voiceover for the episode 1932–1933: HUNGER AS A WEAPON. How the Ukrainian village was destroyed.
Actress — Oksana Smilska
Director — Olga Antimony
Sound Engineer — Myroslav Delev
At the heart of this story is the diary of a village schoolteacher, Alexandra Nikolaevna Radchenko (born 1896, near Izium, Kharkiv region). She was 36 years old when the Famine began.
It is difficult. To read someone else’s diary 92 years later. To read the lines of a person who wrote while children were dying around her and adults were forced to become “less than human” just to survive.
As we sat in a small studio room, voicing her words aloud, we lived together with HER.
We — who know about the Famine only from history books and the stories of our grandparents.
Here, it is the voice of one real person.
Her thoughts. Her pain. Her sense of that time.
No longer an abstract history — but a living human being with whom you feel related as you read and listen.
And it is impossible not to think about today.
Then — hunger, imposed by Moscow.
Today — missiles, deaths, ruined homes.
History repeats itself.
Why must Ukraine suffer?
That question sounds just as sharp today as it did ninety years ago.
#GULAGWitnesses #ГУЛАГСвідки #ГУЛАГСвидетели #
