The guest of this episode of Interview Hour is writer, educator, and researcher Elena Makarova.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GwyzB9BURs&t=1s

This conversation explores art as a form of survival and resistance, family memory of the GULAG, inner dissent, and the refusal to live by lies. Elena Makarova speaks about her unconventional childhood in a family of poets, encounters with censorship and pressure, her work with children, and pedagogy under conditions of unfreedom.

A central focus of the program is her long-term research into the legacy of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Bauhaus artist and educator who worked with children in the Terezín ghetto. Makarova discusses children’s drawings, archives, and diaries, and reflects on how art and attention to a child’s inner world became a means of survival in the camp.

This interview is a reflection on freedom and unfreedom, human dignity, the power of culture, and the responsibility of memory to the future.

The full transcript of the interview and a line-by-line English translation are available on Elena Makarova’s page on the website of Gregory Antimony:
https://www.gregoryantimony.com/elena-makarova

Tags:
#InterviewHour  #ElenaMakarova #ArtAndResistance #GregoryAntimony #HistoricalMemory #CultureAndFreedom #FriedlDickerBrandeis #Bauhaus #Pedagogy #ECGProductions

During our work on the film about Pavlo Virsky, we planned to record a conversation with Virsky Ensemble dancer Leonid Voronov — about his years in the ensemble, about rehearsals, about the inner life of the collective. We intended to do this — but he refused.

Leonid is no longer with us.
Yet this situation — and the reactions to his death — have become a painful reflection of today’s reality. A reality in which Ukrainians are fighting for their country under attacks by Shahed drones and ballistic missiles, without heat or electricity, losing their best sons and daughters.

And still, these shots from the film Birth of the Dance remain:

A rehearsal. Pavlo Virsky is showing something to Leonid Voronov — calmly, precisely, through movement. And off screen we hear Virsky’s voice — words about what it means to him to be part of the Ukrainian people. In these words there is no slogan, but the deep conviction of a person for whom art and identity were inseparable.

Leonid Voronov joined the ensemble in the final years of Virsky’s life, demonstrating rare virtuoso technique.
These images are not merely chronicle footage. They are a moment of transmission — a dialogue between master and artist, without explanations, but filled with precision, trust, and a shared understanding of what Ukrainian dance exists for.

In these shots, Virsky himself remains: his voice, his hopak, his Ukraine.

Note. These images are a fragment of the film Birth of the Dance, shot in 1975 in Kyiv at the Dovzhenko Film Studio. The film was directed by Pavlo Virsky and Alla Surikova. The fragment featuring Leonid Voronov was taken from a copy available in open access on YouTube.

#ECGProductions
#ECGProductionsToronto
#Virsky
#VirskyEnsemble
#LeonidVoronov
#PavloVirsky
#UkrainianDance
#UkrainianCulture
#DanceHistory
#InMemoriam

In this episode of An Hour of Interview, Gregory Antimony speaks with Sergei Grankin, a military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 9.

A wide-ranging conversation about how reality changed after October 7, how Israel achieved not only a military but also a psychological victory, the role of Donald Trump, Israel–Ukraine relations, propaganda, censorship, and the power of truth.

Sergei Grankin shares his personal experience from the front line — thousands of live broadcasts during the war, the deletion of his million-subscriber YouTube channel, and why Israel, despite battlefield success, continues to lose the information war.

In dialogue with Gregory Antimony, the discussion turns to alliances and ruptures, moral dilemmas, and the profound transformations reshaping the Middle East.

 Recorded in Toronto, 2025
 Produced by ECG Productions / Gregory Antimony Show – “An Hour of Interview”

#ЧасИнтервью #ГригорийАнтимони #СергейГранкин #Израиль #БлижнийВосток #7Октября #ХАМАС #ВойнаВИзраиле #ИнформационнаяВойна #Цензура #ДональдТрамп #Нетаньяху #ИзраильУкраина #ВоенныйКорреспондент #Журналистика #Газа #GregoryAntimony #SergeiGrankin #Israel #MiddleEast #IsraelHamasWar #GazaWar #InformationWar #TruthAndPropaganda

The annual “Return of Names” event takes place on the eve of Political Prisoner Day — October 30.
On this day in 1974, prisoners in the Mordovia and Perm labor camps declared a hunger strike to protest political repression in the USSR.

In Toronto, the action organized by Memorial has been held for many years near the Raoul Wallenberg Monument — dedicated to the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II and became a symbol of moral courage and human solidarity.

 Decades later, political prisoners still exist in Russia, and many are again forced to go on hunger strikes as one of the few remaining ways to draw attention to unbearable conditions and injustice.
Since September 25, 2025, human rights activist Mikhail Kriger has been on a hunger strike, protesting constant harassment — repeated solitary confinement on fabricated charges and deprivation of correspondence.

This year, participants of the action read aloud 1,506 names, 22 messages from today’s Russian political prisoners, and 12 names of people they personally wished to remember.
Thanks to volunteers and human rights defenders, the event took place in 95 cities across 37 countries.

 Recently, Memorial presented the animated short “My Dear Ones, I’m Writing to You From…”, created by the creative group East Pond.
It tells the story of letters that helped people survive in the GULAG and was made for the traveling exhibition “The Right to Correspondence.”
Based on archival materials from Memorial and the book of the same name, the film focuses not so much on the hardships of imprisonment as on the tiny spark of hope that came from staying connected to the outside world.

 Letters helped people survive then — and they can still do so today.
Writing to a prisoner, offering support, and sharing news is a way to keep silence from winning.

Watch the film on Memorial’s YouTube channel:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZw5W8xfhfo

#ReturnOfNames #Memorial #Gulag #PoliticalPrisoners #Remembrance #LettersFromTheCamp #RightToCorrespondence #HumanRights #Toronto #EastPond #ECGProductions

In Ukrainian, there is a word — spokutaty — which means much more than to apologize or ask for forgiveness. It means to atone, to admit guilt, to take responsibility and work through it. This idea comes from a spiritual and moral tradition: reconciliation through action and awareness.

When past crimes remain unatoned, they do not disappear — they return. The GULAG, the mass executions, the Holodomor — these were never fully acknowledged or condemned in the way they should have been. That unreckoned past still echoes today. This project connects that unexamined legacy with the current war in Ukraine. War grows where crimes go unanswered, where millions were repressed, executed, or forgotten — with no reckoning and no repair.

This testimony is one of many.
Liudmyla Slipchenko, 78 years old, lives alone in Kyiv. She hides behind her wardrobe during air raid alarms — because it feels safer. She has spent years sleeping dressed, with the door unlocked, ready to run if needed. Her words remind us how ordinary life holds memories of unspoken history and how today’s war continues that legacy.

 Watch the excerpt on YouTube https://youtu.be/ldOMTT9vALA
 Find more stories at gulagshadows.com

GULAG.Witnesses — a project connecting past repression to today’s reality. Because a past that was never atoned for returns — with new violence.

#GULAGWitnesses, #GULAGShadows,#olgaantimony, #ECGProductions, #LifeDuringWar

“As long as I live, I must remember.”

Volodymyr Kolot came to Bykivnia, the forest outside Kyiv where tens of thousands of victims of Stalinist terror were buried in mass graves.
His grandfather, Kyrylo Davy­dovych Kolot, was one of them — executed in 1937.

For years, the family only knew that he had disappeared. In May 2019, Volodymyr visited the memorial for the first time. After the official ceremony, he walked to the black granite slabs — and there it was:
“Kyrylo Davy­dovych Kolot. Executed 1937.”

Kyrylo had lived in the village of Khotske in the Pereyaslav district. He worked in the local kolkhoz (collective farm), managing the building where seeds were prepared for planting. One year, the harvest failed. Kyrylo was accused of sabotaging the grain — possibly even poisoning it.

Volodymyr read the copy of the NKVD case file: it included a single testimony, from the head of the kolkhoz. That was enough for a death sentence. All blame was placed on Kyrylo.

He was 49. He and his wife had six children — three sons and three daughters.
After his arrest, his wife was left alone with all the children — just before the war.

Volodymyr’s father, Kyrylo’s son, grew up with the label “son of an enemy of the people.”
When drafted into the army in 1939, he was sent not to the front, but with a shovel — to build an airfield. When the war broke out, the workers ran home. Later, he was conscripted again and sent to fight. He was wounded twice. His younger brother Hrysha was killed in the war.

Though their father was branded an enemy, the entire family fought for the USSR — “for Stalin,” as they used to say.

There was a resistance network in their village. Volodymyr’s aunt Varka was a courier for the partisans. Another relative, Ivan Kolot, served in the local police — as part of an undercover partisan mission. He died in battle when the village was liberated. Today, one of the streets in Khotske bears his name.

Volodymyr once worked as an electrician at the Kyiv archive on Solomianska Street. There, he asked the deputy director, Olena Viktorivna Polozova, to help trace his family roots. She found the records — and confirmed that both sides of his family came from Cossack ancestry. He still keeps the documents.

“My grandchildren no longer listen to these stories. They have their own lives.
But I come here — while I still can.
Because memory is what remains. And it must remain.”

This video is part of our documentary project GULAG. Witnesses, which explores how the unrepented crimes of the past continue to shape new violence — from Soviet GULAGs to filtration camps and the war in Ukraine.

#GULAG #Bykivnia #StalinTerror #FamilyHistory #Memory #Ukraine #Repressions #EnemyOfThePeople #HistoricalJustice

 “Hour of Interview” with Gregory Antimony
 Guest: Ukrainian historian Ihor Shchupak

What is memory made of?

In this bold and thoughtful conversation, historian Ihor Shchupak opens rarely discussed pages of Ukrainian and Jewish history:

— Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and his role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust
— Why international recognition as a “Righteous Among the Nations” is still delayed
— Parallels between Nazism and Russian fascism (“rashism”)
— Ukrainian-Jewish relations, the Holodomor, the figure of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and historical myths
— Rare archival materials, family stories, testimonies of the saved
— And the role of historians in shaping national memory — especially in wartime

 The program is in Russian, deliberately — to speak truth where propaganda still echoes.

 New episode out now — honest, documented, and painfully relevant.

In the new episode of “Hour of Interview” – Masha Terentyeva, a star performer of the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil! 

The daughter of legendary mime and clown Nikolai Terentyev, Masha carved her own path in the world of circus arts, becoming one of Cirque du Soleil’s top gymnasts. What is it like growing up in a family where the stage and artistry are passed down through generations? What challenges do performers face in the world’s most famous circus? And what happens behind the scenes of the grandest shows on the planet?

 Don’t miss it! A candid conversation about sports, art, and life in a world where the limits of possibility disappear!

 Watch on RTVi and YouTube!

#HourOfInterview #MashaTerentyeva #CirqueDuSoleil #Gymnastics #NikolaiTerentyev #CircusArts #Interview #Circus #ГрегориАнтимони #GregoryAntimony