Address: 15-a, I. Mazepy Street, Kyiv

Phone: 38 (044) 592-45-51

Working hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Closed on Monday

This is the newest museum in Kiev, opened to full extend in 2009. It is dedicated to the terrible historical tragedy of Ukraine. Its inner structure is composed according to modern principles of organization of museum space – with use of interactive means, demonstration of films and appropriate acoustic filling. The museum obtained the status “national” not long ago. The memorial complex “White candle” has become the monument to one of the most tragic events for Ukrainian nation in the 20^th century, along with the National “Chernobyl” museum and the National World War 2 Museum. Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, headed by the academician I. Yukhnovskiy, is the founder of the museum. Ukraine survived three big periods of hunger during 30 years – 1921-22, 1932-33 and 1946. Collectivization of 1928-31, suppression of peasant resistance in 1920^th should be also mentioned here. It was permanent war of Bolshevik regime with traditional social structure and “proprietor`s instincts’” of Ukrainian peasants, who got land from Bolsheviks, but were doomed to surplus – appropriation system and driven into collective farm slavery through hunger and dispossession. Dispossession caused liquidation of the most efficient peasant households, physical elimination and deportation of thousands of peasant families. The hunger of 1932-33 became the final stage of systematic actions, aimed at extermination of Ukrainian nation. Bolsheviks estimated correctly: after such a stroke, after extinction of thousands of peasants, inclined to proprietor`s moods - the core of Ukrainian nation, bearers of traditional values –the rest had nothing to do, but going to a collective farm obediently. The giant program of industrial break foresaw total unification of the Soviet Empire: peasants were to become obedient cogs in the machine, providing with bread for export in exchange for equipment and technology, slaves, throwing their own lives into the firebox of the chimerical idea of a communist proletarian state.

The museum was built as part of an integral memorial complex, constructed near another place, sacred for Ukrainians – the Alley of Glory, where people, who defended and liberated Kiev during the World War 2, are buried. It is situated on the ramparts of the old Kiev fortress, near St. Lavra.

The sculptures of grieving angels – keepers of souls of the dead –are placed by the entrance to the territory of the museum. The sculpture “Girl with spikelet” is located in the center of the Memory Square, surrounded by millstones, which milled millions of lives and are called “millstones of history”. Stalin regime imprisoned people for this notorious spikelet, leaving no chance to survive.

The museum itself is situated under the Memory Candle, decorated with bronze cranes – the symbol of national revival. Black labrodorit on both sides of the staircase, leading to the museum, symbolizes plowed land. Peasants couldn`t use the harvest from it in those terrible years.

 The Memory Hall is designed as memorial space. Everyone can light a candle here, paying tribute to the dead. There is a symbolical sanctuary in the center of the hall. There are generally accessible martyrology books with names of millions of victims on the walls: visitors often find their relatives among them. Such moments cannot be expressed in words. The hall is full of items of peasant life: there are boats, carts, implements roundabout. One can be impressed by family photos of those, who died at that time. We can see a young peasant couple – good-looking, smiling, full of faith in good future, promised by the power. But they were covered by the black shadow of Holodomor. Here is the photo of a big peasant family, made several years before the tragedy: almost twenty people against the background of a traditional Ukrainian house. They cheerfully look into the lens – the symbol of civilization and progress, happiness of the new world, brought by the Unions. A year later this village, like many others, was put into the “black” list of totally died out areas. No one on the photo survived…They all, like many others, were killed by the regime and buried in mass graves. There are many of them left on the territory of Ukraine since that time.

Two films are demonstrated during an excursion – 24 and 18-minute long. They tell about the terrible crime of the Bolshevik regime. The alley of the notorious “black plates” is situated by the museum exit, above the Dnieper slopes. Villages, died out of hunger, are written down on there. There are thousands of them all over Ukraine. Holodomor caused a demographic catastrophe: 3, 4 million people died of hunger, birth rate deficit came to 1, 1 million. Who knows how our history would turn, if that generation had come into life in a full body.   

Memory bell is ringing above the Dnieper slopes. Candles are burning. No matter what the battles and political accents of today are like, lists of the dead from martyrology books and cynically –practical quotes of Bolshevik leaders reveal the awful truth to us. And we have no right to forget it.