Since 1991, Ukraine has been an independent country— one with almost eighty million acres of farmland. Unfortunately, for years a government moratorium prevented millions of landowners from creating a functioning agricultural land market, according to the Atlantic Council (a nonpartisan organization that galvanizes US leadership and engagement in the world, in partnership with allies and partners, to shape solutions to global challenges, www.atlanticcouncil.org/about).
When the Ukrainian Parliament voted in March 2020 to lift the measures that had nurtured corruption among land developers and government officials, Ukraine was on a trajectory of living up to its nickname as the Breadbasket of Europe. Over seven million landowners could now have a say in the use of their land and their agricultural production. Then came February 2022. A promising agricultural market in the hands of landowning Ukrainians is now on pause.
This agricultural beauty has caught the eye of several beasts over the course of Eastern European history. During the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin’s push for a government takeover of Ukrainian land (collectivization) resulted in the horrific Holodomor, a manufactured famine. His policies put farmland in the hands of the Russian government, who chose to continue production and export a million tons of grain to the West while depriving Ukrainians. Four million starved to death during the Holodomor. Russia’s current leader is not only waging a war of attrition with sieges but is willfully committing horrific crimes against children, women, elderly, and soldiers.
In the Disney musical Beauty and the Beast, the tale as old is time is that love can win over the ugliness inside the most hideous of beasts.
Sadly, the tale as old as time in the real world is that unchecked ambition and greed often swell into a permanent amoral state. All countries, including our own, have experienced leaders who abused power. When that abuse continues without consequence, evil has a feeding frenzy.
The propaganda and lies of one man and the government he controls have put Ukraine in harm’s way again. The autocratic nature of Stalin and Putin reminds me of another Disney classic. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the beastliest of them all?
Reading suggestions: (online article) Roman Leshchenko, “Ukraine Can Feed the World,” March 4, 2021
(novel) George Orwell, “Animal Farm,” 1945
Viewing suggestions: (movie) “Mr. Jones,” 2019
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
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