Occasionally while surfing the web, I happen upon some really scary statistics: numbers that have implications that simply defy imagination. One of the gristliest sets of numbers I ever happened upon was a listing of the totals for new students in the kindergartens of the Soviet Union in 1930 and in 1935.In 1930, there were four times as many new kindergarten students in the Russian Soviet Republic as there were in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. In 1935, there were eight times as many Russian kindergartners as there were Ukrainian kindergartners. I remember once pointing that out to a friend and his comment was “A real population explosion, huh?” No, quite the reverse. I think to know that statistic and to fully understand its implications gives the reader a blinding insight into the horrors of the forced relocations and collectivization of the Ukraine, of the extent of the evil of Joseph Stalin, and of the evil of the Soviet Union.
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