On the other hand, we even have little old ladies, those who have been alive long enough to remember the brutality of the Stalin era, sagely opining on how “Ukrainians are being self-important and disrespectful” just because they wish to remember their dead, or how, honestly, Ukrainian lives don’t really matter in all this at all, considering that if the peasants had only laid down for daddy Stalin, they wouldn’t have “deserved” such punishment (I’m not kidding or exaggerating right now – the whitewashing of the Stalin era continues to this day).

I’m not going to say that the truth is in the middle. There is no truth. The only truth are millions of dead bodies, stacked on high from Ukraine, to Kuban, to Kazakhstan.

An authoritarian Russian government cannot simply look back at the Stalin period in particular and declare it to be terrible. That would go against the very nature of authoritarianism. This is why we have the present charade going on in regards to the Holodomor – it’s all “how DARE those uppity Ukrainians! What about the people starving along the Volga?” What about them, indeed? Those people were victims as well. Are Russians encouraged to remember them? Is the world?

Was the Holodomor a genocide? It was, if you expand the definition of what genocide means. Although Ukraine was targeted specifically due to Stalin’s desire to crush and destroy the merest thought of independence, it was a specific class – the peasants – who bore the brunt of the famine.

The peasants resisted unfair collectivization and paid for it dearly, with their lives and the lives of their children.

However, the ethnic element of Holodomor must also include tales of how many of the perpetrators – the ones who literally took the food out of the mouths of Ukrainian peasants – were ethnic Ukrainians sitting pretty in the lap of the regime. It seems perfectly logical. You don’t put a population as large as the Ukrainian population on its knees without many collaborators. So for all of the cries of “it was the Russians” (not stated officially but heard often nonetheless), I have to say that there was nothing so simple and clear-cut about the Stalin years. I mean, Stalin himself was Georgian. You don’t hear cries of “it was the Georgians” – not until it suddenly becomes politically expedient, anyway.

The Russian government, in its snide dismissals of the Holodomor legacy, cannot deny the very simple fact that it does not want to remember the Russians who died in the famines as well. Their bodies are only trotted out as a human flesh for the rhetorical cannons aimed against Ukraine.

Despite my dislike of Yuschenko – often so kindly described in the Western press as a “pro-Western” politician, when he is in fact a pro-Yuschenko politician – I have to admit that for all of his bluster, he has stopped short of the kinds of excesses that Russian public personae have committed when speaking about Ukraine. When Medvedev speaks of a “so-called Holodomor,” you can feel the hatred, that which journalist Dmitriy Gordon (himself a controversial figure) has described as “Russian superpower chauvinism,” rising up like bile.

I hate Russian superpower chauvinism, for social and personal reasons, not the least of which have to do with having a Russian mother and a father who declares himself Ukrainian (his own father’s Russian ethnicity having no importance to him in the matter).

The saddest thing in all of this – besides the millions of emaciated dead bodies, besides children being chased by raving cannibals – is the fact that Russia and Ukraine are still neighbours, they still have a shared history, they still have a future that’s going to see us closely entwined. And that future looks ugly, ugly enough so that children like me are being forced to choose sides, as if being forced to choose between two squabbling, divorced parents, whom they will never stop loving, no matter what.

RT: Immediately after Kosovo’s independence was recognised, Moscow said this could become a precedent for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Today, you made a decision to support these republics’ independence. Why did Russia do it? Does this square with international law?

Medvedev: I’ll start with your second question. This is fully in line with international law. When the case of Kosovo arose, my colleagues said this was a special case, or, as experts in international affairs say, casus sui generis. Well, each case of such recognition is a special case. The situation in Kosovo was special, and the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia is special as well.

In our situation, it is quite obvious that we made this decision in order to prevent genocide and annihilation of these peoples, and to help them to come to their feet. These unrecognised republics have been struggling for their independence for seventeen years now. Despite all attempts by the international community, no progress was made during this time. Until just recently, we tried to help restore the state unite of Georgia. However, it didn’t work.

The decision to launch an aggression buried all hopes of achieving an agreement. Thus, under current circumstances, the only way to preserve these peoples is to recognise them as subjects of international law, to recognize their state independence.

That is why our decision is fully in line with international law, the UN Charter, Helsinki declarations and other international documents.

RT: Is Russia prepared for a long and tough confrontation with leading world powers that the decision it made today may lead to? And, in general, aren’t we afraid of the prospect to enter another Cold War?

Medvedev: We are not afraid of anything, the prospect of another Cold War included. Of course, we don’t want that. In this situation, everything depends on the stand of our partners in the world community, our partners in the West. If they want to preserve good relations with Russia, they will understand the reason for making such a decision, and the situation will be calm. But if they choose a confrontational scenario, well, we‘ve been through all kinds of situations, and we’ll survive.

RT: You have signed the six-point agreement. One of the points says Russia should pull its troops out of Georgia. Nevertheless, Russia is still being accused of not meeting this obligation. Is this true? Are there Russian troops left in Georgia?

Medvedev: That’s not true. Russia has fully met its obligations stemming from the six principles of the so-called Medvedev-Sarkozi agreement. Our troops have been withdrawn from Georgia, except for the so-called security corridor.

RT: The presidential campaign is underway in the US. Both candidates have spoken more than once on Russia’s actions in Georgia. Don’t you think this situation is being used as an instrument for the political struggle inside the US?

Medvedev: Well, as far as I know, usually during the elections in the United States of America, voters are quite indifferent to what is happening abroad. But if one of the candidates managed to use this question, well, godspeed him. The main thing is that it should not lead to international tensions. I have no doubt that both candidates will try to spin this situation for his purposes. But such are the rules of the election campaign.