Ukraine reburies famine victims shot in Soviet era

By Iryna Baranych

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - The remains of 602 people caught fleeing famine in Ukraine 60 years ago and shot by the Soviet secret police were reburied on Saturday, closing a dark chapter in the country's history.

Ukraine's Holodomor, or death by starvation, was denied by the Soviet Union for decades.

It is seen by many Ukrainians as a national tragedy. Allegations, made by President Viktor Yushchenko among others, that it was a deliberate genocide by the Soviet leadership under dictator Josef Stalin have angered many Russians.

In the capital Kiev, Ukrainians including political leaders on Saturday commemorated the anniversary of a famine in 1932-1933 that killed between 7 million and 10 million people and which historians say was avoidable at best, and a genocide engineered by the Soviet authorities at worst.

In the western city of Lviv, residents marked a lesser-known later chapter of the Holodomor, the famine of 1946-47, which historians say killed between 100,000 and 1 million people.

The remains of the 602 victims, including skulls with bullet wounds, were found four years ago. After establishing exactly when and how the victims died, they were laid to rest on Saturday in the Lychakyvsky cemetery.

In rainy weather, dozens of Lviv residents stood by the wooden coffins placed in neat rows by soldiers outside the cemetery's church. A priest blessed them before they were placed in a crypt beneath the monument to victims of Soviet rule.

In the aftermath of World War Two, Soviet authorities seized grain from Ukraine, "the breadbasket of Europe", to supply to other parts of eastern Europe. Starving Ukrainians fled west to areas where harvests were not yet being requisitioned.