Quotation

Before the Stalin atrocities, at film's opening: Across the ages it has been called many things: The borderland, the wild fields, the bread basket of Europe. But since I was a boy, Ukraine was simply 'home'. Even as we dreamed of freedom from the Russian tsar, life went on as it always had. Moving to the rhythm of the seasons, waxing and waning in the eternal cycle of seed, plough and reaping. A life of hard work and small pleasures. === Comrade Stalin, Comrade Lenin tried to collectivise. He targeted the intelligentsia, the church, the peasants. The Ukrainians rebelled. They flourished! - Lenin was too lenient. Syphilis had softened his brain. Ukraine must be taught to bow to our will. Without its huge mineral wealth and vast harvests of grain, Russia cannot exist.