In my last post I shared part of my interview with Mykola Onyshchanko, a survivor of the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933, during which millions of Ukrainian peasants were forcibly starved to death by Stalin’s Communist regime. Mykola, a young boy at the time, survived this period, and decades later, went on to become a top manager at one of the largest locomotive factories in the Soviet Union. Here are some more excerpts from what he told me about that leadership experience during my interview with him at the Holodomor Victims Memorial in Kiev:
In the 1970s I went to Moscow to warn the Communist leaders that the Soviet Union could be destroyed. I told them that the economic system was not functioning properly and that it would collapse if there were no changes. I told them this, but no one listened.
I proposed changes, technology modernization, and, most importantly, the idea of treating workers differently.
I proposed paying more attention to human rights. I proposed making the people, the workers, more important. We needed to focus on the workers more. We needed to pay attention to their needs, to treat them better. But no one in Moscow would listen to me. The government thought everyone was the same—they were all just workers—but I knew that each person was different. I knew that workers were people first.
I asked Mykola if it was hard to help the same political organization that had done so many bad things to him and his country, referring to the Holodomor and other atrocities.
No, no, no . . . it was not hard! I did not care about the government in Moscow. I cared about the people in my factory. I cared about the people in Ukraine. I was trying to make changes to help them, to help the people.
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight. Gross inefficiency, groupthink, and a deep disregard for the individual human spirit splintered the Communist empire into pieces. Mykola, of course, was right: Human organizations must honor the humans they serve, or live on borrowed time.
Mykola is a hero of mine. He was a champion for shared leadership, dispersed power, and respect for all voices in a political culture, place, and time where none of those values were present.
The freedoms we enjoy today stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of human history. For me, Mykola is a reminder of all the leaders who carried unthinkable burdens so that someday, somewhere, it might be different.
Love and light to you, Mykola. You were ahead of your time.
