Hiding things allows people to obtain power, and keep it. Helen and Matthew are facing this from two different times. Helen is living in America, while she has family members living through the Holodomor in Ukraine. Matthew, three generations later, sees how it affected the world. Helen knows that if she doesn't get the story of her family out, nothing will change. Matthew learns that the secrets about the Holodomor allowed the Soviet Government to keep power.

Helen must decide between staying quiet to not upset or scare people, and continuing to talk about the problems in Ukraine to get them out into the open.  We see her, first, considering her mother’s warning. “...back where she came from, it was easy to get in trouble with the government, especially if you expressed your opinion or complained.” She wonders if she “had been troubling people and making them sad.” However, she finally decides that she wants to make life better, and she “couldn’t do that if [she] remained silent and afraid.” The risk of sending a letter to the New York TImes about Walter Duranty is that she may upset the people who told her these stories. She would most likely have to go and ask other people for their stories, again, risking upsetting them. Some people are already upset and most likely actually want to talk about it. She ends up sending it to the times (most likely because she thinks these people also want the story out). The Russian government controls its people with fear, hence why Helen’s mom was still so afraid of upsetting people. She doesn’t want to remain helpless as all these people are hurting and she thinks just having their stories won’t do much good (which it won’t).  She makes the decision to publicize these stories in a hope to tell the truth, to not be afraid. We know that authoritarian governments remain in control by spreading fear and by keeping secrets. No one ever knows the full picture.

Matthew learns that reliable information is important in order for people to be able to make good decisions and stay free.Matthew says “I was reading how Stalin lied, not just to journalists from other countries but to his own people” And Matthew's dad explains the misinformation part by saying “But look what's happening now. At least 10 '000 people have died of covid in New York City, but there are still a lot of Americans who think covid is a myth or a government conspiracy to take away their freedom.” Stalin lied to his people in order to keep them in control. He also lied to the outside world to prevent intervention. With Covid there were just so many “options” to go with because of the internet, myths and misinformation was spread. For America a problem or consequence was that most people didn't take the prevention measures seriously.The Soviet Union was able to keep power because of their lies and secrets. The people never thought the government were the ones at fault because they had the kulaks to blame, and, as Matthew’s father points out, “disinformation can be really powerful, especially when it gives people a shared enemy to blame.” Due to this the government stayed in control for a long time and the suffering only continued. In Ukraine they were being lied to, even by the government. And during covid there were so many different sources of what it truly was that you didn’t know which one to trust. These two situations were very similar, except  one the government was lying to cause confusion but the other time it was people being misinformed and spreading that misinformation. 

Helen wants to change the world, for the world to know what’s happening in Ukraine. Matthew sees that secrets and truth can make a big difference. It's how the soviet government stayed in control. The point is to understand what happened then and why it's so important for Ukraine's past. Something like this could happen again. For example: In Iran the government has blacked out the country (shut off all internet and travel access), which is why it's so hard to find out how many protesters have died. Seeing what happened in the past shows us that authoritarian governments follow the same or similar patterns.