History / UPA barbarian murders on Polish and Jewish neighbors during WW2 [150]


Thanks :)


I cannot agree with you. Zhirinovskiy's speeches don't matter because he's a talented stand-up comedian and a professional orientalist possibly linked with KGB. So his fake party was created to serve as a lightning rod for Nazi voters (now most of his voters are those who just like his pranks).

However there are too many influential people (not solely politicians) in Russia who advocate the same views in earnest. Do you know Privalov, the editor-in-chief of "Expert" journal? He stated that it would be a good idea to buy Eastern and Southern Ukraine, bribing locals to vote for it and politicians in Kiev to allow such a poll. It's typical Russian patriotic attitude to Ukraine and by far not the worst example.

I've read dozens of Russian articles on Ukraine and hundreds opinions on the web and never encountered one in which Ukrainian words or facts of Ukrainian history were not messed up. On the other side arrogant or "paternalistic" attitude towards Ukraine is most common thing even with intellectuals who are rather civilized.

As to pseudo- or not I think than chauvinism is merely a patriotism of the higher (disproportional if you like) degree. So patriotism while not a bad thing if shared by an honest and tolerant person can easily turn into chauvinism like a medicine can easily become poison.


Well, I agree that there's much misunderstanding, mutual animosity and other unpleasant things between various parts of Ukraine and Ukrainian nationals of different backgrounds. I for instance would like it if Russian language was granted an official status in some regions and endangered minority languages (Gagauzi, Urum, Crimean Greek, which is a separate language, etc.) were protected better.

Yet I don't like when people from Russia intervene because Nathan I imagine would disagree with me and say that Ukrainian itself is endangered and is not used as it should be. That would be true and I have no desire for Ukrainian to disappear or degenerate into Russian-Ukrainian mixture. And people from Russia usually don't care a bit for Ukrainian.

Now, I hope you understand me better.

History / UPA barbarian murders on Polish and Jewish neighbors during WW2 [150]

Wow, what a battle of nationalisms! There's only a Jewish hothead (or blockhead which is often the same) lacking here who would wrote that all of you, Slavs and Germans, are bloody killers and that except of Holocaust and pogroms no history is worth discussion.

So, JulietEcho, you live in US and condemn Ukrainian "barbarians". And you are right, innocent people being murdered is always a crime, even if those people are children, wives or parents of criminals.

Tell me, have you seen any historical maps? I have and plenty of them. And I know that in 13th century Poland's eastern borders were generally the same as now and Chełm and Przemyśl weren't even Polish towns then. They belong to Ukrainians (or ancient Rus' inhabitants if you like it that way).

I won't tell all the story about the subsequent Polish aggression onto Ukrainian, Belorussian, Lithuanian, Latvian etc lands, I want to point out though that in 16th or 17th century that aggression changed from a mere occupation (a common thing which brought with it things both bad and good) to severe polonization and catholicization — either you become a Polish speaking catholic or a nobody and even worse. If local people tried to defend their identity they got killed and abused. And that's why Chmelnicky uprising happened (which was not first but something like seventh in a row).

Of course Henryk Sienkiewicz didn't write about that, he was too much of a patriot. Bolesław Prus preferred to be an honest man (impossible thing for a patriot) and criticized him for that. I try not to turn into a patriot too, though I respect my country.

OK, more to the point. By December 1918 all predominantly Polish lands gained independence and were united. To the east lay lands where there were less than 40% Poles and whose inhabitants wouldn't live under an empire any longer too.

So, "za naszą i waszą wolność"? No. Poles chose to conquer those lands. Freedom from old empires turned out to be a freedom to make a new one.

Western Ukrainians who created their own state were driven out of it or made 2nd sort people in their homeland. To make things worse Polish government settled ethnic Poles on the eastern border though there was no surplus of land there. Even before that Ukrainians were mostly poor peasants and all major landowners were Polish. No need to say that Ukrainian culture was suppressed just like Polish one before 1918. So, do you expect Ukrainians like Poles?

Of course those Western Ukrainian army officers who started nationalistic movement in 1922 which eventually led to UPA organization were radicals and Nazi sympathizers (until 1941-42). That's why there weren't supported by W. Ukrainian majority until 1939-1941 when this land became a playground for Hitler and Stalin and in those times only radicals could survive, unfortunately.

So they were indeed bad guys... no better than Polish government which sympathize with Nazis too (taking part in Czechoslovakia dismemberment in 1938) and punished all Ukrainian people for those radicals actions with so called "Pacyfikacja" (in Russian "zachistka" — a police force terror attack on civilians). And Bereza Kartuska concentration camp is not a good part of Polish history.

Yes, UPA (or Nazi collaborationist which is not the same) did murder many thousands of innocent civilians and I'm not comfortable that those people are so blatantly proclaimed heroes in Ukraine. Heroes they were as they didn't spare their own lives to defend their land but they were murderers in the first place, alas.

However you forgot that all that happened not in Polish but in Ukrainian territory and that Armia Krajowa had its revenge on Ukrainians by killing thousands of innocent people as well. So, why don't you notice their atrocities?

Maybe it's time for you Poles to reject your own imperialism and acknowledge that "Polska od morza do morza" was no better than "Deutschland über Alles" or "velikaya Rossiya" and that it was your ancestors who laid the foundation for Polish-Ukrainian conflict?

Now, Sasha. You say that no Russian in his right mind is Ukrainophobic. Well, I'm Russian myself (and I hope that you wouldn't accuse me of bias against you) but I live and Eastern Ukraine and have a bit different view. I have seen, read and heard too much to have any doubt that typical Russian patriot's attitude to Ukrainians is ignorance + superiority complex + "brotherly feelings".

In plain words this attitude is "there's no Ukraine, there's no Ukrainians, there's no Ukrainian language... let's unite". I didn't invent this formula, I heard it from a Russian Duma deputy on TV in 2005.

Of course not every Russian is a patriot (and an idiot like that man having said it to Ukrainians) yet patriots in today's Russia are majority, they rule your country and will be ruling it for a long time.

And please don't tell us which Ukrainian language we do understand and which we don't. Of course Canadian and American Ukrainians... they are much like Russian émigrés living in France — loving their homeland of the past, having not so much in common with it in present but thinking themselves wiser than those who remained there.

And you, Nathan, just try to be less patriotic because it's bad for human brain.
I don't want to discuss with you UPA, massacres of Poles in 1942-44 which hardly can be blamed on Soviet partisans, Shukhevich, who was a Nazi German army officer for a couple of years and now he is proclaimed a hero of Ukraine, and all this history. I want it to become just history. We live in a complicated country and there's no need to brood on it excessively.

Let me just quote myself:
Freedom from old empires turned out to be a freedom to make a new one.
I live in Eastern Ukraine and speak Russian still I don't vote for Yanukovich and never will. In 2004 I voted for Yushchenko hoping to see a new, more European and civilized government. Instead I got a nationalistic moron for a president who does everything he can to alienate us from "self-conscious" Ukrainians and does nothing to make our country closer to EU.

In March 2006 the then minister of justice came on TV (news on "1+1") and called people living and Eastern and Southern Ukraine "savages who don't like to wash themselves". Imagine an Anglo-Canadian politician insulting French Canadians like that. He would be forced to resign the next morning.

However "Europeans" from Ukrainian establishment preferred not to notice that.
Has such a state any future, what do you think?