MOSCOW. (Political commentator Leonid Mlechin, member of the RIA Novosti Expert Council) - Many post-Soviet governments tend to embellish the history of their countries.
They try not only to please their compatriots, but also to spoil the mood of their neighbors.
Well-aware of Moscow's reaction, President Yushchenko posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to a man who was considered a criminal in the Soviet Union. The Commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) Roman Shukhevich (alias General-Cornet Taras Chuprinka) received the title for "outstanding personal contribution to the national-liberation struggle for freedom and independence."
Kiev appealed to the United Nations to qualify the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s (Golodomor) as an act of genocide, that is deliberate destruction of Ukrainians by Moscow...
In turn, the Ukrainian leaders hear humiliating words of Russian politicians to the effect that Ukraine has not made it as an independent state, and will break into two parts.
History has become a Russian-Ukrainian battlefield. For instance, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, a Moscow favorite, is considered a traitor by many Ukrainians. But the battle for Poltava or reassessment of the roles played by Mazepa and Khmelnitsky will not set Ukraine against Russia, just as Napoleon's campaign and invasion in 1812 do not prevent Russia from having good relations with France. But the events of the 20th century are a different thing, and not because they are closer, but because they are bloodier and more confusing.
The 1932-1933 famine took four to five million lives. It was the worst in Ukraine, although Kazakhstan was probably the hardest hit. The famine and the ensuing typhus epidemic killed 1,700,000 people, or 40% of Kazakhstan's population.
The famine was not completely engineered by an evil will, although it did play a role. The reasoning of the Soviet leaders was simple - there was not enough time to persuade the owners of private capital to help; therefore, all resources should be taken by force and used for industrialization. There was virtually nothing left in the cities, and for this reason the villages were robbed. Grain was the main currency there. The authorities resorted to food confiscation squadrons and decided to eliminate the rich peasants (kulaks) as a class - in modern terms this would be called a procedure of accelerated bankruptcy. The destruction of villages led to the famine during the 1932-1933 winter all over the country.
Dooming one's own people to death by starvation is a heinous crime and all Stalinist leaders are to blame for it. This crime cannot be justified, but it does not amount to genocide. Moscow did not plan to deliberately kill Ukrainians or Kazakhs. Politburo members did not care who would die of famine they engineered...
In other words, this requires a serious historical analysis. Interference of politicians into historical studies will do no good.
Historians note that it is unfair and unrealistic to reduce the Ukrainian national idea to provincial buffoonery, light opera, circus, or a comedy with a costume change. There is nothing idyllic about Ukraine's decision to come under control of the Russian tsars. Nikolai Gogol wrote that the Ukrainians did not want this because "they indulged in freedom, had the wild Cossack spirit and wished to live their own life."
After the February 1917 revolution in Russia, Ukrainians tried to establish their own state, but it collapsed after two years and not only because Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky sent the Red Army to Kiev. Many Ukrainians wanted to be with Russia. Some Ukrainians found themselves in Poland. The Ukrainian nationalists said bitterly that after World War I, the Poles received their own state, and the Ukrainians did not.
Hatred of the Poles was so strong that in the fall of 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine without a problem. But as soon as the Soviet leaders started accelerated collectivization and mass deportations, the situation changed.
Film producer and playwright Alexander Dovzhenko wrote with grief in 1940: "Our people are misbehaving - we were given a hearty welcome in Western Ukraine last year, but now we have contributed to the expansion of the insurgent movement there. We are being rude, insensitive, and uncultured there."
It was then that the organization of Ukrainian nationalists became the only defender of Ukrainian interests. This explains the role which nationalist leader Stepan Bandera and his Ukrainian Insurrection Army (UIA) (commanded by Shukhevich) played in Western Ukraine.
In 1944, Eastern Ukraine welcomed the Red Army, but Western Ukraine was much less pleased about the restoration of Soviet power. Resistance was massive; there was a real guerrilla warfare. UIA units controlled a quarter of Ukraine's territory. Power in the countryside belonged to the Soviets during the day and to Bandera's army at night. UIA commandos shot teachers and doctors, killed their own compatriots for collaborating with Soviet power, and had no mercy even on children.
Now supporters of Bandera, his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UIA, and Shukhevich who ordered his commandos to shoot wonder why these forces should be condemned when some Cheka (the first Soviet state security organization) officers and men also acted without any compassion or respect for the law? A resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine dated January 10, 1945 reads: "There were some absolutely unacceptable cases when some NKVD and NKGB (Cheka successors) resorted to punishment without going into details. They burn houses and kill individual citizens without trial, although they have nothing to do with the militants. By doing so, these officers and men discredit themselves and Soviet government bodies."
Sometimes, OUN commandos put on Cheka uniforms and staged atrocities in order to turn the locals against Soviet power. Cheka members also posed as Bandera commandos for the same purpose.
On February 15, 1949 the Military Prosecutor of the Interior Ministry's Ukrainian Military District reported to the Central Committee: "The Ukrainian Ministry of State Security and its departments in Western Ukraine are widely using so-called special groups operating in the guise of UIA militants in order to reveal the hostile nationalist Ukrainian underground... Special groups from the Ministry of State Security (MGB) are behaving like real militants, and their actions cannot be justified by any operational requirements... They are robbing local residents."
Documents revealing Cheka crimes, and not only in Ukraine but also in the rest of the country, are changing much in our understanding of our own history, but they do not cancel the sentence of the Ukrainian nationalist leaders who killed innocent people with unheard-of cruelty. Western Ukraine was not a site of a trench war between the two armies - the casualties were civilian.
When the past is being revised with the advent of the new era, there is the temptation to make a contrary assessment. Those who fought on Hitler's side are becoming heroes not only in Ukraine and the Baltic countries. Some people in Russia are also saying that collaboration with the Nazis may be justified by the struggle against communism. There are proposals to build monuments to Andrei Vlasov who placed his army at Hitler's disposal, or to Cossack ataman Pyotr Krasnov, who swore allegiance to Hitler and wanted to deprive Russia of the Don River area... These figures are being described as anti-Stalinists and fighters for freedom, but an unbiased historical analysis shows that as Hitler's allies, they were helping the fuehrer to implement the program to destroy Russia, and enslave Russians and other Slavs.
History will continue to be revised. New documents and testimonies often change ideas about events and historical figures, but they do not turn murderers into heroes. Many of those who were slandered for no reason are now occupying a befitting place in people's memories, but they are not Vlasov, Krasnov or Shukhevich who are guilty of grave crimes against their own compatriots.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
