Russia alcoholic wife beater, not big brother

One of themes Russian propaganda is employing in its bid to take over Ukraine is that Russia is the “big brother” in the Slavic familial scheme of things and should be allowed to rule the roost.

They’re baiting the West into believing that Russia must be part of the solution because Moscow knows how to deal with this accidental-nation-failed-state-younger-brother-fascist Ukrainians. Bollocks!

Instead of “big brother” try this relationship:

Putin's Mr. Russia is the abusive, alcoholic husband, with a long history of beating up his wife, Ms. Ukraine, who has wanted out of the marriage pretty well since Day One.

After years of fighting, she was formally granted a divorce, but the Police and Judges looked the other way as the drunk husband dragged her back into his house. Mr. Russia repeatedly raped Ms. Ukraine, abused her physically and psychologically. He nearly starved her to death. He called her a fascist whore until some of her children actually started to believe it.

Finally, the Police and Judges agreed to let Ms. Ukraine move out, but only if all the children agreed.

The Police and Judges told Ms. Ukraine that she should really love Mr. Russia, that she would really be better off with him, that she wouldn't be where she is today, if it wasn't for Mr. Russia.

Recently, on a drunken spree, Mr. Russia stormed into Ms. Ukraine’s home and snatched away one of her daughters, Crimea. The Police and Judges looked the other way, saying “He is the father, after all.” They cut off Mr. Russia’s line of credit at the liquor store, he had a basement full of booze, so didn't really care.

Mr. Russia is currently spending time with one of the other children, the son called Donetsk, getting him drunk and urging him to move in with him too. Donetsk finds Mr. Russia’s lifestyle appealing.

Mr. Russia has almost convinced the Police and Judges that Ms. Ukraine is in fact a fascist whore, and that all of her children would be better off with him.

Now, Ms. Ukraine wanted to get a gun to defend herself against Mr. Russia. But the Police and Judges have told her to not even think about it, they will not accept the Battered Woman’s Defense from a fascist whore.

“It was her own fault, in the first place. Slut,” they said.

Maidan versus Militia: war crimes video evidence

2 videos, POV of “death squad” and POV of protesters. Both were shot on Institutska Street near the upper entrance to Khreshchatyk Metro. Cannot confirm they’re both from the exact same time, but they do show: a) how well the Militsia snipers was armed (high-powered rifles, scopes, live rounds), b) unarmed protesters being killed.

The death squad video is 13 minutes, and looks like it was shot by Telekanal Ukraina crew (microphone sock): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4OgynH-7Is#t=0 – the date is not specified, but poster indicates either Feb 20 or 21

The Protesters POV is 41 minutes, from Feb. 20, and the person who posted it (Eldar Nagorniy?) provided a shot list in Russian, translated here (TV journos and editors really like shot lists): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSvj8F_Br4M#t=25

2:55 Kalashnikov fire
12:30 Unarmed people being shot
14:00 People trying to carry dead and injured being fired at
16:48 Protester in green jacket shot
17:08 Mound of corpses
18:00 Dragging body away
19:35 Off-camera Russian TV reporter "Good day colleagues! We are located at the extremists most sharpest attack” – “extremists” are dead or injured
22:00 Unarmed people, clearly not advancing, being shot
29:00 Maidan counterattack. Note: not a single shot is fired by the protesters
31:15 Man clearly retreating from the front line is 30 m away when he is shot
31:50 Protesters with flag on his back. Sign on the flag: “Dnipropetrovsk. Banderite-fascist-Westerner.”
37:00 Medic raises hands “Let us carry the injured!” and goes forward
37:45 Priest with shield and helmet
37:55 Medic lead away, appears to be injured in neck
40:00 Protesters hide behind smoke from burning tyres
40:55 Protesters gain ground. But at what price!

And let’s not forget that all of this was made possible by the Kremlin’s $2 billion bailout of the Yanukovch government and those in West twiddling their fingers about sanctions.

Ukrainian Jewish leader on Svoboda

Far too many Western journalists are getting it wrong when it comes to VO Svoboda (aka Freedom or Liberty Party). I'm not a huge fan (being too "liberal" for some of its members), but the Kremlin-inspired propaganda surrounding Ukrainian anti-Semitism is getting to be too much. 

But don't take my word for it. Consider this excerpt from an interview last month with Joseph Zissels, Jewish community leader in Ukraine, dissident during Soviet times and today a leader of the #EuroMaidan: calling Svoboda and Tiahnybok as "hard-right antisemitic" is inaccurate and is a 

Q: Doesn't it bother you that there are open anti-Semites among your allies? For example, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, lists Svoboda's leaders among the top ten anti-Semites in the world.

A: I am very familiar with the activities of the Wiesenthal Centre and I know the head of the Jerusalem branch of that organization, Efraim Zuroff, who put the names Oleh#Tyahnybok and Ihor Myroshnychenko into “the top ten.” Efraim Zuroff spent a lot of time in Moscow in the past few decades and I don’t consider the portrait he has drawn to be an objective one. I think that, throughout the world, there are plenty of people who are more anti-Semitic than #Tiahnybok and parties that are far more anti-Semitic than Svoboda. I deal with this issue professionally; I was commissioned to conduct a large sociological study of this topic. In reality, there are anti-Semitic elements in Svoboda, and we have been tracking them for more than 20 years, from the time when the party was still called the Social-national Party of Ukraine. There is less and less anti-Semitic rhetoric. For example, of the 37 Svoboda party member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, only six or seven have ever uttered anti-Semitic statement in the last 20 years. There is nothing directly anti-Semitic in Svoboda’s [party] program, neither anything directly xenophobic, although the seeds of xenophobic elements are there. Unlike members of parliament from the Jobbik party in Hungary and Ataka party in Bulgaria, MPs from Svoboda have not uttered anything anti-Semitic from the parliamentary podium. Not a single statement.

In the interview, Zissels calls Svoboda a "radical nationalist party."

Read Russian language original in its entirety here:

http://www.vaadua.org/node/551

Ukraine's 324,000-strong militia earning a pittance

Given all the attention Ukraine’s “police” force – the Soviet-era “militsiya” – is getting these days for their role in things like raping women, raiding property, torturing, beating the crap out of and killing people, a few numbers from Dzerkalo Tyzhnia’s Serhiy Rakhmanin in his July 19 article “Viyna Svitiv” (War of the Worlds):

Ukraine’s militsiya counts 324,000 people: 183,000 in uniform, 171,000 with “atestats” (professional certificates), 12,000 cadets and 33,000 internal troops.

A Colonel earns 6,000 to 10,000 hryvnia – a thousand bucks a month is he’s lucky. A Sergeant earns four times less: from 1,500 to 2,500 hryvnia “and goes off to earn independently,” comments Rakhmanin.

Over 300,000 internal police… and the Ukrainian people have started to push back against the militia state. See this July 20 report from Press TV: http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/07/19/314487/ukraine-antipolice-protests-come-to-capital/

Revenge of the Himkas

Jews and Ukrainians honour the memories of those killed 

at Lonsky Street Prison, October, 2012. (lonckoho.lviv.ua)

John-Paul Himka is at it again. This time he's obfuscating the present AND the past.

In his latest assault, launched at the Harriman Institute in New York on April 22, Himka has taken aim at the Lonsky Street Museum in Lviv.

During his talk "The Lontsky Street Prison Memorial Museum. An Example of Postcommunist Holocaust Negationism," Himka charged that the museum is engaged in Holocaust denial and suffers from a case of “deflective negationism.”

Is Himka, who claims expertise in history and facial recognition, now a psychologist? No, “deflective negationism” is a term widely, and almost exclusively, used to help categorize the deniers, diminishers and distorters of the mass murder of millions of Jews in Europe during WW2. 

In his talk, Himka charged that the Lonsky Street Museum is a hotbed of Holocaust negation. But it appears that he hasn’t actually been there: the slide show accompanying his talk pictured a neighbouring building as the site of the prison. Close, but wrong.

Very wrong, according to Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, one of the museum’s founders. The Lonsky Street Museum has hosted a number of events and exhibits devoted to the Holocaust. A quick search of the museum’s website shows a number of them, including:

• The “Shoah in Lviv” exhibit that ran from January 27 to March 3, 2013;
• On January 28, 2013 Meylakh Sheykhet, director of the Lviv-based Faina Petryakova Scientific Center for Judaica and Jewish Art and member of the Lonsky Street Museum’s Supervisory Board, delivered a talk about the Shoah in Ukraine at the Lonsky Street Museum;
• On October 30, 2011, on the 70^th anniversary of the Babyn Yar executions in Kyiv, Sheykhet donated copies of materials from the German Bundesarchiv in Berlin about the Gestapo, during a screening of SerhiyBukovsky’s 2006 documentary film about the Holocaust “Spell Your Name.”

There are others, and more are planned to take place at the museum that has only been opened for three years.

There is only one permanent exhibit currently functioning at the young museum covering the Soviet NKVD executions that occurred in the prison and courtyard in June, 1941. Towards the end of the exhibit, the names of each of the 700+ victims are written out: Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Russians, and other nationalities.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Viatrovych, who was present at the Himka presentation, dared challenge the University of Alberta professor, but he was cut off by one of Himka’s protégés, Per Anders Rudling, one of the workshop’s organizers.

Rudling has his own bone to pick with the museum. When it was announced that the director of Lonsky Street Museum was coming to Canada on a lecture tour last year, Rudling attempted to discredit his “astonishingly modest [academic] credentials... only a master's degree” and wrote that “Jewish suffering is omitted” by the museum -- an outright lie.

A little more poking around the website, and you’ll find the possible and probable cause of why Himka is taking aim at the Lonsky Street Memorial Museum: posted is a damning 19,000-word review of Himka’s 2011 submission to the Canadian Slavonic Papers called  “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd.” 

Himka's issue with the museum appears to be that it dares to look at Ukraine’s nationalists as something other than “Jew-killers” and “Hitler-lovers” – monikers once assigned by Soviet propaganda and parroted by many in academia.

The history of the matter is that The Lonsky Street Museum is based around a prison that was used by Poles (1918-1939), Soviets (1939-1941), Nazis (1941-1944) and the Soviets again (1944-1991), and was closed in the mid-1990s.

And Ukrainian nationalists were prisoners there all those years, under all those regimes. The museum is doing nothing more, nothing less than telling the prison's history. But that's not enough for Himka et al.

Tabalov Tushki Tabachnyk

A picture to go with the photos in Katia Gorchinskaya's Fear and loathing at the Kyiv Post. Warning it has  bare-breasted Femen women braving the cold to make their political point on the first day of the new Ukrainian parliament. The Tabalovs are listed as members of the Rada on the website under the "Ts".

The two Tabalov tushki are followed by  former education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk in alphabetical order.

"Oleksandr Tabalov and his son, Andriy, were both elected as Batkivshchyna party representatives, but refused to join the party's faction the day before the parliament was due to convene. The opposition interpreted as treason and demanded that they renounce their seats. Oleksandr Tabalov told reporters that he and his son “are not going [to join] any faction.” Andriy Tabalov, in one of his interviews to the Ukrainian media, said they were “pressured” by the government.

There is no legal mechanism to force the two tushkis – the nickname for those who desert their party and join someone else’s -- to give up their seats, though. So the opposition decided to apply psychological pressure, pinning their portraits to the podium, with the word “traitors” spelled out underneath. Iryna Herashchenko, a member of Vitali Klitschko's Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms faction, said the duo will be prevented from entering the session hall for all five years by the opposition.

Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the Svoboda party, called the incident “a blow not only to Batkivshchyna, but to all of the opposition.” Perhaps, to compensate for the blow, his brother Andriy and several accomplices used one of the many breaks in sessions to cut down a metal fence surrounding the Rada. Then they broke a door to get back into the building because it was blocked by a special police unit."

Full article:
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/fear-and-loathing-in-ukraines-new-parliament-317544.html

Unnatural selection of crimes

National memory debate distorted 

by extrusive approach 

to 20th century crimes and criminals

Graph: Years in action (1900-1999)

University of Alberta’s John Paul Himka recently invoked Oxana Shevel’s tripartite framework for dividing up the various sides in the debate over national memory, as follows:


"a) those who focus on Soviet crimes and downplay the crimes of the “national socialists and the nationalists”;*


b) those who focus on the crimes of the “national socialists and nationalists” and downplay the crimes of the Soviets; and


c) those who attempt to treat all such crimes evenhandedly, using the same criteria and practices of investigation and interpretation. "


Himka claims that he represents the c) position (one he claims to share with historiography’s latest darling Timothy Snyder). 


Even a cursory review of the titles of the 22 papers Himka has posted on academia.edu suggest they all fall into the b) category. (The dozen papers I have actually read through are far from being evenhanded.)
Let’s first take a look at the framework reportedly proposed by Shevel at the 2011 convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. Don't take my word for it: judge for yourself.


Upon quick review, Shevel’s approach (as described by Himka) appears somewhat reasonable. Presented in such a way, the third way seems the most rational -- even elegant -- and one to which any sober-minded historic investigator would subscribe to.


But the Shevel-Himka approach* is fundamentally flawed in grouping all the crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine into two groups, namely crimes committed by: 


a)   Soviets, and 
b)   Nazis and nationalists. 


(Unfortunately, Himka does not specify the time period covered by the proposed framework, so let’s assume Shevel meant the years the Soviet, Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists were active in the last century. See Graph above.)


The flaws lie in oversimplification and arbitrary assignment of allegiances: Why are the crimes of the national socialists and nationalists grouped into one category? Why not separate the crimes into multiple separate categories according to perpetrators, and talk about the crimes committed by:


a) Soviets
b) Nazis, and
c) Nationalists


That’s because there was overlap between categories b) and c), a Himka might say. But was there not overlap between a) and b) as well? What about a) and c)? In other words, why aren’t the following categories valid?


d) Crimes perpetrated by the Soviets and Nazis
e) Crimes perpetrated by the Soviets and nationalists


While the latter category seems improbable, it certainly deserves investigation, for the purity of the scientific approach. The former category, however, deserves greater scrutiny, given what we now know about the causes, effects and details of the 1939-1941 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and accompanying agreements that allowed Hitler to get started in the first place. Talk about something that's been downplayed!


What about the crimes Hitler and Stalin committed together? Does John Demjanjuk fall into this category? He was sent to war by Stalin and ended it, supposedly, doing Hitler's dirty work.


In terms of investigating the “who is downplaying what” component, it gets even more complicated. But there are those in who focus, for example, on nationalist crimes and downplay Soviet and Nazi crimes – a category omitted in the Shevel-Himka framework – particularly when it comes to events that transpired between Ukrainians and Poles in Volyn during the Second World War. 


Oh yeah, then there is the issue of Polish crimes omitted from the proposed framework. So what about Soviet-Polish crimes? Polish-Nazi crimes? Polish-Ukrainian nationalist crimes?


The other important piece of information omitted from the Shevel-Himka framework is the identification of victims. Presumably they are referring to crimes against humanity in general terms, but the wording of the suggested framework betrays a bias towards a focus on the Holodomor and Holocaust only, i.e. they’re talking about Soviet crimes against Ukrainians, and the Nazi crimes against Jews.


What about Soviet crimes against Jews? What about Jewish involvement in Soviet crimes? (Delve into that topic and earn yourself the unshakable labels of “anti-Semite,” “fascist,” “Nazi,” which, thanks to the sustained efforts of the likes of Himka, our family is stuck with. And he’s kvetching about getting nasty emails!)


Himka claims he is for “complicated, messy, honest history” and that “ever since the time of the scientific revolution, it has been a principle of science and scholarship that arguments, not authorities, are required to settle disputes.” It seems to me that if you’re going to be scientific about history then all the “complicated” and “messy” permutations deserve investigation and argumentation. Honestly.


=====
* Himka capitalizes the word “Soviets” yet writes “national socialist” in lower case.
** I’m taking Himka’s word that Shevel said what she said at the 2011 Association for the Studies of Nationalities convention, but adding the “Himka-“ qualifier just in case the proffessor got it wrong (mistakes do happen).

Putin's face lift turns back time...

... but will he still look that good a dozen years later? Leonid Brezhnev certainly did not. This autocrat's rhytidectomy and designs for the future does not bode well for the Russian Federation's democratic credentials, managed or not. But who's kidding whoskoff? Democracy is so passé for really modern men. 

Here's how one artist envisions Vlad will look like in 2024 when he's 71 years old.

Item: Former Russian President Vladimir Putin to regain presidency for the next twelve years.

... or "Rumors of the Soviet Union's demise have been greatly exaggerated."

Hat tip to Dmytro Potiekin who's blogging at Ukrainska Pravda

Lviv, Donetsk agree: Nazism = Communism

East and West Together!

Two men in Donetsk, reportedly miners, burn the Soviet hammer-and-sickle and Nazi swastika flags on June 22, 2011, the anniversary of Hitler's attack on Stalin (Hitler attacked after a a nearly two year lovefest known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact when Stalin let the Nazis conquer most of Western Europe).

(pravda.com.ua)

Meanwhile, Lviv city council commissioned four billboards to mark the same anniversary. They show Nazi and Soviet atrocities in that western Ukrainian city. "Communism = Nazism" read the bold, red letters. The caption under the image of victims executed by the Soviets (left) reads "Lonsky Street Prison, Lviv, June 30, 1941." Victims of the Nazis (right) with caption: "Square in front of the Opera Theatre, Lviv, March 1942."

Bridging the east-west divide that's been artificially imposed on the people of Ukraine, local governments and individual citizens agree: standards bearing Hitler's swastika and Stalin's sickle were essentially cut from the same cloth.

Putin angers commies, vets in Ukraine

"Surgeon" helps Put foot in mouth

Vladimir Putin has once again angered Ukrainians, but this time around it’s not only the nationalists and euroatlantacists who’re upset.

The cocksure future president of Russia managed to rattle Ukraine’s communists and war veterans on Dec. 16 when he claimed that Russia didn’t need Ukraine’s help to win WW2.

(Russian language original. "Offending" Putin quote at 3:20)

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1yiaQ-Z-84 

Ukraine’s communists and war veterans – usually diehard proponents of closer ties (and in some cases union) with Russia –expressed indignation at Putin’s words as politicians called for Ukraine’s foreign ministry to respond to the Russian leader’s outrageous statement.

The Ukrainians have the leader of a Russian bike club to thank for exposing what Putin really thinks about Ukraine’s formidable contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis forces in the “The Great Patriotic War.”

Alexander Zaldostanov, president of the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club was in the audience for the live, televised Q+A session with Putin last Thursday, when the microphone lady gave him a chance to ask the Russian leader a question.

Zaldostanov and Putin had met before and rode their Harleys together in Crimea during the summer before last when Putin traveled to Sevastopol for one of his macho PR stunts. (And to gloat over Ukraine’s extension of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease in that port city.)

Speaking from the studio audience last Thursday, the leather-clad, bearded leader of the Night Wolves’ pack known by his handle “Khirurg” (Surgeon) reminded Putin of the rally of 5,000 bikers in the preface to his question that saw Putin put a foot in his mouth in a way that no spin doctors could help get out.

Sporting tattoos and a thick gold chain around his neck, Zaldostanov reminded Putin that the bike rally in Crimea was dedicated to the “65th anniversary of Victory” and “the idea that we probably would not have won the war if we [Russia and Ukraine] were separate states.”

Khirurg proceeded to paraphrase Putin, claiming the Russian leader once lamented “he who doesn’t want Ukraine and Russia to be together doesn’t have a heart but he who wants Ukraine and Russia together doesn’t have a mind.”

Speaking straight from his own heart and with hope in his eyes, Zaldostanov asked “Would you agree that the heart can sometimes replace the mind but that the mind can never replace the heart?”

“Sash,” Putin said, speaking to the biker like to a good buddy, “that’s a very deep question, one that I’m not sure I understand.”

First, Putin clarified the quote Zaldostanov attributed to him.

“I was talking about the demise of the Soviet Union... He who isn’t sorry that the Soviet Union fell apart has no heart, but he who wants to recreate the USSR, as it was, has no head.”

“Concerning our relations with Ukraine... I will allow myself to disagree with you when you say 'if we were divided, then we wouldn’t have won the war.'”

“We would have won either way,” Putin said in a lecturing tone.

Awkward pause. Scattered applause.

“That’s because we’re a country of winners,” Putin said in a victorious tone as the clapping continued.

He proceeded to back up his claim with “facts” such as 70 percent of the losses suffered by the Soviet Union were incurred by the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.

“That war was won – I do not want to offend anyone – but primarily on account of the resources, human and industrial resources of the Russian Federation. That’s a historical fact, it’s all in the documents,” Putin said.

The communists and war veterans of Ukraine reacted to the news of Putin’s statements with disbelief and indignation. But some, displaying the slave mentality that has been instilled in them by centuries of imperial domination, tried to make apologies for their masters in Moscow explaining Putin’s statements away as a mistake made in haste ahead of the 2012 presidential elections in Russia.

Communist MP Oleksandr Holub called Putin’s statement “very controversial” but speculated that the Russian may have uttered it “without appropriate preparation.” He said that “Putin’s concept helps the cause of Ukrainian nationalists who assert that Red Army soldier ‘fought for a foreign country.’”

“Germany waged war with the Soviet Union, not with Russia, Ukraine or other republics,” said Yuli Korotkin, chairman of the Committee of War Veterans. “I consider such thoughts and answers to be primitive. To divide our victory like a pie is sacrilege! It’s desecration of the memory of 27 million Soviet people who died in the GPW and 1.9 million veterans still alive from the Great Patriotic.”

A spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it will not officially react to Putin’s words, adding that Ukraine’s position is that all the peoples of the former USSR can consider themselves winners of the Great Patriotic War.

At least Ukrainians now have further proof of what Putin, the man likely to be Russia’s next president, really thinks about their country(in addition to his claim that Ukraine “is not really a country.”) And we have the straight-shooting bikers of MC Night Wolves to thank for it.

Two presidents: Alexander Zaldostanov (taller, left), president of MC Night Wolves and Vladimir Putin, president-wannabe (2012-2017) in Moscow. (daylife.com)

Holodomor Wikileaks and Russia's Single Historical Space

The Holodomor won’t go away. This past weekend, we marked the sad anniversary of the terror-famine that occurred nearly eighty years ago. And just when the Kremlin thought it was over for another year, the Holodomor has surfaced in the wikileaked US embassy cables.

Ukraine is mentioned in eight of the 278 embassy cables leaked thus far, and it’s not just in connection with Muammar al-Qadhafi’s “voluptuous” Ukrainian nurse. 

(The US Embassy in Kyiv is not (yet?) among the embassies listed as sources for the cables.)

The Holodomor is referenced twice in cables from the past two years.

At the end of October 2008, the US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Tatiana Gfoeller attended a lunch briefing in Bishkek with Prince Andrew of the British crown ahead of his royal highness’ meeting with the Kyrgyz government. Many issues were discussed, and the Prince “pounced” when the topic of Russia came up:

"[Prince Andrew] stated the following story related to him recently by Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev. Aliyev had received a letter from President Medvedev telling him that if Azerbaijan supported the designation of the Bolshevik artificial famine in Ukraine as 'genocide' at the United Nations, 'then you can forget about seeing Nagorno-Karabakh ever again.' Prince Andrew added that every single other regional President had told him of receiving similar 'directive' letters from Medvedev except for Bakiyev. He asked the Ambassador if Bakiyev had received something similar as well. The Ambassador answered that she was not aware of any such letter."

More recently, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov raised the Holodomor with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman when the two met in Moscow at the beginning of June 2009, according to a US Moscow embassy cable:

"Lavrov raised Russian concern with ‘historical revisionism’ regarding the Soviet Era and Second World War, which, he said, was particularly acute in Eastern Europe but was also present in Israel. He cited Israel's official recognition of the Holodomor, the 1930s famine that occurred in Ukraine. Lieberman explained that by recognizing this tragedy, Israel had not said Russia was guilty of causing it, nor that it was an act of genocide."

Lieberman has probably not read Raphael Lemkin’s assessment of the Soviet genocide in Ukraine. Lemkin was a Jewish lawyer who lived in Poland near border with Soviet Ukraine during the years of Holodomor; he was also the man who is credited with coining the term genocide.

Then again, Israel is no longer all that interested in history. At least that’s the message Israel’s President Shimon Peres recently delivered in Ukraine when, during a public lecture on “political and economic challenges in the epoch of globalization,” he said:

“If I was asked what advice to give Ukraine, I’d say: forget history, history isn’t important... you won’t be able to avoid the mistakes of the past, you’ll simply repeat them,” according to the BBC.

Wow is right. Anyway, back to wikileaks and Holodomor: Why would the President of Russia threaten the leaders of former Soviet states with dire consequences if they recognize the Holodomor as genocide? Why would the Russian foreign minister raise the same issue with his Israeli counterpart?

Ukraine never blamed Russia as a state for anything; in fact a Ukrainian court established the guilt of seven organizers of the famine led by Josyf Stalin: two Russians, two Jews, a Georgian, Pole and Ukrainian.

So what exactly irked Russia about former President Yushchenko’s campaign surrounding the Holodomor?

Some would argue that reparations could be demanded from the Russian Federation, as the legal successor state of the USSR, if the international community recognizes genocide (kinda like the Germans paying for the Holocaust).

Others would argue that Russia is not afraid of paying, it’s more afraid of losing face.

Others would argue that Ukraine’s Holodomor narrative – and any historical narrative that’s independent of Russia’s – is unacceptable, because it will undermine Russia’s plans to re-establish hegemony.

Not only does Russia want Ukraine to be part of the Single Economic Space, it also wants all the Soviet republics to be part of the Single Historic Space. (The Single Religious Space and Patriarch Kiril’s Russian world Orthodox Church is part of that plan, too, but that’s another issue altogether).

There can be no room for Ukraine’s unique Holodomor in the common, shared experience of the Soviet Union. Collectivization can only be a common tragedy shared by all the people united by a Great Fatherland (as in Great Patriotic War instead of WWII).

Ask Education Minister Dmytri Tabachnyk: he can give you a copy of the new history text book he's writing for Ukrainian schoolchildren -- it'll all be in there.

Moscow just won’t have it any other way, as the wikileaks have shown. And that makes the Holodomor and other events from the past more than just far off history: it’s about the geopolitics of the very near future.

How many million will be enough?

In the presidential “Slovo” to the people of Ukraine on occasion of Holodomor Remembrance Day, President Victor Yanukovych’s slovo-writers take a sarcastic swipe at those people who claim that “three to five to seven million and even more” died from the tragedy.

Is the president really using the occasion of the Holodomor as an opportunity to criticize his political opponents?

More likely, this debate over the number of victims is allowing Yanukovych to avoid the real issue: that the 1932-33 Holodomor was part of the sustained Soviet genocide in Ukraine.

A similar swipe at Ukrainian Canadians was recently taken by a Canadian journalist in his blog. I left a comment earlier this week, but it has not appeared there. I don’t know why (or if) it’s being censored, so I’ll make the point here, because I feel it’s an important one, especially in the run up to the sad Holodomor anniversary.

By way of background, in his blog entry “Hyperbole has no place in national tragedies,” Peter O’Neil scolds Canada’s Prime Minister and Ukrainian Canadians for claiming that ten million people died in the Holodomor. *

O’Neil decided to take issue with the “ten million” figure after an academic from Australia wrote him that it was wrong. O’Neil did not report that this same academic, Stephen Wheatcroft, has claimed that the “famine was an accidental consequence of ill-conceived policies” and “ecological factors.”

O’Neil’s research let him to discover that other academics felt that the estimate of ten million deaths in 1932-33 is excessive and decided to make a story of it called “Harper accused of exaggerating Ukrainian genocide's death toll .”  (He also chose to make Harper’s visit to Lonsky Street Prison Museum in Lviv one-sided, but that’s another story.)

In focusing on the ten million, what O’Neil failed to realize that rather than an attempt to maliciously exaggerate the number of dead of the part of the PM and/or Ukrainian Canadians, something may have simply been lost in translation: Was it ten million in 1932 and 1933, or ten million in multiple famines in 1921 to 23, 1932 and 33 and 1946 and 47 combined? O’Neil failed to mention that there was more than one artificial famine during Ukraine’s Soviet experience.

I wrote, copied and pasted my comment, but it appears to be trashed by the censors. Working from memory, I wrote something along the following lines:

The monument in Kyiv where Stephen Harper honoured the victims of artificial famines is in memory of those innocents who died in the holodomors – plural.

The Soviets engineered the deaths of Ukrainians by starvation in 1921-23 and 1946-47 as well. The 1932-33 famine was but one episode in the three decades Lenin, Stalin and their bolsehvik henchmen spent killing Ukrainians through civil war, famine, execution, collectivization, forced labour and other means as they tried to replace the Ukrainian “ethnic material” with a new kind of person called homo sovieticus.

If you tally the number of Ukrainians killed by the communists between the 1920s and 50s, then saying that they killed ten million – or the equivalent of the population of Canada – would not be a stretch. It would be understatement.

But be wary of those trying to make this a debate about millions! That’s taking away from the bigger issue raised by PM Stephen Harper during his visit to Ukraine – and covered by the Ukrainian media – an issue that’s obfuscated by the debate over millions, namely that the crime of communism, and the communists themselves, have not had their Nuremberg.

Would the Holocaust not be genocide if only four million Jews were killed? Or (something an O’Neil might appreciate) would the Potato Famine be less of a tragedy if the population of Ireland fell by only fifteen percent?

Harper’s statements on communism not having its Nuremberg and genocide of Ukrainians were, in my opinion, more newsworthy than a rehash of the tired and old millions debate kept alive by O’Neil’s sources.*

But that news took a back seat to a chance to criticize Harper, Ukrainian “nationalists” and do some moral grandstanding. It’s just too bad that the memories of X million have to be dragged through the mud for the purposes of satisfying egos and avoiding the genocide charge.

As for Yanukovych, who wants "truth above all" in matter concerning the Holodomor, perhaps the truth about all the crimes of communism will come to see the light during his presidency. Perhaps this willl be accomplished by the communist he appointed to head the Institute of National Memory. For comparison's sake, that's like appointing a neo-Nazi to head Yad Vashem.

* Peter O’Neil’s favourite source when it comes to matters of Ukrainian history has been self-dubbed "anti-historian" John Paul Himka of the University of Alberta who wrote “How Many Perished in the Famine and Why Does It Matter?” in 2008.

Yanukovych's left foot

Yo Vic! Look Left!

komunist.com.ua

Yanukovych better start looking both ways before crossing Ukraine’s political street. The “left” is increasingly joining the “right” in criticizing him; the union in parliament and cabinet between the communists and his Regions is being questioned by the believers of bolshevism.


Communist Party of Ukraine leader Petro Symonenko said that his reds are the “only political opposition” in Ukrainian society to the “governing oligarchic capital.” Speaking after local elections that saw his party clash with the Regions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea – areas that provide core support for both parties – Symonenko appeared on the defensive as he justified his party’s cooperation with the Regions in parliament as “tactics.” He said his communists joined the Regions in creating the governing coalition in parliament and cabinet for the sake of “stability” and the chance to better protect the rights of the working class.

Why is Symonenko now justifying his party’s cooperation with the government? He didn’t see the need to do so nine months ago, when his party essentially delivered Yanukovych the victory in the presidential elections.

Yanukovych won those elections by less than fifty percent of the vote. He beat Yulia Tymoshenko in the second round by 887,000 votes; Symonenko scored 872,000 votes two weeks earlier in the first round of elections before endorsing Yanukovych in round two.

Yanukovych thanked the communists with positions in government, including control of the Institute of National Memory (that’s supposed to deal with the crimes of communism) and the appointment of Dmitri “the false” Tabachnyk to head the education and sciences ministry.

Yanukovych and his party have remained true to some of the ideological tenets they share with the commies, including genocide-denial, no to NATO, hate for Halychyna, love for Russia and the Russian language.

But issues of history, language and geopolitics tend to take a back seat when hunger and basic social needs are driving peoples’ needs.

Yanukovych’s government is working closely and depending on the IMF for sustained bailout and pushing through some unpopular measures like raising natural gas prices for residential consumers (after promising lower prices as a result of prolonging Russia’s lease of its naval base in Crimea).

These measures, coupled with funny business at the ballot box that saw the Regions snatch some sure victories away from the commies, have some communists to start asking questions. One prominent communist leader, Leonid Grach of Crimea, demonstrably left the party caucus in protest over his party’s marriage of convenience. All of a sudden the communist leaders have some splaining to do to their rank-and-file rickies and lucies with coal on the soles of their shoes.

Leonid Kuchma was once confronted by an opposition that transcended left and right, but he made sure it remained fragmented and divided by skilfully making concessions to the right and the left as required. Yanukovych could borrow a page from Kuchma’s playbook, but will firing Tabachnykoff, for example, be enough when students come out to protest Russian as a second-language and higher tuition fees?

Lonsky Street Blues

Lonsky Street Prison: Nice piece of real estate in Lviv's city center (wikipedia.org)

When I look at what happened to Ruslan Zabily last week, I can’t help but think that could have been me. You see, I was offered the job of director of the Lonsky Street Prison Museum by Lviv city officials back in 2009. And I was going to take it, but there was no stopping Zabily in his pursuit of the position. I just finished a museum project on Ukrainians in Auschwitz and a book of translated documents from the 1932-33 Holodomor, so I welcomed the break from the miseries of history: the Lonsky Street Prison would’ve just added to the nightmares. Let him have it, I thought, if he wants it so badly.

A year and a half later, Zabily is detained in Kyiv by the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), questioned for fourteen and a half hours, his notebook and hard discs confiscated and a criminal investigation opened against him. The charge: Zabily was going to reveal state secrets.

Domestic and international human rights watchdogs were quick to condemn the SBU’s reversion to KGB tactics. The speculations about the reasons for intimidating Zabily are many. Some think the SBU of President Victor Yanukovych is trying too hard to please the Kremlin and demonstrably persecuting historians who do not subscribe to the Soviet historical narrative. Others consider the Zabily affair to be a warning to former SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who has spent the better part of the year organizing a civic movement called “Renewal of the Country.” Nalyvaichenko, the SBU chief under President Victor Yushchenko when the spy agency declassified all the pre-1991 documents on Soviet repressions, has been vocal in his criticism of the Yanukovych regime. The Yanukovych regime has halted the declassification process started under Yushchenko.

I would add another reason to the list of speculations concerning the SBU’s hard-handed tactics, based on my experience with the Lonsky Street Prison Museum. It is much more mundane and although not as sexy as the KGB-Kremlin theory it’s just as worrisome. It goes back to the history of the prison and its location, location, location.

The prison is actually a complex of buildings constructed at different times. The building on the corner of Copernicus and Bandera streets was originally built as a barracks for Austro-Hungarian soldiers. It was used a prison by the Poles, Soviets, Nazis and Soviets again during the 20th century. The USSR liked the location so much they expanded the prison complex to include an administrative building and built a three-story prison in the courtyard.

The prison was closed in the mid 1990s and title to the land was transferred to the SBU. The KGB agents who once fought capitalism quickly embraced the entrepreneurial spirit and decided to start playing the real estate game and erecting an apartment high-rise in the courtyard. Workers said they discovered human remains soon after they broke ground, but the masters told the slaves to keep digging away. They laid the foundation and started work on the first story before a public outcry forced a halt to the construction. The human remains showed the prison complex was not only used to incarcerate enemies of the state, but to kill and bury them as well. The Nazis forced the local Jews to carry the corpses of those killed by the Soviets out of the Lonsky Street Prison in July 1941, but those bodies were identified and re-buried over half a century ago. So whose bones were these?

If I was the director of the Lonsky Street Prison Museum, the first order of business would have been the careful and respectful exhumation of the human remains found in the prisons’ courtyard. Instead, people became more concerned with who was going to get title to the land and which firm would get the contract to build the memorial complex on the location. I came away with a feeling of disgust for the whole process. The Soviet system killed human decency in these people. They had grown accustomed to having human remains lying beneath their feet and didn’t mind building condos on top of them. These are the kind of people who would much rather have their own person running the museum instead of Zabily. These are the kind of people who see mercantile advantages, take them using force and intimidation, and flourish in Yanukovych’s Ukraine. They care not about national memory or historical justice or ideology. They want to sell you a house built atop killing fields.

President misses lessons

“Ukraine for the people”: The president’s portrait and party program greeted the children of School #134 in Dnipropetrovsk on Sept. 1. (UNIAN)

Yanukovych is a homo: Homo sovieticus. Yanukovych and his entourage think they’re living in the USSR.

For example: when Ukrainian children went back to school on Sept. 1 they found “Yanukovych corners” in their classrooms where “Lenin (Stalin, Brezhnev) corners” once stood. These corners serve to inform children about the Great Plans their Great Leader has made for at least the next five years.

The danger of this throwback to Soviet times was not lost to Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk. “You shouldn’t force children in school to sing praises to the government. They shouldn’t have to learn about the president’s program, but about what the president is doing,” Kravchuk told the Argumenty i Fakty v Ukraini newspaper on Sept. 7. “I don’t want to live to see the day when some idiot hands my great granddaughter a portrait of some president and forces her to sing dithyrambs [hymns of glorification] to him.”

Kravchuk will see another example of “throw back” when the Party of the Regions holds its Annual Meeting on Sept. 11. The “party in power” proceedings are scheduled to be televised live on State TV Channel One. No other party enjoys such access to the airwaves ahead of the October local government elections.

The further Yanukovych goes back in time, the shorter his term will be. Yanukovych, it seems, could benefit from going back to school himself and re-reading the chapter on “cult of personality,” if it’s still in the textbooks.

==
Kravchuk’s warnings to Yanukovych (Ukrainian): http://www.unian.net/ukr/news/news-394637.html

Media most trusted check on Yanukovych government: poll

No way to treat the media:

Presidential bodyguard tackles cameraman, June 15, 2010

Ukrainians trust the church and media the most, while they trust the banks and courts the least, according to a June poll.*

After 100 days in office, a little over half of Ukrainians gave President Victor Yanukovych a passing grade and a +22 percent trust balance, third place after the church (+52) and media (+36).

More than 50 percent combined gave a “totally positive” and “mostly positive” assessment to the improved relations with Russia that have occurred since Yanukovych came to power, including the gas-for-fleet deal. More than half approved of the creation of a majority in the country’s parliament.

Yet expectations remain high, as only 25 percent feel the economy has improved since Yanukovych took power after a slim victory in February. Most feel the economic situation has yet to change one way or another; around 10 percent said the economy has deteriorated in the first 100 days of Yanukovych’s rule.

Most Ukrainians think that the Yanukovych government is doing a good job in ensuring wages and pensions are paid on time, allowing access to objective information and maintaining law and order. But the new government has yet to address the challenges of combating corruption, lowering inflation and stimulating economic growth.

Seventy-five percent of poll respondents said that corruption in Ukraine is “very high” or “high.” Thirty percent said they have personally encountered corruption since Yanukovych came into power.

Issues of geopolitics, democracy and language are nowhere near the list of priorities Ukrainians think the government should be addressing. Priority issues are: overcoming economic crisis and economic growth (74 percent), combating corruption (52 percent), reforming the health system (46 percent), welfare for the needy (36 percent), pension reform (32 percent) and cancellation of parliament members’ immunity to criminal prosecution (27 percent).

Elected for a five year term, Yanukovych has plenty of time to address these issues. And his +21 approval rating after 100 days is not the worst ever.

Victor Yushchenko’s approval rating after 100 days in office was nearly +40, while Leonid Kuchma’s was only +8. Yushchenko was out after five years, while Kuchma ruled the country for ten. That’s the thing about expectations: the lower they are the easier it is to meet them.

The list of priority issues Ukrainians want to see resolved hasn’t changed dramatically in the two decades since Independence. What has changed significantly is the public’s perception of and trust in the media. In June, 2004, the national media’s trust balance was minus 3 percent among Ukrainians. Six years later, the media is second only to church, which has traditionally has had a positive trust balance in the post-Soviet space. Ukrainians trust the media more than they do political parties, NGOs, parliament, cabinet and president.

Only 16 percent supported the actions of the political opposition in early June 2010. That makes the media the most-trusted “check” on Yanukovych’s government. If he wants to make a go of it, then he better treat the press better than his goon bodyguards have recently. And it’s up to the media to rise to the occasion of heightened expectations too.

* The nationwide poll of 1,611 adult respondents was conducted from June 5-10, 2010 by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Sociological service of the Oleksandr Razumkov Centre. The face-to-face interviews were conducted in 113 population centers (65 urban, 48 rural). Sample error (without design effect) does not exceed 2.5% (0.95 probability).

Yanukovych bodyguard tackles cameraman, June 15, 2010. The president was reportedly 300 meters away.

June 2010 poll results (in Ukrainian)

June 2004 poll results (in Ukrainian, ZIP)

Toast to Yanukovych

Bearcats Threaten Ukraine

The Arctictis binturong is neither bear nor cat. The nocturnal Asian mammal is making life difficult for some businesses in Ukraine, according to that country's president. (theage.com.au)

Ukraine’s newest president has been described as pro-Russian, but Victor Yanukovych primarily employs US consultants to win elections, whitewash his image and investigate political opponents. If the Americans really want to help Yanukovych’s international image (and make a buck while doing so) they should start with something far simpler: proper English.

As one example, take the June 18 news item on Yanukovych’s initiative to combat corruption found on the English language pages of the presidential website:“We plan to reduce the number of permits and licenses, which has been complicating life of small and medium business, by at least 50%. Thus we will make doing business in Ukraine easier and minimize influence of bearcats on it”, said President Yanukovych.

Bearcats. Bill Gates’ spellchecker won’t say it’s wrong, but an American consultant could probably tell you that rare Asian mammals aren’t Ukraine’s greatest problem. The website contains many such errors: spelling mistake, grammatical no-no’s and obsolete usage. Of course, Yanukovych has more important things to worry about than getting the English language right. He must, first and foremost, create stability, even if that means bulldozing democracy and Rule of Law under the asphalt.

This reminds me of a true story related by a close family friend who was in Ukraine in the early 90's working for an international NGO. It’s about language and a toast worth raising to Yanukovych, his government and their US consultants.

The setting is a dinner in Kyiv with officials from Ukraine and Western diplomats seated around a table. As is customary at Ukrainian meals, vodka is consumed with the many-course meal, but only when it's preceded by longwinded toasts.

Respectful of his guest, the Ukrainian delivered his toast in English. Well, it wasn’t exactly English, but the weird variety of the English dubbed “Ukrenglish,” where words are translated from English into Ukrainian and back again, most often with hilarious consequences. (The book and film Everything is Illuminated capitalize on this phenomenon). The kind of English you’ll find on the presidential website.

The Ukrainian official spent several minutes promising a bright bilateral future while extolling the benefits of cooperation. In conclusion of his toast, and to show that he is savvy in the finer points of English, the Ukrainian said “Up your bottoms!” (The Ukrenglish version of “Bottoms up!”)

Bursts of laughter were successfully suppressed, but a few chuckles disguised as coughs could be heard as smiles crept upon the faces seated on the Western side of the table.

Not to be outdone, the highest ranking Western diplomat responded with a toast when the guests’ turn came around. He too spoke about mutual goals and common interests and the future. Wishing his Ukrainian counterparts only the best, the diplomat finished his toast with the words “Up yours too!”

Medvedev's Stalin lesson for Yanukovych

Presidents of Russia (left) and Ukraine honor Holodomor victims in Kyiv on May 17. (president.gov.ua)

The coniferous attack on Ukraine’s president was not the main highlight of Dmitri Medvedev’s most recent visit to Kyiv. Sure, it was funny, and Victor Yanukovych’s administration made things worse by trying to ban footage of President vs. Wreath on television. Yanukovych’s macho ego was due for a little deflating, but far more significant events did transpire.

One example: the two presidents’ homage to the victims of the Holodomor. They may not agree that the artificial famine designed by the Kremlin and implemented by Stalin’s Soviets to kill Ukrainians was genocide, yet they honoured its victims. Actions speak louder than words. That they even went to the memorial is amazing and deserves as much discussion as the incident by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Flashback to the early 1980s, when Ukrainians outside the USSR embarked on a campaign to let the world know that artificial famines were instruments of Soviet policy that took millions of lives in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet propaganda machine and its cogs in Western academia* dismissed the accusations that the Bolshevik-run state had organized the death of millions by famine. Either the fact of famine was denied or excuses like drought or poor harvest were provided. The “myth” of famine was dismissed as a fraudulent figment of “fascist” imagination.

Twenty-five years later, the truth of the matter has been revealed in such a way that not even the Kremlin dares deny the Holodomor. Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet apparatchiks were in denial mode. Today, the chiefs of post-Soviet states are lighting candles to honour the memories of victims of Soviet crimes. Now that, in the bigger scheme of things, is progress.

Presidents of Belarus(left) and Ukraine honor Holodomor victims in Kyiv in November, 2009.(president.gov.ua)

Yanukovych is the first Ukrainian president to deny that genocide took place. His three predecessors are very clear on the issue, as are the heads of all the Orthodox churches in Ukraine, including Metropolitan Volodymyr of the so-called Moscow patriarchate. The nation’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, detailed how he was ordered to counter the Holodomor campaign of the 1980s in his capacity as communist party ideologue. Today, he is unequivocal in his assessment: it was genocide.

In Brussels, Yanukovych singlehandedly dismissed the genocide claim for the sake of better relations with Russia. In Yanukovych’s Ukraine, monuments to the Holodomor’s head honcho Stalin are erected. Meanwhile, when Russia’s president came to Kyiv, he makes a point of honouring the Holodomor’s victims. What’s going on?

Ukraine’s president looks silly, while Russia’s president looks progressive, like a senior statesman and real leader. Medvedev’s condemnation of Stalin in early May and his honouring of Stalin’s victims in Kyiv are consistent. Yanukovych is sending mixed messages. He does not know what he wants. It’s another argument for letting Moscow run and re-establish primacy over the region. The underlying messages from the Kremlin: a) if they are left on their own, states like Ukraine will fail, and b) the world needs Russia to keep order in the former Soviet space, otherwise you’ll have to deal with yahoos that build Stalin monuments.

The Kremlin has learned that denial and cover-up can only go so far and that sooner or later truths of matters tend to surface, be they radioactive clouds emanating from Chornobyl or archival documents showing how Stalin and his henchmen planned and executed the murder of millions within the boundaries of Soviet Ukraine. (The Kremlin has also learned how to trivialize those truths or make them serve its own interests, but that’s another topic altogether.)

Ukraine’s new leadership has not learned the decades-old lessons of glasnost: cover-ups and denials don’t work. The incident with the falling wreath is but one example.

Perhaps Ukraine’s new leaders do not want to learn and are content with letting Moscow do all of their thinking for them. Otherwise, they would have handled the Holodomor a little differently. For example, Yanukovych could have told Brussels: "Holodomor was genocide. We are not saying that Ukrainians were the only ones targeted and systematically murdered by the Bolsheviks. We know that Stalin committed genocide against other peoples as well. Ukrainians are talking about what happened within the borders of Soviet Ukraine. Ukraine has declassified all of its Soviet archives pertaining to this period and the proof is undeniable: the murder of millions within the confines of Soviet Ukraine was planned by the state. We encourage other former Soviet republics to declassify their documents and do the same. Tell the world about the other Soviet genocides."

That would be the best way to honour all of Stalin’s victims, be they in Ukraine, or Russia.