Ukraine suffers. It seems to be a national infection that pops up to devastate like a lethal game of whack-a-mole. In the late 1920s, for example, Ukraine was subjected to the Soviet move to collectivize farming everywhere. While that effort succeeded to be implemented smoothly else where in the USSR, Ukraine – blessed with some of the richest and most fertile soil in the nation – pushed back. Reluctant landowners were extracted from their land and “resettled” in places like Siberia, where many perished. Perhaps, they were the lucky ones. Stalin’s upped his punishment of Ukraine to a level that rose to genocide. It is impossible to understand the current escalation of hostility between Russia and Ukraine, far beyond the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Russian undermining eastern Ukraine in the hopes of an excuse to intervene and seize more of Ukraine, without looking at the horrific history of Moscow’s repression and decimation that seems to have singled out Ukraine above and beyond any of the other Soviet republics. A little walk with history will bring this home. Looking back almost a century ago.
“The events began to unroll leading to one of the worst genocides in the entire history of the humankind. As Professor Roman Serbyn writes in his brilliant series of works on this subject, Stalin and the narrow inner circle of his henchmen embarked on a task to completely remove Ukraine out of their way, to eliminate it as a nation, a culture, and a political subject. The task consisted of four parts: (1) to destroy the intellectual core of Ukraine, its ‘brain’ – the writers, artists, scientists, engineers, managers, doctors, teachers; (2) to rip off Ukraine’s ‘heart’ – the clergy, the spiritual, religious leaders who remained outside of the control from Moscow; (3) to wipe out the Ukrainian peasantry with its traditions of individual ownership and responsibility, with its resilience against the dictatorship of the state; and (4) to kill off all the islets of the Ukrainian language and culture outside the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, i.e. in Russia, including the Kuban, the North Caucasus, certain areas in the Far East etc. Stalin wanted to see Ukraine merely as a territory with rich farmland that could be exploited for his main pragmatic plan: to strengthen the army that, eventually, the sooner the better, will subjugate the whole world, molding it into his personal empire. Any other kind of Ukraine did not suit him…
“[T]he most horrific genocide was committed in rural areas. In June 1932, Ulas Chubar, then the head of the government of the Ukrainian SSR, wrote to Stalin that after the forced collectivization and the numerous requisitions of grain, Ukraine urgently needs help or, otherwise, there will be mass starvation. In response, the quotas of grain that the Ukraine farmers ‘owed’ to the government were only increased. By June 30, 1932, the entire stock of seed grain was taken away from Ukraine. On August 7, 1932, Stalin’s government issued a decree that made it a crime for a farmer to take home even a tiny amount of grain from the collective farm fields. Those who were caught gleaning grain were ordered to be executed on the spot. Only if the weight of the ‘stolen’ grain was equal to, or less than, the weight of approximately 5 kernels of wheat, the execution could be replaced by at least 10 years of hard labor with confiscation of all belongings. Children were not exempt from this barbaric law. In that same month of August, employees of all railroads in Ukraine were ordered not to let peasants board the trains going from the rural areas to big cities, unless they had a special permit from their collective farm and local Communist Party authorities. All highways and country roads were patrolled by armed special police units. So, millions of impoverished, exhausted, hungry, sick, barely moving people were herded to the collective farm fields for back-breaking labor every day, without being even minimally compensated and without any chance to escape…
“Over the fall 1932 and winter 1932-33, the rural dwellers in several major grain-producing areas of Ukraine were dying by thousands over thousands. However, the peak of the genocide was in spring and early summer of 1933, when the villagers had already eaten all dogs, cats, rats, crows, tree bark etc. When the new grass appeared, many people avidly ate it until they died of bowel obstruction. Cannibalism became rampant, people hunting and eating other people (especially children), and then, eventually, eating their own children. Because of an extremely low amount of albumin in their blood, people looked swollen and lost the capacity to use their muscles. The dead were everywhere: in the houses, in the yards, on the road from villages to the collective farm fields, and on the fields. Some desperate men and women who still could move traveled illegally to cities with the hope to get food there by begging. Most of them, however, died during the travel or soon after arrival to a city. The urban dwellers who had small rations of food were told that these new arrivals from villages are the enemies of the people who refuse to work. The police did not help the dying people and did not allow the city dwellers to help them.
“To this day, it remains unknown how many people were executed by the lethal hunger (the Holodomor) in Ukraine in 1932-1933. In the decision made by the Supreme Court of Ukraine on January 13, 2010, the number of documented direct deaths by starvation during the 1932-33 Holodomor was announced to be 3,941,000. Of course, this is merely the tip of an iceberg because millions of deaths were not documented and millions of deaths were not directly caused by starvation but, rather, by the diseases that accompanied it. Also, any number must be supplemented by the number of unborn human beings that could have been born and lived if not for the Holodomor. Based on demographic studies, most investigators agree that in Ukraine, the man-made hunger and its consequences took lives of approximately 7 million people. About 3 million people were murdered at the same time outside of Ukraine, most of them in the Kuban region of Russia (ethnically, predominantly Ukrainian), and in Kazakhstan.” InfoNapalm.org.
In the post-Soviet era, Russia abrogated their treaty with Ukraine, whereby the latter gave up possession of its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for a Russian guarantee to respect Ukraine sovereignty over its lands… which included Crimea. Russia’s forced annexation of Crimea in 2014 resulted in EU’s and America’s issuing harsh economic sanctions against Russia. Putin scoffed at the effort, denied his obviously severe interference in Western elections and massive hacks of sensitive governmental installations… which only escalated… and continued to support the “green men” (Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine masquerading as local separatists favoring cessation to Russia) while recently amassing massive troops and heavy armaments in the Russian border region, claiming that such efforts were merely “training exercises.”
The Biden administration correctly interpreted these “exercises” as intimidating threats by Russia that could possibly result in a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. Writing for the May 7th Los Angeles Times, journalists Tracy Wilkinson and David S. Cloud explore the ramifications of this most recent provocation: “Russia recently deployed an estimated 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine… Sending a tough diplomatic warning to Russia — backed by a show of military force — the Biden administration on Thursday [5/6] vowed to stand by Ukraine and its beleaguered government in its struggle with ‘destabilizing actions’ from Moscow.
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, on a swing through the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, said the administration was considering more defense aid for the former Soviet republic as threats from Russia persisted… ‘We look to Russia to cease reckless and aggressive actions,’ Blinken said during a joint news appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky… Ukraine is often seen as being on the front lines against Russian aggression, with the defense of its sovereignty a key test for the U.S. and Western Europe…
“President Vladimir Putin then announced a withdrawal, but both Blinken and Zelensky said Thursday that ‘significant’ numbers of Russian troops and weaponry remain massed in the area… ‘Russia has the capacity on fairly short notice to take aggressive action if it so chooses,’ Blinken said.” Russia’s pledge to reduce its border troop deployment fell far short of expectations.
Strategically located between Russia and the bulk of Europe, Ukraine is of particular importance to the West in the effort to contain Russian aggression. Indeed, as Ukraine leaned toward joining the EU and perhaps even NATO, Russia made it clear that such efforts would be considered direct threats to Russia and that Ukraine’s proper place was as a pro-Russian member in good standing as a CIS nation.
Wary of provoking a military response, the West has stopped short of allowing Ukraine to join these western alliances, and there is deep concern that that corruption within Ukraine could undermine that nation’s independence. “In fact, there is little momentum behind the idea among NATO members in Europe, who fear it could spark a military crisis with Moscow. Kyiv would like Washington to supply it with more military aid, but some experts said what would help Ukraine more would be a unified political strategy with European allies aimed at raising the international pressure on Moscow to stand down.
“Meanwhile, rampant corruption in Ukrainian governments, before and including Zelensky’s, remains an obstacle to the country’s acceptance into Western alliances… ‘Ukraine is facing two challenges: aggression from outside, coming from Russia, and in effect aggression from within, coming from corruption, oligarchs and others who are putting their interests ahead of those of the Ukrainian people,’ Blinken said at the brief news conference.” LA Times. Should Russia invade, short of a military response, knowing sanctions against Russia are already substantial, the United States could cut Russia out of the global financial system as it has done with Iran and North Korea.
Ukraine has also found itself mired in the middle of a hot political controversy that led to both the impeachment of Donald Trump, as he sought to use Ukraine to find “dirt” on Biden and his son Hunter, and the DOJ’s seizure of cell phones and computers belonging to Rudy Giuliani, possibly as an unregistered foreign agent. The potential testimony from Ukrainian officials does not augur well for either Mr. Trump or Mr. Giuliani. As they say, “it’s complicated.”
I’m Peter Dekom, and understanding the importance of Ukraine, even within our own strategic and political realities, requires a greater understanding of the relevant historical context.
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