CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX UKRAINE IN WORLD WAR II.

BY the middle of 1939 it became clear that divided Ukraine was in an unfortunate situation. For a brief moment the promise of a free and independent Carpatho- Ukraine seemed to indicate where the interest of the coun­try lay.

It was a nice dream of the old world but it failed to take into account the new practices of totalitarianism which dis­counted human dignity and human rights and regarded men and women as but the tools of the machine or the inanimate members of a caste. The easy way in which the Nazi government turned over Carpatho-Ukraine, despite its promises, to the Hungarians and the ruthless murder of many of its leaders showed to all clearsighted Ukrainians that the future was not so simple as that. 'Even those West­ern Ukrainians who were most hostile to Poland realized that they had nothing to gain by the overwhelming of the Polish state as it was in 1939 and despite the growing op-

UKRAINE IN WORLD WAR II pressive measures of the Poles, any plans for a Ukrainian revolt in Eastern Galicia were laid aside.

The suddenly revealed conclusion of a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in August, 1939, made this even more evident. Little or no­thing has been made public of the negotiations preceding this pact.

The German attack on Poland started on September 1, and as expected, the German army pushed rapidly into Eastern Galicia and soon entered Lviv. They seized practi­cally all of the area but they were not to hold it long. On September 17, the Soviet army invaded from the east despite various treaties, on the ground that the Polish Republic had ceased to exist as an organized state. On September 23, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed another pact for the divi­sion of Poland. Again the exact line has not been disclosed throughout its full course. Yet under it on September 28, the Soviet army pushed into Lviv and occupied the whole of Western Ukraine. This second act of treachery to Ukra­ine completely broke any Ukrainian confidence in the Nazis, and showed them that any further relations could only be fatal.

This was the first time that the Red Army had penetrated as far as Lviv and they at once began to reorganize the country on the familiar pattern. The landowners were dispossessed and the initial steps were taken to collectivize

the country. A large number of professors, journalists, clergy and other intellectual and popular leaders were re­moved. They were arrested by the NKVD and executed or deported to other portions of the Soviet Union. Many were killed by so-called outbreaks of the population led by Soviet agents. In fact all of the methods tested by twenty years of Soviet work in Ukraine were concentrated on the helpless province, in preparation for a “free” election.

This election was held on October 22 and 91 percent of the population voted for the formation of a Popular Coun­cil of Western Ukraine. It was openly said that any one who refused to vote for the single list of candidates, which in­cluded almost no known Ukrainian leaders of Western Ukraine, would be treated as a counter-revolutionary and there was no need to amplify this statement. At its first meeting on October 27, the new Council formally begged to be included in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. There were more meetings of the picked groups at Kiev and at Moscow and on November 1, representatives of the Council were invited to Moscow where they presented their peti­tion and were duly accepted into the bosom of the Ukra­inian Soviet Republic. From then on Western Ukraine was regarded as an inalienable part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

It was the same act that had been symbolically performed in 1919, when the delegates of the Republic of Western Ukraine had appeared and undoubtedly some were able to profit by more or less temporary alli­ances with various German units which controlled the main centres of population and the lines of communication but which were unable to occupy the broad expanses of the country.

Soviet propaganda during the war emphasized the fact that the purges of the thirties had completely destroyed any fifth-column activities in the Soviet Union and glori­fied all the partisans, but despatches since the close of hos­tilities indicate that in some areas the great swarms of ban­dits and deserters from the Red Army could hardly have appeared in the course of a few weeks. Apparently in some districts there was almost as much anti-Soviet as anti-Nazi activity going on in the no man’s land between the two armies.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that this par­tisan activity played an enormous role in hemming in the German forces and in rendering it impossible for them to secure supplies even from land which seemed to be safely

THE STORY OF THE UKRAINE under their control.

After reaching StaIingrad and the northern Caucasus, the German tide began to ebb and s∞n flowed back into Ukraine and White Ruthenia. Slowly but surely the re­treat continued and its speed increased as the Germans made their way back to the land from which they had set out so gaily three years before. After the wave of battle had swept again over Ukraine, the Soviet armies were reorganized into Ukrainian and White Ruthenian armies to bring these Soviet republics into prominence. It does not seem likely that these armies under Soviet Russian generals can be re­garded as armies either of Ukrainian or White Ruthenian citizens. If we accept this version, we must assume that few members of the Russian Soviet Republic took part in the war, for at no time was there mention of any Russian armies and this conflicts with the stories of general mobilization that have been so often told. Apparently the Ukrainian and White Ruthenian armies were armies that were formed or based on the territory of the two Soviet Republics but they served as the basis of the claim that both Ukraine and White Ruthenia were entitled to enter the United Nations.

To facilitate this, the Soviet constitution was changed in autumn of 1944 to provide special Commissars for Foreign Affairs for the various Soviet Republics and to allow them to send diplomatic representatives to foreign countries. In one sense this is a return to the conditions prevailing in

Ukraine before the organization of the Soviet Union, when the bond of connection was the iron control of the Com­munist Party over all the Communists in the various So­viet Republics.

It is interesting, to say the least, that the Ukrainian rep­resentative at San Francisco was the same Manuilsky who had come down from Moscow to act as the Muscovite rep­resentative at the formation of the Ukrainian Soviet Re­public. He was born in Ukraine but he spent most of his life in the service of the Russian Soviet Federated Republic and later the All-Union Soviet, and his relations with Ukra­ine have been rather as a Russian or Soviet delegate than as a spokesman for the Ukrainians. The Chairman of the Council of Commissars, Khrushchev, seems to be definitely a Russian. In fact there is little to suggest that there is any Ukrainian of prominence on the Ukrainian scene in a major role. It seems abundantly clear that Ukraine is now being considered merely as a definite tract of territory with no special connection with its own past, for it must have a culture socialist in essence and only Ukrainian in language, and there is some doubt as to whether the lan­guage is not being remodelled on the Russian pattern.

As the German troops retreated further and further, Ukraine was again thoroughly ravaged. The cities were largely in ruins, the population had been murdered or de­ported either to east or west, and the material progress that had been accomplished during the twenty years between the wars was largely wiped out. It was necessary to begin to rebuild the country after a desolation which exceeded that of 1918-20. Yet there have been few consistent stories of what has happened. Side by side with accounts of star­vation as a result of the German seizure of foodstuffs, there. have been equal stories of gifts by the joyful and liberated population to the victorious Red Army and these gifts have been reported on a scale that would indicate abundance in the areas which were the most hotly contested.

Then as the Red Army swept on into Western Ukraine, the same procedure was repeated. In every city there were held gatherings greeting Stalin as the liberator of the land with the glorious Red Army. There were the usual resolutions of gratitude, the usual concerts at which Rus­sian music formed the bulk of the program, the usual glori­fication of all those Ukrainian heroes who worked for the union of Ukraine and Russia and the usual condemnation of every event or person who did not fit into the Russian or the Russian Soviet program.

Then came the turn of Carpatho-Ukraine. At the time when the Soviet Union recognized the Czechoslovak gov­ernment-in-exile during the War, it recognized the old boundaries of the country and this included Carpatho- Ukraine. When the Red Army crossed into the area, there came the usual demonstrations, the usual resolutions, the usual appointment of temporary Soviets, and then the usual request that the country be allowed to join the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and of course the petition was accepted.

Yet when it came to a question of carrying on negotia­tions with the “independent” Polish government set up after the Allied powers had withdrawn recognition from the Polish government-in-exile, the negotiations were carried on in Moscow. The district of Kholm, which was an old part of Ukraine, was freely handed over to Poland without any consultation with the wishes of the population, a con­sultation that would have been unnecessary, for the entire population of the Soviet Union desires only what has been put forward by the Kremlin, and the same process was fol­lowed in Lemkivshchina.

With the occupation of the whole of Ukraine by the Red Army there has descended an even more impenetrable veil over the country. The silence that reigned during the war has become even more intense and the information that comes out is hardly credible, unless the entire past for cen­turies has been one long nightmare.

It was to be expected that all traces of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church would disappear as soon as the Soviet government was back in control, especially since it has allowed the restoration of the Patriarchate of Moscow to carry out its plans among the other Slavs. It was to be expected that punishment would be visited upon the lead­ers of the Uniat Church, for they had proved themselves in Western Ukraine to be the guardians of the Ukrainian na­tional spirit. Throughout the nineteenth century they had worked for the spiritual and material welfare of their peo­ple and in the past the Russian Empire had dealt harshly with them in all areas under its control. Archbishop Shep- titsky, the patriarch and leader of the Church, died. His successor, Joseph Slipy, was arrested and apparently deported. The other bishops vanished from the scene either by exile, imprisonment or death, and an uncanonical synod of a few priests was convoked. Again that body did the usual thing. It officially requested to be received back into the Orthodox Church and to come under the Patriarchate of Moscow and of course the wish was granted in March, 1946. The Cathedral at Lviv was turned over to the Rus­sian Church and so were many other Church buildings. Priests who do not conform are being imprisoned or tried as fascists. The Uniat and Ukrainian Orthodox bishops

THE STORY OF THE UKRAINE abroad have protested and have pointed out the typically Uncanonical nature of the whole proceedings. The Pope has protested against the persecution of the faithful in these areas, at the violation of concordats with former govern­ments in the area. All in vain. Resolutions and requests continue to pour out to justify and glorify the Red Army and their leader and the fate of the individuals involved grows ever more obscure.

Yet on the other hand two phenomena stand out in clear relief. The one is the problem of banditry. Again and again we read that in Ukraine, in Poland, in Carpatho- Ukraine and along all the borders of the friendly states large bodies of men, largely in Red Army uniforms, are plundering the country, and persecuting the communists and that part of the population which is cooperating with the Red Army. We are told these men in Red Army uni­forms are a mixture of Nazis, traitors who fought in the Nazi armies from the Slavonic lands and the general riff­raff that always follows in the path of war. Among them are Ukrainian nationalists of various groups, especially those who form the Ukrainian Revolutionary Army. They are said to present a formidable problem for the forces that are interested in preserving Soviet “democracy.”

All this sounds strange when we compare it with the general tone of the communiques reflecting the jubilation of the people in being liberated from the Nazi yoke. It fits in well with the stories or perhaps the legends that patriots and nationalists saw their opportunity to strike a blow in their own behalf against both masters and that they have not been so wholeheartedly on the side of the Red Army as we were led to believe earlier.

Side by side with them we have the amazing and distres­sing picture of the displaced persons. At the Yalta Con­ference it was provided that the persons who had been moved from an area by the Nazis should be allowed to re-

turn and that the governments should assist in this task. It sounded a reasonable measure and so it turned out in the west. There were few French who wished to remain in Germany or in Holland. There were few Dutch who were not ready to go back to their homes and country, even if they were to find their families dead or scattered and their homes burned.

Yet there are millions of people who have been trans­ported against their will from those portions of the Soviet Union that were occupied by the Germans, who refuse to go back to certain death. They have experienced for years the cruelty of German prison camps and the abuses of forced labor and even so they do not wish to go back. The methods that have been employed to force them to do so have become a scandal to the Western and civilized powers. Men and women of all walks of life have been ready to commit suicide rather than to face again life within the Soviet paradise. It is idle to call them fascists and to say that they fear just punishment.

The suspicion cannot be put down that these are people who have once been within the veil and are now willing to face even death rather than return. There can be but one reason, that life there was so hard and desperate that their present fate, such as it is and has been during the War, seems far better and more hopeful, even when hope is lack­ing, and when their future is dark and unsettled. We can­not help thinking that their stories and still more their actions throw into lurid relief and confirm the tales of the deportations, the famines, the concentration camps in the wastes of Siberia and of Central Asia, that have drifted across the sealed borders of the Soviet Union and which have never been accepted at face value.

Behind the veil that the Soviet Union has cast around it, Ukraine has been united. Ravaged by war, plundered and destroyed by the marching and countermarching of two

THE STORY OF THE UKRAINE armies, drained of its population by death and by deporta­tions, it remains a tragic spot in the wreckage of a great war. Impartial observers have told us of the devastation and the suffering in other lands, but Ukraine remains in the shadows. Her spokesmen at home are mute and there are only the official representatives of the Ukrainian So­viet Republic speaking, as is their wont, the words of the Soviet Union to assure us that all is well. The world would like to believe it, it is resting its hopes of a better future upon it and yet the doubts are not dispelled, when it would be so easy, if the Soviet Union wished to do it.

But not only that. With the triumph of the Soviet "de­mocracy” in Ukraine, the Soviet Union is hastening to as­sure the world that it has discovered new examples of the revival of Ukrainian nationalism. It has found new cases on a large scale of the evil influences of the work of Profes­sor Hrushevsky. It has found reasons for new purges of the Ukrainian Communist leaders who are unworthy of their great task of promoting the new “democracy.” There are new rumors of a drought in Ukraine. The world has heard all this several times and realizes now that it is the story of the last twenty-five years since the fall of an independent Ukraine.

To-day Ukraine is one. For the first time in centuries it has been united under one government. Not since the days of ancient Kiev has this been so fully true, but it is a far cry from the Ukrainian Soviet Republic to that free and independent government which was formed so hopefully in 1918, in the heat and confusion of the First World War. It is a far cry from the dream of a free and independent republic organized on the democratic principles of the West to the present Soviet Republic, from the wild and tumul­tuous Kozak Host with its elected officers to the present or­ganization with the chiefs appointed by Moscow. It is a sad story and the present chapter is by no means the most hopeful. _ _