Introduction: History and Politics

The largest country in Europe after Russia, with the rich natural resources and a developed economy Ukraine continues to defy much of our understanding of its history society and people, leading recent historians to describe Ukraine as an “edgeland,” a “border country,” and even “the unexpected na­tion.”¹

Yet it was a founding member of the United Nations, a recognition of the Ukrainian contribution to victory in World War II, borne at great cost in human lives and economic infra­structure.

This is their story—an account of the free Cossack move­ment, the foundation of Ukraine, which gave the country its distinct folk culture, and a rich romantic tradition. But above all, it was the unyielding Cossack pursuit of freedom, the refusal to accept feudalism and the oppressive state institutions of the powerful neighbors which surrounded them. The Ukrainian culture of individual freedom encouraged creativity in both the arts and sciences, such as Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol), the father of the short story and modern Russian literature; P. Tchaikovsky one of the greatest composers of all time; Lobachevsky, the father of non-Euclidean geometry and mod­ern mathematics; Tsiolkovsky the theoretician of modern rock­etry; and Sikorsky, the inventor of the helicopter and the two- engine aircraft; and not to omit the most popular Cossack of them all, the figure of Santa Claus.

The rise and fall of the Cossack movement is one of the most dramatic yet largely unknown episodes in European his­tory, when the Cossacks of Ukraine “were at the centre of some of the largest changes in early-modern history.”³ Apart from their frontier origins, a unique feature of Cossack society was the refusal to tolerate state institutions that could replace their democratic governance, or interfere with their liberties. All Cos­sacks, including the elected officers, were considered equal, and endowed with three fundamental freedoms: the right to bear arms, the right to elect officers, and the freedom of movement whether across the “wild prairie” or over land claimed by the nobility. As the Cossacks observed wryly, the three freedoms were in fact one, for the first ensured the other two. The right to personal property and ownership of land for ranching and farming was also recognized, as was the freedom to conduct trade and commerce. What is remarkable is that in the absence of a formal state structure the Cossacks produced the first writ­ten constitution that defined a system of governance based on the separation of the executive, judicial, and legislative powers.

The absence of a home-grown state is the key to an un­derstanding OfUkrainian history, although there are historians who pursue the claim that the history of Ukraine is a continuous process of development of statehood, beginning with Kyiv-Rus to the present day, a sort of a historical hidden hand which has guided events to this end.⁴ A recent historian has even claimed that Ukrainian history is as “normal” as that of any other Euro­pean country. Two main tendencies are generally followed, mainly though not exclusively by emigre historians. The objec­tive of Cossack (and the 20th century) Ukrainian revolution is narrowed to that of achieving a national state to the detriment and subordination of social questions as was observed by a re­cent historian, even though they have always been central to Ukrainian history.⁵ And secondly Ukrainian history is defined as the past record of all parts of today s Republic since 1945, which includes new territories that have little to do with Ukrain­ian history, and which have traditionally been hostile to the Ukrainian Cossack movement.⁶

An examination of Ukrainian history, however, points in

a different direction.

The history ofUkraine and its Cossack movement is also not well treated by the traditional historians of neighboring countries. Polish writers have described Cossacks as little better than common anti-social bandits, who although endowed with bravery and fighting skills spent most of their time looting and murdering their neighbors, and conducting pogroms against Jews. The view has been taken up by English-language histor­ians who characterize Cossacks as “social bandits” using an in­appropriate transference of Hobsbawns concept to describe criminal organizations such as the Sicilian Mafia, and others.⁹ The greatest inaccuracies occur in the popular press, such as in Time, 29 August 2011, which describes the Cossacks as right­wing Russian nationalists “from southern Russia who have been fighting since the 17 th century in the name of the tsar, the moth­erland, or the Russian Orthodox Church.”¹⁰ This portrayal greatly diminishes the Cossack struggle against slavery and feu­dal oppression which was rife at the time.

Russian imperial historians beginning in the mid-19th century take a somewhat different approach, one where Ukraine and its Cossack movement are largely ignored, or are completely misrepresented. Thus the well-known historian V. Kluchevsky incorrectly asserts that “the Cossacks... constituted a stratum of society of the Russian community, which at one time covered the entire country.” This is followed by the factual error (and a contradiction) that “when the Zaporozhsky Cossacks had just begun to organize their military republic, we find the Don Cos­sacks already an organized body....”^u In the same vein, the entire history ofKyiv-Rus has been appropriated as “Russian” history. Meaningless claims such as “Kiev is the mother of Russian cities” and “ancient Rus is our (Russian and Ukrainian) com­mon source” have continued in post-Soviet Russia with the re­turn of Russian imperialism. Clearly, Ukraine could never be seen to be ahead and different from the Russian “Big Brother.”

In more recent times, Russian Soviet historians have also minimized Ukraine’s contribution during World War II, a prac­tice which is followed by English language historians who con­fuse “Soviet” and “Russian.”¹² Yet the contribution was substan­tial as it was crucial. In spite of Stalin’s man-made famine during 1932-33, in which some four million Soviet Ukrainians died, and the purges of the Great Terror four years later, the vast ma­jority of Ukraine’s population rallied against the invasion.¹³ In fact it was in Ukraine that the Germans and their allies encoun­tered the first serious (and unexpected) resistance from the Red Army, the partisans, and other civilians, and without Ukraine the Soviet Union would have been lost to the Nazi and Fascist invasion.

Code-named “Barbarossa,” the sneak attack on the Soviet Union was launched in the early morning of 22 June 1941, with over five million German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Croatian, Finnish and other troops in what was the largest invasion force in the history of warfare.¹⁴ With almost all of Europe at his disposal, Hitler’s Nazi war machine had large reserves of manpower, raw materials, industrial production, and a battle-hardened German army.

Some 4.5 million Ukrainian men and women served in the armed forces of the Soviet Union during the war, and 60 percent of the 250,000 Red Partisans operating in Ukraine were ethnic Ukrainians. Marshalls A. Yeremenko and S. Timoshenko were Ukrainians, as were many other senior officers such as the famous commanders A. Kravchenko, K. Moskalenko, and P. Romanenko. When still a Lieutenant-General in command of the 57th, 62nd, and 64th armies, A. Yeremenko made history with his three-month defense of Stalingrad, for which he was snubbed by Stalin and the Soviet press. With their homes and families under the German occupation, Soviet citizens of Ukraine were highly motivated and many men and women were decorated with the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union, with hundreds of thousands receiving lesser medals.¹⁶ Some were awarded the gold star more than once, such as the pilot I. Kozhedub, who received the Hero of the Soviet Union three times for shooting down 60 enemy aircraft, without losing his own.

A particularly human demonstration of all-out commit­ment and courage took place during the liberation of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Overshadowed by Stalingrad and Kursk, and neglected by most historians it was perhaps the most extraor­dinary battle of the Eastern Front.

Ignoring orders, men began to launch improvised boats, ripping up benches and docks to build rafts and floating field pieces on wooden gates strapped to barrels. Dried grass was stuffed into groundsheets to make floatation devices. Some 3,000 men entered the cold waters of the Dnipro River, more than half a mile wide at this point, and became sitting ducks for German artillery from the city heights. Hit by enemy shells, mortars, and machine guns, many sank to the bottom, but others reached the opposite shore and stormed German posi­tions with light machine guns and hand grenades, fighting up the slopes to the city center.¹⁷ Kravchenkos and Moskalenkos tanks and infantry were also clearing the Germans from the city and by 6 November Kyiv was liberated from the brutal occu­pation. More than 300 men and officers received the Hero of the Soviet Union, out of a total of 11,000 awarded during the entire war.¹⁸

The cost of resistance was high: 2.5 million Ukrainian mil­itary personnel were killed or suffered a slow death as prisoners of war, while 5.5 million civilians died as a result of Nazi policies. This included 1.5 million Jews and thousands of Roma (“Gyp­sies”) who were marked for extermination, together with political opponents—mainly Communists—and those consid­ered unfit to live, such as the mentally handicapped and homo­sexuals. According to the Nazi grand design, the Slavic popu­lations of Eastern Europe were to be reduced by 50 percent, mainly by starvation, with survivors to be used as slave labor by the German colonists who were to arrive following the con­quest.¹⁹ In addition, Ukraine was totally devastated by the re­treating Germans and their allies, who destroyed the country’s virtually entire infrastructure. No country suffered as heavily as Ukraine during World War II.

Today the Ukrainian National Republic consists of dis­parate regions—post-war acquisitions and additions of other Soviet territory.²⁰ Traditionally not Ukrainian, each region had its own religion, language, and customs, and moreover had com­monly confronted Ukrainians in war, beginning with the Cos­sack period. The most important addition is the 144,000 sq. km Crimean Peninsula, with a population of 2.7 million, fol­lowed by what was the medieval Duchy of Galicia and the Carpathian Mountains, some 111,000 sq. km and a population of seven million. Most of Galicia had been occupied by a reborn Poland seeking to reestablish its lost empire following World War I, but when Hitler attacked in 1939 Stalin moved into the Polish occupied territories, most of which were incorporated into the Ukrainian S.S.R. To their surprise, the inhabitants of Galicia and the Carpathian highlands suddenly discovered that they were “Ukrainians.”²¹

The Polish occupation of Galicia had been resisted by both left and right wing political parties as well as by the Greek Catholic Church (today the Ukrainian Catholic Church). But when Stalin shot the leadership of the Galician Communist Party in 1938 (during a conference in Kyiv) the resistance fell into the hands of extreme right-wing parties under the umbrella of the self-styled Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Armed operations Includingpolitical (and contract) assassinations²² were followed by stepped up repression, as thousands of Galicians were jailed or thrown into the infamous concentration camp at Bereza Kartuska, opened in 1932 by the Polish dictator MarshallJ. Pilsudski. The OUN had been es­tablished in 1929 by Ukrainian emigres and Galician political refugees in Vienna and Berlin, and was financed by Canaris, the head of the German Intelligence Service known as the Abwehr. The members ofthe OUN quickly became InfluencedbyNazi ideology, as can be seen from the 17 April 1932 edition of the NorthAmerica newspaper, Meta: “Ukrainian Nationalism must be prepared to employ every means in the struggle... not ex­cluding mass physical extermination, even if millions of human beings are its victims.”²³ The head of the OUN, Colonel Y. Konovalets, was a veteran of the Austrian and later Ukrainian Army, and had direct access to Goring and Hitler, while the lesser leadership dealt with the Abwehr and the Gestapo.²⁴

The OUN, however, was Ukrainian in name only, since its members and leadership (such as the fascists Bandera and Melnyk) came from regions which had never been a part of Ukraine, and were generally not considered to be so. The Nationalist concept of the nation-state, particularly the Fascist and Nazi view of society as a corporal entity was of west and central European origin and completely alien to Ukrainian thought and culture. In fact, few aspects of modern Ukrainian history have been distorted by myth more than “Ukrainian Na­tionalism/’ which had little in common with the multi-ethnic socialist humanism of the Ukrainian urban middle class, or the anarchist-communist orientation of the rural population. Most ethnic Ukrainians were peasants, whose main concern was land and local communal government. During the general election for a Russian Constituent Assembly held in November 1917, the Ukrainian Central Rada received 71 percent of the Ukrain­ian vote which at times is taken as support for Ukrainian Na­tionalism. The vote, however, was mainly due to the peasants’ demand for the traditional Ukrainian household land tenure, which differed radically from the Russian collective Mir system. The OUN was actually highly critical of the left-wing Ukrainian republican governments in Kyiv, especially since two ministers werejewish, as was President Vynnychenkos wife.

Nationalist politics also have made their way into works of Ukrainian history, particularly in North America. Thus Galicia and the Carpathian region are at times referred to as “Western Ukraine,” implying that there were two Ukraines— one in the east and another in the west. The “two Ukraines” the­ory is in fact a myth, which arose in large part from an incorrect assertion that “East and West Ukraines” were once united in a single political entity until the 17th century.²⁵ Although the Principality of Galicia was a member of the medieval Greek Or­thodox city states (as were Muscovy and other principalities in today’s Russia), it refused to support or become a part of the “Ukraina terra Cossacorum” established by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky in the mid-17th century. It is therefore to avoid confusion and for the sake of historical exactness that we refer to today’s western Ukrainian lands by their historical pre-1945 designations as Galicia, Bukovyna, and Carpathia Rus.

What, then, is the origin of the “Ukrainian Nationalism” which caught the attention of many western authors during the Cold War?²⁶ To answer the question we must return to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where following the European rev­olutions of 1848 the Greek Catholic middle class began to en­tertain the new political concepts of nationalism and the nation­state, as proclaimed by the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” during the French Revolution: “The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body of men, no individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate expressly from it.” The main ingredients of nationhood are generally thought to be a shared history, language and/or religion, a literature, or what is agreed to be a common terri­tory.²⁷ Yet, what constitutes a “nation” can also be an arbitrary construct ofpolitical thought, as was pointed out by Hosbawn: “Nations do not make states and nationalisms, but the other way around”²⁸; and by Gellner that “nationalism is not the awak­ening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist.”²⁹

And so it was in Austrian Galicia during the second half of the 19 th century. Middle class Rusins began to discard their traditional Polishness in search of an alternative identity, one that could transcend the provincial designations “Galician,” “Bukovinian,” or “Rusin,” to be able to compete with the wide­spread Polish nationalism, and gain attention of the Austrian authorities.³⁰ Two broad myths began to emerge; the Rus­sophiles, who considered themselves as part of a greater Russian nation, and the Ukrainophiles who began to trace Galician his­tory to Kyiv-Rus, and by the continuity hypothesis popularized by the historian M. Hrushevsky to ContemporaryUkraine. The adopted Ukrainian self-identity by the Galician middle class, however, was a pure formality and based on myth. Following the destruction ofKyiv-Rus by the Mongols, Galicia and Cos­sack Ukraine evolved into very different societies. Both had re­ligions which were hostile to each other, customs and cultures varied widely, and by the end of the 19th century the Galician and Carpathian dialects were hardly understandable to Ukraini­ans.³¹ Galician intellectuals and political leaders had also little inclination to submit to “East Ukrainian” dominance, and con­flicts soon developed at the University of Lviv and the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society.³² When World War I broke out the self-pro claimed Ukrainian identity of the Galician middle class did not stand in the way of an enthusiastic support for the Austrian Crown. A “Supreme Ukrainian Council” and the Greek Catholic Church declared total loyalty to the war effort, and for the next three years Galician formations in the Austrian army faced Ukrainian regiments of the tsarist Russian regime in the mutual slaughter that followed.

The war had exposed the ineffectual nature of the despotic Tsarist system, and following the February 1917 Revolution in Petrograd Nickolas II abdicated and was replaced by the liberal KerenskyProvisional Government. Two days later the Ukrain­ian Central Rada was formed in Kyiv, and on 23 June it issued the First Universal, a proclamation in the style of Ukrainian Cossack hetmans, announcing Ukrainian autonomy within a Russian Federation. Following Lenin’s coup against the unpop­ular Provisional Government in October (old style) 1917, a his­toric general election was held for a ConstituentAssembly, the first in the history of the Russian Empire. Although the Central Rada received 71 percent of the Ukrainian vote, it soon fell out with Lenin’s Soviet Government in Petrograd. An ultimatum was issued to Kyiv and a Russian Bolshevikforce under the ex- Tsarist officer M. Muraviov attacked Ukraine. On SJanuary 1918 the Central Rada issued the Fourth Universal declaring Ukrainian independence and breaking all ties with St. Peters­burg. The Bolshevik force was only some 12,000 strong but the Central Rada had failed to capitalize on its popularity to establish a Ukrainian regular army, although the country was

awash in arms. Fighting broke out in Kyiv in which a Russian pro-Bolshevik arsenal workers’ uprising was suppressed, and on 29 January 300 Kyivhigh school volunteers for the Central Rada were overwhelmed and massacred at Krytie by Muraviov s men. Kyiv fell to the Bolsheviks but with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the city was occupied by German and Aus­trian troops three weeks later, and showing his true colors Mu­raviov jointed the reactionary White Russian Volunteers. The Central Rada signed a treaty with Germany and was recognized as the Ukrainian government, but unable to provide the required grains and foodstuffs it was replaced by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, a Cossack monarch-like ruler and a wealthy landowner from the Poltava Province.

Now the Ukrainian Revolution began. Food expropria­tions and Skoropadsky s refusal to distribute land of the large estates and the Church quickly alienated the land-hungry peas­ants, who under elected “otamans” began to form armed Cossack-Iike bands and attack German and Austrian troops. Then following the signing of the Armistice in Europe, a general uprising broke out on 14 November organized by the left-wing political parties, and the German-Austrian troops quickly with­drew taking Skoropadskywith them. A second Ukrainian Peo­ple s Republic was formed in Kyiv, with a 5-man executive com­mittee named the Directory. Headed by the playwright V. Vynnychenko as President, and the Minister of War S. Petliura the Directory found itself at the head of an imposing 300,000 man armed force, mainly peasants expecting land and demo­cratic local self-government in the Ukrainian tradition.

In the meantime, in what had been the Austrian Empire the Galicians proclaimed a “West Ukrainian National Republic,” headed by the dictator E. Petrushewich and supported by the influential Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andriy A.R. Sheptyt- sky. A Polish count with large estates, he had been a high- ranking officer in the Austrian army before 1914 and during the war worked with Austrian intelligence.³³ The newly formed “Ukrainian Galician Army” was doing badly against the better- led and armed Polish forces equipped by France and the U.S.A., and on 17 July 1919 the defeated Galicians crossed the Zbruch River into Ukrainian territory. Petrushewich had gone to Kyiv, where on 22 January 1919 he signed the short-lived “Act of Uni­fication” which theoretically made his government a part of the Ukrainian People s Republic. The Act prevented Petrushewich and his associates from becoming a government-in-exile, and gained them support from the still popular Ukrainian Repub­lic.

The Directory of the Ukrainian People s Republic, how­ever, was not implementing the promised land reforms, and by the beginning of 1919 its support had evaporated as most peasant-Cossack armed bands switched their support to the Borotbist, SocialRevolutionary, Bolshevik, and Anarchist com­munist parties, leaving the Directory with an army of only

9

20,000 men. Encouraged by the lack of support for the Repub­lic, the Russian Bolsheviks launched their second invasion of Ukraine in January, and Kyivfell a month later. Led once more by a Russian chauvinist called Piatakov who refused to recognize Ukrainian authority and culture it was carried out on Stalins authorization but without Lenins knowledge or approval.³⁴ The outcome was the Red Terror and what became known as War Communism. Hundreds of Ukrainians were ar­rested or executed as trainloads of confiscated goods were sent to Moscow, food requisitioning imposed on the peasants, land nationalized, and peasant markets abolished. The invasion united Ukrainians of all political stripes, as all three Ukrainian Communist parties, the Anarchists, and the Republican forces turned against the Russians.³⁵ ByAugust 1919 all Russian Bol­shevik divisions were expelled from southern Ukraine by Ota- man Hryhoriev, Makhno s Anarchists, and others. At the same time the joint Ukrainian Republican and Galician armies were attacking Piatakovs troops from the west, while Denikins White Russian army was advancing from the east.

TheJanuary 1919 Act of Unification in the meantime re­mained a formality, which was becoming less expedient as time went on. The Greek Catholic Galicians had little inclination to place themselves under the authority of the Ukrainian People s Republic and be absorbed by a socialist-communist (and Greek Orthodox) society which was very different from their own. Petrushewich remained the dictator of a separate government, with its own military force and independent policies. As part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Galicia had become Central European both culturally and politically, where state institutions and state controlled law and order were taken for granted. More­over, during the rule of Polish kings Galicia had not experienced an anti-feudal revolution as had Ukraine, with its free Cossack peasantry. Following Cossack traditions the state represented a foreign and oppressive form of government, based as it was on a Wealthyland-Owning class. As expressed by the Ukrainian Borotbist communist Ivan Maistrenko in his memoirs of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1918-20:

The state was and is the instrument of exploitation, the means of subjugation of the majority by the minority, and the centralized national (Ukrainian) state even more so than the federative.

Therefore socialist policy must strive to win back step by step the recognition of the rights of national collectives, and to endow them with an important share of the functions of a modern state....³⁶

This was a non state-nationalist model for an independent Ukraine, one based on Cossack traditions and ideals which had been preserved by the rural population and founded on the idea of social liberty, rather than ethnicity, religion, or Ian- guage.³⁷

Almost every able-bodied Ukrainian male was a veteran of the GreatWar, and Cossack-Stylepeasantbands—some the

size of small armies—were well-armed and effective fighting forces as the 60,000 man French and Greek expeditionary force discovered when it was attacked and driven into the sea by Ota- man Hryhoriev^,s cavalry. The renowned Anarchist Nestor Makhno controlled much of southeastern Ukraine with head­quarters at his native village, bearing the colorful name ^aHuliay Pole” or “The Prairie that Parties.” Women took part in the gen­eral uprising as well, and at least three “otamans” are known to have been women, all named “Marusia” after a 17th century Cossackheroine. Lawlessnesswas also common as marauding bands of armed men robbed and murdered those viewed to be well-off oftenjews and German-speaking colonists, acts for which the Directory’s military commander Petliura and the An­archist Makhno often received the blame. It was actually the self-administered anarchist region which was the most orderly and protective of the Jewish and Mennonite populations, al­though all had to pay a tax in kind to support Makhno’s military force.

The Petrushewich Galician government, in the meantime, was finding itself alienated from the left-wing Ukrainian People s Republic. Furthermore, the Galician army was losing its stomach for the fighting in defense of a Ukrainian Republic and a Societywith which it did not identify.³⁸ Then, in a remarkable demonstration of the proverbial tail wagging the dog, Petru- shewich announced that his “Western Ukrainian Government” should assume the leadership of the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state. It was the Galicians who were the “nationally conscious” Ukrainians, with a true understanding of what Ukrainian Statehoodwas all about, something that was lacking in “Eastern Ukraine” (also referred to by the equally mean­ingless term “Dnieper Ukraine”).³⁹ The Directorywas to join the Galician army, help drive the Polish forces out of Galicia, and there establish a true Ukrainian state under Galician lead­ership. Needless to say the Galician proposal was met with some astonishment by the Ukrainian leadership which quickly turned into derision.

The joint Ukrainian-Galician armies were still approach­ing Kyiv as the White Russian Volunteer Army under General A. Denikin was moving towards the city from the east. On 30 August the Bolsheviks abandoned Kyiv and the Ukrainian Di­rectorate and Galician units entered the city. Then the unex­pected happened, as against orders from the Ukrainian Directory the Galician units allowed Denikins men to enter and occupy the Ukrainian capital. Several companies of the renowned Zaporozhian cavalry division charged Denikin’s troops, but heavily outnumbered the Ukrainian forces aban­doned Kyiv.⁴⁰ On the next day secret negotiations took place between the Galician commander General Tarnavsky and the Russian General Bredov, following which Tarnavskyplaced his troops under Denikin’s command. Petrushewich was recog­nized as head of a sovereign state, neither Ukrainian nor Russian, and a month later the Galician dictator severed all re­lations with the Ukrainian Republic. When in spite of British aid Denikin was defeated in November 1919 by the Bolshevik Red Army, Makhno’s Anarchists, the Directory and other Ukrainian “otamans,” what was left of the Galician army joined the Bolsheviks in January 1920. It was already a spent force, and during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920-21 the Galicians refused to fight, not only against the Ukrainian Republican army but also against their Polish foes. Part of the Galician Army surren­dered to the Poles, and the rest were either shot or disbanded by the Bolsheviks.

The second Russian Bolshevik invasion of Ukraine had turned into a bad failure, and V. Lenin moved quickly to rectify the situation. During the Eighth Party Congress held in Moscow the “primitive Russian chauvinism” which had penetrated the Social Democratic Party (Bolshevik) was denounced, as the policy towards Ukraine changed radically with the end of the Red Terror and War Communism abolished. Grain expropria­tion and the looting was halted as was Russian-style land col­lectivization with a commitment to land redistribution for family farms. Following demands of the Borotbists and other Ukrainian Communists and socialists, Ukraine was to become a sovereign state with powers to manage its own internal affairs, and to have distinct Ukrainian Divisions within a Soviet Red Army. The new Bolshevik policies gained widespread support in Ukraine with the exception of the self-governed Anarchists, and supporters of Petliura’s Directory, which had lost all popular support. The Directory itself had contributed to the loss of peasant backing when it adopted conservative land policies to obtain the Western Allies’ recognition and military support.

In a final attempt to gain power, Petliura signed a treaty with Poland on 21 April 1920, which gained the Allies’ support. Poland recognized the Directory as the government of Ukraine, but with Galicia to remain as part of Poland. On 6 May 1920, a 65,000 man Polish army supported by 15,000 of Petliura’s troops attacked the Red Army in Ukraine. Following mixed successes and a stalemate which followed a peace treaty was signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, which recognized Soviet Rus­sia and Ukraine but allowed Poland to keep the occupied west­ern regions, up to and including UkrainianVolynia and Polissia. The remnants of Petliura’s forces were interned in Polish-held Volynia while the Ukrainian Anarchist villages were attacked and occupied by the Red Army, with both Petliura and Makhno finding refuge in Paris. With unresolved borders and ethno­religious hostilities, Eastern Europe sank into an uneasy peace.

There the situation stood until the outbreak of World War II, and the fighting began all over again, signaling the be­ginning of unprecedented mass slaughter and genocide.⁴¹ In oc­cupied Galicia, “Ukrainian Nationalism” under Polish oppres­sion had become a fascist and a pro-Nazi movement, supported by the Greek Catholic Church. The first atrocities began when German special forces supported by the OUN “Nachtingal” and “Roland” battalions entered the Galician capital Lviv. On 2 July 1941, by orders issued by the Gestapo ChiefHeydrich a mass murder began of “dangerous elements” such as Commu­nists, people in government and university positions, Polish Catholics, and particularly PolishJews, resulting, by some es­timates in the massacre of 7,000 to 10,000 individuals. Fol­lowing the killings Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky addressed wor­shippers in St. George s Cathedral with the words, “We are overjoyed with the liberation of our land from ungodly Bolshe­vism” and thanked the “invincible German Army” and its “glo­rious IeaderAdolfHitler/ to whom he sent greetings on behalf of the Greek Catholic Church.⁴²

The mainly Galician OUN had accepted German-Aus­trian tutelage with the expectation of leading a pro-Nazi Ukrainian regime once the Soviet Union was toppled and the country subjugated. The Austrian Nazis possessed a good un­derstanding of the ethno-religious politics of the region, but very little could be achieved without the cooperation of the Greek Catholic Church, which had a presence in every Galician town and village.⁴³ The “Prince of the Church,” Metropolitan A. Sheptytskywas seen on occasion to wear the Swastika Cross, and many OUN leaders such as S. Bandera and S. Stetsko were sons of Greek Catholic priests, while A. Melnyk was a super­visor of Sheptytsky s vast estates. Much has been made of Shep- tytsky s “interventions” which had supposedly SavedJewish lives, such as the ISOJews who were hidden in Greek Catholic monasteries by the monks. The metropolitan is credited with speaking out in a pastoral letter of 21 November 1942, with the title “Thou Shalt not Kill.” It was read in all Greek Catholic churches, and reprinted in the publication of the LvivArchep- archia, in which Sheptytsky supposedly condemned all kinds of murder including Jews.⁴⁴ The claim, however, is false as was pointed out by J.P. Himka, who observed that the letter never specified the killing of non-Greek Catholics, but singled out the violent strife between the Bandera and Melnyk fascist fac­tions of the OUN, and had a long statement against abortion!⁴⁵

A deadly ethnic cleansing was also going on of the Polish Roman Catholic population, as well as murder of Ukrainian Orthodox clergy in Volynia. The latter had been invited to form a “union” with the Greek Catholic Church, which in effect meant the adoption of Catholicism and the recognition of the Pope. But when the proposal was rejected in May 1943, Met­ropolitan Alexiy of the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church was gunned down by Bandera s men. When his succes­sor Bishop Damaskyn publicly called for a halt to the murder of Poles, the Banderists responded by burning down Orthodox churches and murdering the priests. Then in September the Ukrainian Orthodox Bishop Manuil was murdered in Volo­dymyr-Volinsky, as missionary work began among the Orth­odox population.⁴⁶ It is only recently that the leader of the

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop S. Shevchuk has openly admitted to “the evil” that was done during the mas­sacres of the Polish population in Nazi-occupied Volhynia.⁴⁷

The Germans had no intentions of putting the OUN in charge of an independent Ukraine, and those who were vocif­erous about the notion were arrested, including some prominent fascist leaders, such as Bandera who was arrested briefly when his men opened a murderous campaign against his rival A. Melnyk. This led to a temporary split between his followers and the Germans, who in order to gain support had placed Galicia under the jurisdiction known as the General Government. This was a very different regime than the one re­served for Soviet Ukraine, Greek Orthodox western Volynia, and Polissia, which became the so-called Reichskommissariat and were subjected to a policy of oppression and extermination. The OUN was permitted to form the so-called Ukrainian Na­tional Council and the Ukrainian Central Committee, the latter to serve as a welfare agency with hundreds of thousands of Gali­cians employed by the General Government and students pur­sued their normal studies.⁴⁸ As recorded by V Kubiyowich, head of the Cracow-based Central Committee (and a promi­nent member of the OUN) in his Ukraine: A Concise Encyclo­pedia published in Germany after the war: “In the middle of 1943, Galicia was the only relatively peaceful island in the great expanse ofEastern Europe conquered by the Germans, and the only place where conditions were normal.” In fact, Greek Catholic Galicia had become the most cooperative of Ger­many’s subjugated territories.

Part of the “normal conditions” in the General Govern­ment was the armed support which the Germans received from their OUN allies in the form of the Schutzmannschaft (“Schuma”) police, the partisan units of the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army (U.P.A.), and two divisions of the Waffen SS all under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo.⁴⁹ The activities of the “Schuma” police and the U.P.A. have been described elsewhere, but perhaps less known of the Nazi collaboration are the SS di­visions raised to fight the Red Army and the Red Partisans.⁵⁰ Following the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, a German decree of April 1943 issued by Himmler authorized the formation of the 14th Grenadier Waffen SS Division Galicien, and on 4 May V Kubiyowich issued a proclamation urging support. The division also received the enthusiastic backing of the Greek Catholic Church and to ensure loyalty only Greek Catholics were per­mitted to join. Many sons of priests entered its ranks, and Met­ropolitan Sheptytsky appointed Archbishop Slipy as the divi­sional chaplain after he himself had blessed the military formation.⁵¹ The “Division Galicien” was commanded by the Nazi General Freitag and staffed by Gestapo officers; as an SS division, each volunteer had to swear personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

The Galician SS Division was trained in France where it was used against partisans. Nazi SS files also indicate a unit, the SelfDefense Legion of the Galician SS, which took part in the suppression of the Polish Home Army uprising in Warsaw in August 1944, and was responsible for the “liquidation” of all residents of the Polish village of Chlaniow.⁵² In the summer of 1944 it was transferred against the 1st Ukrainian Front of the RedArmywhich had entered the territory of the General Gov­ernment. Following bitter fighting ten German divisions were surrounded in the Brody pocket and the Galician Waffen SS Division was thrown in together with the 1st and 8th armored divisions to halt Moskalenko s 38th Red Army.⁵³ The Galician Division was virtually annihilated; of 11,000 men, only 3,000 made their way back to the German lines. A second division, the 30th Waffen SS, was formed from the survivors and new volunteers, but was sent to Slovakia and Yugoslavia to fight the Red Partisans. The summer of 1945 and the end of the war found the Galician SS in northern Italy, where renamed as the 1st Ukrainian Division in order to conceal its true identity it surrendered to the British forces.⁵⁴ Since none were Soviet cit­izens and many had retained Polish papers, the Division was not handed over to Soviet authorities and most were allowed to emigrate illegally to the U.K., Canada and the United States. Today Galicia and the Carpathian highlands are an integral part ofUkraine although religious, cultural, and political differences persist giving the region its own local color. Unfortunately calls are still made for a rehabilitation of the U.P. A. as a legitimate Ukrainian armed force which was supposedly fighting for Ukrainian independence, and the extreme right wing is hailing

Bandera as a hero. Pro-Russian views are not common in the west, although in other parts ofUkraine pro-Russian sentiment and language have persisted, particularly in the Crimean Penin­sula with its post-war Russian population.

Pro-Russian sentiments vanished in most of Ukraine when, in a resurgence of Russian imperialism (and blatant vi­olation Ofinternationallaw), disguised Russian troops quickly overran the Crimean Peninsula and other parts of Ukraine in the east in 2014. The unexpected invasion was well timed by the Russian dictator V. Putin and his generals, as the world s at­tention was focused on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, and the Ukrainian government plunged in a state of dis­organization following the ouster of its pro-Russian President. The most important factor, however, was Europe’s unwilling­ness to act, in the greatest betrayal since Czechoslavakia was handed over to Hitler. Twentyyears before, the Ukrainian gov­ernment had made the security of its borders a precondition for the handing over to Russia of its entire nuclear arsenal, then the third largest in the world. This was the first time a nuclear power had surrendered its atomic weapons, which included the long-range Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles and was carried out under an agreement signed by America, Britain, and Russia that guaranteed the integrity of democratic Ukraine. Although not a full-fledged member of NATO, Ukraine had become a partner and sent troops into Afghanistan. Deprived of weapons by treason and betrayal, Ukraine is once again facing im­perialism and repression from its large neighbor.