For parts 1, 2 and 3 see here: A short course in Ukrainian history
For part 4 see here: History of Ukraine, part 4
Saker Message:
For parts 1, 2 and 3 see here: A short course in Ukrainian history
For part 4 see here: History of Ukraine, part 4
This is excellent.
The Ukraine was a German colony in 1918 with an extremly unpopular puppet regime similar to today’s. It was the German occupiers that invented Ukrainian nationalism to colonize and enslave Eastern Europe more easily(divide et impera). Ukrainian nationalists were always mere tools of German imperialism.
“The German general Wilhelm Groener, who, as Chief of the General Staff of the Eichhorn/Kiev Army Group was the strong man in the Ukrainian capital from March 28 to October 26 1918, dispatched the message that though one would “continue upholding the fiction” that “the Ukrainian Rada was governing,” de facto, it was the German Reich “by means of our authority and power.”[5] Groener, at the time had sufficiently circumscribed Ukrainian “self-determination,” as merely a transfer from one hegemonic sphere to another. Even the character of the rule remained repressive. April 29, 1918, following social rebellions, the Germans put the large landowner Poavlo Skoropadski at the reins in Kiev, quasi as a proconsul. His brutal regime provoked strong protests from the poor peasants. According to one analysis of that period’s German East Policy, “formally speaking” the government was “a dictatorship, however, in the substance, (…) a German General Government.”[6]
…
Already in 1918, the “orange theoretician,” Paul Rohrbach, founded the German-Ukrainian Society, to promote the destruction of the Soviet Union – and simultaneously provide Ukrainian exiles a meeting point, since it could be assumed that, for another German attempt to break off the Ukraine, activists of the Skoropadski regime could come in handy. Berlin’s foreign policy establishment pursued these plans throughout the 1920s and ’30s, until Ukrainian Nazi collaborators led by the fascist Stepan Bandera invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 with the German Army.”
http://german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58703
Rosa Luxemburg in 1918:
“Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was something quite different from, let us say, Czech, Polish, or Finnish nationalism, in that the former was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petit bourgeois intellectuals, without the slightest roots in the economic, political, or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since the Ukraine never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture, except for the reactionary romantic poems of Shevschenko. It is exactly as if, one fine day, the people living in the Wasserkante should want to found a new Low-German [Plattdeutsche] nation and government!”
https://libcom.org/library/nationalities-question-in-the-russian-revolution-luxemburg
“Germans Taught Russian Prisoners of War the Idea of Ukraine”
http://tarpley.net/metaphysical-doubts-concerning-the-existence-of-modern-ukraine-a-1918-creation-of-the-german-general-staff/
In part four there is a portrait of Leon Trotsky labeled Alexander Kerensky.
tell me this, is it *Ukraine* or is it *The* Ukraine?
and whats the difference, If any?
“Ukraine” means Borderland, so The Borderland, The Ukraine. Saker always uses “the”. Many non-Russian speakers do not, treating it as a name, not as a description. Your choice.
To that I must add this (lifted from a facebook page that no longer exists):
Remember the victims of Russophobia in 1914-1917
Talerhof bei Graz, one of the first concentration camps in Europe.
Talerhof was a concentration camp created by the Austro-Hungarian authorities of Franz Joseph I of Austria in the first days of World War I, in a sandy valley in foothills of the Alps, near Graz, the main city of the province of Styria.
Austro-Hungarian authorities imprisoned citizens considered as Russophiles, from Galicia and Bukovina. They were punished for their loyalty to the Russian language and culture, the people who had renounced the Russian language and identified themselves as Ukrainians were released from the camp.
Over twenty thousand people were arrested and placed in the Austrian concentration camp in Talerhof. Another concentration camp for supporters of Russia was the fortress at Terezín, now in the Czech Republic.
The first group of prisoners was interned in Talerhof by the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian regiment of Graz on September 4, 1914.
Until the winter 1915, there were no barracks in Talerhof. Prisoners slept on the ground in the open-air during rain and frost. According to U.S. Congressman Medill McCormick, prisoners were beaten and tortured.
On November 9, 1914 official report of field marshal Schleer said there were 5,700 “Ukrainians” in Talerhof (People who considered themselves not Ukrainians but Russians.
In all, 20 thousand people were prisoners of Talerhof from September 4, 1914 to May 10, 1917.
The camp was closed by Emperor and King Charles I/IV., after the first 6 months of his 24 month reign.
In the first eighteen months of its existence, three thousand prisoners of Talerhof died, including the Orthodox saint Maxim Sandovich, who was martyred there.
Tens of thousands of Russians and Lemkos were victims of reprisals which carried out by the Austro-Hungarian authorities in Galicia during World War I.
The camp site was located at the spot where is now the Graz Airport.
In Przemysl and Brody, people for a simple gesture of sympathy shown for the Tsar and his army, were executed.
Russian schools and institutions were closed, and the Austrian administration tried to force Russians to declare themselves “Ukrainians”.
The Russian minority was considered as a “fifth column” with alleged aspirations to separate Galicia and unite it with Russia.
In Terezín, according to eye witnesses, an ethnic Russian prisoner was forced by a Hungarian officer of the K.u.K. Army to dance “csárdás”, while others – even children – were simply hanged or burned in their wooden houses, by soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Army, in case they were suspicious to “collaborate” with the Russian Army. These “moscovites” were declared state enemies and brutally persecuted.
According to a Russian documentary presented by Planeta RTR (a Russian language television channel for the world), there were more than hundred thousand ethnic Russians (!) killed just for the simple fact, that they considered themselves descendants of the Kievan Rus, and of the big Russian Nation ( instead of Ukrainians, what was the preference of the Austrian administration).
“Around 100 thousand Poles were massacred in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in Nazi occupied Poland. Polish historians calculated that 135 sadistic methods were used to kill innocent people.”
http://www.russiaun.ru/en/news/spev_prgc
I am suprised that he didn’t mentioned in fifth and sixth part about Volhynia massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
Similar thing like with Polish Roman Catholics would happen now with Russian-speaking population/Orthodox Christians in Donbass if they wouldn’t fight back with heavy armament against these Nazi freaks.
Today Ukrainian parliament have honored the death of banderist, nazi murderer Roman Shukhevych with “minute of silence”, but brainwashed people are still repeating that “There is no Nazis in Ukraine”.
very good series and especially useful at university level both undergraduate and post graduate.
i suggest these be embedded and archived.
The basic thing to add is that Slavic and Turkic are language families, not genetic categories. Haplotypes don’t really show much respect for language. As I was taught in Asia 101, there is no scientific basis for race, it’s absolutely a social construct. Some people have more melanin than others but there’s nowhere you can draw a definite line.
great cossack song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UPB2Z8nZmw&list=PLl454lB46JcLVKufuam-j5lD7BrseL2Ns&feature=player_detailpage
Hi Jimmie, I really liked it, and there’s no need to feel like you are taking to long to finish
I don’t really have anything intelligent to say or add, except that its great, and I hope you do another series after this. You seem very knowledgeable and also you’re very good with words.