Ukrainian nationalism - its roots and nature

The saker

First, a short introductory sitrep: The least one could say is that over the past 2 days the events in the Ukraine moved fast, very, very fast. While I had intended to take 2 days off, I still kept an eye on the most recent development and jotted them down on my computer's note pad. Here is what I wrote down (sorry for the shorthand):

• Lukin did not sign
• S&P downgrades Ukraine from CCC+ to CCC
• Pogroms in Kiev
• Attacks on Russian nationals
• Burned buses (incl. Belarussian)
• Yanuk did not attend Kharkov congress
• Yanuk only cares about his security
• Yanuk's mansion was looted
• Kharkov congress 3000 delegates
• Phone threats to all political opponents
• Black Sea Fleet on high alert
• In the East local authorities take full control
• Two Yanuk minister arrested while trying to flee
• NOBODY WANTS A SPLIT UKRAINE NOT EVEN RUSSIA
• BUT ONLY YULIA CAN HOLD IT TOGETHER
• RADA discusses limiting Russian TV channels
• Region turncoats bought over and threatened
• Not referendum but force of arms will decide
• Hunger is a real risk
• 7'000'000 Russians in the Ukraine officially
• 50% of Ukrainians speak Russian
• 15'000 volunteers mobilized in Crimea
• Also on Sunday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned Russia it would be a "grave mistake" to intervene militarily
• Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov 2005 - Head of Ukraine Security Service (SBU)
• New regime says Ukraine needs 35 billion dollars
• Hunger now a real risk
• Russia recalls ambassador
• Russian language basically banned
• Appointed Mayor of Sevastopol replaced by Alexei Chalyi, a Russian citizen, directly elected by the local people.
• EU policians claim they can offer 20 billion dollar to the Ukraine. How they will explain that to Greece is unclear.

Wow!  Clearly, things have gone far beyond the terms of the capitulation of Yanukovich to the insurgency so "brilliantly" mediated by the EU bureaucrats.  Truly, a qualitative change in the terms of the conflict has happened and the country is now in a de-facto situation of civil war.  But first, in order to make sense of what is taking place, we need to take a look far back into the distant past, as far back as the 13th century.

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Ukrainian nationalism - its roots and nature

PART ONE: a preliminary excursion in ancient history

Innocent III

1204 - The Eastern Crusade of Pope Innocent III: Most people mistakenly believe that the Crusades only happened in the Middle-East and that they were only directed at Islam.  This is false.  In fact, while the official excuse for western imperialism at that time was to free the city of Jerusalem from the "Muslim infidels" the crusades also were aimed at either exterminating or converting the "Greek schismatics" i.e. the Orthodox Christians.  The most notorious episode of this anti-Orthodox crusade is the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, during the 4th Crusade, in which the city was subjected to three days of absolutely grotesque pillaging, looting and massacres by the western "Christians" who even looted and burned down Orthodox churches, monasteries and convents, raped nuns on church altars and even placed a prostitute on the Patriarchal throne.  This outpouring of genocidal hatred was hardly a fluke, but it was one of the earliest manifestation of something which would become a central feature of the mindset and ideology of the Latin Church.There is, however, another no less important episode in the history of the Latin hatred for the Orthodox Church which is far less known.

Gregory IX

1242 - The Northern Crusades of Pope Gregory IX: Unlike his predecessor who directed his soldiers towards the Holy Land, Pope Gregory IX had a very different idea: he wanted to convert the "pagans" of the North and East of Europe to the "true faith".  In his mind, Orthodox Russia was part of these "pagan lands" and Orthodox Christians were pagans too.  His order to the Teutonic Knights (the spiritual successors of the Franks who had pillaged and destroyed Rome) was to either convert or kill all the pagans they would meet (this genocidal order was very similar to the one given by Ante Pavelic to his own forces against the Serbs during WWII: convert, kill or expel).  In most history books Pope Gregory IX has earned himself a name by instituting the Papal Inquisition (which has never been abolished, by the way), so it is of no surprise that this gentleman was in no mood to show any mercy to the "Greek schismatics".  This time, however, the Pope's hordes were met by a formidable defender: Prince Alexander Nevsky.Saint Alexander Nevsky's "civilizational choice"

Saint Alexander Nevsky

Even before dealing with the Pope's Crusaders Alexander Nevsky had already had to repel an earlier invasion of Russia by the West - the attempt to invade norther Russia by the Swedish Kingdom - which he defeated 1240 at the famousbattle of the Neva.  No less important, however, is the fact that Alexander Nevsky was unable to defeat Mongol invasion from the East and so he was placed between what can only be called a civilizational choice: he understood that Russia could not fight the Papacy and the Mongols at the same time, so the choice was simple: to submit to one and to resist the other. But which one should he chose to submit Russia to?Prince Alexander (who would later be glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church) was truly a deeply pious man who had a deep understanding of the Holy Scripture and who remembered the words of Christ when asked whether Jews should pay taxes to the Romans: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matt 22:21) and "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt 10:28).  Alexander, who was very well informed of the policies of his enemies knew that the sole goal of the Mongols was to extract taxes from the Russians, but that they had no desire to convert anybody or to persecute the Church.  Quite to the contrary, the putatively "savage" Mongols respected the Church and its clergy and they never persecuted it.  In contrast, the Crusaders were given the specific order to convert or murder all the Orthodox Christians they would encounter as the Latins had done many times before, and as they would do many times later.  Thus Prince Alexander Nevsky chose to submit to the Mongol Khan and to fight the Crusaders whom he defeated at the famous Battle of the Ice in 1242.Western Russia occupied, fall of the 2nd Rome, rise of Moscow

Occupied Ukraine in the 14th c.

Having been defeated by Russia twice, western leaders temporarily renounced their invasion plans, but the Russian victory clearly did not endear the Russian people or culture to the western elites.  Predictably the next wave of invasions from the West began in the early 14th century and lasted until 1385 when the Union of Krewo sealed the union of Poland and Lithuania.  At that moment in time all of what would be called later "the Ukraine" was fully conquered by the Latins.In 1453, the Fall of Rome in the East, in Constantinople, marked the end of the "2nd Rome" and the end of the Roman civilization which had survived the Fall of Rome in by a full one thousand years (the western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD; the eastern Roman Empire fell in 1453).The Latins did attempt to submit the Orthodox world by a careful mix of threats and promises to assist Constantinople against the Ottomans at the so-called False Union of Florance, but they had failed, and Constantinople eventually fell to armies of Mehmet the Conqueror.  Thus, Moscow became the "Third Rome", the last free Orthodox Christian Kingdom, the civilizational heir to the Roman civilization.  Moscow would now become the focal point of the Papist hatred for Orthodox Christianity.  The next western strike would come in 1595 and it would be a truly devastating one.

Clement VIII

1595 - Pope Clement VIII conceives the UkraineBy the end of the 16th century, most of western Russia had been occupied by the Latins for two hundred years (14th-16th), as long as the Mongol Yoke on eastern Russia (13th-15th century).  Predictably the situation of the Orthodox Christian peasants under the Latin occupation was nothing short of terrible.  For all practical purposes, it was enslaved, as Israel Shahak explains in his seminal book Jewish History, Jewish Religion:Due to many causes, medieval Poland lagged in its development behind countries like England and France; a strong feudal-type monarchy - yet without any parliamentary institutions - was formed there only in the 14th century, especially under Casimir the Great (1333-70). Immediately after his death, changes of dynasty and other factors led to a very rapid development of the power of the noble magnates, then also of the petty nobility, so that by 1572 the process of reduction of the king to a figure head and exclusion of all other non-noble estates from political power was virtually complete. (...) This process was accompanied by a debasement in the position of the Polish peasants (who had been free in the early Middle Ages) to the point of utter serfdom, hardly distinguishable from outright slavery and certainly the worst in Europe. The desire of noblemen in neighboring countries to enjoy the power of the Polish pan over his peasants (including the power of life and death without any right of appeal) was instrumental in the territorial expansion of Poland. The situation in the 'eastern' lands of Poland (Byelorussia and the Ukraine) - colonized and settled by newly enserfed peasants - was worst of all.Indeed, the local elites had been more then happy to apostatize and sell out to the Polish occupier to enjoy the privileges of slave-owning (before that Russia had never known serfdom!) while the enslaved peasants stubbornly held on to their faith (interestingly, this is also the period of history when Ukrainian Judeophobia was born - read Shahak for details).  Something needed to be done to find a "solution" to this "problem" and, sure enough, a Pope (Clement VIII) found it: the forcible conversion of the local Orthodox Christians to the Latin church: the so-called Union of Brest.  Thus began a long period of vicious persecution of the Orthodox peasantry by the combined efforts of the Polish nobility, their Jewish overseers and, especially, the Jesuits who justified any atrocity under the slogan "ad majorem Dei gloriam" (to the greater Glory of God).  One man, in particular, excelled in the persecution of Orthodox Christians: Josphat Kuntsevich (whose biography you can read about in this text: The Vatican and Russia).  Kuntsevich - who was eventually lynched by a mob of peasants - was buried in the Saint Peter basilica in Rome near, I kid you not, the relics of Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint John Chrysostom (!).  The Latins still refer to this mass murderer as "martyr for Christ" (see here for a typical Papist hagiography of Kuntsevich) and he is still greatly respected and admired amongst modern Ukrainian nationalists.  And I can see why - it is during these years of occupation and persecution that modern "Ukraine" was created, maybe not yet as a territory, but definitely as a cultural entity.The ethnogenesis of the "Ukrainian nation"Nations, like individuals, are born, live and die.  In fact, as Shlomo Sands so brilliantly demonstrated in his bookThe Invention of the Jewish People, nations are really invented, created.  In fact, the 20th century has shown us many nations invented ex-nihilo, out of nothing (in order to avoid offending somebody or getting sidetracked, I shall not give examples, but God knows there are many).  A "nation" does not need to have deep historical and cultural roots, it does not need to have a legitimate historiography, in fact, all it takes to "create a nation" is a certain amount of people identifying themselves as a community - all the rest can be created/invented later.  Thus the argument of some Russians that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian nation is fundamentally mistaken: if there are enough people identifying themselves as "Ukrainian" then a distinct "Ukrainian nation" exists.  It does not matter at all that there is no trace of that nation in history or that its founding myths are ridiculous as long as a distinct common is shared by its members.  And from that point of view, the existence of a Ukrainian nation fundamentally different from the Russian one is an undeniable reality.  And that is the immense achievement of the Latin Church - it undeniably succeeded in its desire to cut-off the western Russians from their historical roots and to create a new nation: the Ukrainians.As an aside, but an important one I think, I would note that the Mongols played a similarly crucial role in the creation of the modern Russian nation.  After all, what are the "founding blocks" of the Russian culture.  The culture of the Slavs before the Christianization of Russia in the 10th century?  Yes, but minimally.  The continuation of the Roman civilization after the Fall of the 2nd Rome?  Yes, to some degree, but not crucially.  The adoption of the Christian faith after the 10 century? Yes, definitely.  But the Russian *state* which grew out of the rather small Grand Duchy of Moscow was definitely shaped by the Mongol culture and statecraft, not Byzantium or ancient Rus.  It would not be incorrect to say that ancient Kievan Rus eventually gave birth to two distinct nations: a Ukrainian one fathered by the Papist occupation and a Russian one, fathered by the Mongol occupation. In that sense the russophobic statement of the Marquis de Custine "Grattez le Russe, et vous verrez un Tartare" (scratch the Russian and you will find a Mongol beneath) is correct.  Equally, however, I would argue that one could say that "scratch the Ukrainian, and you will find the Papist beneath".At this point I do not want to continue outlining the history of the Ukraine because I think I have made my point clear: the Ukrainian nation is the product of the thousand year old hatred of Orthodox Christianity by the Papacy.  Just as modern rabbinical Judaism is really nothing more than an anti-Christianity, the modern Ukrainian national identity is basically centered on a rabid, absolutely irrational and paranoid hated and fear of Russia.  That is not to say that all the people which live in the Ukraine partake in that hysterical russophobia, not at all, but the nationalist hard-core definitely does.  And this point is so crucial that I felt that I had to make this long digression into ancient history to explain it.I have to add one more thing: the Latin Church has undergone tremendous changes in the 20th century and even its Jesuits have long departed from the traditions and ideas of their predecessors of the Counter-Reformation.  Though hatred of the Orthodox Christians and Russian still exists in some Latin circles, it has mostly been replaced by a desire to "incorporate" or swallow the Orthodox Church into the Papacy by means of the so-called "Ecumenical dialog".  As for the rank and file Roman Catholic faithful - they simply have no idea at all about this history which, of course, is never taught to themThe Papacy's goal end is still the same - submission to the Pope.  But the methods and emotions have changed: it used to be hatred and terror, now its a "dialog of love".  Amongst the Ukrainian nationalists and Uniats, however, the mindset practically has not changed.  From the likes of Stepan Bandera to his modern successor, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector, the Ukrainian nationalists have kept the murderous hatred of Josphat Kuntsevich, hence some of the crazy statements these folks have made.We now need to make a 3 centuries long jump in time and look at the roots of Fascism and National-Socialism in the early 20th century.  We have to do this jump not because these centuries were not important for the Ukraine - they very much were - but for the sake of space and time.  The key feature of the time period we will skip is basically the rise on power of Russia, which became an Empire under Peter I and the corresponding weakening of the Polish and Lithuanian states which ended up completely occupied by Russia on several occasion.PART TWO: Fascism, National Socialism and their different rootsWe are typically taught that WWII war saw the victory of the "Allied Powers" against the "Axis powers".   While not incorrect, these categories are often confusing.  For example, according to Wikipedia, France and Yugoslavia were part of the Allied Powers.  That, of course, depends on which regime one considers as legitimate, the one of Petain or de Gaulle or the one of Pavelic, Tito or Mikhailovich?  Also - does it really make sense to lump the Soviet Union with the British Empire and the USA?  What about Petain, Hitler and Hirohito?  Well, they were allies, no doubt here, but they were very different entities and their alliance was mostly one against common enemies rather than the result of real kinship.  This is particularly true of Hitler's allies in Europe: Mussolini, of course, but also Franco, Petain or Pavlic.  Indeed, while both Hitler and Mussolini were atheist (and even rabid anti-clericalist), Franco, Petain and Pavelic were all devout Roman-Catholics.  And if the Papacy never felt comfortable with the secularist, nationalist and socialist ideas of Hitler or Mussolini, it gave its full support to Franco, Pavelic and Petain.  Hitler and Mussolini were primarily the expression of the views and interests of the petit bourgeois and worker classes, while Franco, Pavelic and Petain were very much an expression of the interests of the financial elites and noblity.  In France, in particular, the Petainist movement always had a very strong anti-1789 almost monarchist ethos.  Deeply, of course, there was not much love lost between the atheist-populist and Papist-monarchist groups.  But what did united is a common hatred for Jews, Bolsheviks, Russians and Orthodox Christians in general combined with a profoundly reactionary ideology.The two different Drang nach OstenBoth the atheist-populist and the Papist-monarchists factions had in common a very strong "Drang nach Osten" and both saw themselves as Kulturträger, literally "carriers of civilization" to the savage barbarians of the East.  Hitler's beef with the Soviet Union was, of course, the very high numbers of Jews in the Bolshevik Party (hence his talk of Judeo-Bolshevism) while the Papacy hated Jews, atheists and Orthodox Christians pretty much equally (Franco liked to speak of the "conspiración judeo masonica pagada con el oro de Moscú" or "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy paid for by Moscow's gold").  And while Hitler looked towards the East to provide land and slaves for his Master Race, the Papacy saw a fantastic opportunity to finally submit the "Photian schismatics" to Rome: already on the eve of WWI, Pope Pius X (who was canonized in 1954) pronounced "Russia is the greatest enemy Of the [Roman] Church" and "If Russia is victorious, then the schism is victorious" (and keep in mind that according to Latin doctrine - these folks are infallible when speaking ex-cathedra, in the name of the Church and on issues of faith).  Thus these two originally very different movement joined forces and united against the arch-enemy: Russia (whether atheist, Jewish and Bolshevik or Russian and Orthodox - it did not matter to them).  Needless to say, this toxic brew of hatred found an absolutely perfect Petri dish for its views amongst the Ukrainian nationalists, especially, in the Western Ukraine.Again, for a lack of time and space I will no go into a history of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,Stepan Bandera or the "Ukrainian" SS Division Galizien, you can read about on the Internet.  I will just say that these forces were amongst the most cruel and murderous of any in WWII.  In fact, the most rabid atrocities of WWII were not committed by Hitler's forces, not even the SS, but by the forces fully inspired and supported by the Vatican: the Croatian Ustashe of Ante Pavelic and the Ukrainian nationalists.  Eventually, the Ustashe and the Banderovsty were defeated, but a lot of its members not only survived the war, but prospered in exile, mostly in the USA and Canada, were the Angloshpere kept them away from actual politics, but active enough to be "defrosted" should the need arise.  And, sure enough, following the end of the Cold War, the AngloZionist Empire saw an opportunity to subvert and weaken its enemies: the descendants of the Ustashe were tasked with breaking up Yugoslavia while the descendants of Bandera were tasked with breaking the Ukraine as far away form Russia as possible.  In the same time, both in Yugoslavia and Russia, the AngloZionists directed another of its terrorist franchises - the Wahabi international aka "al-Qaeda" to join the Neo-Nazis and Papists in a common struggle against the Orthodox/Socialist Yugoslavia and Russia.  We all know what happened to Yugoslavia after that.PART THREE - the Ukraine - back to the future2014 -  The belly is still fertile from which the foul beast sprangAt this point in time I want to say a few things about the (now ex-) Ukrainian "opposition".  During the past months, we were mostly told that it was represented by three men: Vitalii Klichko and his UDAR movement,Arsenii Iatseniuyk and his Batkivshchyna Party, and Oleh Tiagnibok, notorious leader of the Freedom Party.  Of course, the real leader of the Batkivshchyna Party always was Yulia Tymoshenko, but since she had been jailed by Yanukovich, she could not directly participate in the most recent events.  Most western observers have neglected to ask the question whether any of these political figures really could control the demonstrators on the Maidan square.  Furthermore, they also neglected to look into how a crowed armed mostly with stones, baseball bats, iron bars and Molotov cocktails had "suddenly" been replaced by a well-organized and well-armed force of what can only be called insurgents.  The force which really packed the most strength and firepower, was not composed of members of the UDAR, Batkivshchyna or even Freedom Party - the real owner of the Maidan and now of the rest of Kiev is the so-called Right Sector, a terrorist organization headed by Dmytro Yarosh:  

Dmytro Yarosh and his troops

If the photo above looks like it might have been taken in Chechnia during the war, that is because it could have been: many Ukrainian nationalists fought on the side of the Wahabis in Chechnia, often under the banner of theUNA-UNSO terrorist organization.  They also fought in Georgia against Russia, hence the visit Saakashvili made twice to the Maidan Square.It would be logical to ask what percentage of the people of the Ukraine support Mr Yarosh and his Right Sector.  It is hard to tell, but probably a seizable but small minority.  By most estimates, the most popular leaders of the new regime are Tymoshenko and Klichko, followed by Tiagnibok - at least that was true before the revolution of last Sunday.  But that is hardly relevant: most Chechens were not Wahabis, most Croats were not Ustashe and most Kosovo Albanians were not KLA - that did not prevent these small but well armed groups from having a decisive control over the events.This places the new regime in a very difficult situation: either it complies with the agenda of the likes of Yarosh and his Right Sector, or it risks to be swiped away by an armed insurrection.  Keep in mind that the Ukrainian military basically exists only on paper and that the police forces are in no condition to impose their authority on the extremists.

What is worse, the Presidency of Yushchenko has shown that the so-called "moderate" nationalists constantly kowtow to the extremists.  Thus Yushchenko even made Bandera "hero of Ukraine" (the decision was later rescinded) and printed nice little stamps with his face.  The problem with that is kind of seemingly innocuous action is in reality a rehabilitation of genocidal ideology and that it sends a truly terrifying and revolting message to the East Ukrainians and Russians in the Ukraine: we are back and we mean business.It has mostly been overlooked, but a similar situation took place in Croatia at the moment of the breakup of Yugoslavia: the Croats, even the so-called "moderates" found nothing more intelligent to do than to immediately reintroduce the checkered flag of the Ustashe of Pavelic as a "Croatian national symbol".  To what degree this encouraged the Serbs in the Krajinas to take up arms is open to debate, but it certainly did not help.The same thing is now also taking place in the Ukraine.  Besides the yellow and blue flags of the western Ukraine, one can also see lots of black and red flags, the flag of the Banderovsty, along with all sorts of neo-Nazi symbols.  And, again, it does not really matter how many Ukrainians are suffering from genocidal tendencies, what matters is how these flags are seen in the eastern Ukraine or by the 7 million Russians who live in the Ukraine.The reaction to the coup in Kiev was immediate.  Check out this screenshot of a video showing a mass rally in the city of Sevastopol:

Mass rally in Sevastopol

Notice the flags?  Before the coup, the rallies in the east featured almost exclusively Ukrainian yellow and blue flags, now the flags are mostly Russian with a few interspersed Russian Navy flags: the people are either angry or frightened.  Probably both.  And the potential for violence therefore rapidly escalates.Check out this video of an attempt by pro-regime activist to hold a demonstration in the city of Kerch and see for yourself how rapidly the situation gets of out control.  The angry crowd begins with screams of "go away!" and "Fascists!" but soon the cops lose control of the situation and a mob begins to assault the nationalist activists.  See for yourself: 

I am assuming that the the Eurobureaucrats and the Ukrainian nationalists will eventually prevail, and that Yanukovich will either fully complete his apparent "zag" and reverse his decision, or lose power. One way or another the the Eurobureaucrats and the Ukrainian nationalists will, I think, prevail. There will be more joyful demonstrations, fireworks and celebrations in Kiev, along with lots of self-righteous back-slapping and high-fiving in Brussels, and then the gates of Hell will truly open for the Ukraine.