The problems of 1942 – possible causes and solutions – The Red Army

[Lieste]

Specially those darned Georgians.. Stalin hated them... along with just about everyone else, but they held a special place for him.

[Mehring]

If it accomplished nothing else, the early decades of bureacratic rule accelerated a country and economy from semi-feudalism into the 20th century.
To equate 1920-40s Russia with that of the 1990s is, then, completely false. While common threads run through these dates, connecting them, the immense social changes through which they have passed, the creation of new social strata and their interests, make any unqualified comparison facile in the extreme.

Yes, all the republics had distinct histories and makeups. The Baltic States might have become part of the original voluntary Soviet Union but foreign intervention on behalf of its seperatist faction and Red exhaustion gave them independence. As you say, Klydon, they were occupied. Even if you were to include them as part of the Soviet Union, independence movements in such geographically and economically small areas were of little political or military significance.

The Ukraine was not homogenious then, and is not today. It's working class was predominantly Great Russian but this was a minority. The vast majority of its population was peasant whose 'nationalism' did not extend beyond its resentments of Russian and Polish landlords and Jewish userers and traders. The national folk hero, Bohdan Khmelnitsky did homage to Moscow( Carr). This mass had little or no connection with the urban nationalist intelligencia. Lacking any domestic support the intelligencia turned first to Austria in 1914, then to France, then to Germany and lastly to the Poles for support, in the course of which they hopelessly discredited themselves as foreign pawns and not even to nations observing the Orthodox faith.

Underpinning this political impotence was the economic dependance of the Ukraine on Great Russia. Its forward looking industries, which included some of the most modern in the empire, were mostly Russian managed and staffed, its resources connected to Great Russian industry. Even today, the Ukraine vacilates between Russia and the West, conflicting interests pulling it one way then the other.

Simply put, the social forces upon which a coherent nationalist movement could be built, did not exist in the Ukraine. By the beginning of the 1940's they were only just coming into existence.

[Mynok]

"Sense of nationalism" and "effective nationalism" are two very different things, sir. You said the former and I will still wholeheartedly disagree with you on that. Heck the entire 19th century was a hotbed of fomenting nationalism across all of Europe. A lot of it was very ineffective but it was absolutely there. Maybe ethnic identity' is better than 'nationalism' really because that was more at the heart of the matter.

Russia struggled later than most with this, but they absolutely did, both under the Czar and the Soviets.

You cannot say there was no sense of nationalism/ethnicity just because it was insufficiently developed to successfully secede. And it is most definitely appropriate to bring in modern times because time is exactly what it takes to develop an effective nationalism. There is no way that a Ukraine that hasn't been feeling the pull away from Russian hegemony for a long time is going to split as fast as they did in the 90's. No way. Same goes for the Baltics, the X-istans, the Caucasus and especially Byelorussia.

Nope. Ain't buying it.

(Addendum: BTW, the Ukrainians are not Orthodox. They are Catholic. Did I misunderstand you?

After some fact checking...always good with an old brain [:D] ... it does appear the Catholics are a minority. So ignore that point. [8D])

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Mynok

"Sense of nationalism" and "effective nationalism" are two very different things, sir. You said the former and I will still wholeheartedly disagree with you on that. Heck the entire 19th century was a hotbed of fomenting nationalism across all of Europe. A lot of it was very ineffective but it was absolutely there. Maybe ethnic identity' is better than 'nationalism' really because that was more at the heart of the matter.

Russia struggled later than most with this, but they absolutely did, both under the Czar and the Soviets.

You cannot say there was no sense of nationalism/ethnicity just because it was insufficiently developed to successfully secede. And it is most definitely appropriate to bring in modern times because time is exactly what it takes to develop an effective nationalism. There is no way that a Ukraine that hasn't been feeling the pull away from Russian hegemony for a long time is going to split as fast as they did in the 90's. No way. Same goes for the Baltics, the X-istans, the Caucasus and especially Byelorussia.

Nope. Ain't buying it.

(Addendum: BTW, the Ukrainians are not Orthodox. They are Catholic.)

And a good many of the Ukranian partisans fought the Germans and the Soviets equally; and they seemed to hate both equally. In fact there were some still fighting as late as 1950.

[Mynok]

1950? Wow. That's interesting. Sounds like the seeds were sprouting pretty good, though it would be a long time until all the circumstances aligned to bear fruit.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


1950? Wow. That's interesting. Sounds like the seeds were sprouting pretty good, though it would be a long time until all the circumstances aligned to bear fruit.

Can't remember my sources, but there was covert US support for them in the late 40's. According to Wikipedia (FWIW), 1950 was the year the Russians killed the primary leader but some fought on until 1956

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army

[Klydon]

The Ukranians did welcome the Germans at first as liberators, but it didn't last long and the opportunity (for the Germans) was lost.

Moscow worked hard at trying to "Russianize" the Ukraine by doing forced resettlement there. Most of the minority population is in the eastern section of the Ukraine and that happens to also be the more industrialized. The more rural/agricultural area is to the western end. The eastern end doesn't much like the western end and there are still issues there this day.

The Ukraine had been looking to become independent for a long time and in fact declared itself to be independent at the end of WW1. The Russian civil war had something else to say about that however.

[jazman]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

The Ukranians did welcome the Germans at first as liberators, but it didn't last long and the opportunity (for the Germans) was lost.

Moscow worked hard at trying to "Russianize" the Ukraine by doing forced resettlement there.

And the forced famine, the Holodomor. The Communists are evil.

[Mehring]

Well, I'm pretty sure I said "sense of independent national identity" not 'sense of nationalism'. If the difference between these first two is slight, the difference between them and the 'ethnic identity' you put forward as a better expression, is vast. Are you seriously unable to distinguish between sense of ethnicity and national identity?

Ethnicity and the sense of it have been around a very long time. Nations, and the sense of them, relatively, have not. Neither are the two symonymous, most if not all nations being composed of numerous ethnicities. Tatars, Cossacks, need one continue?

A sense of independent national identity would flow from real conditions which would make a nation possible. Sense of ethnicity or ethnicities does not. That is why peasants disgruntled by, even seething with rage at the ethnicity of their landlords, userers and privilaged strata generally, does not constitute a sense of independent national identity or even, a sense of nationalism. It is resentment at the privilage of other people pegged onto ethnic difference. And because there was not such sense of national identity among the vast majority of Ukranian peasants, the urban intelligencia had no domestic support. Indeed, the town/country divide was possibly more antagonistic to most Ukrainian peasants than was resentment against Russia.

You can buy what you like, but could you demonstrate the relationship between the speed of the "soviet union's" break up and the longevity of nationalist sentiment in its former republics? You weren't arguing that the central asian republics, for example, had long standing nationalist aspirations, but did they take significantly longer to break away than Ukraine? Kyrgyzstan took a week longer for one example. How many years less yearning for nationhood, does each day of waiting to declare independence indicate? There's no relationship, is there, and you never thought it through, you just convinced yourself as you thought it?

It's not a question of time but what happens during a time. Industries, social strata and social interests grew up in all the republics in the period of the "Soviet Union" which did not exist before. If there is an increasing element of fiction in the very concept of nationhood in today's globalised world, they are what make for a sense of independent national identity, they make the foundations for nation states. Time ticked away for millenia with no nation states or 'sense of nationalism.' there was no material basis for them.

And BTW, while the Ukraine includes Muslims as well as Catholics- mostly in the west, and protestants, the vast majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox. The largest group is called The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) What patriarchate?

[Mehring]

The Ukraine had been looking to become independent for a long time and in fact declared itself to be independent at the end of WW1.

As I pointed out above, the urban intelligencia had little domestic support. They relied upon, and discredited themselves, by their use of support from abroad. That is why their 'independence' failed.

And the forced famine, the Holodomor. The Communists are evil.

Now that is an irony of history that communists are blamed for the crimes of counter-revolution.

[Michael T]

And BTW, while the Ukraine includes Muslims as well as Catholics- mostly in the west, and protestants, the vast majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox. The largest group is called The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) What patriarchate?

This is correct, my wife is half Ukrainian and one of her crazy uncles (Igor I think) was an Orthodox Priest.

As a side note her family were shot at equally by Russians and Germans as refugees in the war. Her grandmother hated both equally. Her grandfather was in the Tzar's guard and was sent to a gulag. He was released just in time to be overun by the Nazis.

[Flaviusx]

Ukraine predates Russia, btw.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

And BTW, while the Ukraine includes Muslims as well as Catholics- mostly in the west, and protestants, the vast majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox. The largest group is called The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) What patriarchate?

This is correct, my wife is half Ukrainian and one of her crazy uncles (Igor I think) was an Orthodox Priest.

As a side note her family were shot at equally by Russians and Germans as refugees in the war. Her grandmother hated both equally. Her grandfather was in the Tzar's guard and was sent to a gulag. He was released just in time to be overun by the Nazis.

Did you ever see a very long Japanese film, "The Human Condition"? It's painful to watch, just one blow after the other. The expectation so many have in the advanced economies of the right to pursue happiness is such a new phenomenon.

Ukraine predates Russia, btw.

Quite true, and Kiev is an older capital than either Petrograd or Moscow. By far more, Athens predates Berlin, but who's in the driving seat now?

re Ukrainian partisans, here's from the notes to Advanced Squad Leader scenario A84-

Since 1920, when the White Russians under General Denikin had been defeated and the Ukraine forcibly incorporated into the greater USSR Ukrainian nationalists had resisted the Communist government and its policy of suppression.

This is politically motivated 'history' which gains currency not by its basis in fact or deeper truth, for it is easily refuted, but by the frequency with which it is encountered. As stated above, the Ukrainian separatists were unable to achieve anything without various western support, for they had insufficiant domestic support. Under the auspices of these powers and their interests the Ukrainian Directorate presided over disease and famine and what looked ever more like the dictatorship of it's leader, Petlyura. He, according to Carr, distingushed himself by his "ruthless massacres of the large Jewish population" perhaps to coax the indifferent peasants to his side and the usual motive of racism, to deflect from the disaster over which he presided.

Finally, with the Bolsheviks becoming the most powerful political force in the Ukraine in 1919, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petlyura -see under 1919) Petlyura turned to Poland, historically the ethnicity most antagonistic to Ukrainian sensibilities. As head of the Ukrainian People's Republic, he signed away Galicia to Poland in return for her support in kicking the Bolsheviks out of the rest and establishing his rule there as a satelite of Poland (Carr). Hardly a viable nation state project.

In 1941, the invading Germans were greeted as liberators, thousands of Ukrainian patriots joined the German military, and Ukrainian leaders dreamed of freedom.

Rah rah the nationalists! And so on and so forth, the scenario card eventually goes on to describe an encounter at Turia Velyka in 1946.

Left out, however, is that the nationalist partisans found support only in the Western Ukraine, stolen by Poland from the Ukraine in 1920, and were regarded as German collaborators by the East Ukrainians. Also omitted is their policy of massacring and ethnicly cleansing Poles from their region, of whom they slaughtered tens of thousands, more than they ever killed German or Russian soldiers.

Who these people were, what social layer(s) they were drawn from, I am unable to find out. But does anyone regard sectarian genocide on the part of one ethnic faction of a geographic area, as the basis for building a viable, inclusive nation state?

[ComradeP]

But does anyone regard sectarian genocide on the part of one ethnic faction of a geographic area, as the basis for building a viable, inclusive nation state?

That would depend on what the population is happy with. A recent example would be Kosovo, which isn't really a viable state but which was build on the effects of the break-up of Yugoslavia, specifically the antagonistic feeling the Albanians had for the Serbs. I'd say the break-up of Yugoslavia included plenty of sectarian genocide for most of the larger countries involved to begin with. Like the Czar and the communists in Russia/the Soviet Union, Tito tried to make the people believe they were all inhabitants of the same nation or at the least unified under the reign of the same ruler. With the death of the Czar/communism/Tito, that feeling didn't last very long.

Not every war/struggle for independence needs ethnic or truly nationalistic feelings to succeed. Take a look at the American war for independence: historians tend to agree that only about 1/3 of the population wanted to be independent initially, with 1/3 being Loyalists and 1/3 seemingly not having decided yet where they stood on the issue, but it still worked. It was only a war against tyranny for those who wanted to become independent.

It's a sort of standard reaction for a country to, if the power of its (foreign) overlord is decreasing, it will try to remove it. You don't need to, pre-revolution, have a good idea for what your future nation should look like when it's over, often it might be more viable to see what you can build on the ashes after it's over.

[Tarhunnas]

This thread has wandered rather far from its original subject. I think the various rights and wrongs of one group towards another in Eastern Europe is a subject that easily wanders very close to a political debate, and best left without further elaboration here.

[ComradeP]

It's a forum, it's usually more natural for a lengthy thread to go off topic than to stay on it.

You're right, of course, in that we're no longer discussing the original subject.

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: pompack
And a good many of the Ukranian partisans fought the Germans and the Soviets equally; and they seemed to hate both equally. In fact there were some still fighting as late as 1950.

Many people in Ukraine first celebrated when Germans drive red army away. German troops were indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda this lead to hard treatment of civilian population in Ukraine in the occupied areas and made many turn against German troops in the end.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

But does anyone regard sectarian genocide on the part of one ethnic faction of a geographic area, as the basis for building a viable, inclusive nation state?

That would depend on what the population is happy with. A recent example would be Kosovo, which isn't really a viable state but which was build on the effects of the break-up of Yugoslavia, specifically the antagonistic feeling the Albanians had for the Serbs. I'd say the break-up of Yugoslavia included plenty of sectarian genocide for most of the larger countries involved to begin with. Like the Czar and the communists in Russia/the Soviet Union, Tito tried to make the people believe they were all inhabitants of the same nation or at the least unified under the reign of the same ruler. With the death of the Czar/communism/Tito, that feeling didn't last very long.

As you so rightly say, Kosovo is not a viable state. Neither is it a sovereign state in any accepted use of the term, but a client state of interrested parties, ruled by foreign laws and effectively administered from without.

Compare the Declaration of Independence issued by the Second Continental Congress of 1776 with that of the Kosovo provincial assembly. One is a declaration of rights and principles which lit up the world and continues to inspire struggles against tyranny today The other is in essence an undertaking to implement the plan of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, whose plan was in fact withdrawn when Serbia and Russia complained, correctly, that it contravened international law. Now compare the futures of the two countries, one unfolding, the other barely hatched and, if anything, withdrawing back into its egg.

Separation may be temporary protection from Serbian domination and oppression, which I know to have been the case, but it is not independence, autonomy, the birth of a nation and tragically for all in the province, not a solution or a future. The waves of sectarian hatred dragged up from the past by ethnic leaders on all sides, jostling to control dwindling resources, are not the basis for a nation.

By all means, let Kosovo experience the realities of pseudo independence if that's what they currently want. People learn by experience and unity should not be forced on them. But they will one day have to take on the same foreign interests which exploited their country's inner tensions to break it up, powers which will not look so fondly on 'the will of the people,' when that will is not of their own cultivation, should those people decide to renounce foreign control, realising they were better off united.

Such would be a negation of seperatism to unity at a higher level than previously. It is feasible, as with the former 'Soviet' republics, only with an enormous expansion and equality of social wealth.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP


Not every war/struggle for independence needs ethnic or truly nationalistic feelings to succeed. Take a look at the American war for independence: historians tend to agree that only about 1/3 of the population wanted to be independent initially, with 1/3 being Loyalists and 1/3 seemingly not having decided yet where they stood on the issue, but it still worked. It was only a war against tyranny for those who wanted to become independent.

The war of Independence was not a war against tyranny for those who hid from their shame at preferring tyranny to putting their lives on the line for Liberty, to those that thought the king would win and wanted to be on the winning side, or those who profited from that tyranny and feared a reverse of fortune should he lose. One might assume the heftyest number blurred with a hefty number of the indifferent, that section of society which until it sees it, is sadly unable to conceive of a world greatly different from the one they have always known.

Those who were indifferent or loyalist at first might also include those not personally affected by the tyranny, or who found ways to work around it. The permutations of an individual's relation to society are many and varied, but the 1/3 for revolution was a substantial vanguard and ample proof that the revolution's time had come, that it was popular.

Revolutions are not renouned for their adherence to the formal democratic procedure of peaceful times. That has to do with their non-peaceful nature and the fact that different social strata move towards and embrace revolution at different speeds. If the vanguard waited for the tail to catch up, it would lose the moment.

That 1/3 support is precisely what the Ukranian independence movement lacked, however unpopular the existing order might have been in one period or another.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP It's a sort of standard reaction for a country to, if the power of its (foreign) overlord is decreasing, it will try to remove it. You don't need to, pre-revolution, have a good idea for what your future nation should look like when it's over, often it might be more viable to see what you can build on the ashes after it's over.

Oh yes you do, or you will not achieve a revolution, only a change in figurehead. Wasn't it in "The Leopard' someone says "if you want things to stay the same round here, you're going to have to make some changes."

[Tarhunnas]

[>:]

[kvolk]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

[>:]

lol