By: Dr. Volodymyr Senchenko
December, 2000

(Introduction: In 1959, the population of the USSR for the first time heard the official acknowledgement of Josef Stalin's crimes against his own people. Speaking at the historic 20th Congress of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), its then General Secretary Mykyta Khruschov revealed the truth about his predecessor's unjustified genocide targeted at individuals, groups, and entire nations. One of those nations was Ukraine.)

"The blood-freezing list of Stalin's crimes, made public by Mr. Khruschov, included deportation of certain disfavored peoples to the remote areas of the USSR (mainly to Siberia and Middle-Asia). On June 22, 1944, Stalin's favorites Beria and Zhukov signed a degree dooming Ukrainians to this terrible fate. In a preamble to this decree, its authors (definitely inspired by their boss) claimed that 'under the influence of the pro-fascist Ukrainian nation, many Red Army solids and commanders have taken the enemy's side. This outrageous lie was necessary for Stalin to move away from the European part of the Soviet Union all the people who had been in the occupied territory. The deportation was ordered to begin after the end of the harvest season - when all the crops had been gathered and transferred to the State.

According to the documents found, Stalin wanted the deportation process to be fast and well-organized. It was important that soldiers at the front would not learn about their families being deported. So, all letters to the front were checked by special departments and there was one special agent assigned for every five military men coming from Ukraine and some other territories that had experience German occupation.

It is interesting to note that the planned 1944 deportation is not the only example of Stalin's pathological loathing for Ukrainians. Back in 1920, being the Bolshevik government's representative at the Polish front, he ordered the Budionny Cavalry (composed mainly of Cuban Cossacks) to attack the city of Lviv. Fighting on the narrow streets meant the certain death for cavalrymen. On learning of Stalin's order, Lenin immediately dismissed Stalin from his post. Many contemporaries explained this ruthless order of Josef Stalin by his pronounced hatred of Cuban Cossacks, the direct descendants of Ukrainian Cossacks - founders of the Ukrainian Christian Cossack Republic.

The notorious 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine described by many historians as 'artificially created' is another example of Stalin's discrimination against Ukrainians. At least, despite repeated desperate attempts from local party activists, the 'greatest leader of all times and peoples' did not take a single step to save the starving nation.

Modern Ukrainian historians are inclined to think that Stalin's criminal indifference to their people's suffering stemmed from the fact that Ukrainian farmers were the most opposed to collectivization and to the introduction of communist principles into land relations.

Fortunately for Ukrainians, deporting a nation of more than 30 million people turned out to be too ambitious a plan even for a tyrant like Stalin.

However, it wasn't solely the number of Ukrainians that made the Stalin government discard its vicious initiative.

In 1944, the anti-fascist coalition including the USA, Great Britain and Russia started discussing the post-war world arrangements and particularly, the creation of an international organization to ensure global security. Stalin wanted all 16 republics of the Soviet Union to be among the UN nations. But the allies objected to this proposal since none of the Soviet republics featured the attributes of an independent state, i.e. an army, a flag, an anthem, etc. This argument by the allies prompted Stalin to urgently amend the constitutions of Ukraine and Belarus so they stipulated all the aforementioned requirements. Thus,k the two republics suddenly received the right to develop their own foreign relations and military forces (only formally of course!). Nevertheless, these formalities allowed Stalin to nominate Ukraine and Belarus----as the Soviet republics most affected by WWII and the Soviet government obtained two additional controlled votes in this influential international forum.

Certainly, under these circumstances plans to deport Ukrainians from their land had to be abandoned once and forever. However, this does not mean that Stalin altogether stopped discriminating against the Ukrainian nation. Those of my compatriots who had been on the occupied territory (even is they were teenagers back then) were deprived of the right TO make a military or diplomatic career and enter respective educational institutions. Their personal documents featured a humiliating stamp reading 'Stayed on the occupied territory'. Such was Stalin's treatment of the millions of Ukrainian patriots who had survived fascist tortures, slavery, and other adversities of the world's biggest war.

Mr. Khruschov, who assumed the CPSU leadership after Stalin's death in 1953, finally put an end to the paranoid policy of discrimination against Ukrainians as well as other nations that had experienced the German occupation, for which we are extremely grateful to this generally controversial personality in the then political arena."

Article By Volodymyr Senchenko
The Ukrainian Observer
December, 2000
Page 7
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