| |
COMMENTARY by Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky
The Ukrainian Weekly, The Ukrainian National Association
Parsippany, New Jersey, Sunday, April 6, 2003
Dr. Vitvitsky's remarks below are a slightly revised version of remarks
first appearing in Ukraine List 196 that were prompted by Mikhail Molchanov'
s comments, directed to Peter Rutland and appearing in Ukraine List 193,
about the Famine and related issues, and by one remark by Peter Rutland,
directed to Molchanov in Ukraine List 194, in which he refers to "Ukrainian
nationalists." The Molchanov-Rutland exchange arose in connection with
Prof. Rutland's review of Dr. Molchanov's book "Political Culture and
National Identity in Russian-Ukrainian Relations." In his response to the
review, Molchanov made some of the following types of statements:
"Regarding genocidal myth, I have yet to see the proof of the claim that the
Famine 1933 was driven specifically by the party's desire to eliminate
ethnic Ukrainians. That is what I characterize as myth, not the fact that
millions died as a result of collectivization policies." "People were dying
in ethnic Russian heartland as well, en masse. Ukrainian nationalist myth
does not mention these 'details.' I sees Ukrainian suffering at the Russian
hands, not Russian suffering from the hands of Russian (and Ukrainian)
compatriots. The nationalist myth also glosses over the fact that
'genocidal' policies were executed by the local cadres, i.e., primarily by
the Ukrainian party activists, on Moscow's command, of course."
Regarding the Famine and the question of evidence of it being a genocidal
act, let me ask you to contemplate the following: A man is missing. He is
missing because he lies bleeding of wounds in the home of a man known to be
a sociopathic hit man for the mob, and someone who has more than a dozen
murders to his credit. A woman in the yard next door hears what seems to
sound like cries and moans for help; she knocks on the hit man's door. He
tells her she misinterpreted his cat's cries and sends her away. The body
is buried in the back yard, and for years the hit man disclaims any
knowledge as to the fate of the missing man. Then, finally, the body is
discovered and the police also find out that the hit man had a bitter and
longstanding animosity towards the missing man.
The hit man's "dream team" lawyers will argue that there's no direct
evidence of any homicide. No one saw the stabbing. The knife was never
found. There is no evidence that the hit man ever told anyone he was going
to kill the missing man. Then they will argue that even if the missing man
was killed on the premises, it could have been by someone else. Then, even
if the hit man had plunged the knife into the missing man, it was
accidental-he was waiving it around in a state of agitation and accidentally
caused the stabbing. And lastly, even if it was not accidental, it was in
self-defense because the missing man was threatening the hit man in the
latter's own home!
Want to know what would happen? On the above facts, the hit man would be
charged and tried. At trial the prosecution would put together the jigsaw
puzzle of circumstantial evidence as outlined above regarding who the hit
man was, his animosity towards the missing man, where the missing man was
found, the neighboring woman's offer of help, etc. Then the judge would
give the jury the standard instructions about how they are instructed to use
their common sense and to apply their life experiences in interpreting the
evidence, and he would instruct them that circumstantial evidence is just as
valid as direct evidence. The judge would also instruct the jury that to
convict, they must find guilt NOT beyond all possible doubt, but beyond all
REASONABLE doubt. In all likelihood, the jury would convict, except, of
course, if one of the jurors were someone like Mr. Molchanov.
Were Stalin and the Soviet Communists mass murderers? Did the Russians have
a longstanding pathological hatred and fear of any manifestation of national
normalcy by Ukrainians? Did they not in 1708 massacre some 15,000 women,
children and any and all other living beings at Baturyn merely because
Mazepa's headquarters had been at Baturyn? Did they not in the 19th century
send Shevchenko beyond the Urals for his highly threatening act of writing
patriotic Ukrainian verse? Did they not in that century proclaim that the
Ukrainian language had never existed, did not then exist and never would
exist? And, did they not ban the use of the Ukrainian in publications and
other contexts?
Of course by the time the Bolsheviks were taking over power, the level of
Russian affection for Ukrainians was surging! That's why during the period
1917-19, Volodymyr Zatonskiy reported that hatred of anything Ukrainian on
the part of the Russian Communists and Russian proletariat in Ukraine was so
great that he was almost shot by Bolshevik soldiers merely because he had
had a Ukrainian language publication in his pocket, even though the
publication was a Communist one. One could go on and on, but I trust that
is unnecessary.
Was the Famine part of a genocidal campaign against Ukrainians? To answer
that question, you need to look at a number of different types of factors
and issues. They include: first, what are the facts relating to what
happened? E.g., did people die? Did they die of famine? How many? Was
food taken from them? Were they prevented from leaving their villages to
search for food by a system of internal passports that had been imposed at
about the same time as the Famine? Did the Soviets sell grain at the same
time people were dying of Famine? Were offers of assistance made by those
outside the Soviet Union and rejected? Did the Soviets lie about the
Famine? Etc.
Second, what was the vertical context in which the Famine occurred? That
is, what was the previous historical context of relations and attitudes
between the Russians, and to some extent the Jews, on the one hand and the
Ukrainians on the other hand during the decades and centuries preceding the
event? And what happened during the decades after the event? In the
criminal law, the analogous concepts are "prior" and "subsequent bad acts."
Third, what was the horizontal context of the Famine? That is, what were
the political and economic climates, and what were the "nationalities"
policies and practices in the Soviet Union during the years immediately
preceding and succeeding the event? And fourth, what are the appropriate
conceptual categorizations applicable to the event at issue?
Regarding the facts: millions of Ukrainian peasants died over many months
in 1932-33 because their foodstuffs were forcibly taken from them by the
Communists. They were prevented from searching for food elsewhere by an
internal passport system imposed at about the same time. Offers of help
from outside the Soviet Union were rejected and the occurrence of the Famine
was denied. The cities, which were principally Russian and Jewish, did not
suffer famine. The countryside, which was predominantly Ukrainian, did.
Molchanov seems to think that because others than Ukrainians died during the
Famine, it wasn't a genocidal act, and that, purportedly, "[p]eople were
dying in [the] Russian heartland as well." Really? Where? But more
importantly, that's like saying that since not only Jews were the objects of
Nazi German racist and murderous actions and policies-- given that Gypsies,
Slavs, German Communists, political opponents and the mentally retarded were
incarcerated and/or killed--the war against the Jews wasn't really based on
anti-Semitism.
Also, some, perhaps not Molchanov explicitly, seem to think that to show
that the Famine was part of a genocidal campaign, one would have to show
that the Famine was planned in advance and thus staged. That's like saying
that since there's no evidence that the Nazis started WW II in order to be
able to go after the Jews, the fact that the war allowed them, e.g., to
force Jews into various centralized locations such as ghettos and then the
camps, or that it allowed the Germans to send Einsatzgroupen into the Soviet
Union might simply demonstrate perceived or misperceived dangers on the part
of the Germans.
Further, note that, as a matter of fact, there is no evidence that the Nazis
had planned or intended at all times to kill the Jews of Europe. The Nazis
certainly made it plain that they wanted to eliminate the Jews from Europe,
but there was a time when, e.g., they were looking into the possibility of
mass resettlement of Jews out of Europe to, e.g., Madagascar. There's also
no evidence that Hitler himself ever explicitly directed his people to
exterminate the Jews, much less that he ever visited, knew or spoke about
the camps. Someone could, hypothetically, argue that since there is no
direct evidence in terms of an order or a even suggestion by Hitler
regarding what should be done with or to the Jews, and although he certainly
wasn't fond of them (as expressed in Mein Kampf), he didn't really intend
that all the Jews of Europe be killed and that, perhaps, the camps were a
huge and tragic misunderstanding by his underlings caused by the exigencies
of war.
On the odd chance that any of this regarding Hitler's personal intent were
true, would it make any difference at all as regards our understanding of
what the Nazis did to the Jews. That is, would we think that the Nazis's
actions against the Jew during the Holocaust were not a genocidal action?
Of course not. Why not? Because the convergence of the fact of the
millions of victims with the context in which those who killed them did so
provides overwhelming circumstantial evidence of genocidal action. As it
does with regards to the Famine, even if there is no known direct order from
Stalin, and even if there really were unplanned grain shortages. It is
naïve to think of genocidal actions as though they were like political
assassinations or mob hits. The Wansee Conference aside, given how late in
the day it was, genocidal actions do not involve people sitting around a
table discussing in advance the political and tactical pros and cons, follow
ed by design of a plan and finally by the execution of the plan. Genocidal
actions occur when opportunity meets predisposition and attitudes. So
again, did the Nazis plan WW II in order to have cover to eliminate the
Jews? Did the Soviets plan a grain shortage in order to strike at the
Ukrainians? Does it matter? No. Each seized the opportunities presented
by war or grain shortages to further their respective political/ideological
goals and to act on certain deep-seated animosities and fears. Again, where
in criminal matters knowledge and intent are the issues, they are determined
in the overwhelming majority of cases on the basis of circumstantial, not
direct, evidence.
If the Famine was part of a genocidal campaign, what was the object of the
campaign? The physical elimination of all persons of Ukrainian ancestry?
No. The object was the prevention/elimination of Ukrainian nationhood. The
object was the simultaneous beheading and castration of the Ukrainian nation
so as to turn its remnants into a kind of identity-less lumpen that could
then be molded to serve the empire's needs and interests, and so that it
would not have any idea that it might have an identity or needs and
interests different from those of the empire. Think I'm kidding? Go to
Ukraine and tell me why, alone among all other nations in the area, Ukraine'
s "leadership" has no concept of Ukrainian national interests. And tell me
why, again alone among all of the nations in the area, Ukraine's
"leadership" exhibits little inclination to advance or protect the
indigenous language and cultural heritage. Or why, in contrast to what our
Russian or Polish friends know about their respective histories, Ukrainians
know little of their history, and much of what they know is grotesquely
distorted?
What is the evidence of the genocidal campaign, in addition, of course, to
the millions of bodies? That's where the vertical and horizontal contexts
come into play. Regarding the vertical: I've already mentioned some of the
historical context above. Further examples can fill a book: the Russo-Sovs
destroyed any and all vestiges of genuinely Ukrainian civil society and
Ukrainian leadership, whether Communist or not. They destroyed Ukraine's
culture makers as well as her repositories of historical memory. Stalin
gathered together, purportedly for a convention, and then murdered all of
the blind Ukrainian kobzari who had assembled.
And what happened after the Famine? The continuation of the same policies,
except perhaps somewhat expanded in reach. Ukrainian political leaders of
even Galician Ukrainian organizations were assassinated, and then even when
such were living in Western Europe (Konovalets, Rotterdam, 1938). When the
Soviets took control of Galicia in the 1940's, they killed or sent to
Siberia anyone suspected of being a nationally conscious Ukrainian, no
matter how non-political he/she may have been. My father's former
colleagues at the L'viv Conservatory, even a 70-year old composer who had
never had a political though in his head, were all sent to Siberia. Even
after Stalin died, nothing changed as regards policies. Petro Shelest,
Ukraine's First Party Secretary from 1963, was deposed by Moscow in 1972
because the foolish Shelest had the gall to think it was possible to defend
Ukrainian interests vis-a-vis Moscow and try to be something resembling a
"national Communist." As late as 1979, popular Ukrainian folk singers who
dared to write and sing songs that were patriotic even in a veiled way were
simply murdered (Volodymyr Ivasiuk). The same thing happened to patriotic
Ukrainian poets as late as 1986 (Vasyl Stus).
A sampling of the policies and practices that pre-dated and post-dated the
Famine include: mass population transfers of Russians into Ukraine and
Ukrainians out of Ukraine. And, the Orwellian manipulations of history--so
as to extol the Russians and denigrate the Ukrainians and make Ukrainians
wholly ignorant of their own history, culture and language, to the point of
changing the Ukrainian alphabet so that it would be the same as the Russian.
Let me add a personal note. My cousin's wife's father was a popular
principal and teacher of Ukrainian literature and history in a village high
school in central Ukraine. He also started a literary club at the school.
In October of 1929 he was arrested. In February of 1930 he was executed in
Kharkiv. The students in his Ukrainian literary club were all sent to
Siberia. Incidentally, the large majority of the "investigators,"
"prosecutors" and "judges" were Jewish. But more importantly, I've never
heard of any teacher of Russian literature being killed merely for doing his
job too well.
Molchanov makes the point that "'genocidal' policies were executed by the
local cadres, i.e., by the Ukrainian party activists, [albeit] on Moscow's
command." First, it is my understanding that up through WW II, most of the
genocidal policies against the Ukrainians were executed by Russians, Jews
and others. But the existence of Ukrainian cooperators proves what? There
were Judenrate (Jewish councils) in the Jewish ghettos that
cooperated/collaborated with the Nazis, and there were Jewish kapos in the
concentration camps. That somehow makes the German Nazis less culpable?
What about the horizontal context? Given that at about the same time the
Famine was taking place, the Soviets had just destroyed or were in the
process of destroying anyone or anything with Ukrainian content or who
sought to defend Ukrainian political, cultural or linguistic interests or
rights, the answer is pretty obvious. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox
Church was destroyed. The political, scientific and cultural elites were
all destroyed. Galician Ukrainian patriots who had come east to help built
a Soviet Ukraine, including my aunt, were destroyed. And, in the 1930's,
Stalin ordered that toady of every regime in Moscow, the Russian Orthodox
Church, to resume the anathematizing of Ivan Mazepa during church services
(which anathematizing had ceased in 1918). Yet another recitation of the
mantra that Ukrainians didn't exist, don't exist (except as sharivari
wearing, vodka drinking and hopak-dancing caricatures to be trotted out, a
la the Theresienstadt orchestra during the Nazis, to amuse the keepers and
impress occasional foreigners) and wouldn't exist.
Fourth, as to the applicable conceptual scheme: genocide is defined as the
partial or total destruction of a nation. That the Famine was part, albeit
the most physically devastating part, of the long genocidal campaign against
the Ukrainians is, on all of the available evidence, a no brainer.
Molchanov also speaks about what he refers to as one or another opinion
constituting Ukrainian "nationalist myth." Regarding the allegation of
"myth," and as a general proposition, that is a rather comical comment in
light of the Russians' centuries-long proclivity not merely for one big lie,
but several. But specifically as regards Molchanov, if he thinks some
specific view or claim advanced by someone to be mistaken, he is certainly
entitled so to state and to buttress argument with fact or argument. But it
would befit Molchanov, a Russian or Russofile, out of a sense of decency to
avoid such nonsense for the same reasons that Germans do so with regards to
the Jews.
Both Peter Rutland and Molchanov refer to "Ukrainian nationalist" this or
that. What does that imposed moniker mean? I don't think that Rutland or
Molchanov are referring to the views of members of the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists in the 1930's or 40's. So what are they referring
to? (As an aside, pray tell, why is it that someone who seeks to defend the
rights of Ukrainians to the same national prerogatives that the Russians,
Poles, French or Americans assume is their birthright is a "Ukrainian
nationalist"? Is it because some people assume that the national rights of
Ukrainians are inferior to those of all others?) Let's just stick to
facts, reasonable inferences and arguments, and let's leave impliedly
deprecating monikers at the side of the road.
Lastly, Molchanov suggests a kind of moral equivalence between Russians and
Ukrainians, and that, purportedly, the Russians suffered "from the hands of
Russian (and Ukrainian) compatriots" too. Ah, one of the big lies surfaces
yet again. Did Kyiv impose communism upon Moscow, or was it the reverse?
Did Trotsky's Red Army invade and conquer Moscow from and for Kyiv, or was
it the reverse? Was it the Ukrainians who destroyed the Russian Orthodox
Church in the 1930's, or was it the reverse? Was it the Russian Orthodox
Church that was destroyed by the Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1947, or was
it the reverse? Was it nationally conscious Russian historians, poets,
singers and high school teachers that were killed by Ukrainians, or was it
the reverse? Have some decency man.
The Ukrainian Weekly, Roma Hadzewycz, Editor-in-chief, Ukrainian National
Association, Parsippany, New Jersey, Sunday, April 6, 2003, Page 8.
The Ukrainian Weekly Archive and Famine Gallery, www.ukrweekly.com
For personal and academic use only.
Editor ArtUkraine.com: Dr. Vitvitsky is an attorney, writer, lecturer
and teacher who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a long-time
contributor to The Ukrainian Weekly. He writes on political, historical
and legal subjects.
Under Vitvitsky's leadership, as then president of the Professionals
and Businesspersons Association of New York and New Jersey, the
Association initiated, developed and funded the first Famine Oral History
Project in the early 1980's and engaged Dr. James Mace to carry out
the project. Dr. Mace later incorporated the 50 oral histories generated
by the first project into the subsequently created U.S. Congressional
Famine Oral History Program.
|
|
back
