The History Between Ukraine and Russia - Part 2

Where the Communists and Nazis enter...

Author’s note: There are slight variations in the English spellings of both Ukrainian and Russian names. Some English letters are interchangeable, like ‘g’ and ‘h’, ‘i’ and ‘y’, and there may be duplicate ‘redundant’ letters, so ‘Gorsky’ and ‘Gorski’ and ‘Gorskiy’ are the same name. Other letters may be swapped if they’re phonetically (audibly) similar. The spellings used will be the ones quoted from source where possible.

Note: This article continues from the context of The History Between Ukraine and Russia - Part 1, and it is strongly recommended you read that article first, as it sets a lot of the understanding about west-east divides and Ukraine’s origins.

Communist Revolution

Cossacks, although not owning their own country, were still effectively masters of their own domain, through the prestige of fighting for Russia in wars, they were treated akin to royalty. They fought in WW1 through 1914-1918, and this would be the last major war the Cossacks would fight in.

This caused problems when the Russian Communist revolution in 1917 occurred, which was heavily anti-monarchist, and thus, anti-royalty. This meant a large number of royalty and those perceived as royalty got either removed from power, their possessions taken, or executed.

The Cossacks, primarily the guardsmen of the Tsarist government, were a major target for the Communists, and were angry at being effectively dispossessed and killed.

During 1917, the Ukrainian Rada emerged - referred to as a…

[…] counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist organisation […]

Who had effectively tried to declare independence from the newly emerging Soviet Russia, which occurred about the same time the Cossacks rebelled against the Communists.

In response the Communists started a giant purge in 1919 of Cossacks, called De-Cossackisation, by executing the Cossack “elite”, suppressing opposition and erasing the Cossack identity from within Russia. This included deporting Cossacks internally, of which many got deported to Ukraine.

Then in the 1920s, Stalin announced, paradoxically, ‘Korenizatsiya’ (lit. ‘putting down roots’), to try to encourage native populations take roles in local government to get Communism to stick with native populations.

In the region that was to become Ukraine, this became ‘Ukrainisation’. This was largely spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin, to the point hundreds of his statues were erected in Ukraine (which would be later torn down). Ukrainians were given roles within local governments in which to run the Soviet state.

The ultimate death blow, and the major disaster that led to the start of the fracturing between Ukraine and Russia, however was…

The Holodomor

Holod (Ukrainian meaning ‘hunger’) and mor (Ukrainian meaning ‘plague’) was a famine that occurred in Ukraine between 1932 to 1933 as a result of failures in Soviet policy.

Collectivisation of farms (lit. ‘shared ownership’) meant many farms were operated inefficiently, and the ones that succeeded had to distribute their grains with the rest of Russia.

To prevent theft, Stalin implemented harsh death penalties and hard labour practices, so effectively the Ukrainian people had the food they were growing stolen by the state and if they ate any of it, they faced death anyway.

This is despite other nations offering grain and aid supplies to assist with the famine Russia was experiencing (it is worth noting this is the same time period as the 1930s stock market crash in America). Russia refused the aid. Many Ukrainians resented Communist Russia for the famine.

The Rise of Nazi Germany

At the same time, in 1933, the rise of Nazi Germany was occurring, and Hitler’s vehement hatred of Communists was beginning to resonate with other countries under the boot of Russia, including famine-stricken Ukraine.

Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people wasn’t a concern to Ukraine either, despite having a relatively high Jewish population in Ukraine, as the Zaporozhian Cossacks of centuries ago had warred with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Roman Catholics and Jewish people, which they saw as oppressors.

Soviet Russia Annexes Poland

Coupled with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, Soviet Russia invaded Poland in 1939 as part of a joint invasion agreement with Nazi Germany. Harking back to Russsia’s 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo which split the region of Ukraine effectively into two with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, now just Poland, Russia had effectively regained back the ‘missing’ territories of Ukraine.

The combination of the Holodomor only 7 years earlier and Russia annexing another former part of Ukraine sparked a desire within Ukraine to get back at Russia by siding with the Nazis, hoping they could win back their independence.

The Rise of Nazis Within Ukraine

When relations between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia soured, Nazi Germany begun invading parts of Soviet Russia, including ‘Soviet Ukraine’ in 1941. Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis against the Soviet Russians whom they hated for the atrocities during the Holodomor and repression of their people.

Quoting Britannia:

[…] The Germans were accompanied on their entry into Lviv on June 30 by members of OUN-B [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists], who that same day proclaimed the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and the formation of a provisional state administration; within days the organizers of this action were arrested and interned in concentration camps (as were both Bandera and, later, Melnyk). [...]

This is why Stepan Bandera, despite being a Nazi, was granted hero status by Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, and why there are still many Nazis within Ukraine currently.

Despite this, Nazi Germany would go on to lose the war, ultimately losing territory back to Soviet Russia, including the territory of Ukraine. Ukraine’s feelings for the sense for their Nazi “liberators” did not go away post-war, however.

The Transfer of Crimea

Despite this, in celebration of their victory over Nazi Germany in 1954, the anniversary celebrations included the transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the Soviet Union.

This is why, despite Russia originally having gained the territory from the Turks as part of the Russo-Turkish wars, modern-day Ukraine considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine.

Russia still considers Crimea to be a part of Russia because the circumstances surrounding the transfer happened in what they view as shady conditions. 13 members who turned up, out of a 27 group voted in favour in of the transfer within a 15 minute session, which for quite a large land mass is extremely and suspiciously fast.

This happened under the Khrushchev Presidency, a Presidency most Russians eye as being suspicious, as Khrushchev typically had support from America, and even his son, Sergei, even opted to live and die in America. During this same year of 1954, Soviet Russia applied to join NATO and were refused.

The Rise of the CIA Within Ukraine

America, entering a Cold War with Communist Russia, and looking to adopt containment plan policies against them, had the CIA work with Mykola Lebed, as noted in a document from the US National Archives:

Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.

Lebed was no lightweight when it came to Nazi matters, either, vowing revenge against Poland for taking part of Ukraine to begin with:

Lebed himself proposed to “‘cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.”

Despite this, the CIA saw fit to allocate Lebed an office in New York in order to wage war against Soviet Russia:

They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine

Why Lebed and not Bandera? Well, despite Lebed’s leanings, the US got the distinct impression Bandera was much more dangerous:

The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

This wasn’t a problem for British MI6 however, who happily worked with him:

MI6 argued, Bandera’s group was ‘the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization….’ An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, “the operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations …”

The IBTimes wrote an article noting how, even after the CIA had taken on OUN-B, it was still not put to bed, and was simply renamed:

The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him [Lebed], however. It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA)

And it turns out they didn’t just set down their roots in Ukraine, either, Reagan’s administration was rife with them:

By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983

This explains why Putin is of the view he needs to ‘de-nazify Ukraine’, and there’s plenty of evidence of Nazis still residing within Ukraine that reinforces that viewpoint.

The Collapse of the USSR and Start of Ukrainian Independence

In 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker had assured Russian President Gorbachev that NATO would move…

not one inch eastward

In response to the USSR collapsing. Only a year earlier had George H.W. Bush (Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush’s father, was implicated as working with the Nazis) assured Gorbachev that the U.S. would not take advantage.

Baker had reiterated in 1990 that:

neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place

These were all views echoed by the British Prime Minister and the Germans.

A year later, in 1991 the USSR collapsed due to major economic failures. Ukrainian independence was declared later that year on 24th August 1991, leading to the first existence of the modern-day Ukrainian state.

However the independence of Ukraine did not free it from the yokes of the war between the West and East.

The Oddity of Kaliningrad

During this time, Kaliningrad became an oddity. The British feared another re-unification of Germany, and Margaret Thatcher actually opposed reunification of Berlin after the USSR collapsed, fearing another Nazi Germany moment.

Germany desperately wanted to reunify, but did not want to appear expansionist to the rest of Europe. When the USSR collapsed, according to Der Speigel, Russia offered Kaliningrad back to Germany, but Germany refused so to avoid the appearance of expansionism.

Other nations, such as Lithuania, considered ownership of mostly Russian speaking Kaliningrad a thorny issue, and also declined to take the nation, leaving it as an isolated enclave.

NATO Expansionism and Putin’s Election

The “not one inch eastward” agreement was effectively tossed out the window, and in 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO, with Russia voicing fierce opposition.

In 1999, fearing reprisals, Boris Yeltsin resigned, making Vladimir Putin acting President, with elections being triggered. Putin ran on a three point campaign appealing to the Russian voters, of fighting poverty, of protecting the market from invasion, and the national interests of their country.

In March 2000, on the back of increasing tensions with NATO, Putin was elected President of Russia on a campaign of strengthening the State of Russia whilst increasing free market enterprise within Russia.

In 2001, sensing the threat from NATO and trying to find a peaceable solution for it, Putin asked Bill Clinton if Russia could join NATO, to which Bill Clinton said he had ‘no objection to it’, however it never materialised.

NATO’s expansionism didn’t stop, as in 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia all joined as well, along with Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.

Not counting Finland and Sweden’s application, this means 14 countries joined NATO since the assurances by western powers that NATO would “not expand one inch eastwards” following the collapse of the USSR.

This would lead Putin to consider NATO a hostile threat to Russia and make such announcements even as recent as 2019, warnings which were largely ignored to great detriment.

A poll held by Interfax in 2008 found 50 percent of Ukrainians actually opposed NATO membership against just 24.3 percent who favored it. This wasn’t an anomaly, a poll held in Ukraine in 2010 by Gallup found 40% of Ukraine saw NATO as a threat rather than a protector.

However, even as NATO were expanding during this period, there was trouble brewing politically…

Ukraine’s Swinging Elections

Ukraine held elections in 1991, electing Leonid Kravchuk, politically an independent, arguably the closest thing Ukraine had to a neutral third party, who effectively served in a de facto interim position whilst Ukraine re-organised itself.

Kravchuk was effectively seen as Western-leaning, although he had appointed Leonid Kuchma as Prime Minister. Kuchma was seen as Russia-leaning, likely avoiding a split between the West and East sides of Ukraine.

Even though regionally Ukraine had declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Russia, the historical ties were very much still connected to Russia, and Communism still held influence.

Ukraine’s following elections would still show this, swaying back and forth between Western-centric and Russian-centric policies and parties:

• 1994 Leonid Kuchma, Kravchuk’s former Prime Minister, took power. He was seen as pro-Russian by the ‘People’s Movement’ party, although he wasn’t the Socialist party’s choice, who backed Oleksandr Moroz. When it was clear Moroz wasn’t going to win, they backed Kuchma.

• 1999 was another victory for Leonid Kuchma.

• 2004 proved to be controversial, as the Ukrainian courts got involved, claiming falsification of votes favouring Viktor Yanukovych. In response, Ukrainians held the ‘Orange Revolution’ until a second re-run was held, where pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko was elected. Yushchenko would go on to make Nazi Stepan Bandera a national hero for Ukraine, creating 50 monuments, busts and museums commemorating Bandera.

• 2010 the courts tried to get involved again, trying to suspend the election to stop pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych from winning again, however it did not have the popular support of the public, and the election was certified by the pro-Western Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meaning the courts couldn’t claim the votes were falsified. The courts ended up dropping the suspension and Yanukovych became President.

The Ukrainian elections from this point forward were soon to be marred by CIA involvement…

Part 3 of The History Between Ukraine and Russia covers from the CIA operations in Ukraine onwards.

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