Thinking about Ukraine and what is happening there, it is impossible to get rid of the pictures of the past. How has Ukraine changed over the course of history?
The first truly World War was ending. Some empires collapsed, feeding new ones with their fragments. Monarchs, chancellors, prime ministers, presidents, dictators - everyone hoped to win it completely, that is, to draw those boundaries that would guarantee security: for themselves - strength, for others - weakness.
The Russian Empire was divided by everyone, even the allies in the Entente, and, of course, the defeated Germany and Austria-Hungary. This is how the Austro-Hungarian fantasy of a possible victory looked like: pushing Russia back to the Kuban, making the resulting territory Ukraine. Wide buffer.
After the Bolshevik coup in 1917 in Kharkov, the Congress of Soviets created the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. There were also the Odessa Soviet Republic, Donetsk-Krivoy Rog. The West Ukrainian People's Republic is not Soviet. And not the Soviet Ukrainian People's Republic, whose independence was proclaimed by the Kiev Central Rada.
"When the Central Rada began to negotiate with Germany and Austria-Hungary on future borders, they in no way wanted to give up Galicia. What was included in the territory of the Western states. Moreover, they drew such conditions to Ukraine that 60 million poods of bread should it was Ukraine to deliver, under these peaceful conditions, directly to Germany and Austria-Hungary, "said Mikhail Myagkov, head of the Center for the Study of Wars and Conflicts at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The very first attempt of the Central Rada to stop feeding the German army ended in a coup. In the fall of 1918, the Ukrainian People's Republic was abolished. The Germans bring to power Hetman Skoropadsky, a former officer of the tsarist army. The Ukrainian State is declared. Everyone is at war with everyone. There are so many gangs around that the hetman himself leaves Kiev, accompanied by serious security. The peasants have no protection.
"Through the slot of the machine gun I am looking for the enemy in the dust" - these are the poetic lines of Nestor Makhno. He also built a free Ukraine. But without the state. An anarchist communist, contagious, desperate, he distributed land to his own people, robbed strangers, did not give offense to the Jews, and oppressed the German colonists. Such is the idea of justice.
Makhno hated Skoropadsky because he collaborated with the Germans. Skoropadsky defeated the ataman so that he entered into an alliance with Lenin. Cars, battles with Denikin, the capture of Perekop. When Makhno was no longer needed, he was outlawed. Lenin had his own idea of how to equip Ukraine. There was no place for the old man. He fled to Paris. He died in poverty. The fate of the Ukrainian state under Skoropadsky's rule was also tragic.
If you arrive in Kiev by train, you will immediately find yourself on Simon Petliura Street. It's practically the center. Only five years ago it bore the name of the Comintern. And they named it that in 1919. And not at all the Bolsheviks - they were not in Kiev then. There were hetmans, chieftains, junkers, tsarist officers, German occupation troops.
Petliura is a Social Democrat, a half-educated seminarian, a brilliant publicist. In the magazine "Ukrainian Life" he called on Ukrainians to "Fight for Russia to the end." This is the beginning of the war. And already in 1917, he himself was engaged in the formation of the Ukrainian army exclusively from Ukrainians. Skoropadsky does not recognize the Ukrainian State and with his army - the Gaidamatsky kosh - goes to Kiev to build his Ukraine - without the Germans, without the Russians, without the Bolsheviks.
"And who are the Petliurists? Who did Petliura rely on? These are the Haidamaks, Sich Cossacks, anti-Semites, Russophobes. Massacres began in Kiev. Russian families were massacred as well. Let's remember Bulgakov, Myshlaevsky and Turbins, who fled and did not know what to do," how to be in these conditions ", - said Mikhail Myagkov.
In the same 1919, Petliura captured Kiev. "Mysterious and faceless" - this is how Bulgakov calls him in the novel "The White Guard". House of the Turbins on Andreevsky Spusk. I wanted to see how the famous tiled stove is doing, but it’s impossible - they say it wasn’t enough for the museum to be set on fire because of Russian journalists.
Petliura called the French and Poles as allies, but neither one nor the other wanted to help him build an independent Ukraine. Very soon the Bolsheviks drove him out of Kiev, expanding the borders of Soviet Ukraine. But not for long - the Poles attacked.
Petliura fought on their side. Bargained for future territories. Only the case ended with the Polish occupation. And for Petliura - emigration. He fled to Paris, a city where both Russian officers and Jewish inhabitants fled from his Haidamaks. He was tracked down and shot in the street by the Jew Samuel Schwarzbard. It is still debated whether he was a Soviet agent or a Jewish avenger, or both.
A new world power, the United States of America, was also involved in the division of Europe. The Library of Congress contains documents that President Woodrow Wilson was armed with for the Versailles talks. American Intelligence Network Recommendations.
"For example, in the case of Russia, how to divide, highlight which parts of the western former Russian Empire should become independent states. Separate from Russia, the creation of the Crimean state seems unrealistic, and without Crimea, Ukraine has limited access to the Black Sea. The recommendation was to include Crimea in Ukraine. Galicia, too, "said Ted Falin, Fellow at the Library of Congress.
"Galicia has lost any connection with Orthodox Ukraine since the XIV century and was under Poland. Then parts of it passed into the Kingdom of Hungary. Then it became Austro-Hungarian territory. And it was before the First World War. And this is where the fuse of the Russophobic version begins. Ukrainian idea, because even the nationalists of the Central Rada, who advocated an independent Ukraine in 1917 and later, did not have such Russophobia. We were brothers in faith, "said Natalia Narochnitskaya, chair of the Paris branch of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation.
In 1939, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Galicia joins the Soviet Union, which means Ukraine. Stepan Bandera is from these places. The son of a Greek Catholic priest, who from childhood prepared himself for war. He even did not go to the doctor to pull his teeth, but to the blacksmith. His methods of achieving his goal are terror. He organized the assassination of a Soviet diplomat in Lvov, murdered Polish officials, professors, students.
He was caught, sentenced and had to be executed. But the Poles did not have time - the Nazis came and released. Canaris himself gave a bride to a promising fighter. His characteristic: charming, strong-willed, with the tendencies of a bandit. Can be used. He headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
"The first major Jewish pogrom with the active participation of Bandera's supporters was carried out in 1941. Then in Volyn in 1943, there were massacres of the Polish population. And as a result of these pogroms, according to some estimates, more than 120 thousand Poles were killed. People were attacked and killed. even during a church service, "said Tamara Guzenkova, deputy director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.
In 1943, the UPA and OUN acted on behalf of Bandera, but already without him - the Nazis put him in a concentration camp. But, of course, not for the Jewish pogrom in 1941, but for the fact that he solemnly announced the creation of an independent state. I was sure that this was exactly what the Germans expected of him. The Fuhrer was angry, but did not kill Bandera. He kept it until 1944. And when it was necessary to cover the German retreat, he released it.
Although Bandera was not very obedient, he regularly partisaned the Red Army. And after the war, the nationalist underground was called "Banderaism", although Bandera himself lived abroad. He was killed in 1959 in Munich by Bohdan Stashinsky, a Ukrainian nationalist recruited by the Soviet secret services. I sprinkled poison in Bandera. Received praise and fled to West Berlin. An infrequent case of double betrayal.
So, by 1953, the border of Soviet Ukraine looked like this: in the west - according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in the south - history has a peculiar sense of humor - in 1954 Khrushchev, without knowing it, fulfilled the wishes of American intelligence - transferred Crimea to Ukraine.
Soviet people thought little about who came from. They understood, of course, that Brezhnev was from Dneprodzerzhinsk, but did not know that in the passport the secretary general wrote either "Russian" or "Ukrainian". This was not decisive, as for sure for Lanovoy, Vertinsky, Kozlovsky, Paton, Vernadsky, Bystritskaya, Bondarchuk - the overwhelming majority of those who lived within the borders of that uneasy Ukraine.
