Original article in Ukrainian by Ostap Kryvdyk, for UP
You won't speak you Bandera language! Here is Donbas, got it? (from author's experience)
The WW II touched upon everybody.
There are few people who are indifferent to this war – the participants of this war are still alive, their children and grandchildren take into account their opinions, emotions, keeping them in mind.
The USSR successfully put the thought-viral bacillus into the personal memories.
The feat of arms and anti-profiteer detachments, inadequate decisions of the Soviet generals and personal courage of the people – all this was converted by the Soviet propaganda into the irrational and emotional “ours”, indivisible and out of criticism.
And everybody who is trying to separate propaganda from reality, as it was turned out, raises his/her hand against the sacred.
However, it is worth separating grains from weeds in this mixture where through the hushing up all the enemies of the Soviet system were pushed in to.
It was forgotten about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, about the military and technical collaboration of Germany and USSR within a 30 year old period, about joint military exercises and parades. The Soviet history is unable to answer these facts as they are inconvenient, therefore they are “forgotten”.
Instead of, it is not mentioned about criminal nature of the USSR, just through what the anti-Soviet forces had to seek an ally to struggle against it [USSR].
Just the USSR incited these forces to the collaboration with the Nazi, and they [these forces] had no choice.
After the beginning of the war, this collaboration finished very soon because as early as July 1941 the leaders of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) were arrested and sent out to the concentration camps.
Both in Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s residence and the families of Greek-Catholic priests were concealed Jews.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians struggled in UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) against the Nazi since the end of 1941.
This article is not about it, but it demonstrates how clichés of that period go on living in our mind till the present.
Galicians the Nazi
The irrational rejection of Galicians in Central and Eastern Ukraine during the post-war period and the last decade is a generally acknowledged fact.
Galicians one and all speak Ukrainian, they have been always more or less anti-Soviet and told about it with no confusion. They kept their memories about the pre-Soviet period, and those memories were not favorable for the USSR.
Meanwhile such an attitude had propagandistic nature. They [Galicians] were considered as especially different because of so called “Bandera” myth, i.e. the myth of nationalistic bloody bands which put obstacles in the way of the Soviet power confirmation in the West of Ukraine, committed outrages as the books and all the newspapers informed about, and the main, they collaborated with Nazi.
Demonized UPA as a territorially localized “Galician” force (by the way, the UPA’s kurens [units of UPA troops] were both in Zhytomyr and Khmelnitsky regions, and originally it appeared in Volyn) was used for threatening of those who was fighting during the WW II and to whom the memory of it was so dear.
Catholics the Nazi
The anti-religious Soviet system was looking for any reason to annihilate the church, therefore the Ukrainian Greek-Catholics were not an exception.
Additionally, the Greek-Catholic church was in the West of Ukraine as the centre of social activities and national life – please note non-Soviet activities and non-Soviet life.
And all alternative versions of social life were subject to annihilation.
Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, the head of the Greek-Catholic church, on July 5th, 1941 issued an appeal where greeted “the victorious German troop”, i.e. in the most unambiguous manner positioned himself as an enemy of the USSR.
Why just so?
The repressions 1939-1941 in the West of Ukraine were so strong and brutal, and touched upon practically everybody, that the coming of Germans was accepted as a rescue from arrests, shootings, exiles, and prohibition of cultural and religious life.
For two short years the Soviet power gave more than enough reasons to be hated. The bulk of repressions touched upon the church, therefore, church couldn’t be Soviet-orientated.
UPA was a church-orientated force. Its soldiers supported and protected the priests. Hundreds of UPA members often took part in the public worship, therefore the propaganda pined a label of “Nazi” on Greek-Catholic priests (“militant Catholicism”) and Ukrainian partisans.
Just because of this the conflict between the Orthodoxies and the Catholics contains the grain of “the Great Patriotic” USSR’s propaganda.
Ukrainian language is the Nazi language
The openly deceitful stereotype about origin of the Ukrainian language exists and is actively used. It tells the following: the Ukrainian language was invented by Polish and Austrian spies before the WW I and imposed it on all Galicians and some unconscious Central Ukraine “khokhlis” (neglecting name of Ukrainians done by Russians).
Despite its absurdity, in those regions where the Ukrainian language is in fact ejected from, the hostility is seriously forcing. For example: “Odesa will never speak Ukrainian”, or “Donbas has been never Ukrainian-speaking and won’t be it”).
It’s a norm of life for Galicians to speak Ukrainian as since olden times and mainly on principle Galicians speak Ukrainian. Till not so long ago the public communication in Ukrainian in Central and Eastern Ukraine cities was considered as a brave civil deed from one side, and as crankiness and impudence from the other. That’s why the Ukrainian language was accepted just as a sign of Galicians.
Last decades break this stereotype. Even so called leaders in opposition like Yanukovych or Petro Symonenko have to use the Ukrainian language.
There is one more substitution of notions: “national” is made as synonym to “nationalistic” (and in future to “Nazi”). Do you speak about the national? Down with Nazism! Here is one of the propagandistic perversions hammered into the heads of many people. As it was turned out, the division into nationalities is Nazism. The rights of the Ukrainian language are Nazism!
One of the most dangerous confirmation is as follows: around Yushchenko and the Orange Revolution (“Nazi” as according to the propagandistic Yanukovych’s cliché) are just Ukraine-orientated (and therefore nationalistic) forces.
Then federalism and “regional language” fully fit the anti-Orange, anti-Ukrainian, and according to the old matrix, anti-Nazi component. You see how it is possible to normalize the anti-Ukrainian!
Conclusions
The black&white Soviet logic “he who is against the USSR is a Nazi” is still alive. The mixing up of the terms “nationalism” and “Nazism” (in reality, it’s a conscious equating them as synonyms) is echoing today too.
The concerts under the key slogan “The youth is against the nationalism” during the Yanukovych’s pre-election campaign, in combination with Edik Kovalenko’s Nazi-circus continued the cleavage inside of the society.
As before, the “discussion” is at the level of stereotypes which for decades were hammering by the propagandistic system into the heads of the people.
Why it is still relevant? Using old clichés, the opponents of the Ukrainian language expanding call its supporters “nationalists” meaning “Nazi”.
As known, a dialogue with Nazi is or short or no dialogue at all. The term becomes as a thrombus of the dialogue, radicalizes the opponents’ position, and expands aggression. And where is aggression, there the dialogue is impossible.
On such a manner, the anti-Ukrainianship uses the anti-Nazism as a cover, and successfully parasitizes on the memory, substitutes the terms and goes on cleaving us, making us to justify ourselves and give up our past.
We wouldn’t like Ukrainians to feel themselves as “Nazi” in their own country, bearing the ideological burden of such a kind to the future.
