An important new paper by Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University, Sweden, has appeared in the new volume, Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. The collective volume brought out by Routledge (New York & London) is edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson.
Dr. Rudling’s paper, entitled “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda” comprises the sections:
http://evreiskiy.kiev.ua
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jewish_Daily_News/message/92
http://www.facebook.com/evreiskiy.kiev.ua
In the 2012 elections to the Verkhovna Rada the far-right nationalist Svoboda party passed. To date, the Svoboda fraction has 37 parliament members, within the total of 450 parliament members.
For many years, Svoboda has actively used antisemitic and xenophobic rhetoric to attract voters. So, in 2004, Oleg Tyagnibok, the party leader, while praising the Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldiers, said that they were fighting “against the Muscovites, Germans, Zhids (Yids) and the other demons that wanted to seize the Ukraine.” Tyagnibok later said he was not going to apologize to the “occupiers” for saying that. Other Svoboda party members made similar expressions, as there is ample evidence in the media, demonstrations’ videos, and torchlight processions of party members, chanting xenophobic and antisemitic slogans. Continue reading
Dr. Per Anders Rudling (Lund University, Sweden)
According to a report received today from a publication in Ukraine (reproduced in full below), the launch of the new Menorah complex in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, billed as the city’s largest building, includes a new museum containing an exhibit that naively whitewashes the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an infamous pro-Hitler fascist organization responsible for many Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. The exhibit is quoted in the report as including information on Jews “saved” by the OUN, with no mention of its large-scale record of murder.
Dr. Per Anders Rudling
In the course of remarks criticizing the current Ukrainian government for its human rights abuses, made in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper added words of praise for a visiting director of a Holocaust-distorting museum in Ukraine who was on a Canada lecture tour last week, and for the museum itself. The museum, in Lviv, Ukraine, glorifies and sanitizes some of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators. An account of the prime minister’s remarks appeared in a 19 October 2012 report in the Toronto Sun.
There is no suggestion that the Canadian prime minister agrees with the Ukrainian Holocaust revisionists, or would wish to compliment those glorifying the local perpetrators. Instead, the episode is seen as yet another instance of a well-oiled lobby being able to confuse, combine and confound issues in dealings with Western personalities and institutions that stand far from these issues. Attempts to make heroes of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators, in the spirit of antisemitic East European (ultra)nationalism, have also been documented this year in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania.
Recently, Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University in Sweden has articulated his criticism of a highly problematic lecture tour in North America, which features Ruslan Zabily, the director of the Lontsky Street Prison Memorial Museum in Lviv, Ukraine. Mr. Zabily, whose academic credentials are slim, is given a forum as a speaker at several prestigious universities. His role in nationalist history activism in Ukraine and his links and contributions to organizations that diminish the violence, ethnic and political, of Ukrainian World War Two nationalism are not problematized.
This is not the place to reiterate Dr. Rudling’s precise and fair criticism in detail. Full documentation can be found at:
A major new paper on the history and nationalist mythology of the Ukrainian Waffen SS, by Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University, Sweden, has appeared in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Its title is “‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited.”
The abstract reads as follows:
Last week, a Canada-wide lecture tour by Ruslan Zabily was announced. He is the former director of the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement and the current director of the Lonsky Street Prison National Memorial Museum (for short: the Lonsky Museum) in Lviv, Ukraine.
AT THE LONSKY MUSEUM: JEWISH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS PHOTOSHOPPED OUT. A woman has just recognized a loved one among the victims of the NKVD killings in 1941. In the background of the original photo one also sees groups of Jewish victims of the massacre which followed within days of the NKVD murders (Jews were forced to carry and rebury these victims). Thousands of Jews were killed as Soviet crimes were blamed on them and used to incite antisemitic violence and murder. In this photoshopped version on display at the Lonsky Museum, the nationalists’ Jewish civilian victims are literally covered by the circular insertions of Soviet crime statistics, implicitly ethniziced as Ukrainian suffering.
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The original image, before photoshopping at the Lonsky…
The lecture tour includes some of the most prestigious universities in Canada — the universities of Alberta, Toronto, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa — as well as Harvard University’s Ukrainian Studies Institute in the United States. The lectures in Alberta and Toronto are facilitated by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies; the Peter Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine; the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies; the Harvard Institute of Ukrainian Studies and its Chair of Ukrainian Studies.
Vadym Kolesnychenko, a member of the parliamentary faction of the Party of Regions, recently published a volume (http://r-u.org.ua/kniga/kniga.pdf) of Russian language translations of articles written by Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, Per Anders Rudling and Timothy Snyder.
The articles appeared originally in journals such as Kritika, New York Times Review of Books, Carl Beck Papers and KakanienRevisited. Mr. Kolesnychenko translated and published the volume without the approval or consent of the authors. We regard this conduct as unethical.
Our objections to the political instrumentalization of our work by the Party of Regions are the same as our reservations to analogous instrumentalization by pro-nationalist groups and organizations.
I sent the following op-ed, “Euro 2012: Maydan of hate?” to the Kyiv Post in late December regarding the hate literature that is often sold on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. It was published on 21 December 2011. One can read the comments made on the Kyiv Post‘s website here (taken today from the Comments section following my op-ed).
In response to my op-ed I had my educational background questioned; I was deemed a supporter of Kaganovich, Tabachnyk, and Yanukovych in no particular order; I was given various history lessons that have nothing to do with the letter at hand (and nothing to do with history either); conspiracy theories were shared; and I was called names, not least “son of a bitch.” The last epithet was perhaps the most ironic bearing in mind that I am fortunate to have a mother who raised me to have enough dignity to not insult people on internet forums while hiding behind false names.
— З покірністю та в розпачі про індустріалізацію та офіційне прийняття «Остаточного рішення», що спричинило Голокост європейського єврейства;
— Жах та брутальність кампанії повного знищення Європейської спільноти єврейського народу, здійснену нацистським режимом та їх колабораціоністами;
— Масові вбивства євреїв мали місце ще задовго до прийняття плану Остаточного рішення, та розпочалися з відкриттям Східного фронту в 1941 році з ініціативи плану Барбаросса та нападу на Радянський Союз;
— Мільйони не євреїв на території Європи так само страждали від тиранії нацистського та інших режимів під час Другої світової війни;
— Нацистська кампанія щодо знищення євреїв носила філософське, кількісне та практичне підґрунтя і значно відрізнялося від інших форм репресій, застосованих під час Другої світової війни, таких як сталінські репресії в до- та повоєнні часи;
— Ми непокоїмось, що уроки Голокосту не були прийняті до уваги належним чином, а випадки геноциду продовжують траплятися на теренах міжнародної арени й надалі;
— Відвагу єврейських партизанів, що вижили в гетто та концентраційних таборах та вирушили на боротьбу з нацистами та їх союзниками;
— Старання європейських держав щодо визнання Голокосту та його ролі в історії
— щ о дискусія про геноцид в Європі повинна базуватися на визначеннях Конвенції з геноциду 1948 року ООН;
— антисемітизм й надалі має місце в різних формах на теренах Європи та за її межами;
— спроб зведення питання Голокосту нанівець шляхом зменшення значення його ролі та унікальності та визнання даного явища рівного чи подібного до комунізму, як зазначена в Празькій декларації 2008 року;
— спроба прирівнювання злочинів нацистського та комуністичного режимів, що затьмарює своєрідність кожного з них, а також недооцінює важливість уроків історії, взятих з кожної із даних подій;
— спроби переписати історію Європи, яка б відображала поняття «подвійного геноциду» (прирівнювання злочинів нацистського та радянського режимів);
— неприпустиме прославлення нацистських спільників та виконавців Голокосту, а також колабораціоністів, включаючи Ваффен СС в Естонії та Латвії, а також Литовський активістський фронт в Литві;
— спроби легалізувати носіння свастики расистськими та фашистськими угруповуваннями;
— спроби увіковічення трагедії Голокості разом з жертвами комуністичного режиму.
— чітке датування та впровадження програм щодо відзначення пам’яті жертв Голокосту та жертв інших тоталітарних режимів XX століття;
— намагання країн Європейського Союзу визнати свою роль в знищенні Європейського єврейства;
— необхідність вивчення справжньої історії Голокосту та її увіковічення на теренах Європейського Союзу;
— протистояння будь-яким формам сучасного расизму та дискримінації та їх проявів, включаючи антисемітизм, неповага до мусульман, зневага ромів, гомофобія, а також інші форми відсутності толерантності, спровокованими екстремістськими політичними силами.
Декларація створена на основі тексту, авторами якого є Довід Катц та Денні Бен-Моше з ініціативи сайту DefendingHistory.com.
Translated into Ukrainian by Marina Chénier-Delegan.
Such historical issues as Stalin’s policies of mass murder and activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), attract a great deal of the media coverage in contemporary Ukraine. However, the media reporting on these issues is often politically biased, and it even involves a self-imposed censorship concerning the involvement of the OUN and the UPA in Nazi genocide.
The 2010 anthology Strasti za Banderoju (Bandera Passion, alternate translations include Bandera Ecstasy or Bandera-mania), edited by Tarik Syril Amar, Ihor Balyns’kyi and Iaroslav Hrytsak, assembles key contributions to three debates conducted in the years 2009-2010 around the person of Stepan Bandera, leader of the main wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
The first debate, staged on an Internet platform in L’viv in 2009, was occasioned by Bandera’s 100th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his assassination. It was followed in 2010 by another round triggered by then-Ukrainian president Viktor Iushchenko’s decision to convey upon Bandera the title Hero of Ukraine. The editors divided that second round into two parts: the debate conducted in Ukraine and the debate conducted in North America.
During my dissertation research in Rivne, I’ve been going through a number of contemporary Volhynian newspapers for articles on a range of historical matters. As a historian of the Second World War, I do not tend to spend as much time with contemporary publications, yet at the end of the day, every activity and research experience is a lesson in some manner when you’re “in country” working.
I spent time working through what I already understood to be the right-wing nationalist newspaper, Volyn’, which is a Rivne oblast’ level paper that comes out once a week. The paper sees itself as the reincarnation of the Nazi occupation newspaper of the same name, which was edited by Volhynian writer Ulas Samchuk, if that tells you anything about the orientation just to start out.
When one orders a run of a paper, you get an entire year at once bound together. I’ll now take you through some of what I saw in the collection for 2002.
Activists in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv wearing uniforms of the former Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known as UPA, from its Ukrainian language initials) marched in a large scale event in the city center today.
O P I N I O N
by Alexander Gogun
After my response[1] to Rossoliński-Liebe[2] appeared on DefendingHistory.com, the discussion unexpectedly changed direction when the editor stepped into the debate[3].
Iurii Andrukhovych complains in an article published in Gazeta Wyborcza about the sorry state of Polish-Ukrainian relations. He correctly informs readers that in the last ten years Polish-Ukrainian relations, in particular concerning contentious World War II questions, have not improved at all and “if something has changed then perhaps only for the worse”. Yet Andrukhovych’s solution to the problem would be to republish Paweł Smoleński’s collections of essays Pochówek dla rezuna (“Burial of a Butcher”) which, like Andrukhovych in his article, looks for solutions in the revision of stereotypes while ignoring the actual historical causes of current problems.
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
There is actually a larger issue, and a constructive lesson, that emerges from Alexander Gogun’s reply to Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s critique of an earlier article co-authored by Gogun, that had appeared on a Ukrainian nationalist website that tends to glorify various Nazi-collaborationist nationalist groups and underplay or ignore their participation in genocide. Tellingly, that issue does not even relate to differences of opinion on any one point of fact, interpretation or analysis. Historians and academics will naturally disagree and from time to time and hasten to correct each other on this or that detail.
O P I N I O N
by Alexander Gogun
An emotional review[1] written by the PhD candidate Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe and published in this journal, is devoted to a popular scientific article written by me in collaboration with Olexandr Vovk. Our text about the presence of Jews in the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) was written seven years ago and published more than six years ago by the Moscow Jewish magazine Korni (“Roots”)[2]. It was later reproduced on an amateur history website about Ukrainian nationalism.
Aleksander Gogun, a historian at Potsdam University and at Humboldt University
of Berlin, and Aleksander Vovk, are the joint authors of an article, originally published in 2005, that obfuscates the Holocaust and denies the anti-Jewish violence of the Ukrainian nationalists. The article, in Russian, Evrei v bor’be za nezavisimuiu Ukrainu (Jews in the Struggle for an Independent Ukraine), presented in academic format, continues to appear on the nationalist website titled OUN-UPA at http://oun-upa.org.ua.
The article, posted at http://lib.oun-upa.org.ua/gogun/pub07.html, gives the impression that Jews served and fought willingly and enthusiastically in the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia) for an independent Ukrainian state. From the very outset of their article the authors claim that there were no pogroms in Ukraine in 1941, that Ukrainian nationalists never had a negative attitude toward the Jews and that Ukrainians who served in the German police during World War II did not participate in the Holocaust. The authors call all these things “stereotypes of Soviet propaganda” and imply that they never existed or happened.
Review of Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books: New York 2010. This review first appeared in German in H-Soz-u-Kult (online version here; PDF here). This English version and publication in DefendingHistory.com are by authorization of the author and H-Soz-u-Kult, which has kindly supplied the following copyright notice: Copyright © 2011 by H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact H-SOZ-U-KULT@H-NET.MSU.EDU.
“The bloodlands were where most of Europe’s Jews lived, where Hitler and Stalin’s imperial plans overlapped, where the Wehrmacht and the Soviet Army fought, and where the Soviet NKVD and the German SS concentrated their forces” (p. xi) ― as defined by Timothy Snyder, a territory where between 1933 and 1945 approximately 14 million people were killed by the Nazi and Soviet regimes (p. 409). “In the political geography of the 1930s and early 1940s, this meant Poland, the Baltic states, Soviet Belarus, Soviet Ukraine, and the western fringe of Soviet Russia” (p. xi). “The bloodlands were no political territory, real or imagined; they are simply where Europe’s most murderous regimes did their most murderous work” (p. xviii). Snyder’s task is to “turn the number back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity” (p. 408).
On 8 June 2011, the internet journal Maidan announced that “on 30 July [2011] at 11 AM exactly a flash mob will read the Act of Renewal of the Ukrainian State simultaneously in seven places in Kiev”. The “flash mob” in Kiev will be commemorating the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the Ukrainian state by the leading OUN-B politician Iaroslav Stets’ko, who in the evening of 30 June 1941 read out the “Act of Proclamation of a Ukrainian State” during a meeting in the hall of the Prosvita Society in the market place in L’viv, the center of western Ukraine.
O P I N I O N
by Christopher Hale
There are a number of books about the ‘foreign divisions of the Third Reich’. Most seem to be written for military history buffs and those fascinated by uniforms and arcane details of military insignia. Some are downright sinister. The series of books written by Richard Landwehr, an American ‘historian’ associated with the far right, are overtly favourable and have titles like ‘Lions of Flanders’, ‘Steadfast Hussars’ and ‘Nordic Warriors’. His Wiki entry includes the following rationale:
