unfortunate situation. For a brief moment the promise of a free and
independent Carpatho-Ukraine seemed to indicate where the interest
of the country lay. The growing autonomy of the province during the
winter of 1938–9 had gathered to it many of those Ukrainians to whom
national independence was the chief and only goal. Democratic as
they were, they believed that they could use Carpatho-Ukraine as a
base, even with German blessing. They had expected to profit by the
German-Polish dispute to win Western Ukraine in case of trouble and
they had visualized then a clash between Germany and the Soviet Union
which would allow them to win the independence of Great Ukraine. Then
a united Ukraine could be set up and this would be able to play an
independent role in the world as a nation of over forty million people.
It was a nice dream of the old world but it failed to take into account
the new practices of totalitarianism which discounted human dignity and
human rights and regarded men and women as but the tools of the machine
or the inanimate members of a caste. The easy way in which the Nazi
government turned over Carpatho-Ukraine, despite its promises, to the
Hungarians and the ruthless murder of many of its leaders showed to all
clearsighted Ukrainians that the future was not so simple as that. Even
those Western Ukrainians who were most hostile to Poland realized that
they had nothing to gain by the overwhelming of the Polish state as it
was in 1939 and despite the growing oppressive measures of the Poles,
any plans for a Ukrainian revolt in Eastern Galicia were laid aside.
The suddenly revealed conclusion of a non-aggression pact between Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union in August, 1939, made this even more
evident. Little or nothing has been made public of the negotiations
preceding this pact. The sacrifice of Carpatho-Ukraine was apparently
connected with it but no details are known. Yet it made still clearer
the fact that Ukraine was again in the position of 1914. Then it was
clear to the wiser political leaders that Ukraine could only profit
by the complete elimination of both Austria-Hungary and Russia. In
1939, it was certain that Ukraine could profit only by the complete
elimination of both Germany and the Soviet Union, and this meant
that the country would suffer heavily even under the most favorable
circumstances.
The German attack on Poland started on September 1, and as expected,
the German army pushed rapidly into Eastern Galicia and soon entered
Lviv. They seized practically all of the area but they were not to hold
it long. On September 17, the Soviet army invaded from the east despite
various treaties, on the ground that the Polish Republic had ceased to
exist as an organized state. On September 23, Ribbentrop and Molotov
signed another pact for the division of Poland. Again the exact line
has not been disclosed throughout its full course. Yet under it on
September 28, the Soviet army pushed into Lviv and occupied the whole
of Western Ukraine. This second act of treachery to Ukraine completely
broke any Ukrainian confidence in the Nazis, and showed them that any
further relations could only be fatal.
This was the first time that the Red Army had penetrated as far as
Lviv and they at once began to reorganize the country on the familiar
pattern. The landowners were dispossessed and the initial steps were
taken to collectivize the country. A large number of professors,
journalists, clergy and other intellectual and popular leaders were
removed. They were arrested by the NKVD and executed or deported to
other portions of the Soviet Union. Many were killed by so-called
outbreaks of the population led by Soviet agents. In fact all of
the methods tested by twenty years of Soviet work in Ukraine were
concentrated on the helpless province, in preparation for a “free”
election.
This election was held on October 22 and 91 percent of the population
voted for the formation of a Popular Council of Western Ukraine. It was
openly said that any one who refused to vote for the single list of
candidates, which included almost no known Ukrainian leaders of Western
Ukraine, would be treated as a counter-revolutionary and there was no
need to amplify this statement. At its first meeting on October 27,
the new Council formally begged to be included in the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic. There were more meetings of the picked groups at Kiev and at
Moscow and on November 1, representatives of the Council were invited
to Moscow where they presented their petition and were duly accepted
into the bosom of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. From then on Western
Ukraine was regarded as an inalienable part of the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic.
It was the same act that had been symbolically performed in 1919,
when the delegates of the Republic of Western Ukraine had appeared
at Kiev and the united Ukrainian Republic had been proclaimed. But
what a difference! Then representatives had appeared; there was joint
discussion of the problems that had to be solved; there were attempts
to resolve them on democratic lines. Now the appeal was to the Council
of Commissars and the Supreme Soviet at Moscow. The delegates were
handpicked and there had been already a long list of arrests and
executions before the conscious portion of the population adequately
reflected the will of the Communist Party, which had won few adherents
during the preceding twenty years.
The farce continued with new demonstrations of love and affection for
Stalin and the Soviet Union. On December 24, after more preparation,
the proper candidates were elected to the local soviets and on March
24, 1940, Western Ukraine elected delegates to the Supreme Soviet of
the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union. The next year and a half were spent in remodelling the country
and in stopping any manifestations of the popular spirit which were not
socialist in essence and only Ukrainian in language. Only the personal
reputation of Archbishop Sheptitsky saved him from sharing the fate of
the vast majority of the intellectuals and clergy of the country.
All this had barely been started when on June 27, 1940, the Soviet
Union intimated to Romania that it would be extremely appreciative,
if it would hand over Bukovina and Bessarabia. The Nazi-Soviet accord
was still working smoothly and Romania graciously consented. The
next day the Red Army moved in and awarded to the Ukrainian Republic
northern Bukovina and northern Bessarabia. The rest of the territory
so graciously ceded was added to the Moldavian Soviet Republic. Again
there were the same speeches of gratitude, the same elections, the same
choosing of delegates to the various Soviet Republics and the Supreme
Soviet of the Soviet Union and the same introduction of the ideals and
practices of the Communist Party.
Then on June 21, 1941 there came the lightning attack of the Germans
upon the Soviet Union. In a few weeks the German armies smashed across
the Soviet borders, occupied Kiev and Kharkiv and approached Moscow.
Once again Ukraine had changed masters.
There was little reason for the population to rejoice. The Germans
came not as liberators but as conquerors. They made no attempt to
remedy any of the abuses of the Soviet authorities but they added to
them by insisting that all of the property confiscated by the Soviets
was the property of a hostile government and therefore entitled
to confiscation. They made no effort to consult the wishes of the
Ukrainians or to establish a self-respecting Ukrainian government.
They sought only for a few leaders who would consent to act as German
representatives to push the people into a definitely subordinate
position as a subject race. They did allow some of the churches to
reopen and they gave a grudging support to the revival of the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church, which had been banned as soon as the National Republic
had been suppressed.
Yet they prevented any considerable mass movement from developing by
seizing several million Ukrainians, both men and women, and sending
them to Germany as slave labor. There is no need to recount the
hardships of these unfortunate people, who were compelled to work
for almost no wages and on starvation diets for the benefit of the
master-race. Their fate was additional proof, if such were needed, that
Ukraine could expect even less from the Germans than it could in 1918,
and it speedily served to disillusion even the most inveterate enemies
of the Communists.
On the other hand, the fate of another large section of the population
was little better, for the Soviets endeavored to move as large a part
of the population as possible to the east and millions more found
themselves forcibly deported from their homes on the pretext that they
would thus escape the scourge of war. The Academy of Sciences and much
of the Universities of both Kiev and Kharkiv were thus moved and the
Academy of Sciences celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its
foundation in Ufa in western Siberia.
Partisan warfare broke out on a large scale both among Ukrainian
patriots and Soviet sympathizers. Bands of men, sometimes numbering
thousands, with equipment taken from both sides, ravaged the country,
while the Soviets announced that those who fought the Germans were
patriots and those who attacked the Red Army were fascists and
bandits. The names of such leaders as Taras Bulba and Bandera who were
distinctively Ukrainian nationalists and fought both sides are known
but again there is little detailed knowledge of their activities.
The worst aspects of 1918 were repeated for these leaders, although
struggling only for an independent Ukraine, came into frequent clashes.
Some of them seem to have been the survivors of the older nationalist
bands that had fought even after the formal ending of the Civil Wars,
others were communistically inclined and fought for the Soviets,
and undoubtedly some were able to profit by more or less temporary
alliances with various German units which controlled the main centres
of population and the lines of communication but which were unable to
occupy the broad expanses of the country.
Soviet propaganda during the war emphasized the fact that the purges of
the thirties had completely destroyed any fifth-column activities in
the Soviet Union and glorified all the partisans, but despatches since
the close of hostilities indicate that in some areas the great swarms
of bandits and deserters from the Red Army could hardly have appeared
in the course of a few weeks. Apparently in some districts there was
almost as much anti-Soviet as anti-Nazi activity going on in the no
man’s land between the two armies.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that this partisan activity
played an enormous role in hemming in the German forces and in
rendering it impossible for them to secure supplies even from land
which seemed to be safely under their control. It is indeed possible
to wonder what would have been the outcome in many areas, especially in
Ukraine, had the Germans seriously undertaken the task of liberating
the community and of dealing honestly with the people who had
experienced so many years of starvation and confiscation. Yet these
ideas were entirely foreign to the Nazi temperament, which sought to
displace the native population by settling German colonists on the soil
and to reduce the original inhabitants to still greater misery or to
carry them off and destroy them by forced labor.
After reaching Stalingrad and the northern Caucasus, the German tide
began to ebb and soon flowed back into Ukraine and White Ruthenia.
Slowly but surely the retreat continued and its speed increased as the
Germans made their way back to the land from which they had set out so
gaily three years before. After the wave of battle had swept again over
Ukraine, the Soviet armies were reorganized into Ukrainian and White
Ruthenian armies to bring these Soviet republics into prominence. It
does not seem likely that these armies under Soviet Russian generals
can be regarded as armies either of Ukrainian or White Ruthenian
citizens. If we accept this version, we must assume that few members of
the Russian Soviet Republic took part in the war, for at no time was
there mention of any Russian armies and this conflicts with the stories
of general mobilization that have been so often told. Apparently the
Ukrainian and White Ruthenian armies were armies that were formed or
based on the territory of the two Soviet Republics but they served
as the basis of the claim that both Ukraine and White Ruthenia were
entitled to enter the United Nations.
To facilitate this, the Soviet constitution was changed in autumn of
1944 to provide special Commissars for Foreign Affairs for the various
Soviet Republics and to allow them to send diplomatic representatives
to foreign countries. In one sense this is a return to the conditions
prevailing in Ukraine before the organization of the Soviet Union,
when the bond of connection was the iron control of the Communist
Party over all the Communists in the various Soviet Republics. It
bears a superficial resemblance to the decentralization of the British
Commonwealth of Nations, but this is only superficial, for so far as
we know, there has been no change in the provision of the Constitution
that provides that the All-Union Soviet can cancel any measure that is
adopted by the individual Soviet Republic, if it wishes to do so.
It is interesting, to say the least, that the Ukrainian representative
at San Francisco was the same Manuilsky who had come down from Moscow
to act as the Muscovite representative at the formation of the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic. He was born in Ukraine but he spent most
of his life in the service of the Russian Soviet Federated Republic
and later the All-Union Soviet, and his relations with Ukraine have
been rather as a Russian or Soviet delegate than as a spokesman for
the Ukrainians. The Chairman of the Council of Commissars, Khrushchev,
seems to be definitely a Russian. In fact there is little to suggest
that there is any Ukrainian of prominence on the Ukrainian scene in
a major role. It seems abundantly clear that Ukraine is now being
considered merely as a definite tract of territory with no special
connection with its own past, for it must have a culture socialist in
essence and only Ukrainian in language, and there is some doubt as to
whether the language is not being remodelled on the Russian pattern.
As the German troops retreated further and further, Ukraine was again
thoroughly ravaged. The cities were largely in ruins, the population
had been murdered or deported either to east or west, and the material
progress that had been accomplished during the twenty years between
the wars was largely wiped out. It was necessary to begin to rebuild
the country after a desolation which exceeded that of 1918–20. Yet
there have been few consistent stories of what has happened. Side by
side with accounts of starvation as a result of the German seizure of
foodstuffs, there have been equal stories of gifts by the joyful and
liberated population to the victorious Red Army and these gifts have
been reported on a scale that would indicate abundance in the areas
which were the most hotly contested. There is no way to harmonize the
various accounts that have been put out officially and it is probably
wiser not to attempt it at the present time.
Then as the Red Army swept on into Western Ukraine, the same procedure
was repeated. In every city there were held gatherings greeting Stalin
as the liberator of the land with the glorious Red Army. There were the
usual resolutions of gratitude, the usual concerts at which Russian
music formed the bulk of the program, the usual glorification of all
those Ukrainian heroes who worked for the union of Ukraine and Russia
and the usual condemnation of every event or person who did not fit
into the Russian or the Russian Soviet program.
Then came the turn of Carpatho-Ukraine. At the time when the Soviet
Union recognized the Czechoslovak government-in-exile during the War,
it recognized the old boundaries of the country and this included
Carpatho-Ukraine. When the Red Army crossed into the area, there came
the usual demonstrations, the usual resolutions, the usual appointment
of temporary Soviets, and then the usual request that the country
be allowed to join the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and of course the
petition was accepted.
Yet when it came to a question of carrying on negotiations with
the “independent” Polish government set up after the Allied powers
had withdrawn recognition from the Polish government-in-exile, the
negotiations were carried on in Moscow. The district of Kholm, which
was an old part of Ukraine, was freely handed over to Poland without
any consultation with the wishes of the population, a consultation that
would have been unnecessary, for the entire population of the Soviet
Union desires only what has been put forward by the Kremlin, and the
same process was followed in Lemkivshchina.
With the occupation of the whole of Ukraine by the Red Army there has
descended an even more impenetrable veil over the country. The silence
that reigned during the war has become even more intense and the
information that comes out is hardly credible, unless the entire past
for centuries has been one long nightmare.
It was to be expected that all traces of an independent Ukrainian
Orthodox Church would disappear as soon as the Soviet government was
back in control, especially since it has allowed the restoration of
the Patriarchate of Moscow to carry out its plans among the other
Slavs. It was to be expected that punishment would be visited upon
the leaders of the Uniat Church, for they had proved themselves in
Western Ukraine to be the guardians of the Ukrainian national spirit.
Throughout the nineteenth century they had worked for the spiritual
and material welfare of their people and in the past the Russian
Empire had dealt harshly with them in all areas under its control.
Archbishop Sheptitsky, the patriarch and leader of the Church, died.
His successor, Joseph Slipy, was arrested and apparently deported. The
other bishops vanished from the scene either by exile, imprisonment or
death, and an uncanonical synod of a few priests was convoked. Again
that body did the usual thing. It officially requested to be received
back into the Orthodox Church and to come under the Patriarchate of
Moscow and of course the wish was granted in March, 1946. The Cathedral
at Lviv was turned over to the Russian Church and so were many other
Church buildings. Priests who do not conform are being imprisoned or
tried as fascists. The Uniat and Ukrainian Orthodox bishops abroad
have protested and have pointed out the typically uncanonical nature of
the whole proceedings. The Pope has protested against the persecution
of the faithful in these areas, at the violation of concordats with
former governments in the area. All in vain. Resolutions and requests
continue to pour out to justify and glorify the Red Army and their
leader and the fate of the individuals involved grows ever more obscure.
Yet on the other hand two phenomena stand out in clear relief. The one
is the problem of banditry. Again and again we read that in Ukraine,
in Poland, in Carpatho-Ukraine and along all the borders of the
friendly states large bodies of men, largely in Red Army uniforms,
are plundering the country, and persecuting the communists and that
part of the population which is cooperating with the Red Army. We are
told these men in Red Army uniforms are a mixture of Nazis, traitors
who fought in the Nazi armies from the Slavonic lands and the general
riff-raff that always follows in the path of war. Among them are
Ukrainian nationalists of various groups, especially those who form the
Ukrainian Revolutionary Army. They are said to present a formidable
problem for the forces that are interested in preserving Soviet
“democracy.”
All this sounds strange when we compare it with the general tone of the
communiques reflecting the jubilation of the people in being liberated
from the Nazi yoke. It fits in well with the stories or perhaps the
legends that patriots and nationalists saw their opportunity to strike
a blow in their own behalf against both masters and that they have not
been so wholeheartedly on the side of the Red Army as we were led to
believe earlier.
Side by side with them we have the amazing and distressing picture
of the displaced persons. At the Yalta Conference it was provided
that the persons who had been moved from an area by the Nazis should
be allowed to return and that the governments should assist in this
task. It sounded a reasonable measure and so it turned out in the west.
There were few French who wished to remain in Germany or in Holland.
There were few Dutch who were not ready to go back to their homes and
country, even if they were to find their families dead or scattered and
their homes burned.
Yet there are millions of people who have been transported against
their will from those portions of the Soviet Union that were occupied
by the Germans, who refuse to go back to certain death. They have
experienced for years the cruelty of German prison camps and the abuses
of forced labor and even so they do not wish to go back. The methods
that have been employed to force them to do so have become a scandal to
the Western and civilized powers. Men and women of all walks of life
have been ready to commit suicide rather than to face again life within
the Soviet paradise. It is idle to call them fascists and to say that
they fear just punishment.
The suspicion cannot be put down that these are people who have once
been within the veil and are now willing to face even death rather than
return. There can be but one reason, that life there was so hard and
desperate that their present fate, such as it is and has been during
the War, seems far better and more hopeful, even when hope is lacking,
and when their future is dark and unsettled. We cannot help thinking
that their stories and still more their actions throw into lurid
relief and confirm the tales of the deportations, the famines, the
concentration camps in the wastes of Siberia and of Central Asia, that
have drifted across the sealed borders of the Soviet Union and which
have never been accepted at face value.
Behind the veil that the Soviet Union has cast around it, Ukraine has
been united. Ravaged by war, plundered and destroyed by the marching
and countermarching of two armies, drained of its population by
death and by deportations, it remains a tragic spot in the wreckage
of a great war. Impartial observers have told us of the devastation
and the suffering in other lands, but Ukraine remains in the shadows.
Her spokesmen at home are mute and there are only the official
representatives of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic speaking, as is their
wont, the words of the Soviet Union to assure us that all is well. The
world would like to believe it, it is resting its hopes of a better
future upon it and yet the doubts are not dispelled, when it would be
so easy, if the Soviet Union wished to do it.
But not only that. With the triumph of the Soviet “democracy” in
Ukraine, the Soviet Union is hastening to assure the world that it
has discovered new examples of the revival of Ukrainian nationalism.
It has found new cases on a large scale of the evil influences of the
work of Professor Hrushevsky. It has found reasons for new purges of
the Ukrainian Communist leaders who are unworthy of their great task
of promoting the new “democracy.” There are new rumors of a drought in
Ukraine. The world has heard all this several times and realizes now
that it is the story of the last twenty-five years since the fall of an
independent Ukraine.
To-day Ukraine is one. For the first time in centuries it has been
united under one government. Not since the days of ancient Kiev has
this been so fully true, but it is a far cry from the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic to that free and independent government which was formed so
hopefully in 1918, in the heat and confusion of the First World War.
It is a far cry from the dream of a free and independent republic
organized on the democratic principles of the West to the present
Soviet Republic, from the wild and tumultuous Kozak Host with its
elected officers to the present organization with the chiefs appointed
by Moscow. It is a sad story and the present chapter is by no means the
most hopeful.