From: bohdan@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (bohdan.l.bodnar)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: More silliness from Viznyuk
Date: 14 Apr 92 12:42:42 GMT
Organization: AT&T



In article <1992Apr9.000716.13188@physics.ucla.edu> viznyuk@physics.ucla.edu (Viznyuk) writes:

>In article <1992Apr8.160118.29554@cbnewsd.cb.att.com> bohdan@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (bohdan.l.bodnar) writes:
>>
>>President Hrushevsky of the Ukrainian Republic was elected
>>in a free election. Thus his government had a reasonable
>>claim to legitimacy. His was the only elected government
>>of the three pretenders....

SV, in reply:
>  The question was not about goverment [sic] but about a state.

The earlier discussion _was_ about governments, and you initiated 
it. Do I need to dredge up your old posts to remind you?

>Indeed, despite a plentiful of "goverments" in
>Ukraine 1917-1920 there was no such state as Ukraine. Were there
>any countries who recognied "independent" Ukraine and Petlura's
>"goverment" ? 

As a matter of fact, yes, other countries did recognize the Ukrainian
state in 1917-1920. What is more, they recognized the Ukrainian
government in Kyiv and not the Bil'shovyk would-be government
that existed briefly in Kharkiv. Here is a partial list of countries
that did recognize Ukraine, along with the date of recognition:
      
   De jure and de facto recognition of Ukrainian
   independence in 1918-1920:
      2.I.1918  Belgium
      3.I.1918  France
      6.I.1918  Britain
     10.I.1918  Russia [note Sergei - Soviet Russia was one of the first!]
     12.I.1918  Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Vatican
     4.VI.1918  Greece
    4.VII.1918  Denmark, Nederland, Norway, Persia
   16.VII.1918  Armenia
     2.IX.1918  Azerbaijan, Switzerland
     26.X.1918  Poland, Romania
     2.XI.1918  Sweden
      8.I.1919  Spain
     2.IV.1919  Czecho-Slovakia
     25.V.1919  Turkie
     10.X.1919  Estonia, Lithuania
    24.XI.1919  Hungary
      
>So Bolshevicks have had NOTHING to occupy. The only
>thing they did - they just pushed aside those "goverments".

So it took them three years (1917-1920) and plenty of troops to 
accomplish nothing, to occupy nothing? Why did Leon Trotsky say 
as late as 1921 that the Bolshevists were only barely able to 
control the Ukrainians even with the Russian Red Army deployed?

>Even now Ukrainian goverment desperately tries to show up
>at least some evidence of "independent Ukrainian state" - from
>here come all their complexes (the persisent attempts to create
>their "own" army, fleet, etc). One could hardly expect
>anything reasonable (al least at first) from goverment of a
>country which has NEVER been independent. 

What do you say about the fact that Russia is also trying to
create its '"own" army, fleet, etc'? Is that evidence that Russia
has never been independent, or does it mean that it is reasonable
for an independent state to have its own military?

>>Can one be as confident about the good intentions of the R-R and R-W 
>>leadership in Ukraine as of the UNR's? No. In fact there is evidence 
>>to suggest that neither the Ukrainian decolonialist nor the Russian
>>communist factions were most responsible for pogroms, but rather the 
>>Whites whom Jews were least likely to support. See for example Subtelny's 

>This last paragraph is in typical manner of Ukrainian nationalists:
>since they are reluctant to acknoledge the genocide of "native"
>Ukrainian goverment against minorities, and Reds were not likely to do it
>- then who else ? - Of course, Russian White Army !
>But the only problem is that those pogroms happened exclusively
>in areas, controled by Ukrainian "goverment", and NO ONE where there was
>White Army.

Just for starters, you hatemonger & buffoon: you are contradicting yourself. 
How do you reconcile your earlier claims that no Ukrainian state existed 
(thus that no Ukrainian "government" was ever in charge of that state) 
with your admission here that the Ukrainian "government" did control 
territory?

Sergei, skip the revisionism. Get serious. Crimes against humanity are 
not a subject suitable for lying or joking about. Pogroms happened in 
areas controlled by all contenders, and were committed by forces nominally 
loyal to all sides. Here are some thoughts on the subject from a large 
variety of sources, partisan and neutral. Let's see you produce comparable
sources that exonerate the Whites.

      S. Baron, The Russian Jews Under the Tsars and the
      Soviets (New York, 1964)
      - writes that "about 50,000 Jews died in the pogroms".
      
      P. Kenez, Civil War in South Russia 1917-1920 (Berkeley:
      UofC Press, 1977)
      - writes "...before the advent of Hitler, the greatest
      mass murder of Jews occurred in Ukraine, during the Civil
      War. All the participants in the conflict were guilty of
      murdering Jews, even the Bolsheviks. However, the
      Volunteer Army [the Whites or anti-Bolshevik Russians]
      had the largest number of victims. Its pogroms differed
      from mass killings carried out by its competitors; they
      were the most thorough, they had the most elaborate
      superstructure, or to put it differently, they were the
      most modern ... Other pogroms were the work of peasants.
      The pogroms of the Volunteer Army, on the other hand, had
      three different participants: the peasant, the Cossack,
      and the Russian officer ... The particularly bloody
      nature of these massacres can be explained by the fact
      that these three types of murderers reinforced one
      another."
      
      J. Pelenski, "The Cossack Insurrections in
      Jewish-Ukrainian Relations," in P. Potichnyj and H.
      Aster, eds., Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical
      Perspective (Edmonton: CIUS, 1988)
      - cites Jewish sources as saying that the number of
      Jewish fatalities numbered about 35,000. Of these, about
      27,000 were killed by the Whites. Approximately 6000 Jews
      died at the hands of the anarchistic and largely
      Ukrainian partisan forces of Makhno, Zeleny and Hryhoriiv.
      [Zeleny and Hryhoriiv were allied with the Reds.]
      And between 1500 and 2000 Jews died in pogroms
      staged by Ukrainian military units.
      
      I. Rybalka and V. Dovhopol, Istoriia Ukrainskoi SSR:
      Epokha Sotsializmu (Kiev: Vyshcha Shkola, 1982)
      - mention that the Whites staged about 400 pogroms while
      in Ukraine
      
      O. Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto, UofT Press,
      1988)
      - writes "In general, the Ukrainian pogroms differed from
      those of the Whites in two ways: in contrast to the
      premeditated, systematic undertakings of the Russians,
      they were spontaneous outbursts of demoralized and often
      drunken irregulars, and they were committed against the
      express orders of the high command. Unlike the White
      Russian generals such as Anton Denikin, the Ukrainian
      socialists, especially the Social Democratic Party to
      which Petliura belonged, had a long tradition of friendly
      relations with Jewish political activists. Therefore, the
      Directory renewed Jewish personal-cultural autonomy,
      attracted prominent Jews such as Arnold Margolin and
      Solomon Goldelman into its government, appropriated
      large amounts of money for pogrom victims, and even
      negotiated with the famous Zionist leader Vladimir
      Zhabotinsky about the inclusion of Jewish police units
      into its army. But while Peliura's attitudes towards Jews
      might have been well intentioned, he was unable to
      control the otamany, and the court-martial and subsequent
      execution of Semesenko and other partisan leaders did not
      improve the situation..."

>  As for your references to Subtelny: with the same success you can
>refer to Bendera or Petlura.
Please cite specific objections you have to contents of Subtelny's 
book, and back them up by verifiable sources of your own. I bet you 
haven't read any Subtelny other than the above passage, just now. 
Tell us, yes or no? You probably had not even heard of the respected 
Canadian historian or his book. By the way, your persistent inability 
to back up your outlandish off-the-cuff propaganda with sources other 
than Sergei Viznyuk is not going unnoticed by fellow newsgroup readers.

>  Even Sovok's propaganda machine didn't broadcast such outspoken
>lies as Ukrainian nationalists do. The White Army, which was the worst
>enemy of Reds (note - not Ukrainian nationalists, who were considered
>as simply bandits, not even worth to be called as "enemy") and whom
>the communists accused of all sins somehow avoided the accusations in
>pogroms - just because it was too evident and known who did those pogroms.

The reasons why the Bolsheviks prefered to blame the Ukrainian social
democrats instead of the Russian tsarists for their own crimes against
humanity and those of the tsarists are many, but some of the most
important considerations were these:
(1) The Bolsheviks and the tsarists had much more in common ideologically.
Both believed in having an elite rule autocratically over a united empire 
dominated by Russia, and both believed in using force to suppress 
independence-minded occupied countries. They differed most obviously
on the question of who should constitute the ruling aristocracy. The
Ukrainian social democrats had a very different outlook on politics.
(2) After the tsarists were defeated militarily, they ceased being a
threat to the Bolsheviks because they had little popular support in
Russia let alone in Ukraine. The Ukrainian anti-Soviet democrats 
were another matter altogether, because their humanitarian pluralistic
ideals remained a potent ideological force. There can be no doubt about
this, as now after 70 years of Soviet power the democrats are still
able to win the allegiance of the population of Ukraine against both 
the Communists and the neo-impero-monarchists.

Sergei, I've just plain had enough of your BS and this thread. I think
you have done an adequate job of showing that you are a bigot, and a
semi-literate fool to boot. In a word, "scum", as Erland put it so eloquently.
This post was meant for the benefit of those to whom this fact wasn't yet 
obvious. There is now sufficient proof for everybody.

Dr. Bohdan Bodnar
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Naperville, IL 60566
Xref: sparky talk.politics.soviet:3385 soc.culture.soviet:3025 soc.college:1875