"I was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugrynov, the Old, Kalush district of Galicia, which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, along with two other Western-Ukrainian countries: Bukovina and Transcarpathia" spent my childhood in Ugrinov the Old, in the house of my parents and grandfathers, growing up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. There were a large library at home, often active participants of the Ukrainian national life of Galicia""
In Bandera's mind, the Galicians, Bukovinians, and Transcarpathians (Ruthenians), as well as some other nationalities, came from Ukrainian (border) countries. The Ukrainian national life is border region nationalist politics taught by the Austrians.
Considering this was written after 1945, it has an impact on dividing who is Ukrainian and who is a Ukrainian nationalist.
Taras Kuzio laments "Indeed, why did Bandera, the alleged 'revolutionary,' not return to the revolution in his homeland?", which was Galicia, which became Soviet Ukraine, not the non-existent nationalist Ukraine.
All these authoritative accounts agree. It wasn't Soviet Ukrainians that Bandera Ukrainian nationalists thought about when they say "Ukrainian." In their mind, the real Ukrainians were people that never set foot in any place called Ukraine. They are Ukrainian nationalists.
Bandera's Ukrainian nationalists manned the levers and were the happy willing torturers at the Nazi death camps. In what became Soviet Ukraine under Stalin, Bandera's OUN murdered millions. Bandera's Ukrainian nationalists are the Ukrainians that moved west to the US and Canada after WWII.
When discussing the Holomodor, Dr. John Paul Himka writes in Interventions: Challenging the Myths ofTwentieth-Century Ukrainian History
"The genocide argument is used to buttress the campaign to glorify the anticommunist resistance of the Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. I do not think that Ukrainians who embrace the heritage of the wartime nationalists should be calling on the world to empathize with the victims of the famine if they are not able to empathize with the victims of the nationalists. I think, further, that there is something wrong with a campaign that finds its greatest resonance in the area of Ukraine where there was no famine, and in the overseas diaspora deriving from that region. I have problems with all the anger at Russians and Jews that gets wrapped up in the genocide campaign."
Until the 1980s, if you asked someone about the Holomodor, no one would know what you were talking about. People knew about the famine of 1932-33 but it was not looked at as a crime. It was a tragedy. The term Holomodor was first coined and first heard in this period by Ukrainian nationalists who were never from the famine-affected areas.
Why do Ukrainian nationalists say Stalin committed genocide against Ukrainians?This is the big question. Ukrainian nationalists have been answering this honestly and no one bothered to pay attention. According to Ukrainian nationalist ideology, they are the ONLY Ukrainians.
The following is the closest thing to proof of Stalin ordering a Ukrainian genocide that has ever been uncovered. It is part of what the US Senate had to consider before giving Nazis another free pass in history.
While it agrees with what Ukrainian nationalists are really saying, it is totally different from what you are hearing. This evidence the Ukrainian Diaspora cites shows Stalin moving against remnants of Petliura nationalists (1917-18) and the newer Bandera OUN, not Ukrainian people. Stalin persecuted the OUN until almost eradicating them in the mid-1950s. The Banderovites murdered over 20,000 people after the end of WWII and 10,000 NKVD who were fighting them.
In a 1932 letter to Lazar Kaganovich Stalin, wrote "Unless we begin to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine. Keep in mind that Pilsudskii not daydreaming, and his agents in Ukraine are many times stronger than Redens or Kosior thinks Keep in mind, too, that the Ukrainian Communist Party (500,000 members, ha-ha) has quite a lot (yes, quite a lot) of rotten elements, conscious and unconscious Petliura adherents, and, finally, direct agents of Pilsudski. As soon as things get worse, these elements will waste no time opening a front inside (and outside) the party, against the party. The worst aspect is that the Ukraine leadership does not see these dangers."
In a 1934 speech Joseph Stalin said"In the Ukraine, only very recently, the deviation towards Ukrainian nationalism did not represent the chief danger; but when the fight against it ceased and it was allowed to grow to such an extent that it linked up with the interventionists, this deviation became the chief danger."
Ukrainian Nationalists Using Weaponized History TodayIn an article titled "Dancing with Stalin. The Holodomor genocide famine in Ukraine" at Euromaidan Press, the author is clear- the holomodor was a weapon to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. The website first opened in February 2014. Pravy Sektor leader, Dimitri Yarosh spokesman, Sviatoslav Yurash owns the website. He has gone on to become the Ukrainian World Congress assistant director in Kiev. Not too shabby for an 18-year-old college dropout.
Now that we have the basics in place. We know what Ukrainian nationalists want us to overlook. From the Kyiv Post-"History Episode 7: Holodomor was genocide unleashed against Ukraine" shows the famine skewed to nurture Ukrainian nationalism. The author wants the reader to miss the fact that any Ukrainian nationalist in Soviet Ukraine was there to irritate the already bad situation. Remember, the Ukrainian nationalists who wanted to start a country came from the Hapsburg Empire. The Soviet Ukrainians were given a country by Stalin.
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