Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Attempts to Muzzle BDS Are Essentially Fascist in Nature
I doubt that most people understand the pernicious nature of the Israeli-instigated assault on the BDS movement. It is certainly legitimate for people to disagree on whether boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is something they support, but the actions of New York Governor Cuomo (with other states threatening to follow) and, perhaps, language in the Democratic Party platform, are explicitly fascist in nature because they try to control what people think and how we exercise our democratic rights. I am not exaggerating. If you have any concern for civil and democratic rights, you need to investigate these dangerous trends and take a stand. Supporters of Israel are unable to defend the apartheid state with rational arguments so they are resorting to very heavy-handed and openly fascist tactics to suppress dissent. That cannot be tolerated.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
The European Union's "New Clothes"
In all the discussions I have so far seen on the Brexit vote, there is something obvious missing. Why have we seen no thoughts on whether there is something wrong with the European Union and what might be done to change it, to make it more democratic, more responsive to the needs of most people, less dominated by the wealthy and powerful corporations, and so forth? Perhaps austerity needs to be imposed at the top of the economies instead of at the bottom. It seems obvious to me that these are legitimate concerns of British voters, even though leaving the EU per se does not directly address them. It is also clear to me that these are essentially the same issues raised by the malicious TPP, TTIP, and similar "trade" treaties, which surrender control over our governments and our lives to corporations. These are also the issues raised by the Sanders campaign and likely the issues, however distorted and malformed, that motivate support for Trump. It's obvious that the EU is dysfunctional if we look at its inept and heavy-handed handling of the Greek crisis and similar crises in the wings to erupt. Rather than rail at British voters, perhaps the economic and political underpinnings of the current global economic system are what need to be examined and radically transformed. Is the emperor, indeed, wearing any clothes?
Friday, December 18, 2015
Al Jazeera article censored outside the USA
Saudi Arabia uses terrorism as an excuse for human rights abuses
The kingdom is ramping up executions of Shias, with the tacit approval of the United States
Reports emerged last week that Saudi Arabia intends to imminently
execute more than 50 people on a single day for alleged terrorist
crimes.
Although the kingdom hasn’t officially confirmed the reports, the evidence is building. Okas, the first outlet to publish the report, has close ties to the Saudi Ministry of Interior and would not have published the story without obtaining government consent. Some of the prisoners slated for execution were likewise recently subject to an unscheduled medical exam, a sign that many believe portends imminent execution. There has already been a spike in capital punishment in Saudi Arabia this year, with at least 151 executions, compared with 90 for all of 2014.
The cases of six Shia activists from Awamiya, a largely Shia town in the oil-rich Eastern province, are particularly disconcerting. The majority of Saudi’s minority Shia population is concentrated in the Eastern province and has long faced government persecution. The six activists were convicted for protesting this mistreatment and other related crimes amid the Arab uprisings in 2011. Three of them were arrested when they were juveniles. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia religious leader who was convicted of similar charges, also faces imminent execution.
All the convictions were obtained through unfair trials marred by human and civil rights violations, including in some cases torture, forced confessions and lack of access to counsel. Each defendant was tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, a counterterrorism tribunal controlled by the Ministry of Interior that has few procedural safeguards and is often used to persecute political dissidents. Lawyers are generally prohibited from counseling their clients during interrogation and have limited participatory rights at trial. Prosecutors aren’t even required to disclose the charges and relevant evidence to defendants.
The problems aren’t just procedural. Saudi law criminalizes dissent and the expression of fundamental civil rights. Under an anti-terrorism law passed in 2014, for example, individuals may be executed for vague acts such as participating in or inciting protests, “contact or correspondence with any groups ... or individuals hostile to the kingdom” or “calling for atheist thought.”
One of the defendants, Ali al-Nimr, was convicted of crimes such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “going out to a number of marches, demonstrations and gathering against the state and repeating some chants against the state.” For these offenses, he has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion, with his beheaded body to be put on public display as a warning to others.
Because of these procedural and legal abominations, the planned executions for these Shia activists must not proceed. They should be retried in public proceedings and afforded due process protections consistent with international law, which includes a ban on the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18.
No other executions should take place in Saudi Arabia. Capital punishment is morally repugnant and rife with error and bias, as we know all too well in the United States. Moreover, any outcome produced by the Saudi criminal justice system is inherently suspect. Inadequate due process, violations of basic human rights and draconian laws that criminalize petty offenses and exercising of civil rights are fixtures of Saudi rule.
Although the kingdom hasn’t officially confirmed the reports, the evidence is building. Okas, the first outlet to publish the report, has close ties to the Saudi Ministry of Interior and would not have published the story without obtaining government consent. Some of the prisoners slated for execution were likewise recently subject to an unscheduled medical exam, a sign that many believe portends imminent execution. There has already been a spike in capital punishment in Saudi Arabia this year, with at least 151 executions, compared with 90 for all of 2014.
The cases of six Shia activists from Awamiya, a largely Shia town in the oil-rich Eastern province, are particularly disconcerting. The majority of Saudi’s minority Shia population is concentrated in the Eastern province and has long faced government persecution. The six activists were convicted for protesting this mistreatment and other related crimes amid the Arab uprisings in 2011. Three of them were arrested when they were juveniles. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia religious leader who was convicted of similar charges, also faces imminent execution.
All the convictions were obtained through unfair trials marred by human and civil rights violations, including in some cases torture, forced confessions and lack of access to counsel. Each defendant was tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, a counterterrorism tribunal controlled by the Ministry of Interior that has few procedural safeguards and is often used to persecute political dissidents. Lawyers are generally prohibited from counseling their clients during interrogation and have limited participatory rights at trial. Prosecutors aren’t even required to disclose the charges and relevant evidence to defendants.
The problems aren’t just procedural. Saudi law criminalizes dissent and the expression of fundamental civil rights. Under an anti-terrorism law passed in 2014, for example, individuals may be executed for vague acts such as participating in or inciting protests, “contact or correspondence with any groups ... or individuals hostile to the kingdom” or “calling for atheist thought.”
One of the defendants, Ali al-Nimr, was convicted of crimes such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “going out to a number of marches, demonstrations and gathering against the state and repeating some chants against the state.” For these offenses, he has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion, with his beheaded body to be put on public display as a warning to others.
Because of these procedural and legal abominations, the planned executions for these Shia activists must not proceed. They should be retried in public proceedings and afforded due process protections consistent with international law, which includes a ban on the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18.
No other executions should take place in Saudi Arabia. Capital punishment is morally repugnant and rife with error and bias, as we know all too well in the United States. Moreover, any outcome produced by the Saudi criminal justice system is inherently suspect. Inadequate due process, violations of basic human rights and draconian laws that criminalize petty offenses and exercising of civil rights are fixtures of Saudi rule.
Saudi Arabia often escapes moral condemnation in large part because of its close relationship with the US.
They’re also fixtures of authoritarian regimes in general. Those who
simply expect Saudi Arabia to reform its criminal justice system ignore
the fact that the kingdom is an authoritarian regime that uses the law
as a tool to maintain and consolidate power. They also ignore the
reality that Saudi Arabia often escapes moral condemnation in large part
because of its close relationship with the U.S.
In 2014, for example, President Barack Obama visited the kingdom but made no mention of its ongoing human rights violations. In return, he and the first family received $1.4 million in gifts from the Saudi king. (By law U.S. presidents must either pay for such gifts or turn them over to the National Archives.) The two leaders discussed energy security and military intelligence, shared interests that have connected the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for nearly a century.
Obama traveled to the kingdom earlier this year to offer his condolences on the passing of King Abdullah and to meet with the new ruler, King Salman. Again, human rights were never mentioned. Instead, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice tweeted that Abdullah was a “close and valued friend of the United States.”
This deafening silence is not lost on Saudi Arabia and has emboldened its impunity. In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the kingdom’s brutal campaign against its Shia minority and political opposition has deepened. Shias have limited access to government employment and public education, few rights under the criminal justice system and diminished religious rights. Those who protest this discrimination face arbitrary trial and the prospect of execution for terrorism. Consider that Saudi Arabia has not carried out a mass execution for terrorism-related offenses since 1980, a year after an armed group occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca.
Dissent of any kind is quelled. In November, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and artist born in Saudi Arabia, was sentenced to death for allegedly renouncing Islam. His supporters allege that he’s being punished for posting a video of police lashing a man in public.
Even the kingdom’s neighbors aren’t immune from its authoritarian agenda. Numerous reports suggest that the Saudi-led coalition against opposition groups in Yemen has indiscriminately attacked civilians and used cluster bombs in civilian-populated areas, in violation of international law.
Despite its appalling human rights record, Saudi Arabia was awarded a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council last year and this summer was selected to oversee an influential committee within the council that appoints officials to report on country-specific and thematic human rights challenges. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia has used its newfound power to thwart an international inquiry into allegations that it committed war crimes in Yemen.
It’s not by happenstance that the kingdom announced the mass execution just days after 130 people were killed in Paris in the worst terrorist attacks in Europe in more than a decade. Even before Paris, the U.S. used its “war on terrorism” to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, engage in mass surveillance and develop an assassination program immune from judicial oversight. Is it any surprise that Saudi Arabia feels emboldened to intensify its own “war on terrorism”?
In 2014, for example, President Barack Obama visited the kingdom but made no mention of its ongoing human rights violations. In return, he and the first family received $1.4 million in gifts from the Saudi king. (By law U.S. presidents must either pay for such gifts or turn them over to the National Archives.) The two leaders discussed energy security and military intelligence, shared interests that have connected the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for nearly a century.
Obama traveled to the kingdom earlier this year to offer his condolences on the passing of King Abdullah and to meet with the new ruler, King Salman. Again, human rights were never mentioned. Instead, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice tweeted that Abdullah was a “close and valued friend of the United States.”
This deafening silence is not lost on Saudi Arabia and has emboldened its impunity. In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the kingdom’s brutal campaign against its Shia minority and political opposition has deepened. Shias have limited access to government employment and public education, few rights under the criminal justice system and diminished religious rights. Those who protest this discrimination face arbitrary trial and the prospect of execution for terrorism. Consider that Saudi Arabia has not carried out a mass execution for terrorism-related offenses since 1980, a year after an armed group occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca.
Dissent of any kind is quelled. In November, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and artist born in Saudi Arabia, was sentenced to death for allegedly renouncing Islam. His supporters allege that he’s being punished for posting a video of police lashing a man in public.
Even the kingdom’s neighbors aren’t immune from its authoritarian agenda. Numerous reports suggest that the Saudi-led coalition against opposition groups in Yemen has indiscriminately attacked civilians and used cluster bombs in civilian-populated areas, in violation of international law.
Despite its appalling human rights record, Saudi Arabia was awarded a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council last year and this summer was selected to oversee an influential committee within the council that appoints officials to report on country-specific and thematic human rights challenges. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia has used its newfound power to thwart an international inquiry into allegations that it committed war crimes in Yemen.
It’s not by happenstance that the kingdom announced the mass execution just days after 130 people were killed in Paris in the worst terrorist attacks in Europe in more than a decade. Even before Paris, the U.S. used its “war on terrorism” to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, engage in mass surveillance and develop an assassination program immune from judicial oversight. Is it any surprise that Saudi Arabia feels emboldened to intensify its own “war on terrorism”?
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
New Form of "Left" Chauvinism: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
During World War I, the European left split over whether to support the war aims of one's own capitalist government or to oppose the war as an attack against all working people. The left chauvinists were the political ancestors of some of the parliamentary parties in Europe today. Now, there is a new and very ugly kind of chauvinism displayed by American leftists who defend Russian imperialism and its invasion of Ukraine. They do this by ignoring the Ukrainian people and their aspirations and by trying to understand Ukraine solely in terms of great power politics. Because Putin's Russia is opposed to US and European imperialist governments, they automatically become adherents of Putin, they spout his propaganda, and they ignore the realities on the ground.
If Putin had invaded Brooklyn and a few Russian-speaking residents supported them, would those residents be called rebels or separatists? Would Putin's troops be ignored, and would the war in Brooklyn be called a "civil war"? Yet this is precisely what is happening in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion began in Crimea when Russian troops wearing unmarked uniforms left the Russian naval base in Sevastapol and seized the entire Crimean Peninsula. The Russian government at first denied that these were Russian troops. They pretended that these were Russian-speaking residents of Crimea. After a few weeks, however, the Russian government lifted this ridiculous facade and admitted that there were no Crimean rebels, only Russian soldiers. In the last opinion polls conducted in Ukraine before recent events, 54 percent of the residents of Crimea did say they wanted to be part of Russia. Of course, that meant that 46 percent wanted to remain part of Ukraine, but they had no opportunity to express those views.
Let us not forget that when Ukraine gained its independence, it was a major nuclear power. In a 1994 agreement signed by Ukraine, Russia, the USA, and the UK, Russia agreed to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity if Ukraine surrendered all its nuclear weapons and sent them to Russia.
Next, Russian began its invasion of eastern Ukraine. They used the excuse of fascism, even though in Ukraine, fascist parties are only able to get a few percent of the vote in elections, unlike the 25 percent fascist vote in France, for example. They used the excuse of oppression of Russian speakers, even though most Ukrainians speak Russian as well as Ukrainian and even though Russian-speaking Ukrainians were very active in support of the demonstrations in Ukraine, including in eastern cities. In the same public opinion polls mentioned earlier, Ukrainians as a whole polled 90 percent to remain independent from Russia. In the areas of eastern Ukraine where the fighting is going on, they polled 80 percent to remain independent from Russia.
So, where did the so-called rebels or separatists gain their support and their heavy arms? The simple answer is that invading Russians brought both the fighters and their weapons. Not all of them were regular Russian troops. Former soldiers and mercenaries of many varieties were recruited and paid by Putin's government. These were all Russians. I'm sure that a tiny number of Ukrainians joined them, but it makes no sense to call them rebels or separatists. They are collaborators with a Russian-orchestrated invasion.
To be sure, the US and European governments want to fish in these troubled waters. They have recklessly expanded NATO eastward in recent decades. They would like to bring Ukraine into their own sphere of control. But does that change the fundamental character of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from an invasion to a civil war? It certainly does not.
Russia is currently engaging in provocative military behavior elsewhere. Russian military jets flew over the English channel this week. They have flown over Swedish air space. These are no small matters. But Russia did not invade Ukraine because of a perceived military threat. Both Putin and Ukrainians know that the Russian military could easily conquer Ukraine in a few weeks at most if it chose to do so. Ukraine has no desire to join NATO and perhaps not even the EEU. What the Ukrainian people rose up against in massive numbers in 2013 and 2014 was a massively corrupt government and economic system, indeed a system quite similar to that in Russia itself and in neighboring Belarus, which is ruled by a brutal dictator.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has very little to do with great power rivalries and everything to do with his desire to maintain his own corrupt power. He will not tolerate a neighboring country breaking free from corruption and trying to build a genuinely democratic and economically functional society. The Ukrainian people do not have reliable and time-tested leaders or parties who could lead them in that direction, but Putin is unwilling to take the risk that those could eventually develop. He is telling the peoples of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus to give up all hope of improving their lives, and they are getting the message.
The fight of the nascent Ukrainian anticorruption and democracy movement is exactly the kind of thing that principled leftists should support. Instead, the "left" chauvinists are supporting Putin's government, perhaps because they confuse Putin with the Soviet government from decades ago. They spread the totally false narrative of a civil war, of rebels and separatists, and of a US-instigated uprising and coup in Ukraine, as if the US had the influence in Ukraine to cause millions of Ukrainians to go into the streets. Principled leftists, democrats, socialists, and others support the Ukrainian people against a hostile foreign invasion. Principled leftists denounce Putin's imperial objectives just as much as we denounce the imperial objectives of our own governments. What I'm wondering is: where are these principled leftists hiding and why are they not speaking out.
If Putin had invaded Brooklyn and a few Russian-speaking residents supported them, would those residents be called rebels or separatists? Would Putin's troops be ignored, and would the war in Brooklyn be called a "civil war"? Yet this is precisely what is happening in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion began in Crimea when Russian troops wearing unmarked uniforms left the Russian naval base in Sevastapol and seized the entire Crimean Peninsula. The Russian government at first denied that these were Russian troops. They pretended that these were Russian-speaking residents of Crimea. After a few weeks, however, the Russian government lifted this ridiculous facade and admitted that there were no Crimean rebels, only Russian soldiers. In the last opinion polls conducted in Ukraine before recent events, 54 percent of the residents of Crimea did say they wanted to be part of Russia. Of course, that meant that 46 percent wanted to remain part of Ukraine, but they had no opportunity to express those views.
Let us not forget that when Ukraine gained its independence, it was a major nuclear power. In a 1994 agreement signed by Ukraine, Russia, the USA, and the UK, Russia agreed to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity if Ukraine surrendered all its nuclear weapons and sent them to Russia.
Next, Russian began its invasion of eastern Ukraine. They used the excuse of fascism, even though in Ukraine, fascist parties are only able to get a few percent of the vote in elections, unlike the 25 percent fascist vote in France, for example. They used the excuse of oppression of Russian speakers, even though most Ukrainians speak Russian as well as Ukrainian and even though Russian-speaking Ukrainians were very active in support of the demonstrations in Ukraine, including in eastern cities. In the same public opinion polls mentioned earlier, Ukrainians as a whole polled 90 percent to remain independent from Russia. In the areas of eastern Ukraine where the fighting is going on, they polled 80 percent to remain independent from Russia.
So, where did the so-called rebels or separatists gain their support and their heavy arms? The simple answer is that invading Russians brought both the fighters and their weapons. Not all of them were regular Russian troops. Former soldiers and mercenaries of many varieties were recruited and paid by Putin's government. These were all Russians. I'm sure that a tiny number of Ukrainians joined them, but it makes no sense to call them rebels or separatists. They are collaborators with a Russian-orchestrated invasion.
To be sure, the US and European governments want to fish in these troubled waters. They have recklessly expanded NATO eastward in recent decades. They would like to bring Ukraine into their own sphere of control. But does that change the fundamental character of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from an invasion to a civil war? It certainly does not.
Russia is currently engaging in provocative military behavior elsewhere. Russian military jets flew over the English channel this week. They have flown over Swedish air space. These are no small matters. But Russia did not invade Ukraine because of a perceived military threat. Both Putin and Ukrainians know that the Russian military could easily conquer Ukraine in a few weeks at most if it chose to do so. Ukraine has no desire to join NATO and perhaps not even the EEU. What the Ukrainian people rose up against in massive numbers in 2013 and 2014 was a massively corrupt government and economic system, indeed a system quite similar to that in Russia itself and in neighboring Belarus, which is ruled by a brutal dictator.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has very little to do with great power rivalries and everything to do with his desire to maintain his own corrupt power. He will not tolerate a neighboring country breaking free from corruption and trying to build a genuinely democratic and economically functional society. The Ukrainian people do not have reliable and time-tested leaders or parties who could lead them in that direction, but Putin is unwilling to take the risk that those could eventually develop. He is telling the peoples of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus to give up all hope of improving their lives, and they are getting the message.
The fight of the nascent Ukrainian anticorruption and democracy movement is exactly the kind of thing that principled leftists should support. Instead, the "left" chauvinists are supporting Putin's government, perhaps because they confuse Putin with the Soviet government from decades ago. They spread the totally false narrative of a civil war, of rebels and separatists, and of a US-instigated uprising and coup in Ukraine, as if the US had the influence in Ukraine to cause millions of Ukrainians to go into the streets. Principled leftists, democrats, socialists, and others support the Ukrainian people against a hostile foreign invasion. Principled leftists denounce Putin's imperial objectives just as much as we denounce the imperial objectives of our own governments. What I'm wondering is: where are these principled leftists hiding and why are they not speaking out.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Califiornia's New Anti-Democratic Electoral System
When I received my ballot for the 2014 California General Election, I immediately realized how undemocratic it was and how I and many others have been disenfranchised. At the top of the ballot, where statewide offices appear, there were only two candidates for each office, Democrats and Republicans. Since I do not vote for Democrats and Republicans, I left the top of the ballot blank. I was deprived of the right to vote for candidates I agree with and support in the general election. In the past, primaries chose candidates for parties and then all qualifying parties (parties needed a minimum percentage of the vote in previous elections) had a candidate on the ballot in the general election. Now, however, all voters can vote for any candidate in the primary and only the top two votegetters appear on the ballot in the general election. General elections are where most people vote. I'm not sure whether I support letting all voters vote for any candidate in the primary election, but limiting the general election to two candidates turns out to stifle democracy and make it very, very difficult to build third parties. I hope there are many people like me who leave the top of the ballot blank. Those votes should be counted as a "none of the above" vote and should prevent either candidate from getting a majority if there are enough of them. That will underscore the bankruptcy of the current system. There are many ways in which democracy is undermined in the USA: voter IDs, spurious voter challenges, millions of votes stolen by manipulating voting machines, unlimited campaign spending including from corporations, etc. But this particular means of voting is a blatant move to take away choices from voters. We should be able to vote for candidates we support in general elections, and currently, we can't.
Friday, August 29, 2014
The American "Left" and Its Extremely Distorted Narrative on Ukraine
There are multiple narratives about what is going on now in Ukraine. There is the US and EU narrative, which is strongly colored by their own objectives to bring Ukraine into their own orbit. There is the Russian narrative of an east/west divide in Ukraine with massive support for Russia in the east which is being militarily attacked by a runaway government in Kiev. And then there is the Ukrainian narrative, which explains why millions of Ukrainians went into the streets to oppose the former Yanukovich government, which was so extremely corrupt that it had stolen so many tens of billions of dollars that it had bankrupted Ukraine, destroyed its economy, and was moving toward closer relations with Russia as a result. I understand why the establishment media in the US report only the US/EU narrative. I understand why extremely distorted and dishonest Russian propaganda is reported by Russian media and why alternative narratives are censored to prevent the Russian people from seeing them. What I do not understand is why so many prominent figures of the American left and left media such as the Nation, Democracy Now! and KPFA news are promoting the Russian narrative without dissenting views being allowed to be heard. We hear commentators such as Conn Hallinan, Stephen Cohen, Katrina Van Den Heuvel, Bob Scheer, and others broadcasting what I can only call pro-Russian nonsense about the situation in Ukraine.
Why, for example, do we not hear from Paul Robert Magocsi, author of "A History of Ukraine" and professor of history and political science at the University of Toronto, whom I heard on NPR presenting a Ukrainian narrative? Why do we not hear from Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, who lives a few hundred yards from Independence Square in Kiev, and who has just published his diaries from November 2013 to April 2014, also from a Ukrainian perspective ("Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev," Harville Secker, London, 2014. What these commentators present is far different from both the US/EU narrative and the Russian narrative. What they say, which is well-supported by easily ascertainable facts, is that events in Ukraine were and are not primarily motivated by east/west divisions or by Ukrainian/Russian language divisions. People went into the streets because they were fed up with their totally corrupt government, dysfunctional economy, and complete lack of democracy. The thwarted economic agreement with Europe was only a symbol for those much deeper demands, which were and are shared by Ukrainians east and west. There were, at first, uprisings in Kharkiv and Donetsk around these demands, though they were viciously and violently attacked by Russian forces. Opinion polls have consistently shown that all parts of Ukraine are strongly pro-Ukrainian with the exception of Crimea, in which 54 percent of the population wanted to be Russian (that fact should not obscure the total illegality of Russia's occupation of Crimea).
The signs that you are hearing Russian propaganda are easy to detect. For example, the word "coup" is used. There was no coup in Ukraine. President Yanukovich was advised by Vladimir Putin to use violence against demonstrators in Kiev. He did so and sent his snipers to shoot protesters. The negative reaction was so fierce that Yanukovich voluntarily fled the country; that is not a coup. Even his own Party of Regions denounced him. Second, we hear of "rebels" and "separatists." There are no Ukrainian rebels and separatists. What there is has been a Russian invasion for months with thousands of well-armed Russian troops (using the fiction that they are either "on leave" or civilian Russian citizens). Dead Russian soldiers are quietly buried in Russia with no press coverage allowed. The self-proclaimed leader of the Donetsk Republic is a Russian citizen. The weapons that these forces used to shoot down a Malaysian civilian airplane came from Russia. They have Russian tanks and advanced weapons that they are using to shoot down Ukrainian planes and helicopters inside Ukraine. There are likely small numbers of Ukrainians fighting with these Russians in the east; they are not rebels or separatists, they are collaborators with the Russian invasion.
I will not speculate on the motive of the massive support for the Russian propaganda campaign by voices of the left. It is their duty to explain their own actions. But I will state that they have grossly misled many people in the United States about what is really going on in Ukraine. They impose big power analysis on Ukraine and ignore the aspirations of the Ukrainian people. Vladimir Putin has zero interest in the well-being of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine or in Crimea, who faced no threat from Kiev at all until Putin began meddling there with his special forces. First and foremost, he is threatened by even the remote possibility that Ukraine could dismantle its corrupt regime and economic system and begin to build a genuinely democratic society which would certainly appeal to and inspire many Russian citizens as well as the beleaguered citizens of Belarus. That is a direct threat to Putin's power. Second and far behind that, Putin is concerned about Western influence in Ukraine. Ironically, his invasion has actually facilitated that and has caused Ukraine to apply for NATO membership.
I could understand left apologists for the Soviet Union (even when they were wrong, too) since the Soviet Union was still the result of a socialist experiment gone extremely awry. But Putin's Russia has no progressive aspect. This is oligarchical capitalism in the extreme, and Putin's allies, some of whom were sent to fight in Ukraine, are ironically far more fascist and rightwing than any party in Ukraine. This is not a case where the evil United States is trying to steal something from innocent and progressive Russia. Instead, an equally evil Russian government is trying to prevent Ukraine from freeing itself. For American leftists to support this Russian venture is shameful, dishonest, and totally unjustifiable. Inside Russia, the propaganda for this position is so pervasive and unchallenged that Russian citizens have no clue about what is really going on. I understand that, too, but I do not understand why American leftists are promoting and amplifying this completely deceptive Russian propaganda.
Understanding Ukraine is complicated by the fact that there are no genuine political parties which express the will of the Ukrainian people. It remains to be seen whether President Poroshenko will try to form such a party and whether he will succeed if he does try. Most Ukrainians are extremely distrustful of politicians, including Poroshenko. Still, that is the main story here, and the orchestrated Russian invasion is Putin's response to it.
I'd like to end this blog with some citations from the afterword to Andrey Kurkov's diaries, written on June 27. "Over the past two months the Ukrainian people have been introduced to the concept of 'hybrid war': an expression coined to mean war initiated in any country by a neighboring state without mobilizing their own troops but by supplying arms and volunteers to rebel insurgents in the country loyal to the neighboring state, who believe that life is better there. The neighboring state--in this case Russia--persistently denies involvement in the military situation in eastern Ukraine, but when challenged directly to explain how the separatists come to be in possession of tanks and military technology registered to the armed forces of the Russian Federation, they do not reply. Russian volunteers return home--to Rostov-on-Don, Lipetsk, or the suburbs of Moscow--in zinc-lined coffins, a familiar image from the war in Afghanistan.... But Russia does not welcome her wounded soldiers home. If truth be told, she would rather not accept her dead citizens either. With the exception of the opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, the Russian press does not even mention the Russian death toll in Ukraine. The funerals of these soldiers are conducted in virtual secrecy, too, under the supervision of Russia's FSB."
"Meanwhile, the Maidan, our European revolution, has become history. But6 this history is unfinished, not yet ready to be a page in a textbook. Of course, ex-President Yanukovych is currently living in Russia, and he was followed there by several dozen former members of the Cabinet and former heads of the police force and secret services. In other words, an entire class of corrupt Ukrainian politicians (as if there were any other kind) and civil servants have become political refugees. The country is governed by new people now, and Ukraine believes in them--for the time being. The new government has not yet launched its promised war against corruption on all levels."
"It will come to an end at some point. Whatever the outcome, it's already quite clear that the good old Ukraine we have lived in for twenty-three years since she gained independence will no longer exist. What kind of Ukraine will replace this quiet, peaceful version, no one knows. It's easy enough to conjure up a variety of possible scenarios for the immediate future, although none of them are particularly optimistic. The main reason for this is that Europe, so vociferous in her support during the Maidan protests, has subsequently fallen silent and walked away, preferring to profit from trade with Russia. Money matters more than democracy. This cynical lesson that Europe has taught Ukraine will inevitably influence the future of my country. Which means that it will influence my own future. Ultimately, it will influence the future of Europe herself--the future of the entire European Union."
Let real voices be heard, like Kurkov's, and let ignorant American leftists stop speaking as experts on events in Ukraine about which they demonstrably know very little.
.
Why, for example, do we not hear from Paul Robert Magocsi, author of "A History of Ukraine" and professor of history and political science at the University of Toronto, whom I heard on NPR presenting a Ukrainian narrative? Why do we not hear from Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, who lives a few hundred yards from Independence Square in Kiev, and who has just published his diaries from November 2013 to April 2014, also from a Ukrainian perspective ("Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev," Harville Secker, London, 2014. What these commentators present is far different from both the US/EU narrative and the Russian narrative. What they say, which is well-supported by easily ascertainable facts, is that events in Ukraine were and are not primarily motivated by east/west divisions or by Ukrainian/Russian language divisions. People went into the streets because they were fed up with their totally corrupt government, dysfunctional economy, and complete lack of democracy. The thwarted economic agreement with Europe was only a symbol for those much deeper demands, which were and are shared by Ukrainians east and west. There were, at first, uprisings in Kharkiv and Donetsk around these demands, though they were viciously and violently attacked by Russian forces. Opinion polls have consistently shown that all parts of Ukraine are strongly pro-Ukrainian with the exception of Crimea, in which 54 percent of the population wanted to be Russian (that fact should not obscure the total illegality of Russia's occupation of Crimea).
The signs that you are hearing Russian propaganda are easy to detect. For example, the word "coup" is used. There was no coup in Ukraine. President Yanukovich was advised by Vladimir Putin to use violence against demonstrators in Kiev. He did so and sent his snipers to shoot protesters. The negative reaction was so fierce that Yanukovich voluntarily fled the country; that is not a coup. Even his own Party of Regions denounced him. Second, we hear of "rebels" and "separatists." There are no Ukrainian rebels and separatists. What there is has been a Russian invasion for months with thousands of well-armed Russian troops (using the fiction that they are either "on leave" or civilian Russian citizens). Dead Russian soldiers are quietly buried in Russia with no press coverage allowed. The self-proclaimed leader of the Donetsk Republic is a Russian citizen. The weapons that these forces used to shoot down a Malaysian civilian airplane came from Russia. They have Russian tanks and advanced weapons that they are using to shoot down Ukrainian planes and helicopters inside Ukraine. There are likely small numbers of Ukrainians fighting with these Russians in the east; they are not rebels or separatists, they are collaborators with the Russian invasion.
I will not speculate on the motive of the massive support for the Russian propaganda campaign by voices of the left. It is their duty to explain their own actions. But I will state that they have grossly misled many people in the United States about what is really going on in Ukraine. They impose big power analysis on Ukraine and ignore the aspirations of the Ukrainian people. Vladimir Putin has zero interest in the well-being of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine or in Crimea, who faced no threat from Kiev at all until Putin began meddling there with his special forces. First and foremost, he is threatened by even the remote possibility that Ukraine could dismantle its corrupt regime and economic system and begin to build a genuinely democratic society which would certainly appeal to and inspire many Russian citizens as well as the beleaguered citizens of Belarus. That is a direct threat to Putin's power. Second and far behind that, Putin is concerned about Western influence in Ukraine. Ironically, his invasion has actually facilitated that and has caused Ukraine to apply for NATO membership.
I could understand left apologists for the Soviet Union (even when they were wrong, too) since the Soviet Union was still the result of a socialist experiment gone extremely awry. But Putin's Russia has no progressive aspect. This is oligarchical capitalism in the extreme, and Putin's allies, some of whom were sent to fight in Ukraine, are ironically far more fascist and rightwing than any party in Ukraine. This is not a case where the evil United States is trying to steal something from innocent and progressive Russia. Instead, an equally evil Russian government is trying to prevent Ukraine from freeing itself. For American leftists to support this Russian venture is shameful, dishonest, and totally unjustifiable. Inside Russia, the propaganda for this position is so pervasive and unchallenged that Russian citizens have no clue about what is really going on. I understand that, too, but I do not understand why American leftists are promoting and amplifying this completely deceptive Russian propaganda.
Understanding Ukraine is complicated by the fact that there are no genuine political parties which express the will of the Ukrainian people. It remains to be seen whether President Poroshenko will try to form such a party and whether he will succeed if he does try. Most Ukrainians are extremely distrustful of politicians, including Poroshenko. Still, that is the main story here, and the orchestrated Russian invasion is Putin's response to it.
I'd like to end this blog with some citations from the afterword to Andrey Kurkov's diaries, written on June 27. "Over the past two months the Ukrainian people have been introduced to the concept of 'hybrid war': an expression coined to mean war initiated in any country by a neighboring state without mobilizing their own troops but by supplying arms and volunteers to rebel insurgents in the country loyal to the neighboring state, who believe that life is better there. The neighboring state--in this case Russia--persistently denies involvement in the military situation in eastern Ukraine, but when challenged directly to explain how the separatists come to be in possession of tanks and military technology registered to the armed forces of the Russian Federation, they do not reply. Russian volunteers return home--to Rostov-on-Don, Lipetsk, or the suburbs of Moscow--in zinc-lined coffins, a familiar image from the war in Afghanistan.... But Russia does not welcome her wounded soldiers home. If truth be told, she would rather not accept her dead citizens either. With the exception of the opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, the Russian press does not even mention the Russian death toll in Ukraine. The funerals of these soldiers are conducted in virtual secrecy, too, under the supervision of Russia's FSB."
"Meanwhile, the Maidan, our European revolution, has become history. But6 this history is unfinished, not yet ready to be a page in a textbook. Of course, ex-President Yanukovych is currently living in Russia, and he was followed there by several dozen former members of the Cabinet and former heads of the police force and secret services. In other words, an entire class of corrupt Ukrainian politicians (as if there were any other kind) and civil servants have become political refugees. The country is governed by new people now, and Ukraine believes in them--for the time being. The new government has not yet launched its promised war against corruption on all levels."
"It will come to an end at some point. Whatever the outcome, it's already quite clear that the good old Ukraine we have lived in for twenty-three years since she gained independence will no longer exist. What kind of Ukraine will replace this quiet, peaceful version, no one knows. It's easy enough to conjure up a variety of possible scenarios for the immediate future, although none of them are particularly optimistic. The main reason for this is that Europe, so vociferous in her support during the Maidan protests, has subsequently fallen silent and walked away, preferring to profit from trade with Russia. Money matters more than democracy. This cynical lesson that Europe has taught Ukraine will inevitably influence the future of my country. Which means that it will influence my own future. Ultimately, it will influence the future of Europe herself--the future of the entire European Union."
Let real voices be heard, like Kurkov's, and let ignorant American leftists stop speaking as experts on events in Ukraine about which they demonstrably know very little.
.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
a very brief history of Ukraine
I'm appalled at the abysmal ignorance I read and hear about Ukraine and its history. So, this is a very brief outline of how Ukraine got to be the way it is today, which is critical to understand what is going on there. I have two long histories of Ukraine. I'm using Paul Robert Magocsi's book as a source; I've heard him on the radio recently, and he definitely gets it.
First, you need to look at the geography of Ukraine. Aside from the Carpathian mountains in the western edge of the country and the mountains in Crimea, Ukraine is mostly very flat. As a result, it has been invaded and occupied over and over again for thousands of years, and its borders have shifted a lot. Ukraine means borderland. Ukraine is 232,200 square miles and larger than any European country aside from Russia. Ukraine's major north/south rivers include the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Donets'. The Dnieper, in particular, runs from Chernobyl in the north, through Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk, and down to the Black Sea just west of Crimea and east of Odessa. Ukraine is very rich agriculturally, and it is also rich in natural resources, particularly in eastern Ukraine where there are coal, iron, and manganese. In 1989, ethnic Ukrainians constituted nearly 73 percent of the population and ethnic Russians 22 percent with many minorities of less than 1 percent, the largest being Jews at 0.9 percent. Ukrainians, like Russians and Belorussians, are eastern Slavs. Note that because in modern times, Ukraine was under Polish and Russian control, histories were often written to justify that control. In general, Polish and Russian histories played down or denied a uniquely Ukrainian nation. In general, the history of Crimea has been quite distinct from that of the rest of Ukraine.
The very early history of Ukraine is one of nomadic civilizations: Cimmerians from 1150 to 750 BCE, Scythians from 750 to 250 BCE, Sarmatians from 250 BCE to 250 CE, Goths from 250 to 375 CE, Huns from 375 to 550 CE, Avars fro 550 to 565 CE, Bulgars from 575 to 650 CE, and Khazars from 650 to 900 CE. Note that the Khazars were a Turkic people who migrated westward from the western edge of China and who converted to Judaism en masse while they controlled Ukraine. The ancient Greeks had settlements in Crimea as did the eastern Roman or Byzantine empire. This was the source of the spread of orthodox Christianity to eastern Slavs.
The early history of the Slavs is still not known; however, Slavs can be documented in eastern Europe in the first millennium BCE. The consensus is that the original homeland of the Slavs was in eastern Poland,, southern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. From there, they gradually spread outward for about a thousand years beginning around 500 BCE.
In the mid ninth century, the Verangians (Swedish Vikings) arrived. With the Slavs, they founded the Kievan Rus, which lasted for five centuries. One of the remnants of the Swedish presence is familiar names such as Vladimir (Volodomir in Swedish), Olga (Helga in Swedish), and Oleg (Helge). The precise origin of the Kievan Rus is one of the most controversial issues in Ukrainian history. In the late 980s, the ruler of the Rus, Volodymyr the Great, was baptized which marks the predominance of Christianity in Ukraine. Another very controversial issue is the linguistic origins of modern Ukrainian, Russian, and Belorussian. It seems, however, that these languages differentiated in the 13th and 14th centuries CE.
In the year 1240 CE, the Mongols arrived, razed Kiev, and destroyed the Kievan Rus. Life actually did not change much under Mongol rule; however, there was a split into three divisions: Galicia-Volhynia, Vladimir-Suzdal, and Novgorod. Vladimir-Suzdal became centered around Moscow and incorporated Novgorod as well. It became known as Muscovy.
In the 14th century, first Lithuania and then Poland arrived to conquer Ukraine. Muscovy also tried to take Ukraine but was not strong enough then. Note that Ukraine's western neighbors and new conquerors were Roman Catholics. The Lithuanian-Polish conquest also introduced feudalism to Ukraine in which most Ukrainians were serfs and the nobles were Lithuanians and Poles.
In this period, southern and eastern Ukraine were much less populated because of the threats from nomadic invaders. The last of these were the Crimean Tatars. This led to the rise of the Cossacks, who were peasants who armed themselves to take and hold the threatened territory. These Cossacks should be seen as distinct from another group, also called Cossacks, who served as mercenaries. The Ukrainian Cossacks fought for their Polish rulers, but they were also militantly Orthodox. Their first political entity was in Zaporozhia, which is in southeastern Ukraine on the Dnieper.
In 1648, under the leadership of hetman Bohdan Khmelnytski, the Cossacks revolted, took half of Ukraine's territory, and aligned with Muscovy. Their control of Ukraine lasted until 1711. Khmelnytski was also virulently anti-Jewish and killed thousands of Jews. His successor aligned more with Poland. The Cossacks and their territory became divided between Poland and Muscovy.
In 1721, Tsar Peter renamed Muscovy to be the Russian Empire and, over time, Ukraine was integrated into the empire. Russia imposed its control over the Orthodox church, and the Ukrainian language was also subordinated. These were to become important aspects of Ukrainian nationalism as it arose in the 19th century. In 1897, Dnieper Ukraine was 71.5 percent Ukrainian, 12.4 percent Russian, 8.5 percent Jewish, and had smaller numbers of other minorities. However, most of the non-Ukrainians lived in cities. The great Ukrainian writer, Nikolai Gogol, wrote in Russian because Ukrainian was not yet considered a literary language. It's ironic that the first Ukrainian cultural revival was in Kharkiv, which is in eastern Ukraine. The first great writer of Ukrainian literature was Taras Shevchenko, who published a book of poetry, Kobzar, in 1840. Shevchenko, who was born a serf, was also a fervent Ukrainian nationalist.
In 1863, Poles revolted against tsarist rule. After that, the Russian empire clamped down hard against Ukrainian nationalists and banned books in Ukrainian on the pretext that it did not exist separate from the Russian language. This was a period of scholarly resistance. However, in 1900, some Ukrainians began to organize a revolutionary national party instead of joining all-Russian parties. Others, influenced by Lenin, joined the Russian party. After a brief period of political freedom, however, the tsar clamped down once again. There was also a lot of activity in western Ukraine under Austrian control.
World War I in 1914 is a major watershed in Ukrainian history. Ukraine was a key arena of fighting. There were short periods when Ukrainian political entities existed, but by the end of the fighting, Ukraine had been incorporated into the new Soviet Union by 1920.
In 1933 came the great famine during which millions of Ukrainians starved to death. Grain was confiscated from peasants by force, and they were not given any to eat. This event powerfully shaped Ukrainians attitudes toward Russia and socialism. There is some evidence that Lenin had been planning a more benign policy toward Ukraine, but after his death, a ruthless policy was followed. The policy of Ukrainianization ended, and the great purges of the 1930s were also carried out in Ukraine.
In Crimea, at first, a Tatar Bolshevik leader promoted Tatars into the government. However, after he was purged by Stalin, that policy ended.
World War II, of course, was fought very heavily in Ukraine. Germany and Romania both invaded. Significant numbers of Ukrainians collaborated with the Germans and participated in the slaughter of Jews. However, there was also significant resistance beginning in 1941. In 1943, the Red Army defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad and proceeded to march westward. By 1944, they had taken back all of Ukraine. However, on the disputed grounds that they had collaborated with the Germans (some did, but some resisted and most were neutral), Stalin deported all Tatars from Crimea to other Soviet Republics further east.
In 1953, Joseph Stalin died, and Nikita Khrushchev, who had been assigned to Ukraine earlier, became the leader of the Soviet Union. In 1954, he gave Crimea to Ukraine.
Soviet Ukraine was both an agricultural, industrial, and resource producer, but the Soviet system had a national division of labor which means that no one country could produce many finished products on its own. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and introduced perestroika, one of his opponents was still in power in Ukraine for a few years, and that delayed changes coming to Ukraine. As late as 1990, 95 percent of industrial and agricultural production in Ukraine was still controlled from Moscow. The entire Soviet economy was in a shambles, and Ukraine had also been the host to the terrible Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. In 1990, Ukraine's parliament declared it a sovereign state. On December 1, 1991 a referendum was held on Ukrainian independence and Leonid Kravchuk, a former communist party member was elected president with 62 percent of the vote. The vote for independence was 92 percent and in each of the eastern oblasts (provinces), the vote was more than 80 percent. Even Crimea voted 54 percent for Ukrainian independence.
That is where my source ends, but, as we know, Ukraine descended into a totally corrupt state with a small number of very wealthy oligarchs and a dysfunctional economy. In 2004, there was a popular uprising against a disputed election won by Viktor Yanukovich. Viktor Yushchenko won the rerun election. He was later replaced by Yulia Timoshenko, but she did nothing to end corruption or develop the economy. Yanukovich was re-elected in 2010, and he jailed Timoshenko for her own corruption, but Yanukovich was equally corrupt and stole billions of dollars for himself, his family, and friends.
What do we mean by corruption? At the lowest level, it is a police force that routinely takes bribes for many kinds of activities. At the highest level, it is the theft of national resources. It's difficult to find a decent job, and even those with jobs have a lot of trouble making ends meet. Some enterprises, including banks, just stopped paying their employees. It's understandable that popular anger was mounting, especially as Ukrainians saw some of their neighbors doing better. In this context, the proposed agreement for closer ties with Europe was symbolic of an end to corruption and a functioning economy. However, the European Union told Ukraine that they could not make agreements with both the EU and Russia. This situation was complicated by the fact that Ukraine relies on Russia for its natural gas and that Ukrainian pipelines are a principal conduit of natural gas to Western Europe, particularly Germany. The Ukrainian government had subsidized gas prices to consumers so whenever Russia threatens to raise the price (Putin has done that more than once), the Ukrainian economy and consumers are immediately threatened. Ukraine wants more ties to Europe, but it doesn't want to break with Russia.
Ukraine, like most other European countries, has fascist rightwing parties who polled about 10 percent of the vote in the last elections. They tend to glorify and name themselves after the fascists who collaborated with the Nazis. They were very militantly active and visible in the protests in Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev, but those protests had overwhelming popular support which was not rightwing. The organized Jewish community has issued statements asserting that these fascists are too weak to threaten them.
So, how to sort out fact from fiction in the news reports and government statements we see and hear every day. The US government and the EU would certainly like to control Ukraine, and their offers of assistance are predicated on an austerity which Ukrainians cannot afford. Their lives are already very austere. The Russian government has a few interests in preventing that. First, the Russian military is very dependent on airplanes, missiles, and ships produced in Ukraine. Second, Russia leases its large naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea. Third, Russia and Belarus are both very corrupt and undemocratic in their own right, and the example of a genuinely democratic Ukraine would appeal to their citizens. Belarus, in particular, also has a very dysfunctional economy, and it is ruled by an extremely violent dictator who has little popular support. He claimed 85 percent of the vote in the last presidential elections, but the opposition said that exit polls showed that he actually got about 35 percent.
Russian propaganda has been particularly clumsy. Putin denied that Russian troops took part in the takeover in Crimea, but he has since admitted that they were there in unmarked uniforms. The Ukrainians call these green men, and green men are seen now in eastern Ukraine, where Putin continues to deny they are present. Putin claims to be concerned about threats to ethnic Russians and Russian speakers; yet there is no evidence that there are such threats. In fact, most Ukrainians are bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian, and many for whom Russian is the first language participated in the protests for which there was obvious support in eastern cities such as Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. There is no sharp east/west divide in Ukraine, though there may be a generational divide in which Ukrainians who grew up in Soviet Ukraine look more to Russia than younger Ukrainians do.
Western propaganda is more subtle. We know that they want the corrupt former opposition to come to power again, and thus they do not want real progressive change in Ukraine. The difficulty for Ukrainians is that there is no party or politician who represents their real aspirations. They hate Yanukovich, and they hate Timoshenko. They don't trust the former boxer, Klitchko. They certainly don't want the fascists to come to power.
Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are thus in a very difficult situation. Nobody knows if there's a real way forward now, but to understand what is happening, any analysis must be rooted in facts and reality and not in competing big-power propaganda.
First, you need to look at the geography of Ukraine. Aside from the Carpathian mountains in the western edge of the country and the mountains in Crimea, Ukraine is mostly very flat. As a result, it has been invaded and occupied over and over again for thousands of years, and its borders have shifted a lot. Ukraine means borderland. Ukraine is 232,200 square miles and larger than any European country aside from Russia. Ukraine's major north/south rivers include the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Donets'. The Dnieper, in particular, runs from Chernobyl in the north, through Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk, and down to the Black Sea just west of Crimea and east of Odessa. Ukraine is very rich agriculturally, and it is also rich in natural resources, particularly in eastern Ukraine where there are coal, iron, and manganese. In 1989, ethnic Ukrainians constituted nearly 73 percent of the population and ethnic Russians 22 percent with many minorities of less than 1 percent, the largest being Jews at 0.9 percent. Ukrainians, like Russians and Belorussians, are eastern Slavs. Note that because in modern times, Ukraine was under Polish and Russian control, histories were often written to justify that control. In general, Polish and Russian histories played down or denied a uniquely Ukrainian nation. In general, the history of Crimea has been quite distinct from that of the rest of Ukraine.
The very early history of Ukraine is one of nomadic civilizations: Cimmerians from 1150 to 750 BCE, Scythians from 750 to 250 BCE, Sarmatians from 250 BCE to 250 CE, Goths from 250 to 375 CE, Huns from 375 to 550 CE, Avars fro 550 to 565 CE, Bulgars from 575 to 650 CE, and Khazars from 650 to 900 CE. Note that the Khazars were a Turkic people who migrated westward from the western edge of China and who converted to Judaism en masse while they controlled Ukraine. The ancient Greeks had settlements in Crimea as did the eastern Roman or Byzantine empire. This was the source of the spread of orthodox Christianity to eastern Slavs.
The early history of the Slavs is still not known; however, Slavs can be documented in eastern Europe in the first millennium BCE. The consensus is that the original homeland of the Slavs was in eastern Poland,, southern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. From there, they gradually spread outward for about a thousand years beginning around 500 BCE.
In the mid ninth century, the Verangians (Swedish Vikings) arrived. With the Slavs, they founded the Kievan Rus, which lasted for five centuries. One of the remnants of the Swedish presence is familiar names such as Vladimir (Volodomir in Swedish), Olga (Helga in Swedish), and Oleg (Helge). The precise origin of the Kievan Rus is one of the most controversial issues in Ukrainian history. In the late 980s, the ruler of the Rus, Volodymyr the Great, was baptized which marks the predominance of Christianity in Ukraine. Another very controversial issue is the linguistic origins of modern Ukrainian, Russian, and Belorussian. It seems, however, that these languages differentiated in the 13th and 14th centuries CE.
In the year 1240 CE, the Mongols arrived, razed Kiev, and destroyed the Kievan Rus. Life actually did not change much under Mongol rule; however, there was a split into three divisions: Galicia-Volhynia, Vladimir-Suzdal, and Novgorod. Vladimir-Suzdal became centered around Moscow and incorporated Novgorod as well. It became known as Muscovy.
In the 14th century, first Lithuania and then Poland arrived to conquer Ukraine. Muscovy also tried to take Ukraine but was not strong enough then. Note that Ukraine's western neighbors and new conquerors were Roman Catholics. The Lithuanian-Polish conquest also introduced feudalism to Ukraine in which most Ukrainians were serfs and the nobles were Lithuanians and Poles.
In this period, southern and eastern Ukraine were much less populated because of the threats from nomadic invaders. The last of these were the Crimean Tatars. This led to the rise of the Cossacks, who were peasants who armed themselves to take and hold the threatened territory. These Cossacks should be seen as distinct from another group, also called Cossacks, who served as mercenaries. The Ukrainian Cossacks fought for their Polish rulers, but they were also militantly Orthodox. Their first political entity was in Zaporozhia, which is in southeastern Ukraine on the Dnieper.
In 1648, under the leadership of hetman Bohdan Khmelnytski, the Cossacks revolted, took half of Ukraine's territory, and aligned with Muscovy. Their control of Ukraine lasted until 1711. Khmelnytski was also virulently anti-Jewish and killed thousands of Jews. His successor aligned more with Poland. The Cossacks and their territory became divided between Poland and Muscovy.
In 1721, Tsar Peter renamed Muscovy to be the Russian Empire and, over time, Ukraine was integrated into the empire. Russia imposed its control over the Orthodox church, and the Ukrainian language was also subordinated. These were to become important aspects of Ukrainian nationalism as it arose in the 19th century. In 1897, Dnieper Ukraine was 71.5 percent Ukrainian, 12.4 percent Russian, 8.5 percent Jewish, and had smaller numbers of other minorities. However, most of the non-Ukrainians lived in cities. The great Ukrainian writer, Nikolai Gogol, wrote in Russian because Ukrainian was not yet considered a literary language. It's ironic that the first Ukrainian cultural revival was in Kharkiv, which is in eastern Ukraine. The first great writer of Ukrainian literature was Taras Shevchenko, who published a book of poetry, Kobzar, in 1840. Shevchenko, who was born a serf, was also a fervent Ukrainian nationalist.
In 1863, Poles revolted against tsarist rule. After that, the Russian empire clamped down hard against Ukrainian nationalists and banned books in Ukrainian on the pretext that it did not exist separate from the Russian language. This was a period of scholarly resistance. However, in 1900, some Ukrainians began to organize a revolutionary national party instead of joining all-Russian parties. Others, influenced by Lenin, joined the Russian party. After a brief period of political freedom, however, the tsar clamped down once again. There was also a lot of activity in western Ukraine under Austrian control.
World War I in 1914 is a major watershed in Ukrainian history. Ukraine was a key arena of fighting. There were short periods when Ukrainian political entities existed, but by the end of the fighting, Ukraine had been incorporated into the new Soviet Union by 1920.
In 1933 came the great famine during which millions of Ukrainians starved to death. Grain was confiscated from peasants by force, and they were not given any to eat. This event powerfully shaped Ukrainians attitudes toward Russia and socialism. There is some evidence that Lenin had been planning a more benign policy toward Ukraine, but after his death, a ruthless policy was followed. The policy of Ukrainianization ended, and the great purges of the 1930s were also carried out in Ukraine.
In Crimea, at first, a Tatar Bolshevik leader promoted Tatars into the government. However, after he was purged by Stalin, that policy ended.
World War II, of course, was fought very heavily in Ukraine. Germany and Romania both invaded. Significant numbers of Ukrainians collaborated with the Germans and participated in the slaughter of Jews. However, there was also significant resistance beginning in 1941. In 1943, the Red Army defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad and proceeded to march westward. By 1944, they had taken back all of Ukraine. However, on the disputed grounds that they had collaborated with the Germans (some did, but some resisted and most were neutral), Stalin deported all Tatars from Crimea to other Soviet Republics further east.
In 1953, Joseph Stalin died, and Nikita Khrushchev, who had been assigned to Ukraine earlier, became the leader of the Soviet Union. In 1954, he gave Crimea to Ukraine.
Soviet Ukraine was both an agricultural, industrial, and resource producer, but the Soviet system had a national division of labor which means that no one country could produce many finished products on its own. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and introduced perestroika, one of his opponents was still in power in Ukraine for a few years, and that delayed changes coming to Ukraine. As late as 1990, 95 percent of industrial and agricultural production in Ukraine was still controlled from Moscow. The entire Soviet economy was in a shambles, and Ukraine had also been the host to the terrible Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. In 1990, Ukraine's parliament declared it a sovereign state. On December 1, 1991 a referendum was held on Ukrainian independence and Leonid Kravchuk, a former communist party member was elected president with 62 percent of the vote. The vote for independence was 92 percent and in each of the eastern oblasts (provinces), the vote was more than 80 percent. Even Crimea voted 54 percent for Ukrainian independence.
That is where my source ends, but, as we know, Ukraine descended into a totally corrupt state with a small number of very wealthy oligarchs and a dysfunctional economy. In 2004, there was a popular uprising against a disputed election won by Viktor Yanukovich. Viktor Yushchenko won the rerun election. He was later replaced by Yulia Timoshenko, but she did nothing to end corruption or develop the economy. Yanukovich was re-elected in 2010, and he jailed Timoshenko for her own corruption, but Yanukovich was equally corrupt and stole billions of dollars for himself, his family, and friends.
What do we mean by corruption? At the lowest level, it is a police force that routinely takes bribes for many kinds of activities. At the highest level, it is the theft of national resources. It's difficult to find a decent job, and even those with jobs have a lot of trouble making ends meet. Some enterprises, including banks, just stopped paying their employees. It's understandable that popular anger was mounting, especially as Ukrainians saw some of their neighbors doing better. In this context, the proposed agreement for closer ties with Europe was symbolic of an end to corruption and a functioning economy. However, the European Union told Ukraine that they could not make agreements with both the EU and Russia. This situation was complicated by the fact that Ukraine relies on Russia for its natural gas and that Ukrainian pipelines are a principal conduit of natural gas to Western Europe, particularly Germany. The Ukrainian government had subsidized gas prices to consumers so whenever Russia threatens to raise the price (Putin has done that more than once), the Ukrainian economy and consumers are immediately threatened. Ukraine wants more ties to Europe, but it doesn't want to break with Russia.
Ukraine, like most other European countries, has fascist rightwing parties who polled about 10 percent of the vote in the last elections. They tend to glorify and name themselves after the fascists who collaborated with the Nazis. They were very militantly active and visible in the protests in Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev, but those protests had overwhelming popular support which was not rightwing. The organized Jewish community has issued statements asserting that these fascists are too weak to threaten them.
So, how to sort out fact from fiction in the news reports and government statements we see and hear every day. The US government and the EU would certainly like to control Ukraine, and their offers of assistance are predicated on an austerity which Ukrainians cannot afford. Their lives are already very austere. The Russian government has a few interests in preventing that. First, the Russian military is very dependent on airplanes, missiles, and ships produced in Ukraine. Second, Russia leases its large naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea. Third, Russia and Belarus are both very corrupt and undemocratic in their own right, and the example of a genuinely democratic Ukraine would appeal to their citizens. Belarus, in particular, also has a very dysfunctional economy, and it is ruled by an extremely violent dictator who has little popular support. He claimed 85 percent of the vote in the last presidential elections, but the opposition said that exit polls showed that he actually got about 35 percent.
Russian propaganda has been particularly clumsy. Putin denied that Russian troops took part in the takeover in Crimea, but he has since admitted that they were there in unmarked uniforms. The Ukrainians call these green men, and green men are seen now in eastern Ukraine, where Putin continues to deny they are present. Putin claims to be concerned about threats to ethnic Russians and Russian speakers; yet there is no evidence that there are such threats. In fact, most Ukrainians are bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian, and many for whom Russian is the first language participated in the protests for which there was obvious support in eastern cities such as Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. There is no sharp east/west divide in Ukraine, though there may be a generational divide in which Ukrainians who grew up in Soviet Ukraine look more to Russia than younger Ukrainians do.
Western propaganda is more subtle. We know that they want the corrupt former opposition to come to power again, and thus they do not want real progressive change in Ukraine. The difficulty for Ukrainians is that there is no party or politician who represents their real aspirations. They hate Yanukovich, and they hate Timoshenko. They don't trust the former boxer, Klitchko. They certainly don't want the fascists to come to power.
Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are thus in a very difficult situation. Nobody knows if there's a real way forward now, but to understand what is happening, any analysis must be rooted in facts and reality and not in competing big-power propaganda.
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