Today I’m going to begin to describe how the Organization of #Ukrainian Nationalists, (#OUN) progressed from publishing antisemitic articles in its theoretical journal, Rozbudova Natsii (Building the Nation) to genocidal incitement, from 1928 (left image) to 1941 (right image).
How was the #Holocaust in #Ukraine ideologically prepared? How did demands for an 'independent' Ukrainian state lead to its destruction by German #imperialism? Due to the large body of evidence, we will divide our exposé. Here we deal with the period 1928 to Spring 1933.
The OUN had been preparing itself ideologically to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine since 1928. These preparations began in the first issue of R.N. which came out openly against democracy, against the Soviet Union and socialism.
The OUN’s opposition to ‘demo-liberalism’ and ‘humanitarianism’ was consciously based on a philosophical rejection of reason and the Enlightenment. Rozbudova’s fascist, anti-socialist politics, and its genocidal schemes, sprung from the same rotten philosophical soil as Nazism.
In 1928 #3, E. Onatskyi’s infamous ‘On Fascism’ appeared. He compared Ukrainian nationalism and Italian fascism, but declared that Ukrainians must work hard to build a state before they can call themselves ‘fascists.’ The article is full of praise for Italian #fascist youth.
1928 #12, a fascinating article, ‘Ukrainization of Ukraine’ attacks the original, #Bolshevik nationalities policy of support to national minority cultures, the policy of ‘Korenizatsiya.’ I will discuss this article at length as it exposes the reactionary basis of racial politics.
Reviewing mid-1920s #Soviet statistics, nationalists were forced to admit the successes of the ‘Ukrainization’ policy. The article exposes as a lie the Ukrainian nationalist assertion that the early Bolshevik policy oppressed Ukrainians. (Stalinist policies, certainly later did.)
The Bolshevik policy of 'Ukrainization' was NOT about ‘creating a Ukraine for Ukrainians only’ but about raising the cultural and political level of #Ukrainian peasants and workers, part of a struggle for a world #socialist #republic enabling the full participation of Ukrainians.
R.N.'s 'Ukrainization' article is the first of many in which ‘Jews’ are counted as separate from Ukrainians using statistical information from the Soviet Union. The nationalists were very concerned to quantify the ‘Jewish problem’ which they qualified using antisemitic slanders.
1929 #3-4: “Russian-Jewish Domination and the role of Russian culture in Soviet Ukraine” by 'V. Bogush'. It is an extended complaint using demographic statistics, that although Ukrainians are a majority of the population, power and influence in Ukraine rest with Jews and Russians
1929 #8-9 “Jewry, Zionism and Ukraine” by Yuri Milyanich: Jews are the “enemies of the Ukrainian independent national idea” and “In the fight against Jewry, which is hostile to us in every respect, we must develop the most advantageous forms for solving the Jewish question.”
1930 #9-10. Mykola Stsiborskyi, later author of the 1940 OUN-M constitution publishes “Jewry and Ukraine” in which he argues for assimilation of “Jewry” subordinate to Ukrainian state goals, in order to re-start capitalist social relations, after the future collapse of the USSR
1932 #1-2 Mitsiuk's antisemitic account of ‘Pre-revolutionary Jewish trade relations’ accusing ‘Jewry’ of monopolizing trade and exploiting the peasants of the Hutsul region. A 1943 Krakivski Visti article would later rejoice that ‘there were no more Jews in the Hutsul region.’
Rozbudova published Mitsiuk’s incitement in every issue for two years, and then issued the articles as a book. What is clear is that well before the Nazis constituted a mass movement, Ukrainian nationalists had developed clear plans for a ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians only.'
I will follow this up in the coming weeks with an examination of OUN's ideology into the 1930s, after the Nazi seizure of power, and how fascist ideology was openly expressed in the Ukrainian Canadian press of that time. Stay tuned.
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🧵There is a political split in the petty bourgeois Palestinian leadership, and some elements are desperate to try to cover it up and silence debate about it, using moralizing identity politics to prevent anyone from elaborating a political analysis of it.
Palestinian journalist Motaz has issued a filthy statement blaming Palestinian resistance for Israel's genocidal actions. He has seemingly aligned himself with Fatah, just as the imperialist powers are promoting the quislings of Fatah as 'legitimate' Palestinian leaders.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly flew to Israel this week to meet with Netanyahu, and then to Ramallah to be photographed, along with Zionist MP Ya'ara Sacks, with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah is being prepared by imperialism to suppress the Palestinian resistance.
Imperialism lurches toward escalation because there simply are no more young Ukrainian men to draft into its war against Russia. There was a massive decline in Ukrainian births after the dissolution of the USSR, and most Ukrainian men aged 20 to 35 are either dead, or fled.
Ukraine has a massive surplus - of babushkas, due to WWII and its aftermath. Note the approaching third demographic crisis. The murder by imperialist war of most of the young males now threatens the very existence of Ukrainian people.
The Ukrainian population bulge in the graph represents Ukrainians born during the Soviet period. The Soviet Union produced lots of Ukrainians. Capitalist restoration, Ukrainian nationalism and fascism have, when combined, murdered more Ukrainians.
🧵The Israelis and imperialists are deliberately starving Palestinians in #Gaza, just as the Nazis developed the ‘Hunger Plan’ to starve the Jews and the Soviet working class in WWII. If Zionism looks like Nazism, it’s because Zionists are copying #Nazi policies to conquer Gaza.
Fact: the State of Israel has decided on a policy of #starvation against the population of #Gaza. The openly genocidal statements of Israeli leaders are a simple matter of public record. They are criminal self-indictments, which cannot be reinterpreted post facto, or taken back.
Retired #IDF General Giora Eiland described this plan in November 2023. “Severe epidemics in the southern Strip will bring victory closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers.” Starving people are too weak to fight their occupiers. (See alt text) archive.ph/DmwAp
🧵Today we recall the Revisionist #Zionist movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky, political ancestor of the criminal Netanyahu. Like the the Ukrainian nationalists, the dependency of the Zionist bourgeois and petty bourgeois on world imperialism drove them towards fascism and genocide.
Jewish workers and peasants had an alternative to Zionism – revolutionary socialism. The conquest of power by the working class created the basis to destroy antisemitism, which arose historically, and can only be destroyed by workers acting consciously in the historical process.
1921. Jabotinsky made a secret pact with Maxim Slavinsky, ambassador of Ukrainian pogromist Simon Petliura, to send Zionist police with a 15,000 strong Ukrainian nationalist army, backed by France, to attack the Soviet Union, moving Jews out of Soviet Ukraine. The plan failed.
🧵To hear Zionists, the Oct 7th Palestinian uprising against illegal Israeli occupation is akin to ‘original sin.’ Each act of #Zionist barbarism is justified by the ‘bloodguilt’ of #Hamas. They are copying #Nazi propaganda techniques used against the Poles and Great Britain.
On Sept 3 1939, Germans in #Bydgoszcz Poland attacked a Polish military barracks, coordinated by German military intelligence. In response, the Polish majority of the town rose up and violently resisted. Approximately 400 German civilians and soldiers were killed over two days.
Historian Ian Kershaw writes: “For German propaganda, the attacks on ethnic Germans were exploited as an apparent justification for a policy of 'ethnic cleansing' that had surpassed in its first days anything that could be regarded as retaliation.” (see Alt text for full quote)
Canada's 'Nazi scandal' has been sitting in plain sight for decades. In 2010, the #Ukrainian Canadian Congress tried do draw a big equals sign between soldiers and others killed fighting the Nazis, and Ukrainian #Nazi collaborators who killed them. #Hunka ucc.ca/2010/11/11/ukr…
The 'First Division of the Ukrainian National Army' referred to above is the 14th #WaffenSS #Galizien Division. Below is their commanding officer, Friz Freitag. Fritz kept a diary, reducing his mass murder to such banalities as "114 prisoners taken, 283 Jews shot."
The Canadian state in the 1940s and 50s WANTED #Nazis, to go after #socialists in the working class. Upon arrival, that's just what the Nazis did. They attacked workers meetings across the country. On October 8th, 1950 they bombed Toronto's #Ukrainian Labour Temple .