Thread by @JamesClay1917

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.