10) WEST RE-OPENS OLD SORES IN UKRAINE

 

By Graham L. Wilson

 

    July 2014 - As the cease fire ended, and the peace process falters further, Ukraine descends further into bloodshed. Reports say that fighters from Chechnya have joined the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, alongside Right Sector militants being brought in from Western Ukraine on the side of the Ukrainian military (as well as private American mercenaries) - worrying signs that the country will continue to be roiled by ethnic conflict.

 

    The fears of a fractured society born from the February coup seem to be rapidly becoming realized. By deposing an elected president and forcing a polarizing, definite shift either to east or west, the nation's unity now seems irreconcilably broken. As fighters continue to pour in, the European continent is seeing violence unheard of since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As has happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria, the West seems to care little about the chaos that ensues in the aftermath of its attempts at regime change.

 

    A drastic uptick in violence followed the May 25 presidential election, which the West had portrayed as the turning point towards stability, but was largely boycotted in the restive east. Clashes between rebels and security forces rose sharply, as the Ukrainian military turned to large scale bombardment against both rebels and populated civilian areas.

 

    Hopes for peace are slipping even further away after President Poroshenko's "peace plan" proved to be cynically ineffective. To anyone with a long memory, this all seems too terribly familiar. The aftermath of the First World War, with the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, left an environment that continued to be bloody long after 1918. Nationalist sentiments created new nations, as the remnants of the old guard struggled to reemerge.

 

    The threat of a new war was never far from anyone's mind, which brings us to the geopolitical duel between Russia and the West. Even without a large scale confrontation, the renewal of ethnic and religious skirmishes and insurgencies is worrisome enough.

 

    This all strikes a personal note when I consider my own family history. My ancestors on my maternal grandfather's side, ethnic Ukrainians on the eastern edge between Austria-Hungary and Russia, were stuck in the middle of the morass. My great baba was hauled off to work as a slave in a German dairy, while my great gido was sent to fight for the Hapsburgs. He eventually surrendered to the Russians, was held as a POW, escaped during the Revolution, and made the long trek on foot back to his home village, which was now within Poland. My great baba survived through secretly suckling the cows she tended, and eventually was allowed home.

 

    My great-grandparents met, married and set out to have a family. My great baba, however, was a very astute woman. Sensing the coming of the next great war, she eventually convinced my great gido of the necessity to emigrate to the New World. His family, the Warchomikas, were comparatively well to do in the region, and it required some sizable persuasion from his wife, who came from the lower class Ference family.

 

    This class difference was illustrated by two different experiences. One relative from the Warchomikas fought alongside the Nazis for the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a group extolled by the far-right groups that frighteningly remain in key positions among the new Ukrainian authorities. Another from the Ferences fought against and successfully escaped twice from Nazi imprisonment, rejoining with the Red Army from Stalingrad to Berlin. But my immediate relatives had managed their escape in 1929, allowing their descendants to live in peace at last.

 

    There is a common thread of immigration to Canada in order to escape never-ending war. This helps to show how hollow are the attempts by the Canadian government to depict Canada's sizable Ukrainian community as absolute in their support for the new Ukrainian authorities, even to the point of encouraging an increasingly brutal civil war.

 

    Ukraine deserves the right to determine its destiny free from political domination from either east or west, and to reject either the economic control of Russia's corrupt oligarchs or the devastation of IMF imposed theft and austerity. Its diverse regions deserve fair representation within a decentralized federal system, but most of all, Ukraine deserves peace, dialogue and reconciliation, and the rejection of the fascist nationalism that has sparked violence in the west and east of the country. The alternative seems little more than the continuation of the centuries old cycle of violence. A grim prospect indeed.

(The above article is from the August 1-31, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)