From the Youtube Video: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abr6Pxqhs94“
УКРАИНСКИЙ ПЬЕМОНТ: МИФ ЗАПАДНОЙ УКРАИНЫ
Synopsis
This video presents a critical analysis of the modern “decolonization” narrative promoted in Ukraine, arguing that it is an imported ideological construct used to justify illiberal policies.
The speaker deconstructs the myth of Western Ukraine (Galicia/Bukovyna) as a “Ukrainian Piedmont”—a pure, ancient bastion of Ukrainian culture that enlightened the rest of the country.
Using historical census data and quotes from Ukrainian intellectuals like Ivan Franko and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, he demonstrates that major western cities like Lviv were historically predominantly Polish and Jewish, with Ukrainians forming a modest intellectual minority. He argues that a predominantly Ukrainian character in these regions emerged only after the mid-20th century due to the genocide of Jews, the deportation of Poles, and the expulsion of Germans—actions perpetrated by Nazi Germany, Ukrainian nationalist partisans, and the Soviet state.
The speaker contends that portraying Ukrainian history solely as one of victimhood under empires ignores periods where Ukrainians were also perpetrators and simplifies a complex past. He warns that using this oversimplified “myth of oppression” to justify banning languages, renaming places, and replacing one culture with another is a destructive path that prevents Ukraine from building a pluralistic, forward-looking future based on the interaction of its diverse cultural heritage.
Text: Andrii Baumeister
Hello, dear friends! We live in a world not only of hot wars, where a powerful state invades the territory of weaker ones, violating the boundaries of international law and dictating its will. But we also live in a world of cultural wars, ideological wars. When those same powerful states, using more powerful resources, intellectual propaganda media, create certain myths, certain narratives, which also act and are used as instruments of influence.
One such instrument of influence at the end of the 20th, but more so, at the beginning of the 21st century, became the so-called “new agendas,” which were spread worldwide by organizations like USAID, programs like DEI. These are programs and ideologies according to which the entire history of the West is a history of colonialism, imperialism, oppression, the restriction of freedoms. Liberation and decolonization are linked to a kind of revenge by the formerly colonized and oppressed peoples.
This ideology still needs to be studied, because we see for what purposes and in which countries it was used. But my current modest discussion on the topic of how this ideology bore fruit in my country, in Ukraine—I think this conversation will be the beginning of a whole cycle of discussions, so please don’t judge me too harshly.
Why did I decide to address this conversation? Primarily because I see how we are hindered by those clichés and ideological traps that were set by this ideology. Once again, they were invented not in Ukraine, not even in Eastern Europe, but invented in rather distant centers, yet sufficiently powerful in the United States and partly in Western Europe. By the way, Third World countries are also already trying to imitate such things, understanding the importance of soft power, but that’s not the conversation for now.
So, I want to analyze several important ideas of that myth, which can be called the myth of oppression and decolonization, but with a more specific refraction. What is the goal of my discussion? The goal of my discussion is to contribute to the liberation of the thinking of part of my fellow citizens, so that they might look a little from the outside at what seems to them to be axioms, what seems to them to be historical facts, what seems to them to be documented main principles. Most often, propaganda clichés are understood as facts; under certain rigid, understandable principles, there are often ideas concocted by small groups. And one such idea is the representation of Western Ukraine as the Ukrainian “Piedmont.” Let’s begin with a sort of prelude, an overture to this symphony. The overture might sound like this:
There was a terrible Russian Empire, then a terrible Soviet Union, where Ukrainian culture was oppressed, where there were very strong persecutions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, where Ukrainian culture broke through certain obstacles until 1917. But fortunately, fortunately for Ukrainian culture, there existed a Ukrainian Piedmont, namely Galicia and Bukovyna, where Ukrainian culture developed, where books were published, where there was a whole galaxy of intellectuals, writers, philosophers, composers, architects who developed this Ukrainian culture. And so when, having passed through the complexities of the 20th century (we’ll skip the details for now), Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, it was precisely this Ukrainian Piedmont that raised high the banner of the Ukrainian national idea, of Ukrainian cultural enlightenment, and began to spread it to other, less conscious parts of Ukraine: Central Ukraine, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Poltava, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad (now Kropyvnytskyi), and to the completely unconscious (politically inert) territories of Ukraine, such as Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kherson Oblast, and so on, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In this idea, in this myth of the Ukrainian Piedmont, there is much that is contrived.
It must be said that this Ukrainian Piedmont, from 1939-1940, became part of the Soviet Union, and much happened on the territory of not only these three regions. By the way, I will use the word “Galicia” so as not to grate on the ears of my Ukrainian compatriots (Halychyna, Bukovyna), since I’m speaking Russian, I will speak as is customary, say, in a certain language. But I will also quote directly from the page various Ukrainian texts, important testimonies, translating them immediately, and if I allow any inaccuracies, I will sometimes read fragments from the original texts.
Also, concluding the overture, I want to warn those who are incapable of reasoning calmly, objectively, who immediately turn on reactive emotions and react absolutely irrationally. I am addressing thinking people. I understand that what I’m about to say will irritate many, but I emphasize: what I’m about to say will be based on the texts of Ukrainian classics, on solid numbers from social surveys, and on solid historical facts, recorded in all the historiography of all historians who study the history of Ukraine—I mean American, European, and Ukrainian historians.
So, we are agreed. Let’s begin.
So, the Ukrainian Piedmont. We are talking about these three regions: Galicia, Bukovyna, and also Transcarpathia. Mainly Galicia and Bukovyna.
I call my first witness: Ivan Franko, who in 1905 writes an open letter, titled in the original language “An Open Letter to Ukrainian Youth.” By the way, the original Ukrainian is substantially different from the Ukrainian language we use today. Sometimes it’s even difficult to quote the Ukrainian original. For example, this letter “є” with two dots. It feels like Ivan Franko, our classic, overuses this letter. Also, there are many atypical phrases that today would more likely be understood as Polonisms or Germanisms. And they don’t look much like modern Ukrainian.
So, this “Open Letter” was written in 1905. What was the occasion? A revolution occurred in the Russian Empire in 1905. Emperor Nicholas II issued a decree (what would later be called a constitutional reform). And Ivan Franko insightfully understands that the era is changing. This is before World War I, before the 1905 revolution. And he understands that soon the barriers for various reasons—cultural, historical—between different parts of Ukraine will fall. And Galician youth will become part of a large cultural effort with other parts of Ukraine.
By the way, when I say “other parts of Ukraine”—and in his text, or for example, in the correspondence of Lesya Ukrainka from the late 19th, early 20th century—”Ukraine” very often refers to the Ukraine that is on the territory of the Russian Empire. Sometimes he calls it “Russian Ukraine,” and those Ukrainians “Russian Ukrainians.” And Lesya Ukrainka, for example, in letters often says that “we in Ukraine,” and “they in Galicia, where they do such and such.” And often, for example, Franko might use phrases like “Bukovynian Ukrainians,” “Galician Ukrainians,” “Russian Ukrainians.” We see the language was not settled.
So, what is the main pathos? A great cultural effort is beginning. Galician youth must remember that—this is directly in the letter—I quote the original published in 1905 with old orthography: “Since history is not created by heroes,” says Ivan Franko, “but history is a mass movement. Mass movement. You see, I’m quoting: ‘history is the movement of masses.’ And therefore, youth, especially intelligent Ukrainian youth, must participate in this great process, understanding that the masses decide everything.”
Here’s an interesting contradiction: he says much depends on these young people in the future, the near future. But simultaneously he says history is made by masses. We see here a populist ideology. This, by the way, distinguishes Franko from other Ukrainian figures I will talk about later.
But when we read this “Open Letter” (I advise reading it, it’s only about 15 pages), we can find much that is interesting for ourselves. I want to highlight, otherwise my analysis will take too much time, only some important points.
For example, he says that the existing, for now, Chinese walls that separate us from Ukraine will fall. He says, not even from Russia, just “from Ukraine.” Our literature and press must move to a higher level if it does not want to perish in competition with that type of literature and press which has been developed in Russia. Very wise. Ivan Franko is a wise man. He says that we will have to compete on the level of text quality and the quality of ideas. There is a certain quality there. We must compete. By the way, this differs sharply from how cultural struggle is understood today: as bans, one culture instead of another, not free competition.
Let’s go further. He talks about the necessity to compete. Then he says that you, Galician youth, must help the brothers in Ukraine who are on the other side of the border for now. And in the concluding part of the letter, he tries to answer the question: how exactly to help? This is very interesting. Starting from page 17—this is literally a reprint from the journal “Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk,” issue 30. He enumerates what young Galicians cannot help Ukrainians there with, and what they can.
They cannot help financially, because “we are not rich in capital,” he says. No investments will go from us there. It sounds a bit strained because the modern world is a bit different. But then I’ll go into more detail.
Also, let me give the original and then translate for those who don’t understand Ukrainian, especially Franko’s Ukrainian:
“We also will not impress Ukrainians with our intelligence, with our zeal for theoretical enlightenment. A bitter fate forced us to grow up and educate ourselves in a land where, thanks to a gentry regime, science is considered an unsafe weapon.”
And then he continues. Translating more concisely: He says we also cannot help that Ukraine with cultural levels, since here, where we live, a bitter gentry regime, which does not consider science something serious, has ingrained in Ukrainians a low level of culture, a low level of intellectual work. Let’s note for ourselves: For current decolonizers, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are the main spawn of Hell, which oppressed Ukraine for 300 years. At the same time, they forget that a significant part of Ukraine, this very Ukrainian Piedmont, was part of other empires—for example, the Austro-Hungarian. And for Ivan Franko, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and at the end of the letter we’ll see he contradicts himself) is for him a system of oppression. That is, the Austro-Hungarian one, but then also the Poles—the territory of Lviv, the autonomy, and with the Poles the situation is better since they are more culturally developed, and this Polish level very much influences us Ukrainians. So, we cannot help with culture either.
With what, then? Further, he says what we cannot help with: school textbooks. Because, unfortunately, it must be said, there is very little hope. Our textbooks written here by our Ukrainians in Volhynia are of a very low level.
And now the last two paragraphs. He asks: what can we help our brothers with? And, nevertheless, we here have something that can be useful to Ukrainians in Russia:
“I have in mind a practical mindset, a habit of paying more attention to concrete facts than to theories, and a more developed habit for public life, for organizations and parliamentarism. The long struggle for national rights has developed in us a certain tradition and not a small reserve of experience…” etc.
That is, what does he say? He speaks of the experience of public life of Ukrainians in Galicia, participation in parliamentarism, participation in debates in the Sejm, in the parliament in Vienna, including, for example, the Galician Sejm. And he says, with this we will help.
And let’s sum up: Ivan Franko perfectly understands the low financial levels—he himself was in need all his life. By the way, he wrote for Russian newspapers. He wrote for Polish ones, until he wrote a text that angered the Poles and they refused his texts. He was in need all his life. A man who never had a sufficient material level—very low, because he always lived in a very difficult atmosphere, and the Ukrainian idea in Galicia was not funded. One had to publish in Polish, Russian, Austrian, Berlin journals. There they paid money; here there is no money. So, not with finances, not with the level of education, not with the level of textbooks, but with parliamentarism. Remember? This is very important.
So, this is 1905.
Now let’s take another author, also a classic, after whom streets are also named in our country. This is Volodymyr Vynnychenko. “Revival of the Nation,” the third volume (the last, three volumes in total). And there he—I will refer to his book several times today, and maybe analyze it separately sometime—speaks about how when, during the Directory, the UNR, and then the Directory, we began to interact with the Galicians, one terrible thing was revealed. And what exactly, I will quote for you. Actually, this book is a bombshell. Immediately—a bombshell. Because when students read textbooks in school, or when the broad public is fed certain myths, again “revival of the nation,” “executed revival”—this is not a myth, it’s a fact, but the meaning is a myth. We will now see in what sense Vynnychenko uses “revival.” A little spoiler: In the sense of revival as a communist idea. This is Ukrainian Bolshevism. For him, bourgeois, liberal, religious, right-wing ideas are not the core of the nation’s revival. And his entire three-volume epic, “Revival of the Nation,” is aimed at justifying that we must become communists. And he collaborated with communists for a long time. He started as a leftist. He broke with them only around 1933. That is, throughout this period, he came to the Soviet Union, he offered his services. Moreover, in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his collected works were published twice when many were banned. Once a 21-volume collected works of Vynnychenko, I think in 1923, and a second time a 23-volume collected works. Can you imagine what authority he enjoyed.
And so he writes about the Galicians the following:
“Sons of a poor, small country, beaten down by Polish lords and priests, raised on a degenerate-gentry Polish culture. A degenerate-gentry Polish culture.” (Asterisk: this is not me, this is a quote.) “Great Polish culture. Suckled on a pseudo-European civilization worldview.” Actually, these three volumes are one long rant. He has no analysis, no arguments. These are his great documents, where he writes declarations, texts, letters. And this is a rant.
And then he says that these sons of a beaten-down province, instead of turning to the popular masses or calling for an axe, a sickle, they engage in parliamentarism. They are used to chattering in courts and chattering in parliaments of different levels in Austria-Hungary. That is, for him, the European experience of parliamentarism is bad, it’s backwardness. What’s needed is revolution—that’s the constant pathos of revolution.
So it turns out Vynnychenko has a thought absolutely opposite to Franko’s. And if we add to this the radicals, like Bandera and all that group, or different groups (I won’t study different groups today that went under abbreviations like OUN, etc., I won’t talk about that now. I’ll speak about it as a general phenomenon), so for this group, the parliamentarism of the old ones, that is, the parliamentarism of the fathers, is bad. The fathers were intimidated by such young people as Bandera—literally intimidating their Ukrainian fathers. They humiliated them. They believed the path to a new Ukraine was through terror.
Look how interesting: For Franko, the future of Ukraine is parliamentarism. One. For Vynnychenko, the future of Ukraine is communist revolution. First here, then worldwide. Two. For Bandera, the revival of Ukraine is terror. Three. Parliamentarism—revolution—terror. You judge.
But then, when he speaks of these guys, he also says, when negotiations began in 1919, in Paris in 1919, he speaks of “little calves” wearing embroidered shirts and suddenly dressing in tailcoats, never knowing how to wear them. Young Galicians who poured into the best restaurants and best hotels of Europe—Paris, Berlin, Vienna—to there with a smart look, eating expensive food and pretending to be diplomats, having a great time. He hates diplomacy, hates parliament, hates lawyerly activity. He, by the way, was involved in that in his time.
I won’t even talk about how Poles are described here, just a few main metaphors. And, by the way, he hates the Entente (France and England), he doesn’t like them either. For example, he speaks of the Poles in Lviv and speaks of the revolution that had already choked in November 1918. “Having deceived Ukrainians with their submissiveness, they gathered forces, that is, the Poles, prepared, and attacked the Ukrainians on November 4th in Lviv itself. And it turned out the Poles had more forces.” And they had more forces because the majority of the population in Lviv was Polish. And it could help its military. The struggle in Lviv and its surroundings lasted three weeks, and the Ukrainians had to yield. We’ll talk a little about this today.
But then he tears into the Poles, and for several pages we read, for example, like this. By the way, he tears the Entente and the Poles to shreds because they attack Bolshevik Russia, the worker-peasant state, and try to overthrow the regime there. And so he says, when speaking of the Poles: “the most repulsive branch of social parasites. The gentry, aristocracy, professors, engineers, scientists, artists. This is the most repulsive branch of social parasites.” Further: “Polish divisions of Haller, reformed, trained, armed by the French, seeded with French officers. These divisions, in which the Polish was only cannon fodder, were little suited to go to the Bolshevik front, they eagerly rushed against Russian workers-peasants. The Polish gentry, and its servants, socialists in lapty [bast shoes], like Piłsudski, Daszyński, etc., against Ukrainians.” And further he says they sat like spiders on the land, that this Poland, which for a century and a half crawled in royal antechambers of the whole world, and complained about oppression and injustice from the tsars, this Poland now revealed its knightly nature. “Like a villainous and insolent lackey, who, instead of being given pennies for this dirty-pan work, steals them and does speculation, so the Entente’s Eastern boor and gendarme.” And so it continues. This is what he says about Poland. Degenerate gentry, boors, gendarmes, spiders, bloodsuckers.
Why did I cite these two texts? Both Franko and Vynnychenko understand that Galicia is no Piedmont. That cultural life there is only in its very infancy. And that in comparison with German, Polish, Jewish cultures (I mean culture: all texts, novels, philosophy, social science, natural sciences), to put it mildly, they are lacking. But if Franko sees Galicia’s advantage in parliamentarism and the ability to conduct politics in an evolutionary way, for Vynnychenko this is the curse of a beaten-down province. These are the two images.
Thus, we have taken the first step in our conversation.
Now we’ll move to numbers. Numbers before World War I and between the world wars. The percentage of residents of the main cities of “Western Ukraine.” I put “Western Ukraine” in quotes because it’s a construct assembled from different histories, different cultures. Primarily, of course, this is Lviv Oblast, Chernivtsi Oblast, Transcarpathia. Volhynia is a bit different; Volhynia is mistakenly called Western Ukraine, but it was a different culture, a different cultural code, primarily connected with Orthodoxy.
So, numbers. If you can’t keep up with the numbers, you can rewind, go back, and listen again.
So, population of Lviv Voivodeship. This is the first general census of population, September 30, 1921. Polish census—I give references to it, and also to the original text. So, Lviv Voivodeship (I’m not talking about all of the Second Polish Republic). Poles: 1,537,986 people, 56.5% of the population. Ukrainians: 975,268, that’s 35.88% of the population. Jews: 190,368, 7% of the population. Germans: 12,436 people.
Statistics for all of Poland: This census showed (I looked into this specifically at the time), total population of the Second Polish Republic: 25,694,700 people. All of Poland. Same 1921 census. Poles: 17,789,287, that’s 69.23%. Ukrainians: 3,898,428, that’s 15.17%, a bit over 15%. Jews: 2,048, that’s 7.97%. Look, the total number of Ukrainians is only just over a million more than Jews. So, to reflect. Belarusians: 1,035, 4% of the population. Germans: 769, almost 3% of the population. Lithuanians: 24,000, 0.9% of the population. Russians: 48,920, that’s 0.19%, more than Lithuanians. “Tutejsi” (locals): 38,000, people who didn’t identify. Czechs: 30,628, that’s 0.12%. And others also couldn’t identify: 9,856 people, 0.4%. That’s how it was for all of Poland.
And now the population of Lviv. You see how I took Lviv Voivodeship, all of Poland, and the population of Lviv. This is the same 1921 census? No, this is already the population of Lviv in 1931. That was 1921, now population of Lviv in 1931. Poles: 63.5%. Jews: 24.1%. Ukrainians: 7.8%. Ruthenians: 3.5%. And Germans: 0.8%. Thus, Poles and Jews according to the census make up 87.6% of the residents of Lviv. Again, 87% of Lviv residents.
Now, let’s go on. Life passed from 1921, 1931, 1939—shortly before World War II. Population of Lviv in August 1939: total 333,500. By the way, if you think this is a forgery by Polish lords and professors, go into these documents, these censuses, and you’ll see that the Poles, especially in the early years, around 1920 and early 1930s, turned to French sociologists for help. They didn’t have experience yet, and so it’s interesting. This census often, the Polish language is duplicated by French in main terms, main titles.
So, population of Lviv in August 1939, a month before World War II: total 333,500. Poles: 169,900, that’s 50.9%. Jews: 104,700, that’s 31.4%. Accordingly, Poles and Jews together: that’s 81.3%, it was 84, remember? Ukrainians and Ruthenians here together (because they argue, and sometimes attack me: “What are you doing? What does it mean? Nothing of the sort—read, compare, and you’ll learn that sometimes one term is used as a synonym, consciousness of different groups differs from each other”). So, Ukrainians and Ruthenians: 53,200, 16% of Lviv residents. Germans: 2,600. And others: 3,100. So that’s our statistics for 1939.
Now let’s go through cities not as large as Lviv. I’m giving numbers now, and then we’ll discuss these numbers. In this case, these numbers, population of Lviv 1939, I quote from the book by Grzegorz Hryciuk, “Polacy we Lwowie, 1939-1944. Życie społeczne” (Warsaw, 2000), where he also references the census.
Population of Stanyslaviv (only from 1962 was it called Ivano-Frankivsk—Soviet power also loved to rename everything—Ivano-Frankivsk, it was Stanyslaviv, it was connected with the name of a king, the gentry created this city). So, before September 17, 1939, Stanyslaviv: Jews 46%, Poles 36%, Ruthenians about 15%, Armenians 2%, Hungarians, Germans, Roma about 1%. Reference to Raimund Piłsudski, “Polskie Kresy, z dziejów…” Warsaw, 1921, page 152. Again, Stanyslaviv: Jews 46%, Poles 36%, in total that’s 82%. Armenians 2% = 84%, plus 1% Hungarians, Germans, Roma = 85%. And there could be Ukrainians and Ruthenians, total 15%.
Population of Vilnius in September 1939, that is, directly before World War II: total in the city of Vilnius (often Vilnius, capital of a whole country, maybe Vilna people will forgive) lives 209,000 people in 1939 in September. Poles: 137,000, 66%. Jews: 58,000, that’s 28%. Russians: 7,000, that’s 3%. Lithuanians: 1,500 people, 1%. Belarusians: 1,600 people, also a bit over 1%. And so, Poles and Jews, that’s already 94% of the population of Vilnius. 94% of the population.
Here, Raimund Piłsudski in this book on page 13 even says: “We became a nation that, in comparison with other nations, lost the greatest percentage of its population in the course of World War II: 20%. Even greater losses were among the elite, for Germans, Ukrainians, and Russians destroyed, left to their conscience, more than 50% of our intelligentsia. Poland lost more than 30% of its territory.”
Now, Lutsk. Population of Lutsk on January 1, 1939. This is data from the English-language Wikipedia for now; I compared several sources. Actually, if you go to Ukrainian Wikipedia pages for Lviv, Rivne, Stanyslaviv, you’ll see that in these articles, all of this is either very little or not there at all. The authors of Wikipedia don’t want to know these numbers. Sometimes they mention them, but after or before this period.
So, Lutsk on January 1, 1939: total 39,000 people. Lutsk: Jews 17,500, Poles 13,500. Out of 39,000 people, 31,000 are Jews and Poles. No other data according to English Wikipedia. So Poles and Jews constitute the overwhelming majority.
Lutsk County—now I’m referencing a county, a whole region: total 316,000 people. Ukrainians 59% (so no one says I’m not objective). Rural areas of Volhynia and Galicia in certain regions have more Ukrainian peasants; some of them don’t know they are Ukrainian peasants, some call themselves Ruthenians. But when we evaluate these numbers, we’ll talk about the quantity of population, about elites, which are still created in cities, not in villages. In villages of the Second Polish Republic lived who? There’s the gentry, palaces, libraries, concert halls, breweries, wine industry—mainly beer industry. This culture, which goes from the city to the village, is a gentry village. And a peasant village is not only connected with Ukrainians, Belarusians, other peasants; they don’t yet live by cultural interests, and for them questions of identity, culture, philosophy, natural sciences, classical music simply don’t exist. This must be understood. They will later receive, in another system, including the Soviet system, general access to education, to musical culture, to science, etc.
Poviat: Ukrainians 59%, Poles 19.5%, Jews 14%. Poles 19.5%. Czechs, Germans: 23,000 people—such compact groups. And as far as I know, even in later Soviet times, in Volhynia there were whole Czech villages where Czechs lived and Czech traditions, etc.
Population of Lutsk, 31… I told you before the war, August 1931: total 35,500. Here I’m already quoting Polish data, Polish Wikipedia: total 35,500 in Lutsk. Jews 17,000, Poles 11,000, Ukrainians 3,000. Ukrainian-language Wikipedia does not provide any detailed statistics except general for Lutsk: “Чисельність мешканців зросла з 30 тисяч одразу після війни до 40 тисяч у 1932 р.” Translation: they indicate the general growth of population in Lutsk after World War I until 1939, absolutely not asking who and what, to whom it belongs.
Volhynian Voivodeship in 1931: Ukrainians 68% of the population in 1931. Czechs, Jews, Germans. And finally, Rivne. We talked about Lutsk, now Rivne. Population of Rivne in 1939, Polish Wikipedia: population 41,500. Jews 21,000, Poles 15,000. So Jews and Poles, majority of the population: 36,000 out of 41,500. Ukrainian and Russian Wikipedia do not provide any data for the periods we are interested in, 1918-1939. No data. But it’s not advantageous for them.
And I’ll conclude with the population of Chernivtsi and Uzhhorod; this is also interesting.
So, population of Chernivtsi in 1930 (English Wikipedia): in Chernivtsi live 112,400 people in 1930. Jews 26.8%, Romanians 23.2%, Germans 20.8%, Ukrainians 18.6%. That’s Chernivtsi. German Wikipedia provides data for 1925, 5 years earlier for Chernivtsi: total in Chernivtsi then 90,000 (we see in 5 years growth of several tens of thousands). So in 1925 in Chernivtsi: 90,000, Jews 40%, Germans 20%, Romanians 20%, Ukrainians 20%. That regarding Chernivtsi.
And finally, Uzhhorod. In 1910, total there live 16,919 people, a small city in 1910. Hungarians constitute 80.3%. Hungarians in Uzhhorod in 1910. Germans 6.8%, Slovaks 7.2%, Ruthenians 641 people, Czechs 1.6%. Again, Ruthenians—that means there could be Ukrainians, could be Ruthenians—641 people, that’s what? Let’s now see other data: Jews, by the way, are not indicated in Uzhhorod. But in the same paragraph, the next sentence (I mean the English Wikipedia), the religious composition of the population is indicated: there 5,305 people profess Judaism, and then Roman Catholics, Calvinists. That’s the data.
And finally, I will quote Timothy Snyder, “Bloodlands,” translation 2021, where there is this: “The territory of the Second Polish Republic” (all this you’ve seen, Polish data, English, German data; Ukrainian data are absent, and Russian-language data most often conceal this). “The territory of the Second Polish Republic was smaller than that of the First Polish Republic, but its population was still very heterogeneous. Up to 65% of the population of the Second Polish Republic were ethnic Poles, and Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Russians were considered national minorities. About 5 million Ukrainians, constituting about 16% of the total population, were the largest minority of the Second Polish Republic of the country. Ukrainians constituted the majority: about 3.5 million of them lived in the former Habsburg Eastern Galicia, and about 1.5 million in the once Russian Volhynia. At the same time, the population of both large and small cities of southeastern Poland consisted mainly of Jews and Poles. Ukrainians of Galicia…” etc. I won’t quote further.
What do these numbers tell us? On what is built this modern agenda or new agenda ideology, which was brought into Ukraine along with funds at the end of the 20th century? The main pillars, main ideas of this agenda consisted in that this was an imperial system, dominance, imperial oppression; this was a colonial regime. Accordingly, Ukraine’s task is to decolonize, and since the communists were also colonizers, to decommunize. Remember: decommunization and decolonization are two aspects of one problem. In order to justify intolerant, non-European politics regarding languages, culture, especially after 2014-2015, in all Ukrainian history, the most tragic episodes were taken, which were declared intentional genocide by imperial forces.
What we know from 20th-century history: we are taught, first of all, about the Bolshevik massacre or the Makhnovist bands that came from the north, captured Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and established themselves and created an empire here, and Ukraine failed to defend a liberal republican path. Then they tell us about, after Makhno’s bands and Stalinism, they tell us about the “Executed Renaissance,” that’s the early 1930s. And after the Executed Renaissance, they tell us about the Holodomor. After 1945, they focus on the dissident movement and the heroic struggle of the UPA, conditionally from 1943 to 1950, as a resistance movement, which also partly got their sentences, lived, returned, etc. That is, we get the feeling this is total oppression where Ukraine is always the victim.
Therefore, the decolonizer or new agenda, in order to justify modern non-European, non-democratic, illiberal moves, portrays 20th-century history as total destruction. We need to understand this. First, not only was Ukraine not always the victim; it was also a perpetrator. One of the first holocausts was carried out by Khmelnytsky with his Cossacks—they killed Jews and Poles on a national basis. That’s genocide. The Koliivshchyna, sung by Taras Shevchenko—that’s simply massacre and genocide. Jewish pogroms under Petliura—they were also under Denikin. Now they try to justify Petliura, saying he didn’t know, couldn’t influence his atamans. In this book, Vynnychenko directly accuses Petliura of doing nothing to prevent actual genocide or actual pogroms. Summer of 1941, when Germans enter Lviv—that’s a heavy stain on our history. And that’s genocide. Terrible photos, terrible memories: people were simply humiliated and killed and beaten right on the streets. That’s summer 1941. Further, 1943-44, the so-called Volhynia massacre, but simply Volhynia became a byword.
I’m not saying now, since I’m addressing thinking people, that Ukraine is a perpetrator and Ukrainians committed genocide. But I’m also not saying that Ukraine is a victim and always a victim. I’m saying something else: that in the history of humankind, in the history of European nations, especially the last 150 years, often the same nation was both oppressor and victim. Like the Poles between the world wars: it wasn’t Stalinism, not the Gulag, but still an unfair policy towards Ukrainians. But simultaneously Poles were later victims, starting with the arrival of the Germans and in Soviet times when they were simply deported. So too the Germans: they were both victims and, you know what they did. And the French in the 20th century: they were often punishers, but were also victims. The English, Italians, Spaniards, and so on and so forth.
But when your main historical message and construction of history is built on the cult of the absolute victim, and when they tell you that all of Ukraine’s 20th-century history is an attempt to survive in total genocide, the destruction of our culture, and our current state is caused by the Executed Renaissance, the Holodomor, and the struggle of the young guys who fought for the Ukrainian idea under the banner of various groups of Melnyk, Bandera, different groups—this is propaganda falsehood. Because from it conclusions are drawn for modern practical politics: to ban, to cancel, to put one thing instead of another.
And why did I talk about this with a focus on Galicia as the Ukrainian Piedmont? Because if we calmly, without emotions and without inventions (I’ll talk about inventions a little), look at the numbers and ask ourselves, especially addressing residents of Central Ukraine, and also Western Ukraine: when you come to Lviv (I love this city very much and am on very good terms with a number of intellectuals in this city; maybe there are now), my feeling is that this city, this architecture, these churches were created by some other people. And that after 1945, a completely different life began to flow there. And the university, and science, and architecture, and music, and theater—as I quoted, as a young man was told by his teacher, also a very famous philosopher: “You are lucky, we are such lucky people, we live in the most beautiful, most European city of Europe.” That was said in the 1920s of the 20th century.
That is, if we apply these numbers to this (you remember, I hope), then what we call Western Ukraine, in terms of the development of Ukrainian culture and language, arose on three pillars: genocide (of three peoples). The Germans destroyed the Jews with the help of local Ukrainian, Belarusian police in the Baltic countries; they took less part, did not provoke massacres, and the Einsatzgruppen with the command. First, the Jews were destroyed. Then the Germans took on the Poles. And what they didn’t finish, Soviet power finished by deporting Poles from the territory of Western Ukraine. Look: there are no more Jews (I’m talking 1945-46), no more Poles (deportation), Germans—those not killed, what the Czechs did terribly to the Germans, either killed or arrested somewhere, sent to Siberia, or they are waves of refugees who fled further west. What do we see? We see that three peoples, in different percentage, demographic relations—Poles, Jews, and Germans—on the territory of Lviv, Chernivtsi, Lutsk, Rivne created the majority of the intellectual product and determined the profile of city life. Ukrainians in this regard, as we recall from Vynnychenko, from Franko, were a very modest intellectual-cultural group. Many Ukrainian peasants lived in villages, but again, generally ideas of identity are not created by peasants who don’t even know who they are—”tuteishi” (locals), others, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, etc.
So, it is precisely these three peoples that strangely, in quotes, disappeared from these cities, disappeared from this territory. After them remained houses, lands, art galleries, libraries (like the Ossolineum Library), libraries, industry (because although there were few Germans, there still existed industry; for example, Poland, if we talk about Żywiec, or talk about Wedel chocolate, Żywiec beer—that’s all German production). It turns out that this is genocide, linguicide, because in these cities after 1945, at the level of 20-30%, no one spoke German, no one spoke Yiddish, no one spoke Polish on such a scale. That is, it’s linguicide and culturicide.
I’m not saying this is a characteristic of one or another nation. Again, my thesis: that in history, often the same nation can be in one sense a victim, in another a perpetrator. I’m talking about something else. I’m addressing my intellectual colleagues who, like sirens, sing hymns of these new agendas and tell of the terrible genocidal legacy of the empire, simultaneously banning, demolishing, renaming, and putting one culture not as an addition to another, but instead of another. If you think that what I’m saying is only based on Polish, European sources, then for example, if we take the books of the well-known friend of Ukraine, namely Timothy Snyder, we will find there very many facts and arguments that work precisely for my position, although I think in many, most cases we have disagreements.
Here I’ll quote several books from Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands.” He speaks of the Polish operation of Soviet power, when they came to Poland in 1939, and already after 1945, there remained about 70% of the number of Poles in the entire Soviet Union in Western Ukraine, and only… In the course of the Polish operation in Soviet Ukraine, 55,928 people were arrested (this is immediately, the end of the 1930s), of which 47,000 were executed. That is, Soviet power kills Poles starting from 1939-40. In 1937-38, Poles had a probability 12 times higher than the rest of the new population of Soviet Ukraine to be arrested, etc. And further numbers: pages 140, 145, 179—we won’t quote them.
I want to come to other numbers. The Germans destroyed about 1,300,000 Jews in the former eastern Poland from 1941 to 1942 with the help of local police. Some of these Ukrainian police helped. Ukrainian partisan armies in 1943, which under the leadership of Ukrainian nationalists cleansed the once southeastern Poland. This is quoted, “Bloodlands,” pages 424-425, Russian translation. “The OUN of Bandera,” Snyder writes, “a nationalist organization leading a partisan army, had long promised to free and kill Poles. Its ability to kill Poles depended on German training, and the resolve to kill Poles was connected to the desire to cleanse the territory of an assumed enemy before the final confrontation with the Red Army. The UPA killed tens of thousands of Poles and provoked revenge by Poles against the Ukrainian civilian population.” And now attention: “Although the UPA were implacable opponents of communism, the ethnic conflict it began only strengthened the Stalinist empire. Stalin finished what the Ukrainian nationalists started. He continued to remove Poles, attaching the contested Polish territory to Soviet Ukraine.“
That is, what we call Western Ukraine—and this is not propaganda, these are numbers, judgments of historians, judgments of philosophers—what we now call Western Ukraine, where the majority are Ukrainians, where the Ukrainian language is dominant, from here was born the complex idea of the Ukrainian Piedmont in some golden periods of the late 19th, early 20th century, as a result of imperial politics at the beginning, of National Socialists, then of Ukrainian nationalists (not imperial, but nationalist politics), and of the imperial politics of Stalin (if you like, you call all this empires). Essentially, Hitler and Stalin cleared for Ukraine the predominance of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainians in this region, especially in large cities. That’s one.
And second, initially the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, and then the Yalta agreements, which secured the theft, part of then internationally recognized Polish territory, and its alienation into the composition… And it’s interesting: when people hear that Stalin essentially annexed Western Ukraine to the Soviet Union, and therefore Ukraine within the 1991 borders is a product of, unquestionably on one hand Lenin (because those, Hrushevsky, Vynnychenko, and Petliura, lost; who annexed? Lenin), that this is essentially a product of the imperial activity of Lenin, Hitler, Stalin—people whom I do not accept, but these are facts. And when these facts are named, they say to me: “This is all propaganda.” What, did Bandera create the 1991 borders? Or Vynnychenko with Hrushevsky? Again, Hrushevsky went to serve the Soviet Union and even served as the head of a major academic institution and died under mysterious circumstances in the years of arrests, even before a very old age, in the mid-1930s. Vynnychenko, in conclusion…
I’ll return to this book: Vynnychenko, who called for world revolution, for communism, and said that Petliura’s problems consisted in that he wanted to be a mystical petty-bourgeois worldview person with the masses, the peasantry, and the workers. And both Vynnychenko and Hrushevsky, and partly Petliura, were practically communists in politics. Because the texts of the Directory, the program with which the Directory entered Kyiv in the winter of 1918, is the expropriation of landowners’ lands, the expropriation of factories and plants. That is, how do they differ from communists? Therefore Vynnychenko—practically no difference, only “we bet on revolution,” and Petliura got scared. That is, people came and said: we will take land from owners, give it just like that to peasants; we will take factories and plants and give them just like that to workers. Question: the 1990s showed, can workers manage a plant without special preparation? Can they manage a factory, a large industrial object, large land spaces? A person who had a small plot—can he manage if he has no skills, no machinery, no special education? No, he cannot. Then who will manage? And so Vynnychenko, Petliura, and Hrushevsky, and their like, they thought so. Or Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin. That is, the communist top took everything under the guise of giving away someone else’s property for free. Just as Ukrainians received wonderful apartments in wonderful old buildings built by Poles, Jews, Germans in Lviv, Chernivtsi—these houses were expropriated, stolen, and given for what? For serving the new system. A Ukrainian family settling into a wonderful apartment in the old town—this family was settled by Soviet power not for struggle, but for service to Soviet power.
And therefore, when someone says, “I’m a native Lvivian, we are such-and-such guys,” we heard the numbers about native Lvivians. One, just as many Kyivans, and exactly the same, these people who lived there, and the laundry was still warm, dinner just cooked, or a book opened for reading—these people disappeared.
I’m saying this not in order to stir up, say, one anger against another. This is a rational discussion in order that we change, stop throwing around phrases: decolonization, decommunization, “they oppressed us, they hindered us, we are like this because all our flower was executed, killed, strangled.”
In conclusion, I’ll say about… Sometimes in comments: “But the Executed Renaissance.” Look at the matter: the image of the “Executed Renaissance,” which is invented here… Have just 10 more minutes of patience, I want you to literally understand. This has entered and gone into schools, universities, since the 1990s. But what did Vynnychenko himself understand by this? Have you thought about it? And I’ll tell you now.
Generally, the last chapter, well, simply “To the New Order” evokes communist. He believes that only the friendship of Ukraine with Russia, of two Bolshevik systems, can change the world and defeat capital, the bourgeoisie, and the liberal world. Here’s what he writes now about the “Revival”: “The revival of the Ukrainian nation”—this is page 497, reprint, Kyiv-Vienna, 1920, 3 volumes. “The revival of the Ukrainian nation in the national Ukraine is decided and timely in harmony with social liberation. This is also the axiom of the three-year experience of our revolution: that the more rightist and reactionary were all regimes in Ukraine, the greater and deeper was the humiliation of the Ukrainian nationality.” Translating concisely: the more rightist ideas, the more destruction of Ukrainians.
And then on the next page, 499, he says directly: the more leftist the idea, the more social-political revolution, the more Ukrainian revival. Quoting the original so no one thinks I’m making it up: page 499: “Already it is clear: the more leftist (he writes through ‘щ’) the social-political regime in Ukraine will be, the more it will be favorable for the national revival of our people. The fuller the social liberation, the more necessarily it will bring with it the full national revival. From this point of view, it is clear that of all the regimes that can be in Ukraine, the fullest can ensure the national revival of our people is the regime of national-Ukrainian Soviet socialist power.”
And finally, page 500: “The revolution in Ukraine, as in Russia, so or otherwise, its fate depends on the Great World Revolution in Western Europe. And so, it can be said that the fate of the revival and liberation of the Ukrainian nation depends on the worldwide struggle of socialism with capital.” That is, the revival of the national Ukraine is communism. There it’s called socialism, social liberation. But in a number of pages it directly says that we were more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks. And the 1920s showed how he collaborated with the Bolsheviks. He even, first, personally knew Lenin, and then when he was invited in the early 1920s, he met with Stalin and with Trotsky; he quotes Trotsky perfectly as an authority, and very, very respectfully.
So, when we speak of the “Executed Renaissance,” everything falls into place. This is the early 1930s. But before this tragic and terrible act of history was committed, the Bolsheviks from 1917 to the 1920s executed the flower of the officer corps, the flower of the financial and industrial empire. Many writers, intellectuals, scientists were executed; many were lucky in 1922 to be expelled from the country—the philosophers’ ships, philosophers’ trains, etc. Already in 1921, Shpet was executed in Lviv. And already, parallel with the execution of the Ukrainian revival, parallel, they take on Shpet, who would be executed, a Kyivite; father Pavel Florensky almost perished in a camp; then still young Likhachev; hundreds and thousands of representatives of the elite of that old, in the eyes of Stalinism, were doomed to death.
But if Florensky, Shpet, or Mandelstam (died in a camp), or someone else—that’s still a bit of the intelligentsia and elite of deeper roots—then those people who are called the Ukrainian revival, these are all people who served communism. This is not to justify in any way, because in some of you a shift, displacement of the brain occurs when you hear this. Again, this is a crime. This crime was committed parallel with the execution of elites, not only Russian-speaking, but of other nations. When the Baltic countries were annexed, they went through the Baltic countries. When Lviv was annexed, they went through the Polish, German elites, etc.
This I say to what? Because it was parallel. And when you say that the reason for the execution, the “Executed Renaissance,” is the reason for the decline of our elites, culture, art, etc., don’t forget that a much greater number of representatives of the imperial elite were executed earlier, in the early 1930s. And Stalinism fought with the Russian… For him, the fight for the Russian… to execute the Ukrainian—this is a construction of guys who studied for 5-6 months only in some American leftist universities. Because Stalinism all through the 1920s, as you know, conducted the most brutal Ukrainization. That’s what appealed to Vynnychenko and Hrushevsky. Two of Franko’s sons did everything to reunite with the Soviet Republic—also one of them later perished in NKVD walls, but they fought on the side of communism. Yuriy Kotlyubynsky entered Kyiv together, leading the Bolsheviks. He later in the 1920s interacted with Petro Shelest, Yevhen… wrote this “unification” or “union,” two terms. On January 20, 1919, when we once again will write this nonsense, don’t forget that when the Ukrainian power of the Directory and part of the Sich Riflemen found themselves squeezed between two forces—Poles and Denikin in the summer of 1919—then in Kamianets-Podilskyi there was a split. And one part, actually part of the Petliurists, said we will now interact with the Poles and for this interaction give them all of Galicia and all of Volhynia and Podillia. And another group, the Sich Riflemen, and all these wonderful creators who say, said: we will be with Denikin and will be part of a united indivisible Russia and demand autonomy from Denikin. That is, they had a split. And it was precisely the Galicians who went to serve the idea of a united indivisible Russia, and the Petliurists went to conspire with Piłsudski. And it was precisely the Poles together with the Petliurists who entered Kyiv in May, early June, and then history went on.
But also remember this: and when these treaties were concluded between the Sich Riflemen and the Denikinists, the Act of Union was denounced by the same people who signed it. But we are not told about this. They point to it as some symbol, some symbolic fact. But then already the Petliurists were leaving, enemies were squeezing them out; essentially it was such a gesture: let’s write something. But it was denounced half a year later, less than a year later.
We will continue to live by myths, or should we after all, my conclusion on a positive note, make a small transformation of our consciousness and understand that we did not have a golden past, we did not have some hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of great representatives of the elite, and that all that was created in the 20th century was created practically from scratch in different difficult situations, and that Ukraine is a project of the future, and that we need to think about how to build a complex space for interaction of different cultures and languages. In this is our future.
They establish theirs instead of another, eradicating the other. The myth of the Ukrainian Piedmont, of Galicia as the center of spreading the correct teaching, as you see, is false. It arose through the displacement and replacement, to put it mildly, of culture. And if we in the 21st century, as a revanche, turning to this past, justify our barbarism, bans, pressure, by saying, “But they did that to us then, and now we do to them,” this means a path to nowhere. We will not have a future because the majority of those who are banned today are natives of Ukraine, praised Ukraine, and such cities as Kyiv, I will call the old name—Yelysavethrad, by the way Vynnychenko also was born in present-day Kropyvnytskyi, as was the great poet Arseniy Tarkovsky. Katerynoslav, Dnipro, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy—so now I understand how many interesting people were born in Cherkasy, in Zhytomyr how many people were born—this is all the flower of science, culture, art, etc.
Therefore, I call on you not to be captivated by these ideological propaganda stories about a genocidal past, about a colonial imperial past, which, as you see, I tried to show in my conversation, is told not with the goals of learning history as it really was (that is not interesting to anyone, historians are complex, they argue among themselves), but I, having pointed to facts, with the goal of creating an instrument for dominance, not competition of ideas, but destruction of competitors; not building interaction between cultures, but destruction of one culture at the expense of another. One cannot build a culture on the destruction of another culture. One cannot create real elites by destroying other elites. One cannot create civilization by destroying civilization. This is a path to nowhere.
And this was the goal of my conversation: precisely to reveal this main idea. And so, of course, comment, criticize, write your vision, give your sources. All this exists, is not deleted, and everyone can read, learn sources exist; we must rely on them. Subscribe to my channel, like, don’t forget to subscribe to Polis space, to my Patreon channel. And of course, we are resuming classes at the school; you are welcome to join at any time. All information is in the description. Goodbye.