Posts Tagged ‘History’

Commemoration day of war in Georgia in 2008

Monday, August 9th, 2010

As we all know, two years ago there was Russian-Georgian war inspired by Russian government and president. Recently about 20% of Georgian territory remains occupied by Russian forces. Russia violates the Mevedev-Sarkozy cease-fire agreement. Russia showed its real face again. The whole world has to understand, that Russia doesn’t obey any international agreement. I really hope that the territorial integrity of Georgia will be restored.

The clash of civilizations in the center of Ukraine

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

This year, almost simultaneously, the court of Donetsk refused to consider Stepan Bandera and Roman Choukhevytch as heroes, but the city councils of Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk gave them the title of Citizens of honor.
The same people for the same actions are considered in one case as heroes and in the other case as criminals, and this is not a personal preference, but decisions of state institutions.
If such an assessment could be heard about this issue from Moscow and Tbilisi, Tehran and Washington, it would be clear that these warring parties are diametrically opposed in their evaluations. But Donetsk, Ternopil are not combatants, they are situated in the same country.
So we can consider this fact as a form of complicated schizophrenia.
The dual personality of a state occurs when two different civilizations coexist in one country.

Civilizational paradigm

This term has gained popularity in political science after the book named “The Clash of Civilizations” by Samuel Huntington published in 1996 – “. When the global conflict between communism and capitalism is over, the author considers the clash of civilizations as the main conflict in modern history.
A civilization can be created by a group of nations and countries, for example, the modern Western civilization. It is also possible that one country forms just one civilization, like China.
It may also happen that two civilizations exist simultaneously in a single country.
Huntington calls these countries as “divided countries”. Such as: Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Ukraine. However, he determines a dividing line and its nature in Ukraine without deep analysis, that’s where he is wrong.
The conflict that divides Ukraine, according to Huntington, is a conflict between Western and Orthodox civilizations. “Western civilization” in Ukraine is represented by the residential areas of the Greek Catholics. So the dividing line should be placed on the territory between Galicia and Volyn and the rest of Ukraine.
As visual confirmation, Huntington uses the results of voting in presidential elections of 1994. At that time, the dividing line was at the eastern border region of Kyiv, Cherkasy, and south of the Cherkasy region, Vinnytsia. But it is clear that these regions are not Greek Catholic, if we take into account the dominant faith.
The results of the presidential elections of 2004 and 2010 and parliamentary elections of 2007 are even more revealing.
The results provide a stable line, which shows that the “western” Ukraine includes the regions of Chernihiv, Sumy and Poltava, which neither geographically nor by religion belong to the line drawn by Huntington.
The stability of such a division is enough to analyze its nature. It is clear it’s not religious. The same Orthodox people live in the two sides of the dividing line.
According to Huntington, in the eastern side of the dividing line lives “the Orthodox civilization.” But more specifically we call this civilization “Russian” or “Eurasian”. Now Russia, including its Muslim population, created a special independent civilization, which also includes the Central Asian republics of the former USSR, which have become independent countries, without leaving the Russian cultural area.
So, the religious definition of civilization is not correct. It includes the Orthodox and Muslims, and also many atheists, formed as a result of Soviet anti-religious policy.
So it is logical that the civilizational division in Ukraine has no religious specification.

The oldest proof

“Kyiv was invaded in March, the twentieth day, Wednesday of the second week of Lent. And they have looted the entire city for two days. And there was no pity: the churches were burning, the Christians were killed, others were captured, and also women, children cried while watching their parents killed.
And they took a lot of goods, and have stolen things in the churches, and they have removed the bells … and all the shrines were also looted. And even the monastery of Saint-Mary of Lavra was burning, but God through the prayers of St. Mary, saved it.”

This is an excerpt from a report about the total theft and destruction of Kyiv in 1169. This is neither the Kumans, nor the Mongols, this is the army of Grand Duke of Vladimir Andrei I Bogolyubsky and other princes, that he has invited to the case.
Serious conflicts, including murder, were common under the Rurik dynasty. The march on Kyiv of princes of Rus’ is not surprising, the innovation of the Grand Duke Andrei I Bogolyubsky was the fact that he did not want to get the city, but he also wanted to destroy Kyiv.
But why? It was not a civil or religious war. The act of the Grand Duke Andrei did not seem motivated, even the reason for the destruction of Kyiv is absent in the chronicle.
The explanation given by Hrushevskyi seems to be plausible.
Imagine that the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal is America of Kyivan Rus’, it started to develop quickly during the reign of Andrei I Bogolyubsky. Andrei has created that principality as an autocratic state from the very beginning, the beginning of a future Russian absolutism and despotism. So we can understand its relationship with Kyiv.
Hrushevskyi writes, for Andrei “historical traditions related to Kyiv were not nice… this infinite gallery of Princes, the influence of the boyars and the political role of communities. There was no hope to overcome the situation, and Andrei did everything to destroy, humiliate Kyiv.”
If Hrushevskyi is right, the destruction of Kyiv by Grand Duke Andrei can be considered as the first sign of the conflict of civilizations between the Western and the Eurasian.
Although these civilizations did not exist at that time, they were going to settle few centuries later.

Testimonials of Sigismund von Herberstein

In the early sixteenth century in Western Europe there was no expert more enlightened about the countries of Eastern Europe and the Muscovy than Sigismund von Herbertsein, a distinguished diplomat of the Habsburg Royal House.
It reflects the unprecedented power of the Czar in Moscow: “The authority he has on people exceeds the one of all the monarchs of the world … He oppresses everyone and aggravates the slavery. If he gives an order to someone to be in his court or go to war, or be an ambassador, he must obey orders at his own funds.”
Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin were not yet born – but the possibility of a servile use of any person is undeniable. In addition, it is the accepted norm in society.
“These people are happier in slavery than in freedom” – this sentence from Herberstein has become a stamp to determine the merits of the political culture of Russia in the centuries to come.
And what about the European part of Rus’?
At that time it was Lithuania which in the description of Herberstein, extended from Livonia (modern Latvia) to Cherkassy (modern Ukraine). So, at that time, the European part of Rus’ was composed mainly of land of modern Belarus and modern Ukraine.
This is not surprising that Lithuania was predominantly Orthodox, and not Catholic. According to Herberstein, most famous Lithuanians of the time were the Dukes Konstanty Ostrozky and Mychaylo Hlynsky, native Volhyniens and not Lithuanians at all.
Another fact: the original version of “The Lithuanian Statute” was written in Ruthenia language in XVI century.
The lack of authority of the monarch of Lithuania to his subjects surprised Herberstein, especially compared with Muscovy. The Lithuanian magnates, he said, “do not use so much freedom and goodness of their King, but they abuse it.”
It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast between the neighbor countries, political freedom in Lithuania and the serious despotism of the Muscovy.

Where the dividing line is?

As you can see, we can found in ancient history, incredible testimonies with fundamental difference between two political cultures. The place of this line today can be demonstrated very effectively by many criteria, including the most obvious – the electoral geography.
All national elections from 2004 to 2010 give the same line:
Electoral division of Ukraine
I do not know who firstly noticed that this line is the historical border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth century.
I think that the first was Mykola Ryabtchuk who wrote about this division line: “The Polish-Lithuanian… Commonwealth was not an ideal place to live, but it was another civilization than Muscovy. People used to live a long time outside of Russia and the Soviet Union. The south and east, pay attention to this, have never lived outside the USSR or Russia…”
Stanislav Bilytchenko made another interesting geographical comparison: This map shows the distribution of the Ukrainian language as mother tongue according to the latest census. The fact is that this division is not accidental, is also confirmed by a research from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, where it is proved that in Ukraine the political choice is not based on political platforms but on national feelings.
And finally one more thing on the dividing line.
Here is an excerpt from a press release of GFK about the results of the survey on Ukraine’s accession to the EU carried out 16 May 2010. “The inhabitants of central and western regions, and also Kyiv support the possible accession of Ukraine to the EU – 69%, 61% and 60% respectively. At the same time the inhabitants of eastern and southern express more actively against membership – 35% and 31% respectively. »
A direct question about the civilizational identity – a straight answer about who is who.

Possible variants

In the conflict of two civilizations, in this case of Western and Eurasian civilizations in a single country, the following developments are possible:
1. Eurasian civilization conquers Western civilization.
2. Western civilization conquers the Eurasian civilization.
3. The status quo is preserved.
4. Each of the warring civilizations creates its own separate state.
Option 1. The easier one. This is the situation of the last three hundred years, but significantly reducing positions of Eurasians compared to previous years.
First, we must say they do not dominate by number, just as when Ukraine was a part of Russia and the USSR. Secondly, they have no repressive forces as they used to have in the USSR. Therefore, the total removal of the representatives of the other civilization, as it used to be after the accession of Western Ukraine to the USSR, does not seem to be real. At least, the required repressive apparatus is not yet renewed.
So the future development of this option would be – the repressive use of Ministry of Interior, Security Service of Ukraine, the Prosecutor’s Office, courts, tax services primarily against political opponents and journalists, and then against all dissidents.
Option 2. The least likely due to two factors. Firstly, there is no significant advantage of number in Ukraine, and secondly, the total inability to act together and strictly.
The presence of these two factors in Latvia and Estonia has brought a quick victory to Western civilization.
In Ukraine, even in the 2005-2009 period, when there was a chance to conquer the population of Eurasian cultural regions, there was no action. These regions were not – de facto – subordinated to the center, which was just pretending to manage them.
It remains the possibility of a peaceful conquest, the gradual cultural acquisition. It’s theoretically possible, but the process can take a considerable amount of time. We never noticed any sign of this process over the past 20 years.
Option 3. In practice, this can be accomplished by the division of power among the representatives of both cultures.
The country is divided administratively into equal numbers of Eurasian and Western lands, which form proportionally a federal parliament, split the posts of President and Prime Minister. Much of the power and budget remain at the level of the land.
This construction is possible, but very unstable. The change of social groups, the contradiction of the new social balance to the old political structure, the intervention of the extremists – all this issues build up over the years and imbalance the situation. And we go to one of three options.
Option 4. Representatives of each of the two civilizations do not want to consider this option because both parts think subconsciously, that one of it can overcome the other part and dominate the whole territory.
They are all for a united Ukraine. Maybe they are right, more specifically – one of them. But this remains very hypothetical.
This dominance in any case will be violent.
Nobody can persuade the other party. Furthermore, nobody wants to convince the other party.
We then choose consciously violent conquest of representatives of a culture by the representatives of the other. On balance there is on one side, the negative of the preservation of a violent state, and the other side – the ill process of creating of two states civilly homogeneous, mostly less confrontational.
Today nobody is going to say on which side will tip the balance. It’s clear that we cannot live like this anymore. But how it’s possible? This is not yet clear.
May God give Ukraine the forces to implement the option that will bring misfortune to less people as possible. And may God gives us the spirit of finding this option.

http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2010/06/11/5126765/

To deport Ukrainians to the distant regions of the USSR

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Top secret

Order No. 0078/42 22 June 1944

The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR
Moscow

The undercover intelligence discovered: the last time in Ukraine, particularly in the region of Kyiv, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Rivne and in other regions, there is obvious hostile atmosphere against the Red Army and Soviet government. In some districts and regions Ukrainian people opposes to exercise the events of party and of government about the restoration of kolkhozes and (forced) delivery the meal for the needs of the Red Army. To disrupt the construction of collective farms, they kill cattle. To disrupt the food supply for the Red Army, they bury the bread in the ground. In many regions of Ukraine the hostile elements consisted mostly of people seeking refuge from the mobilization to Red Army, were organized in the “green” woods groups that explode and attack military convoys and small military units, as well as they are murdering the representatives of local soviet government. Some Red Army soldiers and commanders fell under the influence of the semi-fascist and Ukrainian soldiers mobilized by the Red Army in the liberated regions of Ukraine have begun to degrade and to call on enemy.
What is written above shows that the Ukrainian population has been on the path of sabotage against the Red Army and Soviet power and sought to return the German occupiers. Therefore, to eliminate and control the Red Army soldiers mobilized and commanders of the liberated areas of Ukraine, I order:

1. To deport all Ukrainians who lived under German occupation to the distant regions of the USSR.
2. Run the expulsion:
a) Above all, Ukrainians who have worked and served for the Germans;
b) Expel the rest of the Ukrainians, who are familiar with life during the German occupation;
c) begin deportation after when the harvest will be delivered to the State for the purposes of the Red Army;
d) expulsion should be carried out only at night and suddenly, to prevent the cases of escape, and not introduce them to family members who are in the Red Army.
3. Establish control over the soldiers of the Red Army and the commanders from the occupied areas:
a) create special files for each person in the responsible departments;
b) check all the letters not by censorship but by a special department;
c) attach one undercover officer for 5 commanders and soldiers.
4. 4. To fight against the Anti-Soviet bandits, 12th and 25th punitive divisions of NKVD should be transferred.

To announce this order down to the level of regiment commanders inclusive.

The People’s Commissioner for Internal Affairs of the USSR, Beria
Deputy Commissioner of the popular defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov
True: 4th Department Head colonel (Fedorov)

On materials of Chuev F.: Soldiers of the Empire: Interviews. Memoirs. Documents. – Moscow, 1998

Treasures of Polubotok and the Bank of England

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

GoldIn XVIII century sons of hetman Pavlo Polubotok (1660 – 1724) put a huge amount of money to the British East India Company (also known as B.E.I.C.) with an interest of 4% per year. There are two conditions under which we can get the money back are:
1. being a direct descendant of hetman
2. when Ukraine gains its independence
It’s known that during the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917 – 1920) there was a case when a man came from Argentina to Vienna in the embassy of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Austria, and said that he’s a direct descendant of hetman Polubotok. Then the ambassador of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Austria demanded a meeting with a representative of the B.E.I.C., but such a company ceased to exist in 1858 and the entire capital and the deposit liabilities moved to the Bank of England. So it was the representative of the Bank of England who came. Further, there is no precise information what happened then. But we also know that no money has ever been sent to Ukraine.

According to the estimations the amount of money which the Bank of England has to pay to Ukraine is about £1 trillion. Of course, if we put out such an amount from the fiscal system of the Great Britain, it’ll be a big problem. But I think Ukraine would agree on repayment via tranches. However, the UK doesn’t think about repayment, because the Ukrainian government does eventually nothing to get repayment.

Generally, we can’t say for sure whether it’s a fiction or a legend, or this event took place. But I’d like to mention one interesting thing to justify that this story is true. Time of the economic prosperity of the United Kingdom and the time of putting the money on deposit account by hetman’s sons match the XVIII century. Maybe in the same way England has earned a lot of money, and this case concerns not only Ukraine but also a lot of other states.

2010 – The year of Russia in France

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Sarko - MedvedThere is nothing wrong, but the fact that it’s not only the year of Russia in France, but also a year of Kyivan Rus’ in France. At the first glance, it’s difficult to understand what’s the problem. But the problem is that for French people the word Rus’ and Russia are synonyms. So in this way the historical truth is distorted. Since Ukraine is the heart of Rus’, and is the place where began Kyivan Rus’. Kyiv was its capital, as is now the capital of Ukraine.
On the Louvre’s request to send exponents, Ukrainian museums refused to provide this exhibition with their exponents, organized by Louvre under the name of “Holy Russia”. In such a way Ukrainians are boycotting the historical injustice.
The French people believe in “twins” Ukraine and Russia. They do believe that this two nations are fraternal (see the same people). But let’s imagine the situation if the French said that the Roman Empire is the Motherland of France? And the Italians, Spaniards, Romanians and other nations are fraternal or are the same people?
In my opinion, the French people are so arrogant to learn more on this question. For them, pro-Russian information of the French government and mass media are the only truth.
The attitude to my state and people insults me.