Let's begin to answer people unfortunately misled into spouting the typical "Ukrainian" nationalist line of nonsense and quackery. Firstly, pogroms in Tsarist Russia were not state sponsored, but local phenomena which had occured for centuries, normally sparked by religious or economic concerns, but in the late imperial period, some of the culturally traditional populace acted in political violence, in response to the radical ideas of revolutionaries and some in the press who happened to be Jewish. The whole Jewish community was unfortunately scapegoated and these events only led to their further radicalization and revolutionary fervor. Petlura et al. did indeed at least turn a blind eye to pogroms, if not outright call for them, and they in turn became massacres, as opposed to the street violence of the Tsarist era. It was a systematized policy that was carried out as revolutionary violence in areas of the Ukraine under his control. Some today maintain that it was his military commanders going rogue, but Petlura was known for his heavy handedness in regard to dealing with his subordinates, his personal anti-semitism, and he never once spoke out in opposition to these acts, but frequently praised these very same commanders after they had "committed their deeds of valor for the independent Ukraine."
The word "pogrom" is an old Russian word generally meaning massacre or atrocity and is first commonly used in the Primary Chronicles in connection with the Mongol conquest of Rus'.
As far as "Ukrainian nationalism" in the Soviet Ukraine is concerned, it was STATE SPONSORED, and Lenin made it a point to inaugurate a systematic programme of "ukrainoznavstvo" throughout the Ukraine to uproot "counter revolutionary tendencies" and to "liberate the Ukrainian people from imperialistic bourgeois thinking."
RUSIN nationality, which is what WAS HISTORICAL was uprooted and attacked vociferously by the Soviets and their Ukrainian nationalist lackeys for decades until today where Rusin, once commonly greeted as an ethnic appelation historically throughout the region, now to some only means those of Carpatho Rusyn heritage.
"Ukrainians" did not suffer as a group in Tsarist Russia, as they were treated as ANY OTHER RUSSIANS, and many times occupied the highest posts in Russian society and had done so since Perejaslavl' when the Ukraine began to be reunited with Rus'. The books which were banned by the Tsar' in the mid nineteenth century were printed on Austrian territory and disseminated by newly created "Ukrainian nationalist" organizations with the express intent of fomenting insurrection, the creation of a new "nationality," and the union of this territory to the Austro-Hungarian empire. "Ukrainians" were not killed by Tsarist Russia, nor were they even sought out, for they represented a SMALL MINORITY, alienated from the ethnically RUSIN population, whose origins were anything but "Ukrainian" as the initial impulse for the movement came from GREAT RUSSIAN NARODNIKS, Dragomanov and Kostamarov, who felt the Little Russian populations to be so "atavized" in their eyes, that if they created a "nationality" for them in their "state of nature," these Great Russian narodniks wanted to test Rousseau's and other political philosopher's thinking at the time to see what "primative peoples" would do and how they would congregate.
Thus, "Ukrainian nationalism" was formed under the genuine auspices of Great Russian chauvinism with an utter contempt for the "Ukrainian" people. Kostamarov and Dragomanov were neither imprisoned nor harmed in any way--they were exiled to Austria where they continued their work in the creation of the "Ukrainian nationality" UNDER STATE SPONSORSHIP for the Austrian government, which feared the RUSIN AWAKENING which began shortly after the Russian army aided the Austrians in putting down the Hungarian revolution and Rusins came into contact with FREE RUSSIANS from the Russian Empire and began seeking All Russian unity and pan-Slavism.
What was suppressed and met by violence, pogroms, concentration camps and public executions as well as mass arrests was the Rusin Awakening IN AUSTRIA HUNGARY. The "Ukrainian nationalists," the Uniate church and the Austrian secret police were the perpetrators.
The Russian Brotherhood in Lvov, which had existed for over three centuries was closed and "Ukrainian national organizations" put in its place. Rusin newspapers and presses were either coopted or suppressed with acts of state sponsored political violence and executions. Return to Orthodoxy was punishable by imprisonment. Having a book printed in cyrillic left one open to summary arrest.
Then came the famine of the 1910s in Austrian occupied Russia where the people suffered from hunger. The Tsar mobilized aid and relief for the suffering Rusin populations in Austria only to have it stopped at the border, for UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS had impressed upon the Austrian crown the need to "halt russophile propaganda." The Tsar' had the aid restamped as coming from the Austrian crown and distributed by its agencies to feed his Russian people undergoing Austrian occupation. During the war, the Rusins of Austria greeted him with the title "kormilets," ie he who feeds us.
It was "Ukrainian nationalists" mercilessly sponsoring famine and artificially worsening it at the beginning of the twentieth century for their quack and ahistorical notions of nationality.
While when the First World War came, "Ukrainian nationalists" and the Uniate church denounced "russophiles" and "Orthodox sympathizers" and all of "Rusin nationality" to the Austrian government, whereupon thousands were rounded up into the first concentration camps like TALERHOFF and tortured, executed, starved to death, maimed, etc. "Ukrainian nationalism" played an ugly role there as well in STATE SPONSORED POGROMS.
While the Austrian role in creation and promotion of the FICTIONAL "Ukrainian nationality" was so pronounced that even radicals like Hrushevsky were put upon to change the names of their works, eg his opus "A History of the Ukraine" WAS INITIALLY TITLED "A HISTORY OF RUS'" until the Austrian secret police and "Ukrainian nationalist" organizations impressed upon him the need to "stop russophile/Rusin" propaganda and CHANGED THE TITLE WITH ALOT OF "Ukrainian nationalist" editing added.
So totalitarian states and ideology? Oh yeah, in spades,IN BLUE AND YELLOW THAT IS--it wasn't until the mid 1930s that "Ukrainian nationalism" fell out of favor with Stalin, and then because the Vatican and Hitler had picked up on it and were using it for propaganda purposes more effectively than the Bolsheviks were.
As far as the "golodomors" are concerned, they were state sponsored and their effects were artificially worsened by the government, but were tactics learned by the Bolsheviks from Austria and the Ukrainian nationalists!
While the famines of 1932-33 were a SOUTHERN RUSSIAN PHENOMENON not limited to the Ukraine, but to all of Southern Russia and the Volga region. Why, Lenin in the 1920s had orchestrated just these types of famines in the Kuban and along the Volga using them as revolutionary violence, where many of "Ukrainian" sensibilities like Petlura and Vynnichenko found them to be appropriate and effective "in combatting counter revolutionary tendencies" and "overcoming the prejudices of the Russian Orthodox church."
It seems that artificial famine wasn't anything that "Ukrainian nationalists" frowned upon until it was employed against them.
The war against NEP and the Kulaks happened throughout Russia. Whereas, the Ukraine in 1932-33 was even more russophone and less "Ukrainian conscious" than it is today. The population saw itself generally as RUSSIAN or RUSIN, with only the younger generation, in minority, gravitating toward Bolshevik sponsored "Ukrainian nationalism." While there wasn't even a set "Ukrainian language" to speak at the time (There still isn't as it continues to "update its lexicon" and "derussify," ie removes elements inherited from its Middle Ruthenian parent, every six months).
Galicia, Bukovina, Carpatho Russia are historically territories known as CHERVONAJA RUS' = RED RUSSIA. They are NOT part of the territory of the Ukraine. Their populations are historically NOT "Ukrainian" and called themselves HISTORICALLY RUSIN or OUTRIGHT RUSSIAN.
Most "Ukrainian" Canadian settlers are from these territories. They are not Ukrainians historically or even ethnically, but a RELATED Russian sub-ethnos.
The word "Ukraina" means a borderland, frontier, disputed territory which was applied to the territory in question after the Mongol conquest AND WAS NEVER USED IN REFERENCE TO IT DURING THE ERA OF KIEVAN RUS' as the word "ukraina" implies an uncivilized wilderness territory and the territory in question during the Kievan era was by no means "uncivilized" but was more developed and populated than the Western Europe of its era.
Use of the term "ukraina" begs the question "UKRAINA CHEVO?!" "RUSI!!!" is the answer. In other words, a "Ukraine of what?" Of "Russia." A frontier of Russia. That is the historical understanding of this territory. Galicia was not a frontier as it had retained its civilization from Kievan times so it would NOT AT ALL be considered part of the "Ukraine."
Whereas, the "Ukrainian" appelation was historically REGIONAL, not national. It became such under hostile and quack currents. To correct it and apply an ethnic accuracy to it, one would accurately write "Ukraino-Rus'" and "Ukraino-Rusin" as taxonomical labels for the territory and its people. That would be historically accurate.
But in the end, "the Ukraine" and "Ukrainians" cannot escape the historical fact of their place historically as one branch of the ONE RUSSIAN PEOPLE on historically RUSSIAN territory.
R M Malleev-Pokrovsky
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