The real contrast is not between Ukrainians and other Soviet peoples, but between Soviet peoples and Western Europeans. In general, Soviet peoples were killed in far higher numbers in and out of uniform by the Germans than were Western Europeans. Far, far more people in Ukraine were killed by the Germans than collaborated with them, something which is not true of any occupied country in continental Western Europe. For that matter, far, far more people from Ukraine fought against the Germans than on the side of the Germans, which is again something that is not true of any continental Western European country. The vast majority of Ukrainians who fought in the war did so in the uniform of the Red Army. More Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht than American, British, and French soldiers—combined. Russian propaganda today falsely insists that the Red Army was a Russian army. And if the Red Army is seen as a Russian army, then Ukrainians must have been the enemy. This line of thinking was invented by Stalin himself at the end of the war. After Ukrainians were praised during the war for their suffering and resistance, they were slandered and purged after the war for their disloyalty. As late Stalinism merged with a certain kind of Russian nationalism, Stalin’s idea of the Great Patriotic War had two purposes: It started the action in 1941 rather than 1939 so that the Nazi-Soviet alliance was forgotten, and it placed Russia at the center of events even though Ukraine was much more at the center of the war, and Jews were its chief victims.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 13:21:35 +0000