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Unbelievable
Today I learned that some idiot leftists (Americans, I might add, not Russians, though Russians are loathe to admit the Holodomor too) are denying the reality of the Holodomor. This was Stalin’s genocide of Ukrainians, and it stands as a testament to the inevitable brutality of communism and also the utter, unbelievable stupidity of forced collectivism. The collective farms (which had been wrested away from their proper owners by force) quite simply failed. When they couldn’t meet Stalin’s excessive quotas, he tripled the quotas and blocked any shipments of food into the area. Stalin’s troops under his orders took what food there was and left the people to die. That’s communism for you: a breadline with no bread at the end or a gulag. Make no mistake: those of you thinking “our communism will be different” (or socialism or Marxism) are not only wrong, but deluded narcissists who, peevish because you yourselves have nothing want to make sure everyone else suffers too. Get a job.
(this is a photo of my friend Tove’s home town during the Holodomor)
It’s difficult to educate leftists because they have zero grasp of history and don’t want to learn. Learning would damage their ideology and for leftists it’s ideology über alles. Regardless, here are a few videos that discuss the Holodomor. Educate yourselves. Genocide denial is a particularly gross thing in the plethora of grossness that forms the leftist worldview.
Conspiracy of Silence: Covering up the Holodomor here.
The Insanity of Holodomor Denial here.
A basic History of the Worst Man-Made Famine here
I also recommend the books “Bloodlands” by T. Snyder, “Red Famine” by Anna Applebaum (who also wrote one of the first serious in-depth historical examinations of the Soviet Gulag system), and just for general history, “The Gates of Europe: A History of the Ukraine” by Sergei Plokhy.
I’m not sure why this isn’t taught in school, but early 20th century history seems to be given seriously short shrift. I’ve guest taught two college classes where I would estimate at least half the class did not know what the Holocaust was let alone the Holodomor. Historical education is crucial. If we don’t know where we’ve been, good and bad, we’re going to keep making the same mistakes. History is crucial and it’s not being properly taught.
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Clarification
Several people have asked me why I removed my post severely criticizing the very misguided protestors who are “standing with Palestine.” I think this Israeli-Palestinian war and moreover the way it has been covered in American media, has really ripped the mask off those who think themselves good and moral people and has shown something truly vile lying beneath the surface. Children who cannot even find Israel on a map are turning out in droves advocating the eradication of Jews.
I deplore the damage, the harm that is happening to children in Gaza but I support Israel in this conflict. Rape and the brutal murder of children and pregnant women is not “resistance” to some imagined colonization. It is terrorism. Had Hamas hit a military base only, I wouldn’t feel so strongly about this. They didn’t do that though; they purposely targeted civilians, just like they position their own bases and hide outs underneath hospitals, day cares, and schools. The people who suffer the most from the tactics Hamas deploys are the Palestinians themselves, by the way. Yes, I very much oppose the pro-Palestine marches and riots, many of which use virulently pro-Hamas language. I think these protests are , in many cases, a gloss for vicious anti-semitism that has astounded, just astounded me. I never expected to see such anti-semitism bubble up in New York City of all places. That is my position, BUT innocent children are dying and I deal every day with young people who are really, really scared and hurting.
I am also a vitki, a wyrd-worker, a diviner, a priest, and I believe that there is a force of evil that seeks to unmake our world, to corrupt our minds, hearts, and spirits; moreover, I believe that Evil has been feeding on the terrible, terrible emotions evoked by the horrors we’ve seen on the news, by the wars and genocides, by the hatred and fear drummed up from every side. It feeds, gloats, and seeks to push us to greater and greater destruction. It takes our moral yearning, our moral hunger, our yearning for justice and twists it into something that justifies terror. It is not our job to feed the Beast, the Enemy. It is our job to restore frith. That can be a violent process to be sure, but it should be clean and my post and the emotions behind it, at the time I wrote it, were not clean.
That is why I removed my post. It was not clean. Regardless of what we feel about this, our job as devout people, is to pray for peace.
Guest Post :Continued Update on the Situation in Nagorno-Karabakh
By K. Vogelaar
As of the time of this update (October 11, 2023), well over 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. This has left the region of Nagorno-Karabakh virtually desolate of its native inhabitants, whose history in the region extends over two millennia. However, unlike what the Azerbaijani government had stipulated last month, this migration of people was not voluntary. As noted in the prior update, President Aliyev had offered to the ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh a choice between leaving for Armenia or staying and receiving some kind of Azerbaijani citizenship or otherwise legally-recognized status. Most Armenians did not trust the offer to stay, and many fled to Armenia once pathways were opened in the Azerbaijani military blockade. However, it has come to light that the overwhelming majority who have left up to this point were in fact forced to leave under threat of violence. Furthermore, their migration to Armenia was under duress and was often impeded by violent ambushes and illegal abductions, completely contradicting Aliyev’s public statement and offer. Two sources confirm this. The first is first-hand testimony and cell phone video footage from refugees who have arrived in Armenia. The second is from videos posted by Azerbaijani soldiers to TikTok and other social media platforms of organized executions of ethnic Armenian elderly and ill in Nagorno-Karabakh. There is no reason for the Azerbaijani military to specifically target the elderly and ill unless they are ensuring that the local population could be forced out of their homes as quickly as possible. These actions demonstrate Azerbaijani intent to violently evict the Armenian population in direct contravention of Aliyev’s public promise of protection and freedom of choice.
Forced migration and deportation of specific groups of people targeted for their religious, ethnic, or racial identity is a hallmark of genocide. The 1948 Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five acts intended to destroy a community based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious identity. These acts are: killing members of the targeted community, causing them bodily or mental harm, preventing births, forcing the removal of children from the community, and imposing living conditions upon the community intended to kill them. Between the indiscriminate use of heavy artillery on and near civilian populations, the nine-month-long blockade of food and medical resources, organized extrajudicial killings and disappearings, and forced migration and the explicit ethnic targeting of victims, the genocidal intention of the Azerbaijani government is absolutely undeniable.
Recognizing the genocide taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh is of vital importance, not just in pursuit of justice for the victims, but also in preparation for the future. Since the 2020 war, the Azerbaijani military has crossed their southern border with Armenia at least three times, including after the ceasefire was signed. This southern region, the Armenian province of Syunik, offers the only overland connection between the Republic of Armenia and Iran. Iran has a sizeable Armenian diasporic population going back centuries, and it is the only non-hostile neighbor Armenia currently has. Public statements coming out of Aliyev’s government have referred to Syunik as part of “Western Azerbaijan.” Azerbaijani officials have even applied this designation to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. These statements put plainly the Azerbaijani intention for further hostilities and an aggressive, illegal war of conquest against Armenia itself. The ethnic Armenian refugees sheltering in Armenia have stated their desire to not live along the southern border, because they are convinced that an invasion is imminent. University Network for Human Rights field workers have observed Armenian school children living along the border drawing pictures of Azerbaijani soldiers killing their families, and photographs of bombs and unexploded ordinance are hung on school walls to show the children what to avoid in the fields. With the ethnic Armenian native population of Nagorno-Karabakh being subject to genocide under the rationale that their lands were truly part of Azerbaijan, that the same rhetoric is being used now against Armenia itself cannot be ignored or overlooked.
A war against Armenia proper could also result in Turkish involvement, with the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan actively and openly supporting Azerbaijan and Aliyev. Turkish soldiers partook in celebratory demonstrations in Baku following the Azerbaijani victory in the 2020 war. Erdogan sent Syrian mercenaries to Azerbaijan to aid in the campaign against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Enver Pasha, one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide and the Ottoman officer who gave the order to initiate it, is honored as a hero in both Turkey and Azerbaijan. If Azerbaijan invades Armenia and Turkey supports them, then there is simply nowhere for the Armenian population to go. This will, in all likelihood, result in a second Armenian Genocide. Turkish soldiers would not even have to participate, but simply allow Azerbaijani soldiers to do it themselves.
The responses of the European Union and the United States have not been helpful.
While the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh began nine months ago, the sudden shift in the Azerbaijani position to a more direct application of violence and forced migration came after Aliyev struck a new economic deal with the European Union. The deal included the exportation of more natural gas to the EU, likely to compensate for the continuing sanctions placed on Russian energy exports. The Aliyev regime’s shift in stance to a quick acquisition of Nagorno-Karabakh was likely intended to make the region ready for expanded drilling and processing activities to meet the immediate EU energy demand. This deal was struck during the illegal blockade of essential goods to ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which itself constituted a genocidal act by the definitions of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the International Criminal Court and was ordered to cease by the International Court of Justice. This makes the European Union a direct beneficiary of the current genocidal campaign including the ongoing forced migration. To their credit, the French seat in the UN Security Council attempted to call a vote to intervene or otherwise condemn Azerbaijan for the blockade, but the rest of the Permanent Member nations (including China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) simply dismissed the call and put it off. France is the only Permanent Member of the UN Security Council which is also part of the EU. This means that the EU Commission sought to work with the Aliyev regime to acquire cheap natural gas knowing that one of their most authoritative member nations publically recognized the threat Azerbaijan posed to the ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Many homes in the EU will be warmed this winter with natural gas acquired by the extinction of a two-thousand-year-old culture.
The United States’ response has been no better. After Nagorno-Karabakh surrendered, the United States sent a delegation to Yerevan under the auspices of the Secretary of State. In Yerevan, the delegation issued a public warning to the Armenian government to not pursue further hostilities. They did not extend their warning to Aliyev’s regime. The United States did not issue a warning to the perpetrators of an ongoing genocide, but to the victims and to those trying to help and feed them. As an American, I can say that this total failure of moral, ethical, and legal judgement in the office of the Secretary of State and the Biden administration is completely unjustifiable. In light of the wholesale abandonment of the Afghani people to the depredations of the Taliban, the Biden administration’s treatment of the Armenians demonstrates a consistent and practiced apathy toward the needs of non-stereotypically white populations besieged by fanatics. This practiced apathy is as irrational as it is unforgivable.
As Azerbaijani soldiers post videos online of beheadings, dismemberings, and torturing of ethnic Armenians, including the desecration of corpses, and Aliyev’s regime only more bluntly stating their intention for future conflict, absolutely no one in the EU and US governments can claim ignorance. The United States and the European Union both stand in shameful complicity with the Azerbaijani dictatorship’s genocidal campaign. Similarly, the Russian “peacekeepers” who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh following the 2020 ceasefire continue to do, say, and achieve nothing.
What can be done?
By their silence and apathy, the United States and European Union are permitting or even encouraging Azerbaijan in its genocidal campaign against Armenians. It thus falls upon us to publically denounce and shame our elected officials in every medium available to us: social media, public petitions, letters to elected offices, and protests. We must demand that our governments recognize the genocide taking place before our very eyes and require from them that they take legal and economic action against Azerbaijan. In international law, the accusation of genocide (as opposed to ethnic cleansing) requires legal intervention, which is the primary reason for why our governments and elected officials have heretofore avoided using the term. However, that Azerbaijan is engaged in genocide against Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and threatening one against Armenians in the Republic of Armenia itself is undeniable. We must demand that our elected leaders pursue and support legal actions taken against Azerbaijani officials in the International Criminal Court. Likewise, we must demand that our governments place Azerbaijan under heavy economic sanctions to prevent Aliyev’s tyrannical regime from continuing to profit from its atrocities. Economic sanctions can be applied immediately, and would stall further hostilities from Baku.
We must make it clear to our elected officials that further failure to condemn and practically punish this new Armenian genocide and all ongoing genocides across the world will result in their losing the support of their constituencies. By their profiting, silence, and apathy, our governments are complicit in the ongoing genocide of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, and we must hold them accountable. We likewise must make it known to our dominant news media outlets that they have no right to ignore the plight of the Armenians or to overlook the brutal military dictatorial oppression suffered by the Azerbaijani people as well. We must marshal what political authority our nations permit us to have for the betterment and protection of human decency, memory, and dignity for the sake of victims and for our own sakes.
Aside from appeals to political authorities, we must also aid those tending to the refugees who have arrived in Armenia. The issues concerning humanitarian aid and cultural preservation noted in the prior update are even more pressing now. The economy of Armenia continues to be weak in the wake of the lost 2020 war, and growing popular anger against the government of President Nikol Pashinyan is making the unstable situation all the worse. The Red Cross and Traveling Doctors are active in Armenia and are helping the refugees. Please consider donating or helping in any way you can. Likewise, the threat to historical sites, graveyards, and archeological sites in Nagorno-Karabakh is both very real and immanent. Caucasus Heritage Watch, hosted by Cornell University, has been documenting the Azerbaijani military destruction and alteration of sites going back to the first conflicts in the 1990s. Their resources and records are essential, but they are in constant need of funding and publicity. Please consider donating to their project and sharing their work over social media. If the cultural and artistic obliteration of the Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh goes without notice or documentation, then the people who lived there can be expunged from history as if they never existed at all. Cultural preservation, or documentation where preservation is impossible, is essential to preserving memory, inspiration, and hope for future generations.
Thank you for your time and for your action. Genocide has become all too commonplace in our modern world, and we must, at every turn, resist and recognize it, lest humanity forever lose what humanity we have remaining.
Further Resources:
Caucasus Heritage Watch: https://caucasusheritage.cornell.edu/
University Network for Human Rights reports and documentation: https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/nagorno-karabakh?utm_source=map&utm_medium=map&utm_campaign=website
Panel by students and advisers who issued the UNHR report for Nagorno-Karabakh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEYf9-ZEYcI
Promise Institute For Human Rights (UCLA Law) panel on legal options: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72_yAuL0lW4&mc_cid=cf591495b8&mc_eid=ddd8393039
On cultural erasure as an act of genocide: https://time.com/6322574/cultural-genocide-armenia-nagorno-karabakh-essay/
How to Help: Organizations supporting people affected by war in Israel
For those who want to know what to do or how to help, here is a list of organizations to which one may donate. The full list may be found here.
Barzilai Hospital. The Ashkelon hospital sustained rocket fire and has been inundated with hundreds of victims of the attacks. Give here.
Friends of the IDF. The group is authorized to gather charitable donations to provide for the health, welfare and education of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. To donate, click here.
Hadassah. The nonprofit’s hospitals in Jerusalem are treating victims of the attack and accepting donations for a crisis fund. Give here.
IsraAID. This Israeli aid group with a Bay Area office, known mainly for humanitarian work outside of Israel, is accepting donations for its efforts to get relief supplies and other support to Israeli communities affected by the fighting.
Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund. The S.F.-based Federation has opened an emergency fund and is working with the Israel Trauma Coalition, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Jewish Agency for Israel to support victims of terror, help rebuild damaged infrastructure, and address trauma. Donate here, or through a donor-advised fund here.
Jewish Federations of North America. The umbrella organization of more than 350 Jewish federations has a national Israel emergency fund. To donate, click here.
Magen David Adom. Donate to support paramedics, EMTs, first responders and first-aid providers on the ground in Israel. Click here to donate.
NATAL: Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War. This Israeli organization offers mental health treatment around PTSD and other trauma related to war and terror. Donate here.
New Israel Fund is raising money for basic needs for vulnerable groups, combating incitement online, trauma counseling and preventing violence in Israeli “mixed” cities with Jewish and Arab residents. Donate here.
Soroka Medical Center. The Be’er Sheva hospital has treated hundreds of victims and is seeking donations for its emergency fund to acquire essential medical equipment. Donate here.
United Hatzalah. The independent, nonprofit, fully volunteer emergency medical service organization provides emergency medical service throughout Israel free of charge. Donate here.
EDIT: November 15: I want to add ES-Sense, a social enterprise in Israel that works with special needs adults and teenagers. It was hit by a Hamas rocket on October 7th causing extensive damage to the facility. Here is the GoFundMe page to help them rebuild.
Have Courage and Pray
For a year my household has been following the war in Ukraine, donating as we can to charities, participating in fundraising events, and keeping up with the news in three, sometimes four languages nightly. Last night, I came home after working at a gallery all day (having not had access to news) to find that there had been a terrorist attack on Israel, one that escalated immediately to a declaration of war. For the three days previous, my dead had been putting images of Anwar Sadat and his assassination in my mind (I’m old enough to remember it, especially since my aunt worked at the Pentagon at that time and knew some of Sadat’s people), we’d been moved out of the blue to read about Golda Meier and the Yom Kippur war. Movies started hitting our feed on the same – and all of this is the way I have seen my dead attempt to get me focused on something before. I just didn’t realize that’s what was happening this time. I just assumed it was just because the anniversary of the Yom Kippur war was coming up and some of my military dead wanted it acknowledged. Friday night, the ancestors wouldn’t let me sleep, keeping me from dipping deeply in wyrd as I journeyed, which happens sometimes when I sleep. The dead tried to warn us. They wanted us to be prepared for the currents moving in the world that would affect us and would add to the military dead so grievously. We didn’t understand but when I learned last night about the attack in Gaza, I realized they had been preparing us. I have my thoughts about all of this as a diviner that I will keep to myself. What I will say is that for those scared, hurting, and confused there are things we can do.
That is the question I get most often, and have gotten from people since the Ukraine war started: what can I do? And there is fear of nuclear war (which I think is more of a possibility now in the middle east than in Ukraine) and the question : what can I do?
Well, do what it is you are called to do in this world. If you are an artist: bring beauty into the world. That transforms. If you are a sanitation worker, do your work dedicating it to the Gods (Yes, there are Gods Who oversee this, Venus Cloacina being the first that comes to mind). If you are a teacher, teach with an eye toward shepherding the next generation into becoming good men and women. If you are a bricklayer, you are bringing order to chaos. You are doing your part, and what we can all do, as we go about our work, is pray.
When Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, I was really upset that I could not volunteer to fight. I shoot very well, used to train in hand to hand, and wanted to go. I could force myself past most of my chronic injuries save one: I have a mangled left ankle. My military dead told me that I would be a liability to a team because running is not something I can always do. They were right as much as it killed me to admit. So, what could I do instead? I prayed, made offerings, and then looked for opportunities to help on a physical, practical level. This is what we can all do.
People who dismiss prayer as wishful thinking don’t know what prayer is. It is a direct conduit to the Gods, a means by which They may step forward and pour Their blessings into us and onto our world. Prayer keeps us connected, nourished, and clean which in turn allows us to do the same for others. The more beauty and kindness we bring into this world, the more rightly ordered reverence, the better our world can be. Prayer transforms.
There is a saying I saw somewhere, in something written by an orthodox Christian writer – I can’t remember where (it was during my comp exams, and I read *a lot*). I will say that I agree completely: “Where fasting and prayer are absent, there are demons.” I believe this. I have seen this. When we pray, we are stepping into an ancient battle between those forces aligned with our Gods and holy order and those seeking to destroy it. When we pray, we stand. We stand against evil. We stand for our Gods and by extension for the world They created. Now is the time for prayer. Now is the time to stand.
My colleague and friend Kevin sent me the following (when I was opining the thing above). We were talking about how frustrating it is to only be able to write and teach. He said, wisely: “if that is what we can do, then we can be proud that we are doing it. A tree grows the leaf, but the wind makes it fly; God will do with it as he wills.” He’s right too.
As I pray for Ukraine, so too, I will pray for Israel and, when I can overcome my anger, I pray also for Russia (which has its hand in the attack on Israel, I might point out), and the Islamic countries contributing to the terrorist action in Gaza, and this country too with its idiotic leadership (and I mean both parties). I can’t always pray for the latter groups, but at my best, I try.
We are living in a time of genocides, multiple ongoing genocides
I really try to avoid posting too many political things here. I save that for my Facebook and twitter, BUT a good friend, an art historian who has worked on histories of interfaith relations and who specializes in Armenian, Syriac, and Persian art and literature, who has also worked on the expansion of the Armenian Museum of America’s permanent exhibition on the Armenian Genocide in 2019-2020, recently sent me articles and information on what is currently happening in Azerbaijan. I know for many of you, that seems a long, long way from us, but we need to be knowledgeable about what is happening in our world, and especially what is happening in our religious worlds. Below is his statement and a few relevant links for those who are interested. Feel free to share this around.
I was speaking with my assistant Tove and my husband recently and we were talking about how there are two genocides also happening in the Ukraine: that of Putin’s assault on Ukraine with the intention of stealing children, raising them Russian, and wiping out native Ukrainians but also his policy of sending his minorities (particularly those from the more Asiatic former Soviet republics) to do the fighting, neatly removing them from the Russian gene-pool. Historian Dr. T. Snyder talks about that here. We are living in a time of multiple genocides. As I write this, I need to sit with this: we are living in a time of multiple genocides. What does that say about us as human beings? As an ancestor worker, I concur with K. Vogelaar below: “if we are alive, then we can act. If we live, then we must act.” Prayer is action. So is sharing this information and writing your state representatives. This is largely being ignored in the American press.
Here is my colleague’s statement:
“How long can someone look into the faces of ghosts before we forget what the living look like; before we forget that we are alive? “Genocide” is a word which has been thrown around quite carelessly in recent years. The word has been used terribly out of context in the cacophony of social media. Like the boy who cried wolf, those on the political far right tend to invoke the word whenever they are reminded that the world does not turn according to their preferences and whims. “Genocide” has lost its meaning; its purpose and gravity. “Genocide,” like so many other accusations of atrocity and bigotry, has entered into our vernacular as a superlative used to garner attention or serve as a thoughtless punchline.
And yet, we are steeped in genocide nonetheless. Atrocity haunts our world’s every moment: the ongoing genocides of Indigenous peoples in the Americas; the Herero and Namaqua genocide; the Algerian genocide; the Armenian and Assyrian genocides of World War I; the Holocaust; the two genocides in Cambodia; the genocide in Darfur; the ongoing Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang; the Yazidi genocide committed by ISIL- to name only the most well-known, but by no means the majority. Only last year was the last member of an Indigenous tribe in Brazil found dead. His entire civilization was exterminated decades prior by illegal ranchers and miners, and he had managed to survive on his own until August 2022. I do not know his name, or the name of his “uncontacted” tribe, but he was found in Tanaru territory. Just like that, his people were gone; consigned to oblivion. And most of the world simply did not care. We are so inundated with the cries of innocent people drowning in their own blood and suffocated dreams that we have grown immured to them. Out of cynicism or desperation, some of us even dismiss these cries outright: “out of sight, out of mind;” “both sides have their points;” “we don’t know all the facts yet;” “they aren’t mine, so who cares?” “what can I do?;” or, blaming the victim, some say “they’re fighting back, so it can’t be a genocide.” In our dismissals, we act as if we are already dead; wandering helplessly through a life we have no connection to anymore. However, we are not dead. We are as alive as the merciless who seek to murder the innocent. We are as alive as the innocent begging to be saved from the hands of their murderers. And if we are alive, then we can act. If we live, then we must act.
For the past nine months, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Artsakh in Armenian) has been under siege by Azerbaijan. No food, fuel, or medical supplies have been allowed to enter the region, which is home to almost one-hundred and twenty thousand ethnic Armenians. Electricity has been subject to rolling blackouts, making what little infrastructure which is still serviceable almost entirely unreliable. As a result, deaths due to disease and childbirth complications have spiked in number. This is a genocide playing out right in front of our eyes.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of Artsakh attempted to form their own state, the Republic of Artsakh. The region, however, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Armenia and Azerbaijan had fought over the region in the 1990s and again in 2020. After the 2020 war, which Armenia decidedly lost, Russia brokered a fragile peace between the two. As per this peace treaty, the Lachin Corridor, a single stretch of road, was to be kept open to connect Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Russian peacekeepers were deployed in the region to ensure the safety of cultural and religious sites and the citizenry. Nine months ago, Azerbaijan government-backed “protestors” blocked the Lachin road and refused to allow anyone or anything through. The UN ordered that the Azerbaijani government break the blockade up for humanitarian purposes. The government did so, but then established their own military checkpoint and proceeded to continue blocking all supplies and people from entering Nagorno-Karabakh, in direct contravention of prior and succeeding UN and ICC orders. The Russian peacekeepers did nothing.
On September 19, the Azerbaijani military initiated a series of artillery barrages and airstrikes throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Their stated intention was to engage in “anti-terrorist” actions after two military trucks were claimed to have been destroyed by landmines. Hundreds of Armenians died, with several hundred more left injured, including children. The Azerbaijani military claims to have opened up “humanitarian corridors” for Armenians to leave the region. However, where those Armenians would go in a hostile Azerbaijan is unclear, and no information on how they would be kept safe has been provided. Needless to say, denizens of Nagorno-Karabakh believe these “humanitarian corridors” to be traps meant to lure them to where they can be killed without witnesses.
Starvation has been described as an “invisible weapon.” The International Criminal Court has recognized withholding of food or other necessities of life from a group due to religious, racial, or ethnic identity as a genocidal act. However, for reasons which are quite likely tied to extensive and pressing EU interests in fuel and mineral exports from the region, the Azerbaijani military has elected to forgo a gradual genocide by starvation and have turned to the more direct method of outright violence. The nine-month-long blockade, which remains in effect even now, has left the people of Nagorno-Karabakh weak and vulnerable and entirely unable to defend themselves from military aggression. The Armenian military is beaten and unable to intervene in any but suicidal ways. Even if the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were to make it to Armenia, the nation in its current financial state cannot hope to shelter and care for tens of thousands of refugees. Opposition in Azerbaijan itself is met with incarceration or assassination. The people of Nagorno-Karabakh need help, and it will not come from Russia or Armenia. Help must come from external pressure. It must come from other nations who have the ability to make Azerbaijan’s dictatorial government back down. As of this moment, the only nations who are likely to be able to do so are the US, UK, and those of the EU; none of whom have done anything but “express concern” about the situation before going on to ignoring it.
The government of Azerbaijan, which has taken increasingly hostile Armenophobic stances over the past decades, has made it entirely clear that they intend to exterminate the Armenian physical and cultural presence in the region. Numerous public statements from Azerbaijani government and military officials, including its dictator, President Ilham Aliyev, have made it clear in no uncertain terms that they wish to see Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh exterminated. In 2020, the government issued a commemorative stamp depicting a hazmat-suited man washing or fumigating the region of Nagorno-Karabakh on the Azerbaijani national map, directly asserting that Armenians are to be treated like the COVID-19 virus. Azerbaijani military detachments have been engaging in documented acts of cultural erasure since the 1990s, destroying Armenian gravesites, churches, and pre-Christian archeological sites. Those sites and monuments which have not been destroyed have been significantly altered to appear less Armenian, thereby facilitating the Azerbaijani governmental narrative that such sites never were Armenian to begin with.
These are acts of murder, forced deportation, and erasure; these are acts of intentional and planned state-sponsored genocide.
As witnessed in Brazil only last year, the total obliteration of a civilization is horrifyingly possible. Where Russia will not act and Armenia cannot act, we must. We must do all we can to bring attention to the existential plight of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Contact your elected officials, start petitions, post on social media, and demand that your nations take a stand against a genocide unfolding before our very eyes. It is not too late; the violence is on-going, the starvation is on-going, but the people of Nagorno-Karabakh endure. We must help them while we still can in whatever way we can. The atrocities which dominate the unfolding history of our modern era need not continue. We can stop them; and if we can stop them, then we must.” — K. Vogelaar.
Here are some relevant links (Courtesy of Mr. Vogelaar):
Events:
https://www.international.ucla.edu/armenia/event/16296
https://www.international.ucla.edu/armenia/event/16283
Statements
https://naasr.org/blogs/news/naasr-statement-on-september-19-2023-attack-on-artsakh-nagorno-karabakh
New Information as of Yesterday’s Attacks; September 19, 2023
https://www.politico.eu/article/azerbaijan-launch-anti-terror-operation-nagorno-karabakh-armenia/
https://www.international.ucla.edu/armenia/article/269497
The Reason Why Yesterday’s Attacks Matter: Information on the Situation in Nagorno-Karabakh (up to end of August 2023)
Statements:
Former ICC criminal prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo
https://www.cftjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Moreno-Ocampo-Expert-Opinion.pdf
https://luismorenoocampo.com/lmo_en/report-armenia/
From Amnesty International
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/02/azerbaijan-blockade-of-lachin-corridor-putting-thousands-of-lives-in-peril-must-be-immediately-lifted/
From the Center for Truth and Justice
https://www.cftjustice.org/former-international-criminal-court-prosecutor-luis-moreno-ocampo-issued-report-stating-the-blockade-of-nagorno-karabakh-is-genocide/?fbclid=IwAR2YT9Hvrp0PmgNmIt8qaSMAZ7MUp46n_7RPFXLD6_Np4BbkdiIHRTW-V_k
https://www.cftjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Preliminary-Opinion-23.08.2023.pdf
From the International Association of Genocide Scholars
https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IAGS-EB-AB-Statement-on-Azeri-Blockade-of-Artsakh.pdf
https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IAGS-EB-Statement-Armenia-Azerbaijan-Oct-2022_update.pdf
Statement of 52 prominent genocide scholars – http://genocide-museum.am/eng/11.8.23.php
Statements from Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Turkish NGOs and organizations
https://postsovietpeace.mailchimpsites.com/lachinblockade
https://en.feministpeacecollective.com/post/in-solidarity-with-karabakh-artsakh-against-total-war-blockade-and-hegemony?fbclid=IwAR3JIoyhFC_ABTO227IeLCE2LgCiFHw2RRBflTOcVoMbSTkOLHz_XLmify4
https://www.agos.com.tr/en/article/29016/call-by-citizens-of-turkey-to-international-community-to-end-the-blockade-of-karabagh?fbclid=IwAR0a6KPhBttF_1bFmxAJ7MJGiSzj2f88pNP5N3puJOSLzpCL850-FG7UOUc
From The University Network for Human Rights
https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/nagorno-karabakh
Articles, Essays, and Journal Volumes for Context
Felix Light, “Nagorno-Karabakh residents say ‘disastrous’ blockade choking supplies,” Reuters, August 16, 2023. (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nagorno-karabakh-residents-say-disastrous-blockade-choking-supplies-2023-08-16/)
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/11/5/nagorno-karabakh-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-humanitarian-impact
https://www.politico.eu/article/united-nations-security-council-discuss-nagorno-karabakh-crisis-genocide-warning/
“Azerbaijan should reopen the Lachin corridor— and avert another war,” Editorial Opinion, The Washington Post, August 16, 2023. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/16/azerbaijan-nagorno-karabakh-blockade-armenia/)
“Explainer: What is Nagorno-Karabakh and Why are Tensions Rising?” Al-Jazeera, April 24, 2023. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/24/explainer-what-is-nagorno-karabakh-why-are-tensions-rising)
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor Crisis, Genocide Studies International, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2023). (https://utpjournals.press/toc/gsi/15/1)
Susan Barba, “The Road to Arsakh,” New York Review of Books, February 22, 2023. (https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/02/22/the-road-to-artsakh/)
Mira Nalbandian, “Azerbaijan Won’t Stop at Artsakh,” Harvard Political Review, January 22, 2023. (https://harvardpolitics.com/azerbaijan-wont-stop/)
Arman Grigoryan, “The Causes of Defeat in the 44-Day War: a Review Essay,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 29, 2023. (https://brill.com/view/journals/jsas/aop/article-10.1163-26670038-12342794/article-10.1163-26670038-12342794.xml)
Neil Hauer, “Azerbaijan’s ‘Ethnic Hatred’ Theme Park Draws Ire, Imperils Reconciliation,” RFERL, April 22, 2021. (https://www.rferl.org/a/azerbaijan-karabakh-theme-park-armenia-ethnic-hatred-aliyev/31217971.html).
Hrag Vartanian, “Artsakh: Cultural Heritage Under Threat,” Hyperallergic, February 28, 2021. (https://hyperallergic.com/625101/artsakh-cultural-heritage-under-threat/)
Djene Rhys Bajalan, Sara Nur Yildiz, Vazken Khatchig Tavitian, “What’s Really Driving the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict?,” Jacobin, October 8, 2020. (https://jacobin.com/2020/10/azerbaijan-armenia-conflict-nationalism-colonialism)
International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 7 No. 2 (2022): Special Issue on Artsakh (http://agmipublications.am/index.php/ijags?fbclid=IwAR2nfo1jpSWAKz7WbdTutuXbiiK8zbt6-imSKf-Kd5Z2i_ALrWBdki6lEOo)
Naira Sahakyan, “The rhetorical face of enmity: the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the dehumanization of Armenians in the speeches by Ilham Aliyev,” in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, November 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2022.2153402)
Caucasus Heritage Watch
https://caucasusheritage.cornell.edu/
Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation
https://caucasusedition.net/imperial-legacies-in-the-south-caucasus-armenian-azerbaijani-relations-1918-1920/
https://caucasusedition.net/from-liberal-to-agonistic-peace-in-the-south-caucasus/
https://caucasusedition.net/making-sense-of-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict/
https://caucasusedition.net/armenia-and-azerbaijan-on-the-way-to-peace-the-process-of-demarcation/
https://caucasusedition.net/the-property-restitution-process-after-the-second-karabakh-war-challenges-and-opportunities/
https://caucasusedition.net/formation-of-discourses-of-national-identity-in-armenia-and-azerbaijan-from-the-path-to-independence-to-nationalist-hegemony/
https://brill.com/view/journals/casu/9/3/article-p320_8.xml
Happy Fourth of July, America
I have heard a lot of friends talk about how they are not going to honor the fourth this year and I get it. Our country is a mess and a lot of what our Supreme court is doing is frightening and enraging to many people. As a country, we are divided and certainly are not living up to the promise embedded in our founding documents. We are not living up to the promise of America at its best.
This is exactly why I choose to celebrate the fourth (though for me, it’s muted. I ain’t going out in ninety-degree heat to grill lol bad grammar intended!). I’ll make offerings to our revolutionary war dead and hang my flag and we’ll have a nice dinner. I do this not because I think America is perfect – I’m an educator. I think America is FAR from perfect. I do this because we need to remind ourselves of what a remarkable experiment America is, and what truly extraordinary documents the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of rights are. I can’t help but think about the protests this past year in Hong Kong. People were singing our national anthem and waving our flag because they recognize the best ideals embedded in the idea of “America.” The fourth is a call to live up to those ideals every day and to demand our politicians do so as well.
I celebrate the fourth as a reminder that we haven’t yet lived up to the promise embedded in those documents and in the better choices our fore fathers and mothers made. I celebrate as a reminder that the Constitution is one of the most flexible and remarkable documents ever written in any country’s history. It is a flexible scaffolding designed to guide the country into the future. When that document was written, there had been nothing like it in the world. It came out of a desire for independence and freedom, and yes, equality (though thankfully our understanding of what that word means has grown since 1776). It was not inevitable that America would come to be as a nation. It is not inevitable that it will continue. Nothing is set in stone and that is why it is important to know our history. We have to know where we failed but also where we were victorious, where our best natures prevailed. We need to know where we come from in order to know what to cherish about our history and what to carry into the future. Nothing is inevitable. Each one of us has the opportunity to decide what tomorrow will be. Happy fourth.
WTF USA?
So, it’s a bad day in the US today.
- SCOTUS shot down Roe V. Wade so now abortion goes back to the states. In about half the states across the country, women are going to be denied access to abortion. Seems like our Supreme court has no problem defining what a woman is, at least 8 of the 9 of them, and especially when they want to remove rights. Medical care should not be a political issue. A woman’s access to abortion should not be impinged upon by Christian nutcases. Your religion has no right to reduce any woman to the status of chattel slavery, which, imo, is precisely what forced pregnancy does. Thing is, women let this happen. You want a right, you fight for it. If you’re not willing to fight, well, too fucking bad when you lose it.
Access to Plan B/morning after pill is being cut off by Amazon and other online providers to states that have anti-abortion laws set in motion by this ruling. Therefore, women can’t even order online. I have maybe half a dozen packets (haven’t checked my medical kit in a while – I keep a fairly well stocked med kit at home) that I’m happy to send to any woman in one of these states but maybe what we need to be doing is putting together a USPS underground to get abortifacients to women in need.
2. The Senate passed a bipartisan gun safety bill. I’m against any restrictions to the second amendment whatsoever. Let’s blame guns for everything instead of providing competent health care and mental health care to our citizens. *sarcasm* I’m particularly against “red flag” laws. Who gets to decide what or who is dangerous? I fully believe that the only requirement for anyone 16 and over to purchase and carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, should be a training course and a set number of hours clocked at a range (and not a training course like the one-day workshop the NRA offers, but an actual multi-week course). Without the second amendment, we can kiss the rest of our rights goodbye…which we seem to be doing, and quickly. I expect this stupidity from liberals (just as I expect foolishness on abortion from conservatives) but any conservative who signed this law is a fucking coward who ought to be removed from office. Midterms are coming, motherfuckers. Midterms are coming.
3. Finally, SCOTUS limited the courts’ ability to enforce Miranda. Read the story here. If you have to deal with the police, the ONLY word out of your mouth should be “LAWYER.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/supreme-court-miranda-rights/index.html
EDIT 1: And I just read that Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion with the Roe decision stating that SCOTUS should “reconsider” Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” – those are the rulings that allow, respectively, contraception, the legality of same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage. This comes as no surprise. I said months ago that if this court went after Roe, the next on the list would be Griswold and then they’d just work their way down.
On a single positive note, JP Morgan announced that it would pay for its employees to travel to states that allow abortion should the need arise.
Interview with Ukrainian Freyja’s Woman Tove Freyjadottir, Part II
As promised, here is part 2 of a much longer interview that I conducted recently with Ukrainian Freyja’s woman Tove Freyjadottir. You may find Part I here if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Now, let’s jump right into part two. My questions are in bold and then Tove’s response unbolded. If there is bolded text in her response, it is her own emphasis.
GK: What is at stake for Ukraine here? What factors do you think contributed to the current war? How did we get here? I ask this, because many of my readers, especially in the USA, may not be aware of the history and politics that led up to this current point. It’s a long, long story.
Tove: What is at stake? Well, if Ukraine succeeds and wins this war, repelling Russia to its natural internationally established borders, it will spell the end of Russia as we know it. Putin will likely not be able to sustain power after a defeat of this kind. Of course, this is why we also know by past experience that no matter what his diplomats say during the negotiations, he will not stop.
For Ukraine, should Ukraine lose this war, its existence will be wiped off from the face of the earth. Almost every man, woman and child will be executed, tortured, or shipped off to Siberia or some place even worse.
Galina: for those who may doubt the veracity of this, this is precisely what happened when Lithuania was taken by the USSR. Native Lithuanians were shipped out, native Russians shipped in. It’s an old, old strategy of colonization and conquest. We’re already seeing this with Russian aggression in Bucha and other parts of the Ukraine that have been occupied.
Exactly. Ukraine’s land will be milked by Russia for all that it can give until no life will be left in it, because Russia will do what it has done for years to its own people – rob and blame someone else for it. Ukrainian history, language, art, and culture will be deleted off the face of the earth or appropriated as Russian. This is particularly important to understand for those who urge Ukraine to negotiate for peace with Russia or those who would like the West to put pressure on Ukraine to negotiate for peace – any area of Ukraine, over which Russia takes control, will suffer the fate of Buchi. The two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia has controlled since 2014, are home to the most inhumane human rights abuses, and one of the most notorious prisons in the world. There has been a culling in that region, people who spoke out against the occupation have disappeared now for years, services have been reduced to almost nothing, and every cultural location and center have been deleted. The very prison I mention above was created inside of a museum of Soviet architecture, where all art was either burned or melted and a prison was built in its place. The entire area is a concentration camp which has been operating for so long, it’s a ghost town. Many more will be killed if Ukraine surrenders and all of it will become a sparsely occupied land of slavery, murder, and degradation.
This invasion has already essentially threatened every nuclear non-proliferation in existence, because it announced to the world that alliances only hold when convenient and encourages the idea that if a nation wants to guarantee its security, it must be nuclear capable. We can now, and probably should, expect every nation to attempt to grow its nuclear arsenal and only hope that MAD will keep the world safe from a nuclear war. The way that the West has dealt with the Ukraine issue virtually guarantees it.
It’s as simple as an if-then statement. Ukraine in 1994 surrenders over 3,000 nuclear warheads – to Russia no less! – in return for US, Britain and Russia guaranteeing its security. It was not spoken at the time, but completely understood by all sides, that this need for security comes from its concern that at some point, Russia will attempt to invade Ukraine. Ukraine was invaded in 2014 and a portion of its territory taken over by the Russian military, following an overthrow of then –read “Putin’s flunkey” –President Yanukovich who decided that he could disregard the wishes of a nation and instead favor his own alliances when making public policy. US and Britain did nothing to stop this or help Ukraine take their land back, instead we all watched as there is a mock referendum under Russian rifles with more people voting than actual people living in the region. So…. What does this mean for the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that Ukraine, US and Britain signed?
Russia invades again in 2022. United States vows it will not get involved in another war, which is completely understandable since we just exited Afghanistan. That is wise – except again, we default on the agreement that we will not allow Ukraine’s security to be jeopardized after it gave up 3,000 nuclear warheads in 1994. I ask, if you were another country with an aggressive neighbor and had a signed nuclear non-proliferation treaty with US, how safe would this treaty make you feel? What if the neighbor was a nuclear power, like Russia? How valuable is a treaty when it’s just been exemplified to the entire world that no one had any intention to honor it if its inconvenient? If I were an advisor to Ukraine, immediately following this war I would begin its nuclear weapons production. It seems to be the only thing that Russians understand and the one thing that will keep them from invading (maybe.)
Galina: as an historian (particularly an historian with a Native American husband), I have to point out that the US has a shit record for maintaining its treaties, alliances, and protecting its allies. Though, it does a better job than Russia.
NATO’s reaction to this conflict is particularly troubling. Although this is not officially written into their charter, NATO was specifically formed to repel the encroachment of Soviet Union. Since Russia has somehow been able to take over the seat of USSR on the UN Security Council, we can safely assume that UN – and NATO – essentially sees Russia and USSR as the same threat. NATO has repeatedly stated that they will not be involved militarily into the conflict in Ukraine. So, an organization that was specifically created with the purpose of preventing Russia’s expansion, has refused to get involved militarily into their war of expansion. The reason seems to be because Russia is a nuclear power. So, will this reason will stand when it comes to Poland, or the Baltics? NATO has expressly stated that they will not be involved. It’s important to prevent a nuclear war, but their non-involvement essentially negates the purpose of their existence. Despite their loud statements, their actions suggest that they will not get involved with Russia, or any nuclear power, no matter what they will do, including genocide and entire annihilation of a nation-state.
These are simply cold and hard geopolitical facts, and if Ukraine loses, we can expect much worse compared to this. We can now forget the goal of universal disarmament or hope that NATO will prevent annihilation of entire nations via Russian expansionism. However, there is a deeper and much more fundamental issue at stake here that can dis-balance the world in an even more fundamental way.
Ukraine, a democratic nation, is fighting with an autocratic nation 10 times its size. If Ukraine loses, it will be a case of a democratic nation falling to a dictatorial one, not due to internal conflicts or lack of cohesion, but due to an outside invasion of an aggressor we failed to stop. It will mean that a strong man nation can do as it likes with the world doing nothing to stop it, it will mean that might equals right without any boundaries. It will mean that diplomacy and international rule of law does not exist. It will be a failure of not just democracy in Ukraine, but failure of the democracies around the world to support one. We will likely see democracies fall across the world at an alarming rate, because we have just proven to dictatorships around the world that we are unwilling to stop them and so they can act with impunity.
We must acknowledge this reality, otherwise we are playing fire with suspension of disbelief. However, suspension of disbelief will not work this time, because reality is here. Not dealing with it will be pretty much like ignoring your student loans – one day, your wages will be garnished and there will be nothing you can do about it then.
I have heard many Western leaders – as well as Ukrainian political figures – in the last month say that Ukraine’s fight is a fight for democracy and for the ideals that the West espouses. I know we have heard our leaders use this rhetoric before, and frequently with some pretty bad results, so I realize how suspicious this type of language can be. That being said, in this case, it’s not only accurate, it fails, due to its frequent misuse in the past, to grasp the gravity of how true this statement is. For the very first time in a long time, we are actually asked to stand for democracy and liberty. We are asked if we truly espouse our values, in democracy, free speech and free society.
GK: Why such extreme scenarios? What are the reasons for the zero-sum game in this case?
This may seem farfetched to those not intimately familiar with Russian and Ukrainian history, but the plain truth of this situation is this: a democratic Ukraine cannot exist next to an autocratic Russia. This simply cannot be and the Moscow of today will do what it can to prevent it. There are various historical, ethical, religious, and ideological factors at play here that make this attack inevitable in my view, and I will dive into the historical portions of it, because they are central to this. History aside however, as of now, the most important fact that must be understood is this: on the territory encompassing Ukraine and Russia, there can be only one model of government – Putin’s model or the model of a democratic Ukraine. Both cannot exist at the same time. The survival of Russia’s autocracy depends on this.
GK: Historically, Russia has never really been free. They’ve never had the type of democracy that exists in the Ukraine or other Western nations. There was Tsarism, Communism, gang-rule, and Putin. There isn’t a history of freedom really …ever.
That’s why I am not exaggerating here. If in a black mirror universe Zelensky announces that he is disbanding the Rada (Ukrainian Parliament), declares himself President for Life, that all laws will come from him and are essentially him, this war will end. Putin will give Zelensky a call, commence friendly relations, and Russian troops will immediately exit the territory of Ukraine. A dictatorship is something that Russia can understand and get behind. This is as simple as a math equation – a democratic Ukraine cannot exist next to a dictatorial Russia. Either Russia will turn Ukraine into a dictatorship or destroy it. Allowing it to stand as it is now, developing a Western democratic government, would spell the disintegration of the current Russia as we know it.
See, what’s important here is to understand that Putin is afraid, he is afraid for his own skin.
He has committed many crimes, before he ever invaded Ukraine, and he is afraid. He is fighting for his own skin and the skins of his cohorts, and they are all criminals. If he loses this war, and democracy comes to Russia, he will need to answer for everything he has done.
GK: It is fascinating seeing pictures of Putin with his top military advisors. He’s totally isolated at one end of a huge table and I thought, “that’s a man afraid of his own.”
Seriously. If Russians do not take a hold of their own country, and deal with Putin right now, Russia will fall apart into small little parts
GK: Disintegration of Russia? How would this look like? And why?
If Russia fails to either turn Ukraine into a dictatorial state with itself as a model, or annihilate it from existence, it will spell the end of the modern current Russia. It will substantially weaken and eventually end the reign of Putin’s presidency. Russia is not simply a monolithic nation, it’s comprised of federations that have their distinct cultural and regional histories, traditions, and beliefs. With the end of a strong and powerful regime and leader, these federations, during the commencement of the power struggle that would occur as a result of the power vacuum after Putin’s departure, will each opt for their independence. This will not only be Chechnya; Siberia, Ural, and other regions, that have their own religious and historical story to tell, they will all become their own autonomous nations. One only has to look at the particular cultural identity and history of Siberia and look back at the days when Communists would kidnap Siberian shamans and with the words “you think you can journey and fly? Let’s see if you can fly now” throw them out of planes to destroy the culture of those regions to understand the deeply buried animosity that can easily develop into a need to self-actualize.
GK: Yes, readers, historically this was exactly how the Communists treated the shamans of Siberian tribes. I can confirm this from my own research.
In a word, one can argue that Russia is also fighting for its survival. Putin understands that once Ukraine becomes democratic, it will be the end of his reign. Of course, if Russia would have true democratic elections, none of this would have had to happen, but for a nation that has never had a democracy in place this is not an option that is likely to occur.
GK: What ideological ideas do you think play a role in this conflict and how?
In the history of Russia and Ukraine, there have been two unrealized but incredibly monumental projects, incredibly lofty dreams. Both of these have been unrealized as yet, and either one would change both nations as we know it if they did.
The first is the dream of Westernization. This was a dream of Peter the Great, who modernized and Westernized Russian society, economy, and military. He was one of the greatest Russian Tsars, and one who coined an expression “make a window into the West” but was unfortunately only partially successful. This was a project that he never got to finish. This project again came close to becoming a reality with the First Russian Revolution, the February Revolution of 1917. It was the Second, October Revolution, that came within the year of the first that brought communism to Russia.
GK: the people slaughtered a sacral leader. I understand why – Nicholas was an incompetent leader – but that brings a horrible curse on the land. It’s pathological.
The first revolution was the revolution of the bourgeoisie, of Western thought, of intellectualism and liberalism. Some of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century, originally repressed by the tsar, came to the fore and wanted to become a part of the new Russia. This attempt at Westernization also failed however, because the bourgeoisie were a temporary government that had only partial power. The remainder of the power was in the hands of the workers and freed slaves (the serfs) that were freed less than a 100 years ago but that still were living essentially the way they did prior to the end of serfdom. During this brief window before it closed via the second communist revolution, there was an unrealized possibility: a dream not only of Westernization, but also a democracy.
The second unrealized dream was one of independent Ukraine, or, as it is called now in Ukraine, “Незалежна Україна”. This second dream was very much like the first dream in its zenith, one of democracy, but not for the whole of Russia, but specifically for Ukraine.
It is this burgeoning dream, one of independence and democracy, that Ukraine is trying to make a reality today. I say “still trying to realize” because Ukraine may have obtained its formal legal independence in 1991, but Russia has consistently tried for the past 30 years to undermine its dream of democracy and Westernization by offering Ukraine money in return for its voice and its favor, by flooding its political parties with deputies and candidates that have been vetted by Russia’s FSB secret police or in many cases actively working for them, by bribing its businessmen to favor Russia’s policies and in many other ways. Russia has tried to do anything and everything they could possibly do to keep this democracy from taking hold. But make no mistake, the 1991 independence of Ukraine, its 2004 revolution and again the Maidan Revolution of Dignity of 2014 – all of these have been Ukraine’s efforts to make this project of a democratic and Westernized Ukraine a reality. This is why the subject of “repression of Russian minority within Ukraine” is a complex one – what do you do when a good portion of the Russian population in the country is likely working for the Russian spy network with plans to subvert and curb Ukrainian democratic systems? What do you as a country when political parties are formed with the intent to undermine the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state, parties that are funded by foreign governments with plans to occupy the land and take away its independence? Ukraine has walked a tight rope between probably its most favorite of democratic ideals – free speech – and its reluctant need to deal with situations of outright treason and foreign agents working on its lands. These are not mere allegations, many political figures within these parties have currently used the invasion of Ukraine and occupation of certain towns to force them to acknowledge them as new mayors which they did not elect and then announce they are separating from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation – in the midst of large scale protests of the people, under Russian gunfire.
At this point, Putin has able to create this system of absolute power, and they all answer to him. However, if Ukraine becomes an independent country, a democratic nation, it will give Russia an idea that they have never had. Russia has no such lofty idea, up to now they have known only one way to live- with a tsar and an empire. They have no other ideas. If this idea cannot be actualized for them, it will be all over.
GK: Russia has been repeatedly saying that Ukraine is a new idea, a new nation, and we know that it was founded in 1991. Is there a historical precedent to the Ukrainian nationality? Or was it, as Russia says, simply a Russian ethnicity simply speaking a dialect of Russian?
To say, as Putin has, that Ukraine is an invention of USSR is not only incorrect, it’s laughable. This is easy to disprove – just ask the Turks. They have been fighting and making peace treaties with Ukraine for at least 500 years.
This dream of an independent Ukraine is not a recent creation. It’s incredibly old. One can say that it started on the steppes of Ukraine approximately 500 years ago, when the Cossacks formed their own autonomous nation called Zaporozhia Sech. They were the first ones to refer to the wild uninhabited lands as Ukraine. To conceptualize how incredibly long ago this was, United States as a nation has only existed under 250 years.
Even on the linguistic level, one can trace the development of Russian language via a transition of a more ancient form of Ukrainian through an ancient language called Church Slavonic.
GK: I’ve studied both Russian and Ukrainian, and omg, it is so obvious to anyone with a linguistic background that Ukrainian is the original language, the older language. Russian is polished, and we have Cyril and Methodius and a healthy dose of Byzantine culture to thank for that. Russia is the language of imperium and orthodox Christianity.
This is why we often hear that Ukraine is the beginning of Russia. Russian culture evolved out of the roots of Ukraine. This is why so many traditions, even culinary recipes, are found in both Russia and Ukraine. Add to it a history of autonomy and nationhood, treaties created and broken, freedoms granted and acknowledged, Russification, repression, imprisonment, and ethnic cleansing, and you will end up with two nations, one placing the other in bondage and committing mass murder and torture all the while claiming love and fraternity.
The most important thing in understanding the historical dimension of this conflict is to understand that Russia and Ukraine describe history of the past 1,000 years in different and sometimes diametrically opposing ways. In a word, you can read Russia’s view on historical events involving Ukraine’s history, and find the same events described in a completely different light by Ukraine. I will try my best to point out what they agree on, and what they disagree on, and make my own opinions, based on what information we have. Should you attempt to look for historical information on both nations, your sources will tell you what they think of history.
Archeologists would echo the humor in this statement because we can actually trace the Ukrainian people currently living in that territory as far as the Stone Age and even further. There is evidence of the people migrating to the Dnieper River from Africa around 44,000 years ago, and if we go into pre-history, to our cousins the Neanderthals, we find evidence of them residing in the area about 150,000 years ago. There are even bones of Homo-Erectus found going back about a million and a half years ago at an archeological cite discovered about 10 years ago on the territory of Ukraine. Humans occupied the territory of present-day Ukraine since the height of the ice age, and there have been continuous settlements there. DNA shows this progression in the modern Ukrainians themselves, it’s undeniable on a biological level. There are over 200 cites discovered all over Ukraine that show this to be a fact. To summarize, Ukraine is one of the oldest human settlements in the world.
GK: Those interested can learn more here.
Tribes formed there ever since, the Cukuteni-Trypillians replaced by the Cimmerians, who were in turn replaced by the Scythians and then by the Sarmatians. It was even a home to Greek colonies on the Northern Black Sea and saw the formation of the Pontic Kingdom, who was then defeated by the Roman Empire. In short, this ancient land has been home to many ancient civilizations, each a zenith of their own time period. It was in the III century AD. between the Don and the Danube appeared Goths who came from the north. The Snake Island, made famous at present by the defiant response of the Ukrainian officers, was a sacred resting place of the Greek Hero Achilles. Many Greek temples are found in that area, specifically to Apollo. Even today there is a small population of ethnic Greeks living in Ukraine who speak a version of ancient Greek known as Pontic Greek.
The roots of these two nations come from the same place – Kyivan Rus’ with its capital Kyiv. Its important to note here that “Rus’” is not the modern country we know today as Russia (“Russia”). This is an 8th century ancient dynasty that no longer exists. This was the first Slavic kingdom, loosely joined together by multiple small principalities. This kingdom existed from 9th to 13th century, coming to an end when the Golden Horde attacked Kyiv and leveled it. The great Kyevan Rus’, founded by the Vladimir the Great and the Yarosav the Wise, the Rurik Dynasty, was invaded and pillaged in 1237 by the Golden Horde. When the Golden Horde invaded the ancient lands of Ukraine, Moscow was virtually non-existent, a tiny town built around a swamp. The Golden Horde concentrated its power in Moscow and strengthened it against foreign nations around it.
This Kingdom, Kyivan Rus’, is one of Putin’s major arguments why Ukraine is a part of Russia. However, this is inaccurate, as even the name suggests. The truth is, Kyivan Rus’ was, at most favorable to Russia, a nation that was the predecessor of Ukraine and Russia, an ancient kingdom that preceded both nations. In truth, however, it was formed before the existence of Moscow with Kyiv as its capital, and some arguments have been made that rather than Russia, this was actually the beginning of Ukraine, with Russia eventually forming and gaining power during the reign of the Golden Horde. If anything, however, this common root in itself, Kyivan Rus’, has also become a part of the dispute. Since the first great Slavic kingdom was the Kyivan Rus’ with its capital in Kyiv and its formal language an archaic version of Ukrainian, did Ukraine in effect exist prior to Russia and this great kingdom was Ukrainian, or was it Russian, its existence temporarily destroyed by the Golden Horde and re-established after it has been weakened and left the Slavic lands? Ukraine says it was Ukrainian, while Russia says it was Russian. What you calculate in that the population of these countries spoke an ancient version of Ukrainian, lived on the territory of present-day Ukraine, and have direct DNA connection to these people, the argument that this nation, Kyivan Rus’, was actually the first Ukrainian nation, rather than Russian, does hold some ground. Genetic records certainly back this up and show that modern Ukrainian DNA connects to the people who lived in that area since the Bronze Age, likely to the Yamnaya culture.
In the IV century, the Huns invaded the Black Sea steppes from the depths of Asia, pushing the Goths to the remote regions of the Crimea. This is why the actual indigenous population of Crimea are the descendants of the Tatar tribes.
GK: Crimea: there has been a lot of discussion on whether its historically and ethnically Russian or Ukrainian. What is your take?
My father used to say, if you want to know who are the actual indigenous populations of the land, go to the cemeteries and look at the headstones. The oldest grave sites will tell you the true story. Crimea may have been won by Russia in 1856 and given to Ukraine in the 50’s by Khrushev, but the Tatar gravesites on the peninsula go back over 2,000 years. The Crimean Tatars are a small indigenous population in Crimea. Since 1856, consistently repressed first by the tsarist Russia, deported, killed, and sent into camps by Stalin, and eventually repatriated back to Crimea once it was safe, in 1989-1994, after the Fall of the Soviet Union.
There is a reason why the Tatars came back to their indigenous home only after the fall of the USSR, and this tells us which nation treated the indigenous best, at least in their view. They came back because they knew that as part of Ukraine, their minority status will be respected. Indeed, Ukraine is probably the only country in the world (safe from the obvious example of Israel) that has purposely and consciously elected a Jewish President into office, a president that has always known he was Jewish and made no secret of it. This was simply not an issue during his election. If you have any questions about how Russia treats minorities, take a look at how it has treated the Crimean Tatars since they illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014. Their cultural centers and museums have been closed, their language has been outlawed, and anyone demanding the repeal of this has “disappeared”. In fact, the Crimean Tatars have asked the NGOs who have tried to get involved to stop speaking to Russian authorities about it, because this only causes purges and disappearances.
GK: Back to Ukrainian history – you said that it was when the Golden Horde decimated the Kyevan Rus’ that the population of Russia and Ukraine started to develop a separate history. How did this come about?
The great Kyevan Rus’, founded by the Vladimir the Great and the Yarosav the Wise, the Rurik Dynasty, was invaded and pillaged in 1237 by the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde concentrated its power in Moscow and strengthened it against the neighboring countries.
This is when the path of Ukraine splits from the path of Russia. What is also fascinating and a little bit disturbing is how Russian history, down to their history books in primary schools, tells a distinctly opposite historical account. This is a very important feature as to why this war has occurred. There are two narratives that are in play here, and the Ukrainian has been mostly silenced until after the fall of the Soviet Union.
After the power of the Golden Horde waned, the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth has taken over the lands we know today to be Ukraine. Poland is largely a Catholic country, and while there were some nobles who were Ukrainian and Christian Orthodox, these eventually lost their language and adopted the Catholic faith to curry favor with the controlling elite.
GK: It pisses me off so much. Lithuania held onto her traditional polytheism until one of its Grand Dukes married a Polish princess in the 14th c. It sickens me. History shows when polytheists marry outside of their own traditions, those traditions suffer up to and including eradication.
Absolutely. That is so true. Moreover, this all left the peasants alone and unprotected, subject to increasingly repressive laws. The divide between the Catholic and the Orthodox also created a lower and repressed class of citizens. Fairly quickly the Ukrainians were prohibited from owning land – leaving the land of their lord, essentially creating a slave class called serfs with little to no rights. So repressive was this regime with no representation, that many serfs escaped to the wild steppes of Ukraine, which were dangerous, and frequented by bands of Turks looking to kidnap them and sell them as slaves, rather than remain at the behest of the Polish lords.
The land of Ukraine was wild and uninhabited, a dangerous place, and those living there could fall victim to attacks from the Turkish Tatars. The Crimean Tatars were a slave dependent economy. To give you an impression of the extent of this, between the years of 1450 – 1586, there were 86 raids and 1600 – 1647 – 70. Each raid could bring as many as 30,000 kidnapped Ukrainians, but usually it was around 3,000. The serfs who moved to the steppes for freedom would have been very vulnerable to these attacks.
The Cossacks were not a specific ethnicity, they came from the surrounding regions looking for the freedom to form their own lives. In fact, the word quasaq itself is derived from Turkish, it means “freeman”. The first Cossacks started to appear in the steppes of Ukraine during the 1500’s, and eventually started to form their own structured society, complete with a powerful military. By 1600’s, they would make the raids on the Turkish villages themselves.
For centuries, Cossacks aligned themselves, and by turn, fought with, the Turks, the Rzeczpospolita (Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth) the Tsardom of Russia, the Crimean Khanate, and the Ottoman Empire. They were no longer freemen looking for adventure, they formed their own society, with an elite class and a full functioning army. Upon joining the Cossacks, a person had to undergo 7 rigorous years of military service. There were no prisons, but this is because the punishments were strict – a Cossack who killed a fellow Cossack would either be buried alive with the dead body or beaten to death. This nicely prevented misbehavior.
One of the most fascinating things about the Cossacks is that they had one of the first types of democratic societies in the world. Their leader, called a hetman, was an elected position. During the time of war, he was followed without question, but during the time of peace, he could easily be criticized or even replaced if he should become unpopular amongst his men. The term of office was unlimited – until the people decided it needed to end.
The Cossacks were infamous for being powerful warriors on the field of battle, for mastering gun powder, and for their small and agile ships, called chaiki. They were passionately democratic and furiously against any control over them by another state. All officials were elected, and they had a speakers circle, called ocrug. When the ocrug was held, everyone had the right to speak. There was a saying amongst the Cossacks, that a man’s wife is not his servant, but the truest friend and the best of counsel. I often wonder to myself, is this why the Ukrainian word for wife is “дружина”, the root of which means friend? I am not a philologist or a linguist, but I do like to think that it may be.
GK: yeah. In Russian when a woman gets married she “goes behind her husband”. When a man gets married, “he takes a wife.” That’s quite a different model.
Yep. In fact, Cossack women enjoyed a great deal more freedom that women did in Russia during this time period. There have even been a few instances when they themselves lead armies when their husbands were dead or taken prisoner, and have been jailed by the aggravated Russians for doing so.
While Ukraine currently is a democracy and the office of the president has limits to his term,
It amuses me to compare the old Cossack system of government to modern Ukraine, and reminds me of how Zelensky refuses to grant Russia’s demands without a referendum. There is a continuity there – if the Cossack leaders remove themselves too far from the wishes of the people, they will be removed from office.
While in the beginning the Cossacks were committed to fighting the Tatars, sometimes joining the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, they started to eventually turn away from that alliance because the Polish King would renege on the promises he made as soon as the battle was over.
So here you need to bear with me, because here enters the convoluted history of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Pereiaslav Articles of 1659, Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 and the dismally different ways in which Russia and Ukraine view both these documents. To stress how important these two documents, are, written almost 400 years ago, are, they actually played a part in why it was specifically Crimea that Russia invaded and occupied since 2014, claiming it should really be a part of Russia.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, born in 1596, came from a noble family. He joined the Cossack ranks after a Polish aristocrat killed his son and his wife and burned his house to the ground. To him, and to many, this was an example of how uneven the relationship between the Ukrainians and the Pole has been at the time. The Cossacks have continuously demanded for rights on par with the Poles for their nobility, but the Poles would not give in. This response was influenced by the fact that the Polish nobility were Catholic and the Ukrainian Cossacks were Christian Orthodox. Following the murder of his family, Bohdan Khmelytsky caused an uprising that made him legendary as a hetman. Allied with the Crimean Tatars, after several decisive battles in which he and the Cossacks were victorious, he negotiated a peace in 1649 with King John II of Poland. The agreement recognized an autonomous Cossack state within the Commonwealth called Zaporozhian Hetmanate.
However, the Cossacks had too many enemies and this was a vulnerability – the Swedes, the Polish-Lithuanians and the Tatars. Eventually Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the hetman of the Cossacks, decided to make a treaty with the Russian Tsar to protect the autonomy of his people. This is where Russian history rewrites Ukrainian history with a flourish of a fan fiction writer.
In reality, the original treaty, Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654, was a temporary alliance between the entire land of Ukraine, which Bohdan Khmelnytsky claimed, and the Tsar of Russia. This was a necessary alliance for the Cossacks, it would earn them an ally that would support and protect their independence and sovereignty against powerful border nations, the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth especially. Immediately after the agreement was made, the Cossacks, as part of their Treaty with Russia, captured the city of Lviv. The Russian troops captured Vilnius. However, while this was happening, the Swedes unexpectedly attacked the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth, and Russia turned around and signed a new Treaty with the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth, and repelled the Swedes.
GK: I think this is where one of my favorite anecdotes from Vilnius comes. When the Swedes attacked, the people prayed to Our Lady of the Gates of Dawn (Whom I believe is syncretized with Ausrine, the Goddess of dawn) and the iron gates of the city miraculously fell on the Swedish army killing a ton of them.
A fitting greeting. LOL. After that though, Khmelnytsky was enraged. Not only was he not even invited to the negotiation as one would do with an ally, the treaty between Russia and the Commonwealth was in opposition to the tsar’s Treaty with the Cossacks. To Khmelnitsky, the Russian tsar just reneged on his agreement – and this is after the Russian envoys took it to every province of Ukraine and had every person swear allegiance to it. The agreement stated that Russia was required to supply its troops in defense of the Cossack Hetmanate against the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. This of course would no longer be possible if the tsar had a separate agreement with the Commonwealth.
Boghdan Khmelnitsky wrote to the Tsar comparing Russian behavior to the Swedes, “The Swedes are an honest people; when they pledge friendship and alliance, they honor their word. However, the Tsar, in establishing an armistice with the Poles and in wishing to return us into their hands, has behaved most heartlessly with us.”
By this time, it was too late. In 1659 the Pereiaslav Articles were brought forth. Khmelnytsky’s government drafted a modified version of the Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 that was more advantageous to Ukraine (the Zherdev Articles). Taking advantage of the hetman’s difficult position (Pereiaslav was surrounded by a 40,000-man Muscovite army), the Muscovite government rejected the new version and imposed a falsified version of the 1654 treaty and 14 ‘New Articles’ that considerably restricted Ukraine’s sovereignty. This new version forbade the Ukrainian Cossack state to conduct foreign policy or sign military treaties and gave Moscow unrestrained right to station their troops anywhere in Ukraine. The right to elect or depose a hetman, one of the most central foundations of the Cossack life, was forbidden by this “treaty”. The hetman himself was forbidden to appoint or remove members of the General Officer Staff and regimental colonels, and that authority was given exclusively to the Cossacks’ General Military Council. Cossack leaders thenceforth who attempted to break Ukraine away from Muscovy were to be executed, and the Ukrainian Orthodox church was subordinated to the Moscow patriarch.
This is how the people, whose very name descended from the word “freemen” became enslaved.
Russia to this day refutes that they have reneged on the agreement, has stated in various ways that Ukraine and the Cossacks voluntarily wanted to become vassals of the Russian state, and have even at various times in history claimed that Ukrainians always wanted to join the Russians and where one people.
The Cossack Hetmanate became the land of the slaves, and Ukraine was split in two, the Western side going back to Poland and the East – occupied by Russia. The treaty, signed in 1686, lost shortly after, and rumored by the Kremlin to be located in their vaults, once again took the freedom of the Cossacks away.
GK: Tell me more about this treaty. I studied Russian history at least when I was in school the first time around and I never heard of it – which should surprise no one. How many of us educated in the US can go in depth with all the Native treaties that our government has broken?
This treaty that Bohdam Khmelnitsy made with the tsar of Russia, the Pereisaslav Agreement, is one of the most contested, argued over, and contrary pieces of political history in the Russo-Ukrainian political relations. To begin with, the document has been missing almost immediately after it was signed, and each side contests the content in the “copies” that have been made. Russia, for their part, has contended that they have the original, but that they can’t show it on Lenin’s orders. Yes, this is not a typo.
In 1954, during the elaborate celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian union in the USSR, it was announced – not by scholars but by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – that the Pereiaslav Agreement was the natural culmination of the age-old desire of Ukrainians and Russians to be united and that the union of the two peoples had been the prime goal of the 1648 uprising. In the official Soviet interpretation, Khmelnytsky’s greatness lay in the fact that he understood that “The salvation of the Ukrainian people lay only in unity with the great Russian people.” In “honor” of this agreement, Nikita Khrushev gave Crimea to Ukraine. It has been argued that one of the reasons, besides the obvious strategic ones, that Russia took Crimea in 2014, was because Ukraine was unwilling to grow closer ties with Russia and this insulted the new Russian “tsar”.
In vain did the Cossacks, who provided the tsar with the needed military assistance to extract such a treaty from Poland, tried to align with other nations. Their continued attempts at re-establishing their autonomy only lead to more and more repression, when in 1775, Ukraine became enslaved, and every Ukrainian became a serf. The word Ukraine was banned, the Ukrainian language was banned, and the Eastern Territory was renamed “Malo-Rossia”, which means “little Russia”, showcasing the Russian attempt at Russification. Even the word itself was a prison sentence.
It is likely that Russia has simply destroyed the document and turned the Cossacks into slaves. To be a serf meant you had no right to leave the land of the master who owned it, that you had no right to marry or own the fruits of your own labor. While formally masters originally could not move the serf from the land, this rule eventually became defunct and serfs were often sold. In fact, the first instance of a slave being sold in Britain was a serf.
GK: YES! I learned this just last year in a class I took on colonialism, religion, and race. I was shocked.
Prior to this, the autonomy of the Cossack state was apparent, and declared by the Polish King himself. Their elected leader, Hetman, managed their own national and international policy. After Russia’s influence, the hetman became a post appointed by Moscow and the Cossacks would no longer rule themselves.
Conversely, some Ukrainian politicians such as Ivan Zaets, member of parliament, even take the view to completely ignore the Pereiaslav agreement saying, “that there was no Pereyaslav agreement, as no treaty had been signed at Pereyaslav.” He went on to say, “in the course of three hundred years [of Russian rule] they took our soul and sold it to the devil”
Thus, followed decades of repression and Russification, in turn following rebellions that have been quashed, after which even more repressing policies followed. Ukraine remembering them as fallen heroes for its independence, and Russia calling them traitors – to Russia. Its a pretty familiar pattern. This is how Mazepa was declared a hero of Ukraine, to the indignation of Russia. Mazepa was an educated Ukrainian nobleman who eventually became a Ukrainian hetman and who supported Peter the Great in his war expeditions, until he realized that Peter the Great policies repressed and abused Ukrainian people, and failing to change these, eventually decided to sign a treaty with Sweden. On the field of battle, however, both the Swedes and the Ukrainians lost, and Mazepa was declared a traitor by Peter I. Mazepa was able to sign an agreement in which Sweden recognized Ukraine’s full autonomy and promised the support of its military to ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty against foreign aggression – specifically Russia. As a hetman, his people’s well being was his prime concern, but apparently for Russia, this should have been second to the tsar’s imperialistic aspirations (sounds familiar?) In May 1709, a Russian force destroyed the Cossack Sich and the tsar issued a standing order for the immediate execution of any Zaporozhian who was captured. According to the terms, the Swedish troops would be treated humanely, however, most of the Cossack troops were executed for treason or sent to Siberia. It was a massive defeat which spelled the end of Ukraine’s hope for independence for the next two centuries.
Today, Mazepa is remembered for his rebellion and celebrated for having the courage to fight for an independent Ukraine, and, as a result paying the ultimate sacrifice. In 2009 the Cross of Ivan Mazepa was created to honor Ukrainian citizens who have distinguished themselves. In 2015 the Cross was presented by Ukrainian President Petro Pereshenko to the director of the documentary ‘Winter on Fire’, a film about the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014. Furthermore, the ten hryvnia bank note is dedicated to Ivan Mazepa. He remains one of Ukraine’s strongest symbols of resistance to foreign rule.
Thus, the tradition of associating Ukrainians with Mazepa, which began in the aftermath of the battle of Poltava, continued over the rest of the century, with the terms Mazepist and khokhol expressing the negative attitude toward Ukrainians in the Russian Empire.
Today, the treaty, Mazepa are all used in Russia’s propaganda machine. This is why we hear Russia admonish Ukrainian nationalism. Ukrainian nationalism is not new, it has been an unceasing effort for 100s of years to claim its own right to its own soil. To Russia, it has always stood as treasonous – to its own idea of imperialism. The uprising of Stephan Rezin, a Cossack pirate and a leader in 1670, the uprising of Pugachev in 1774 – these are all branded as criminals by Russian law even today. Russia still uses non-existent treaties from 17th century to claim that Ukraine should still be subservient to the Russian Patriarch, and when in 2019 they declared independence from the Russian Orthodox Church it only served as another reason to invade and attempt to subjugate. It has always been an intent of the Russian government to have a puppet government in Ukraine that was under Russian rule.
It’s a Russian tradition, to quench Ukrainian independence, install puppet governments, rename Ukrainian cities, and strip Ukrainian leadership of power and Ukrainians of free elections. All must answer to the Russian “tsar.”
The Cossacks would serve in the tsarist army, and even beat Napoleon back to Paris. Once upon a time, Napoleon said that if he only had 10,000 Cossacks, he would conquer the world. During World War 2, 90% of Ukraine was occupied by the Nazis, so when Russia likes to quote that they lost 30 million people in WW2, they are really referring to USSR, all of the 15 republics. Ukrainians lost about 12 million people during WW2. During Holodomor, a famine induced by Stalin in the year between 1932 and 1933, 7 million more Ukrainian lives were lost. This was done again, to quash the insurgent Ukrainian fight for independence.
GK: I just want to emphasize that: Stalin purposely created a famine with the conscious intent to starve millions of Ukrainians to death. Readers can learn more here.
To this war, to Putin, to all who are trying to figure out, how is it possible that Ukraine is still fighting, and why doesn’t it surrender to salvage the people that are still remaining, I can quote a famous Cossack who was the leader of the last Cossack revolt Pugachev. When he was finally arrested and interrogated, he was asked, how he, a lowly criminal could go against the monarchy. How is it that the people were still fighting when he is incarcerated? He answered: “I am not the raven, only his offspring”.
GK: I think that’s a good place to end part 2. I know this has been a long and deep dive into Ukrainian history, but it’s necessary to know where we all come from, to really understand what’s going on today. There will be a part III so stay tuned, folks. I’ll have it in a week or two, as soon as I have a chance to proof and edit (I only edit for commas, apostrophes, and spelling lol – which Tove fully approved).
Resist
It’s really interesting to me that the majority of the people crying “fascist!” at everyone in the community with whom they disagree (and they’re doing it to people on the left and the right, mind you) are…atheists. They are people who have forced their way into polytheistic traditions, who may have once believed in and venerated the Gods, but are now atheists who refuse to leave our traditions alone, who are working from the inside to destroy them. They are randomly attacking teachers, elders, clergy, devotees who have faith, piety, and devotion…perhaps because they themselves have none. Guess their progressive politics don’t elevate their souls quite as much as they thought. *sarcasm*
How much weight should we be expected to give the words of the godless? Exactly why are we letting those without belief dictate the future of our traditions? Resist.
Gangleri's Grove 