Austrian, Poland, Zionist WWI connections to Ukraine Nationalism
Austria-Hungary/Ukrainianism pre-WWI
The Austrians closed Russian schools and boarding schools, Orthodox churches and chapels, and banned Orthodox services. Ukrainian nationalist movements and organizations received political and financial support leading to Ukrainian nationalist leaders to emphasize their loyalty to the Austrian and German governments.
One of these Ukrainian nationalists, Dmitry Dontsov, declared in 1913 at the Second All-Ukrainian Student Congress held in Lvov that those who would not side with Austria and Germany in the future war against Russia would be considered criminals to their nation.
Dontsov argued that the slogan “independence” was no longer relevant. He called for a new, more relevant, real, concrete, and achievable slogan of “breakaway from Russia”, severing any ties and for complete political separatism.
Because of the objective processes, he argued, any defeat of Russia, any separation of even a piece of Ukrainian territory in favor of Austria would lead to consolidation, to the strengthening of the Ukrainian element in Austria, and therefore in Russia, and would bring closer the time of the final liberation of Ukraine.
During WWI in 1918, a Ukrainian state “allied” with Germany and Austria was created that for a short while was headed by Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky.
Sharing the plans regarding it in November 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Berchtold stated that “the main objective in this war is the long-term weakening of Russia, and therefore, in case of our victory, we will proceed to create a Ukrainian state that is independent from Russia”.
But the November Revolution of 1918 in Germany, the defeat of Austria and Germany in World War I led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, never having realized its plans to throw Russia to the east.
As a result of hostilities in 1918–1921 and the subsequent division of territory as a result of three wars – World War I, Russian Civil War and the Soviet-Polish war – Galicia became part of Poland, Bukovina went to Romania, and Transcarpathia – to Czechoslovakia.
In all three of these territories of the Southwestern Rus’, the authorities of the respective states tried to do exactly the same – to carry out total Polonization, Romanization, or Czechization. But after encountering stubborn resistance from the Rusyns on this path, they took the path of inplanting a “Ukrainian national consciousness” in them.
The policy of Ukrainianization or, in other words, the construction of the nation’s identity on the basis of Russophobia, is being continued with varying degrees of success by various political actors to this day. We can see what it has led to: a military conflict that threatens to grow into a global conflict is blazing in the very center of Europe.
http://eu.eot.su/2022/05/06/austria-hungarys-contribution-to-ukrainization-ukrainism-chapter-iii/
Poland-Post World War I
From 1795 to 1917, the Poles did not have their own nation state. The emergence of an independent Poland was associated with the revolutionary events in Russia. On March 27, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies adopted an appeal to the “Polish People”, in which it reported:
“The tsarist regime, which for a century and a half oppressed the Polish people simultaneously with the Russians, has been overthrown by the joint forces of the proletariat and the soldiers. Russian democracy stands on the basis of recognition of the national and political self-determination of peoples, and proclaims that Poland has the right to be completely independent in state-international terms.”
On September 10, 1919, according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain, signed by Austria after its defeat in the First World War, the “allied and united powers” (the USA, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, and others) obliged Austria to recognize the new borders of Poland, as well as not to oppose their subsequent changes at the expense of Austrian territory.
Using this treaty, Poland occupied Galicia, and on March 14, 1923, at a conference of ambassadors of the Allied powers, diplomatically formalized its authority over this territory.
Also in 1919, Polish troops, formed and armed by France, were already advancing eastward. The Supreme Council of the Entente recommended that Poland stop at the “Curzon Line”, accepting it as the eastern border passing through Grodno – Yalovka – Nemirov – Brest – Dorogusk – Ustylug, east of Hrubieszów, through Krylov and further west of Rava-Russkaya, east of Przemyśl to the Carpathians.
However, this was just diplomatic rhetoric. Poland, instigated and armed by the Entente, seized part of the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands: Novogrudok, Polesie, Volyn region, from Russia, which was weakened by the Civil War,.
However, the Red Army managed to achieve a turning point in the war and drive the Poles back to the west. The Red Army stopped only at the gates of Warsaw. The Poles themselves call the sudden salvation of Warsaw, still not explained with sufficient historical accuracy, the “Cud nad Wisłą” or “Miracle on the Vistula”.
The result of the Red Army’s sudden retreat from Warsaw with great losses was the signing of the Border Treaty in March 1921 in Riga, according to which the western parts of Ukraine and Belarus were ceded to Poland.
The border established by the Treaty of Riga did not correspond to either the ethnographic map of the settlement of the Poles or the historical borders of Poland before the three partitions. Domestic historians and most foreign researchers qualify it as a border established as a result of Poland’s aggressive actions.
“The first World War brought freedom and independence to Poland, thanks to the Russian revolution and the defeat of Austria and Germany. The Soviet Government willingly agreed to the re-establishment of the Polish State within her ethnographical frontiers, which as far as Soviet Russia was concerned meant that Poland’s eastern frontier should be ‘the Curzon Line,’ her original frontier.
Had that just demarcation line been accepted, the history of Soviet-Polish relations between 1919 and 1939 might have been very different, the history of Europe might have been very different, in fact the Second World War might never have occurred.
Unfortunately, in 1920 Pilsudski, encouraged no doubt by evil counselors in the Chancelleries of London and Paris, repeated the same tragic crime made by the Polish leaders six centuries earlier.
Taking advantage of Soviet Russia’s preoccupation with other enemies, Polish forces invaded Russia and annexed—under the Treaty of Riga—Ukrainian and Byelorussian territory,” the English researchers W.P. and Zelda K. Coates wrote.
After that, the active polonization of the Ukrainian and Belarussian territories began. State, administrative, and judicial proceedings and correspondence were switched into Polish. Railroad tickets had Polish names of stations, and the post office and telegraph refused to accept mail and parcels in any language other than Polish.
“During the first 10 years of Polish rule in Western Ukraine, the number of public schools was reduced from 3,600 to 400-500 <…>
The thesis was proclaimed – ‘there are no Russians in Poland,’ justifying the total abolition of Russian schools. According to this plan, it was proposed to switch completely to the Polish language. Those schools that wanted to keep teaching in Russian were closed.”
[this is exactly what Ukraine is doing today]
By that time Poland’s foreign policy began to take shape around the Jagiellonian idea, which implies expansion to the east. The practical implementation of the Jagiellonian idea was “prometheism” – a special Polish intelligence project, which began using representatives of Russophobic counterrevolution in its Ukrainian, Georgian, Tatar, and other varieties.
The leaders of the Georgian emigre community proposed the name of the “Promethean project,” metaphorically associated with the legend of the freedom fighter titan Prometheus, chained, according to one the versions of the myth: to the Georgian rocks. Presenting the “enslaved peoples” in the form of a collective victim, the Polish secret services intended to act as a “Hercules,” freeing this victim – “Prometheus” – from chains and torment.
According to the authors of the article “The Prometheus Organization and the Promethean Movement in the plans of Polish intelligence for the dissolution of Russia/USSR,” based on archival materials that the Soviet Union acquired during the Second World War, this special project called for “specific actions of Polish intelligence, aimed at the territorial dismemberment of the USSR with the help of a well-organized and Polish-controlled process of forming an alliance between anti-Russian nationalist forces of various persuasions, including national separatists or national integralists.”
In 1928, a club was created in Warsaw with a long name: “‘Prometheus’ – the League of peoples oppressed by Russia: Azerbaijan, Don, Karelia, Georgia, Idel-Ural, Ingria, Crimea, Komi, Kuban, North Caucasus, Turkestan, and Ukraine.” Polish intelligence officer Edmund Haraszkiewicz supervised the “Promethean” work in Warsaw.
The Prometheus organization was unparalleled in its scope of espionage and sabotage activities against the USSR as well as in numbers and ethnic diversity of its personnel in the 1920s and 1930s.
Realizing the “Jagellonian idea” through wars of conquest and annexations, Poland in 1938, in the words of Winston Churchill, “with the greed of a hyena, took part in the robbery and destruction of the Czechoslovak state.”
Germany prevented the further development of Polish expansion. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, and less than a month later, Warsaw fell. Poland again lost its statehood, and the border troops of the Red Army stood on the “eastern Кresy.”
On the night of September 16-17, 1939, Polish ambassador to Moscow Wacław Grzybowski was summoned by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Potemkin, who read to him a note addressed to the Polish government:
“The Polish-German War has revealed the internal bankruptcy of the Polish state. During the course of ten days’ hostilities Poland has lost all its industrial areas and cultural centers. Warsaw no longer exists as the capital of Poland. The Polish government has disintegrated, and no longer shows any signs of life. This means that the Polish State and its Government have, in fact, ceased to exist. Therefore the Agreements concluded between the U.S.S.R and Poland have ceased to operate.
Left to its own devices and bereft of leadership, Poland has become a suitable field for all manner of hazards and surprises, which might constitute a threat to the U.S.S.R. For these reasons the Soviet Government, which hitherto has preserved neutrality, can no longer observe a neutral attitude towards these facts.
The Soviet Government further cannot view with indifference the fact that the kindred Ukrainian and Belorussian people, who live on Polish territory and who are at the mercy of fate, are left defenseless.
In these circumstances, the Soviet Government has directed the High Command of the Red Army to order the troops to cross the frontier and take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia.
At the same time, the Soviet Government proposes to take all measures to extricate the Polish people from the unfortunate war into which they were dragged by their unwise leaders, and to enable them to live a peaceful life.”
By this time, the Polish government and military commanders had fled the country. The curator of the “Promethean” project, Haraszkiewicz, also fled. After settling in Paris, he continued his ideological work and wrote a history of Prometheism.
According to some reports, part of the “Prometheus” agent network, together with the officers of the II Department of the General Staff who supervised it, were recruited by British intelligence after the outbreak of World War II.
Another, much larger group of the “Promethean” agents went under the direct control of Nazi German intelligence services, with subsequent utilization in sabotage units such as “Brandenburg-800”, the “Jagdverband-Ost” and “Zeppelin” intelligence schools, as well as in the “Vineta” propaganda and translation special group within the Nazi German Ministry of Propaganda.
Poland became independent again after Soviet soldiers liberated it from the Nazi occupation by defeating the German Reich,. The Soviet-Polish border was drawn along the “Curzon Line” in such a way that Western Belarus and Western Ukraine with Lvov remained in the USSR. These changes were framed by the Treaty on the Soviet-Polish state border, signed in August 1945.
http://eu.eot.su/2022/04/22/polands-historical-claims-to-ukraine-ukrainism-chapter-ii/
Many are somewhat perplexed by Israels and Ukrainian Jewish leadership tolerance for Ukrainian Nazis/Nationalists.
For this a bit of history of the Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky might help, although it does not fully explain it.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jabotinsky was rediscovered in the city of his birth, Odessa, and throughout Ukraine.
https://colinshindler.com/jabotinsky-and-ukrainian-nationalism/
A Ze’ev Jabotinsky Foundation was established in Kiev – a product of the warm relations between the new Ukrainian state and Israel.
In 1998 Israel Kleiner was the first winner of the annual Jabotinsky prize and medal for the Ukrainian-language edition of the reviewed book. Although it was written in the early 1980s, this book further distances the figure of Jabotinsky from the manufactured stereotypes and compliments new archival evidence from the former Soviet Union.
https://colinshindler.com/jabotinsky-and-ukrainian-nationalism/
Most importantly, it expands a hitherto little-known aspect of his political work – his support for Ukrainian nationalism before the First World War.
Odesa, where Jabotinsky was born in 1880, was called “the Gates of Zion” (Shaarei Zion in Hebrew). From the second half of the nineteenth century, the city became known as one of the main centers of Zionism in the Russian Empire. Literature in Hebrew was published here, and it was the place from where Jews headed to Palestine.
“In Odesa, Jabotinsky matured in the milieu of distinguished personalities, whose creativity, knowledge and worldview influenced the man that he became. Alongside him lived and worked poets, writers, and the historians Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshu‘a Ravnitski, Leon Pinsker and Ahad Ha-Am, Mendele Moykher-Sforim and Sholem Aleichem, Yosef Klausner and Sha’ul Tchernichowsky,” noted the Israeli diplomat and culturologist Dr. Yatvetsky in his commentary for Radio Liberty.
https://ukrainianjewishencounter.org/en/the-ukrainian-question-in-the-world-perception-of-jabotinsky-the-zionist/
Jabotinsky grew up in a Russified, nominally Jewish household in the cosmopolitan seaport of Odessa, only 10 per cent of whose population, according to the 1897 census, were Ukrainian.
Jabotinsky credited the Greeks, Romans and Jews with building Odessa: the Ukrainians, Russians, French, Italians and Turks came later. He recalled that the 20 pupils in his class at school represented some 13 nations. The Ukrainians, he noted, provided the sailors, masons … and tramps – ‘the salt of the earth’.”
As a student in Berne, Switzerland, Jabotinsky notes in his autobiography, he made various pro-Zionist remarks after hearing the Zionist leader Nachum Syrkin – a statement questioned by recent research.
His first article on Zionism – albeit as almost a disinterested outsider – was written in 1902 under the nom deplume Altalena.
In 1903, he was elected as a Russian delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congressin Basel, Switzerland. After Theodor Herzl's death in 1904, he became the leader of the right-wing Zionists. That year he moved to Saint Petersburgand became one of the co-editors for the Russophone magazine Yevreiskaya Zhyzn(Jewish Life), which after 1907 became the official publishing body of the Zionist movement in Russia.
In the pages of the newspaper, Jabotinsky wrote fierce polemics against supporters of assimilation and the Bund.
In 1905, he was one of the co-founders of the "Union for Rights Equality of Jewish People in Russia". The following year, he was one of the chief speakers at the 3rd All-Russian Conference of Zionistsin Helsinki, Finland, which called upon the Jews of Europe to engage in Gegenwartsarbeit(work in the present) and to join together to demand autonomy for ethnic minorities in Russia.
I wont go into Jabotinsky’s history in Palestine here. You may read the below link for that
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsky
Jabotinsky’s interest in the Ukrainian national question was first noted in article where he suggested that the Jewish national movement should ‘find and unite with allies whose interests overlap to some extent with ours.
Herein lie our tasks in the general political area’. The co-operation of national movements was quite distinct from the coalescence of ideologies. Jabotinsky later proposed monism and the doctrine of ‘the sha ‘atnez [a biblical prohibition against wearing two kinds of material] of the soul’, which he formulated in order to concentrate Betari minds on achieving the breakthrough to the Jewish state rather than involvement in such ‘hybrids’ as mixing Zionism with socialism ( cosmopolitanism) as some Zionists were pursuing
https://archive.org/details/cosmopolitanismz00lewiiala
Jabotinsky saw close similarities between the goals of the Ukrainian and Jewish national movements. Both peoples had been stateless for centuries but had attempted to keep alive their national and cultural identities. Both were systematically discriminated against by the empires in which they lived, though for different reasons and to differing degrees. Both suffered from reactionary enemies – the Black Hundreds in Russia and the Polonizers in the Russian and Austrian areas of Poland.
National liberation for Ukrainians and Zionists alike could come about only through democratization.
The fact that before the First World War the Ukrainian national movement adopted a positive attitude towards the Jewish national movement impressed Jabotinsky. Perhaps most important of all, the concept of co-operation between the two national movements was symbolic of an emerging independent Jewish national policy and a pragmatic understanding of Zionist aims.
Jabotinsky understood that as the Jews were a minority within minorities, they were especially vulnerable to being used as unwitting agents of Russification in an attempt to undermine the Ukrainian national movement. Indeed, this is how many Ukrainians perceived such assimilated Russified Jews – a view Jabotinsky attempted to combat.
Tsarist Russia’s tactic of playing one nationality against another was by no means novel. Russia had used Ukrainian nationalism to effect the defeat, partition and elimination of Poland in its sweep westwards in the eighteenth century.
St Petersburg did not recognize Ukraine, only ‘Little Russia’. It was only in 1905 that the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences acknowledged Ukrainian as the distinct tongue of a distinct people.
In 1897 almost 3 million Jews inhabited Ukrainian ethnic territories – some 28 per cent of world Jewry. It therefore made sense for Jabotinsky to work with the nascent Ukrainian national movement and identify common goals and aspirations.
This conception prefigured his emphasis on working with Pilsudski’s Poland – although there were clear differences, especially with regard to his various evacuation plans in the interwar years.
Prior to the First World War the Austrians oppressed the Poles, who in turn oppressed the Ukrainians. The attempts to Polonize both Polish and west Ukrainian territories affected Jews and Ukrainians alike.
Jabotinsky thus supported the Ukrainians in the Polish-Ukrainian dispute over Galicia. But in Austro-Hungary and Russia he supported the Polish minority.
His support for Ukrainian nationalism and other minority national movements between 1904 and 1914 must be understood in the context of his struggle against Jewish assimilationism and rival ideologies such as those advocating national-cultural autonomy in the Jewish diaspora.Thus Jabotinsky began to contribute articles to the nationalist publications Ukrainskii vestnik (in 1906) and Ukrainskaia zhizn’ (in 1912).
The Jews, Kleiner argues, began to appreciate the Ukrainian national-democratic forces only in 1917 – and by then it was too late since Russification had become partially identified with the Jews.
Moreover, Jabotinsky’s views on the national question, his opposition to Russification and his support for the democratic forces of national minorities did not mean hatred of Russia, antipathy to Russian culture or a renunciation of his background.
In 1926, in an affectionate rebuke to the songstress Ida Kremer, Jabotinsky wrote: ‘You are yourself an incarnation of all the fun, devilment and melancholy [of Odessa].’Almost 20 years after the Revolution, he still referred to his birthplace Odessa as ‘my beautiful toy of a city’.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of Kleiners’s book is his analysis of the Jabotinsky-Slavinsky agreement of September 1921 where it was concluded that Jewish gendarmes would accompany Petliura’s army in a new invasion of Ukraine to prevent further anti-Jewish atrocities. The agreement followed pogroms by nationalists in the war against the Bolsheviks.
Joseph Schechtman, later Jabotinsky’s secretary and biographer and a member of the Central Rada and Small Rada, proposed the creation of selfdefence units in November 1917. Petliura agreed to this proposal in principle but the Jewish socialist parties deemed the idea overtly nationalist and counter-revolutionary, scuppering the idea with terrible results for the Jewish population.
This was the background to Jabotinsky’s formal meeting with Petliura’s representative Maksym Slavinsky at the twelth Zionist congress in Karlovy Vary in September 1921. Slavinsky, a minister in Petliura’s government, was an old friend of Jabotinsky from Odessa. His wife was Jewish and he was a known ‘friend of the Jews’.
In the elections to the second Duma in 1907, Slavinsky and Jabotinsky both ran for office in the same constituency, which boasted a large Jewish population. Slavinsky was elected, but, perceived as a pro-Jewish candidate, was blocked by anti-Semitic groups from reaching the Duma.
The two men subsequently collaborated on the publications Ukrainskaia zhizn’ and the Moscow liberal daily Russkie vedomosti (which sent Jabotinsky to Western Europe following the outbreak of the First World War).
In his message to the twelth Zionist congress, read out by Jabotinsky, Slavinsky stated:
The upheavals that made victims of them [Ukrainian Jews] wounded the Ukrainian people as severely as they did the Jewish people. That section of the Ukrainian people that is aware of its tasks can in no way be held responsible for this, since it rejects and condemns those criminal attacks, for which irresponsible elements must be blamed.
Slavinsky concluded with an appeal for brotherhood between the two peoples. However, all this did not go down well with the delegates, particularly the East Europeans and the Anglo-Americans, who laid the blame for the antiJewish atrocities firmly on the Ukrainian government.
The accord itself did not commit the Jewish gendarmarie to participate in any military operations on behalf of Petliura’s forces and provided them with a great deal of independence and autonomy.
Kleiner notes that whereas the pogroms in Ukraine had deeply distressed the Jewish world, the international community was less concerned. Both sides had an interest in preventing further atrocities.
Jabotinsky also understood the iconic value of a Jewish army. This had been his raison d’être in his struggle to create the Jewish Legion. With its disbandment, resurrecting this symbol of the Jewish national movement in military guise had considerable symbolic and inspirational value. Only Weizmann supported Jabotinsky in his efforts to form the Jewish Legion and he encountered considerable hostility from fellow Zionists.
This hostility, Kleiner claims, lingered despite the success of the Legion. Jabotinsky’s individualism, dynamism and intellectualism did not please everyone in the Zionist movement, least of all Poalei-Tsion22 and the Zionist left overall, who looked on the October Revolution with respectful ambivalence. The accord thus provided an opportunity to accuse Jabotinsky of allying himself with anti-Semites.
Another objection was that Zionists should remain neutral in the conflict between Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik forces. This view resembled the majority view among Zionists against forming the Jewish Legion since it meant backing the British against the Germans and ditching a policy of neutrality.
Some asked why it was necessary to seek Petliura’s agreement to create Jewish self-defence forces; others wanted to know why Jabotinsky had broken ranks by not consulting the leadership of the Zionist organization.
All this became part of the staple criticism of Jabotinsky and his followers especially in the 1930s when Betar’s imagery of militarism and singlemindedness led to comparisons with the etatist states of inter-war Europe.
Although the Ukrainian incursion planned for 1922 never took place, the vehemence of the reaction of the Jewish world took Jabotinsky aback. In a letter written in New York, several months after the agreement, Jabotinsky noted that he had certainly not forgotten the Slavinsky affair: he considered it a serious matter and planned to reopen it on his return to Europe. Clearly, he felt he had been judged unfairly. He returned to the subject on several occasions during the next 20 years but never renounced his original position.
The positive Jewish reaction towards the assassination of Petliura in Paris in May 1926 and the public support for the assaillant, Shalom Schwartzbard, induced a cautious reaction in Jabotinsky. The Jews saw in the judicial investigation a trial of Petliura rather than one of his assassin.
Kleiner writes that Petliura was ‘easily transferred in the national consciousness into the villain of the Jewish tragedy. In actual fact, he was the scapegoat’. In contrast, the Ukrainian press compared Petliura with Garibaldi– ironically Jabotinsky’s hero.
Although he does not come down on one side of the fence or the other, Kleiner questions the accepted wisdom that the Ukrainian government and Petliura in particular were totally – or even in part – responsible for the killings. He notes, for example, that in his last stronghold on Ukrainian territory between January and August 1920 Petliura’s forces put an end to ‘all attempts to carry out pogroms against the Jews’.
Kleiner argues conventionally that many Ukrainians viewed Jews and Bolsheviks as interchangeable entities. He takes issue with the quote on the jacket of a book published in the mid-1970s which describes Petliura as ‘the Jew hating leader of a Jew hating people’, suggesting that this description dovetails nicely with the Soviet approach.
He further notes that the fewer Soviet atrocities against the Jews such as in the town of Hlukhiv in February 1918 were conveniently airbrushed out of the history books. Arnold Margolin and Solomon Goldelman, prominent Jewish participants in these events, claimed that Petliura and the Ukrainian government actually attempted to combat the pogromists.
in 1927, Jabotinsky stated the following in a letter to the editorial offices of the Russian-language Paris newspaper Poslednie novosti [Latest News] "Part of the Ukrainian press incorrectly interpreted my position on the question of Petliura's responsibility for the pogroms of 1917–1920."
In a subsequent article entitled "Petliura and the Pogroms," he explained that he was not accusing Petliura and the Ukrainian national movement either of antisemitism or of organizing pogroms, only their inability to halt them:
"Dismissing it [responsibility] means not understanding what it is to be the head of the government and the army."