Category Archives: History

Joseph Brodsky was a despicable psycho, and typical “Russian liberal”

From his poem about Ukrainian indepdence in 1991:

It’s over now. Now hurry back to your huts
To be gang-banged by Krauts and Polacks right in your guts.
It’s been fun hanging together from the same gallows loop,
But when you’re alone, you can eat all that sweet beetroot soup.
Good riddance, Khokhly, it’s over for better or worse,
I’ll go spit in the Dnieper, perhaps it’ll flow in reverse,….

But mark: when it’s your turn to be dragged to graveyards,
You’ll whisper and wheeze, your deathbed mattress a-pushing,
Not Shevchenko’s bullshit but poetry lines from Pushkin…..

https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/a-russian-poets-view-of-ukraine/

Forgetting

“Forgetting” is a centuries old, deeply ingrained Russian past time.

Only in a population with a strong instinct for forgetting can the whims of their Czar be supreme, always wise, always winning, always correct.

#russianworld

Why Was There a Ukrainian State in the Russian Far East?

History Hustle
163K subscribers

Revolutionary Russia
Green Ukraine (Zelenyi Klyn; Зелений клин, Zakytaishchyna) was a short-lived Ukrainian state that existed in the Russian Far East in the years of the Russian Civil War. In the years before the Russian Revolution Ukrainian settlers had moved to the region and after the October Revolution of 1917 Iurii Hlushko (“Mova”) proclaimed a Ukrainian state. First it sought union with the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR; a.k.a. Ukrainian People’s Republic; UPR), but later went for full independence. The state would be dissolved in the early 1920s and would make way for the communist-oriented Far Eastern Republic that would be dissolved also.
History Hustle presents: Why Was There a Ukrainian State in the Russian Far East?

The Big ‘Russian’ Lie – the re-branding of Muskovy

“Just a century ago people in France and Europe could easily differentiate Rus’ from Muscovy”, Theodore Casimir Delamarre, owner and editor in chief of La Patrie, said back in 1869 in his petition to the French senate.
“History shouldn’t forget, people we know now as Ruthenians were known previously as Rusians (spot single “s”) or Ruses and people we call now as Russians were Muscovites and their land was called Muscovy”, added Delamarre.

https://texty.org.ua/articles/110147/battle-for-the-history/

***

As for this video, in this I examine exactly why Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia are different countries, cultures, and peoples and how history, easily available to all, shows us this very, very clearly.

Maiorov, Alexander Vyacheslavovich. “The daughter of a Byzantine Emperor–the wife of a Galician-Volhynian Prince.” Byzantinoslavica-Revue internationale des Etudes Byzantines 72, no. 1-2 (2014): 188-233.
Jarzyńska, Katarzyna. “Patriarch Kirill’s game over Ukraine.” OSW Commentary 144 (2014): 14.
Keleher, Serge. “Orthodox rivalry in the twentieth century: Moscow versus Constantinople.” Religion, State and Society: The Keston Journal 25, no. 2 (1997): 125-137.
Lynch, Allen. Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft. Potomac Books, Inc., 2011.
Shevt︠s︡ova, Lilii︠a︡. Russia–lost in transition: the Yeltsin and Putin legacies. Carnegie Endowment, 2007.
Pearce, James C. The use of history in Putin’s Russia. Vernon Press, 2020.
Andriewsky, Olga. “Towards a decentred history: The study of the Holodomor and Ukrainian historiography.” East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): 17-52.
Beevor, Antony. Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921. Penguin, 2022.
Curanović, Alicja. “The attitude of the Moscow Patriarchate towards other Orthodox churches.” Religion, State & Society 35, no. 4 (2007): 301-318.
Cybulski, Marius L. Political, religious and intellectual life in Muscovy in the age of the Boyar Fedor Nikitich Iur’ev-Romanov aka The Grand Sovereign, the most holy Filaret Nikitich, patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’,(ca. 1550-1633). Harvard University, 1998.
Graziosi, Andrea. “The Impact of Holodomor Studies on the Understanding of the USSR.” East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): 53-80.
Koropeckyj, Roman. “Russia and Ukraine.” TLS. Times Literary Supplement 6194 (2021):
Kyrychok, O. “Role of the Kyivan Rus’ Writing in Strengthening Greek and Byzantine Understanding of the Political.” Ucrainica Mediaevalia, 2 3 (2019): 63-70.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The court of the red tsar. Hachette UK, 2010.
NEUTRALITY, ARMED. “CATHERINE II: LAST YEARS (1779-1796).”
Poppe, Andrzej. “The christianization and Ecclesiastical structure of Kyivan Rus’ to 1300.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 21, no. 3/4 (1997): 311-392.
Plokhy, Serhii. The gates of Europe: A history of Ukraine. Basic Books, 2015.
Prodan, Tetyana. “Honor and Dignity in the Kyivan Rus Period.” ФІЛОСОФІЯ (2019): 81181.
Screen, J. E. O. “Gajecky, G.” The Cossack Administration of the Hetmanate”(Book Review).” Slavonic and East European Review 59, no. 1 (1981): 156.
Van Bergen, R. “IVAN III, THE GREAT.” Russia, China and Eurasia 34, no. 4 (2018): 579-584.
Voloshyn, Yuriy. “Household composition and family structures of Ukrainian Cossacks in the Second Half of the eighteenth century.” The History of the Family 20, no. 1 (2015): 141-157.
Wilson, Andrew. The Ukrainians: unexpected nation. Yale University Press, 2000.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, like Dostoyevsky, fantasized about Russia taking over India

In The Last Break Southward (1995), Zhirinovsky described his worldview. “Since the 1980s, I have elaborated a geopolitical conception—the last break southward, Russia’s reach to the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.” This is “really the solution for the salvation of the Russian nation … It solves all problems and we gain tranquility.”[47] Russia will rule the space “from Kabul to Istanbul.”[48] The United States would feel safer with the Russian rule in the region, since wars there would cease under the Russian rule. Perhaps, some people in Kabul, Teheran, or Ankara would not like it but many people would feel better. “The Persians and Turks would suffer a bit but all the rest would gain.”[49]

The “bells of the Orthodox Church must bell from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.” And Jerusalem becomes close. It is necessary that “the Christian world reunifies in Jerusalem.” The Palestinian problem can be solved by partial transfer of the Palestinian population to the former territories of Turkey and Iran.[50] The great Russian language and Russian ruble would wield Near Eastern and Central Asian peoples into one Russian citizenship.[51]

***

Dostoyevsky:

Egregious examples arise in his “Diary of a Writer”, a genre-bending collection of fictional and non-fictional sketches produced towards the end of his life, in which he enthused about the then-ongoing Russian conquest of Central Asia. In a passage written in January 1881, he celebrates the Russian army’s victory at Geok-Tepe (now Gokdepe in Turkmenistan), a bloody battle that cemented the empire’s authority in the region. As Olga Maiorova of the University of Michigan notes, in the book Dostoyevsky hopes Russia will continue its conquest into Asia, so that people “all the way to India” might “become convinced of the invincibility of the white tsar”.

Source: https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/10/06/yes-the-russian-literary-canon-is-tainted-by-imperialism

Kuban Kozaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8x0sgGPInM

До сторіччя розстрілу Кубанської Народної Республіки фільм режисера Валентина Сперкача “Кубанські козаки. А вже літ двісті…” Студія “Україна-Світ”, 1992 рік. Фільм розказує про історію переселення запорізьких козаків на Кубань, про геноцид українців в Росії.

youtube channel: Valentyn Sperkach

Russia and Genocide — you’re either a subject, or an enemy

Russia continues the genocidal expansion strategy by which they conquered the Steppe 500-300 years ago.

This thread by @d_foubert . Includes many little known and seldom discussed episodes of their Brutality.

***

https://twitter.com/d_foubert/status/1571224457854730242

“No man, no problem.”
Russia is the country that has committed the most genocides.
Here is a history of ‘s relations with its neighbours and with its population
1/23

Tsar Ivan IV (The Terrible)
1552: The Kazan massacre, ~50 000 dead.
1570: The Novgorod massacre, ~60 000 dead.
2/23

The Circassian genocide in the North Caucasus (XIXth century):
The Russian Empire ethnically cleansed the Circassian people (90%). Between 400 000 and 1 500 000+ dead.
The Circassian genocide is denied by the Russian government.
3/23

The massacre of the Praga district of Warsaw (1794): the Russian imperial army killed up to 20 000 civilians in reprisal or revenge, regardless of gender and age.
“The whole of Praga was strewn with dead bodies, blood was flowing in streams” – Suvorov
4/23

The January uprising (1863–1864)
80 000 Poles were exiled to Siberia.
Whole villages and towns were burned down, all economic and social activities were suspended, and the nobility was ruined through the confiscation of property and exorbitant taxes.
5/23

The White Terror (1917-1923): ~300 000 dead.
6/23

The Red terror (1918-1920): ~1 300 000 dead.
50 000 White PoWs and civilians were executed with Lenin’s approval in 1920. 800 000 Red Army deserters were arrested and many were killed with their families.
7/23

The Tambov peasant rebellion (1920-1921): ~240 000 rebels and civilians were killed by communist forces. The Red Army used chemical weapons to fight the peasants.
8/23

Data from the Soviet archives indicates 2,4 million Kulaks were deported from 1930 to 1934.
The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389 000.
9/23

The soviet man-made famine of 1930–1933:
About 5,7 to 8,7 million people are estimated to have lost their lives.
The Holomodor has been recognized by Ukraine alongside 15 other countries as a genocide against the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet regime.
10/23

The Katyń massacre: 20 000 Polish military officer prisoners were summarily executed in April and May 1940.
But it’s only the tip of the bloody iceberg: at least one-third of the 320 000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army in 1939 were murdered.
11/23

As a result of the Soviet occupation during the Second World War, Estonia permanently lost at least 200 000 people or 20% of its population to repression, exodus and war.
12/23

The soviet occupation of Latvia during the Second World War: ~35 000 Latvians were taken from their homes, loaded onto freight trains and taken to Siberia.
13/23

The soviet occupation of Lithuania during the IInd WW: 300 000 Lithuanians were deported or sentenced to terms in prison camps. It is estimated that Lith. lost almost 780 000 citizens as a result of the Soviet occupation, of these ~440 000 were war refugees.
14/23

From 1939 to 1941, nearly 1,5 million persons were deported from the Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland deep into the Soviet Union.
15/23

In 1945, the number of members of the Polish Underground State who were deported to Siberia and various labour camps in the USSR reached 50 000.
At least 6 000 political death sentences were issued and over 20 000 people died in Soviet prisons (including Witold Pilecki).
16/23

The scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases. The Polish state archives and statistics of the Ministry of Health indicate that the number of victims might have exceeded 100 000.
17/23

After the retreat of the Wehrmacht from Crimea, the NKVD deported around 200 000 Crimean Tatars from the peninsula on 18 May 1944.
18/23

Afghanistan (1979–1989)
Up to 2 million Afghans were killed by the Soviet forces and their proxies.
19/23

The First Chechen War (1994-1996):
Between 30 000 and 100 000 civilian deaths and possibly over 200 000 injured, while more than 500 000 people were displaced by the conflict, which left cities and villages across the republic in ruins.
20/23

The Second Chechen War (1999-2000):
Around 200 000 civilians dead.
21/23

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that Russian air strikes and artillery shells have killed 18 000 people, including nearly 8 000 civilians, in Syria by 1 October 2018.
22/23

I don’t think I have anything more to say, except that we must put an end to this barbaric state, which has no place in the modern world.
This may be the work of a generation or several. In any case, it will be a necessity.
23/23

They even took pillows away • Ukraïner • National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide

Nadiia Korolova was born in the village of Ivankivtsi in Podillia region. When the Holodomor broke out, she was 10 years old. Podillia was among the first regions to start rioting against mass compulsory collectivisation (making villagers forcefully join collective farms, “kolhosps” — ed.) and the closing of churches in 1929. Outraged by the regime’s actions, Ukrainian villagers chased out the local officials and activists from their villages and took control over the district centres. In 1932 the opposition of the rural population reached threatening levels, and the Soviet regime sent military units to suppress the riots. The clashes lasted for days.

Czech Writer’s comment on Russia

Karel Havlicek Borovsky
1821-1856

“Russians like to label everything Russian ‘Slavic’, so that they can later label everything Slavic as ‘Russian’.”

“It is a land of misery destruction and booze with many literary works about misery, destruction and booze. And that is what Russia brings to the world. No exceptions.”

Photo of Controversial Galician SS Soldiers

The one in the lower left shares my last name, apparently.

The Galician SS Division was formed when the Nazis were already in full retreat. They consisted of about 13,000 young men from Western Ukraine. I think (and also, I would like to think) that they were following the pattern of 25 years earlier, where Ukrainians served in the Autro-Hungarian Army, and then formed a core of a Ukrainian army for the short-lived Ukrainian state. In their only major engagement, the Battle of Brody, the Galician SS Division took 80% casualties.

One veteran of the battle, Hryhoriy Hevryk, was taken into the Red Army, killed in Poland, and made an official Hero of the Soviet Union.

Some veterans of the Division later carried out war crimes.

RT @CanadianKobzar: This is the ongoing megathread containing all of my history pieces – the Kobzar Chronicles.

https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1586445851341520896

I present you the first of my history threads on the Kobzar. One of the most iconic figures in both Ukrainian history, literature and art.

Outlaw Oleksa Dovbush the Ukrainian Robin Hood. Robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Born in the Carpathian mountains in the 1700s, Oleska was feared by landlord nobility and adored his countrymen.

The Tryzub – deep dive into the origins of our national symbol

Tchaikovsky – reclaiming our great composer

The Rise of Rus – discussion of the origins of Kyivan Rus.

Spooky Ukraine – myths, monsters and ghosts

The Ukrainian Dancers – a painting acknowledged.

The first Bogeyman – a tribute to my favourite hetman Ivan Mazepa.

Details matter – An analysis of the old Azov Battalion Logo.

Our Brother/Sister Nation – Dedicated to our Polish brothers and sisters.

The Forgotten Holocaust – Holodomor and the Soviet Starvation of Ukrainians.

Canada Oblast – Overview of Ukrainian Canadians

A Kozak Tradition – the lost traditions of a Kozak family.

and much more…

RT @fermerzpolissia: Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-1921) was an independent country that existed between 1917 and 1921. Independence…

https://twitter.com/shchedri/status/1614378531060088832

RT @fermerzpolissia: Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-1921) was an independent country that existed between 1917 and 1921. Independence…

Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-1921) was an independent country that existed between 1917 and 1921. Independence was even recognized by Bolshevik Russia in February 1918. Later as usual in 1918 Russia chose to withdraw its recognition of independent Ukraine. /4

The map shows how the Kuban used to be considered Ukrainian. It was largely settled by Cossacks after Catherine destroyed the Sich. The Cossacks were then genocided by the Bolsheviks — their population was reduced by about 50% – with a focus on destroying their elite. And Russian from elsewhere were resettled into Cossack lands to destroy their way of life, which relied on open land and some free movement. And that, I argue is the typical process of how people “become Russian.”

Ukrainian/Cossack identity began rising from the ashes later during the Soviet period. The Soviets resorted to typical Russian tactics for destroying it, including organizing school clubs so that people who needed to be deported would self-identify. It’s covered in this documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8x0sgGPInM

Кубанські козаки
Valentyn Sperkach
4.29K subscribers
676,394 views Apr 10, 2017
До сторіччя розстрілу Кубанської Народної Республіки фільм режисера Валентина Сперкача “Кубанські козаки. А вже літ двісті…” Студія “Україна-Світ”, 1992 рік. Фільм розказує про історію переселення запорізьких козаків на Кубань, про геноцид українців в Росії.