Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Ukraine’s Emerging Middle Class

In my opinion, Ukraine has three stories right now. 

1) Independence from Russia.
2) The fight against corruption and oligarchy.
3) An emerging middle class.

The third is much less appreciated than the other two.  But the signs are everywhere.  Back when my wife and I were still taking the Covid-19 quarantine seriously, we’d go for drives through the country, and even in little tiny villages we’d see fliers posted about driving instructors offering their services.

With a middle class, tastes and entertainment get more sophisticated.  Restaurants are becoming more numerous, and more unique.

Resorts are springing up everywhere.  Suburbs are forming outside of Kyiv and Lviv. 

And usually, when we go to a recreational facility, I find it to be clean, safe, modern, and well run.

 

30 Methods and Characteristics of Communism

by Roman Skaskiw

(Two short essays recently published on American Thinker were excerpts from this longer essay.  If you’d like to read these excerpts, visit Leftism’s Casual Relationship with the Truth Is Intentional or The Radical Left Will Never Tolerate a Messiah Who Actually Arrives .  But if you have time, read the essay below. It’s the important one.)

French historian and philosopher Rene Girard observed, correctly in my opinion, that communism was not popular despite killing millions of people, but precisely because it killed millions of people.

I’m told that my grandfather climbed from the window of a school at which he was teaching when a breathless neighbor told him that “they” were coming for him. So began his trek across war-torn Europe with my then-four-year-old mother. Another relative, who would have been some sort of great uncle to me, was taken to a labor camp in Uzbekistan for belonging to an anti-communist club in his high school. He was sixteen. His family received two letters from him — the first saying it was extremely cold and asking for them to send a pair of boots, the second saying that the boots had been taken by another prisoner. He did not return.

Continue reading →

The Radical Left Will Never Tolerate a Messiah Who Actually Arrives

The worldview of the radical left offers many dizzying contradictions and fantasies. One of the strangest is the extent of indifference and even hostility with which radical leftists treat those who deliver on the very vision they so tirelessly advocate.

There are myriad examples, some so obvious that articulating them seems like shaking the foundation of the postmodern reality (or anti-reality) in which we live.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_radical_left_will_never_tolerate_a_messiah_who_actually_arrives.html

Fatherhood

My son love to respond to any mention of “para trooper” with “para pooper”.

“Your father was a paratropper.”

“Para pooper.”

***

We give my son an extra hour of time on his tablet. He sobs and say, “anything but an hour.”

“Danny,” I say. “First of all, you don’t even know what an hour is.”

He cracks a smile.

“And secondly, crying only works on your mother.”

He laughs.

Senate report links Hunter Biden to Eastern European ‘prostitution or human trafficking ring’

Hunter Biden sent “thousands of dollars” to people who appear to be involved in the sex industry, according to a report released Wednesday by Republicans in the US Senate.

The report says unspecified records show that Biden “has sent funds to non-resident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine.”

“The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring,’” the report says.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/23/senate-report-links-hunter-biden-to-trafficking-ring/

The Perfect Rib Eye

Since figuring out where to get great steaks here, I’ve made three attempts at the perfect rib eye. Last night’s attempt was pretty damn close.

The strategy which I’d been contemplating since the second try, was simply “faster and hotter”.

I played a Bluegrass playlist while cooking. That probably helped.

Leftism’s Casual Relationship with the Truth Is Intentional By Roman Skaskiw

In The Soviet Tragedy, Martin Malia describes many Soviet citizens feeling great relief at the outbreak of World War II. These were people less than twenty years removed from devastating wars, so they were unlikely to be naïve to the horrors, yet many welcomed the news of war because, as Malia describes, war provided a coherent, tangible reality again, in contract to the schizophrenic insanity of communism.

The incoherence is everywhere.

It’s difficult to believe, given modern rhetoric, but in the early days of communism, wealth was considered a good thing, and, they argued, communism was superior because it created more of it. By the mid-1950s, it became impossible to ignore communism’s poverty and deprivation, so rather than abandon their revolutionary ideology, the communists completely replaced what had been their fundamental goal. Yes, capitalism caused wealth, they conceded, but the wealth caused inequality, and inequality, not poverty, was the great evil against which all society’s resources must mobilize.

The intellectual bankruptcy is absolutely shameless and calls to mind an observation from the great black conservative Thomas Sowell: “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”

Philosophy professor Stephen Hicks’s excellent little book Explaining Post-Modernism details the many outrageous ideological pivots the radical left has been forced to make over the years to preserve a revolutionary posture, including even its abandonment of the presumption of truth.

Read more at the American Thinker.

Privat Bank decision by Kyiv Court causes corruption concerns

🔵 On Tuesday, a Kyiv court ruled that PrivatBank should pay $350 million – principal and interest – for deposits of six British companies owned by Ihor and Hryhoriy Surkis, two brothers who were business associates of PrivatBank’s former owners, Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholyubov. PrivatBank lawyers said yesterday they will appeal, arguing that the brothers were related parties to the mismanagement of the bank. The Surkis and other depositors have filed hundreds of lawsuits suing for $1.2 billion.

🔵 “We will challenge this decision,” Petr Krumphanzl, a Czech banker who is Board Chairman of PrivatBank, told Ukrinform. We will continue to seek justice for PrivatBank and Ukrainian taxpayers who are the bank’s ultimate shareholders.”

🔵 “One of the biggest transgressions in the history of the judicial power of Ukraine took place today,” Justice Minister Denis Malyuska wrote on Facebook. Noting that the judge’s name Vovk, also means ‘wolf’, he illustrated his complaint with a cartoon of a gray wolf happily carrying away a big bag of loot.

🔵 Alexander Danilyuk, Finance Minister at the time of the nationalization, warned on Facebook yesterday: “This is the beginning of the collapse of the results of the nationalization of PrivatBank.” He warned that if the lawsuits are not stopped, they could cost Ukraine’s government billions of dollars.

Read more at https://ubn.news/

(from June) Massive bribe to stop Ukraine probe of Burisma founder intercepted

Ukrainian officials on Saturday announced they intercepted a $6 million bribe attempt to stop a criminal investigation into the president of Burisma, the natural-gas company at the center of President Trump’s impeachment investigation.

At a news conference, the officials displayed large bags of seized U.S. currency.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption prosecutor Nazar Kholodnitsky said former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who once held a board seat, was not complicit in the bribe attempt.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/burisma-bribe-stop-ukraine-probe-intercepted

Lenin Statue in Germany???

After Ukraine attempts to exorcise Communist demons by taking down Lenin statues, a far-left party in Germany puts one up.

Far-left political party erects statue of Lenin in Germany

A far-left German political party installed a statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin over the weekend in the city of Gelsenkirchen.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany erected the statue, similar to the one in Seattle, in front of its offices over the weekend, according to the BBC. City officials tried to stop the statue’s installment, but courts blocked their efforts.

“We live in a time in which many countries of the world are reflecting on memorials,” said the city’s mayor, Frank Baranowski.

“It’s hard to put up with the fact that a dictator from the [20th] century is being placed on a pedestal and a memorial is being made out of it. Unfortunately, the courts have decided otherwise. We must accept that, but not without comment,” the mayor added.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/far-left-political-party-erects-statue-of-lenin-in-germany

Ukraine’s first PM stands for pardoning enemy troops in Donbas

A special status should be granted to the entire territory of Donbas, not just the temporarily occupied parts as Russia has been demanding, Fokin suggests.

First prime minister of Ukraine Vitold Fokin, who has recently been appointed deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation at the Donbas settlement talks within the Trilateral Contact Group, believes “general pardon” is required today as a prerequisite to end the war.

“Another important question is about pardon. On both sides, many crimes have been committed that should ultimately be investigated, and let the perpetrators be prosecuted. But today, in order to end the war and save the lives of soldiers and commanders, my position is to declare general pardon, hold elections, resolve the issue of the special status of certain regions, and best of all, the entire Donbas,” he told Strana.

Also, the delegate said he was ready to go for a working trip to the occupied areas, and that the idea saw support from the chief of Ukraine’s delegation, Leonid Kravchuk, who was the first president of Ukraine.

Read more on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/war/donbas-war-ukraine-s-first-pm-stands-for-pardoning-enemy-troops-in-donbas-11128886.html

Ukrainian-Americans have always been split in US politics

http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/wow-very-impressive/

By Myron Kuropas

The two-page advertisement by Ukrainian Americans for Joe Biden is a first. I have been reading The Ukrainian Weekly since 1946 and, if memory serves, this is the first time an ad for an American presidential candidate has appeared three months prior to the election. Hardly the norm, as I recall.

Also impressive are the number of Ukrainian Americans listed on the two-page ad. I know many of them. I respect their willingness to take a stand. Getting that many Ukrainians to commit is not easy; sometimes it’s like herding cats.

Our woke generation may be surprised to learn that the first political orientation of Ukrainian Americans was socialist, reflecting the ideology of the Social Democrats in Ukraine. Ukrainian American involvement in the American political process began in 1907 with the creation of the Haidamaky. A publication of the same name soon appeared and efforts were made early on to promulgate the goals of American socialists. Other radical publications soon made their appearance: Khlopsky Paragraf (1908), Proletar (1911) and Robitnyk (1912).

Responding to the leadership of the progressive Catholic priests then steering the fraternal organization once known as the Ruthenian National Association (RNS), Svoboda, the RNS periodical, urged Ukrainians to ignore Republicans and Democrats and to support socialist candidates as the only people who cared about the working class. At its 1914 convention, the RNS changed its name to the Ukrainian National Association (UNA)

In 1901, Eugene V. Debs, one-time locomotive fireman and labor organizer, established the Socialist Party of America (SPA). A number of socialist clubs came into being in the Rusyn/Ukrainian community, and, encouraged by the SPA leadership, Ukrain­ians created the Ukrainian Federation of Socialist Parties of America (UFSPA), joining the SPA as an ethnic affiliate.

From the beginning, Ukrainian socialists were divided between those who focused on national rebirth in Ukraine, the Social Patriots, and those who favored world revolution, the Marxist/Internatio­nalists.

The SPA, now also split between moderates and Marxists, suffered further division in 1919 when the committed Marxist wing of the party held a formal convention in Chicago establishing the Communist Party of America (CPA). At the UFSPA convention that same year, Ukrainian Marxists pushed through a resolution recognizing the Third Communist International. Expelling Social Patriots from its ranks, the UFSPA formally changed its name to the Ukrainian Federation of Communist Parties of America (UFCPA).

The Communist cause suffered a setback after a number of explosions rocked major American cities. In 1919 and 1920, President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, began deporting Communists, anarchists and other radicals. President Wilson never recognized the Soviet Union nor did his successors, Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

When the war ended, Ukraine was divided among the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Three political rationales were offered in the U.S. for the failure of Ukraine to maintain its independence. Ukraine was not prepared for sovereignty, argued members of the newly formed Ukrainian Hetman Organization (UHO); only a Hetman can restore order. Ukrainians need another revolution, explained members of the recently created Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine (ODWU), an affiliate of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Ukraine exists, claimed Ukrainian Communists pointing to Soviet Ukraine.

Urged by The New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty and others in his Cabinet, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly recognized the USSR as the legitimate successor of the Russian empire. Within months, the Soviet Embassy in Washington was swarming with NKVD and GRU agents. Ukrainian American Communists prospered during the 1930s, welcoming financial support from Soviet Ukraine.

During World War II, UHO, ODWU and UNA leaders were accused of Nazi sympathies and were called to testify before Congress. The UHO disbanded. ODWU and the UNA lost members.

When the war ended and the Communist threat was acknowledged once again, Ukrainian Americans associated with the anti-Communist front came roaring back. Leading Ukrainian American political figures at this time were Republican Dmytro Halychyn, UNA president, and his successor Joe Lesawyer, Democrat. Dr. Lev Dobriansky was the GOP outreach chair during the 1968 presidential campaign.

Ukrainian Republicans prospered after the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968. The Republican National Committee (RNC) created the Heritage Groups Council. An ethnic affairs office, headed by Laszlo Pasztor, was established within the RNC. Laszlo traveled around the country forming local and national ethnic affiliates that became part of the Heritage Groups Council. By 1972 there were 34 nationality federations and 25 state councils. The Ukrainian National Republican Federation (UNRF), which encompassed councils in 20 states, received the coveted Dwight D. Eisenhower Service Award in 1972. That same year, Taras Szmagala Sr., then the director of Sen. Bob Taft’s Cleveland office, became the ethnic outreach director for the Nixon re-election campaign.

Thanks to their visibility and activity in the Republican Party, President Gerald R. Ford appointed a Ukrainian as White House special assistant for ethnic affairs. Ukrainians also served on the staffs of Sens. Taft (Ohio), James Buckley (New York) and Bob Dole (Kansas) – all Republicans. A Ukrainian was appointed ambassador to the Bahamas by President Ronald Reagan.

Ethnic influence by the Captive Nations lobby led to a vicious vilification campaign by the Sovietophile left. Most egregious was a leftwing publication, “Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration” by Russ Bellant. “Fascist” anti-Soviet ethnics in the RNC were influencing American foreign policy prolonging the Cold War, claimed Mr. Bellant. A similar hit piece by Joe Conason appeared in The Village Voice. The New York Times and the Washington Post reviewed the stories. The RNC allowed the RHGC to fade.

Ukrainian Democrats were strong in 2016 and are even more so in 2020. They appear to be zealous and organized. It’s time for Ukrainian Republicans to be heard. Good luck to both parties.

Ukrainian Americans love Ukraine, but they love the United States, the nation that provided a safe haven for their parents and grandparents, far more. Our people are bright, well-read and politically savvy. I’m confident they will do the right thing in 2020.

Holodomor Background – Soviet Grain Exports and Loan Repayment

The Foreign Office and the Famine. British Documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932–1933 (1988)
Edited by Marco Carynnyk, Lubomyr Y.Luciuk and Bohdan S. Kordan
with a foreword by Michael R. Marrus

Ovey wrote in a letter to Henderson in march 1930 that the encouraging of British exports to the Soviet Union was a “pressing matter.” Britain’s policy, he gathered, was “to maintain correct and friendly relations with the Soviet Government, with a view to encouraging trade as much as possible.” Ovey then discussed ways of increasing exports to the soviet union. “That we buy commodities from Russia,” he wrote, “arises principally from the fact that it is the cheapest market.” The Soviet ability to buy from Britain depended on its ability to sell to Britain. ” The more Russia sells to us the more she should be sympathetically inclined ceteris paribus to buy from us,” Ovey concluded.(63)
(63) woodward and Butler, eds.,Documents on British Foreign Policy 7: 111-12

Moscow had borrowed a dreat deal of money in the west,especially in Germany, to finance its industrialization, and it could repay its loans only by selling grain. The Soviets were financing their programme of industrialization with short term loans which they paid off by exporting wheat. Between 1926 and 1930 Britain lent between 30 and 40 million pounds to Germany. The germans kept a percentage for themselves and passed the credits on to the Soviet Union, which used them to purchase goods,principally heavy machinery, in Germany. Britain was thus financing Germany’s export trade with the Soviet Union. (66) A serious public campaign to alleviate the famine by returning the grain to those who needed it most would,therefore, have brought about a reduction of Soviet grain exports,and that in turn, would have upset the international banking system, in which London had such a great stake. (67)

(66) R. Boothby, Conservative MP, speaking at the Congress of Peace and Friendship with the USSR in London in December 1935. Britain and the Soviets: The Congress of Peace and Friendship with the USSR (London: Martin Lawrence, 1936), 3.
(67) In a memorandum on the solvency of the Soviet government, G.P. Paton, the commercial counsellor of the British embassy in Moscow, revealed in June 1932 that the Soviet Government was not able to pay the bills that would mature in Germany in October 1932. In October -December 1931 Soviet bills amounted to 40 million marks, but a year later the Soviet government would be faced with bills totaling 165 million marks. ” If all reports regarding this year’s sowing are true.” wrote Paton, ” the prospects of a bumper crop are very remote, and wheat acreage is up all over the world. The Concensus of opinion, in fact, is that Soviet Russia will be fortunate if it can produce sufficient grain to meet domestic requirements; and that exports, if any, will be relatively insignificant as compared with the past 2 years. Assuming this forecast to be true, where is the Soviet government to find the wherewithal to pay the bills maturing in Germany from October onwards? And what of the bills maturing in other countries?” FO.371/16323 N 3840

Presidential elections in Belarus end in mass protests and violent crackdown

Thousands of people took to the streets of Minsk, Gomel, Vitebsk and at least ten other Belarusian cities after the authorities released the official exit poll, according to which Alexander Lukashenko won the presidential elections for the sixth time in a row.

On Masherov Avenue in Minsk, protesters built barricades using garbage containers, buckets, flower beds blocking the roadway, reports the news outlets Mediazona and Sputnik Belarus.

http://uawire.org/presidential-elections-in-belarus-end-in-mass-protests