Not long ago, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a not only strange but scandalous law, equalising the status of veterans of war – those who were fighting against Nazi troops and Nazi Ukrainians fighting for “independence of the Ukraine” against Red Army soldiers. The meaning of the law is simple: both sides were fighting for the “liberation of Ukraine”. However, one side were liberating the country from Nazi invaders while others were fighting with the liberators. Not to mention that there were many Ukrainians among Red Army members who were also killed by the “heroes of nation”.
How can we understand such a law? What attitude can we have to such a deep shift of ideas about good and evil, truth and lie? Probably, to find the truth we should remember that Ukrainian Nazis were carrying out mass, bloody slaughter of Jewish and Polish people, and that they were killing Russians simply for being Russian. It is also necessary to mention that they were serving as guardians at Nazi concentration camps and death camps which were, by the way, liberated by the Soviet Army. It looks like all of this is not important any more. The only thing that matters now is that “they loved Ukraine”.
This is not a joke, nor a pathology. This is clear, pure nationalism in its most deep-rooted form. Nationalists carry the idea of a Nation being an inseparable, single entity where “Motherland” appears as a uniting, hysterical fiction. The “Motherland” can be treasured in different ways. And the word “Motherland” can also be interpreted in different ways. Everything depends on what you consider to be good and evil. And despite our desire, we can’t escape from this fact.
The true horror and even devilish basis of the Ukrainian law lies in equating the ideas of Nazism and Communism. Short-sighted Ukrainian delegates have not realized that by voting in this way they have encroached on the European Sancta Sanctorum. For the EU, Nazism and Nazi ideology is an absolute evil. By comparing the ideas of communism and Nazism, Ukrainian delegates have deprived Nazism of the status of the absolute evil – a status that Europe does not merely respect, but considers to be a key principle of political and moral gradation. Communism for Europeans is also considered evil. But this evil is not basic, not conceptual. No one in Europe rejects the fact that the practice of world-wide communism ruined millions of people’s lives. Yet, it was the practice of communism that was harmful rather than the theory, because there are no suppositions to the murdering of innocent people in the ideology of communism. Communism in Europe used to be estimated as a horrible, extreme distortion of democratic ideas of European socialism and socialist humanism. However, communism in its basic principles is not evil, but good. Evil appeared from the moment when Communist Utopia started to be integrated in real life.
Nazism itself is a pure evil starting from its basic principles. It is a malicious racial ideology which implies total destruction of nations because of racial principles, slavery of nations, including Slavic people, and superiority of the Arians above others. Alfred Rosenberg, a German of Russian origin, who has become the main ideologist of Nazism, developed in his bestseller “Myth of the XX century” the mythological idea of the mystic quality of Arian blood. Yes – blood! According to Nazi ideas, one’s belonging by blood to the dominant race must be defined de-facto, as must the other human nations’ belonging to the race of slaves. In other words, this was seen as something objective. The status of a slave was not so bad because there was another category of people, translated from German as : “subhuman”! They put, for example, all Jewish, Gypsies, Slavic people under this Nazi Eugenic classification. Both the ideas and the practice of Nazism are abhorrent. That’s why we consider it to be the ultimate evil in the world.
But Ukrainian delegates are not worried at all. For 20 years already, Ukraine has been spreading the intense propaganda of gloomy nationalism without a clear, national idea. Summed up simply, we could say that the Ukrainian national idea consists only in separation from Russia and USSR. In other words – the rejection of the whole 350 years of Ukrainian history. And this despite the fact that modern Ukraine received its territory, borders and governmental system from the USSR. We can start where, after the declaration of the USSR, Ukraine became a not fully independent, pseudostate. In 1940, Ukraine received its western regions after the annexation of parts of Polish and Romanian land. In 1954 Crimea was given as a gift to the Ukraine. Also, thanks to the Soviet system, schools, institutes and universities were established, and the grammar of the Ukrainian language was written. In comparison, during the period of the monarchy, such a phenomenon as the Ukrainian language simply did not exist. There was only the ‘Little Russia’ dialect.
The “Ukrainian idea” – is something raw, sandy, based on a complicated, inferiority complex and a developing megalomania. The fact that Ukraine now glorifies “Ukrainian heroes” who fought for the independence of the country among the Nazi Army clearly shows the deepest internal contradiction, which is not accidental. The Petliura Ukrainian Republic was announced under the total occupation of the Ukrainian territory by Austro-German troops. Here we can clearly see some trends which last even up to now. The Yanukovich regime was under the control of Russia, but Poroshenko’s junta was under the strong influence, or even control, of the USA.
An independent Ukraine has never existed de-facto. This is probably the reason for such morbid self-obsession and the incapability to see themselves from another perspective. If the Ukrainian deputies could have such ability, they would probably not announce bloody murderers in Nazi uniform as Heroes. How can you worship the guardians and the liberators of Auschwitz in the same way?! How can you possibly provide the killers who shot at the Jewish women and children at Babij Yar with the privileged pensions of the real war heroes? This is what is happening in Ukraine.
In the 1990s the expression “Red- Brown” was very popular, meaning “Communists-Nazi”. I’ve never appreciated this wording, although I did not respect communists either. This expression just seemed conceptually false for me. By trying to eternalize it, Ukrainian lawmakers achieved the opposite result. Their scandalous law appeared to be a big shock for the whole Europe. Not everyone noticed this act till now because in reality not many people are really interested in Ukraine, but general negative reaction is inevitable. And that will be absolutely right.
I can’t fail to notice that this law is especially blasphemous at this moment when the world is about to remember the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany.