Alive In The World
I’ve recently been viewing a series of posts on social media documenting the ongoing terror and tragedy currently raging in Ukraine, uploaded from various sources [see below] including those shared by our tour guide, translator, and close family friend Diana Borysenko, whose efforts on our behalf these past several years are the primary reason these blogs and videos about The Old Country even exist – not to mention all of the members of our extended family we’ve met and the friends that we’ve made there because of her talents – Ukrainians all – whose lives are at risk as we speak.
Ukrainians are being threatened by and captive to paternalistic feudal ideologies that have spawned an historical cancel-culture that denies and even prohibits any reference or illusion to Ukrainian customs, or heritage, or traditions, or even its language; warped by a Past as well as a Present shaped by powers hostile to independent thought; the pervasiveness, potency and oppressive nature of this chauvinism not only opaque to but forbidden from any intrinsic critical opposition.
Here we sit in the West, living in our little world outwardly secure and safe while coping with our own day to day challenges: deciding whether to wean ourselves from working at home, re-join colleagues assembled in the home office downtown and become a commuter again, vying for a lane on the bridge or a seat on the bus while keeping your mask over your nose [or not] with your eyes glued to the screen of your phone for the latest viral post. Or choosing whether or not to vaccinate your children so they might safely go back to school. Or joining the call to end mask mandates so you can enjoy the freedom of coughing or sneezing in public once more; debating the need to provide adequate shelter for the homeless and affordable housing for the precariat – just [as some might argue] Not In My Back Yard [NIMBY]. Or resisting the incessant blather about Critical Race Theory [CRT] from anti-wokers who refuse to grasp the history of racial profiling in the U.S. Or figuring out how to budget for hyper-inflated fuel and utilities bills as well as food prices at Whole Paycheck among other venues – over half of which reports show are due to corporate greed. Or planning for a future when AI’s become gods, climate change takes hold, and we’re living in subterranean siloed prisons. Or securing the Social Safety Net for future generations; providing a universal basic income , affordable housing, and comprehensive single payer healthcare for every man, woman and child. All worthy goals, some of which are even doable – just Don’t Get Me Started [DGMS].
But these issues do not bear the same weight as literally having a gun pressed to your head [talk about the meme Cancel Culture] which could ultimately result in your heritage, country and traditions – amid denials from the Rushka kakistocracy that your customs and traditions ever even existed – literally being expunged from hereditary memory while you watch. Meanwhile we Westerners watch from the comfort of our Eames lounges as MSM coverage of this arrogation unfolds – its message diluted when juxtaposed against pitches for the latest gas-guzzler pickup from GMC [best not ask what this acronym might stand for] or a blurb for anti-mood swing medications [and their contra-indications]; content seamlessly reported by talking heads seemingly oblivious to any aesthetically inherent contradictions. Hey, it’s cool as long as you shop ’til you drop. Hence we’ve decided to do a little flag-waving in this post – titled affectionately “The Old Country: Blue Over Gold“.
In Living Memory.
Ukraine. A beautiful country – with its proud, open, friendly, and gorgeous people! It has only been a short time since my most recent visit to Ukraine in November 2021 – my second of that year [COVID notwithstanding]. One in which – thanks to Diana’s talents – I was fortunate enough to meet, interview, and even break bread with extended Ukrainian family members from both sides of our paternal lineage.
We start below with a series of clips shot in Burkaniv and Zolotnyky in August of 2021 featuring Babiy cousins Stefaniya Barszka, [whom Diana, David, Dan and I had met earlier in the Summer of 2019 along with her husband Roman], plus her son Bohdan Barszkiy – both related to us via Stefaniya’s mother Tekla Babiy Biskup [see photo], a first cousin to Grandpa John Babij via Tekla’s father Prokop Babiy – a sibling of Panteleimon, Grandpa John’s dad; plus Khuda cousins Sofiya Vernyhora-Khuda & daughter Nadiya and Oksana Syvulska whom are related via Sofiya’s Grand Aunt Anna Chuda Popenik; all three of whom we had also met that same Summer of 2019.
An Oral History.
Through these interviews – a verbal history – Diana was also able to piece together family charts [see expandable image] of not only Prokop Babiy and wife Maria Durdela’s eight offspring and their progeny linking down to Stefaniya’s three children including Bohdan, two of whom – Vasyl and Olga – we would meet later in November of 2021, but also Sofiya was able to provide Diana with the family lineage of Phillipius Chuda and Maria Kokara. Their offspring included our “Aunt” Anna Chuda Popenik [actually a cousin] born in 1893, a son Petro [1915], plus four other daughters including an Anastasia born in 1919 who was Sofiya Vernyhora’s mother; meaning sisters Anna and Anastasia were born 26 years apart! What does that say about Ukrainian creativity?
And this latter amuse bouche raises some questions about both of our Anna Chudas emigrations to the United States. We have documents that record Grandma [we called her “Gramma”] Anna Chuda being processed through immigration at Ellis Island in New York City fresh off the boat – the S.S. Konig Albert that had sailed from Bremerhaven [Bremen] Germany on 12 July 1913 – on which she is listed as being 18 years old. However she was born on 28 August 1893 – so in July of 1913 she would have been 19; and on top of that her tombstone back in Croswell, Michigan states she was born in 1894. Go figure.
L->R: Elsie Babiy, Anna Chuda Popenik, and Anna Chuda Babiy
Anna Chuda Popenik was born in Zlotniki to Maria and Phillipius on 27 August 1893. Her Ellis Island immigration record states that she was aboard the S.S. Ryndam that sailed from Rotterdam in the Netherlands on 10 January 1913, arriving in NYC on 29 January 1913 and lists her as age 18. So she would have been 19 as well. Anyway, as of 23 July 1913 both Anna Chuda cousins were re-united in NYC and living at 12 1/2 149th Street in Queens.
But both of our Annas were teenage girls – 19 – traveling across Europe 1300/1600 km [by train?] in 1913!! How did that happen? Did mom or dad or a relative or family friend accompany them? We’ll never know.
As always you can visit the Chuda Gallery on this site to view these and other archival records for the Chuda/Khuda as well as the Babij Gallery for those of the Babij/Babiy extended families.
[Note: if you click on any of the photos included in this and other posts, they will expand to fill the screen.]
Exploring The Archives.
Other than meeting living relatives, one of the most compelling reasons for my return visits to Ukraine is to continue exploring the archives for any information related to our Babiy/Khuda ancestors. So Diana arranged through Igor Smolski, the head archivist at the State Archives in Lviv, to spend an afternoon scanning the cadastral records in the archives for both Zolotnyky and Burkaniv; “cadastral” in this case meaning Polish and Austrian era maps and property listings from the 18th and 19th centuries originally recorded in longhand and bound into large folios. Through these visits and subsequent trips to the archives Diana was able to provide us with more the 500 pages of property listings related to likely ancestors who lived then – some in the same house as either their ancestor or antecedent. For an example [see expandable photos below], from the 1820/21 folios, a Tymko [Timothy] Babiy who lived in house 174 in Zlotniki owned 26 properties. A Paulo Babiy living then in house 186 owned 21. And an Anton Chuda living in house 344 – the same house as our Grandma Anna was born in 70 years later – owned 14.
Tymko and Paulo Babiy Properties 1821
Anton Chuda Properties 1821
Needless to say, this is another big work in progress that needs more analysis, more detailed mapping, and ultimately more visits to the archives. And whether or not that happens in a timely manner is out of our hands for the moment. We can only hope that sanity prevails and that any potential long term solutions are inclusive rather than exclusive which for Ukrainians are apparently not where both Russia’s interests and those of the Western mindset currently are. But I digress. Hope is like that. It just keeps popping up.
Alive In Lviv.
Then there were the joy-filled days back in August spent with Diana and her family celebrating her son Illya’s birthday at Baczewski’s Restaurant; visiting the Lviv Oceanarium [see video clip below] with her children August and Alicya, not to mention being treated to those tasty home-cooked meals served up by Galician cuisine chef and hostess Kateryna Kravchuk.
We even went to the Lviv Opera House – officially known as the magnificent Solomiya Krushelnytska Lviv State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet – where we got to see Verdi’s Greatest Hits!
Alive in Our Memory Palace.
Earlier in Two Thousand Twenty-one, Diana queried me regarding plans for that Summer. Our “normal routine” would be to meet in late June to attend performances at the Leopolis JazzFest which we had done in 2018-19, but COVID had scotched everyone’s plans the previous year and the jury was out as to when or if there would be concerts for the current year. In the course of our Facetime chat, she mentioned that a friend of hers – Olga Gan – an artist who was also her son August’s former teacher – had been diagnosed with breast cancer and needed chemo-therapy; actually an experimental immunotherapy drug called keytruda made by Merck Labs which was very expensive and could I donate some money to help.
Of course I agreed and immediately got online to check out various crowdfunding sites including GoFundMe, PayPal, and GoGetFunding where I became aware of the necessity to set up a separate banking account to handle such transactions – distinct from my personal accounts. So I contacted my credit union where they were more than happy to lend a hand at setting up the account. What the agent there failed to tell me at the outset – or I quite possibly failed to mention where the money was destined to be sent and found out later – was that the credit union had a list of countries that it could do business with which also contained a “black list” of countries that it could not transfer money to. Ukraine was on that black list, “sanctioned” from conducting financial transactions with banks that subscribed to this black listing both in the U.S. as well as elsewhere I presumed.
As luck would have it I had another source for performing bank transfers whom did have banking relationships with European countries that included Ukraine and thankfully arranged for a transfer to Olga’s bank in Lviv. But then there was the issue of both Olga and Diana having to convince the president of Olga’s bank in Lviv that the money was a charitable donation and therefor exempt from tax. Fortunately Diana is also great at opening doors and getting things done. During my visit in August, Diana arranged for us to spend part of an afternoon with Olga at a local restaurant where we had a quiet lunch during which Olga gifted me one of her paintings [see expandable photo]. Unfortunately that was the last time I was to see her. Olga passed away from the combined effects of her cancer and COVID 19 which she had contracted in November 2021. She was only 41.
Living in The Past.
Spin forward to November of 2021 when I returned to Lviv in time to join in celebrating Diana’s birthday, had a sit down meeting with archivist Igor Smolski to work at bit on his website (still a WIP), and did some post-production video editing for a seminar Diana had chaired a month previously, all while being treated to Kataryna’s Galician delights as well as Ilya’s tiramisu, paella and pastas. But there was one other “project” I wanted to check the status of.
Back in August, when we had visited Burkaniv and Zolotnyky and met with Stefaniya and son Bohdan, a farmer by trade who now lived with his mother, we had attempted to re-visit Second Great Grandfather Ignat’s obelisk in the abandoned cemetery behind the Orthodox church in Burkaniv. Stefaniya had elected to come with us, dressed in black as she was in still in mourning for her husband Roman who had passed away in late 2020. We parked in front of the Tserkva Pravoslavna – Orthodox Church – [see expandable aerial photo] and began making our way around to the wooded area behind it where the old cemetery was but the vegetation had grown so dense it was impossible to penetrate – especially for Stefaniya – so we made our way back to the car so she could have a seat in comfort while Diana and I attempted again access from another possible route, but it too was blocked by thick vines and underbrush.
Clearly we had been quite fortunate two years before when Oksana Syvulska had taken Diana, Dave, Dan and I to the site. At that time there were signs of a series of vegetation burns done seemingly in order to clear a path to the old burial ground, so we were able – with some effort – to make our way into the mosquito infested necropolis and actually stand next to Ignat’s obelisk [see expandable photo]. Not so this time.
Later when we got back to Stefaniya’s house we had a chat with Bohdan about the state of the cemetery. Could it be cleared – with church approval – so that local families might visit the many tombs that were still in evidence there? “Of course”, he responded. But the best time would be in the Fall when the vegetation died off.
So I left him some “earnest money” with a promise to return in a few months and witness the results and take some more photos.
Oksana had contacted Diana with an invitation to dinner, plus it seemed there would also be a family memorial gathering in a few days back at Stefaniya’s in Burkaniv in honor of her husband Roman whom had died the year before.
Of course Oksana had me at “borsch” as one of my main goals was to meet with extended family, especially since there was at least one missing generation between Halychyna’s Present and its Past – a gap that only archival records augmented by verbal history could even attempt fill.
We spent a lovely evening getting to know one another along with her two sons – with Diana as interpreter – enjoying snacks and savory dishes during which I was gifted a t-shirt and a graphic storybook history of Ukraine titled “Battles For The Native Land” by Yuri Zhuravel – an historian, musician and leader of the Ukra-Billy band OT VINTA. Ukra-Billy..with banjos and “ukes” [ukuleles].
We briefly met Oksana’a father who joined the party as we were saying our goodbyes with promises to join Oksana and her husband and extended family at her Aunt Stefaniya’s in Burkaniv the following Monday to help commemorate Roman’s passing.
And so early Monday morning, after a tasty breakfast of home-cooked eggs and coffee we set out once again in Maria – Diana’s red Saab sedan – and made our way East into the Terebovlia Region of Ternopil Oblast, our destination the twin villages set opposite each other along the River Strypa. By the time we arrived, Diana having expertly navigated the narrow village roads past the Sich Riflemen WWI Brigade Bolzano battlement, by-passing 2nd Great Ignat’s [or his son Prokop’s] original business offices [see image] and on to Stefaniya’s house where the memorial party had apparently left for the cemetery as there was no one home. So we proceeded down the road, slipped past the church and over to the village cemetery where we discovered that the family had recently been at Roman’s grave evidenced by several candles adorning his tomb that were still lit.
Okay, then it was back to Stefaniya’s where sure enough there was a line of cars just outside her gate, how we missed them still a bit of a mystery but then they knew the lay of the land way better than us. We were greeted at the door by Bohdan, as Stefaniya was busy in the kitchen preparing the food together with her daughter Olga and niece Oksana, who ushered Diana and I into the dining room and introduced us to the assembled family.
Again I have to recount what it felt like suddenly being the focus of attention; all those querying eyes, smiling faces, friendly and open voices while we were being seated – almost as if guests of honor. Truthfully, I felt a little presumptuous – as if stealing the spotlight from Roman on his special day. But that’s how Ukrainians are: open to strangers, loving traditions, honoring the Past, and living in the Present. Plus it was like we were bringing the World to their door. Would that the World answer their call in this time of need. Would that the World Stand For Ukraine against the oppressor. That is my wish and prayer every day, “Grid willing and prices don’t rise”™.
Here is what happened that Monday afternoon in November 2021 – a few short months and a lifetime ago in a World destined to be changed forever:
Just take a quick glance of the image of the overgrown and abandoned Orthodox cemetery above and compare that shot with the photo posted here…and you might feel a glimmer of the emotional surge of gratitude and respect we felt the instant we caught sight of the work Bohdan had done in freeing both 2nd Great Ignat Babiy’s obelisk [our hospodar] – and a second Greek Orthodox cross marker, whose as yet indecipherable inscriptions from 1851 chiseled onto its face might be dedicated to either a Mattias or Tymko Babiy – from a literal prison of forest undergrowth and institutional neglect. But that’s just what family does for family. I am still in tears. Дякую, Богдане!
On our way back to Lviv Diana took an alternate route which took us by the city of Pidhaitsi [Podhajce in Polish which means “near the trees”] whose region or raion [see map] was the county seat for Burkaniv/Zolotnyky and environs back in our grandparents’ day.
Pidhaitsi was also the stepping off point for Diana’s initial attempts back in 2017 at locating possible State archives to begin searching for any Babij/Chuda ancestral links. Why Pidhaitsi/Podhajce? Because Ivan and Anna’s marriage license from May of 1916 shows their place and country of birth to be “Austria Galicia Podhajce”. [See our post on the 100 Year Anniversary of their marriage]. It was one of only a few documents other than the Ellis Island immigration records that we had copies of. So what better place to start a quest to find archival records about our Ukrainian ancestry? Check out our blog links below for the whole story.
Anyway on our way through the Pidhaitsi area in 2021 Diana and I noticed something that pulled us back to the present, reminding us of what the human race needs to focus on rather than territorial and economic imperatives or what flavor of Русь we might be; the absolute need for renewable, fossil free energy sources. And their they were – field after field of solar arrays – in rural, remote Pidhaitsi!
Russky Mir – The Russian State & The Orthodox Church.
However this казка is also about how the confluence of political power in conjunction with religious hegemony can impact a small rural community as well as an entire country. That forest cited above was allowed to fester and engulf those tombstones because the Soviet Union decreed that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church had to “re-join” the Russian Orthodox Church. Any priests who resisted, including its head Cardinal Josyf Slipyi were arrested and sent into exile. As a result churches like the original Tserkva Pravoslavna in Burkaniv were either abandoned along with their burial plots or turned into “clubs” for the Party faithful.
And this theological/political partnership continues to this day, in a renewed “Russian World” exemplified by the close relationship between Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill [Cyrll] – Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ – whom since his ascent to become Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church – has consistently supported and even lauded the Putin regime – backing the expansion of Russian power into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the regime’s intervention in Syria. and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to the Wiki on 9 March 2022:
…he [Kirill] declared that Russia has the right to use force against Ukraine to ensure Russia’s security, that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, that Russia and Ukraine are one country, that the West incites Ukrainians to kill Russians in order to sow discord between Russians and Ukrainians and gives weapons to Ukrainians for this specific purpose, and therefore the West is an enemy of Russia and God.
A month later a group of clerics from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church sought to convene a “Council of Primates of the Ancient Eastern Churches” to try Kirill for heresy – preaching the “Doctrine of the Russian World” and the moral crimes of “blessing the war against Ukraine and fully supporting the aggressive nature of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine.” So a broader schism is brewing. If Kirill’s attempts to support Russia’s territorial ambitions is his way of preserving the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church, an antithetical outcome is becoming increasingly likely.
Bête Noire.
If the Soviet Union were still intact, there would likely be no country named Ukraine. Oh there would still be “Ukrainians” – Eastern Slavs without a country. We should pause the narrative here to parse what the term “Україна” transliterates to from the Cyrillic. All names mean something, right? “Y” – pronounced “oo” means “outside of or not a part of”. “Країна” transliterates to “country”. Україна [or на Украине in Russian – “the” Ukraine] then is a place that does not exist as a country – thus Ukrainians are a people without a country.
And this is also the mind set of Vladimir Putin – would-be Tsar – soon to be crowned [with apologies to our Romanian friends] Vlad The Impaler II. In an article published on History Today titled Ukrainian Tales, Professor Uilleam Blacker cites a recent essay by Putin:
In July 2021 Putin published a lengthy essay, ‘On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians’, in which he aired multiple grievances against Ukrainians, while simultaneously denying their existence as a separate nation. He reached the contradictory conclusion that ‘genuine sovereignty for Ukraine is only possible in partnership with Russia’.
Here also are excerpts from Putin’s speech on 21 February 2022 in which he recognized sovereignty of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk:
Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917…
As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine”. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents… And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call de-communisation. Do you want de-communisation? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real de-communisation means for Ukraine.
Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.
No shit Sherlock.
And again on 25 February 2022 he made the following speech:
“Neo-Nazis and Banderites”?
Stepan Bandera and The OUN.
These are terms obviously gleaned from the 20th Century history of this region which saw the rise of Ukrainian nationalism in the late 1920’s with the OUN – Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [Організація Українських Націоналістів] whose original anthem by-the-way, was penned by a distant relative – Oles Babiy – a poet whom eventually migrated to Chicago. Ironically one of the OUN’s early critics – a respected teacher and former officer of the Ukrainian Galician Army of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, Ivan Babiy – another distant relative – was assassinated by a faction of the OUN in 1930. Stepan Bandera became one of OUN’s leaders in 1940, and was very popular in the Western provinces of what had been known as Halychyna – Galicia – under the Habsburgs and subsequently a province of Poland until the outbreak of hostilities with Germany and The Soviet Union in 1939. In early 1941, Bandera and his OUN-B followers sided with the Nazis against the Soviets and formed the “Ukrainian Legion” with German support and a tacit promise to back Ukrainian independence from both Poland and the Soviets. However, once territorial gains against the Soviets were made by the Nazis as of late June 1941, the OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of Ukrainian State in Lviv, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier.
In response to this declaration, an estimated 1,500 OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Bandera and two of his brothers were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Bandera himself was imprisoned until September of 1944 when, with Germany rapidly losing ground in the war in the face of the advancing Allied armies, Bandera was released in the hope that he would be instrumental in deterring the advancing Soviet forces. The term “Banderites” was used by the Bandera followers themselves and by others during the Holocaust, and also during the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by OUN-UPA from 1943–1944. These atrocities resulted in the deaths of an estimated 80,000-100,000 Poles and 10,000-15,000 Ukrainians.
Bandera eventually settled with his family in West Germany where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations as well as with the British intelligence agencies. Fourteen years after the end of the war, he was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents in Munich. Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with some Ukrainians hailing him as a liberator who fought against the Soviet, Polish and Nazi states while trying to establish an independent Ukraine, while others in Ukraine as well as in both Poland and Russia condemn him as a fascist and a war criminal who was, together with his followers, largely responsible for the massacres of Polish civilians and for playing a significant role in the Holocaust in Ukraine. Today in Lviv there is a plaza and monument [see photo] dedicated in his memory.
Living A Nightmare.
That does not excuse or diminish the antisemitic atrocities that factions of the OUN and its Ukrainian partisans visited upon its Jewish citizens during those years. This is a horror that Ukraine must stand up to and somehow work to make amends. One step might be to help the existing Holocaust survivors and their children re-establish memorial sites – graveyards, synagogues, shtetls, and museums in honor of their ancestors and traditions.
I recently did some transcription work for a series of video interviews with two Holocaust survivors – Nobel Prize winner Roald Hoffman and Professor Leon Chameides – as well as author/lawyer Phillipe Sands – produced by Ukrainian filmmakers whom were clients of Diana – that explored the role that some Ukrainian Nationalists played in the Holocaust – from the point of view of Jewish children – their childhood memories of enduring several years during WWII in hiding either with their parents as with Hoffman in the attic of a local schoolhouse thanks to its compassionate Ukrainian schoolmaster or – as with Chameides [thanks to the personal intervention of Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Andrei Scheptytsky – [see photo]- in an Orthodox monastery posing as a monk, shrouded from the view of Nazi occupiers and their Ukrainian partisans, his identity hidden from even the other Christian monks. Children – forced to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, their memories scarred by the atrocities they had witnessed and somehow survived. Can we even imagine what that was like?
The Azov Battalion.
The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов ) is a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit forming part of a military reserve of the National Guard of Ukraine. Initially a volunteer militia, formed during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, Azov has since been incorporated into and is armed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. All members of the unit are under contract of National Guard of Ukraine. The Azov Battalion has been labeled neo-Nazi, “patriots”and “a far-right Ukrainian militia”. Azov Battalion fighters have been observed wearing helmets with swastikas and “the ‘SS runes‘ of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps”, and on other occasions some of the soldiers have been reportedly been seen to have SS tattoos. The Azov Battalion has dismissed accusations that their unit promotes fascist symbolism, stating that any resemblance to Nazi symbols is a result of Russian propaganda. It also states that the battalion’s logo is based on the Coat of arms of Ukraine, which has been used to symbolize Ukraine since 1918. More than half of the Battalion members are from eastern Ukraine and speak Russian, and many of its recruits come from the eastern cities of Donetsk and Lugansk – in the separatist regions recently recognized as being independent by Russia.
But the fact is the Azov Battalion is now and has been from the start of hostilities on the front lines in Donbas, Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Kyiv engaging the enemy, and both taking losses to its rank and file and giving back the same to the Russians or greater. [Add to that the recent mysterious and as yet unexplained explosion at the Olenvika POW site near Donetsk where some fifty or more Azov prisoners were killed.] But yes, the Azov Battalion functions as a part of the Ukrainian National Guard and they are led by far-right “patriots” whose influence is wide spread especially in war torn Ukraine today, so much so that even Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has had to publicly make peace with them.
Consequently Putin’s linguistic twisting of historical fact – regurgitating the horrific challenges that Soviet Russia faced in turning back the Nazi onslaught in WW II at the cost [for Russia alone] of an estimated 27 million lives – and painting Ukrainians – led by a Jew who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor – as being a nation of Nazis or autocrats [including evidently the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia], is absurd given Russia’s history in the region; ironic at best considering how Putin’s regime is handling dissidents at home like Alexei Navalny and in its mass media; and in fact blatant propaganda aimed at convincing his Russian audience of his pledge to defend them and their country against a despicable aggressor.
As historian Timothy Snyder relates in his recent book Bloodlands evidence of a Russian world-view that perversely rebrands a Nazi to be a “Ukrainian who refuses to admit being Russian”, and whose people some Russians often refer to with the pejorative “Маленькая Русь” – “Little Russians” – an appellation even applied by Russians to the long-suppressed Ukrainian language.
In an article published in History Today, author Charles Emmerson puts this view into a contemporary perspective:
For a long time, Russians saw Ukrainians as being little more than country bumpkin relatives. Theories of Slavic ethnogenesis described the two peoples as siblings born of the same Slavic womb: the ‘Great Russians’ (Russians) on one hand and the ‘Little Russians’ (Ukrainians) on the other. Ukrainian literature, which began to emerge in the 19th century, was patronisingly viewed as the picturesque product of a peasant society, essentially subordinate to Russia’s own literary canon, even when it produced such great poets as Taras Shevchenko. The fact that the flowering of Ukrainian national culture was strongest in western Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, made some Russians dismiss the whole thing as an anti-Russian ruse sponsored by external forces, a familiar refrain to those heard today.
The Past As Future?
But there is another side to this catastrophe…NATO expansion into Eastern Europe despite promises to the contrary by Western leaders, including Reagan, Thatcher, and even Obama. Plus Bill Clinton literally pulled the trigger for NATO expansion by promoting the addition of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1998 to the alliance. This was followed by NATO expansion to Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Baltic bloc of former Soviet satellites by 2005. This – one could be tempted to say – might be enough to piss off the Pope were he an autocrat. And Putin is no pope. But neither has the West been led by acolytes from the Holy See whose sole allegiance is to money and the power of the military industrial complex as Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges points out:
The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe has earned Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Analytic Services, Huntington Ingalls, Humana, BAE Systems, and L3Harris billions in profits. The stoking of conflict in Ukraine will earn them billions more.
A behavior which equates with that of genocidal maniacs from the Past thrust into the Present as if from the Barricades of Heaven. The U.S. has been at war – hot or cold – continuously since the end of WW II – a debacle which in six years or more caused nearly 100 million deaths. And as we “kill our way to a better world” people are still dying – not only just Ukrainians and Russians – the oligarchs and autocrats and their defense industry sycophants are complicit in this latest episode of The Forever War as evidenced by their latest mass privatization scheme put forth by The Heritage Foundation – Project 2025. We were warned. In his famous farewell address to the nation made prior to leaving office, then president Eisenhower sounded the alarm and nobody listened likely because he, along with the Dulles Brothers, helped create an environment in which the military industrial complex could thrive in to begin with. And yet even today as we write this, nobody has informed the citizens of a certain federal state that someday they might have to run for their lives because of a plan to make their province literally Ground Zero for an immanent doomsday event. Remember all those duck-and-cover air raid drills as kids when we were forced to hide under our school desks as if they could protect us from a thermonuclear blast? Plus have you heard any reports of recent plans for nuclear disarmament talks? Really, how much is a human life worth in dollars or rubles to plutocrats?
In recent article for MintPress News Jonathan Cook puts it bluntly:
Even a cursory glance shows that the West’s hands are not clean in Ukraine. Not at all. It was the choices made by Western politicians that provoked the invasion. Russian troops are in Ukraine not because Putin is “Hitler,” “mad,” or a “megalomaniac” – though, again, the invasion makes him a war criminal in the same mold as Tony Blair and George W. Bush. Russian troops are there because he and his officials judged the West to be acting malevolently and in bad faith in their dealings with Ukraine.
The Putin as “madman” or “Hitler” script deflects attention away from the very obvious fact that Western leaders willfully played fast and loose with the security of Ukraine and the safety of its population.The West encouraged Ukrainians to believe that they would soon fall under NATO’s security umbrella, when in fact the West had no intention of protecting them, as is now only too evident.
Ukrainians were led to believe that the more Russia’s posture turned belligerent towards Ukraine the more likely NATO would be to come to Ukraine’s rescue and act as its savior. Which, of course, incentivized the Ukrainian government to keep poking the Russian bear in the expectation that Kyiv would have a NATO insurance policy up its sleeve. It didn’t. It never did, as current events show.
But now, despite all of the anti-NATO rhetoric in Putinese and from the Liberal media in the west, Finland – which has a 1340 km border with Russia – and Sweden have been offered membership in the alliance…a punch in Vlad’s nose and a blow to his demands for a buffer zone between mother Russia with its eleven time zones and the missiles of the West. I wonder what he has to say about those nukes in the Aleutian Islands? Besides, after six centuries of genocide and oppression – and counting [the latest episodes being the bombing of an apartment complex in Vinnytsia and the discovery of mass graves in Kharkiv] – if any country needs a buffer zone it is Ukraine.
Dreaming of Freedom.
Okay, besides the fervent desire to be an independent state, what historical events from the six century struggle by Eastern Slavs to gain self-determination against feudal European powers and the Russian Empire taken as a whole or alone might be cause enough to stand up against perceived oppressors? What other factors and events could piss you off enough to make Molotov Cocktails ?
The term itself is a pejorative coined during the Finnish-Soviet Winter War of 1939 in reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, referring to – as cited here from the Wiki – “the propaganda Molotov produced during the Winter War, mainly his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbors”- the Finns themselves. In Putinese does that make Finns potential Nazis as well? If so it may not bode well for other former Soviet satellites – er Nazis. I do remember seeing a statue of Lenin adorned with flowers in Turku Finland decades ago. Of course there was a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville among other Southern cities during that period [and much later] as well. Time heals all wounds but does not erase memories of xenophobia and genocide.
Holodomor.
Let’s start with Stalin’s purge of the Kulaks or Kurkuli – agrarian landowners in Ukraine similar to our Babiy and Khuda forebears [whose properties in Halychyna were at that time still being governed by Poland] – and subsequent collectivization of their farmlands that started in 1928 and ran for a decade or more. Basically this was an attempt to do away with privately-owned and operated farmlands (except those belonging to elite Party members naturally), transfer them to the State who could then ostensibly control the output from these collectivized farms under what were called “Five Year Plans” and earmark that produce for international trade markets. Of course at first these successful farmers, or kurkuli [куркулі], (kulaks, in Russian) resisted the land grab, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Subsequently Stalin instituted policies whereby kurkuls were branded as a class enemy, and brutal enforcement by Soviet troops and secret police used to “liquidate them as a class.”
As of 1930 Holodomorct.org cites this report:
1.5 million Ukrainians in the countryside fall victim to Stalin’s “dekulakization” policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families. Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter.
The remaining farmers are hounded to give up their land, livestock, and equipment and join the collective farms. As the traditional structures of rural livelihood disintegrate, the religious clergy are demonized and arrested or deported, and their churches destroyed or repurposed for grain storage or other secular use.
During the period 1931-1933 things went from bad to worse. The rural population were forced to join farm collectives and when paid for their labor it was often with the products that they had harvested. Many could not make ends meet and migrated to the cities to work in the factories where they were given food ration cards but increasingly found they could not even get the basic food products like bread and milk they needed using those cards. As a result the harvest was negatively impacted by a significant decline in field workers necessary to plant, maintain and harvest crops needed in order to meet the quotas mandated by the 5 Year Plan in force. Plus people started to die from starvation and what did the Kremlin do in response? Why, it raised the quotas since it was neither the Plan’s nor Stalin’s fault.
Grain Seizure by Soviet Troops 1933
As a result, millions die because of a forced famine – Holodomor – during which an estimated 1.5 to 10 million Ukrainians would perish. In June of 1933 alone, 28,000 Ukrainians would die from starvation – each day – a genocide. It was an Ukrainian holocaust, the reality of which was never acknowledged by the Soviet Union. And to this day the Russian government continues to call the famine a “one-sided falsification of history” – or fake news. Those Маленькая Русь just make shit up. But Ukraine will never forget. We’ve published this link to a video memorializing the atrocity plus another to the film The Living in which survivors of Holodomor are interviewed.
Living In The Moment.
This is why, among the many battles fought during which dreams of freedom were shattered and unacknowledged millions have dead, Ukrainians have been and are now more united than ever against an enemy – their Bête Noire right next door. As of April of 2022 there were reports of mass graves near the town of Bucha Northwest of Kyiv where the bodies of an estimated 400 Ukrainian civilians litter the streets – some with their hands tied to their backs – massacred by the retreating Russians – evidence of yet another Russian genocide.
And then if that wasn’t disturbing enough, there was a recent report on AlterNet detailing a post on the Russian ultra-nationalist blog RIA Novosti by columnist Timofey Sergeytsev, in which he asserts that in order for Russian to “de-nazify” Ukraine it must “liquidate” any and all persons suspected of being either active or clandestine agents of Ukraine’s Nazi regime – and then proposed a ten step agenda for accomplishing just such an ideological cleansing including:
- The complete liquidation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
- Installation of a Russian-oriented media.
- Creation of a local militia to protect against clandestine Nazi terrorists.
- The prohibition of educational programs on all levels that contain Nazi ideologies.
- The investigation of those deemed personally responsible for war crimes and supporting the Nazi regime.
- The imprisonment into forced labor camps of those deemed to be accomplices of the Nazi regime.
- The establishment of anti-fascist laws in the constitutions of “new peoples’ republics”.
Russians sure like to use the “N” word a lot. But really this dogma sounds a lot like one in which the Past is the path for Future “peoples’ republics”, and Putin’s agenda seems for all intents and purposes a regurgitation of past Soviet excesses and failures in which 5 Year Plans will expand to 25 years in order to ensure the compete de-nazification of the republic. As Yale philosopher Jason Stanley posits in a recent podcast:
Russian nationalists being led by Putin, who is the Russian nationalist, engaged in an aggressive, imperialist war that is a kind of paradigmatic throwback to European fascism…with the Hitler-style 1939 propaganda that the war is supposedly justified by genocide of ethnic Russians. These are classic, not even pretending Nazi tropes to justify colonial invasion and war. It’s an almost classical paradigmatic of fascism with some hair-splitting on, you know, how you justify the imperial war…not to kill Ukrainians but to assimilate them and pretend their identity never existed in the first place…
Why should Ukraine be the whipping boy – a perennial buffer between Western Europe and this Beast From the East? Lusted after because of its resources; its wheat, its salt, its oil, its chervona ruta, its people – Slavs – whom our nonagenarian Aunt Estelle calls “slaves” – are grist for the mill and cannon fodder for the oligarchs: Batu Khan, the Tatars, the Ottomans, the Romanovs, the Habsburgs, the Soviets, now Putin. Enough.
And what do everyday Ukrainians think of Russia and Russians [AKA “Rashka” and “Rashkas”]? In an article by author Bernard Moser published in The Nation Magazine, he quotes his Ukrainian publisher Annetta Antonenko:
“I will spit on them. I will never sit at the same table with them. Proud Ukraine is unlikely to forgive.” … This attitude extends to Russian culture. “The great Russian culture is as much of a myth as the great Russian army,” Antonenko said. “The real Russian culture is the enemy of everything progressive. All, absolutely all Russian culture is built on loyalty to the tsar-father. If they allowed a fascist and a psychopath to rule them for 22 years, they’re not a nation. Dostoevsky or Tchaikovsky hide the reality that Russian culture is a culture of slaves who do whatever the king says. We’ve tried to warn the world for years. Haven’t you seen what they write to their relatives in Ukraine? Telling people who are being attacked by missiles that there’s no war on?”
Here is what real Ukrainians have always done and are doing today armed only with mobile phones and umbrellas:
Cancelling Culture.
In an article published in The Guardian, columnists Luke Harding and Harriet Sherwood argue that the destruction of cultural assets – art and literature, historical architecture, ancestral archives – and its physical infrastructure is another aspect of a deliberate strategy on the part of the Rushkas to “erase Ukraine as a sovereign state”.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has been an all-round disaster. Its army has shelled densely populated cities, killing hundreds…Alongside this humanitarian catastrophe, cultural assets have been bombed and damaged. They include a museum in the city of Ivankiv, north-west of Kyiv, which housed dozens of works by the Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, some now lost forever. Last week Russian forces shelled the Assumption Cathedral in Kharkiv, hurling debris into its nave.
Many Ukrainians believe this vandalism is no accident. In an essay last summer Putin claimed Ukraine and Russia were “one people” and Zelenskiy has argued the Kremlin’s ultimate goal is the “erasure” of Ukraine as an independent sovereign state. That includes its language, people and culture, suppressed during previous eras of Russification.
“Also at risk are Ukraine’s archives”, reports The Guardian’s Anna Reid, adding:
Since Putin began closing the Russian ones to all but approved researchers, Ukraine’s records have become a way into the Soviet period for historians not only of Ukraine, but the whole Soviet Union. Their closure is a blow to scholars round the world. Daria Mattingly, a leading historian of Stalin’s 1932-3 artificial famine [Holodomor], fears “archivocide”. Russian occupiers “might destroy everything that doesn’t fit into their narrative … That would be catastrophic; it would be the erasing of Ukrainian identity.”
Bernard Moser goes on to comment on the attempts in the West to “reconcile” Ukrainians with Russia through “culture”:
Putin’s recent proclamation that Ukrainians and Russians are a single people is part of this long tradition, and comes, as usual, with a brutal colonial war. If to the West this seems like a bizarre flashback, for Ukrainians it is simply a confirmation, once again, of what they see Russian culture as having always been: cruel, imperialistic, and refusing to allow neighboring peoples the simple right to exist.
Volodymyr Sheiko, the director-general of the Ukrainian Institute is impatient with the calls for reconciliation through culture. “The cultural front is no less important than the military,” he says, rejecting programs that suggest an equality between Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians. “The reaction of part of the cultural West to the war”—the desire to use culture to patch up these wounds—“is also deeply colonial.” It was far too early, he said, to know what to do with a hypothetical postwar Russia—or, as the Ukrainians put it, “where to find a mental hospital with 140 million beds.”
Want a visceral right-this-minute example of what Ukrainian Moms, Dads and children are going through? Check out this viral clip from YouTube:
Amelia Anisovych sings “Let It Go” from the Disney film “Frozen“. Check out the lyrics in English online.
Turkiye’s Wheat Deal.
Recent headlines tout Turkiye’s leader Recep Erdogan brokering of a deal between Russia and Ukraine to free up Black Sea shipping routes from Odesa to Istanbul for exporting badly needed grain and seeds to world markets that are dependent upon both Ukrainian and Russian sources for nearly one-half the global supply.
While on its face this arrangement appears to be a step in the right direction for cooling hostilities, both sides admit that the deal is just a “one off” to provide badly needed relief to countries experiencing food shortages that are fueling rampant inflation. Plus there’s a lot of urgently needed money to be made. And this one off deal may not even happen because the realty is that – as reported in a recent Moscow Times article:
While the blockade — which the UN said risked exacerbating the threat of a global food crisis — is due to end in weeks thanks to a landmark deal signed Friday, Ukrainian farmers on the ground continue risking their lives to protect the new harvest endangered by Russia’s offensive. The increased shelling and missile attacks by Russia mean that farmers are living under a constant threat that their harvest will be destroyed by fires caused by an attack even before they attempt to collect it.
Yes. Mother Russia seems bent on preventing the deal from even happening for its малоросс step children by continuing to bomb Ukraine’s wheat fields thereby setting them on fire. No wheat no deal.
Ukraine also risks facing a shortage of grain storage space as many of the facilities have been destroyed or remain under Russian occupation.
And as reported on RussiavsWorld the Russians are actually stealing grain from embargoed cargo ships.
Russia tried turning off cargo ship sensors and then transferring grain to another ship. But the cases of ships going offline started to be monitored more, and purchasers of such grain began to fall under sanctions. Thus, tens of millions of tons of stolen grain are impossible to export secretly.
And now – one day – just one day – after the ink is barely dry on the breakthrough deal they’ve signed, the Russians have attacked Odesa with missiles. As reported on the Russia Invaded Ukraine website Russia is systematically weaponizing food in its war against Ukraine deploying “missile strikes and shelling by Russian troops [that] have damaged and destroyed dozens of farms, stocks of food and seeds, silos, warehouses, oil depots, agriculture machinery and equipment”.
Russian forces have riddled Ukrainian fields with mines to prevent farmers from cultivating their crops for years. According to the recent preliminary estimates, about 13% of Ukrainian territory (80,000 square kilometres) has been contaminated by Russian mines and ERW (explosive remnants of war).
Russia is not only taking aim at Ukraine’s fields though. Europe’s largest poultry farm, Chornobayivska in Kherson region (a $300 million investment), is entirely out of service due to Russia’s attacks. More than 4 million adult chickens and about 700,000 young birds died needlessly without supporting food production.
So, Recep Erdoğan do you really think the world should trust Putin [aka Vlad the Impaler II]?
The Inanity of Sanctions.
The West’s primary response to Russia’s onslaught in the East has been hellicopter money for weaponry [which at some point will have to be paid back to the IMF, of course] and sanctions aimed at isolating the Russian regime at least economically from doing business in the West. But as Professor Alfred McCoy points out in a recent article on TomDistpatch:
Although the Kremlin’s invasion threatened European security, Brussels moved far more cautiously, since Russia supplies 40% of the European Union’s gas and 25% of its oil — worth $108 billion in payments to Moscow in 2021… With its critical energy infrastructure bound to Russia by pipe, rail, and ship, Germany, the continent’s economic giant, is dependent on Moscow for 32% of its natural gas, 34% of its oil, and 53% of its hard coal. After a month of foot-dragging, it did go along with the European decision to punish Putin by cutting off Russian coal shipments, but drew the line at tampering with its gas imports, which heat half its homes and power much of its industry.
The European Union is considering plans to cut off Russian oil imports completely, but its proposal to slash Russian natural-gas imports by two-thirds by year’s end has already met stiff opposition from Germany’s finance ministry and its influential labor unions, worried about losses of “hundreds of thousands” of jobs.
In short, the West has seized a few yachts from Putin’s cronies, stopped serving Big Macs in Red Square, and slapped sanctions on everything except the one thing that really matters. With Russia supplying 40% of its gas and collecting an estimated $850 million daily, Europe is, in effect, funding its own invasion.
And to whom are all of those petro-rubles going? As economist Thomas Piketty reveals in his recent book “Time For Socialism“:
The characteristic of Putin’s Russia is an unbounded drift into kleptocracy. Between 1993 and 2018, Russia had massive trade surpluses: approximately 10% of GDP per year on average for twenty-five years, or a total in the range of 250% of GDP (two and a half years of national production). In principle that should have enabled the accumulation of the equivalent in financial reserves. This is almost the size of the sovereign public fund accumulated by Norway under the watchful gaze of the voters.
The official Russian reserves are ten times lower—barely 25% of GDP. Where has the money gone? According to our estimates, the offshore assets alone held by wealthy Russians exceed one year of GDP, or the equivalent of the entirety of the official financial assets held by Russian households. In other words, the natural wealth of the country (which, let it be said in passing, would have done better to remain in the ground to limit global warming) has been massively exported abroad to sustain opaque structures enabling a minority to hold huge Russian and international financial assets. These rich Russians live between London, Monaco, and Moscow: some have never left Russia and control their country via offshore entities.
Piketty, Thomas. Time for Socialism (p. 184). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
Even more to the point, as the U.S. levels sanctions and tariffs against even more countries it labels either as “authoritarian” or as enemies, it is forcing them – as with China and Russia – to retaliate and create alternative trade mechanisms that no longer rely on the dollar, thereby serving to hasten the inflationary destabilization and disruption of its own economy that its inherent neoliberal globalization policies and predatory banking system helped create a climate for in the first place. Who outsourced those jobs to Asia? The same very same Global North institutional entities that are now preaching the mantra of The Great Reset -a neo-national rebranding of Neo-liberal Capitalism – which, when coupled with the unfolding debacle of climate change and an impending global recession, is the root cause for worldwide socioeconomic wealth disparity to begin with.
And now the U.S. Federal Reserve created asset bubble – caused by more than a decade of Quantitative Easing programs, aimed at buoying the financial sector with low-interest lending which has led to sky-high asset prices, is the chief cause of the current inflationary trend – when paired with the economic chaos created by both the COVID pandemic and Putin’s obsession with re-creating the Russian Empire – has triggered the possibility of a worldwide recession – marked by an inflationary pandemic with both spiraling prices and interest rates, so much so that there’s nowhere to hide for the financially vulnerable as reported by Wall Street On Parade‘s Pam Martens and Russ Martens:
The world’s financial markets have gone off the rails in an equally disorienting fashion. The central bankers that had created bubbles in almost every asset class by keeping interest rates at zero for years, are now in competition for how fast they can raise interest rates in order to keep their currencies from collapsing and causing further crippling inflation. The dramatic spike in interest rates around the globe is causing prices to collapse in everything from stocks, bonds, commodities, and risk assets. There is nowhere for investors to hide.
Talk about shooting oneself in the foot! DGMS!
The Great Ukrainian Reset.
As recently reported in the media, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has formed a “‘partnership” with Larry Fink – CEO of global investment management firm BlackRock, to “provide advisory support for designing an investment framework, with a goal of creating opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy.” According to a BlackRock press release about the proposed alliance, BlackRock will work with Ukraine “on establishing a roadmap for the investment framework’s implementation, including identifying design choices for the envisioned setup, structure, mandate and governance.”
What does this “partnership” portend for Ukraine? In a recent post Branko Marcetic of Jacobin Magazine puts it:
Ukraine is being sized up by neocolonial vultures from BlackRock to the EU for a carve-up after the war is over. On the menu is deregulation, privatization, and “tax efficiency” — measures that may have already begun.
Where and when have we heard this before? Greece, Portugal, and the E.U. for starters. According to Investigate Europe BlackRock is “an adviser to states on privatization” and “is very busy countering any attempt to increase regulation” in Europe. Marcetic continues:
“In December last year, as Kiev and BlackRock were months into their discussions, the Ukrainian parliament rammed through property developer–backed legislation that had stalled prior to the war, deregulating urban planning laws to the benefit of a private sector that has been hungrily eyeing the demolition of historic sites. It comes on top of parliament’s earlier assault on the country’s Soviet-era labor laws, legalizing zero-hour contracts, weakening the power of unions, and stripping labor protections from 70 percent of its workforce.
“This past July saw a host of big business, European, and Ukrainian representatives attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference, 2022’s version of the annual Ukraine Reform Conference. As the conference’s policy brief on economic recovery made clear, a postwar Ukrainian state won’t need BlackRock around to pursue the kind of agenda a Republican politician dreams of. Among the policy recommendations are a “decrease in government spending,” “tax system efficiency,” and “deregulation.” It advises further “reducing the size of government” through privatization and other reforms, liberalizing capital markets, and ensuring “investment freedom” — a euphemism for opening up markets — thereby creating a “better and more familiar investment climate for EU and global direct investment.”
“Ukrainians’ freedom to determine their own fate has been under assault from Moscow’s colonial-style land grab. Unfortunately, it looks likely that an end to the war will bring new assaults from the other direction as the West’s army of investors readies its invasion.
“The future of Ukraine after the land grab..”
In September 2022 while opening a trading session on the NY Stock Exchange, Zelenskyy also made a pitch for his Advantage Ukraine initiative which calls for $400 billion in foreign investment for what he called “superior growth opportunities”. As Brett Wilkens points out in a recent post on Common Dreams:
The program focuses on 10 key sectors of the Ukrainian economy, including the military-industrial complex, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, power, natural resources, and industrial manufacturing.
In July, top officials from some of the world’s leading economic powers met in Lugano, Switzerland for the most recent Ukraine Recovery Conference. Last year’s conference agenda included core “shock doctrine” policies of “decentralization, privatization, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform,” as well as “Euro-Atlantic integration.”
The Russian onslaught against Ukraine has devastated its infrastructure and economy. According to the World Bank, it will cost at least half a trillion dollars to rebuild Ukraine once the war ends.
So, Volodymyr – after the war, and Ukraine joins the E.U. – who’s going to own Ukraine- Donald Trump? And more salient…who’s going to pay for this Great Ukrainian Reset? Most likely the Ukrainian people.
Living In A Possible Future.
Consequently how do we as one race – you know, the Human one – dig ourselves out of this quagmire of sectarian flag-waving inflamed by conflicting allegiances and cultural prejudices which spawn proxy wars that – as with all wars – are primarily economic in scope and intent but ultimately genocidal in practice and finally bury the hatchet? This is the burning question that all “peeps” must focus on finding answers to because we all have to live on one planet. The threats to humanity posed by the challenges of climate change, inherent sexism, the rise of far-right neo-nationalism fueled by decades of neo-liberal austerity policies which have created structural neo-feudal economic disparities, and systemic cultural and religious ethnocentrism are the same or very similar to those that confronted and were unsuccessfully dealt with by past generations – [in Ukraine’s universe more than six centuries of suppression]. Therefore looking to the Past for solutions for the Future will be unfocused, unenforceable, and self-defeating in the end. Any possible answer to this burning question must by default be inclusive, multilateral and binding in scope, in intent, and most importantly – in practice.
A recent editorial in Against The Current begs the question: “Where then is the hope?”
We saw it in the antiwar demonstrations in Russia with thousands of people, most of whose names we don’t know, going into the streets in the face of police-state repression (with Putin now demanding “self-purification” of Russian society).
One name we do know is Marina Ovsyannikova, the TV producer who stormed the live TV news broadcast with her “no war” sign. Her bravery equals that of those two great living Americans, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, both examples of people who never intended to become heroes — but didn’t leave their morals at the door when they signed up for the intelligence and military services.
The greatest immediate hope lies with the Ukrainian people and their communities abroad, performing miracles in mobilizing both humanitarian and military material aid.
That energy and purpose show what popular organization can accomplish— the kind of organization that on a global scale might win humanity’s existential struggles for equality, justice and environmental survival. If that seems a lot to hope for, there really is no other option.
But right now we in the Dis-United States are confronted by the rise to power of a Neo-Nazi Christian Nationalist movement based upon the wet dream of more than 400 ultra-conservative oligarchs assembled by the Heritage Foundation to basically take over the reins of government under a plan called Project 2025 and completely privatize it. And who’s in charge? None other than Donald Trump – a crook in sheep’s clothing. We have our work cut out for us.
A Family Heritage.
So where does all of this leave us in our Journey To The Past – The Old Country – in search of our Slavic ancestry and heritage? Obviously with more questions.
First in my mind is where are the burial mounds for Babiy/Khuda [and Palychata/Lemiszka] ancestors? Thanks to Diana we found Ignat’s obelisk but where are those of his wife Magdalena Kurys and children? Where are those of Great Grandparents Panteleimon and Maria Palychata? Or of Pavlo Khuda and Xenia Lemiszka? What happened to them? One answer might be that they had migrated elsewhere: to Vienna or Poland as cousin Stefaniya intimated regarding her Uncle Gregoriy Babiy [see photo] that Diana recorded during our November 2021 visit. Or maybe they were exiled to Siberia – as many Ukrainian Nationalists were by the Soviets. Burkaniv at the turn of the 20th Century had a population of 2,500 souls. Now in the 21st Century its head count is only around 750 littered with many seemingly abandoned houses.
Secondly, is the cemetery behind the Tserkva Pravoslavna in Burkaniv the original necropolis where the town’s Greek Orthodox faithful were buried or have their tombstones just been moved there? We could see no evidence of surviving burial mounds anywhere – although in truth the site is still overgrown and in earnest need of more of Bohdan’s skills.
Third; what happened to the farmlands collectivized [expropriated ] by the Soviets from our kurkuli forebears a fraction of which is cited above in cadastral records Diana managed to capture from the Ukrainian State Archives? Those farmlands along with the lives of the people who once cultivated them have been conveniently erased from official records and the collective Rushka cultural memory because, having been inhabited in the Past by subhuman “little Russian” occupiers [or presently Nazi terrorists], de-kurkulization was deemed justified – in essence indemnified by God.
And therefore Russia could then – as well as now – ignore any and all consequences [such as reparations; a ‘blessing” that the European colonizers of Africa and the West have also enjoyed] – by disenfranchising Ukrainian residents in the occupied regions in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson via sham plebiscites – thereby robbing natives of not only their rights as citizens but also the ownership of their properties while de-legitimizing their cultural heritage as Ukrainians and stealing their artistic treasures from local museums.
And while we’re at it…..Fourth; who’s going to pay for this genocidal act of terrorism; the lost lives, the destruction of homes and businesses, the Ukrainian civilian population and its children forever scarred by the emotional trauma of a war few them will ever understand the need for nor be compelled to search for reasons that might even bring Eastern Slavs together again? And – once more – the spawning of another diaspora – all caused by incessant bombing, drone attacks, and artillery strikes from the heroic patriots of Russia’s “Peoples Republics”. Maybe Turkiye – now an economic partner with Russia trading in rubles [which have gained considerable value on international financial markets in recent days]? But of course certainly not Ukraine – likely to be burdened with high interest loans from the IMF or the EU Bank or BlackRock to whom its public infrastructure will be pledged as collateral. Who indeed?
Lastly; might it be time to look elsewhere for archival information – Austria, Poland, even Russia and the USA?
Plus, maybe our heritage is happening right before our eyes closer to “home”. Case in point…Our Grand Niece, Kaylee Babij recently completed a class project in which she donned a vyshyvanka, put together graphics which included the Blue Over Gold flag, pieces on Ukrainian Artifacts, Art and Music, and a detailed step-by- step recipe for Ukrainian Waffle Cake [Вафельний торт] which I have to confess I’ve never had- at least I don’t recall Gramma ever making one for us.
Kaylee then added everything to a poster, presented it to her class and gave a lecture on The Old Country!
Слава Кейлі!
Wherever any answers to these questions might take us, our hearts and souls will always remain with Ukraine and we will be back to explore the Ukrainian State Archives once more – among other delights.
Слава Україні — Слава Героям
Dear Ancestor
A quick note about the photos in this blog and others on this site: to view an expanded Lightbox view of a particular photo, just click on it and it will fill your screen. To close, click the small “x” located in its upper right-hand corner. Enjoy.
P.S. In case you missed it be sure to catch both of our videos on the Pysanky MasterClasses we took from Master Folk Artist Halyna Syrotyuk. You’ll want some pysanky as gifts too!
And be sure to watch these videologs of our tours to The Old Country: “The Old Country – Galicia” ; our 2019 tour of Western Ukraine featuring The 3 DB’s titled “The Old Country – Echoes In Time“; and “The Old Country – A Slideshow” – a visual tour of the sites and sounds of the ancestral villages and historical places we’ve visited in our trips to Ukraine.
Plus….if these videos aren’t enough to whet your whistle, you won’t want to miss the posts on our visits to The Old Country starting with: The Old Country – Ternopil Oblast; then The Old Country – Ivano-Frankivsk; followed by The Old Country – Lviv; from 2018 both The Old Country – In Nomine Patris; and The Old Country – Salt of The Earth; and 2019’s “The Old Country — Between The Forceps And The Stone” in which we expound upon our innate mortality, the pandemic of fake news, alternative realities, and “unknown unknowns” – our take on Donald Rumsfeld’s paranoia about “things we don’t know we don’t know”, then present even more ancestral links to actual living relatives that we’ve found. Plus you will also want to read Brother David’s eloquently detailed rendition of our 2019 tour entitled “The Phenomenal Babij Brother Ukraine Trip“.
And…be sure to read our most recent blog “The Old Country: Our Slavic Roots” in which we discuss some reasons why Time turns truth into legend via missing family narratives.
And if all of this starts to pique your passion for a visit to our ancestral homeland, check out Diana Borysenko‘s website DianaTours-WesternUkraine.com for links to all of the tours, masterclasses, activities, and ancestral heritage services she provides.
Plus you can keep abreast of the ongoing battle for Free Ukraine here and keep watching Diana’s Diary – Ukrainians At War updated periodically via her posts on social media .
These posts are journeys from the Present into the Past, opening portals opaque with age or forgotten or long closed and hidden by Time’s passage. We make our own history and in the end, history is about the journey not the destination.
As Steve Jobs used to say:
There’s just one more thing….
Ще не вмерла України і слава, і воля,
Ще нам, браття молодії, усміхнеться доля.
Згинуть наші воріженьки, як роса на сонці.
Запануєм і ми, браття, у своїй сторонці.
Приспів
Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу,
І покажем, що ми, браття, козацького роду!
Nay, thou art not dead, Ukraine, see, thy glory’s born again,
And the skies, O brethren, upon us smile once more!
As in Springtime melts the snow, so shall melt away the foe,
And we shall be masters in our own home.Soul and body, yea, our all, offer we at freedom’s call
We, whose forebears, and ourselves, proud Cossacks are.
In Loving Memory to: Olga Gan, Teacher, Artist and Friend and to Oksana Romanivna Savchyn, Archivist Ternopil State Archives….R.I.P
Photography and Videography [and everything else] by Diana Borysenko.
Background image is of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, Memphis Tennessee.
Video clips courtesy of posts on YouTube and Facebook.
[Just an aside here about transliteration …in the records Diana found in both the Lviv and Ternopil archives most of the documentation is hand inscribed in Latin. So for instance, Grandpa John’s given name was written “Joannes” and his surname “Babij” just as it’s spelled on our birth certificates here in the States. But in languages that employ the Cyrillic alphabet [Ukrainian, Greek, etc.], his given name is Іван [Ivan] and his surname Бабій transliterates in English to “Babiy” and is pronounced “bobbee”. Similarly, “Chuda” in Latin is written in Cyrillic as “Худа ” which when properly transliterated in English is “Khuda” and is pronounced “khyooda”. Just keep this in mind while reading these blogs.]
© Kazkar Babiy & Ruthenians.net MMXXII. All Rights Reserved.
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