How would you call a person who makes use of the property that is of criminal origin, or so he says? What’s more, he shouts the thief’s name from the housetops, takes the stand and yet will not surrender that property?
The comparison has been suggested by the news media coverage of a more tragic event in human history, the Second World War. The scar it left is so deep that every new generation of people will keep returning to it time and again. This is prompted by the memory of the fallen, - Russians, Americans, the English, the French, as well as by the striving for gaining insight into the political intricacies of the countries that found themselves on the opposite sides of the battle lines; and also by curiosity about history.
But some people are motivated by other things: “The leaders of some country decided to write anew the tragic contradictory pages, come up with their own one-dimensional assessment of history and impose a distorted and mythologized model of the Second World War both on their own society and other countries”, writes Yuri Shcherbak, Ukraine’s former ambassador to the United States and Israel, the author of the article titled “Stalin. Hitler. Ukraine”. The article is carried by Ukraine’s national daily The Day1.
Now, what country does he mean by saying “some country”? Shcherbak points his accusing finger at Russia, charging it with an “Orwellesque totalitarian and propaganda idea of brainwashing above all the generations (of which there is a majority) who do not remember the war or the trying post-war years…”.
OK, that much is understandable… But how would the Second World War look like according to Shcherbak, not Orwell?
One should better not waste time looking for the author’s own idea of it, all we’re offered is a variation of the old concept, born of the Cold War spirit in the West and reproduced by modern-day adherents of the Euro-Atlantic policy, whereby two kindred “criminal regimes”, those of Stalin and Hitler, entered into an alliance to divide the world and carved it the way they liked until they finally locked horns.
Shcherbak portrays a certain virtual picture of a pre-war Europe which contains just the two mentioned regimes and their victims. Western democracies are non-existent, and the author mentions only in passing the high stakes in the run-up to the war by Berlin and Moscow, but also by London and Paris. An elementary pattern is used to replace a very involved (and not totally clear to this day) system of diplomatic contacts, talks, manoeuvring by potentially and actually opposing forces, by searching for allies and disuniting enemies, by agreeing the framework of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral security etc. etc.
The rapprochement between the Soviet Union and Germany is presented as a “criminal conspiracy with the Nazis”. Stalin was allegedly “bitterly disappointed” at the stand the British and French delegations took during the Moscow talks and at Poland’s reluctance to let the Red Army pass through its territory, since this ostensibly prevented the Soviet leader from “setting fire to, destroying and conquering” Europe. But claiming this amounts to juggling with facts.
The Soviet leader was indeed disappointed with the position of London and Paris but for an altogether different reason. – The talks that had been on in Moscow from April 1939 showed that Moscow’s partners were not in the least interested in a real-term building of a collective security system that could have contained Hitler. The western parties to the talks used the negotiations for an involved diplomatic game, namely they frightened Germany by a possible forming of an alliance with Moscow, while Moscow had its hands tied as regards efforts to look for other options to guarantee security.
There is a host of evidence to corroborate this, let us just recall a statement the British Foreign Secretary made during a meeting of Britain’s military council to the effect that the military talks with the Soviet Union had no importance of their own and should only prevent Moscow from “changing sides and joining Germany”.
The Western democracies wanted to leave the Soviet Union in limbo until they themselves settled the issue of their own security by reaching agreement with Berlin (as they did in Munich in 1938) at the expense of other countries. If that kind of “appeasing” Hitler had not led to what Pan Shcherbak ascribes to the USSR, namely to “setting fire to, destroying and conquering Europe”, then what did it lead to? To a united and safe Europe? You’d better ask the Czechs first…
In this context it’s impossible not to mention Poland. Since it became Hitler’s first victim following the first of September 1939, the degree of responsibility for unleashing the war that Warsaw accounts for, is by convention shyly held back. But the tragedy that befell the people of Poland during the war can in no way eclipse the cynicism and political calculations of the Polish ruling circles.
Hitler’s objective was, Shcherbak writes, “to isolate Poland”, “and this could only be done with Soviet assistance”. But the Soviet Union could have conversely assisted in forming a powerful military cordon between Germany and Poland, perfectly in line with the Soviet proposals for creating a military alliance with London and Paris. But to attain the objective, Poland should have allowed the Red Army to pass through its territory to the East Prussia border. J. Pilsudski’s scions rejected the idea out of hand. They would not hear of the need to realize the commonplace truth that the Anglo-French guarantees of Poland’s independence would prove futile, given the distance that Poland was located at from both Britain and France (but then the guarantees in question did not provide for preserving Poland’s territorial integrity anyway). But a military alliance of London, Paris and Moscow, if built up, would have made a world of a difference.
Pan Shcherbak specifies: “Britain and France honoured their commitments of allies to Poland and entered the war with Germany on the 3d of September”. Let us set aside the actual reasons for the move by the western democracies and ask just one thing, namely, did that move help Poland? And was it really so difficult for Warsaw to foresee the disastrous turn that the events would take?
Why lay one’s own fault at somebody else’s door? Why call Stalin “a conspirator, an accomplice in the destruction of Poland and Hitler’s ally”?
I wonder what kind of policy did the Soviet Union’s failed allies expect Moscow to pursue in summer 1939 and how do people like Shcherbak see that policy today? Obviously Moscow, just like Prague in 1938, should have waited until the European allies reached agreement between them (possibly at the expense of the USSR, if you recall that H. Göring was to have visited London on the 24th of August 1939), to meekly accept the lot that had thus befallen it. It is precisely because Stalin did not allow anyone to treat him as a bull-calf at the slaughterhouse that western politicians and their current Ukrainian clients are in a rage. The Non-Aggression Pact with Germany broke all of the Foreign Office’s canny schemes. The Soviet Union had found a way out of the situation where it could have faced a consolidated enemy single-handed.
And let me remind those in favour of double standards in diplomacy what US historian and journalist William Shirer said on the score (in back translation): “If Chamberlain played fair by appeasing Hitler and giving to him Czechoslovakia in 1938, then why did Stalin play unfair by appeasing Hitler with Poland, which had rejected Soviet assistance anyway?”.
And now a couple of words about yet another aspect of Yuri Shcherbak’s article, namely the “Ukrainian issue”. If we scrape off the verbal scale and cut straight to the chase, Shcherbak is compelled to admit through clenched teeth that it was Stalin who had united Ukraine. Shcherbak would have loved things to be different but nothing can be done with a hard fact that “the one who consolidated Ukraine into a single state was not a patriotic zealot, the Chief Ataman of Ukraine’s People’s Republic Symon Petliura (who conversely agreed to joining the predominantly Ukrainian-populated Eastern Galicia to Poland when concluding an agreement with Warsaw in 1920), but a sanguinary-tyrant-preying-on-Ukrainians, Joseph Stalin”. But the author leaves a hole and adds: “Unlike Petliura, Stalin bothered little about Ukraine’s interests. He proceeded from his own interests, namely consolidating lands as part of a new Soviet Imperial gathering effort”.
But however you slice it, it was none other but the Soviet Ukraine that preceded the modern-day Ukrainian state. Otherwise, what country would the ex-ambassador represent in Tel Aviv and Washington?
It’s not really good to become personal, but it seems impossible to resist the temptation to briefly comment on Yuri Shcherbak’s background, even if part of it, since this clarifies the issue of principled importance, namely whence so many separatists and nationalists that surfaced in the Soviet Union in the last few years of its existence (the separatists and nationalists who emerged within elite groups, rather than at the bottom level).
All signs are Yuri Shcherbak was a law-abiding Soviet citizen, exerting himself in the field of epidemiology and ecology, became Doctor of Science, dabbled in writing fiction and joined the Union of Soviet Writers. In the last years of Gorbachev’s rule Shcherbak was even elected People’s Deputy of the USSR. But he changed colours to become a follower of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN(b), which is a Banderovite movement. Those people, the future ruling elite in almost all former Soviet republics, would never reject offices or academic ranks in Soviet times. But they continuously monitored political winds for a likely change of direction. When in the USSR Supreme Soviet, Shcherbak joined what was known as the inter-regional deputy group where he was thoroughly trained, along with Boris Yeltsin, Stanislav Shushkevich, Anatoly Sobchak, Marju Lauristin and Vitautas Landsbergis in fighting the Soviet Union’s “imperial” heritage.
It was bowing to the pressure of the inter-regional group that the Second congress of the People’s Deputies of the USSR adopted an unfounded resolution in December 1989 to denounce the signing of secret protocols to the Soviet- German Non-Aggression Pact.
This ensured Yuri Shcherbak’s integration into the ruling elite of the independent Ukraine. He was made a Government Minister, a member of the National Security Council, and then appointed ambassador to Israel, the United States and Canada. When holding these positions and forming part of the environment in question Shcherbak became a ready writer to fight Russian “imperialism”.
There are lots of people like that in the ruling elites of Ukraine, the Baltic republics, Moldova and Georgia abusing the Stalin regime for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the ensuing “occupation” and inveighing against the Kremlin today for the differently wrapped “imperial policy”. But, gentlemen, could you at least try to be consistent? Why don’t you correct the sight of your holy anger? Would you mind telling us who is in control today of the areas that the Soviet Union annexed as a result of the “two dictators’ criminal conspiracy”? The answer is anything but the Russian Federation.
Since you, Pan Shcherbak, admit that it was Stalin, rather than Petliura, who consolidated Ukraine, why don’t you forgo the political gains of the “sanguinary-tyrant-preying-on-Ukrainians” and follow the example of your idol Petliura and give the Trans-Carpathian region back to Poland or Hungary? Also, give back to Russia Donbass and Crimea. The effort to save face should have prompted the consistent critics of the Soviet “occupation” regime in Lithuania the need for a return of the Vilnius region to Poland, while Klaipeda to Germany. Poles could, for their part, give voice to their indignation about the return to Germans of a major part of East Prussia and also give up their western border along the Oder-Western Neisse line, something the Soviet leader insisted on during the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences.
But we can hear nothing of the sort from officials in Kiev, or Vilnius, or Warsaw. The officials in question work on the principle: although we denounce Stalin’s territorial policy, we have nonetheless used and will continue to use its fruits.
How dare people of that sort condemn Russia for the “glorification of totalitarian regimes” and see the OSCE resolutions putting the USSR on the same footing as Nazi Germany as “yet another step on the path towards putting the historical record straight”!
…And you, my reader, ask for the reason why I am querying just what a person should be called who adopts the goods stolen.
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1 http://www.day.kiev.ua/278604278475
