Imagine that you are a Ukrainian nationalist, a person from a political spectrum that supports the establishment of a separate Ukrainian state and national identity. For hundreds of years, your lands have been fought over by dominate neighboring empires. Most recently, you have lived through the main front of World War I and the Bolshevik civil war, Stalins terror, murder and exile of the middle class. At the moment, 1939, you are living in Poland, sandwiched between Nazi Germany and the expanding Soviet empire. The Nazis say they will give you a free state and protect you from the Soviet Union. In 1941, the Nazis betray your agreement, invade your lands and set up a killing machine. Against the odds, the only alternative left, you join the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization to fight against both Nazi and Soviets. The leader of UNO is Stepan Bandera who has just proclaimed the establishment of a free Ukraine. Your homeland becomes the main front of the war between the USSR and Germany. In the end, your decimated land is incorporated into the Soviet Union, Bandera is murdered by the KGB and your history rewritten by Soviet propagandists to discredit Bandera and the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Bandera becomes the symbolic legacy of the struggle for Ukrainian identity. The Soviets brand Ukrainian nationals is Banderites. Over time, the propaganda term looses association with a specific person and come to mean dangerous anti-socials from western Ukraine who threaten the peace of the Soviet Union. Russian-speaking people of the USSR are taught to be afraid to go to western Ukraine where they may be attacked or killed. And so this week, the Russian government issues an official press release calling Banderites a threat to the peace of Ukraine, destroying churches and synagogs indiscriminately, bloodthirsty anarchists burning, looting and murdering Russian-speaking people. A complete fabrication by the neo-Soviet establishment.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 06:03:12 +0000
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