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On 5/6/14 9:33 AM, Paul Flewers wrote:
I know Chris Ford well and readily acknowledge his expertise on the history
of Ukraine, but I'm surprised that he wrote that 'put
simply without Stalinism there would have been no Bandera'. The hard-line
Ukrainian nationalism -- 'integralism', as it was often called -- that
Bandera espoused was around well before Stalin's taking over the reins in
Moscow, and the integralist OUN, of which Bandera became a major leader,
was formed in 1929, that is, just as Stalin took over and some years before
the famine in Soviet Ukraine, and Bandera had become its chief propaganda
officer in 1931. No doubt the famine in Soviet Ukraine reinforced Bandera
in his views, but he was an integralist well before it happened.
Yes, in fact it was during the "heroic days" of the Comintern that
hostility to communism--or at least a distorted form--took root. Let me
refer to that FI article that I scanned in to remind you of the
circumstances:
http://louisproyect.org/2014/04/20/lenins-party-great-russian-chauvinism-and-the-betrayal-of-ukrainian-national-aspirations/
Skrypnyk, a personal friend of Lenin, and a realist always studying the
relationship of forces, was seeking a minimum of Ukrainian federation
with Russia and a maximum of national independence. In his opinion, it
was the international extension of the revolution which would make it
possible to resist in the most effective fashion the centralising
Greater Russian pressure. At the head of the first Bolshevik government
in the Ukraine he had had some very bitter experiences: the chauvinist
behaviour of Muraviev, the commander of the Red Army who took Kiev, the
refusal to recognize his government and the sabotage of his work by
another commander, Antonov-Ovseyenko, for whom the existence of such a
government was the product of fantasies about an Ukrainian nationality.
In addition, Skrypnyk was obliged to fight bitterly for Ukrainian unity
against the Russian Bolsheviks who, in several regions, proclaimed
Soviet republics, fragmenting the country. The integration of Galicia
into the Ukraine did not interest them either. The national aspiration
to sobornist’, the unity of the country, was thus openly flouted. It was
with the “Katerynoslavian” right wing of the party that there was the
most serious confrontation. It formed a Soviet republic in the mining
and industrial region of Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih, including the Donbas, with
the aim of incorporating it into Russia. This republic, its leaders
proclaimed, was that of, a Russian proletariat “which does not want to
hear anything about some so-called Ukraine and has nothing in common
with it”. This attempted secession could count on some support in
Moscow. The Skrypnyk government had to fight against these tendencies of
its Russian comrades, for the sobornist’ of the Soviet Ukraine within
the national borders set, through the Central Rada, by the national
movement of the masses.
The first congress of the CP(B) of the Ukraine took place in Moscow. For
Lenin and the leadership of the Russian CP(B) the decision of Tahanrih
had the flavour of a nationalist deviation. They were not ready to
accept an independent Bolshevik party in the Ukraine or a Ukrainian
section of the Komintern. The CP(B) of the Ukraine could only be a
regional organization of the pan-Russian CP(B), according to the thesis
“one country, one party”. Is the Ukraine not a country?
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