by John Maryon
Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are predominantly from the East Slav sub-group of the Slavic people. Crimean Tatars form an important ethnic group of the population of Crimea. The fertile lands of mineral rich Ukraine were for centuries shared between the Poles and the Mongols. By 1500 the Ottoman empire had expanded and taken over South East Ukraine and Crimea. In 1654, following years of conflict with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack leader of Ukraine pledged allegiance to the Czardom of Russia in exchange of protection. Russian influence increased and in 1797 Catherine the Great established the port city of Odessa and the region became an important part of the Russian Empire.
Today most people have heard of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was an imperialist conflict for Middle East influence between Russia and an alliance of France, Britain and Turkey. Russia lost the war and with it influence in the region and now had only a limited access to the Black Sea. However there were two other significant impacts. One saw the break up of European alliances and the other was that it forced Russia to become modernised.
Following the 1917 Great October Revolution in Russia Ukraine became a Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian SSR. A majority of those in Eastern Ukraine spoke Russian while in the western areas the people spoke Ukrainian. The Ukrainian language is very similar to Russian and considered by some to be a dialect. In the Crimea, Tatar and other ethnic languages were secured by decree. A devious Kruschchev was to later cede Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR.
To understand the Ukraine of today it is important to consider some developments during the pre World War 2 period. The Congress of Soviets had proclaimed Soviet Power in 1917 and elected Soviets were established in the towns, villages, work places and military units. The new young republic started on the road to building socialism. But the peaceful life was soon to be shattered. Counter-revolutionary forces led by former Czarist officers and the feudal lords of Central Asia waged a civil war against the Soviet republic. They were to be supported by forces of intervention. British, French, American and Japanese forces in the Far East invaded the Soviet Union. An undeclared war of intervention was underway and Britain occupied Odessa while Germany took control of a large part of western Ukraine.
The Soviet forces were united and soon built an alliance with workers and peasants and established the Red Army. A war economy was established. The counter-revolutionary military superiority was short lived as conflicting interests emerged. The White Guards, as the alliance of foreign backed fighters was known, depended upon foreign finance and was essentially a mercenary army. When the money stopped during the major capitalist economic crisis they fell apart. The imperialist powers however continued to occupy western parts of the country. The imperialist powers used former Soviet territory to establish a cordon sanitaire from which they could carry out attacks on the young republic.
Collectivisation of agriculture enabled farms to be modernised. The days of the horse-drawn wooden plough were over and Ukraine started to become an important grain growing area. The process of change was not an easy one. The years 1932-1934 saw the worst drought in living memory. A typhoid epidemic ravaged the Caucasus. Many agriculture experts and cadres sent from Moscow were murdered by fascist gangs. Some kulaks slaughtered all their animals and invading forces burned crops. Many people died of starvation. However by the late 1930s Ukraine had become the bread-basket of the Soviet Union while the industrial regions of Eastern Ukraine became known as the Soviet Ruhr.
At 0400 on 22nd June 1941 Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Of the 27 million Russians who were killed during the war, five million were from Ukraine plus 1.5 million Jewish people who lived in the region. Nationalists from the former ruling class in Western Ukraine supported Hitler and the Nazis. The leader of the Halychyn SS Division , Stefan Bandera, was held responsible for many atrocities. Jews, communists, socialists, the mentally ill and the disabled were slaughtered in the death camps. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin the Soviet Union fought courageously and was able to smash the Nazi war machine. The battle of Stalingrad is considered to be the turning point of the Second World War which ended in victory in 1945, But after the war many Ukrainian Nazis were made welcome in the USA and Britain.
During the post-war era industry quickly developed and agriculture flourished. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Oligarchs took over in Russia and Ukraine grabbing the wealth that had been created during people's rule with former officials changing sides to get their noses in the trough. Living standards fell and unemployment reappeared after an absence of 50 years. With the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians were promised that NATO would not expand eastwards. The gullible Russian leadership believed this but the Imperialists saw it as an opportunity to expand their malignant influence, gain access to Russia's rich resources and to threaten China.
The United States is notorious for its never-ending wars and coups for regime change. The long list includes Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chile. In February 2014 it was Ukraine's turn. In a coup planned, financed and supported by the USA, the democratically elected government of Yanukovych was overthrown. Opposition parties were banned, politicians arrested and demonstrators murdered in Odessa by being driven into the trade union building which was then set on fire. The new pro-Nato and pro-European Union puppet regime embarked on widespread repressive measures against Russian speakers, including a ban on the Russian language. Strong resistance in Eastern Ukraine led to the establishment of independent states which were recognised by Russia and later along with Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. Between 2014 and 2022 some 8,000 civilians were killed by shelling from regime held areas.
In 2022 Russia commenced its special military operation to defend those regions under attack, prevent the expansion of Nato eastwards and rid the Ukraine government of supporters of the infamous Nazi collaborator, Stefan Bandera. The civil war became a proxy one as the Americans and their Western allies poured in money and weapons. Negotiations, such as the Minsk agreements to end the conflict have been repeatedly sabotaged by Western leaders. The Western powers are losing their war and Ukraine is tragically being destroyed in scenes similar to those left in Vietnam and Korea. Instead of bringing the tragedy to an end Western leaders, including, Macron of France, Merz of Germany and Starmer of Britain, have become obsessed with keeping the war going. They continue to pour in money to keep the conflict going while their own economies face collapse.
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