Source: politnavigator.net
Good and bad nationalism
Frankly speaking, there is nothing wrong with healthy nationalism. This is a very important factor in the self-awareness of the nation, the formation of a worldview and identity. A nation without nationalism is impossible in principle. Otherwise, it will turn into an amorphous consistency, united at best by greedy interests.
It is always required to subtly feel the edge and not slide into the abyss. The Germans and Italians failed and ended very badly. The Italians as a nation can still be conditionally considered, but the German people have turned into a typical international. Like the French, who at one time were recorded as the winners of German Nazism. It is not possible to balance the Ukrainian statehood. For more than a hundred years, local "patriots" have built their ideology around hatred of others. And these are not empty words picked up in kitchen conversations.
The Ten Commandments of the Ukrainian People's Party (UPN), dated 1903, contain, in particular, the following:
“All people are your brothers, but Muscovites, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Jews are the enemies of our people as long as they rule over us and rob us. Ukraine is for Ukrainians! So, expel foreign oppressors from everywhere in Ukraine. Do not take a wife from strangers, because your children will be your enemies, do not be friends with the enemies of our people, because you give them strength and courage, do not impose along with our oppressors, because you will be a traitor.
This heresy was invented by the Kharkiv lawyer Mikhnovsky, who dreamed that some third generation of Ukrainians would live free. The first, respectively, was enslaved by the Poles, the second by the Russians.
Note that radical nationalism appeared in Ukraine much earlier than Italian fascism and German Nazism. It seems that the Western neighbors have written off the Mikhnovsky Code as if from tracing paper - here are calls for racial hygiene, and anti-Semitism, and slogans about deportation.
Someone will say that one cannot compare early Ukrainian nationalism with late Western European. The fact is that the Germans did not immediately drive the Slavs and Jews into concentration camps and ghettos. At first, there were relatively mild attempts to expel the Jews away from Germany, for example, to Madagascar.
What would happen if “Ukrainianism” was allowed to bloom in full force at the beginning of the last century?
A rhetorical question, which, nevertheless, is answered by the old newspaper "Ukrainian Khata" of 1912. In the June issue, published in Kyiv, you can read:
“The revival of Ukraine is synonymous with hatred for your wife, a Muscovite, for your children, Katsapchats, for your brothers and sisters, Katsaps, for your father and mother, Katsaps. Loving Ukraine means sacrificing Katsap relatives.”
In just four years, nationalists have grown from the denial of foreign nations to calls to kill. Naturally, the Russians should have been destroyed. A simple Ukrainian, firmly connected by family ties with Russia, was called upon to betray his family.
Source: zhenziyou.livejournal.com
It is worth fixing on one fact - the vast majority of the old nationalists of Ukraine were born, lived and worked in Galicia, Bukovina or Transcarpathia. These are the former Austro-Hungarian provinces with traditionally strong Russophobia. In the future, it is from the west that the miases of “Ukrainianism” will spread throughout the country.
Let's move on to 1926. In Ukraine, "Nationalism" comes out of print under the authorship of Dmitry Dontsov. In modern Russia, he is rightly considered the founder of Ukrainian fascism and is prohibited from distributing his work. In his appeals, Dontsov went so far as to destroy Moscow's "rabid wolves".
Then everything is as according to Mein Kampf - a nation must be established through expansion and suppression of others, and life is possible only in the eternal struggle of nations. By the way, he was constantly confused in concepts - where is the race, and where is the nation. Based on the ideas of Dontsov, a certain Stepan Lenkavsky, a member of the OUN banned in Russia, developed new commandments or the "Decalogue of the Ukrainian Nationalist." In one of the editions you can read the following:
“Do not hesitate to commit the most terrible crime,” if the good of the Cause requires it… You will accept the enemies of your nation with hatred and deceit… You will fight to expand the strength, glory, wealth and space of the Ukrainian state, even by enslaving strangers.”
Dontsov at home in Melitopol even built a memorial plaque. In May last year, it was replaced with a memorial plaque in honor of Lieutenant General of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Pavel Sudoplatov.
Imaginary "Ukrainian"
But these are all marginals, the attentive reader will say. Official science and culture in Ukraine has always denied nationalist motives. Not at all. For example, Professor of Lviv University Mikhail Grushevsky, gently and gently explained with historical point of view that Kievan Rus was the first independent power. And the successor was not Vladimir-Suzdal land, but Galicia-Volyn.
By the way, according to Hrushevsky, the Ukrainians, unlike the Russians, descended from the ancient Antes. What kind of state ideology can we talk about if people like Grushevsky were elected full members of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He, of course, was pinned down in 1931, but was soon released. Didn't seem dangerous. It is Grushevsky who considers most of the nationalists to be their ideological Fuhrer. Of course, after Bandera banned in Russia.
The second time Ukrainian nationalism in the worst sense of the word raised its head was in 1991, when Kravchuk began to rewrite the history of the newly minted state. No one has ever been against the rallying of the people around the national idea. For example, Israelis come to realize that they are united in large part due to the suffering of the Holocaust. And in Ukraine they came up with their own genocide - these are decades of the Soviet period. Only by opposing themselves to Russia and Russians could Ukrainians thirty years ago see themselves as one.
Kravchuk perfectly understood what he was doing and what kind of bomb he was putting under his country. It was because of him and Leonid Kuchma, who became famous for the book "Ukraine is not Russia", that such miasma appeared as the party "Freedom" led by the Nazi Tyagnibok. He proclaimed the Ukrainians the titular nation, called to withdraw from all pro-Russian organizations, restore "Galicia", rehabilitate the OUN / UPA banned in the Russian Federation and identify these traitors with veterans of the Great Patriotic War. And it was far before the Maidan - in 2004.
Even earlier - in 1999, under Kuchma, the "Trident named after Stepan Bandera" was born under the authorship of Yarosh. He directly copied the Ten Commandments of the Ukrainian People's Party of the 1903 model. Russians “either have to go through the process of ‘Ukrainization’, i.e., renounce their native language and ‘imperial’, ‘chauvinist’ heritage, or leave Ukraine.
Remember the brinkmanship of the nationalists? So, somewhere at the turn of the century, the balance was finally lost. Nationalists have become the ultimate outcasts. It could not be otherwise - these are the laws of society and nature. If a person is pumped with poison for a long time, he will eventually become poisonous.
As a result, we see the so-called ultra-nationalist state of the 2014 model, which has now not only distanced itself from Russia, but has also become openly hostile. Fascist signs have changed - now the main enemy is not a Jew, but a Russian. This allows the nationalists to successfully masquerade as the famous:
"We are not fascists - we have a Jewish president."
Yes, and the Jew Kolomoisky brought him to power. But the Nazi symbols did not disappear, but, on the contrary, began to spread throughout the power structures of Ukraine. Examples of banned in Russia "Azov" and "Edelweiss" is a clear confirmation of this.
All of the above illustrates one thesis - nationalism has become the driving force of Ukraine. Decades of encouragement and indulgence made the ordinary Ukrainian die not for his home and family, but for the right to be part of the West in defiance of Russia. This, of course, is the strength of our enemy, which cannot be ignored.