Received a letter:
I recommend reading this (setting aside all emotions) http://pravda.com.ua/news/2009/9/8/101146.htm
The guy is right on many points.
I read it without emotions. Then, when I saw it was written by Syoryozha Pidrakhouy — I was disgusted for a long time.
For some reason, half of the Moscovites and “regionalists,” whenever they argue about something — whether about current affairs or past history — tend to tell only half the truth: the half that’s convenient for them, from just the right angle.
After all, more than 5 million Ukrainians perished in the war at the hands of the Hitlerites, in whose ranks Roman Shukhevych also marched.
1. 5 million Ukrainians, as we now know, perished not only at the hands of the fascists, but also, among others, at the hands of the glorious fighters of the NKVD.
The Council of Europe, marking the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the fratricidal war of 1939–1945, by Resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly condemned attempts to heroize Nazis and their collaborators.
2. The dishonorable Kivalov nods at the heroization of Nazis, forgetting that: “On Wednesday, July 1, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Democracy adopted a resolution equating Stalinism and Nazism and calling for international condemnation of totalitarian regimes.”
http://korrespondent.net/world/888410 — that’s just an argument against one-sided distortions and half-truths. Every other street in any city or village — Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Ilyich. Strange that Beria isn’t there. What I find most unpleasant here is that this party-regional politician once again uses substitution of concepts and deliberately conflates “national socialism” (which, by the way, nobody calls it that — since we spent 70 years building socialism, everyone says “Nazism”), which is essentially “the official political ideology of the Third Reich,” and “nationalism” — “an ideology and political direction whose core principle is the thesis of the supreme value of the nation and its primacy in the state-forming process.”
And (couldn’t help myself) also from Wikipedia:
Nationalism is above all an ideology that includes the following elements:
- The existence of nations. Nationalism postulates that humanity is divided by the laws of nature into fundamental units — autonomous and self-sufficient nations, distinguished by a set of certain objective characteristics.
For example, in February 2009, at a general meeting of the staff of Donetsk National University, not a single person voted “FOR” naming it after poet Vasyl Stus, 283 voted “AGAINST,” and 1 “ABSTAINED.” As a result, the renaming did not take place.
In general, it is right for the collective itself to decide what it wants to be called. Fair enough — if they don’t want to be named after a patriot, a human rights defender, a Nobel Prize nominee (and by the way, Stus worked as a miner) — then let them choose the name of some hat-thieving, twice-jailed Bandyukovych or Kidalov.
“Each one chooses for himself — a woman, a religion, a road; to serve the devil or a prophet — each one chooses for himself.” These words of Kyivan Levitansky best reflect my attitude toward this. And Kivalov — a Moldovan, a Sverdlovsk cop — is not the kind of person (not a person at all, really) whose opinion could interest even a single Ukrainian. You asked without emotions. I calmly read the article about Shukhevych in the Russian (= ideologically antagonistic) section of Wikipedia. What did I find there? This fellow started with “Plast,” was in the UVO (“an illegal organization of nationalist orientation”), was one of the first members of the OUN, conducted underground resistance — including by terrorist methods. That’s what Wikipedia says. What else does it say?
“The leadership of the OUN(b) counted on the fact that after the ’liberation’ of Ukraine from the Bolsheviks by German forces, they would be permitted to create their own independent Ukrainian state — something that had been indicated on multiple occasions at the very highest Nazi levels. The Ukrainian Legion, by the design of the OUN(b) leadership, was to become the core of the army of the new Ukrainian state under OUN(b) leadership.”
That’s it. I can see that this man waged a liberation struggle for the independence of my country against both totalitarian regimes (which are called such by the very Europe that Kivalov holds in such high regard). I need no further arguments. Except perhaps for the fact that in those troubled times, Soviet NKVD operatives dressed in UPA uniforms would break into homes, shoot people in the back, and torture them.
So there you have it. Apart from being a crook and a “regionalist,” the guy is also wrong on many counts.