Katyn vs. Khatyn: An Illustration of How WWII History Was (and Is) Manipulated for Political Purposes
On Thursday, Putin held an ad hoc meeting with motley collection of leaders of the motley connection of nations that represent his allies: Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These members of the Organization of Collective Security Treaty were called together in haste for an emergency meeting on Ukraine.
One remark jumped out at me, and illustrates my earlier post on how WWII history is used to advance Russian imperial objectives. Belarus’s Lukashenko brought up an episode from the War that the Soviets used in a way that I’ll discuss in a bit:
“Events happening in Ukraine do not allow one to sit quietly on the side-lines and just look at what’s going on,” – said Alexander Lukashenko after the meeting with Putin. According to the Belarus head of state first of all it concerns events in Odessa. “This takes us to the bad old parallels. I see that on TV screens these parallels have already appeared. We remember Chatyn, when several hundred villages in Belarus were burned by the Nazis on the same principle,” – he said. “Such actions are unacceptable in any state, and it will be even more unacceptable if we will quietly and watch what is happening. This is particularly true of the Russian Federation and Belarus. Naturally, we cannot just watch it, because that’s our people and they cry out for help and we need to respond to such things,” – said Lukashenko, adding that the situation is evolving very quickly.
The name of the village Chatyn is usually rendered as Khatyn. It is the site of a memorial complex commemorating more than 100 Belarussian villages where the Germans destroyed and massacred civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks.
But why in Khatyn? Why that particular hamlet from of the 100 villages where Nazis massacred civilians, or of the over 9000 destroyed (with some of their residents surviving)?
The answer to those questions speaks volumes about the use and abuse of history by the Soviet Union and Russia.
Note the similarity of the name Khatyn to that of Katyn, where the NKVD assassinated tens of thousands of Polish officers with a pistol shot to the back of the head. When the Germans discovered the graves, the Soviets denied responsibility, and for decades shrilly asserted that the Germans had killed the Poles. At Nuremberg the Soviets tried to put Germans on trial for the killings, but the Americans and British knew the truth and refused to go along.
This was a forbidden subject in Communist Poland, but Poles around the world continually pressed the Soviets to acknowledge their guilt. They made a political issue of it in the United States. Congressional hearings on Katyn were held in the early-50s. It was an embarrassing and annoying subject for the USSR. So they came up with a bizarrely Sovok scheme to attempt to consign Katyn to the memory hole and put a memorial to the victims of German atrocities in Khatyn. They erased all references to Katyn, the site of a Soviet atrocity, and made a great spectacle of Khatyn, the site of a German atrocity. By this three card monte trick the Soviets attempted to gull the world into believing that Katyn really was the site of a German war crime.
A CIA historian summarizes it well:
Meanwhile, the Soviets obliterated references to Katyn on maps and in official reference works. Then, in 1969, Moscow did something strange that many believe was further calculated to confuse the issue further: it chose a small village named Khatyn as the cite for Belorussia’s national war memorial. There was no apparent reason for the selection. Khatyn was one of 9,200 Belorussian villages the Germans had destroyed and one of more than a hundred where they had killed civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks. In Latin transliteration, however, Katyn and Khatyn look and sound alike, though they are spelled and pronounced quite differently in Russian and Belorussian. When President Nixon visited the USSR in July 1974, he toured the Khatyn memorial at his hosts’ insistence. Sensing that the Soviets were exploiting the visit for propaganda purposes, The New York Times headlined its coverage of the tour: “Nixon Sees Khatyn, a Soviet Memorial, Not Katyn Forest.” (The Times probably got it right. During the Vietnam war, the Soviets frequently took visiting US peace activists to Khatyn.)
The Telegraph ran a story about Nixon’s visit at the time:
President Nixon’s visit to the memorial in the Byelorussian village of Khatyn has caused a mistaken impression that Russia has erected a memorial to the victims of the wartime massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. In fact, Khatyn and Katyn are two entirely different places; Khatyn, in which the ‘kh’ is pronounced like the English ‘h’ is a small village some 30 miles to the north-east of Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia.
Katyn, which is pronounced as written, is a town about 15 miles west of Smolensk, a provincial city in Russia proper. Khatyn is about 160 miles west of Katyn.
When Stalin and Hitler divided up Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, some 240,000 Polish officers and men fell into Russian hands. After Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941, 15,000 were found to be missing and the Russians denied all knowledge of them.
Katyn fell into German hands in the late summer of 1941 and at the beginning of 1943 the German army discovered a mass grave of 4,443 Polish officers and men.
When the Polish Government-in-exile appealed for an international tribunal to determine how the Poles died Stalin broke off relations. After re-taking Katyn the Russians set up their own inquiry and said the Poles had been executed by the Germans.
Later researches by Polish and independent authorities in the west, as well as wartime Foreign Office documents, leave no doubt that the Poles were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.
The Russians have tried to erase Katyn from maps and history books. The reference to it in the 1953 edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia was dropped in the 1973 edition. No visitors are allowed to the area and no memorial has been erected.
It was not until 1969 that the Russians announced the unveiling of a “memorial complex” on the site of the village of Khatyn. It was one of 9,200 Byelorussian villages destroyed by the Germans, and one of 136 of which all the inhabitants were killed.
The Russians appear to have chosen Khatyn because of the similarity of its name to Katyn. They hoped in this way to obscure the fact they have erected no memorial to the victims of Katyn, which was no less a crime than the one committed at Khatyn.
This is the way the Soviets manipulated World War II history to serve their ends. Putin continues these manipulations to this day, and good Sovok Lukashenko resurrects this staple of Soviet propaganda to slur the Ukrainians, by comparing them to Nazis.
Keep this in mind whenever Putin or any other Russian or FSU Sovok uses World War II history to make a political point, or to advance a political objective.
The Odessa massacre has had almost zero coverage in Western media. No investigation has been announced by Kiev.
Meanwhile they cut down the trees in Kiev’s sniper alley real quick. Why the rush?
Comment by So? — May 11, 2014 @ 11:12 pm
What, Odessa where armed pro Russian thugs opened fire on a pro Ukrainian demonstration which outnumbered the pro Russians 10 to 1? Where the pro Russians killed a number of pro Ukrainians, then got chased back to the building, started throwing petrol bombs from the roof, after which (quite naturally) the pro Ukrainians retaliated and the pro Russian thugs suffered the consequences of their actions?
Comment by Andrew — May 11, 2014 @ 11:51 pm
Andrew,
A word of advice for you, buddy boy.
NEVER GO FULL RETARD.
(Although it’s 35 years too late for you. )
Comment by So? — May 11, 2014 @ 11:59 pm
Since Andrew has recently mounted an ad hominem attack on me, including new waves of libel, let me re-post my old article about him that I personally find quite funny, albeit totally factual, based on Andrew’s posts to the late LaRussopobe blog:
Glenn // May 14, 2009 at 9:24 am
Andrew, are you gay?
Andrew // May 14, 2009 at 9:29 am
I suspect you are the gay one (usually people insult others with what they fear in themselves).
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Really? Very interesting… So, what do you fear in yourself, Andrew?
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Andrew // January 17, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Oh Arthur, just because you are uptight about your homosexuality…… Though maybe you are uptight about your homosexual tendencies because, like Putin, they involve little boys??
Andrew // April 13, 2009 at 4:37 am
BTW “I’m Russian” YOU show all the mental conditions of a paedophile, or most likely a pederast.
Andrew // June 9, 2009 at 10:04 am
You are the joke “free”, to much of a left wing paedophile to use your name in your post.
Andrew // June 9, 2009 at 10:22 am
free, stop going on about little boys. We all know the predilection those such as yourself have for underage males
Andrew // May 14, 2009 at 9:29 am
usually people insult others with what they fear in themselves.
Andrew // April 19, 2009 at 9:40 am
No Misha,…. pederast Lavrov stated publicly…
Andrew // February 23, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Well “Leonid V Marchenko, I am in a much better position to judge the opinion of Georgians than a pederast like you
Andrew // November 26, 2009 at 4:48 am
.. a racist little douchebag like yourself kgb pederast.
Andrew // August 5, 2009 at 5:14 am
Considering the overwhelming Russian tendency to pederasty and paedophilia I am sure AKM has a lot of experience inlubing up while waiting for it to come again.
Andrew // May 14, 2009 at 9:29 am
usually people insult others with what they fear in themselves.
Andrew // May 8, 2009 at 5:23 pm
military “officers” pimp out their conscripts to be raped by rich Russian pederasts.
Andrew // March 27, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Sphynx, are you a tranny? Or maybe a pederast?
Andrew // September 12, 2009 at 5:06 am
Butt-plug is the same sort of slimy, lying little pederast…
vermin like butt-plug
Andrew // September 12, 2009 at 5:22 am
Now butt-plug,….
Andrew // September 12, 2009 at 4:46 am
Try watching it butt-plug, or are you too busy molesting little boys?… more realisticly called butt-plug from now on… Once again butt-plug
Andrew // December 31, 2009 at 8:47 am
Looks like “Jason” is just the latest reincarnation of …. Bi-Gay-Curious Putin worshipper
Andrew // May 9, 2010 at 3:49 pm
No, read the report dima dickhead.
Andrew // May 26, 2009 at 8:43 am
Well Algymuff, it seems that buggery was pretty normal in Russia…. Medieval Russia was apparently very tolerant ofhomosexuality.
Andrew // April 30, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Hey Pedophile, I mean Russophile
Andrew // August 11, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Its a well known fact that those most insecure in their sexuality try the hardest to be “macho”.
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Is that why you try the hardest to be “macho”, Andrew?
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Andrew // January 16, 2010 at 5:08 am
There are a lot more about the wonders of gay life in Russia…
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Really? How much more? How did you become an expert on the “ wonders of gay life in Russia”, Andrew? Personal experience or nights spent drooling while surfing the gay internet?
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Andrew // January 16, 2010 at 5:08 am
you are the one who defends Putins pederastic tendencies.. Medieval Russia was apparently very tolerant of homosexuality…
Andrew // January 18, 2010 at 11:33 am
However Russia does have a long and proud tradition of homosexual behaviour in General and pedophilia in particular.
Andrew // January 18, 2010 at 10:29 am
So you deny Putin is a paedophile despite film evidence of him kissing a boy on the stomach in public? Or are you and the MBLA still considering that normal behaviour?
Andrew // June 27, 2010 at 3:39 pm
you work as a male prostitute for gay Russian ex-pats, you end up in the trailer park….
Andrew // August 11, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Well, Medvedev and Putin probably do have THAT sort of relationship according to rumour. And those shirtless photo’s do have to make you wonder.
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Images of a shirtless man “ make you wonder”, Andrew? Is that what you do when you go to public beaches in the summer: wonder?
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Andrew // August 11, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Russian gay chat rooms and blogs were particularly intrigued by the photos: some claimed that Putin, by stripping to his waist, was somehow pleading for more tolerance for homosexuality in Russia
Andrew // January 16, 2010 at 5:08 am
Medvedev obviously enjouys having another mans hand up his arse…..So you deny Putin is a paedophile… Well I do think that Medvedev and Putin have a passive active relationship. As shown by their somewhat “intense” relationship…However Russia does have a long and proud tradition of homosexual behaviour… the MBLA…
Andrew // February 4, 2010 at 5:30 am
Now Arthuretta, don’t project your homosexual fantasies onto others, we all know you get your jollies from perverted dreams of all boys schools, as evidenced by your homoerotic posts…..
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”Homoerotic posts”, eh? Please tell the readers what particular posts from Arthuretta further arose your homosexual erotic feelings, Andrew. Give an example of a sentence that you find “homoerotic”.
Хере аре тхе цомментс тхат И гот:
1. Dmitry
July 1, 2010 at 5:24 am
Oh stop mocking him:)
2. Konstantin
July 7, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Poor guy must be uptight about everything that reminds him of his sexual urges.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 3:14 am
Andrew // August 11, 2009 at 5:48 pm: Russian gay chat rooms and blogs were particularly intrigued by the photos: some claimed that Putin, by stripping to his waist, was somehow pleading for more tolerance for homosexuality in Russia
Wow, what expertise, what dedication! Do you devote your life to reading just Russian gay chat rooms, Andrew, or the English-language ones too?
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 3:25 am
Andrew on holocausts:
Andrew> What, Odessa … the pro Ukrainians retaliated and the pro Russian thugs suffered the consequences of their actions?
Andrew on genocides:
>> You advocate the same genocide against Georgians as the one the Ottomans perpetrated on Armenians and facilitated by your own Brits who prevented Russia from protecting Armenians?!
Andrew> Of course the Armenians fail to mention they rebelled against a government that had given them most favored minority status in the late 19th c, with special privileges in trade and parliament…
http://www.ceiig.ch/Report.html
Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia
Georgians were to some extent even a privileged nation within the Russian Empire.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 3:56 am
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5253.htm
Official site of the US Department of State
In the postwar period, Georgia was perceived as one of the wealthiest and most privileged of Soviet republics
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 4:02 am
“In the postwar period, Georgia was perceived as one of the wealthiest and most privileged of Soviet republics”
Wow…I had no idea that Georgia was on such a lofty pedestal. Georgia was the Luxembourg of the Soviet Union.
I agree with Andrew. At this point the only thing that makes sense is meeting fire with fire.
Comment by pahoben — May 12, 2014 @ 4:18 am
The countries that were formed by amalgamation WWII time frame are now beset with internal strife. It would have been a better case to recognize ethnic and cultural divisions at that time in both Soviet and non Soviet areas. Ultimately they will return to those smaller divisions.
Comment by pahoben — May 12, 2014 @ 5:05 am
> A CIA historian summarizes it well: In Latin transliteration, however, Katyn and Khatyn look and sound alike, though they are spelled and pronounced quite differently in Russian and Belorussian.
Why oh why do you insist on quoting Goebbels-style “historians” who are such habitual liars that they lie even when there is no need to? The Russian word for Khatyn is Хатынь, and for Katyn is Катынь. Both word are written in Russian almost identically, and are pronounced almost identically!
> It is the site of a memorial complex commemorating more than 100 Belarussian villages where the Germans destroyed and massacred civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks.
Actually the number of destroyed or partially destroyed villages (destroyed by Germans and their Ukrainian nationalist helpers) in Belarus is 5445, not 100:
http://news.tut.by/society/340204.html
The reason why the burning alive of Khatyn and other Belarusan villagers is on everybody’s mind now, is because last week Ukrainian nationalists burned alive 40 people in Odessa, just as their fellow countrymen from the Ukrainian 118th Batalion Schutzmannschaft burned alive the villagers of Khatyn (on German orders, of course).
Please have some decency.
> This is the way the Soviets manipulated World War II history to serve their ends.
How did the Soviets “manipulate World War II history”? Are you saying that the Khatyn massacre didn’t happen? Or that the Khatyn people don’t deserve a memorial? If so – is there another more “worthy” village that should be the site of such a memorial? If so – which village and why? If not – why are you so much ideologically against memorializing the 5445 villages that were destroyed by the Nazis?
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 6:08 am
> Putin continues these manipulations to this day, and good Sovok Lukashenko resurrects this staple of Soviet propaganda to slur the Ukrainians, by comparing them to Nazis.
Why is it unnatural to compare modern Ukrainian nationalists, burning people alive in Odessa, to WWII Ukrainian nationalists, burning people alive in Khatyn?!
And haven’t you noticed the myriads of Western and Ukrainian journalists and politicians comparing Putin’s actions in Crimea/Ukraine to Hitler’s actions? The entire argument among the Western politicians and the mass media for “stopping Putin” from attacking the Ukrainian junta is that we shouldn’t make the same mistake as we made in 1939 when we allowed Hitler to conquer Poland. You read and hear “Putler” every day. Your own stable of idiot readers use “Putler” in each post here.
Not only that, by US magazines like Time used to come out with pictures of Milosevic and Saddam with captions: “New Hitler?”
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054290,00.html
The New Adolf Hitler?
By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH Monday, Apr. 05, 1999
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1991/02/11/74659/index.htm
HOW BUSH DECIDED He sees Saddam Hussein as another Hitler.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-03-03/new-hitler-gaddafi-rounding-up-opponents/1966478
‘New Hitler’ Gaddafi rounding up opponents
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 6:33 am
Professor, you must’ve hit the nail on the head about Russia’s manipulation of war remembrance. Vladislav, in particular, shat enough bricks to build a new Berlin wall.
Comment by Trubkokur — May 12, 2014 @ 11:18 am
“The reason why the burning alive of Khatyn and other Belarusan villagers is on everybody’s mind now, is because last week Ukrainian nationalists burned alive 40 people in Odessa, just as their fellow countrymen from the Ukrainian 118th Batalion Schutzmannschaft burned alive the villagers of Khatyn (on German orders, of course).”
Just as?
So, in Belarus, initially peaceful Germans and their Ukrainian nationalist helpers were attacked by Belarusian villagers, the Germans and Ukrainians retaliated, and in the course of the struggle between the two groups many Belarusian villagers died of fire?
Sorry, I do not agree with your historical revisionism, Vladislav.
Comment by AP — May 12, 2014 @ 11:27 am
My opinion of the Putin-Hitler comparisons:
Putin’s behaviors in Crimea were quite similar to the Anschluss, Russian behavior in eastern Ukraine is reminiscent of the situation in Sudatenland and Danzig (although Putin has not yet moved on these territories where his co-ethnic supporters are causing trouble). So Putin and Hitler share in common their desire to alter borders that they consider unjust, based on ethnic terms. Of course, Hitler was not unique in this. A lot of authoritarian interwar states felt the same way. The Poles grabbed a piece of Czechoslovakia, the Hungarians grabbed Transcarpathia and Transylvania, the Romanians grabbed Bessarabia, Italy was grabbing lands to reconstitute the Roman Empire, etc. There is nothing specifically, uniquely Hitlerian about Putin’s behavior. He’s just acting like any aggrieved 1930’s right-wing European strongman (and so, it is no coincidence that Putin’s biggest fans west of Russia are parties such as Hungary’s Jobbik, Bulgaria’s Attaka, etc. who are heirs of those 1930s parties)
The specifically Hitlerian elements was the focus on destroying the world’s Jews, and the desire to physically exterminate and enslave a large neighboring ethnic group. Putin doesn’t share these traits with Hitler.
So while comparing Russia’s behavior to that of Germany in the 1930’s is entirely appropriate, the Putin-Hitler comparison is over-the-top.
Comment by AP — May 12, 2014 @ 11:38 am
To add to my earlier comment – if Putin and Tiahnybok didn’t have claims over the same territories, they would probably be friends. Indeed, prior to Hungary’s Jobbik allying with Putin Jobbik and Tiahnybok’s parties were friends. The Hungarians simply decided that Russia would have more to offer Hungary than Ukraine would.
Comment by AP — May 12, 2014 @ 11:42 am
@AP – “and the desire to physically exterminate and enslave a large neighboring ethnic group. Putin doesn’t share these traits with Hitler.”
The comments of So? : “And then there is the gibberish that is the Ukrainian “language”. Imagine having to write an essay for a university entrance exam in… EBONICS. Which no-one has standardized and no-one actually knows, even the examiners. Had the Eastern Ukrainians (Russians) not been so brainwashed with “internationalism”, “multiculturalism”, “all people are brothers” and other sovok nonsense, they would have rebelled years ago, not now. No other people would have tolerated this crap”
Comment by So? — May 10, 2014 @ 7:13 pm
Ukrainian is not a language, Ukrainians are oppressing the Russian language, etc. are the exact types of language you hear to justify extermination, whether genocide or ethnocide. These are the same types of comments you hear more and more from Putin, Dugin and that ilk.
Remember… The Holodomor didn’t happen.
Comment by Gordon — May 12, 2014 @ 12:24 pm
“Ukrainian is not a language, Ukrainians are oppressing the Russian language, etc. are the exact types of language you hear to justify extermination, whether genocide or ethnocide.
Sure, but Putin is not calling for the extermination of Ukrainians, as Hitler did for Jews and Slavs.
As for ebonics, ebonics sounds vulgar to those who speak standard English. Ukrainian does not, in contrast, sound vulgar to Russian ears – it sounds cute and funny. This is how Czech sounds to Poles.
In contrast, Russian does sound vulgar or crude to Ukrainian ears who are not used to it. Instead of “yak” Russians say “kak”; if Russians don’t care about something they say they spit on it. And Russian mat’ (swearing) is incredibly detailed and diverse, as is Ebonics’ use of m-f. As Poroshenko deonstrated, it is ideally suited when it comes to verbally abusing subordinates. Of course, this does not mean that Russian, or Ebonics, are bad ways of speaking. In both cases they probably reflect more of a brutal existence and hardship during the time when Ebonics and the Russian speech were formed.
Comment by AP — May 12, 2014 @ 1:14 pm
@AP
Absolutely right. Russians who I know that speak English can’t distinguish between British, American, or Australian accents. Usually they just assume if someone has been rude or discourteous they are American (in my experience they are most often British). I could never distinguish a Moscow accent but I immediately know a Ukrainian accent in Russian. It is kind of funny-very sing songy and not guttural.
Comment by pahoben — May 12, 2014 @ 1:38 pm
Actually, “мАцковский” accent is easily recognizable for a native russian speaker.
Comment by Trubkokur — May 12, 2014 @ 2:09 pm
Muscovites sound like whiny twats. (English English is the most nausea inducing English as well).
Comment by So? — May 12, 2014 @ 6:51 pm
Why is it that the Katyn massacres of 22,000 Polish officers are publicized by the Western propaganda, while the extermination of
Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–24)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland that existed during 1919-1924 housed two main categories of detainees:
1. personnel of the Imperial Russian Army, and Russian civilians, captured by Germany during World War I and left on Polish territory after the end of the war; and
2. Soviet military personnel captured during the Polish-Soviet War, the vast majority of them captured as a result of the battles of 1920.
Due to epidemics raging at the time, made worse by the very bad sanitary conditions in which the prisoners were held, largely due to overcrowding, between 16,000 to 20,000 Soviet soldiers held in the Polish POW camps died
During the memorial ceremony for the victims of the Katyn massacre on April 7, 2010, attended by the Russian and Polish Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk, Putin said that, in his private opinion, Stalin (whose refusal to obey orders from Kremlin resulted in the Russian defeat against Poland in 1920) felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940 out of a sense of revenge”
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Why were the noble Russian soldiers, who fought for the Allies in WWI, put into camps? Why were Russian soldiers kept there for 4-5 years, long after the wars ended? Why were they kept in such abominable conditions?
Why are there no movies about this, no mention of this in the Western press, no hysteria like the hysteria about Katyn? Why aren’t YOU writing about this, Professor? Is it because 18,000 is slightly smaller than 22,000? Or is it because nobody considers the deaths of Russians to be a tragedy? Why didn’t the Polish leader apologize to Russia and other republics, the way Putin and Medvedev profusely and numerously apologized for Katyn. Why were no official memorial ceremonies for these Russian soldiers, like the ones that Russia held in Katyn, attended by the leaders of both
And why is that the only part of the 1932-33 Soviet famine, in which 7 million Ukrainian, Kazakh, Russian, Belorusan, etc. peasants in the Grain Belt starved to death, is the Ukrainian part? Aren’t Kazakhs, Russians and Belorusans human too? Why is the word “Голодомор” translated as “Holodomor” instead of the correct “Gholodomor”? To make it sound like the Holocaust?
Why would the hate-mongering President of Ukraine Yuschenko brainwash the Western public with patent lies about the number of victims:
opinion into believing:
http://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/8296.html
Holodomor – Official web-site of President of Ukraine
Victor Yushchenko, The Wall Street Journal
Holodomor
It was a state-organized program of mass starvation that in 1932-33 killed an estimated 7 to 10 million Ukrainians, including up to a third of the nation’s children.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 7:19 pm
The Holodomor took place exclusively on Ukrainian ethnic territory, including the Kuban and Slobidska Ukraina all the way to the Volga, with the purpose of destroying the Ukrainian people particularly, not just in the areas of the ypcp. In many of these areas were large numbers of khazaks, Russians, etc.
To quote your idol and hero Stalin: “When you chop wood, chips fly”.
Also, the letter “Г” in the Ukrainian language is pronounced like an “H”, not a “G”. Holodomor is a Ukrainian word.
Comment by Gordon — May 12, 2014 @ 8:16 pm
@vladislav. That is retarded, even by your standards. The camps were not extermination camps, despite the large death tolls. I like your selective quotation from Wikipedia, because that source (such as it is) also notes that a similar number of Polish prisoners died in Soviet camps.
I would also note that during 1918-1919, large numbers of allied soldiers in their own camps died from rampant disease, notably Spanish Influenza.
Even someone as dense as you should be able to understand the difference between ill-treatment of POWs that results in large numbers of deaths through disease, which is an all too common occurrence in war from time immemorial, and the deliberate assassination of tens of thousands to serve a specific political purpose.
The Putin statement that you apparently approve of just shows what a demented, evil fuck he really is. Trying to make excuses for Stalin, and such wildly implausible ones to boot. As if Stalin, who was responsible for the deaths of millions, really cared about the fate of a few thousand prisoners. What’s more, we know what Stalin thought about those who surrendered, don’t we?
If Stalin felt personally responsible, it was because his “leadership” in the campaign in Poland was beyond incompetent. A foreshadowing of his operational ineptitude in WWII. But we also know that Stalin was a master at escaping blame for his fiascos, and fixing blame on others. Therefore, to think he would feel any sense of guilt or responsibility for the fate of the Soviet POWs in Poland is so out of character that only a masterful liar like Putin could spew such bullshit with a straight face.
He hated the Poles because they had beaten him in the war in 1919-1920. He hated the Poles because Russians hate Poles. (Yes, I know he was Georgian by birth, but he made a career of being more Russian-than-thou for that very reason.) And he wanted to destroy the Polish elite that could threaten his control over the country, just as Polish elites had threatened imperial control in 1794, 1830, and 1863.
In other words, even by Putin’s standards, that story is sick, twisted, and light years from reality.
And spare me about Putin’s and Medvedev’s abject apologies for Katyn. Apparently they were spoken in a frequency only you can hear.
The question is why was not every single Polish officer shot, if the hate was so deep.
Russians don’t hate poles, they are indifferent to them. . Same attitude as Americans have towards Russians – “obstructionists” that just get in the way. That’s as far as the hate goes. “Short guy with a chip on his shoulder.”
The poles OTOH hate Russians for that very reason – “not giving them respect”. I’m afraid 1612 weighs mightily on their psyche. Poland could have stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific. Imagine your schlubby cousin that you thought was only fit to mop your floors and wash your toilets turn you into his bitch?
Comment by So? — May 12, 2014 @ 9:48 pm
Gordon> To quote your idol and hero Stalin….
Stalin is my idol?! Why do you neo-nazis always accuse everybody, including an anti-Stalinist like myself. Here are a few of my posts on Stalin:
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/gentlemen-start-your-engines/
Gentlemen, start your engines!
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/httplib-rumemuarybazhanowstalin-txt%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2-%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%B1/
Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/%D0%BD%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BA-%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%BD-%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82-%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8-%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B4%D1%8F-%D0%BA%D0%B0/
Не так страшен культ личности вождя, как культ обезличивания народа
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD-%D0%B8-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B0/
Сталин и колбаса. Stalin’s sausages.
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/was-insomnia-responsible-for-stalins-paranoia/
Was insomnia responsible for Stalin’s paranoia?
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9-%D0%B4%D0%B6%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BB%D1%8C/
Новый Джугашвилль
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/%D0%B8%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%84-%D1%81%D1%8B%D0%BD-%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B4%D0%B6%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D0%BE-%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81-2/
Иосеб Бесарионис Джугашвили-”Сталин” о русском патриотизме и русской культуре
http://vladrutenburg.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B7-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8C-%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%B8-%D0%B2-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B5-%D0%B4-2/
Анализ потерь красной армии в первые дни войны
Look, Gordon, you are entitled to your views, no matter how much I find neo-nazism repulsive. But don’t falsely accuse others.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 11:08 pm
Professor> @vladislav. That is retarded, even by your standards… Even someone as dense as you…
Now I understand why you are not a professor at Harvard. At Harvard people are taught that personal insults is the province of people with inferior minds (and I use this word loosely) who resort to ad hominem attacks when they start losing an argument.
> If Stalin felt personally responsible, it was because his “leadership” in the campaign in Poland was beyond incompetent.
Actually, what happened was the Politburo and Lenin and Trotsky personally gave the command to all forces on all fronts to chase the retreating Poles into Warsaw and finish the war. Instead, Stalin convinced Egorov, Budenny and Voroshilov to disobey the orders from the headquarters and to take the South-Western Front to Lwow instead of Warsaw. As the result, the Russian western front army was attacked from the south-west and destroyed. Many people were later exterminated by Stalin for criticizing his treasonous and ruinous actions. In what other would country an officer, who had disobeyed orders from his commanding officers and caused the loss of the entire war, not be courtmarshalled and shot?
> I would also note that during 1918-1919, large numbers of allied soldiers in their own camps died from rampant disease, notably Spanish Influenza.
If you had some reading comprehension, genius, you would have noticed my question as to why the Poles kept the Russian soldiers in war prisoner camps for 4 years after the wars ended. Why? And why did they intern WWI soldiers instead of letting them join their fellow White emigrants in places like Paris and Belgrade? For 4 extra years, until 18,000 had died!!!
> He hated the Poles because Russians hate Poles.
Russians hate Poles no more than they hate ladybugs or ants. In fact, most Russians love Poles as “fellow Slavic brothers”. And when they first encounter all-consuming russophobia from many Poles, they get shocked, probably the way the English get shocked by the Irish hatred, or Americans – by the hatred in Iraq, in other Arab states and in Latin America.
So? is once again right in pointing out that after many centuries of treating East Slavs – Ukrainians and Belarusans – worse than cattle and centuries of unsuccessful attempts to subjugate Russia into a Polish-controlled Slavic super-state, the Poles got really shocked and angry when the tables were turned and the East Slavs, who outnumber Poles by a factor of about 5, subjugated Poland, together with the Prussians and Austrians.
The reason why Stalin killed those Polish officers is pretty much the same as the reason why he exterminated almost the entire Soviet commanding staff in 1937-38, from colonels up to the marshals: he was afraid of them, he suffered from paranoia, and eliminated everybody who had any potential of opposing him or preventing him from freely ruling and abusing the average subjugated population.
Comment by vladislav — May 12, 2014 @ 11:46 pm
> The Holodomor took place exclusively on Ukrainian ethnic territory,
Of course, “Holodomor”. “Holodomor” is DEFINED as the part of the 1932-33 Soviet famine that took place in Ukraine and refuses to pay respect for millions and millions of non-Ukrainians who perished in this famine.
The Famine caused mass deaths all over the Grain (and Cattle) Belt, and was due to Stalin expropriating around 40% of all grain (and livestock) fror his collectivization and forced industrialization from peasants in grain-growing regions (for example, 40% in the Russian Lower Volga, 36% in Kazakhstan, and 36% in Ukraine):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_en_URSS_1933.jpg?uselang=ru
The number of deaths in the Grain Belt was directly proportional to the grain output of each region. Ukraine, as by far the largest producer, was hit the hardest:
Таблица 1. Изъятие зерна, в % от валового сбора
Районы 1930 год 1931 год
Северный Кавказ 34,2 38,3
Нижняя Волга 41,0 40,3
Средняя Волга 38,6 32,3
Украина 30,2 41,3
Казахстан 33,1 39,5
Западная Сибирь 26,5 29,3
Таблица 2. Средняя урожайность зерновых, в пуд. с га
Районы 1927 год 1928 год 1929 год 1930 год 1931 год
Северный Кавказ 41,1 51,7 50,1 42,7 45,1
Нижняя Волга 32,9 47,9 38,0 37,2 22,6
Средняя Волга 34,8 50,2 35,6 38,9 22,0
Украина 70,0 46,3 60,8 57,3 51,9
Казахстан 32,3 60,3 34,2 37,6 27,5
Урал 51,2 66,5 43,2 52,1 18,3
Таблица 3. Фактические заготовки зерна (без совхозов и возврата семенной ссуды), млн. пуд.
Районы 1929/30 год 1930/31 год 1931/1932 год
Северный Кавказ 103,3 128,8 161,5
Нижняя Волга 65,5 84,9 73,0
Средняя Волга 46,6 72,3 68,1
Украина 303,9 436,7 415,4
Казахстан 37,8 40,7 40, 4
Урал 42,4 74,0 44,4
> including the Kuban and Slobidska Ukraina all the way to the Volga
Nonsense. First of all, people in the grain-growing Kuban and Volga are NOT “ethnic Ukrainians”. The cast majority are Russians. It is true that many of these Russians have Ukrainian ancestors, because Ukrainians were the masters of grain-growing and settled in ALL grain-growing regions. However, I doubt that if we dig into the ancestry of Kuban and Volga regions, the Ukrainian ancestry would come out to any more than, say, 30%. In fact, people in the Volga region have a lower percentage of Ukrainian “blood” than 30%.
Moreover, the Kuban cossaks/people, and especially Kubanian of prononounced Ukrainian ancestry, are the most vehement Russian patriots, notoriously vehement. And they also are the greatest supporters of the East/South Ukrainian independence form the Maidan junta and of Putin’s re-annexation of Crimea. In fact, at a pro-Maidan meeting in San Francisco in early March, one of the speakers (one of the less deceitful ones) told the crowd and the reporters that “yesterday hordes of Kuban cossaks have invaded Crimea and killed close to 2,000 ethnic Ukrainians there.” (that was a slight exaggeration, because the actual number of victims was 0, as was the number of cossacks who “invaded” Crimea).
Second, if the purpose was to exterminate people whose ancestors were of Ukrainian stock, why is it that the Eastern Ukraine, where many people were of Russian stock, suffered much higher losses than West Ukraine, where everybody was Ukrainian? I’ll tell you why: because east Ukraine is the heart of the Grain Belt, and West Ukraine isn’t.
Third, no matter how much Ukrainian propagandists try to deny that other millions of people of other ethnicities died in this Famine. Kazakhstan alone suffered between 1 and 2 million victims:
http://www.rferl.org/content/A_Tragedy_Kazakhstan_Must_Never_Forget/1357455.html
A Tragedy Kazakhstan Must Never Forget
The famine of 1932-33, which wiped out a huge chunk of the Kazakh population, is one of the darkest chapters of the country’s history. It was triggered by the Soviet government’s decision to confiscate all of Kazakhstan’s livestock. During a conference devoted to the Ukrainian famine last month, Russians historians estimated that Kazakhstan had lost 1.5 million people during the famine. Kazakh intellectuals argue that Kazakhs suffered proportionally much larger losses than other ethnic groups in Kazakhstan… No Kazakh family was spared by the tragedy…
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4_%D0%B2_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%85%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5_%D0%B2_1932%E2%80%941933_%D0%B3%D0%B3.
Голод в Казахстане в 1932—1933 гг.
Comment by vladislav — May 13, 2014 @ 12:41 am
Vladislav, Russia kept German prisoners in POW camps until the 1950’s something around 10 years on average.
But never mind, the Russians did it so it must be OK.
But once again Vladislav shows his Great Russian racism.
It’s like his worship of the USSR in regards to it’s foreign policy of destroying Israel, makes you wonder about his claims to be Jewish. Maybe 1/16th?
Comment by Andrew — May 13, 2014 @ 1:15 am
> But once again Vladislav shows his Great Russian racism.
Evidence please. We have already gone through many rounds of you libeling me and then refusing to give supporting evidence. Of course, this is hardly surprising, given your pathological addiction to lying. For example, when I reminded you of bizarre lies that you had told at the LaRussophobe blog, you made clumsy excuses and then immediately told another outright lie:
———————————————-
Comment by vladislav — April 13, 2014 @ 4:18 am:
Andrew, you are a pathological liar. Just yesterday I exposed your lie about minority language schools in Russia. But not only is virtually every political and historical fact that you give, a lie, you also lie through your teeth when it comes to your personal life, even though one would expect that you can say anything about your personal experience without us being able to check it. But even with this advantage, you managed to tell us two veritably false stories in one sentence! Namely, in the LaRussophobe you wrote:
> “My father in law got a scolarship to Moscow University in 1960. He also finished his engineering course top of the class, and was the no.1 engineering student of his graduation year in the USSR.” / Andrew on September 14, 2009 at 8:23 am/
First, MJ and other Russian readers here will testify that there was no such thing as the selection of “the no.1 engineering student of a graduation year in the USSR.” How would you even try to compare hundreds of thousands of engineering graduates from thousands of colleges in the Soviet Union, a country that occupied 1/6 of the land mass on Earth? And what for?
Second, Moscow University did NOT have engineering departments. Engineers in the USSR were trained not in Universities but in “Institutes”.
———————————————–
Comment by Andrew — April 13, 2014 @ 10:25 pm:
Furthermore, Tsitelashvili has been living in Russia since the 90s.
———————————————–
Comment by vladislav — April 17, 2014 @ 1:23 am
The problem, Andrew, is that Tsitelashvili was still in the Georgian army during the August 2008 war:
http://ru.saqinform.ge/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12714%3A—–l———-r——-&catid=37%3Ainterviu1#axzz2z7rdG6fu
Грузия, 9 апреля, ГРУЗИНФОРМ. В гостях у ГРУЗИНФОРМ – генерал Тристан Цителашвили, ветеран абхазской войны, командир боевого подразделения «Аваза», участник августовской войны
So, you lied again. Right after you tried to explain your previous lies!
———————————————–
Comment by vladislav — May 13, 2014 @ 2:48 am
And here is your “minority languages” lie:
———————————————–
Comment by Andrew — April 8, 2014 @ 3:00 am:
Non Russian languages are banned from state schools, and have been for a few years now.
———————————————-
What is it that compels you to invent new, newer and newest lies, Andrew? Is it genetic, or did your mom accidentally drop you from the 5th floor when you were young?
Not only non Russian languages are NOT banned from state schools, but in thousands and thousands of schools in Russia the entire education is in these minority languages:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%85_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8
Образование на языках народов России
Среднее образование
В школах:[6][7][8]
Язык Число школ с преподаванием на языке Число школ с преподаванием языка как предмета численность народа в России
год 1995/96 1997/98 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2013/14 1995/96 1997/98 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2002 (перепись)
Аварский 584 592 497 589 537 502 514 586 549 814 473
Адыгейский 31 36 35 37 20 106 123 131 129 128 528
Азербайджанский 5 7 6 6 6 69 73 65 72 621 840
Алтайский 63 64 62 65 64 106 115 121 128 67 239
Армянский 2 6 7 3 7 34 17 19 16 1 130 491
Балкарский 23 17 10 8 5 68 78 88 89 108 426
Башкирский 892 906 884 886 911 838 1222 1424 1426 1 673 389
Бурятский 144 138 146 143 140 298 347 338 344 445 175
Грузинский 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 4 197 934
Даргинский 233 233 186 188 187 281 219 290 289 510 156
Иврит 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 229 938
Идиш 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 3 3 229 938
Ингушский – – – – 0 92 103 104 111 413 016
Кабардинский 106 92 86 74 74 179 188 208 219 519 958
Казахский 1 1 1 1 1 107 70 89 92 653 962
Калмыцкий 42 56 64 66 71 220 204 196 200 173 996
Кумыкский 72 91 75 73 71 175 184 177 176 422 409
Лакский 70 74 75 71 79 105 107 102 106 156 545
Лезгинский 148 122 149 137 148 199 215 214 210 411 535
Марийский (горный) 41 43 39 33 20 34 47 40 38
Марийский (луговой) 298 283 276 259 258 374 433 433 410
Мордовский (мокша) 137 134 110 113 117 137 118 127 121
Мордовский (эрзя) 101 95 96 97 83 134 142 144 154
Осетинский 64 57 58 53 45 202 160 199 197 514 875
Табасаранский 71 69 70 57 71 103 118 123 125 131 785
Татарский 2374 2406 2280 2207 2166 757[9] 2185 2400 2524 2469 5 554 601
Тувинский 150 151 152 151 153 129 140 142 147 243 442
Удмуртский 56 55 48 44 44 469 431 464 452 636 906
Хакасский 17 18 10 10 12 96 96 88 93 75 622
Черкесский 8 7 7 8 7 41 43 41 43 60 517
Чеченский 20 23 21 18 19 52 53 472 482 1 360 253
Чувашский 628 602 592 593 571 404 439 429 451 1 637 094
Эстонский 1 1 1 1 1 – 1 1 1 28 113
Якутский 430 419 426 441 445 75 99 98 94 443 852
Всего 6826 6803 6482 6439 6334 8841 9619 10 608 10 532 24 809 544
Comment by vladislav — April 11, 2014 @ 4:27 am
– See more at: https://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8338
Comment by vladislav — May 13, 2014 @ 2:53 am
AP,
> As Poroshenko deonstrated, it is ideally suited when it comes to verbally abusing subordinates.
That’s pure demagoguery. You make it look as if Poroshenko speaks Ukrainian in his private and business life and switches to Russian only when he wants to “abuse subordinates”. In reality, for Poorshenko, Tymoshenko, Klitchko, Kuchma and pretty much all other mainstream Ukrainian politicians, Russian is their native tongue (just as it is for most Ukrainians and even most Kievans), and they speak it not just when they want to “abuse subordinates”, but also to tell their loved ones that they love them and in other lofty situations. Don’t tell me that if Poroshenko’s native tongue were Ukrainian and he didn’t know Russian, he wouldn’t be able to find words to abuse his subordinates. That would be silly and childish even for you.
> As for ebonics, ebonics sounds vulgar to those who speak standard English.
Does it? I suppose it does. To racists.
> Ukrainian does not, in contrast, sound vulgar to Russian ears – it sounds cute and funny. This is how Czech sounds to Poles. In contrast, Russian does sound vulgar or crude to Ukrainian ears who are not used to it.
Really? Would you care to provide references? 🙂
I hate to break it to you, but to Russian ears, Ukrainian sounds like the language of uneducated peasants, garbage collectors, prostitutes and construction workers. 🙂
> Instead of “yak” Russians say “kak”;
Oh, my! One word – “kak” – “sound vulgar or crude to Ukrainian ears”. That’s a powerful argument! I am sure there are no Ukrainian words that sound vulgar or crude to Russian ears. 🙂
For example, there is a famous Ukrainian children’s song:
U mene est’ pisenka, pisenka, pisenka!
In Ukrainian, it says: I have a little song, song, song!
But to the Russian ear it says: I have a little pee-pee, pee-pee, pee-pee!
And do you know what? To the Ukrainian ear too! Because the Ukrainian word for “little song” sounds identical to the Ukrainian word for “little pee-pee”.
Why? Because of the weird way that vowels are used in Ukrainian. Because of this, various Greek words sound mutilated in Ukrainian. Greek “Dimitri” is “Dmitriy” in Russian but “Dmytro” in Ukrainian. Sounds crude and vulgar to me. Sevastopol become Sevastopil (which in Russian means: Vsevolod drank a hundred). Even Kiev in Ukrainian sounds vulgar: Kyiv. It also looks weird to English-readers, as do all other incessant uses of the letter “y”. The city of Krivoy Rog becomes Kriviy Rig. In fact, Ukrainian often looks like Russian where all 10 different vowels are replaced just by “y” and its brother “i”. 🙂
> if Russians don’t care about something they say they spit on it.
And? What’s your point? Is that vulgar to you?
Are you aware that when English-speakers think that two objects or notions are similar, they call them “spitting images” of each other?
> Of course, this does not mean that Russian, or Ebonics, are bad ways of speaking. In both cases they probably reflect more of a brutal existence and hardship during the time when Ebonics and the Russian speech were formed.
That’s nonsense. “Russian speech”, like all speeches, constantly evolves, fairly uniformly over time. And, sadly, West Ukrainians have been subjected to more hardship than not only Russians and East Ukrainians but most other peoples. Just compare the amount of hatred that West Ukrainians had towards all “foreign” ethnicities that they came in contact with (Poles, Jews, Magyars, recently Russians), with a much more relaxed views in the Russian Empire’s Ukraine. The amount of hatred in West Ukraine towards the “oppressors” Poles was incredible. J-P Himka tells the story how West Ukrainians in the late 19th centuries had dreams of the Russian Czar coming and liberating them and killing all the Poles and Jews. On the other hand, in the Russian Empire’s Ukraine the attitude towards Russians was quite friendly. In WWII, Uke nationalists fought and tried to exterminate everybody they came in contact with – Poles, Jews, Russians, Germans, etc. To this day, one of the 3 Maidan leaders glorifies ethnic violence by saying: “”They took their machine guns, went to the woods and fought with Russians, Germans, Jews and other scum”. A truly victim mentality.
> Of course, this does not mean that Russian, or Ebonics, are bad ways of speaking.
So, in your view as an American with a very limited knowledge of Russian (how’s your Ukrainian?), Ukrainian is to Russian what King’s English is to Ebonics? That’s extremely childish. But let’s play your game. Could the reverse be a much better comparison? Russian is to Ukrainian what King’s English is to Ebonics? Let’s compare:
1. There are thousands of the worlds greatest, most intellectual, most brilliant pieces of literature written in Russian and English. Virtually none in Ukrainian or Ebonics. All greatest ethnic Ukrainian writers, known around the world, including the great Gogol, wrote in Russian. All greatest African-American writers wrote in English, not Ebonics.
2. For centuries, almost every educated African-American chose to speak/write in English not Ebonics. For centuries, almost every educated Ukrainian chose to speak/write in Russian not Ukrainian.
3. Almost every good piece of literature from around the world has been translated into Russian and English. There are very few such translations into Ukrainian and Ebonics.
4. There is abundance of great films, opera, theater and other cultural things in Russian and English. Very few in Ukrainian and Ebonics. I bet even in Kiev itself, there are more good Russian-language theaters than Ukrainian-language ones. I bet that at least 80% of best poets/writers in Kiev write in Russian.
5. If you are a scientist or an engineer, there are thousands of journals in English and Russian for you to read. Almost none in Ebonics and Ukrainian. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of top scientific articles available in English and Russian. Almost none in Ebonics and Ukrainian. Actually, probably none. As in zero. Nada. Nothing. All Black and Ukrainian scientists use English and Russian respectively in their professional life, and almost all of them also use English and Russian, not Ebonics and Ukrainian, in their personal life as well.
Should I continue, or do you begin to get the point?
Comparing Russian to Ebonics, referring to both as “vulgar” and “crude” due to “brutal existence and hardship”… What the secret of your eternal youth, AP? Why do your arguments look like you are forever young, forever 5 years old, AP? 🙂
Comment by vladislav — May 13, 2014 @ 5:35 am
One more:
6. The number of Russians and other foreigners, who study English in school, is at least 100 times larger than the number of those who study Ebonics. The number of Americans and other foreigners, who study Russian in school, is at least 100 times larger than the number of those who study Ukrainian in school (even though there are orders of magnitudes more Ukrainian-Americans than Russian-Americans). Didn’t you yourself study more Russian than Ukrainian? What’s better: your Russian or your Ukrainian?
Comment by vladislav — May 13, 2014 @ 5:53 am
Vladislav: “At Harvard people are taught that personal insults is the province of people with inferior minds (and I use this word loosely) who resort to ad hominem attacks when they start losing an argument.”
Same day: “What the secret of your eternal youth, AP? Why do your arguments look like you are forever young, forever 5 years old, AP?”
So much defensiveness regarding the Russian language, Vladislav. Truth hurts? Do you have a problem with Ebonics? I don’t. I didn’t use the comparison, to insult.
“So, in your view as an American with a very limited knowledge of Russian (how’s your Ukrainian?), Ukrainian is to Russian what King’s English is to Ebonics?
Perhaps due to your rage, you weren’t able to figure out that the comparison to Ebonics was not in terms of usage but in terms of how it sounds harsh and vulgar to those who speak similar languages. In the East Slavic world, the “Ebonics speakers” built an empire and with that came high culture, science, etc. The fact that in the East Slavic context more operas and novels have been written in “Ebonics” than in “Standard English” does not in any way make the former sound less vulgar or harsh.
Do you understand now?
Russian vulgarity is well-known; there is even a wikipedia page dedicated to it (google Mat (Russian profanity)”. From that article:
“Obscenities are among the earliest recorded attestations of the Russian language (the first written mat words date to the Middle Ages[5]). It was first introduced into literature in the 18th century by the poet Ivan Barkov, whose poetry, combining lofty lyrics with brutally obscene words, may be regarded as a forerunner of Russian literary parody.
The use of mat is widespread, especially in the army, the criminal world,[6] and many other all-male milieus.
A detailed article by Victor Erofeyev (translated by Andrew Bromfeld) analyzing the history, overtones, and sociology of mat appeared in the 15 September 2003 issue of The New Yorker.”
In the Russian language there are at least 500 expressions using the word khui (“dick.”). You will hear much more swearing in small Russian towns by Russian-speakers, than in small Ukrainian towns by Ukrainian-speakers.
As for my Russian – I speak it well enough to be confused for a Russian-speaking Czech, or Polish tourist, when in Moscow. In Russian I can read Chekhov without a problem, but struggle with, for example, Venedict Erofeev.
“Oh, my! One word – “kak” – “sound vulgar or crude to Ukrainian ears”. That’s a powerful argument! I am sure there are no Ukrainian words that sound vulgar or crude to Russian ears. 🙂
For example, there is a famous Ukrainian children’s song:
U mene est’ pisenka, pisenka, pisenka!
In Ukrainian, it says: I have a little song, song, song!
But to the Russian ear it says: I have a little pee-pee, pee-pee, pee-pee!
The problem with this comparison is that “pisenka” is a relatively rarely-used word (it is the diminutive form of “pisnya”, song) where the word “kak” – “how” is much more common. So Ukrainians may “pee pee” once in a while, whereas Russians “poop” all the time in their speech. There was even a slogan encouraging Ukrainization, asking people to stop “kakaty” and start “yakaty.” 🙂
While the ubiquity and high level of development of vulgar swear words in the Russian language is objective and demonstrable, I suppose that “harshness” is subjective. Nevertheless, as pahoben here has noticed, most people consider Ukrainian to be a softer language than Russian. Feel free to google comparisons between the two, and you will see that Russian is viewed as harsher, and not vice versa, by those who comment on on that. For example:
http://www.polishforums.com/language-17/ukrainian-language-similar-polish-30550/2/
Nathan:
“Tell better how Russian sounds in comparison to Ukrainian – like a harsh dialect.”
Southern:
“Yes,like harsh.It sounds more primitive but has power in it,like it is the real thing it expresses an authentic soul.”
Just like the poetry of rap lyrics.
> Of course, this does not mean that Russian, or Ebonics, are bad ways of speaking. In both cases they probably reflect more of a brutal existence and hardship during the time when Ebonics and the Russian speech were formed.
That’s nonsense. “Russian speech”, like all speeches, constantly evolves, fairly uniformly over time. And, sadly, West Ukrainians have been subjected to more hardship than not only Russians and East Ukrainians but most other peoples.
The Russian ethnos and with it the language were formed under the Mongol Yoke and soon afterward.* These were very harsh and brutal conditions and probably the Russian speech reflects this, jut as Ebonics reflects the brutal experiences suffered by African Americans under slavery, during which their subculture and speech were formed. The Ukrainian ethnos developed during the times of the comparatively civilized Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.* Unlike Russian, the Ukrainian language does not have hundreds of expressions using the words “d-ck” or “c-nt.” The Ukrainian speech was already long-developed by the time that western Ukrainians experienced their worst hardships, under Soviet rule.
*I hope you don’t believe the fairytales about Rus being an “old Russia” or “old Ukraine”? If so, I would be happy to discuss that with you.
Comment by AP — May 13, 2014 @ 7:19 am
I’ll elaborate on the origins of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples by simply quoting from Westerners who visited both Ukraine and Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries. They reflect the fact that Ukraine had developed as a nation, as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – in Europe, whereas Russia developed under the Mongols and then after throwing off their yoke, on its own its isolated primitivism. Please do not be offended. This is no more meant to insult Russian than to point out that Gauls and Germanics were primitive barbarians compared to their Greeks and Romans contemporaries is insulting towards the French or the Germans:
A French diplomat, Jean Baluse, on Ukrainian leader (Hetman) Mazepa:
“At his court he has two German doctors, with whom he converses in their tongue; to the Italian masters of whom there are several in the castle, he speaks in the Italian language. I spoke with the master of Ukraine in the Latin language, inasmuch he assured me that he was not very fluent in French…I do not know if this statement of his concealed a special motive, for I myself saw French and Dutch newspapers in his study.”
The German Friedrich Weber in 1720 about the son of Hetman Apostol:
“Although he was never abroad, he speaks fluently Latin, French, Italian, German, Russian and Polish…”
Contrast the above, with a description of Mazepa’s nemesis Peter the Great and his Court:
“Prince Menshikov, a figure second to the tsar, could neither read nor write. Chancellor Golovkin knew no language but Russian; not a single one of the tsar’s dignitaries could speak Latin, with the exception of Musin-Pushkin, who was fluent in that language. Even Tsar Peter, whose ‘enlightenment’ was widely known, spoke only one Western European language, namely Dutch, and even here the tsar had difficulty in making himself understood.”
Austrian diplomat J.G. Korb, 1700-1701, on Russians:
“The people are rude of letters, and wanting in that virtuous discipline by which the mind is cultivated…John Barclay, in his Mirror of Souls, describes at length how this race, born for slavery, becomes ferocious at the least trace of liberty…Humility more solidly crouching the very Turks do not entertain not for their Ottoman sceptre. They esteem other races as well by their own character.
Danish envoy in Moscow Jul Just, 1709-1712:
“Although at the present time the Russians in their conduct are trying to emulate in monkey fashion the other nations, and though they don French attire and in their external appearance they appear more civilized, inwardly, however, there sits a cholop”
“The tsar’s entourage behaved without conscience and shame; they shouted, whistled, belched, spat, berated each other, and even shamelessly spat in the faces of decent people”
Just described how all of the teachers at the Moscow gymnasium were either Ukrainians or Byelorussians (“Orthodox from Poland”).
Just contrasts this with Ukraine:
“The inhabitants of the Chernihiv province, as well as the entire population of cossack Ukraine, are known for their politeness and cleanliness, dressing neatly and keeping their homes immaculately clean.”
“Korolevets is a big town…the streets are beautiful, such as I never saw in Russia; the buildings are stately, strong and clean and are along the streets as in Denmark…”
The envoy visited many Ukrainian dignitaries, all of whom he found to be extremely learned and educated. The ordinary monks in the Pecherska Lavra spoke fluently with him in Latin. He was greatly surprised to see the Ukrainian peasants in many villages going to church with prayer books, indicating that they were literate.
In Podolia, in Nemyriv, “the meanest building was much cleaner than the most sumptuous palace in Moscow”.
The Eurasianist historian, Vernbadsky, noted the the acquisition of Kiev and its Academy was as important for Russia’s modernization and westernization as was the creation of St. Petersburg. The Kiev Academy, fiercely Orthodox in its loyalty, was nevertheless created on the Jesuit model, with Polish and Latin the languages of instruction. Indeed, during this time Latin words filtered into the everyday Ukrainian language (the Ukrainian word “raptom” – rapidly – is an example).
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Obviously, since the time when these diplomats visited both Ukraine and Russia, Russia has produced arguably the world’s greatest prose literature. It has also created operas, ballets, etc. while Ukraine has completely languished in provincial obscurity. But if Russia was so barbaric and primitive relative to Ukraine as late as in the 17th and 18th centuries, imagine how it must have been in the 14th, 15th, and 16th when the people and the language were really born?
Even modern forms of languages leave echoes and traces of the past. In English the fact that “rough” words tend to be of Germanic origin (swine) vs. French-derived neutral or pleasant variants (pork), is traced to the Francophone Norman aristocracy’s domination of the Anglo-Saxons whom they conquered. Similarly, the harsh and vulgar nature of the Russian language reflects the historical situation of the Russian people in their earlier development.
Comment by AP — May 13, 2014 @ 8:06 am
@AP
I really enjoyed your post and so I thank you for taking the time to write this.
Comment by pahoben — May 13, 2014 @ 11:48 am
Russia has never “overthrown the yoke”. All that actually happened was that as the result of internal power struggle, the capital of the Horde moved from Sarai to Moscow, where it remains now.
Comment by Ivan — May 13, 2014 @ 12:05 pm
This Mongol yoke is a historical farce of the highest order. If one contemplates the logistics of the “invasion”, the whole thing becomes utterly ridiculous. History before the printing press, hell history before the 17th century is a bunch of fairy tales.
Comment by So? — May 13, 2014 @ 2:33 pm
AP,
Polish sounds like hissing snakes. Explain that.
Compared to Americans the British sound like whiny sissies. Explain that too.
Comment by So? — May 13, 2014 @ 4:35 pm
@ Pahoben,
Thank you.
Comment by AP — May 14, 2014 @ 6:50 am
A comment on Polish history and national mythology:
“So? is once again right in pointing out that after many centuries of treating East Slavs – Ukrainians and Belarusans – worse than cattle and centuries of unsuccessful attempts to subjugate Russia into a Polish-controlled Slavic super-state, the Poles got really shocked and angry when the tables were turned and the East Slavs, who outnumber Poles by a factor of about 5, subjugated Poland, together with the Prussians and Austrians.
The Polish state did not treat Eastern Slavs worse than cattle. It was a state of nobles who treated all serfs – Polish speaking, Ruthenian-speaking, Roman Catholic, Orthodox – equally. It should be noted that Russian serfdom was no less harsh than serfdom had been in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Until the Counter-Reformation, Orthodox Ukrainian or Belarusian noblemen were in every way the equal of the Polish Roman Catholic ones (I am using the terms Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian anachronistically because modern ideas of all three nations did not exist in the 16th-17th centuries). The nobles themselves enjoyed democracy and were each others’ legal equals; they were in a much better position than their counterparts in the West. There were also a lot of them. Approximately 10% of the population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were nobles.
The state did not consider itself to be Slavic; the dominant ideology of the nobles was Sarmatism. The nobles believed themselves to be descendants of the Sarmatians and thought of all Slavs as being, basically, noting more than natural servants. This was a very Rus like approach to the Slavs, actually. And Sarmatism was taken for granted by all the peoples of the Commonwealth, including Ukrainians, who believed that they were descended from the Roxolany, a tribe related to the Sarmatians.
Sarmatism was discarded by later Polish nation-builders/mythmakers.
Comment by AP — May 14, 2014 @ 7:07 am
The word bydlo is of Polish origin.
Comment by So? — May 14, 2014 @ 2:41 pm