Ukraine’s Sordid Past

After the war, will Zelensky help reconcile Ukraine to its antisemitic past?

Ukraine has a complicated history with its Jewish population. It’s the elephant in the room that no one in the West wants to talk about lest we become uncomfortable supporting Ukraine’s fight against the modern Nazis, Vladimir Putin’s regime.

As a Ukrainian American, I would like to get past the propaganda, and the politics and focus on the truth.

Ukraine has a sordid past.

When Ukraine integrated into the Lithuanian Commonwealth which was later combined into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, most of the population were serfs. The Ukrainian landowners eventually adopted Polish names and identities, and the Ukrainian masses were treated not much better than slaves tied to the land. In the 17th century, the landowning nobles hired Jews as overseers and store managers putting them in terrible positions against Ukrainian serfs, and forever giving them an appalling reputation in what would be the geographic confines of modern Ukraine¹.

At times the peasants revolted and who did they slaughter first in taking out their grievances — their Jewish overseers and not the ones who really deserved it, the nobles¹. These feelings of hatred turned to bigotry and negative stereotypes of Jews which permeated Ukrainian society.

In the nineteenth century when Ukraine was partitioned with the western half given to Austro-Hungary and the Eastern half to the Russian Empire, many Jews thrived in the cities where they embraced the language and culture of the conqueror if they were not forced into the Pale. The Pale were areas of the Russian empire where Jews were forcibly moved and confined to live. Most of these pale settlements were in rural Ukraine. Ukrainians remained mostly in the villages and rural areas retaining their Ukrainian culture and language. Many of the Ukrainians and Jews near each other lived in relative peace until the Russian Empire’s authorities rounded up Jews at times to murder and expel them in pogroms. I am sure there were many Ukrainians who participated in the pogroms. What better way to keep control of your minorities than by pitting them against each other lest they band together against you?

The modern clash came again when Nazi Germany invaded in 1941 and swept through Ukraine. Ukrainians initially saw the Germans as saviors from the repressive Soviet regime. My mother initially thought so after losing her beloved brother forever to forced Soviet conscription. After some time, the Nazis settled into occupied Ukraine and went about their business of rounding up people and kidnapping them for slave labor in Germany while convincing local people to collaborate with them to mass murder Jews or send them to concentration camps.

Too many Jews lost their lives to Nazi barbarism and Ukrainian collaboration — a good example was the mass extermination of Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar. These were heinous acts not denied by Ukraine. There are memorials to these atrocities in the country. This is a good start, but I would argue that Ukraine must do more to reckon with its past.

My own parents coming from Western Ukraine in the 1930s held some of these antisemitic views going back to the peasant days. I would cringe when I heard them and would often argue and correct them. Sometimes my words impacted them enough to modify at least their words if not their views. Long-held stereotypes can be hard to shake. However, I know my parents meant Jews no real harm. Their vitriol was really against both Hitler and Stalin as they incessantly debated who was worse. As you can imagine, it’s not really an argument anyone wins.

It’s not as if Jewish stereotypes and repression miraculously evaporated in the Soviet Union either. I have many Russian and Ukrainian Jewish friends who immigrated from the USSR and talk of limited educational, professional, and promotion opportunities offered to them because they were Jewish, even if they were party members or devoted atheists. If they practiced their religion, they were even more repressed. I wonder what it is like for today’s Jews in the Russian Federation? I doubt it is something Putin wants to discuss openly.

However, I am confident in its thirty years as an independent nation, Ukraine has made progress to move away from the bigotry of its Nazi and Communist past. Does it have more work to do? I am sure it does. But then I could say the same of the West and the United States of America. Antisemitism, Nazism, and White Supremacy are all on the rise on our own shores.

When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President in 2019, far alt-right political organizations received only 2% of the parliamentary vote, short of the 5% required for even representation in their Rada.² In the United States, we have House of Representative members of the Freedom Caucus like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz who speak at American Alt-right conferences and invite alt-right members to the State of the Union Address. Does that mean the United States is a Nazi state? Of course, we are not! I make the same argument about Ukraine!

Personally, I don’t believe now is the right time for Ukraine, while it is fighting for its very existence against modern-day Nazis, to reckon with its past sins against Jews. But when this war is over, I believe Ukraine has an obligation to itself to take ownership of this immoral past and formally apologize for the atrocities caused by it against the Jewish people.

I hope President Zelensky will lead the way.

Ukraine made an important step towards healing those past grievances by electing a Jewish President with over 70% of the vote. There is no one more qualified than a Ukrainian Jewish patriot to help the country heal and reconcile itself to its sordid past.

I hope once this country is at peace, President Zelensky will lead this nation to this long overdue reconciliation - to formally apologize for its misdeeds against Jews and then become an official member of the EU and NATO. If a popular modern-day George Washington, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Winston Churchill all rolled into one cannot do it, then I would argue no one can!

¹ Poland — History, Culture, People | Britannica

²https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/02/world/europe/ukraine-nazis-russia-media.html