Ukraine has a right to be a nation. It has a right to live unmolested by either its larger more powerful neighbour Russia, or by supra-national entities such as the European Union. Ukraine’s continued existence as an independent nation is a good thing in and of itself but it is also an inspiration for those of us who believe that nationhood matters and that the nation is by far the best way for people to organise themselves. As Tom Slater the editor of Spiked Magazine said recently:

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainians’ impossibly brave resistance to it have reminded us of so many things we seemed to have forgotten. It has certainly shaken some of our elites’ more comforting delusions. They told us that history was over. That war and conflict were on the way out, or at the very least confined to far-flung places no one could find on a map. Most powerfully, the war has reminded us just how much nationhood matters; how violating and barbaric it is when borders are breached and another nation’s armour cruises into your town. Nationhood matters to people not for sentimental or jingoistic reasons. But because nations are our communities, our way of life; they are the means through which we collectively shape our society and the world. All this and more is what the Ukrainians are fighting tooth and nail to defend.

Mr Slater is correct in his assessment of the Ukrainian situation. The Ukrainians have the moral right to organise themselves as they see fit just as Britain, Israel, Bangladesh, the USA and yes indeed Russia have the right to create the society that their people wish to see within their own borders. Nationhood, despite its somewhat messy nature, is in my view always preferable to the sort of Globalism that erases borders and cultures and can never be as responsive as the nation state can be to the needs and desires of those who live within the borders of the nations of this planet.

However along with nationhood also comes history and sometimes that history is bloody awful and Ukraine is no exception. I believe that we should be honest about history and that those who speak or write about history should, in the words of one of Britain’s former leaders Oliver Cromwell, present history ‘warts and all’, a phrase said to have been used by Cromwell to describe how he wanted his portraitist to depict him.

What I’ve noticed about much of the mainstream media coverage of the Ukraine conflict and of Ukraine in general is that we are being presented with a sanitised and deracinated history of the Ukraine. We get fed the ‘plucky little Ukraine’ narrative with little or no in depth examination of Ukrainian history. Unless you look hard and deliberately seek out voices that are counter to the narrative of the mainstream media and politicians, you don’t get to see the ‘warts’ of Ukrainian history, just as an adherence to knee jerk uncritical British monarchism doesn’t reveal the warty monsters of our own royal past, such as Henry VIII, who killed at least 50,000 Britons in order to prevent challenges to his rule in both the secular and religious spheres.

History is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It is a mixture of the two. In the case of Henry VIII, although he was a monster, he also freed England from the Roman Catholic church and by doing so inadvertently put England on the first steps to the religious pluralism of later centuries. This religious pluralism where questions could, eventually, be asked about religion fed into and helped create a culture that questioned much else besides religion and created a environment where the natural world could be explored. This exploration of the natural world then led to the establishment of the concept of the primacy of empirical science, which in turn also helped to create what I believe is Britain’s greatest gift to the world, which is the Industrial Revolution.

The Ukraine, like the United Kingdom, has a history made up of both good and bad aspects. But the cheerleading for Ukraine is mostly failing to look at its history in the round and only looks at the current era Ukraine. What many in the mainstream political and media spheres are not telling the public is that Ukraine in the early part of the 20^th century and in particular during the Russian Civil War had a culture of monstrous and murderous Jew hatred, the like of which was not seen until the Nazi Hitlerian regime of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

A recent article in The Tablet magazine by Jeffery Veidlinger, whilst recognising that murderous pogroms against Ukrainian Jews were committed by members of both the Tsarist White Army as well as by the Communist Red Army, much of the murderous behaviour came from ordinary Ukrainians. Basically the Ukrainian people were enthusiastic Jew murderers and were being so when the National Socialist German Workers Party wasn’t even a significant political force in Germany.

There were over a thousand separate pogroms against Jews in the Ukraine between 1918 and the early 1920’s. The death toll, according to modern historians was 100,000 Jews with 600,000 being displaced across the world.

Mr Veidlinger said:

As Russian troops threaten Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin denies the very existence of the Ukrainian people, it is worth remembering the tragedy that took place between November 1918 and March 1921, when Russian and Bolshevik armies invaded the independent Ukrainian state that had been established in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. All civilians, whether they identified as Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, or none of the above, became victims of that conflict, commonly referred to as a “civil war.” But the 3 million Jews who lived in the region—about 12% of the overall population—suffered a distinct fate.

Between 1918 and 1921, over 1,000 anti-Jewish riots and military actions—both of which were commonly referred to as pogroms—were documented in about 500 different locales throughout what is now Ukraine. This was not the first wave of pogroms in the area, but its scope eclipsed previous bouts of violence in terms of the range of participants, the number of victims, and the depths of barbarity. Ukrainian peasants, Polish townsfolk, and Russian soldiers robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, stealing property they believed rightfully belonged to them. Armed militants, with the acquiescence and support of large segments of the population, tore out Jewish men’s beards, ripped apart Torah scrolls, raped Jewish girls and women, and, in many cases, tortured Jewish townsfolk before gathering them in market squares, marching them to the outskirts of town, and shooting them. On at least one occasion, insurgent fighters barricaded Jews in a synagogue and burned down the building.

The key information about these murderous Ukrainian pogroms was Mr Veidlinger’s statement that these murders and dispossessions took place with “ the acquiescence and support of large segments of the population”. These murders were not just the work of two opposing armies in the context of a civil war where the enemy could be anyone or anywhere, but the work of the ordinary Ukrainian citizen. The 100k plus murders were the work not of some external invader, or an oppressive authoritarian government, but Mr and Mrs Average Ukrainian.

Things could have been different and indeed much better for Ukraine’s Jews had the original Ukrainian People’s Republic declared in 1918 had got off the ground and not been strangled at birth by both the Tsarist and then the Bolshevik forces along with anarchists and Poles eager to gain territory. Mr Veidlinger continued:

The Ukrainian People’s Republic, established in November 1918, promised to usher in a new era of peace and stability based on socialist principles and the promise of national autonomy for the Jews, including the right to use the Yiddish language and to administer their own internal affairs. There would be a minister of Jewish affairs, and Jewish schools, hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, welfare and health institutions, all functioning in Yiddish and funded by the Ukrainian state. It was an offer eagerly embraced and celebrated by Jews in Ukraine and around the world.

However, this moment of mutual recognition did not last long. Within months of its foundation, the leaders of the Ukrainian state were forced to defend their newfound territory against anarchists, warlords, and independent militias, while fighting a “White” army seeking the preservation of a United Russia, a “Red” army trying to establish a global Bolshevik empire, and a Polish army intent on recovering its historic borders.

Warlordism, of the type that we see today in third world failed states and a three way competition for land and power killed off the idea of a potentially moderately socialist republic where non- Jewish Ukrainians would have had their freedom and Ukrainian Jews would have some autonomy and help after centuries of oppression by Tsarist governments. Sadly it was not to be.

The collapse of the Ukrainian People’s Republic ended up with both the betrayal of Ukraine’s Jews who had hoped for relief from oppression and set the stage for the pogroms where everyone on every side falsely blamed the Jews for Ukraine’s problems. Mr Veidlinger added:

Jewish civilians alone were singled out for persecution by virtually everyone. The Bolsheviks despised them as bourgeois nationalists; the bourgeois nationalists branded them Bolsheviks; Ukrainians saw them as agents of Russia; Russians suspected them of being German sympathizers; and Poles doubted their loyalty to the newly founded Polish Republic. Dispersed in urban pockets and insufficiently concentrated in any one contiguous territory, Jews alone were unable to make a credible claim to sovereignty. They could be found on all sides of the conflict, allying with the group most likely to maintain stability and ensure the safety of the community. As a result, no party fully trusted them. Regardless of one’s political inclination, there was always a Jew to blame.

I don’t blame Ukraine’s Jews of the 1920’s and just before for grasping, like a drowning man for a lifebelt, some form of security by choosing whatever side in the conflict might have seemed to them the best bet for safety and security. The Jews were too spread out and did not have contiguous territory that they could defend as other groups did. They had to make the decision ‘which side will provide the most safety?’

It’s probably a good idea to imagine what anybody else would do in such as situation. Imagine perhaps that the United Kingdom had been convulsed by ethnic and ideological civil war of a sort maybe worse than the nation saw in the seventeenth century. Put yourself in the shoes of one of Britain’s increasingly beleaguered Christians in such a civil conflict, who instead of merely being mocked and excluded from political debate as they sometimes are today, were marked for death by all sides to varying degrees. Some would no doubt choose the status of Dhimmis under Islam whilst others would see the Hindu and Sikh community as places of shelter and yet more would cleave to one of the many possible competing ideologies that would no doubt thrive in such a conflict situation. There would then be, for Christians, a similar situation as that faced by Ukrainian Jews who were forced to choose whatever faith or ideology that would look least likely to kill them.

The Red Army eventually won the day in the Ukraine just as Henry VIII won the day in England. In England we ended up with the situation where Catholics were viewed with suspicion and, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly, as agents of foreign powers. In the Ukraine, the Jews ended up by being similarly subjected to suspicion because there were Apostate Jews in the Bolshevik party and amongst its supporters. The Communists’ message of peace and bread appealed widely to those at the bottom of the social pile in that country. This meant that those who opposed the Communists talked up the fact that some prominent Apostate Jews such as Leon Trotsky were readily identified with Bolshevism and this appealed to old and deep seated prejudices among the Ukrainian population.

Mr Veidlinger continued:

The biggest threat to Ukrainian statehood, though, and the eventual victors in the conflict, were the Bolsheviks. Their promise of “land, bread, and peace” appealed to wide swaths of the peasantry, so their opponents sought to discredit them by drawing upon age-old prejudices and superstitions. It was widely recognized that some of the most prominent and popular figures in the Bolshevik movement were of Jewish heritage, most notably the Commissar of Foreign Affairs and leader of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, who, while personally disavowing his ethnic and religious origins, continued to be recognized by the world as a Jew. The Bolsheviks’ enemies found they could turn the masses against him and the movement he represented by portraying him as a tool in a Jewish-Bolshevik quest for global power.

We in the UK live, to a much much lesser extent than was the case in the past, with a cultural memory of religious conflict and the religious convulsions following Henry VIII’s break with Rome. This break did end up with an identification by both the state Protestant Establishment and much of the general population, of Roman Catholics being burdened with outdated thinking, following theological ‘error’ and having divided loyalties between Monarch and Pope. (not I need to add positions or thinking that I agree with). However that’s not the case now. There is no longer a threat from Rome and the fact that someone is a Roman Catholic is barely remarked upon these days. The presence of Apostate Jews within the Bolsheviks and with the Bolsheviks becoming, to a certain extent, a False Messiah for dangerously oppressed Ukrainian and Russian Jews, helped to create the myth of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’, just as very real seventeenth and eighteenth century Catholic plots against the English monarchy sowed the seeds of the myth of the disloyal Catholic.

Some Jews in war torn Ukraine in the early part of the 20^th century chose to ally with the Communists as they seemed at the time as the least worst option, which it probably was, at least in the context of the conflicts of the time. The Bolsheviks at least tried to punish the Jew murderers among their followers, which was much more than some other groups were doing. Tragic and terrible circumstances forced the Ukrainian Jews to put their trust in Red “Princes” and one should never have too much trust or excessive reliance on princes. Unfortunately it ended up being extremely misplaced because as soon as the Bolsheviks consolidated their power over what became the Soviet Union, the Communist turned on the Jews. From the 1920’s onwards the Communists did their utmost to eliminate any Jewish identity and break the link between the Jewish people and their faith. In short the Jews were Sovietised and turned into atheists by the Communist system. As well as oppressing the Jewish system of belief, the Soviet authorities eventually destroyed the Yiddish language culture of books, film and theatre. This culture is one that had, for a short time, been tolerated by the Communists, possibly so that the Soviets could use the Jews to propagandise the Communists’ claim that they were peacefully multi-ethnic and Internationalist at a time when the political and psychic wounds of World War One and its associated nationalisms and ethnic conflict, were still raw and relatively recent. Stalin saw to it that any talk about socialist internationalism and tolerance of Jews and the Soviet Yiddish culture died. The trust given to the Red Princes of the Soviet system by some Jews was understandable in the circumstances of Ukrainian and Tsarist pogroms, but the Communists ended up shafting the Jews badly.

For my own part, I believe that being a religious Jew and being a Communist or a Socialist are mutually incompatible positions. This is because one key tenet of Judaism is that there is only one thing that can be worshipped and is worthy of worship and that is G-d whereas both Communism and Socialism demand, often on pain of death, the worship of the State. However the Jews of early 20^th century Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe at the time did not have the luxuries that I have which are, amongst others, knowledge of how Communism turned out, which was badly, not just for Jews but for every poor bastard who has to live under it, nor a nation, Israel, that Ukrainian Jews could, had it existed at the time, fled to when life became dangerously impossible.

In writing this piece I’m not blaming today’s Ukrainians for the horrors of the past. Eventually both Jewish and non-Jewish Ukrainians suffered horrifically under Bolshevism’s own self-created monster in the form of Josef Stalin. The Ukrainians have elected a Jewish heritage president, something that would have been unimaginable in immediate post WWI period.

The average Joe on the Kiev street today is no more to blame for the horrors of 1918 – 1921 than the average Joe on the contemporary Berlin street is to blame for the past actions of Germans during the period of the Shoah. What I am concerned about is the failure of both mainstream media and the political classes to acknowledge Ukrainian and Russian history and accept that it can be good, such as the post-Soviet collapse creating a truly independent Ukraine, and the bad such as the widespread pogroms that accompanied Ukraine’s first attempt to become an independent nation and the tragic, such as the way that the Communists under Stalin turned on the Jews who had mistakenly trusted the Communists.

There’s a lot of history behind the current Russia-Ukraine conflict and in my view the mainstream media and political classes have failed to put the Ukraine conflict into any sort of historical context. Neither has there been, to my knowledge, any proper acknowledgment that both Ukraine and Russia, either together or separately, have during the 20^th century at times committed some truly appalling atrocities on their own people. Not talking about the past in this region of the world removes its contexts, and context as well as history is important. There’s a lot of history at play in the Ukraine / Russia region and the past matters there as much as it does here.

The past matters, because neither politics nor people exist in temporal isolation and the situations of today are that way because of events that might have taken place centuries before. There’s a lot more to know about the history of both Russia and the Ukraine, not all of it good and a lot of it containing rather too many pogroms and gulags. Although it’s clear and obvious that the Ukraine has been aggressed against, neither Russia nor the Ukraine have clean hands backgrounds and that is something we need to accept and understand. Personally I think that the mainstream media is short-changing its consumers by not saying ‘yes Ukraine might be in the right as the victim of aggression but it has a murky past that should not be ignored, since it happened when the country was first trying to establish its independence and is relevant’. Instead the media too often feeds us a dichotomy narrative with Ukraine good and Russia bad. That bothers me, as it’s not as simple as that. It’s the geopolitics for morons narrative. What made these two countries, that have in the past been forcibly culturally and politically intertwined, is their history and we are not being told enough about it. It’s in the nature of day to day reporting that simplistic narratives about either side in the conflict end up being used, but more historical context and a recognition that every nation’s history contains shitty bits would be appreciated. If we in the UK can look at our own history and see that characters like Henry VIII and others were both good and evil mixed together, then why cannot we do the same with the history of places like the Ukraine? We need to talk about history, including stuff that is uncomfortable for those who want to see things as ‘Ukraine good / Russia bad’. We need to accept that it contains bits that are glorious and bits that are shameful. My worry is that if we don’t talk about history honestly then we might end up repeating not the glorious and praiseworthy parts, but the truly awful parts.