A Nation Worth Fighting For
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Two rival Orthodox clerics, a Greek Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and an imam didn’t walk into a bar. Instead, they starred in a video appeal released on March 16. The message of Avraham Wolf, the chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, was especially pointed. Speaking in Russian with a Hebrew accent, he said: “Until two weeks ago, I was shy about not knowing [the] Ukrainian language. Today, I take great pride in living in a city where I can speak Russian and be understood by everyone, be helped by everyone.”
As war propaganda, the message was shrewdly targeted. Russian forces are poised to attack Odessa , claiming that they need to protect Russian speakers in the city from genocide at the hands of Ukrainian Nazis. What more powerful refutation could there be than the sight of the city’s religious leaders standing together?
But the video also carries a larger message, more central to the Ukrainian cause. It declares: Ukraine is a melting pot; a multifaith, multicultural society; a society defined by liberal values. It claims something more than sympathy from the democratic world. It claims membership.
Many in the West, and not only Moscow sympathizers, have long doubted that claim. When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda outlets, both foreign and domestic, accuse Ukraine of some special affinity for Nazi ideology, they are pressing on old sensitivities.
Shortly after Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, the CBS news program 60 Minutes , then near the peak of its influence, aired a segment attacking the new country as an incubator of murderous anti-Semitism. Hosted by Morley Safer, “ The Ugly Face of Freedom ” alleged that thousands of Ukrainians had volunteered for the SS and enthusiastically participated in Nazi atrocities against Ukrainian Jews.
The segment infuriated Ukrainian émigrés across North America, especially those in Canada, which had welcomed many Ukrainians displaced by World War II. One Canadian Ukrainian reacted by creating the website ukar.com, crammed with counteraccusations that the Stalinist terror famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s should be seen somehow as a “Jewish” atrocity against the Ukrainian people. The website also offered an early internet home to Holocaust deniers in Canada and elsewhere, Jewish groups alleged.
Ukar.com triggered a decade of litigation under Canadian human-rights law that culminated in the closing of the site and a defamation judgment against its owner and principal contributor. Canada is home to large and influential communities of both Ukrainians and Jews. The battles between the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Ukar site spread mutual resentment and suspicion.
One Canadian of Ukrainian origin decided to take a more responsible approach. James Temerty had found refuge with his family in Canada in 1950. He made a fortune in the electrical-power industry. The 60 Minutes episode and the Ukar aftermath inspired Temerty’s project: to study the ways that Jews and Ukrainians had coexisted and flourished—and to foster common understanding.
In 2008, he launched a group called the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, to bring together Jews and Christians with ties to Ukraine at seminars in Ukraine, Israel, and North America. The organization published scholarly books and Holocaust memoirs, and supported translations from Hebrew to Ukrainian and vice versa. “Our stories are incomplete without each other” was the group’s motto . Although my own family roots lie farther north and west, inside what is now Poland, I’ve followed the contributions of the UJE for many years. Slowly, gradually, its patient work countered rancor and recrimination and encouraged mutual recognition of the traumas of both the Holodomor and the Holocaust.
I reached out to Temerty midway through the third week of this latest Russian aggression against Ukraine—as the whole world was rallied to Ukraine’s defense by its Jewish president . “You have to think there is maybe something supernatural,” Temerty began, but he could not quite finish his sentence.
“We shape our buildings,” Winston Churchill famously said , “and afterwards our buildings shape us.” The same can be said, even more emphatically, about our national myths and national identities. Tell your national past in a way that excludes and disparages, and you have created a tool for ideologies of persecution and domination. Tell your national past in a way that includes and honors, and you have laid the foundation for a free and democratic society.
Across Europe, societies have both flourished and faltered as they have widened their perspective on their identity. In the center of Kyiv stands a monument that exemplifies the challenge: an imposing equestrian statue, raised in the 1880s to a Cossack warlord of the 1600s, Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Before Khmelnytsky, much of what is now Ukraine was ruled by Polish kings. Khmelnytsky led a successful rebellion against the Polish crown . He murdered Polish landlords and Polish Catholic priests when he could get them, but he above all targeted Jews. He killed thousands and enslaved thousands more. Khmelnytsky’s atrocities haunted Jewish memory for generations, until they were overshadowed by the even more terrible organized mass murder of the 20th century.
Despite his violence, Khmelnytsky could not secure his power. He struck a bargain with the Russian czar: He would accept Russian overlordship if Russia supported his regime. That pact became the basis for Russia’s eventual absorption of all Ukraine.
So why is there a big statue of Khmelnytsky in the center of Kyiv? In 1863 , Poland launched a desperate rebellion against the Russian empire. Russia retaliated with the grim suppression of Polish autonomy and identity. In 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassinated. Because some Jews had been among the conspirators, some czarist officials blamed the killing on a Jewish plot. New anti-Semitic legislation was passed, and anti-Semitic pogroms were incited across the empire—especially in Kyiv, the biggest city in the empire in which Jews were permitted to live.
The official who organized the monument was himself a Russian, not a Ukrainian. In fact, his other noted accomplishment was to enact laws curtailing the use of the Ukrainian language. For him, Khmelnytsky symbolized the rightful domination of Russia, the rightful suppression of Poles and Jews. (The original design for the monument actually proposed that Khmelnytsky’s horse trample a Polish lord, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish leaseholder, above an inscription proclaiming—in Russian—that the statue honors “a united, indivisible Russia.”) The baton in Khmelnytsky’s hand points in the direction of Moscow, the capital of the one and indivisible Russia that the Cossack supposedly championed.
In the decades after the erection of the Khmelnytsky monument, Ukrainians were invited by the Nazis, by the Communists, and by foreign and domestic extremists of all description to define their identity against their neighbors. Today, though, it is Poland that is Ukraine’s most committed ally, Turkey that has provided Ukraine with tank-killing drones , and democratic protesters in the cities of Russia who offer the best hope for a speedy and humane return to peace.
In Ukraine, a new national myth is being created. It’s a myth of collective resistance to violent foreign tyranny, of a citizen army fighting for European liberal and democratic values. Wars almost always make societies more tribal, more authoritarian, more violent, and more inhumane. But sometimes—as with the Western Allies in World War II, the North in the U.S. Civil War, and perhaps now in Ukraine—a war for ideals and principles can challenge a society to become what it says it is fighting for, even if it does not yet wholly live up to the ideals it espouses.
If Ukraine survives and prevails, this new myth will propel the country toward a better future. Near the end of our conversation, Temerty joked to me about his pride in the vindication of his vision of Ukraine. “Do you think [the UJE] can go out of business now?” he asked. No, I replied, not now. Certainly not now. Not ever.
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... and now for some revisionist takes by the usual suspect.
The Ukraine of 2022 is far different from the Ukraine of 1991. It has evolved, desperately trying to throw off the yoke of Russian corruption/influence. This struggle has been hard, fraught with setbacks and real failures from some of the Western democracies themselves. But they have prevailed thus far.
If Ukraine is defeated, ground into dust by Putin's revenge, it would be fair to question the Democracies willingness, ability to protect the concept of democracy itself.
Democracy has a golden opportunity and must not squander it. The demise of the Putin autocracy would constitute a 'death blow' to all of the autocracies and theocracies that currently infest the World. If America desires to be a world force and leader, now is the time to act and do so with extreme prejudice.
Navalny for president of The Russian Federation. Start there and see what happens.
they've done a way better job of that than the trump wing of the GOP has here in the last 5 years...
As we speak there are rumors of Belarus entering the war on the side of Russia. If that happens at that very moment the future of freedom will be hanging in the balance. Will NATO respond to Belarus, will the Belarus Army refuse to fight Ukraine, there are Belarusians currently fighting for Ukraine. At that moment we'll know the future of freedom, IMO.
With Biden making verbal personal attacks on Putin as valid as they may be this will be the world's future.
Putin was threatening nukes long before Biden called him a war criminal.
Biden is egging him on to carry out the threat.
Gee, I guess we should call Putin a "genius" and surrender.
As we speak there are rumors of Belarus entering the war on the side of Russia. If that happens at that very moment the future of freedom will be hanging in the balance
Whatever Belarus does, I don't think it will make much difference.
Over 35 thousand people have been arrested over the last year and a half in Belarus at pro-democracy protests. Lukashenko's lips are firmly glued to Putin's ass. Many of the protesters fled into Ukraine before the war. Those that couldn't flee again are fighting for Ukraine in Ukraine.
There was also a mini rebellion in the military when several generals quit and defected to the west. As my question above is what will the military do if Lukashenko orders them to invade Ukraine.
If they actually do invade Ukraine it will change the face of war immediately to Ukraine's disadvantage.
I think the idea would be to try and cut off supplies coming into Ukraine. That would be a setback for Ukraine at the outset, but I think we'll also see more non-Ukrainian people join the Ukrainian forces. It won't be a lot and they will all be volunteers from various countries. It also increases the chances that NATO gets directly involved. I think some of those NATO states bordering the war are looking for an excuse to kick Putin in the balls.
I just read an article where the Belarus military announced that a rebel unit inside Belarus knocked out a rail line that would give Belarus/Russia rail access straight into Ukraine.
The Poles just kicked out 45 Russians they claim are spies and the Polish/Ukrainian protesters are still holding up hundreds of trucks from entering Belarus from Poland.
Seems Russia and Belarus are having a bad day.
No. Lukashenko is used goods. He rules by fear and oppression. With the war going on weapons are plentiful and many will find their way into Belarus. Lukashenko is a 'dead man walking'.
Now is the time. It must not be squandered. The democracies will find more allies in Russia than they could ever have imagined.
Navalny for president.
Reports this morning indicate that the Ukrainians are having some success retaking areas that the Russians had previously occupied. In other words, they may be winning the war on the battlefield. What will this news do to Putin's mind?
Putin is afraid. His circle is shrinking. His biggest problem is that there isn't anywhere for him to go. Except down. He started something he can't finish.
Just reported by Reuters Anatoly Chubais has resigned from his Kremlin position and fled from Russia. Chubais held senior business and political jobs under Putin and had been serving as the special envoy to international organizations before his defection.
It must be noted that contrary to false presumptions of Putin and his lousy propagandists nobody anywhere in Ukraine, including separatists regions, has welcomed the murderous invading Russian forces as, "Liberators"!
I remember when people said the United States was a nation worth fighting for.
If Ukraine is a nation worth fighting for then make the sacrifice and get in the fight. People sympathizing with Ukraine from now to eternity won't change anything. Hot air just drifts away in the breeze.
Russia wants something otherwise Russia would not be fighting. And Putin and Russia apparently believe that what they want is worth fighting for. Russia is making a sacrifice to get something that Putin and Russia wants. Do we know what Putin and Russia want?
If we don't know what Putin and Russia want then what would we be fighting for? What would our sacrifices accomplish? We can make guesses. We can speculate what Putin and Russia want. Are we willing to make the same sacrifices Russia is making for a hypothetical? Are we willing to accept thousands of casualties and wreck our economy for a guess?
Putin has laid out the reasons for Russia to fight and what Russia wants. That's what the Russian people have been told to make the sacrifices that Russia is making. Yes, Putin may be lying. Yes, Russia may want something other than what they have said. But we only know what Putin and Russia have said they want. Anything else is just a guess.
Are we so opposed to what Putin told us Russia wants that we are willing to fight? Are we willing to make the sacrifices Russia is making so we can fight for a guess that Putin is lying?
Alas claudication in my right leg and age eliminates me. All I can do is donate money, and one of the fine beneficiaries is Project Dynamo:
A. Putin lies.
B. Putin's only sacrifices are his own people.
C. To give Putin any credibility at all in any manner is to support him. That is not only a bad choice it is also un-American.
FUCK PUTIN!
You gotta love this.
Ukraine destroys Russian landing ship after state media revealed its location with propaganda footage: Huge fireball rises over port that had been taken by Putin's forces
Oppps...the gulags will be over flowing with failed generals and military advisors shortly...never to be seen again...
I do recall when Putin unfortunately came here years ago they sent two warships and a tug...incase one of the warships broke down..
Go Ukraine..
The Russian Defence Minister hasn't been seen for a week.
Arvo.. probably find he is booked into Gulag number 13 for rest and recreation..in the salt mines....
Russian news played a clip of him today as if it was live. It wasn't. Could he be in Finland?
I read that Finland will be stopping service on the train from St. Petersburg to Helsinki tomorrow, Sunday.
Finland stopping the service? Or is Russia stopping the service?
Finland is stopping it.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/finland-national-railway-suspends-service-to-st-petersburg-from-helsinki-01648251332#:~:text=COPENHAGEN%2C%20Denmark%20%E2%80%94%20Finland's%20national%20railway,to%20reach%20the%20European%20Union.