But to be fair to Mr. Safer, he did not really say that the peasants were in possession of the
nuclear weapons - what he actually said was that they were in possession of an anomaly. This is
an unfamiliar concept, and I cannot get my mind around it - what does it mean to say that
someone is in possession of an anomaly? Perhaps what it means in this case is simply this
that Mr. Safer sensed that even the uncritical 60 Minutes viewer at whom he was aiming his story
wasn't going to believe that the Ukrainian peasants had gotten control of the nuclear weapons,
and so the thing to do was to speak gobbledygook - to suggest that they did but without actually
saying it.
(14) Why leave Ukraine? Mr. Safer suggests that the explanation of Jewish emigration from
Ukraine is anti-Semitism: "The [anti-Semitic] message is clear to Lvov's Jews. They're leaving
as quickly as they can get exit permits."
I can think of an alternative interpretation. It is that given the catastrophic and
deteriorating economic situation in Ukraine, practically everybody in the country wants to
leave, but it is disproportionately Jews who can afford to and who are allowed to. Anybody who
is emigrating from Ukraine today is, in comparison to the average Ukrainian, both wealthy and
influential. Iosef Zissels, co-president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and
Communities of Ukraine as well as co-president of Va'ad (Confederation of Jewish Communities of
the Former Soviet Union) has stated that: "Many Jews are emigrating from Ukraine, not because of
anti-Semitism, but because of the unstable situation in Ukraine. They see instability in
Ukraine, as well as in all the former republics of the Soviet Union, as lasting a long time"
(Ukrainian Weekly, January 26, 1992).
(15) Symon Petliura. Mr. Safer tells us that "Street names have been changed. There is now a
Petliura Street. To Ukrainians, Symon Petliura was a great General, but to Jews, he's the man
who slaughtered 60,000 Jews in 1919."
But that is not what happened and it is irresponsible to broadcast such an accusation.
Of course here as elsewhere, the 60 Minutes numbers may be somewhat inflated - Orest Subtelny
gives us a more moderate range of 35,000 to 50,000 Jewish fatalities (Ukraine: A History, 1994,
p. 363), though even the lower bound of 35,000 is still a horrendous number. The main point,
though, is that in 1919, Ukraine was in a state of civil war. Two Russian armies - the
Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White army - were rampaging through the country, and
both were killing Jews. The White Army, in particular, had an official policy of killing Jews,
proceeded to do so in an organized and methodical manner, and can be credited with the majority
of the victims:
The Ukrainian pogroms differed from those of the Whites in two ways: in
contrast to the premeditated, systematic undertakings of the Russians, they
were spontaneous outbursts of demoralized and often drunken irregulars, and
they were committed against the express orders of the high command. Unlike the
White Russian generals such as Anton Denikin, the Ukrainian socialists,
especially the Social Democratic party to which Petliura belonged, had a long
tradition of friendly relations with Jewish political activists. Therefore,
the Directory renewed Jewish personal-cultural autonomy, attracted prominent
Jews such as Arnold Margolin and Solomon Goldelman into its government,
appropriated large amounts of money for pogrom victims, and even negotiated
with the famous Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky about the inclusion of
Jewish police units into its army.
But while Petliura's attitudes towards the Jews might have been
well-intentioned, he was unable to control the otamany (the court-martial and
subsequent execution of Semesenko and other partisan leaders did not improve
the situation), and their dreadful deeds were associated with his government.