Colonel Evtikhiev) were shot in Odessa, batches of fourteen and
sixty-six in Tiraspol, thirty-nine in Kiev (mostly members of the
intelligentsia), and 215 in Kharkov - the victims in the latter case
being Ukrainian hostages slaughtered in retaliation for the
assassination of certain Soviet workers and others by rebels. And,
similarly, the Izvestia of Zhitomir reported shootings of twenty-nine
co-operative employees, school teachers and agriculturalists who
could not possibly have had anything to do with any Petlura
"conspiracy" in the world.
(Sergey Petrovich Meglunov, The Red Terror in Russia, London, 1925,
pp. 88-89)
Thus, if the impression gleaned from the Shapoval volume is correct (to the effect
that the control of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD lay overwhelmingly in the hands of Jews), then
the situation might be summarized by saying that even while Jews were in reality
pogromizing Ukrainians throughout Ukraine (as we saw in the Melgunov quotation
immediately above), they were simultaneously pogromizing Ukrainian leaders in the
diaspora, as by the assassinations of, among others, Symon Petliura (1926) in Paris
by Cheka agent Schwartzbard employing a handgun, of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets (1938)
in Rotterdam by GPU agent Valyukh employing a package bomb, of Lev Rebet (1957) as
well as Stepan Bandera (1959) both in Munich and both by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky
employing a poison pistol loaded with cyanide. This same Bohdan Stashynsky
eventually defected to the West where he confessed to the two above assassinations,
thereby demonstrating the reasonableness of the distrust that the Kremlin might feel
toward its own assassins, as well as the reasonableness of the unease that the
assassins might feel concerning being distrusted.
Cause and effect. As is often the case with respect to historical events, the
thread of cause and effect is difficult to untangle. When Petliura makes the
following statement in his Army Order No. 131, he assumes that pogroms cause an
opposition to Ukrainian independence:
Our many enemies, external as well as internal, are already profiting
by the pogroms; they are pointing their fingers at us and inciting
against us saying that we are not worthy of an independent national
existence and that we deserve to be again forcefully harnessed to the
yoke of slavery.
However, it is also plausible that causality proceeds in the opposite direction
that Jewish opposition to Ukrainian independence causes pogroms. Of course, the
causal link can act in both directions simultaneously, with pogroms and opposition
each fuelling the other in an escalating spiral. Who might start such a spiral and
who might encourage it? Petliura views the pogroms not as spontaneous, but as
incited by "adventurers" and "provocateurs." If he is right, then we may ask who
might have sent these adventurers and provocateurs? Who might have been paying them
to do their work? Perhaps the answer is those who might have preferred to absorb
chunks of a dismembered Ukraine rather than coexisting with an independent Ukraine
most particularly, Russia and Poland. And perhaps those who wanted to increase
emigration of Jews out of Ukraine - the Zionists. Russia, Poland, and Zionism
benefitted from pogroms on Ukrainian territory. All who wanted to live peacefully in
Ukraine - whether they were Ukrainians or Jews - suffered from the pogroms.
To see the links to the documents in the Petliura section, please click on the
PETLIURA link below.