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COMMENT: Once again we set forth polit­i­cal devel­op­ments  against the sce­nario pre­sent­ed in Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

In that Nazi tract, the SS go under­ground in the after­math of World War II, build up their eco­nom­ic mus­cle, buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media, infil­trate the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, and–following a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents in the U.S. which cause the dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law–take over the Unit­ed States.

Cen­tral to this takeover is the use of the Nazi-con­trolled opin­ion-form­ing media to fun­da­men­tal­ly revise his­to­ry in a pro-Hitler fash­ion. Just such a revi­sion is under­way in Ukraine.

It is impos­si­ble with­in the scope of this post to cov­er our volu­mi­nous cov­er­age of the Ukraine cri­sis. Pre­vi­ous pro­grams on the sub­ject are: FTR #‘s 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 783, 784, 794, 800, 803, 804, 808, 811, 817, 818, 824, 826, 829, 832, 833, 837, 849, 850. Listeners/readers are encour­aged to exam­ine these pro­grams and/or their descrip­tions in detail, in order to flesh out their under­stand­ing.

In Ukraine, polit­i­cal his­to­ry is being stood on its head. Both for­mer pres­i­dent Yuschenko and cur­rent pres­i­dent Poroshenko have vis­it­ed the site of the Babi Yar mas­sacres, among the most noto­ri­ous inci­dents of the Holo­caust. They did so, how­ev­er, in order to hon­or the UPA/OUN/B cadre who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mur­ders! The OUN/B was heav­i­ly involved with staffing the exe­cu­tion­ers ros­ter.

The deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the Ukraine cri­sis are such that we should not be sur­prised by such devel­op­ments. “ABSTRACT: In the wake of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, Ukraine has wit­nessed a sub­stan­tial growth in orga­nized anti-Semi­tism. Cen­tral to this devel­op­ment is an orga­ni­za­tion, known as the Inter­re­gion­al Acad­e­my of Human Resources, bet­ter known by its Ukrain­ian acronym MAUP. It oper­ates a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal net­work that reach­es the very top of the Ukrain­ian soci­ety. MAUP is the largest pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Ukraine, with 57,000 stu­dents at 24 region­al cam­pus­es. MAUP is con­nect­ed to the KKK; David Duke is teach­ing cours­es in his­to­ry and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the uni­ver­si­ty. Fund­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s print­ing house pub­lish­es about 85% of the anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Until very recent­ly, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Yushchenko and For­eign Min­is­ter Tara­siuk served on its board; for­mer Pres­i­dent Kravchuk still does. . . 

The arti­cle below is also sig­nif­i­cant because of the rel­a­tiviza­tion of his­to­ry:

•  The pre­pos­ter­ous claims (by the UPA and its defend­ers) that the UPA con­tained a sig­nif­i­cant Jew­ish mem­ber­ship is tan­ta­mount to say­ing that the SS had sig­nif­i­cant Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion.
• This polit­i­cal iner­tia will lead to the Holo­caust being rel­e­gat­ed to “maybe it hap­pened and maybe it didn’t”–and final­ly Holo­caust denial as estab­lished his­tor­i­cal truth.
• The above items ARE Ser­pen­t’s Walk in action.
• Note how doc­u­ment­ed World War II his­to­ry is couched in rel­a­tivis­tic terms like “so and so says,” or “accord­ing to one arti­cle,” or “jour­nal­ist so and so has writ­ten.”
• The exter­mi­na­tion of the Jew­ish ghet­to by the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall (Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion) is his­tor­i­cal fact. The orga­ni­za­tion’s polit­i­cal offi­cer was SS offi­cer Theodor Ober­lan­der, lat­er the (West) Ger­man min­is­ter for expellees, forced to resign when his role in the mas­sacre was revealed. Ober­lan­der (also spelled “Ober­laen­der” in some sources) is dis­cussed on pp. 191–192 of T.H. Tetens’ The New Ger­many and the Old Nazis. Note that Lvov was also known as Lem­berg (the Pol­ish name of a city that was part of var­i­ous coun­tries at var­i­ous times, includ­ing Ukraine, Poland and the for­mer Sovi­et Union.) “Nachti­gall” trans­lates into Eng­lish as “Nightin­gale,” the name for the unit com­mand­ed by Ober­lan­der, as dis­cussed in the Tetens text.
• A street in the Lvov dis­trict was named in hon­or of the group.
• Although it does not appear to have occurred to the author of this arti­cle (or many oth­er observers) the instal­la­tion of the direct polit­i­cal­ly evo­lu­tion­ary prog­e­ny of World War II-era Nazi butch­ers on Rus­si­a’s bor­ders has not gone unno­ticed by Putin and oth­er Rus­sians. This had much to do with the over­whelm­ing sup­port the peo­ple of Crimea gave to re-uni­fi­ca­tion with Rus­sia. It would be impos­si­ble to exag­ger­ate the gal­va­niz­ing effect that the aware­ness of the pres­ence of World War II Nazis at Rus­si­a’s bor­ders has had on Russ­ian pub­lic sen­ti­ment.

“Ukraine: World War II Fias­co Leads to Pub­lic Rela­tions Dis­as­ter and Thorny Rela­tions for Kiev  and For­eign Dias­po­ra” by Nicholas Kozloff; Huff­in­g­ton Post; 6/29/2015.

For Kiev, win­ning the pub­lic rela­tions war against Vladimir Putin would seem to be a no-brain­er. For a year now, the Krem­lin has con­duct­ed a thin­ly-dis­guised war of aggres­sion in east­ern Ukraine result­ing in the deaths of thou­sands. Yet Kiev seems intent on squan­der­ing any inter­na­tion­al pub­lic sup­port it might have had amidst a bizarre crack­down on free speech and cen­sor­ship of con­tro­ver­sial his­tor­i­cal debates. Through its crack­down, Ukraine has actu­al­ly played into Putin’s pro­pa­gan­da war and facil­i­tat­ed Rus­si­a’s PR efforts.

At issue is Ukraine’s con­tentious World War II past, some of which isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly flat­ter­ing. With the sup­port of Nazi Ger­many, mili­tias affil­i­at­ed with the extrem­ist Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) alleged­ly com­mit­ted a pogrom in the west­ern city of Lviv. Writ­ing in the Lon­don Inde­pen­dent, jour­nal­ist Patrick Cock­burn notes that while “Ukrain­ian politi­cians and his­to­ri­ans have denied com­plic­i­ty... sur­viv­ing Jew­ish vic­tims, oth­er wit­ness­es and con­tem­po­rary pho­tographs prove that Ukrain­ian mili­ti­a­men and mobs of sup­port­ers car­ried out the pogrom, though the Ger­mans over­saw it and com­mit­ted many of the mur­ders.”

One schol­ar, John Paul Him­ka, has con­clud­ed that the pogrom was most­ly con­duct­ed by the OUN under Ger­man super­vi­sion. Accord­ing to Him­ka, the OUN sought to demon­strate to the Nazis “that it shared their anti-Jew­ish per­spec­tives and that it was wor­thy to be entrust­ed with the for­ma­tion of a Ukrain­ian state.” . . . . the OUN fought the Sovi­ets and strived for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine, many [of its] lead­ers were influ­enced and trained by Nazi Ger­many. Indeed, the OUN could be char­ac­ter­ized as a far right ter­ror­ist group which hoped to con­sol­i­date an eth­ni­cal­ly homoge­nous Ukraine and a total­i­tar­i­an, one par­ty state.

Wartime Con­tro­ver­sy

“The truth is that the offi­cial pol­i­cy of the OUN was open­ly anti-Semit­ic, includ­ing approval for Nazi-style Jew­ish exter­mi­na­tion,” writes Eduard Dolinksy of the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee. Dolinksy adds that it was only at the end of the war, when it became clear that Ger­many would be defeat­ed, that the Ukrain­ian right changed its posi­tion. The OUN in fact played an impor­tant role in pogroms which spread across West­ern Ukraine in the sum­mer of 1941, result­ing in the deaths of tens of thou­sands of Jews. After the Nazis dis­solved the mili­tias, many mem­bers linked up with the Ukrain­ian police and helped car­ry out the Holo­caust through­out West­ern Ukraine.

Then, for good mea­sure, the OUN assumed con­trol over the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army or UPA in 1943. A para­mil­i­tary out­fit, the UPA ini­tial­ly leaned toward Ger­many but lat­er turned against both the Nazis and the Sovi­ets. The Times of Israel notes “accord­ing to some his­tor­i­cal accounts the group mur­dered thou­sands of Jews in the 1940s” [oth­er his­to­ri­ans, as well as sup­port­ers of the UPA, dis­pute this, claim­ing there were many Jews who them­selves served in the ranks of the orga­ni­za­tion]. A recent arti­cle by Reuters claims the UPA shut­tled vic­tims into labor camps where they were sub­se­quent­ly exe­cut­ed. Fur­ther­more, it is claimed the UPA was also guilty of con­duct­ing eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles in 1943–44. The mas­sacres in East­ern Gali­cia, which formed part of an over­all UPA strat­e­gy aimed at cre­at­ing a homoge­nous Ukrain­ian state, result­ed in the deaths of 100,000 peo­ple.

Crim­i­nal­iz­ing Dis­sent

Amidst esca­lat­ing war in the east, Ukraine des­per­ate­ly needs allies and pop­u­lar for­eign sup­port. Giv­en the des­per­ate stakes, one would think that Kiev would come to terms with some of the unsa­vory aspects of its World War II past. Yet strange­ly, polit­i­cal elites are run­ning hard in the oppo­site direc­tion in an effort to cod­dle the extrem­ist right. At issue is a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial law recent­ly signed by Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko which hon­ors the OUN and UPA.

Under the new law, it would be a crime to ques­tion the likes of the UPA. Specif­i­cal­ly, leg­is­la­tion stip­u­lates that Ukraini­ans and even for­eign­ers [includ­ing Americans?–D.E.] who “pub­licly insult” the mem­o­ry of wartime par­ti­sans “will be held to account in accor­dance with Ukrain­ian law.” The bill does not spec­i­fy the penal­ty for ques­tion­ing Ukraine’s wartime past, nor does the state explain which body will enforce the leg­is­la­tion. On the oth­er hand, it is pos­si­ble that any pri­vate indi­vid­ual could bring a case to court.

Though cer­tain­ly dis­tress­ing, Kiev’s approval of the ret­ro­grade law comes as lit­tle sur­prise. For­mer Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko, in fact, hon­ored Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists at a memo­r­i­al in Babi Yar, where the most hor­rif­ic mas­sacre of Jews took place through­out the Holo­caust. Not stop­ping there, Yushchenko then bestowed the high­est gov­ern­ment hon­or on none oth­er than Stepan Ban­dera, a leader of the OUN.

Reha­bil­i­tat­ing Extrem­ist Right

Per­haps, Yushchenko’s efforts helped to reha­bil­i­tate Ban­dera and oth­ers in the minds of many. As recent­ly as 2013, rad­i­cal nation­al­ists were vis­i­bly active dur­ing Ukraine’s Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion. Indeed, right­ists bran­dished a host of OUN and UPA flags on Maid­an square while belt­ing out par­ti­san wartime songs [for a fuller dis­cus­sion of such curi­ous right­ist sym­bol­ism, see my ear­li­er arti­cle here]. If any­thing, the UPA’s pop­u­lar­i­ty has soared omi­nous­ly since the Maid­an.

Even more dis­turbing­ly, a num­ber of OUN-UPA apol­o­gists cur­rent­ly hold impor­tant gov­ern­ment posi­tions in Kiev, and Poroshenko has done noth­ing to con­front the rad­i­cal right. In fact, the Pres­i­dent has gone out of his way to fol­low in the foot­steps of his reac­tionary pre­de­ces­sor Yushchenko by once again lay­ing a wreath in hon­or of the OUN at Babi Yar. In addi­tion, Poroshenko has labeled the UPA as “defend­ers of the father­land” and estab­lished an offi­cial hol­i­day in hon­or of the par­ti­sans.

Need­less to say, Putin and Russ­ian media have made a lot of hay out of Kiev’s back­ward pol­i­tics and the emer­gence of so-called fas­cist hard­lin­ers. But while the new laws have raised a pre­dictable response from Rus­sia, the leg­is­la­tion has also report­ed­ly led to hack­les in Poland. Szczepan Siekier­ka, a leader of a civic orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Poles killed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned. Speak­ing with the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Siekier­ka remarked “it’s hard to see rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and for­give­ness when the Ukraini­ans treat the UPA crim­i­nals and Ban­dera like nation­al heroes. Accept­ing one extrem­ism now will lead to the accep­tance of oth­er extrem­isms in future.”

Kiev Draws Inter­na­tion­al Fire

Pre­dictably, Kiev’s new leg­is­la­tion has drawn inter­na­tion­al fire from a vari­ety of quar­ters. The U.S. Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um has protest­ed the new leg­is­la­tion, not­ing “as Ukraine advances on the dif­fi­cult road to full democ­ra­cy, we strong­ly urge the nation’s gov­ern­ment to refrain from any mea­sure that pre­empts or cen­sors dis­cus­sion or politi­cizes the study of his­to­ry.” The Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe (OSCE) has echoed such sen­ti­ments, not­ing that “broad­ly and vague­ly defined lan­guage that restricts indi­vid­u­als from express­ing views on past events and peo­ple, could eas­i­ly lead to sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal, provoca­tive and crit­i­cal speech, espe­cial­ly in the media.”

Per­haps, the new leg­is­la­tion could even harm Ukraine’s bid to join the Euro­pean Union. Dolin­sky writes “mod­ern Ukraini­ans need to real­ize and com­pre­hend this dif­fi­cult and trag­ic his­to­ry in order to become a tru­ly Euro­pean nation. Such laws as that recent­ly signed by Pres­i­dent Poroshenko can only harm the Ukrain­ian peo­ple.” For their part, some schol­ars have expressed grave dis­may over devel­op­ments in Kiev. Recent­ly, a group of forty his­to­ri­ans from west­ern uni­ver­si­ties even signed an open let­ter of protest.

Still oth­ers wor­ry about the chill­ing effect upon schol­ar­ship. Writ­ing in the His­to­ry News Net­work, aca­d­e­m­ic experts declare that “the dan­ger is that a pro­hi­bi­tion on ‘insult­ing’ the ‘fight­ers’ or ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of their ‘strug­gle’ is tan­ta­mount to a ban on crit­i­cal research. The law does not spec­i­fy what con­sti­tutes ‘insult­ing’, rais­ing the ques­tion as to what schol­ars of mod­ern Ukrain­ian his­to­ry are allowed to write and say, and what they are not.”

The Search For Ukrain­ian Iden­ti­ty

Con­tro­ver­sy swirling around the his­toric role of the OUN and UPA high­lights Ukrain­ian soul search­ing and the quest for a mod­ern nation­al iden­ti­ty. Though Ukraine has its right wing agi­ta­tors and even main­stream apol­o­gists, the coun­try has by and large prac­ticed tol­er­ance and inclu­sive­ness since gain­ing inde­pen­dence in 1991. Unfor­tu­nate­ly how­ev­er, back­ward leg­is­la­tion may serve to obscure such his­to­ry. Accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, recent polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy demon­strates that “the debate over Ukrain­ian fas­cist his­to­ry isn’t sim­ply a he-said-she-said between Moscow and Kiev, but a deep­er prob­lem of how to square Ukraine’s some­times sor­did past with its efforts to find a mod­ern iden­ti­ty.”

While the recent World War II flak pos­es thorny ques­tions for many in Ukraine prop­er, the imbroglio may prompt some soul search­ing with­in the wider for­eign Dias­po­ra, too. In the wider met­ro­pol­i­tan New York area, the Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty num­bers more than 100,000 peo­ple. In Man­hat­tan’s East Vil­lage, some­times known as “Lit­tle Ukraine,” locals expressed oppo­si­tion to Russ­ian influ­ence while hold­ing fundrais­ers in sup­port of Maid­an protest. Though the East Vil­lage has become gen­tri­fied in recent years, the neigh­bor­hood still sports land­marks such as the Asso­ci­a­tion of Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans; the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Home; the Vesel­ka restau­rant; a Ukrain­ian Church, and the local Ukrain­ian Muse­um.

In the wake of Maid­an protests in Kiev, Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans took to the Brook­lyn Bridge in sup­port of demon­stra­tions back home and even sang the nation­al anthem on the sub­way. Indeed, Euro­Maid­an encour­aged the growth of civic pride and patri­o­tism, with many bran­dish­ing Ukrain­ian flags and embrac­ing native folk­lore, crafts, music and food. The Krem­lin’s sub­se­quent annex­a­tion of Crimea unit­ed Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans like nev­er before in oppo­si­tion to Russ­ian aggres­sion. Along Sec­ond Avenue in the East Vil­lage, local res­i­dents set up an improved shrine hon­or­ing the Euro­Maid­an move­ment with signs attack­ing Wash­ing­ton for not stand­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with Kiev.

Tack­ling Dif­fi­cult Ques­tions

Unit­ing the Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty against exter­nal threats is one thing, but look­ing inward and try­ing to define the new soul of a nation is quite anoth­er. Per­haps, as Kiev’s polit­i­cal class increas­ing­ly moves to cod­dle extrem­ist con­stituen­cies, the for­eign Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty will under­take seri­ous reflec­tion. Hope­ful­ly, the wider Dias­po­ra will not only con­demn right wing pol­i­tics and leg­is­la­tion but also build upon and expand mod­ern con­cepts of Ukrain­ian iden­ti­ty. Rather than appease World War II apol­o­gists, Ukraine should rec­og­nize the his­toric role of Jews in the coun­try. Today, many are sore­ly under-informed about such con­tri­bu­tions and may not even be aware of such lit­er­ary giants as Shalom Ale­ichem, for exam­ple.

In New York mean­while, the expat com­mu­ni­ty seems to fol­low famil­iar scripts. At the Ukrain­ian Muse­um, which sup­port­ed the Euro­Maid­an move­ment by dis­play­ing patri­ot­ic posters in win­dows, cura­tors have by and large played it safe by push­ing rather nar­row def­i­n­i­tions of Ukrain­ian iden­ti­ty. Rather than tack­le the tan­gled his­to­ry of Ukrain­ian-Jew­ish rela­tions, for exam­ple, the muse­um tends to con­cen­trate on folk art and themes such as his­toric Ukrain­ian resis­tance to Russ­ian expan­sion­ism. At the height of the Euro­Maid­an move­ment, one exhib­it dis­played — appar­ent­ly with­out irony — a pho­to of a col­or­ful “Cos­sack” pro­test­er on the Maid­an [need­less to say, many Jews of Ukrain­ian ances­try may have fear­ful asso­ci­a­tions of such Cos­sack his­to­ry]. On their way out, patrons may pur­chase kitschy folk­loric items in the muse­um gift shop.

Just a few blocks south of the East Vil­lage lies the Low­er East Side, a neigh­bor­hood which absorbed waves of Jew­ish immi­grants in the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Many of the immi­grants hailed from Czarist Rus­sia, pri­or to mod­ern Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence. Lat­er, many of the Jew­ish arrivals moved out of the Low­er East Side and assim­i­lat­ed into the wider cul­ture. Arguably, how­ev­er, many of the immi­grants’ descen­dants could be con­sid­ered just as Ukrain­ian as more recent arrivals in the East Vil­lage. To be sure, mem­o­ry or asso­ci­a­tions of Ukraine may seem quite dis­tant and abstract to the great grand­chil­dren of Low­er East Side migrants. On the oth­er hand, it is not unheard of for Amer­i­cans of Ital­ian or Irish descent, for exam­ple, to express sym­pa­thet­ic eth­nic ties to the moth­er coun­try. Maybe it is time for Ukraine to take a hard look in the mir­ror and ask itself why Jew­ish descen­dants are not clam­or­ing for the same.

“The Nazis Even Hitler Was Afraid Of” by George Elia­son; OpE­d­News; 3/16/2014.

. . . . Dur­ing WW2, Babi Yar was the sin­gle most hor­rif­ic act of holo­caust at the time. Even today, the Ban­derite response to Babi Yar is “I am proud of the fact that among 1,500 Polizei exe­cu­tion­ers in Babiy Yar there were 1,200 OUN men but only 300 Ger­mans.” This quote is from a Rivne city offi­cial named Shku­ratiuk, and appears in the book Orga­nized Anti-Semi­tism in Con­tem­po­rary Ukraine: Struc­ture, Influ­ence and Ide­ol­o­gy by Pers Anders Rudling.

The atroc­i­ties at Babi Yar, and the accom­pa­ny­ing bru­tal­i­ty, were left to SS Nachti­gall and the polizei. Both were Ban­derite. The rea­son was sim­ple. The bru­tal work of geno­cide at this lev­el made even hard­ened Ger­man SS uncom­fort­able. This fact is even obscured in the Holo­caust Ency­clo­pe­dia at the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Muse­um.

Dur­ing the peri­od Sep­tem­ber 29–30, 1941, the first mas­sacre at Babi Yar killed over 30,000 Jews. Over the next few years the geno­cide piled up. Vic­tims from the Roma (Gyp­sies) alone num­bered almost 200,000. Ban­derite apol­o­gists have offered a range of ratio­nal­iza­tions, from “Ukraini­ans suf­fered too” to the sur­re­al “Ban­der­a’s men stepped back and the Jews did it them­selves.” No kid­ding. Babi Yar was racial sui­cide. . . .

“The Hon­or They So Clear­ly Deserve” by Per Anders Rudling; Jour­nal of Slav­ic Mil­i­tary Stud­ies; 26:114–137, 2013; Copy­right © Tay­lor & Fran­cis Group, LLC ISSN: 1351–8046 print/1556-–137.

. . . . In May 1941, the OUN(b) had issued a blue­print for the nation­al­ist upris­ing that was to accom­pa­ny the Ger­man inva­sion. The out­break of vio­lence would ‘per­mit the liq­ui­da­tion of unde­sir­able Pol­ish, Mus­covite, and Jew­ish activists’34 and to ‘shoot the Mus­covites, Jews, and NKVD men.’35 The vio­lence was inter­con­nect­ed as the OUN(b) used the NKVD mass mur­ders as a pre­text for pogroms across West­ern Ukraine, hold­ing Jews col­lec­tive­ly respon­si­ble for Sovi­et atrocities.36 OUN(b) fliers pro­claimed ‘Know this! Moscow, Mag­yars, Jews —these are all your ene­mies. Exter­mi­nate them.’37 Cur­rent research show that there were over 140 pogroms in 58 cities in West­ern Ukraine fol­low­ing the Ger­man inva­sion, in which between 17,000 and 35,000 Jews were killed.38 OUN(b) pro­pa­gan­da pre­sent­ed Bol­she­vism being a tool of Jew­ry. This stereo­type was not only embraced by the OUN. Dur­ing the recruit­ment of the Waf­fen-SS Gal­izien, Volodymyr Kubi­jovyc, one of the ini­tia­tors of the ˇ Waf­fen-SS Gal­izien pub­li­cal­ly called upon its vol­un­teers to help ‘exter­mi­nate the Jew­ish-Bol­she­vik pesti­lence.’ . . . .

“Orga­nized Anti-Semi­tism in Con­tem­po­rary Ukraine: Struc­ture, Influ­ence and Ide­ol­o­gy” by Pers Anders Rudling; Cana­di­an Slavon­ic Papers; Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (March-June 2006): pp. 81–118.

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, Ukraine has wit­nessed a sub­stan­tial growth in orga­nized anti-Semi­tism. Cen­tral to this devel­op­ment is an orga­ni­za­tion, known as the Inter­re­gion­al Acad­e­my of Human Resources, bet­ter known by its Ukrain­ian acronym MAUP. It oper­ates a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal net­work that reach­es the very top of the Ukrain­ian soci­ety. MAUP is the largest pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Ukraine, with 57,000 stu­dents at 24 region­al cam­pus­es. MAUP is con­nect­ed to the KKK; David Duke is teach­ing cours­es in his­to­ry and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the uni­ver­si­ty. Fund­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s print­ing house pub­lish­es about 85% of the anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Until very recent­ly, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Yushchenko and For­eign Min­is­ter Tara­siuk served on its board; for­mer Pres­i­dent Kravchuk still does. This paper is a study of anti-Semi­tism in Ukraine, of its intel­lec­tu­al roots, influ­ence and strength. It traces the Sovi­et, Chris­t­ian, Ger­man and racist polit­i­cal tra­di­tions and out­lines the polit­i­cal ambi­tions of orga­nized anti-Semi­tism in post-Orange Rev­o­lu­tion Ukraine.