The Galician national minority in Ukraine

The negotiations are carrying out for already more than twenty years in the modern Ukraine about the existence now and sometimes about the creation of so-called “the Ukrainian nation”, uniting all population of the country. Thus the adherents of this “nation” often don't try to explain at all what it represents.

Viktor Yanukovych's command has succeeded in a rhetorical molding of “the Ukrainian nation” also. Very few people have paid attention that somewhere from the middle of 2010 in all official reports and mass-media, the word “Ukrainians” began to be used instead of expression “citizens of Ukraine” inconsiderately ignoring that fact that there are not only the Ukrainians among the Ukrainian citizens. Besides, there is the rigid opposition between the Ukrainians of separate regions based on non-recognition of national priorities of each other.

The illusiveness of existence of “the Ukrainian nation” lies on a surface, it is necessary only to address to corresponding terminology. The ethnos is a generality of the people united by relationship, external similarity, language and territory, but the nation is historically developed generality of people as a result of merge of several ethnoses, owing to association of the lands and creation of the general society and the state.

The concept of the nation has two aspects – political and ethnonational. The political nation is the form of co-citizenship, including all people living in certain territory, depending on used language, political or religious beliefs and assuming a principle “one people – one territory – one state”. Ethnonational nation is a generality of the people connected by general for culture an origin, language, religion, customs and historical past. The political interpretation of the nation assumes the internal unity within the limits of one state and ethnonational is expressed, as a rule, in the superiority of one nation over another, in aspiration to the statement of life style of this or that national group at the expense of another.

They try to hammer into the head for the years of independence that “the Ukrainian” nation is only the Ukrainians and the national-state ideology build on it with the title people, the Ukrainian language, the new national heroes, the thought up history attempts, etc. The undertaken attempts to rally people on this basis have shown the futility of such approach.

There is no speech about the political nation as there is no uniting purpose and can't be because of basic divergences of regions sights on the past and the future. All are united only by the territory and attributes of statehood. It is possible to speak about the unity, if, the people are mentally divided so that the feeling of hatred and contempt to each other of the separate parts of the country simply reads off the scale.

As the author of a fairy tale on existence of “the Ukrainian nation” was always Galicia undertaking the titanic efforts on imposing of its understanding of “the Ukrainian nation” to all country, based on the ethnonational superiority of Galician ethnos over other population.

It is necessary to remember the history of this krai for understanding of the reasons of the occurrence of Galician ethnic egoism. Galicia is not all Western Ukraine, but only three regions - Lvov, Ternopol and Ivano-Frankovsk in which less than 11 % of the population of the country live. So has it developed that the population of Galicia has been subordinated to the foreign people for long centuries and for a long time has lost the historical and mental touch over whom tries to establish the domination now.

“The Ukrainian king” Daniel Galitsky, esteemed for sacred in Galicia, began the going away off the Old Russian roots. After the Mongolian pogrom of Russia and capture of Kiev in 1240, this Russian prince has solved “to integrate the European way”. He accepts a royal crown from a hand of the Pope and starts to trample down the road to Europe, pursuing a policy of de-Russification, occupying the lands with the Poles, Hungarians and Germans, spreading their culture and customs.

The local aristocracy betrays the people and transformed to “Poles” through dynastic marriages, the refusal of the Russian and acceptance of Catholic belief. Such actions doom Galicia as the independent state to disappearance from historical arena, and in 1392 it becomes provincial Polish province and practically for 700 years (till 1939) loses the touch with the South Russian relatives. The disappearance of Galician elite dooms the West Russian people on centuries-old servility at the Polish gentry. The bearers of the Russian spirit and culture (as for example Stefan Yavorsky and Feofan Prokopovich) run to East Russia.

The ruthenian intelligentsia starts to arise from the environment of the simple people and clergy with submission of Galicia in 1772 to the Austrians. But after the defeat of the Polish revolt of 1863, the Poles decided with a view of opposition of Russia to create an antipode of the Russians from Galician Rusyns “Ukrainians” with the support of the Austrians.

For realization of these plans, the society “Prosvita” and “Shevchenko Association” are established in Lvov for the Austrian money. These organizations under the direction of Grushevsky start to stamp the pseudoscientific works about the existence of the independent Ukrainian people and its century oppression by “Moskals”.

The Poles think out a modern language on the basis of Cyrillics with the replacement of many Russian words on Polish and German for more difference of “Ukrainians” from the Russians. The newspeak affirms in a quality of the official language of Galician “Ukrainians” according to the Austrian parliament’ decree in 1893 and subsequently becomes a basis of the modern Ukrainian language.

The fierce hatred of the Poles to all Russian is consistently imparted to the created Galician ethnos. The Poles could create an ethnic mutant with the help of the dissenters in the Ruthenian movement which has destroyed the rests of the historical consciousness with its own hands. It was actively carried out during the First World War. The newly appeared Galician “Ukrainians” for the purpose of reception of property and posts of the repression Rusyns, take the most active part in drawing up the lists and denunciations in cities and villages on “unreliable persons” and become the main motive power of terror of the Austrians against Rusyns.

As a result, the strong by spirit Rusyns have been destroyed and the weak and traitors have accepted “the Ukrainian” identity. It was possible to create anti-Russian base with the efforts of the Poles and the Austrians and to clear Galician krai of the last rests of the Russian spirit on these lands and to impart the fierce hatred to all Russian to those who agreed to accept the new national identity based on an inferiority complex.

Having used the distemper in Russia after the February revolution, the newly appeared Galician “Ukrainians” seizes the power in Kiev under the pretext of the Central Rada and try to impose the “Ukrainian” identity to the population of Little Russia. However incapable to keep the power, they hand over all territory of Ukraine to the Germans and, despised by the Little Russian people, are expelled on the primordial lands with a shame.

The civil war comes to an end with joining of Galicia to the revived Poland. The Galician Ukrainians create OUN, take the nationalism of Dontsov for a basis of the ideology constructed on ideas of the Italian and German fascism and begin the struggle against the Polish owners for their “Ukraine” by gangsterism and terrorism methods.

During the Great Patriotic War they spend the destruction of dissent people with ideas of the Ukrainian nationalism in the Western Ukraine. They have killed ten thousand of not guilty people.

Roman Shukhevich became the leader of “the Ukrainian nation”, whom the native aunt characterizes as the degenerate and sadist. Now his followers try to impose to us the perverted understanding of “the Ukrainian nation”.

All the history of the development and formation of the Galician ethnos shows that having appeared on historical development periphery, he has come to be in a role of servants of other people. Galician people never had the high-grade elite and there were the fathers and the atamans occasionally stirring the common people to action with the enslavers, but bringing nothing on these lands except destruction and violence. They didn't influence a social system in any way, the most gifted and capable gradually became Polish and German and the others continued to drag pity existence.

What should they be proud of? They appropriate the history of the Kiev Russia with typically servile rudeness and name it the first “Ukrainian power”. For what reason? All political, economic and cultural life of the Old Russian state has left on the north in Vladimir and Moscow. Here only the territory and the country population living on it were left who couldn't be the statehood bearer in any way and the more to create the independent culture.

Having considering themselves as the Europeans, these “vuyks” can't understand in any way that they have no relation to the European culture. All present culture of Galicia is the Polish-Austrian and only the country folklore is from Galician. Look at their cities – Lvov (Lemberg), Ivano-Frankovsk (Stanislav), Ternopol, what do they have “the Ukrainian”? It is the classical West European gothic style with all its beauty, erected by the western civilization and the country bottoms have simply grasped all and haven't found time even to keep for the future generations.

They consider Lvov as their capital, but hold back for some reason that before it have been selected at Poland, 63,5 % of the Poles, 24,1 % of the Jews and only 7,8 % of the Ukrainians lived there before the war, most likely, as servants and yard keepers. Now them became 88, 1 %, that is the native urban population has been entirely replaced by peasants.

The old conversation is remembered still in the Soviet period with the director of one Lvov scientific research institute, native citizen of Lvov, the Jew by nationality, who saved by miracle during the occupation. After war of all saved Poles moved to Poland and their houses were occupied by “vuyks” – the natives of neighboring villages. This scientist has told how the installed former lackeys simply threw out “lordly” furniture unnecessary for them on the street from apartments, showing by that the attitude to the former owners.

The solid defeats and humiliations were in the history of this ethnos, they haven't given to the world neither nice heroes, nor great humanists and because of full despair, without having the heroic past and outstanding persons, try to impose the same representation about the history of Ukraine. Under their version, the Ukrainians are the offended by history people, presented by the bottoms of a society and surrounded with “malicious neighbors” who constantly encroach on his freedom.

On the other hand the objective reality doesn't give them rest at which their former blood brothers in Little Russia, having got rid from the Polish yoke and having united with Great Russia, have reached the tops in many spheres of human activity. Without having anything similar, they try to deny and pervert history of our people with any servile arrogance who has managed not only to defend the originality, but also to create a world superpower.

The inferiority complex and fierce hatred was developed to everything that reminds about Russianness of our people. All it has led to formation of absolutely special non-Russian ethnos.

This illness infects the overwhelming majority of the population of Galicia and even such sacred holiday for us as a Victory Day for them is an occasion for mourning because it is our victory and their defeat. The confirmation of that is the spent poll after known Lvov events in May 2011 according to which more than 60 % of the citizens of Lvov consider that the day of memory of war victims should be celebrated and only 28 % - the Victory Day should be celebrated.

Having mixed the patriotism (love to the country) with the nationalism (hatred to other people), they try to impart the love to Ukraine through the hatred to Russia. They have reduced the sense of the existence to negation of the Russianness, to opposition of oneself to Russia and wild jealousy to it. Their main objective is the full derussification of Ukraine and creation of monoethnic Galician nation. It is not enough for them that the Southeast feeds them, they want to force it morally to the knees, to destroy the love to the history in it and to deprive of respect for itself.

The Galitian ethnos already identified itself as the irreconcilable enemy of Russianness for a long time, maniacally searching for rescue in Europe. Having grasped all information field of Ukraine, they have impudently assumed the right to speak on behalf of all people.

One more fact can serve the confirmation how much we are different. The latest works of scientists-geneticists spent in the CIS countries under the task and on money of EU (published in 2005) have shown that the genotypes of the person in different parts of Europe seriously enough differ from each other. By results of these researches it was unexpectedly found out that, for example, in Russia “the Russian” genotype is present only in the Russian European part approximately to Volga and differ between each other on 1-2 units and further beyond Volga it is absolutely another and differs on 10-20 units. And the difference between the European Russians and Ukrainians of the Southeast has appeared scanty, only 2-3 units, but the difference between the Ukrainians of the Southeast and the Western Ukraine has reached 15-25 units. Here is such genetic consequences of our historical past.

Happy-go-lucky, the unpretentious Galician-fascist national idea “Ukraine is for the Ukrainians” became dominating in the state as in 1991 it was favourable to newly appeared Ukrainian elite for the statement of the backward pseudo-statehood. Having used it, the Galician minority with impudence peculiar and pushiness to it has started to dictate to all population of the country under what laws to live, what history to learn, in what language to speak, what heroes to esteem and with whom to be on friendly terms. They had obvious successes at the initial stage – we were imposed the uptown country name, the flag presented by the emperor of Austria-Hungary and the hymn thought up by the Poles. They wouldn’t go further than the attributes of statehood and, without having offered the alternative of the future to a great bulk of the population they became outcasts in our country.

Nevertheless, the policy of discrimination of interests of the majority of the population in the country continues to be spent by their hands by information, political and cultural pressure for the purpose of reformatting of its consciousness under their ideological installations. They have started the present ideological war at which the overwhelming part of the population has appeared in a degraded condition, when its culture, history and language admit as alien and hostile at the state level and all becomes possible for their destruction.

The Galician ideologists try to make the derelicts of us, the aboriginals of Ukraine, on the native land, accusing of all conceivable and not conceivable sins only because we are not same as they. We are really others and are notable for the mentality, language, belief and the relation to historical events from them.

We are guilty that we, as the passive majority, follow their tastes and don't find time to defend the interests. It was indecent for all years of independence to speak about our general history with Russia for some reason, in which there is a mass of examples for pride and imitation, that the Russian people have increased the territory of Ukraine in several times and that the Russian language is native for the majority of the population, but not the Ukrainian.

We hesitate to say that dictator Stalin has pulled out Galicia from tenacious Polish embraces, but not the people of Bandera and Shukhevich and that all Southeast of our country has no relation to Ukraine.

We are the great people and we have something to be proud, but, unfortunately, have allowed to humiliate ourselves and have admitted the low-standard political riffraff to the formation of the national-state ideology of the country.

Let’s take the language problem: the Galician minority tries to impose the dialect of the Ukrainian by force under the pretext of revival of “native language” of the people of Ukraine. One of philologists has precisely expressed about the relation of the people to this dialect, having told, that is it possible to mix guttural Galician croak with melodious Poltava-Cherkassk Little Russian dialect.

The majority requirements are reduced basically to giving of the status of the second state language to the Russian language, having losing to Galician minority at once, recognizing that their language is the first. It is silly to play by their rules, it is necessary to establish the own as even 83 % of citizens of Ukraine prefer to communicate the Russian language according to the data of the American institute of Gallup and practically nobody wants to recognize “native” language, except the population of Galicia. That is the Russian language is the native language of the majority of the population of the country.
It is reasonable to demand the introduction of native (Russian) language of the overwhelming majority of the population of the country as the state and its revival of Little Russian (Ukrainian) dialect, demanding the protection in Ukraine from scandalous distortion by followers of Grushevsky for a long time. The rural remote places and excited intelligentsia for which it is the native, have the legitimate right for using it in all spheres of the life.

The right to use the artificial language invented by the Poles should be given to the population of Galicia as to compactly living national minority, according to the Charter signed by Ukraine and the admirers of this language can further continue to spoil with its delicacy. The statement of language question in such plane will correspond to realities of our life and will make sober the apologists of the Galician dialect at once.

One more example how much the Galician decay has amazed our society that some moments simply don't yield to the reasonable explanation. To scan these vile, yes vile words “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!” became the good manners to the point and not. I somehow had to be present at the regional conference of Party of Regions and I have been inexpressibly surprised, when they have started to scan “Glory to Ukraine” in the end and even nobody didn't think of the sense and origin history.

This slogan was born in 1940 in German diversionary camps where the Banderovites had training preparation as the agents for diversions and gathering of the military information in the Soviet territory. The greeting “Glory to Ukraine” and the answer “Glory to Heroes” became the greeting of the OUN members by analogy of the Nazi greeting with thrown the hand up “Hail Hitler!” and the answer “Seig Heil!”. They try not to remember about the thrown the hand up after the defeat of fascists and the greeting has lived up to now.

It is clear for me, when the rage crowd of the Galician Nazis scans these words, but the repetition of these words by the normal person and more the politician looks simply blasphemy in relation to our compatriots who have laid down lives for our land.

The Galician minority likes to call themselves as “Galicians” and flies into a rage literally, when they are named as galicicy and the more as galicai. It is necessary to remember it and at any opportunity to remind them, whence they have occurred and what represent. The Russian princedom was Galician and in the beginning of XX century their province called as Galicia and only under the Polish influence they became “Galicians”. There should be a rigid counteraction in ideological struggle and in such, apparently, trifles.

It is possible to give many such examples, all of them say that there is no accurate understanding how the struggle against this harm is much important in a society while. It is very difficult to struggle with the state which has added it to the arsenal, but we see that all attempts of political elite and officials to impose to a society a mentality of Galician minority suffer the crash and influence of their ideas on a national scale is insignificant. They have any value only because their ideology became state and as soon as to separate them from the state they will turn to the sect of outcasts which is not influencing on our society in any way.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to stop the approach of Galician minority, differently this stench as from a foul place, will be carried further on all country and make our life miserable. Really there are only two ways – to put this gone too far ethnos in a corresponding stall and to force to carry out the laws of the state or to get divorced on different apartments.

Having knowing the boorish impudence of the Galicians, it is difficult to force them to respect the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the relatives on a hostel, though it is possible. Besides the change of state machinery and change of political elite are required for its realization that demands the time and it is unknown what it will end.

If to consider the second way, it can seem to someone as the encroachment on the firm bases of inviolability of the borders, put in the Constitution, but it is far not so. The article 73 of the Constitution says “the questions on change of the territory of Ukraine are solved exclusively by All- Ukraine referendum” and the article 72 defines the order of carrying out of a referendum “the All Ukraine referendum is proclaimed by the popular initiative on demand not less than three million citizens of Ukraine who have the right to vote provided that the signatures about referendum appointment are collected not less than in two thirds of regions and not less than on hundred thousand signatures in each regions”.

Having achieved the carrying out of such referendum it is possible not to doubt that the main mass of our citizens will vote with pleasure for disposal of unbalanced and rather impudent roommates.

All these reasoning lead to a conclusion that the there is no and hardly possible the existence of the uniform political nation in today's borders of Ukraine state. Today we have two ethnoses – Little Russian majority (Ukrainian) and Galician minority with opposite civilized aspirations. The unsuccessful attempts of the last to achieve the domination over all society by radical withdrawal of self- consciousness of million people only discredited the idea of existence of such state and have proved that the ethnonational idea basically can't be uniting for all population of the country.

Having considering the specificity of Ukraine, the lands of which never made the uniform state earlier, but entered into the state formations of different civilizations by parts, the creation of the political nation is hardly possible and it is necessary to solve the problem of aggressive Galician national minority sooner or later all the same and, most likely, by surgical way.