Originally Posted by
Azor
Actually, Muscovite oppression of Ukrainians has been ongoing for more than three centuries. Despite all of the killings and deportations during the Civil War and then Stalin’s tyranny, the issue of ethnic and national identity east of the Dnieper River is a thorny one.
Alternatively named the Wild Fields, Sloboda Ukraine and Left Bank Ukraine, eastern Ukraine was a sparsely-settled no-man’s land for centuries after the first Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th Century. Despite the Mongols’ eventual defeat, this region was still subject to Mongol and Tatar depredations and was on the route that the Crimean Tatars took when raiding north toward Moscow. Crimea was only finally conquered in the late 18th Century, and both Crimea and eastern Ukraine were settled by a blend of ethnic Russians as well as ethnic Ukrainians from Right Bank Ukraine, where Ukrainian national identity had formed. Therefore, it would be false to claim that Ukrainian citizens in eastern Ukraine and Crimea are as Ukrainian as those in central and western Ukraine, or that there was continuity in Crimea and Donbas from Kievan Rus to present. Many in the east weakly identify as Ukrainian, a minority identify as Russian and still others identify as “Soviet”. Nor are the Dnieper and Sivash exact demarcation lines for identity, as there is considerable spillover.
As for the armed uprisings for Cossack independence in the 17th Century and Ukrainian independence in the 20th (during World War II), both saw Cossacks and Ukrainians, respectively, spend more time slaughtering Jewish civilians followed by Polish civilians, than fighting the forces of occupation, be they Polish, Russian, Soviet or German. All violent resistance movements have their share of criminals and criminal acts, but it is disturbing to see the worst of Ukraine celebrated merely to make some Ukrainians feel good about their history. Ukrainians did not meaningfully participate in the mass anti-Soviet movements of 1989 to 1991 that liberated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany and the Baltics. Whereas these nations were glad to see the Russians leave and to rebuild pride in their suppressed communities, Ukrainians were more circumspect until late 2013.
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