Yaroslav Stetsko: The Lessons of History [1985]

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Forty years ago the roar of guns finally ceased on the European fronts. The end of World War II brought about a shattering defeat of Nazi Germany and the victory of an unnatural coalition between Western democracies and the totalitarian Soviet Russian Bolshevik regime. Western Europe would once again enjoy peace, freedom and justice. Yet at the same time, in Eastern and Central Europe there descended the dismal shadow of the Iron Curtain which to this day continues to separate the free from the enslaved. Instead of liberty, the nations in the USSR and the satellite states were burdened with new chains; instead of justice and the right to assert their national identity, they faced continuous national enslavements and violations of human rights; instead of peace, they faced an escalating arms race and the threat of a nuclear holocaust. National liberation struggles are being fought continuously. The intimidating and agitating uprisings and strikes of Ukrainian and other national prisoners throughout the 1950s, the 1953 Berlin workers’ uprising, the Poznan rising in Poland, the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, the Ukrainian renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, the liberation war of the Afghan people against brutal Russian aggression and the recent developments in Poland demonstrate the fact that these subjugated nations yearn to break away from Moscow’s colonial bondage. Yet the barbarous and cruel methods used to crush these individual uprisings also indicate that the Soviet Russian empire can be toppled only through the united efforts of a common front of subjugated nations. This liberation strategy based on the concept of a common front of the Free World and the subjugated nations against both totalitarianism — of  Nazi German and Bolshevik Russia — was proposed as early as 1943 at a conference of subjugated nations in the forests of Zhytomyr, Ukraine. In June 1941, Ukraine and Lithuania proclaimed the renewal of their independence. In Ukraine, an armed struggle was led by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UPA-OUN), aimed at both the German Nazi and Russian Bolshevik occupiers. The Lithuanian armed struggle was spearheaded by the Lithuanian Liberation Army. Latvians, Estonians, Byelorussians and other nations organized similar resistance movements. The heroic freedom fighters of these and other East European nations constituted significantly to the decisive defeat of Nazi Germany.

According to Russian sources, only seventeen per cent of the territory of the RSFSR (which also includes non-Russian ethnic territories) was occupied by the Germans. At the same time Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland were completely occupied by Hitler’s armies. A large part of World War II was fought on Ukrainian territory for the possession of the country and its vast material riches. Ukraine suffered more human losses than any other European country, including Germany. 7 million casualties amounting to 16.7 per cent of the entire population. Of these 7 million, 2.5 million were military casualties and 4.5 million were civilian casualties. Thus, Ukraine suffered the greatest number of losses out of all the nations in the Soviet Union. Poland lost 5 million people, while Byelorussia’s wartime losses amounted to about 33 per cent of its population. By contrast, during the war, the RSFSR endured approximately 5-6 million civilian and military casualties. Thus, the 20 million losses so often attributed to the “Russian nation” include the total losses of all the nations in the Soviet Union.

The Germans instituted a mass destruction of the civilian population and prisoners of war in Ukraine. The world is well aware of the fate of Lidice (Bohemian village) and the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, but the world does not know that Ukraine suffered ca. 250 Lidices and Oradours.

Today, as we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the freedom fighters who defended their homelands against both tyrannical regimes are paradoxically branded as Nazi collaborators, anti- Semites and persecutors. What their accusers do not understand is that a massive KGB-devised disinformation campaign is the source of these defamatory, malicious accusations. The accusers and prosecutors are ready to repeat these fabrications, yet they forget that it was Stalin himself and the entire Bolshevik leadership with the Communist Party (CPSU) who collaborated with the Nazis by signing the non-aggression pact in 1939. With their cooperation, Hitler unleashed the Second World War and all its horrors.

The accusers also forget about Katyn, Vinnytsia, Lviv and countless other places where the Russian communists murdered tens of thousands of prisoners; they forget about the tens of millions who died in the Gulags; they forget about the mass deportations, and they forget about the artificial famine in Ukraine in 1932/33, organized by Stalin and the Russian imperialists in which 7 million people died. Nor are these events of an apparent interest to the Western media. Instead, they are willing to unhesitatingly accept the falsified evidence supplied by the perpetrators of these horrors behind the Iron Curtain as an accurate presentation of the events of the Second World War.

Nazi Germany and Nazism are dead and buried and will never rise again. Russian Bolshevism, on the other hand, is very much alive and poses a continuing threat to the Free World. Yet, country after country falls prey with no interference or concern on the part of the Free World and with practically no recognition in the Western media. It is absurd and foolish to focus their attention only on the extinct and obsolete principles of Nazism. They should also concentrate their efforts on rousing world public opinion on the dangers that presently confront the Free World, and they should rise in defence of the liberty of the nations presently enslaved or threatened by Moscow. It is indeed puzzling and disconcerting that the Free World is so unwilling to stand in defence of the national and human rights of the persecuted Afghans, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Bulgarians, Byelorussians, Croatians, Cubans, Czechs, Estonians, Georgians, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Nicaraguans, Poles, Rumanians, Slovaks, Turkestanis, Ukrainians, Vietnamese and those of other nations within the USSR and its satellite states throughout the world. The lessons of history and the benefits of hindsight show that although the Allies were militarily victorious in May 1945, the political fruits of the triumphant victory over Nazism were unilaterally reaped by Moscow. Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam divided the world in two. Furthermore, the West’s failure to counter the countless acts of Russian aggression since World War II demonstrates the West’s implicit acquiescence in the perilous events that have since led to immeasurable human suffering. On the occasion of this fortieth anniversary, we are also sadly reminded of the misguided post-war policy of the Allies which led to the tragically forced repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees and prisoners who were deported to the USSR to face hard labour and almost certain death in Stalin camps. The present dangerous situation that confronts the Free World could have been avoided had the Western democracies listened to the voices of the liberation movements of our nations during World War II. We proposed a simultaneous two-front war against German National Socialism and Russian Bolshevism. At the Conference of Subjugated Nations in 1943 in the forests of Ukraine representatives of thirteen enslaved nations called upon Western nations to support them in a joint anti-imperialist and anti-totalitarian front. Unfortunately, their appeal fell on unreceptive ears. Even without Western support, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were nevertheless able to wage a heroic fight against Moscow for 10 long years. For more than four decades now the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) has been advocating a joint front of the freedom-loving nations of the West with the liberation movements of the enslaved nations of Eastern Europe and Russian-dominated Asia against Russian Communist imperialism and Bolshevism.

A Third World War is being waged at this very moment. While its tactics change continuously, Moscow’s strategy remains the same: it seeks to divide the free world, juxtapose the underdeveloped Third World from the developed democracies of the West, break up NATO by sowing discord among the Allies,  corrupt Western morality and undermine its will to resistance, subvert public opinion by every possible means of disinformation and propaganda, and destroy the liberation organizations of the captive nations by discrediting leaders of the emigre groups and silence them by a campaign of lies, fabricated accusations and intimidation.

We raise our voices in warning the leaders and people of the Free World against falling into this trap. In the name of God, in the name of the highest ideals of truth, freedom and justice, we demand that in its interests of survival and as the only realistic alternative to nuclear war, the West support the coordinated national liberation movements of the nations enslaved within the Soviet Russian Empire and in the countries dominated by its puppet regimes.

We demand: — unequivocal recognition of the rights of all the Captive Nations to full national independence within their own ethnic territories;

— full moral and material support for the liberation struggle of the underground movements behind the Iron Curtain;

— encouragement and support of government and privately sponsored information and publicity campaigns employing all available media resources to enlighten the public of the Free World on the situation of the enslaved nations and Moscow’s expansionist policies;

— international recognition of the central liberation organizations of the enslaved nations as the only genuine spokesmen of their nations, providing every opportunity for them to voice the aspirations of their nations at representative international forums;

— we demand that Western governments, the United Nations and other international organizations condemn Russian imperialism, communism and totalitarianism, and Moscow’s Russification policies as genocidal and colonialist; that they similarly condemn Moscow’s persecution of religion;

— we demand the liquidation of the concentration camps, the psychiatric asylums and all instruments of oppression and terror;

— we demand that Western governments exert pressure on Moscow by all possible means to withdraw its troops from all the subjugated countries;

— we demand the adoption by Western countries of the U.N. Resolution on Decolonization to the USSR, as the last remaining colonial empire; and

— we demand the dissolution of the Russian empire into national, independent, democratic states of all the subjugated nations.

These are the lawful, unwavering demands of our proud nations. As there can be no compromise with evil, the Empire of the Great Lie must fall! We will do everything in our power to hasten its demise; its ignominious downfall.

Hon. Yaroslav Stetsko Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, ABN President.