The Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is the title of the greatest book by one of America’s greatest historians, Timothy Snyder. Snyder describes the bloodlands as follows: “In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people. The place where all the victims died, the bloodlands, extends from central Poland to western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states.” During the Second Word War Ukraine was, in other words, at the heart of the killing.
But that’s not all. The Ukrainians endured enormous suffering before the war even started. They were decimated not only by the Holocaust but by the Holodomor, known also as the Great Famine. The Great Famine in what then was Soviet Ukraine lasted from 1932 – 1933. It was the direct result of Stalin’s wretched efforts forcibly to extract from Ukraine grain, thereby imposing on the country draconian policies that led to what has been estimated at 4 million direct famine deaths, and another 6 million birth defects.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Ukraine remained in Russia’s orbit. Until 2014. In 2014, in consequence of people’s protests so determined and prolonged they came to be considered revolutionary, a new government was installed. This government was much more friendly to Europe than to Russia, a sin for which the Ukrainians have never been forgiven – by Putin.
So, here we are. Putin taking revenge. The West plotting its response. The Ukrainians again in the middle of the miserable action.
Postscript: It happens – no surprise – that Timothy Snyder just spoke about Ukraine at Harvard. Here is a highly pertinent piece from the Harvard Gazette about his remarks. Note his comment about regarding Ukraine as “the most interesting country in Europe.” Upending Putin’s Russia-Ukraine myth – Harvard Gazette