War. Ukraine. History

For evident reasons the Second World War will long remain one of the prevailing themes in the post-Soviet television space. Over and over again, TV screens will show classical, highly artistic, and fairly realistic (based on true historical occurrences) films of the past years, alongside purely propagandist creations from the Stalin and Brezhnev epochs. These will be complemented by new TV series, often also liberally loaded with propaganda.

This is because the war still plays a role in the present-day political processes. One can debate about whether this is good or bad, but it remains a fact nonetheless. Thus, it must be taken into consideration if we are to acknowledge our heritage.

This is especially important since the Russian production of TV series based on war themes has recently begun to develop into a kind of “artistic-propagandistic” industry – and one that is better organized than in Soviet times. The money invested is not wasted: the audience watches, the series go down well with the brainwashed viewers, a few knowledgeable intellectuals are beside themselves with indignation, and propaganda activities are in full swing.

The Red Army’s catastrophic defeats are shown as victories. The inefficiency of the leadership is concealed by the heroism of the rank and file and middle-rank officers. The bungled work of the intelligence services disappears without a trace. The numbers of Soviet and German casualties are shown as equal. In short history, which still awaits proper study (the most important documents are safeguarded in Moscow’s special archives), is once again being re-written according to the Kremlin’s orders. And this includes the history of Ukraine’s participation in the war.

Moreover, in Soviet times films of this genre would inevitably involve the demonstration of frontline friendship among the representatives of various Soviet nations, where Ukrainians would be invariably included, sometimes even as army generals or marshals. Nowadays, however, the “good guys” on TV screens are almost exclusively ethnic Russians, with a splash of other representatives of the Russian Federation’s ethnic minorities. If a character with a distinctly Ukrainian name does appear, they are bound to be either a thievish sergeant, a blockhead, or a traitor.

Thus, it seems the Russian army was made up of only Russians. The fact that Ukrainians made up between one-fifth to one-third of it at various moments during the war is now thoroughly hushed up. They also conceal the fact that a considerable proportion of Ukrainians (not Galicians at that, but the residents of the eastern and central regions, from the Donbas to Vinnytsia) would not join the Red Army, deserted it, dodged mobilization, or retreated with the Germans while not even sharing the Nazi ideology.

In short, these two dimensions of the truth about the war are now being successfully ignored, while in the Soviet times only one of them was overlooked.

As for the “Russian army,” following Soviet ideological models, it is again shown as the savior of mankind. However, they choose more sophisticated means to support this thesis than those used in the past: the pathetic scenes featuring political instructors and huge numbers of casualties have been replaced with TV stories of heroic missions of special units who either destroy the German wonder weapons, steal secret documents of extreme strategic importance, or, for the umpteenth time, unmask the treacherous plans of their Western allies to sign a separate peace with Hitler (although it was actually Stalin who attempted this, while the principle of Germany’s unconditional surrender was elaborated by Theodore Roosevelt).

Nevertheless, it is utterly counter-productive to complain about someone making “incorrect” TV series or showing a distorted version of history in them. Any state with some self-respect will produce its own films and TV programs, which would satisfy the citizens’ demand for a “nation-centric” version of past events. By the way, the presence of such a version does not necessarily imply a lack of objectivity; it is obvious that, out of an array of facts, the ones which are particularly important for a given nation will go to the foreground.

Even tiny Iceland, whose total population is roughly equal to one of Kyiv’s administrative districts, regularly produces “war” films. However, Ukraine has nothing to boast of, as it has voluntarily conceded its TV space to Russian series and American action movies (which can be pretty good, but still...).

Far be it from me to suggest blocking the access to Ukrainian TV to anyone, even in the case of films featuring “Stalin’s blows” and “the treacherous Crimean Tatars.” It would be desirable to have them accompanied by historical commentaries. By the way, it would be equally good to show Nazi films, especially newsreels, with such commentaries, alternating them with their communist counterparts. I guarantee an astonishing effect.

Yet the main idea is, like with everything else, to make our own competitive products. They do exist in Ukraine, but only in the genre of cinema and TV political journalism. With feature films it is more complicated. Oles Yanchuk’s films fall into the category of trial balloons; the more so that the vast majority of Ukrainian families were related to the “Soviet” side (even with regard to a certain conventionality of this term), making Russian series more instinctively appealing.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian dimension of WWII history is exceptionally rich in unusual events and figures, which is no mere coincidence. Ukraine’s very location was a major factor behind its unique history. Long before the global slaughter, the importance of controlling our country in the future geopolitical struggle had been discussed by such renowned politicians as Pilsudski, Trotsky, Stalin and Hitler.

It was only natural that Ukraine should become one of the major theaters of war in 1939-45. The battles died down and flared up again; the fronts came and went, vanishing in the distance only to come back to the Ukrainian steppes, mountains, and forests. The major European geopolitical players attempted to lay hands on Ukraine without as much as bothering to wonder if it minded it or not.

In this situation, some Ukrainians tried to oppose everyone and everything, fighting on all possible fronts. The others resigned themselves to their fates and were turned into slaves. The third would stick with one of the geopolitical forces, but still showed their own character, unable to fit in the ranks of the Soviet, Polish, or German military. The fourth would actively avoid taking part in the war on any side. The fifth just saved lives, their own or their neighbors’.

In a nutshell, there where many roads to tread, and the wealth of storylines is much greater than that of Americans, Russians, or Poles, as Ukrainians (both ethnic Ukrainians and people born in Ukraine) were virtually everywhere, in almost all armies, at all fronts, on land and at sea.

If only someone would make TV series in Ukraine! What stories are wasted!

Below are only three of those which can only be used by UKRAINIAN film studios. When you read them, you will easily see why. Moreover, they are free of propaganda.

STORY NUMBER ONE: STELLA KRENZBACH

“That I have lived to be 38, and can sacrifice all my strength to free Israel, is obviously only thanks to God and the UPA [the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. – Ed.]. I owe to God my eyes, blue like the cornflowers in the Ukrainian fields, and my hair, golden like wheat. I am grateful to God for not imprinting on my face the eternal brand of Israel, so I grew up to resemble Ukrainian girls rather than take after my ancestors, Rachel or Rebecca.

“I often wondered why Jehovah would create me absolutely unlike my mother Sarah, red-haired and green-eyed; or my dark-haired father, a rabbi in the Western Ukrainian town of B., with his Semitic nose and orthodox earlocks. Today, I see why. His Holy Will was that I work for the glory of Israel – for whose freedom I have prayed my whole life; for Moses’ promised land, where one half of my heart belongs – for the other half will remain until my very last day full of love for the land where I was born and grew up.”

This is a fragment of Stella Krenzbach’s short memoirs (the style of the original is preserved). A considerable part of our readers know about this woman, whose fate resembles a movie script. Yet no script writer can make up such a story, and lead his or her heroine through the circles of hell which were the Ukrainian lands from the late 1930s to the mid 1950s.

“In 1935, I finished school and wanted to apply to the School of Medicine in Lviv. However, my application was rejected, together with those of 38 Ukrainians. I was the only Jewish girl that was not accepted. Then I applied for a course in philosophy.

“That year, my parents left for Palestine, and I was supposed to join them after graduation. In the June of 1939, I graduated and got my doctoral degree. I was booked for a boat for Palestine, which was due to leave on 28 September. But on 1 September, the war broke out, and I wasn’t able to leave Lviv.

“At first, the new masters of the city, the Bolsheviks, treated Jews rather favorably. I instantly got a job at a secondary school, of course, hiding the truth about my social background. However, in less than a year, some militia men appeared at my place and ordered me to pack. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ I asked calmly, sure that it was just a misunderstanding. I showed them my passport and all the necessary papers. But everything was in vain. The order was to deport all Jews to Siberia, and that was it.

“And then I started to pack my things, put my best clothes on, and was ready to accept my fate. Before leaving the apartment, I asked if I could use the bathroom. They let me do it. This is how I was able to escape. I lived on the first floor, the bathroom window faced the yard, I jumped out and ran through a gate which led onto another street.”

Here is the story, waiting for someone to write the script and build dialogs.

“All the while, I was hiding in the house of my friend Olia, the daughter of the priest from my home town, waiting for the Bolsheviks to leave... When the Germans entered Lviv, I was perhaps the only Jew who was happy at their arrival. I thought that they would create Ukraine, and that they would fight against the Bolsheviks.

“How bitter my disappointment was! Soon my joy gave way to horror. What Germans started to do to Jews, and then, to Ukrainians, was nothing else but the continuation of the Bolshevik atrocities.”

Our heroine then goes on to travel throughout Galicia. We can look through her eyes (the eyes of an accidental witness) at the OUN leadership (the discussions concerning the extent of possible collaboration with Germans, whether the OUN should assist them in exterminating Jews or not, and how open and underground activities should correlate, etc.); at ordinary people’s everyday lives (which, paradoxically enough, were often better than during the Bolshevik occupation); at the occupation policies (our heroine had a good command of German), and of course, at the “forest brothers,” the UPA men. We can do it without any sentiments or ideological stigma, in the harsh and dramatic style prompted by the author herself:

“Every day, I saw long columns of Jews who walked resigned to meet their death, supervised by a handful of policemen. This resignation infuriated me. I could hardly restrain myself from shouting at them, ‘Come on, attack and kill those few cops! You outnumber them! You will die anyway, at least, die like heroes, not like slaves!’

“What Germans started to do to Jews, and then, to Ukrainians, was nothing else but the continuation of the Bolshevik atrocities.”

The episode when Krenzbach, after almost a year in the UPA and after working as an intelligence agent in the Soviet rear, is arrested and sentenced to death, is the perfect setting for a uniquely moving scene:

“I was put in the death row. There were 24 of us in a tiny room which would hardly hold 12 people. Among the inmates there was a 70-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl. The latter was convicted for grazing her cow at the edge of the forest, allegedly to supply milk to the insurgents. Each of the women here was sentenced based on an absurd accusation.

“When the lights in the passages went out, the inmates decided to stay up all night and pray – to be ready to meet our death with dignity in the morning. The old lady took a beautiful silver crucifix off her neck. Each one kissed the cross in turn, and then started to whisper prayers. I, too, prayed earnestly...

“I don’t know how much time had passed in prayers when we heard guns and some commotion in the corridors. The shooting didn’t cease, we didn’t know what was going on, but hope dawned in our hearts.

“After some time, the doors to our cell opened, and there stood the guys whom I had known since my days in the forest. The town of R. was then in the hands of insurgents for four days.”

What followed was the life of a guerrilla in the Carpathian forests, and escape to Austria. This was followed by departure for Israel and reunion with her parents. Later came life in Israel, which was, and still remains, a frontline country. And of course, there were memories of Ukraine and attempts to prove to everyone that Ukraine must be free.

“Since early childhood my parents have taught me to love Israel, my motherland which was enslaved just like Ukraine. And when I began to explore the depths of my soul, I saw that my heart was divided in two equal halves. In one there burns love for Israel, in the other, love for Ukraine...”

STORY NUMBER TWO: GENERAL MYKOLA POPEL

The memoirs of General Popel, Days in Flames, and other works written by this tanker who fought in the war from the summer of 1939, at Khalkhin Gol, to May, 1945, in Berlin, provide an equally enthralling potential script.

At first, General Popel seems to be merely a Soviet political propagandist and a convinced communist, a soldier who is never tired of praising the party’s leading role and the advantages of the communist system. Yet at the same time he depicts situations which directly contradict his own declarations, and lets out secrets which leave Viktor Suvorov’s famous studies in the shade.

In June, 1941, Popel was a deputy commander in charge of policy – a commissar – of the 8th Mechanized Corps, stationed in Galicia. The corps had nearly 900 tanks and was generally well prepared. According to the plans for Operation Groza (Thunderstorm), it was supposed to spearhead the Red Army’s major offensive, in the direction of Krakow and Poznan, and then further towards the lower Oder and the Baltic Sea. Later he reminisced:

“In April, 1941 at the army headquarters in Rivne, we ‘practiced’ (as the staff officers would say) the start of the war on maps. The starting point of the game implied that the enemy would probably allow us to mobilize, concentrate, and deploy our forces for hostilities.

“In the staff games and at maneuvers it was forbidden to as much as assume that the enemy could outnumber us. Nor did we consider defensive border warfare, let alone a retreat. The slogan was forward, fight on the enemy’s ground!

“We did not have a plan for the coordination of actions with border troops, nor a plan for blowing up bridges, mining fords, etc. We even didn’t have good maps of our own territory, let alone maps of the terrain west of the border...”

This fragment of Popel’s memoirs was left out after 1968, as it provided direct evidence to the effect that in 1941 Stalin was preparing a war against Germany, and that war would be anything but defensive. As proven by Popel, the latter option was not even considered.

However, things took a different turn. Hitler was able to strike first, the Soviet command set the tankers a crazy task to cover half a thousand kilometers of dirt roads per day, and an anti-communist popular uprising broke out in Western Ukraine:

“When at 8.00, on June 24, I entered Lviv together with the motorcycle regiment, which also comprised tanks and armored vehicles, we were met with a depressing, tense silence. The streets were desolate, save for the main ones, which were one solid flow of refugees. From time to time gunshots were heard.

“As more of our troops entered the city, the shots were becoming more and more frequent. We were unable to find any trace of municipal authorities... The motorcycle regiment had to perform an odd mission – fighting in the attics. Up there, there were observation and command posts, and ammunition depots. The enemies tracked our every movement, yet we couldn’t see them.”

Now tell me please, what kind of Moscow-made TV series will show a popular uprising in Lviv in June, 1941, albeit seen through the eyes of a communist commissar?

Then, a mobile group comprising 300 tanks, and led by Popel, attacked Dubno in the late June of 1941. It was the only successful tank operation in the first period of the war, and it crtically endangered the entire Nazi plan for Operation Barbarossa.

“Our blow turned out to be totally unexpected for the Nazis. They couldn’t imagine that the Russians would dare attack a thoroughfare teeming with German columns day and night. The German soldiers, clad only in trunks (they had been sunbathing), rushed to their cannons and tanks, and jumped into the trenches.

“Volkov promptly did away with the enemy’s defense, so the main forces almost didn’t have to slow down. Our motorcyclists occupied the entire breadth of the highway, and to their right the tanks were moving, their guns looking left.

“When I saw this rapid flow from the top of the hill, I was overjoyed with the realization of our own power. But this was not all. Somewhere in the west, hiding in the thin groves, Bolkhovitin’s tanks were attacking...

“The battle flared up in a vast rye field some ten kilometers southwest of Dubno. The visibility was fairly good. Vasiliev and I were watching the battle sitting in our tanks on the top of a small hill north of Pidluzhia...

“What caught the Germans absolutely unawares was Bolkhovitin’s tanks in their rear. The tanks were spinning here and there over the field, and the infantry men were dashing in all directions, like ants. Meanwhile, the motorcyclists struck from the flanks, and Volkov’s regiment attacked.

“We did away with the encircled enemy force before night fell. The infantry were combing the field. They dragged the chief of staff of the 11th tank division out of the rye, then the director of reconnaissance, then someone else.

“When we entered Dubno it was quite dark.”

These memoirs sound as if it were in 1945 or, at least, in 1944. But it was actually in June, 1941. I want to emphasize: this attack, which was only planned in 20 minutes (!!!), was the only significant successful operation. It was perhaps because everything was planned and decided by the tank generals themselves, without the General Staff led by Zhukov, without the People’s commissar Tymoshenko, without the personal participation of Comrade Stalin and the headquarters of the South-Western Front. However, Popel’s group did not receive support from the other mechanical corps, and he himself was unable to take advantage of his position.

Encircled at Dubno, Popel’s tank corps broke the circle and retreated maintaining good order and organization. Stalin’s famous order No. 270 of Aug. 16, 1941, under which all prisoners of war were declared traitors to be exterminated by all means (and their families were to be repressed), used Popel’s group as a positive example of fighting the enemy in the rear:

“The commissar of the 8th Mechanized Corps, Brigade Commissar Popel, and the commander of the 406th Infantry Regiment Colonel Novikov, fought their way out of encirclement, leading 1,778 armed men. The Novikov-Popel group covered 650 kilometers fighting the enemy and causing collossal damage to the enemy rear.”

However, none of those men got any awards, neither for the counteroffensive at Dubno nor for the raid through enemy lines. Why? This is one of the mysteries of the war, and one of the notable features of General Popel’s biography: he began his war record on June 25, 1941, when the vast majority of Soviet generals were either hiding in the second echelon, or “redeployed” to the deep rear.

“I jumped out after Burda, but he was nowhere to be seen. A roaring engine indicated that the commander was driving away in his tank. I yelled to Korovkin to start it and got into my T-34. What a piece of luck that I took it along instead of relying on the Horch...

“In the heat of the battle you lose your sense of time and place. I didn’t notice when our maneuvers brought us to the outskirts of Tsybuliv. Burda’s tank raced ahead and didn’t respond. Then, it stopped dead. I ordered Korovkin to come closer, covering the brigade commander’s T-34 with fire.

“The driver tumbled out of the front hatch of Burda’s tank. He ran towards us with arms flailing. I flipped the upper hatch open and heard: ‘Commander! Commander got killed!’”

Mind you, it was February, 1944. No one forced the general, now a member of the military council of the 1st Guards Tank Army to attack. So this is something to show in a war series, without even deviating from the real events.

Now let us see what the witnesses and participants of those events can say about Popel. This is what Nikita Khrushchev writes about him in his memoirs:

“I do not remember now whose idea it was this time, ours or the General Headquarters’. We returned to Moscow and made an appointment with Stalin. I asked him to assign General Popel, a member of the Military Council, to one of our armies. I met him in the very first days of the war, when he was a commissar in General Riabyshev’s corps. His calmness, sensibility, and courage appealed to me. Now I asked to send Popel to work with us again. Stalin agreed.”

Now, let us descend from the tops of party leadership into the rank and file. Says Yakiv Makarov, a radio operator and machine gunner on a tank crew, participant of the Victory Parade:

“I received this letter of commendation, just like my other fellow soldiers, in Berlin on Victory Day. It was signed by our Army Commander, Colonel General Mykhail Katukov (he was then 45, a big, handsome guy) and member of the Military Council, Guards Lieutenant General Mykola Popel. My own father was only a little older than them, and we went to the army almost on the same day. Taking the letter of commendation in my hands I felt as if I had looked into my father’s eyes.”

A totally different opinion of General Popel can be found in the words of Kateryna Katukova, wife of the commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army:

“Mykola Popel was of medium height, strongly built, with a handsome face and dark, sparkling eyes. He was clever. Despite of his good looks, he was a petty egoist and a faint-heart. He was without heart or conscience... But one has to hand to him, he was a talented specialist in his field and could easily take his cue from a situation. However, when it came to making his own, original decisions, Popel was useless. He had no talent for that.

“Popel was very eloquent and could speak well and easily. He had a good memory, but he uttered others’ words rather than ones, inspired by his soul and talent – and everyone could sense that.

“He was very formal. He looked a true dandy in a suit – well-groomed, clean-shaven, and neat. And he was so hard to please. Despite the order which prohibited the keeping of diaries, documents, and archives, he collected such papers and sent them to Moscow. After the war, he wrote three books...

“Soon after the end of the war Popel got an offer to go to Moscow. The military council was assigned a new member, Semen Melnikov. He was a completely different man, nothing like Popel – just his opposite. Melnikov was a true Leninist type of political officer. He was a true help in the new, difficult mission of creating and establishing a socialist state on the land of Germany.”

Indeed, what Leninist-type could General Popel make! Here is just one example: when it came to re-establishing life in the suburbs of Berlin which were occupied by Soviet tankers, it was necessary to find technical specialists – but they were almost all reported to be Nazis. General Popel came with an unexpected reply: “To hell with them being Nazis, if they know their stuff well.”

Katukova found even worse words to describe another renowned Ukrainian tanker, General Andrii Hetman. Of course, one can perceive being neat and clean-shaven during a war as a deadly sin. The same applies to wartime drinking. Yet was Comrade Katukova really wrong when she spoke about the formal style Commissar Popel was given to when addressing his men? Here is a fragment of his memoirs, a dialog with an old priest from Bukovyna:

“The old man unlocked a carved box decorated with a Hutsul ornament.

‘Here, take a look.’

“And he tossed several thin booklets in colored covers on the polished surface of the table.

‘These are the passports and IDs which I have been given in 70 years of my life. Austria-Hungarian, Polish, Russian, sorry, Soviet, and here is the German one... And only one has always been missing...’

“I stared at the old man questioningly.

‘The Ukrainian one...’

“But the Ukrainian passport does exist, — I interrupted. The Soviet passport is essentially Ukrainian. To be true, it testifies not only to the holder’s national identity, but also to the fact that the holder is a citizen of the world’s first state of workers and peasants who voluntarily united in the great Soviet Union regardless of their nationality, and now they shed their blood fighting for happiness and freedom together. The nations of the great Soviet Union have chosen the Soviet social system exactly because it does not humiliate a person’s national dignity. Conversely, it raises it even higher. This system was also chosen by the Ukrainian nation, whose representative is now sitting in front of you.”

Why all this verbosity? Why this official, formal style? Doesn’t it seem that General Popel himself does not really believe his own words?

Popel retired in the same rank that he held at the end of the war, lieutenant general. Despite the great popularity which his books have always enjoyed among those interested in the history of WWII, all reference books have a question mark in the place of the date of his death. We were only able to find out that he lived to see the independence of Ukraine, was a very friendly person, hated formality, loved fishing, and that a street was named in his honor in Mykolaiv. That’s all.

So what kind of person was Mykola Popel, a tanker, political officer, communist, and Ukrainian? The man was hated by marshal Zhukov all his life for his own, independent opinions, and who nearly destroyed Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941? I do not know. Maybe, not only I am at a loss when it comes to evaluating my hero. The Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia does not mention him either; neither does the diaspora’s Encyclopedia of Ukraininan Studies, although they write about military figures of much smaller standing. In a word, he was a stranger among his own kind.

And he is also a perfect hero to represent all the different interpretations of the “Soviet” aspect of the war where a Ukrainian, albeit a general, had to face difficulties only because he chose to remain Ukrainian, even if a “Red” one...

STORY NUMBER THREE: FEDIR PIHIDO-PRAVOBEREZHNY

Other great opportunities to develop an unusual plot can be found in the memories of a civilian who was far from being “Red” in his political beliefs, despite being a Soviet citizen at the start of the Soviet-German war. The man who viewed all the contemporary events through an eye which was not one of a fighter, nor that of an adherent of any totalitarian regime.

“As early as in the first days of July, the more important party bosses from Kyiv began to evacuate their families to the east. They were followed by the lesser ones. Then, the petty kind from party committees followed suit...

“The panic among the leadership could not but echo in the masses. Indeed, amplifying the sentiments overwhelming the broad circles of the population, it simply assumed a different form, namely, unprecedented mass desertion. The mobilized reservists failed to turn up en masse.

“I remember the Russo-Japanese war, which is known to have been extremely unpopular with the people, very well; and I can remember the First World War as well. Three years at the front acquainted me with the sentiments of the soldier masses – but I never witnessed anything even slightly similar.”

This is a fragment from the book The “Great Patriotic War.” Inverted commas are no mistake. It was written by Fedir Pihido-Pravoberezhny (1888-1962). His biography was typical of a large proportion of intellectuals from Central Ukraine. Born into a peasant family in the village of Staiky near Kyiv, he received professional training in medicine, and a degree in economics. Later he worked in the Soviet industry and taught at colleges.

In the wartime, he found himself on the territories occupied by the Nazis. Later, like hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, he managed to be evacuated to the West, as he was loath to come back to the Stalinist regime. He worked for Ukrainian emigration publications, research centers, and was an active member of the Ukrainian revolutionary democratic party.

The book of his memories was first published in Canada in 1954, and reprinted in Ukraine in 2002. It shows pictures very different from those which are still present in our history textbooks...

“The attempts to apply ‘Comrade Stalin’s order of the 3rd of July’ (plowing in crops with tractors, trampling wheat fields with herds of cattle driven across the Dnieper from Right-Bank Ukraine, and attempts to remove the grain stored at kolkhoz granaries and the cattle from kolkhoz farms) inevitably met with open resistance on the part of Dnieper Ukraine’s peasants.

“In early July, most kolkhozes in the Dnieper villages were destroyed. The grain, pigs, poultry, and other livestock were all taken by the peasants. The local authorities were unable to control or stop this anarchy.

“Out in the fields and at home in the evenings, people would openly talk of the long-awaited ‘end to the Soviets.’ They said that the ‘Ukrianian government led by Vynnychenko’ was coming together with the Germans, that ‘when Germans came, the Ukrainian army would be immediately created,’ and that all the people ‘like one man’ would stand up for their land.”

Such were the sentiments recorded by Pihido in the villages around Kyiv at the very start of the Soviet-German war. As the Wehrmacht approached the capital of Soviet Ukraine, the sentiments were becoming more and more radical. The narrator gives such a vivid description of the carriers of those opinions that the fragments can be directly incorporated in a script without any adaptation:

“A respectable peasant X. says that in Rzhyshchiv he himself read a leaflet dropped from a German plane, in which Hitler called the population to stay in place and help fight against Stalin and the communists. There he also promised to abolish kolkhozes and give the land to peasants. ‘The kolkhozes are done. Enough of them bastards!’ he said in conclusion.

“I didn’t get to see the leaflets described by X. Instead, in early August, I came across a different type of leaflet, also scattered by German pilots. It was a brutal, bawdy little poem, obviously meant for the ‘new Stalinist individual,’ which told a story of Voroshilov fleeing from the Germans together with his commanders.

“On another day, the cannonade became worse. The people were listening, making signs of the cross, and the joy on their faces gave way to sadness: ‘But our children are out there, somewhere...’

“Working in the fields I had a good opportunity to observe the ‘enthusiasm’ of the Ukrainian people. During those days I was to see literally hundreds of the so-called deserters. They were all hiding in gullies and on the outskirts, trying to make their way home. There were army deserters, reservists, and also those who escaped from trench works. They were coming alone or in groups...”

The Kyiv region turned into a battlefield for Soviet and German troops. Pihido, who had arrived in the country to join his family, observed the actions of the Red Army at a close distance:

“There was one senior lieutenant who stood out from the other commanders. He was a Red commander typical of the civil war of 1918-20: insolent, rude, a real cheeky type. He could always be seen around the village womenfolk, and everyone knew him. He was referred to as Petka, for no one knew his full name.

“Once my wife came from my neighbors’ and said that this cheeky Petka had boasted in front of the girls in the street that on the next day he would drive the Germans away by himself, ‘beyond the village of Stritovka.’ And indeed, on the next day there was much shooting in the south-western segment of our front: first there were tommy guns, then mortars, and then even cannons joined in. In an hour, everything was over.

“In the evening, people said that that Petka had attacked the German positions without even as much as warning his headquarters or the neighboring segments of the front. I can’t figure out what motivated this poor excuse for a commander: was it a craving for an award ‘for initiative,’or an urge to show the local girls that he, too, was worth something... The ‘operation’ cost him 25 human lives.

“The village teachers later related that in the evening cheeky Petka got a good scolding from his commander at the headquarters (the village school building), with a very artistic use of all the unprintable words available to a Soviet commander. And that was the end to it. 25 Red Army men did not come back from battle. Petka continued to amuse the local girls.”

The Red Army’s reaction to the actions of such “Petkas” on all levels was its unwillingness to fight “for the Motherland, for Stalin.” No wonder: a large proportion of soldiers had survived the Holodomor; the others had relatives who were either dekulakized or deported from cities in course of the purges “against parasitic elements.” Thence the logical outcome:

“How many of them were ‘retreating’ like this is hard to say. They shunned highways and stuck to out-of-the-way lanes, asking about even more remote paths – there must have been pickets on the highways. A lot of them ‘settled down’ in the country, thanks to the hospitality of the locals.

“This constant flow of deserters could be observed before the Germans arrived. There were Red Army men of all nationalities: Tatars, Kazakhs, Caucasians, Siberians, even Muscovites. Of course, there were also our Ukrainians. They were all terribly exhausted, worn out, famished, many went barefoot, with feet covered in sores. They would walk from door to door in an endless line, asking for something to eat.”

The battle for Kyiv ended up in the encircling of almost one million men of the South-Western Front headed by General Mykhailo Kyrponis, and this encirclement turned into a total disaster:

“The other day, before sunset, a group of prisoners was brought from the left bank. There were some 400 or 500 men, a true International: Russians, Ukrainians, Caucasians, etc., mostly rank and file, ten sergeants, and a big group of drivers. The sentries, Slovaks, were kind men. We went to have a word with those prisoners.

“They told us that the Kyiv grouping was surrounded by the Germans and encircled. The Kyiv troops, which comprised several armies, were completely wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of men and commanders, and all weapons and ammunition were captured by the Germans. The Soviet armies retreating from Kyiv flooded the roads on the Left bank. Motor cars and horse-driven vans were packed so close that not only the artillery and tanks were completely blocked and got stuck, but infantry could not move either. All this was mercilessly bombed by the German aircraft. Some of the commissars and senior commanders tried to organize hit groups to fight their way further eastwards and join the rest of their forces. Later, I heard from the participants of this shameful retreat that the German pickets were so insignificant that a little effort would have been enough to overthrow them – and a million-strong army with the colossal stock of ammunition would have been rescued from total destruction. But the vast majority of men would not fight the enemy off.”

665,000 Soviet soldiers were taken prisoners then. Another 100,000 to 120,000 scattered over the countryside, and only 21,000 were able to break through the encirclement. The figures speak for themselves, so the sentiments of the Red Army men, recorded in the book by Pihido-Pravoberezhny, can be considered as typical:

“‘In our regiment,’ a tall, bulky Red Army man joined in the conversation, ‘the division commissar gathered the soldiers and commanders and began to persuade them to break through eastwards. He assured us that the Germans were not numerous, and it would be fairly easy to break through. The men kept a sulky silence, and so did the commanders. Then the commissar ordered to fall in. The men became excited. Our company commander cried out to the soldiers, ‘Who are you listening to? Away with the darned Cheka rat!’

“The commissar instantly grabbed his gun and shot. Our company commander fell down. And then, our seniour lieutenant and a crowd of men rushed at the commissar, and in a moment they tore him to pieces. Well, here are some soldiers from our regiment, they can prove I’m not lying,’ he concluded. ‘Yes, that’s true, the damned Stalinist dog did get killed.’ ‘Yes, the cur deserved his death!’ More voices echoed in.”

Not only did Pihido record what he had seen around him, but he also tried hard to interpret the tragedy which had befallen the country and the nation. Sure enough, the hopes for German liberation from the atrocities of Stalinism, cherished by Ukrainians and other Soviet nations, were nothing but a delusion: there are no “good” totalitarian regimes. Only the forms of terror changed, but the essence persisted. This is how Pihido accounts for the nature of these delusions, which were most vividly exhibited during the final stage of the battle for Kyiv:

“A considerable proportion of the people under Soviets were aware of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and did not have great illusions. However, the vast masses of the nations oppressed by the Soviets had experienced the 25 years of Stalinist tyranny, written with blood on the body of their nation...

“So, they laid down arms not because Hitler’s regime was good, but because the Soviet population, exhausted after nearly 25 years of terror, could not see any other opportunity to do away with the bloody Stalinist regime. Out of two evils, the people chose the lesser one. No one should be amazed at this: so grim, so unbearable was the Soviet reality, especially for peasants, that the idea to be conquered by anyone, even Hitler, looked much more appealing, and the Soviet nations gave their sentiments to Hitler, blindly and impulsively. However, it took the boundless stupidity of Hitler’s entourage to ignore, so fatally, these sentiments and fail to take advantage of them.”

Paradoxically enough, the enemy of the Soviet regime Pihido-Pravoberezhny falls in line with the leader of this regime, Dzhugashvili-Stalin who, either accidentally or intentionally, let it out in the fall of 1941 that the Nazis’ catastrophe would mainly be brought on by “Hitler’s stupid policy which has turned the nations of the USSR into present-day Germany’s sworn enemies.”

Curiously, virtually the same was written (but this time after the war) in the memoirs of the tank genius Heinz Guderian, the German general who flatly prohibited his tankers from executing commissars or massacring Jews.

So, there is plenty of material for making Ukrainian TV series, which would be both true and centered on the nation. We have seen just three episodes telling us of unusual fates – but how many more of them can be found! Now, it is turn for someone else to have their say: film producers, financiers, managers, eventually politicians – if the latter want to stand on the solid ground of the country, deeply rooted in its own unique past.