In writing this blog Continuing Counter Reformation, I've long wondered why Russia has been so relatively quiet about the Roman Catholic Croatian genocide against the Eastern Orthodox Serbs in Yugoslavia during WW2.
Might this because of the Russian-USSR l930s and WW2 era genocide against the Polish/Polish descended peoples of the western USSR (primarily the Moscovite occupied lands of the traditional Polish Commonwealth)?
You may massacre the primarily Eastern Orthodox Serbs to the west of the Amber Path/Great Schism Line in northern Yugoslavia, if we may do that same to those primarily Roman Catholic (and perhaps minority Protestant) Poles to the east of that Line. After all, we - the EASTERN pillar of the Roman Empire was already doing it during the 1930s before the 1939 outbreak of WW2 in Europe.
Quid pro quo ("something for something" in Latin[1]) means an exchange of goods or services, where one transfer is contingent upon the other. English speakers often use the term to mean "a favour for a favour"; phrases with similar meaning include: "give and take", "tit for tat", and "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Croatia
After the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, the Nazis and fascists established the Croatian state known as the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) or NDH. Immediately afterwards, the NDH began a terror campaign against Serbs, Jews and Romani people. From 1941 to 1945, when Josip Broz Tito's partisans liberated Croatia, the Ustaše regime killed approximately 300,000 to 350,000 people,[201] mostly Serbs and almost the entire Jewish and Romani population, many of them in the Jasenovac concentration camp. Helen Fein estimated that the Ustaše killed virtually every Romani in the country.[202] The Ustaše enacted a policy that called for a solution to the "Serbian problem" in Croatia. The solution was to "kill one-third of the Serbs, expel one-third, and convert one-third".[203] According to the United States Holocaust Museum, 320,000–340,000 ethnic Serbs were murdered under Ustaše rule.[204] The Yad Vashem World Holocaust Museum and Research Center concludes that "more than 500,000 Serbs were murdered in horribly sadistic ways, 250,000 were expelled, and another 200,000 were forced to convert".[205] The Ustaše killed nearly 80,000 Roma and 35,000 Jews.
Some historians consider the crimes of the Chetniks in Bosnia against non-Serbs to constitute genocide.[206][207]
Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia in 1943. Most Poles of Volhynia (now in Ukraine) had either been murdered or had fled the area.
The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) West in the Nazi-occupied regions of Eastern Galicia (Nazi created Distrikt Galizien in General Government), and UPA North in Volhynia (in Nazi created Reichskommissariat Ukraine), from March 1943 until the end of 1944. The peak took place in July/August 1943 when a senior UPA commander, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, ordered the liquidation of the entire male Polish population between 16 and 60 years of age.[208][209] Despite this, most were women and children. The UPA killed 40,000–60,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia,[210] from 25,000[211] to 30,000–40,000 in Eastern Galicia.[210] The killings were directly linked with the policies of the Bandera fraction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, whose goal, specified at the Second Conference of the OUN-B, was to remove non-Ukrainians from a future Ukrainian state.[212]Yes, prior to the respective western and eastern Roman Empire massacre within Croatia and U.S.S.R. occupied eastern 2nd Respospolita, this already happened in the 'Byelorussian' and in the 'Ukrainian' S.S.R.
The massacres are recognized in Poland as ethnic cleansing with "marks of genocide."[213] According to IPN prosecutor Piotr Zając, the crimes have a "character of genocide".[214] However, according to Katchanovski, the actions in Volhynia lacked evidence of an intent to eliminate all or part of the Polish population, and the anti-Polish action was mostly limited to a small region.
In and near Byelorussia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_%281937%E2%80%931938%29
The Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 was a Soviet Great Purge-era mass operation against purported Polish agents in the Soviet Union, explicitly ordered against Polish spies, but interpreted by the NKVD as relating to "absolutely all Poles". It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people and the execution of 111,091 Poles,[1] and those accused of working for Poland.[2] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order № 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[3] Not all, but the majority were ethnic Poles according to Timothy Snyder: 85,000 is given by him as a "conservative estimate" of the number of executed Poles.[4] The remainder being 'suspected' to be Polish without further inquiry.[3]
NKVD personnel gathered Polish-sounding names from local telephone books in order to speed up the process. In Leningrad alone, almost 7,000 citizens were rounded up. A vast majority of them were executed within 10 days of arrest.[5] In the fourteen months after the adoption of Order № 00485, 143,810 people were captured, of whom 139,885 were sentenced by extrajudicial organs, and 111,091 executed (nearly 80% of all victims).[6]
It was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Terror.[7]
Order № 00485
NKVD Order No. 00485 called "On the liquidation of the Polish diversionist and espionage groups and POW units" was approved on August 9, 1937 by the Party's Central Committee Politburo, and was signed by Nikolai Yezhov on August 11, 1937.[3] It was distributed to the local subdivisions of the NKVD simultaneously with Yezhov's thirty-page "secret letter" explaining what the "Polish operation" was all about. The letter was entitled "On fascist-resurrectionist, spying, diversional, defeationist, and terrorist activity of Polish intelligence in the USSR".[8] Stalin himself demanded to "keep on digging out and cleaning out this Polish filth."[9] The operation was the second in a series of national operations of the NKVD, carried out by the Soviet Union against ethnic diasporas including Latvian, Finnish, German and Romanian, based on a theory about the fifth column residing along its western borders, and the Party's pronouncement of a "hostile capitalist surrounding." On the other hand, Timothy Snyder suggests that the argument was intended only to provide justification for the state-sanctioned campaign of mass-murder meant to eradicate Poles as a national (and linguistic) minority group.[9]
Scale of the Polish Operation and its victims
The largest group of people with Polish background, around 40 percent of all victims, came from the Soviet Ukraine, especially from the districts near the border with Poland. Among them, tens of thousands of peasants, railway workers, industrial labourers, engineers and others. An additional 17 percent of victims came from the Soviet Byelorussia. The rest came from around Western Siberia and Kazakhstan where exiled Poles lived since the Partitions, as well as from southern Urals, northern Caucasus and the rest of Siberia including the Far East.[6]
The following categories of people were arrested during the Polish operation of the NKVD, as described in Soviet documents:
- "Active" members of the Polish minority in Soviet Union (practically all Poles).
- All immigrants from Poland.
- Political refugees from Poland (mostly members of the Communist Party of Poland).
- Former and present members of the Polish Socialist Party and other non-communist Polish political parties.
- All prisoners of war from the Polish-Soviet war that remained in the Soviet Union.
- Members of Polska Organizacja Wojskowa listed in the special list (most of them were not in fact members of that organisation).
The operation took place approximately from August 25, 1937 to November 15, 1938.[10] According to archives of the NKVD: 111,091 Poles and people accused of ties with Poland, were sentenced to death, and 28,744 were sentenced to labor camps ('dry guillotine' of slow death by exposure, malnutrition, and overwork);[11] 139,835 victims in total.[12] This number constitutes 10% of the total number of people officially convicted during the Yezhovshchina period with confirming NKVD documents.[13] The Operation was only a peak in the persecution of the Poles, spanning over a decade. As the Soviet statistics indicate, the number of ethnic Poles in the USSR dropped by 165,000 in that period. "It is estimated that Polish losses in the Ukrainian SSR were about 30%, while in the Belorussian SSR... the Polish minority was almost completely annihilated."[10] Historian Michael Ellman asserts that the 'national operations', particularly the 'Polish operation', may constitute genocide as defined by the UN convention.[14] His opinion is shared by Simon Sebag Montefiore, who calls the Polish operation of the NKVD 'a mini-genocide.'[15] Polish writer and journalist, Dr Tomasz Sommer, also refers to the operation as a genocide, along with Prof. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz among others.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22]
Almost all victims of the NKVD shootings were men, wrote Michał Jasiński, most with families. Their wives and children were dealt with by the NKVD Order № 00486. The women were being sentenced to deportations to Kazakhstan for an average of 5 to 10 years. Their children, put in orphanages to be brought up as Soviet, with no knowledge of their own origins. All possessions of the accused were confiscated. The parents of the executed men – as well as their in-laws – were purposely left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well. Statistical extrapolation, wrote Jasiński, increases the number of Polish victims in 1937–1938 to around 200–250,000 depending on size of their families.[23]
Footnotes
- Goldman, Wendy Z. (2011). Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19196-8. p. 217.
- Snyder, Timothy (January 27, 2011). "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?". The New York Review of Books. p. 1, paragraph #7. Retrieved June 12, 2012.
- Н.В.Петров, А.Б.Рогинский. ""Польская операция" НКВД 1937–1938 гг." (in Russian). НИПЦ «Мемориал». Retrieved May 27, 2012. "Original title: О фашистско-повстанческой, шпионской, диверсионной, пораженческой и террористической деятельности польской разведки в СССР"
- Snyder, Timothy (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00239-9. pp. 103–104.
- Joshua Rubenstein. "The Devils’ Playground". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2011. "Rubenstein is the Northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA and a co-editor of The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories."
- Robert Gellately, Ben Kiernan (2003). The specter of genocide: mass murder in historical perspective.. Cambridge University Press. p. 396. ISBN 0521527503. "Polish operation (page 233 –)"
- "A letter from Timothy Snyder of Bloodlands: Two genocidaires, taking turns in Poland". The Book Haven. Stanford University. December 15, 2010. Retrieved April 25, 2011.
- Original doc. (see full text in the Russian language) entitled: "О фашистско-повстанческой, шпионской, диверсионной, пораженческой и террористической деятельности польской разведки в СССР." Хлевнюк О. В. Политбюро: Механизмы политической власти в 1930-е гг. М., 1996.
- Matthew Kaminski (October 18, 2010). "Savagery in the East". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- Prof. Bogdan Musial (January 25–26, 2011). "The 'Polish operation' of the NKVD". The Baltic and Arctic Areas under Stalin. Ethnic Minorities in the Great Soviet Terror of 1937-38. University of Stefan Wyszyński in Warsaw. p. 17. Retrieved April 26, 2011. "UMEA International Research Group. Abstracts of Presentations."
- Dr. Eric J. Schmaltz. "Soviet "Paradise" Revisited: Genocide, Dissent, Memory and Denial". GRHS Heritage Society. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- OA Gorlanov. "A breakdown of the chronology and the punishment, NKVD Order № 00485 (Polish operation) in Google translate". Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- McLoughlin, References, p. 164
- Michael Ellman, Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited PDF file
- Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin. The Court of the Red Tsar, page 229. Vintage Books, New York 2003. Vintage ISBN 1-4000-7678-1]
- Prof. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2011-01-15). "Nieopłakane ludobójstwo (Genocide Not Mourned)". Rzeczpospolita. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- Franciszek Tyszka. "Tomasz Sommer: Ludobójstwo Polaków z lat 1937-38 to zbrodnia większa niż Katyń (Genocide of Poles in the years 1937-38, a Crime Greater than Katyn)". Super Express. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- "Rozstrzelać Polaków. Ludobójstwo Polaków w Związku Sowieckim (To Execute the Poles. Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union)". Historyton. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- Polska Agencja Prasowa (2010-06-24). "Publikacja na temat eksterminacji Polaków w ZSRR w latach 30 (Publication on the Subject of Extermination of Poles in the Soviet Union during the 1930s)". Portal Wiara.pl. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (22 March 2011). "Rozkaz N.K.W.D.: No. 00485 z dnia 11-VIII-1937, a Polacy". Polish Club Online. Retrieved April 28, 2011. "See also, Tomasz Sommer: Ludobójstwo Polaków w Związku Sowieckim (Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union), article published by The Polish Review vol. LV, No. 4, 2010."
- "Sommer, Tomasz. Book description (Opis).". Rozstrzelać Polaków. Ludobójstwo Polaków w Związku Sowieckim w latach 1937-1938. Dokumenty z Centrali (Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union). Księgarnia Prawnicza, Lublin. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- "Konferencja "Rozstrzelać Polaków – Ludobójstwo Polaków w Związku Sowieckim" (Conference on Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union), Warsaw". Instytut Globalizacji oraz Press Club Polska in cooperation with Memorial Society. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- Michał Jasiński (2010-10-27). "Zapomniane ludobójstwo stalinowskie (The forgotten Stalinist genocide)". Gliwicki klub Fondy. Czytelnia. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
Further reading
- McLoughlin, Barry, and McDermott, Kevin (eds). Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, December 2002. ISBN 1403901198.
- Paczkowski, Andrzej (1999), "Poland, the "Enemy Nation"", in Stéphane Courtois et al., Black Book of Communism, pp. 372–375
Plus what happened in Ukraine to the KulAKS:
Holodomor
Main article: Holodomor
During the Soviet famine of 1932–33 that affected Ukraine, Kazakhstan and some densely populated regions of Russia, the scale of death in Ukraine is referred to as the Holodomor and is recognized as genocide by the governments of Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, the USA and Hungary. The famine was caused by the confiscation of the whole 1933 harvest in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Kuban (a densely populated Ukrainian region), and some other parts of the Soviet Union, leaving the peasants too little to feed themselves. As a result, an estimated ten million died, including over seven million in Ukraine, one million in the North Caucasus and one million elsewhere.[145] American historian Timothy Snyder wrote of "3.3 million Soviet citizens (mostly Ukrainians) deliberately starved by their own government in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933"[146]
In addition to the requisitioning of crops in Ukraine, all food was confiscated by Soviet authorities. Any and all aid and food was prohibited from entering the Ukrainian republic. Ukraine's Yuschenko administration recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide and pushed international governments to acknowledge this.[147] This move was opposed by the Russian government and some members of the Ukrainian parliament. A Ukrainian court found Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Pavel Postyshev, Vlas Chubar and Mendel Khatayevich guilty of genocide on 13 January 2010.[148][149] As of 2010, the Russian government's official position was that the famine took place, but was not an ethnic genocide;[147] former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych supported this position.[150][151] A ruling of January 13, 2010 by Kyiv's Court of Appeal declared the Soviet leaders guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932–33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.'"[152]http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/02/kiev-founded-by-east-polans.html
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/02/crafted-in-austria-west-ukrainian.html
