87 Comments
Mar 6, 2023Liked by Peter Nimitz

Even if your narrative & some of your facts are not 100% accurate (what ever is?); I think the gist of your article is that the history of eastern Europe & western Asia is a lot more complicated than most Americans realize, or are willing to put in the effort to understand. Your typical American doesn’t know that far more Russians died in the first (3) months of WW-2, then Americans during the entire war.

I am not excusing Russia’s attack on Ukraine, or the atrocities they have perpetrated, but in order to stop the war as soon as possible, you need to understand it. No body has clean hands.

In order to understand the present, you gotta understand the past. - Thank you for this article. The war needs to stop!

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This otherwise excellent narrative slights the most scarring event in Ukraine in the 20th century, beyond even the devastation of WWII: the Holodomor genocide of 1933-1934.

The "1933 famine" was not a natural event, but a genocide engineered by Stalin and the USSR regime to starve Ukraine to force collectivization and break the backs of Ukrainian 'kulaks', independent farmers. Grain was being exported from USSR at the same time as millions starved. It killed as many as 7 million Ukrainians, a death toll as great as Hitler's Holocaust of the Jews in WWII. To say that this genocide has left many Ukrainians with a deep-seated distrust of Russian power, especially led by former KGB officer Putin, would be an understatement.

https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/the-history-of-the-holodomor/

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Mar 7, 2023Liked by Peter Nimitz

Thanks for the great article!

You link to a debate snippet by Obama regarding the passive acceptance of Putin's election fraud and the beginning of animosity after banning homosexual propaganda. I think that is reading too much into Obama's rhetoric and was used as a post hoc justification to garner domestic support for US actions against Russia. US and post soviet Russia geopolitical antagonism predates Obama and homosexual worship in America.

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I'm still making my through this article and enjoying it immensely.

I wanted to ask whether or not you are familiar with the theories of Fomenko regarding the true identity of the Mongols. He argues that there is no proof of an asiatic horde and that it was actually a civil war over succession between northern and southern princes, from what I can remember.

He further argues that significant parts of the chronicles are copies and retellings of the same tale told over again. So, for example, the Khazars and the Mongols are the same threat. In the same way that the Gaetae and the Goths are the same threat that Rome faced duplicated.

Thoughts?

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I am still reading the essay, but it fills in gaps I've been meaning to fill. Thanks for composing it.

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Good and thorough article. I read Magocsi's A history of Ukraine last year and I see book's influence on this.

Must also say that seldom anyone try analyze this conflict as objectively as you.

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Mar 7, 2023Liked by Peter Nimitz

Well written, still waiting for the facedoxx.

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Mar 6, 2023·edited Mar 6, 2023

I dont usually comment on these articles but I feel that this particular one merits a long response. In short, while the article seems to be written as an in-depth historical research piece it is actually a very skillfully produced Russian contemporary propaganda. As a laughable cherry on top the author posted a picture of Peter Wrangel (the last general of the russian imperialist forces during the russian civil war) as an avatar and pathetically tried to present himself as someone with a western last name (Nimitz) while it is actually russian (Nemets - Немец). Not today Vanya! Americans are not that stupid.

While the historical events listed here are mostly accurate, here is a list of blatantly misleading implications and frankly made-up assertions. The list is by no means exclusive - these are merely the most obvious ones:

- Its cute how the author described Igor Strelkov's forces as "80% Ukrainian citizens", conveniently avoiding the fact that the leadership of these forces (Strelkov, Borodai, etc) were Russian citizens with a background in Russian intelligence forces. Furthermore, the author implies that some branches of the Russian government acted independently and stoked the conflict, as to force Putins hand vis-a-vis Donbas. However, it is now proven beyond any doubt with the evidence presented by the dutch airplane tribunal that Putin himself was giving orders to these so called "separatists" as early as May 2014.

- The author blithely mentions the 1930s famine as "failures of collectivization". This, to put it mildly, is disputed. Suffice it to say Holodomor is now recognized by a growing number of countries, not to mention Ukraine itself, as a deliberate genocide aimed at breaking the back of Ukrainian nationalism and diluting the Ukrainian populace with more obedient Russians.

- How would the author know that majority of eastern Ukrainians felt sympathetic with the Russian regime in the 17th and 18th century? Are there any contemporary polls or records attesting to this hypothesis? Also, the author implies that there was very little difference between Russians and Ukrainians at that time. I should mention that at this point Ukrainians and Russians were sufficiently different to such a degree that, for example, Chmelnitzkiy needed a translator to talk to Moscow emissaries in 1654. Even older Ukrainians alive today can testify that Ukrainian, not Russian, was still the everyday language of Ukrainians of Eastern Ukrainian cities all the way into 1920s.

- The author barely mentions the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Simon Petlyura during 1917-1921, as if it is a minor historical footnote. It was a major geopolitical establishment and theres plenty of evidence that Petlyura and his brand of nationalism were immensely popular among the Ukrainians at the time and served as a beacon for the nationalists of the 1980s and 1990s.

- There a repeat of the old Soviet trope about Crimean Tatars collaborating with the Nazis thats just presented as a fact. Is there any evidence of this whatsoever? In fact it is more likely that Stalin deported the Crimeans to repopulate the region with the military that he trusted more. Is it any wonder that Crimea today is essentially a giant military base and most Russians living there have or have had in the past some kind of a connection to the Russian military?

- Theres an implication that the Ukrainian state is overly centralized, squashing local wishes. How convenient - this happens to be one of the major demands of the Russian government during the Minsk negotiations! Except the transparent purpose of it is to make Ukraine sufficiently dysfunctional to be dominated by Russia.

- Im not sure what "pro-homosexual" politicians the author has in mind when hes describing the Maidan Uprising sympathizers in the West. Victoria Nuland? Barak Obama? Holland? Merkel? To blame the Western support of Maidan on some sort of a LGBT conspiracy is beyond absurd. But this happens to be another Russian talking point, about the LGBT lobby taking over the West and Russia being the bastion of traditional values. How clever.

- Theres a long discussion over establishment of the Orthodox Metropoly as a supposed natural consolidation of Orthodox Church in Moscow and not a single mention that this fact was opposed by the Orthodox authorities in Constantinople. I will not mention the key historical events of the 16th century but this was the main reason Ukrainian orthodox Church was given autocephalous status a few years ago by the current patriarch of Constantinople.

These are just off the top of my head. Im sure there are many more misleading allegations.

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Apr 15, 2023Liked by Peter Nimitz

You started so early in history that might as well start from when Adam and Eve graced the earth!

Good article but I wished you explained more on what happened in recent times, like between 2004 and 2014 or what happened after the storming in Slavyansk, how the government responded and how the first war proceeded and ended.

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Excellent article

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I don't understand the purpose of this article. Ukraine is a sovereign country, with clear borders, recognised internationally, including by Russia. We cannot invade other countries because of some historical "injustices", this would mean that the US would be able to the the whole Planet, since it is by far the strongest nation on the planet. And no nuclear war would stop that!

Ukraine's borders must be respected no matter what! Russia must leave Ukraine completely! And Moldova and Georgia! And close the frozen conflits they created internationally to have control of the fate of those countries.

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Thank you for well researched and crafted article. I really appreciate the fact that you took a labor to go really deep into history of that entire region and brought it up to present. I also appreciate your objectivity in view of present events.

Thank you.

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The quote is that power political power grows from the barrel of a gun and it is attributed to Mao.

This is an extension of Clauswitz argument that warfare is merely the continuation of political discourse by other means.

The EU failed to evict Russia from their military base in Crimea after the Russians counter-offered $50b. As the EU couldnt beat the Russian trade offer (which was clearly superior to the EU offer) the US State Department (i.e. Victoria Nuland) and EU officials collaborated with the Banderists to overthrew the government of Ukraine. They installed a Banderist regime by force in exchange for the political annexation of Ukraine into the EU.

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a word of appreciation for the thought and effort you put into your account of ukrainian history, which i found very enlightening. i especially found your account of the legitimate reasons russian speakers in east ukraine had reason to resist kievan rule very enlightening - you usually only hear the pro-western ukrainian side. this doesn't excuse putin and it would be ironic if his invasion creates in a nationalist reaction the very unitary ukrainian state he hoped to prevent. still, your account makes me more understanding why in any future negotiation, the donbass and crimia might be given to russia in order to secure peace. that and russia giving up its imperialist goals for all the ukraine.

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Mar 6, 2023·edited Mar 6, 2023

I got to the part where the author claims the Ukrainian language has origins in the 12th century before the invasion of the Mongols when I realized the author was not being truthful.

The Ukranian Constitution requires a 3/4 vote to remove a sitting President. The vote to remove the Eastern Ukrainian Yanukovych failed. The Western Ukrainians removed him anyway and replaced him with an unelected President. Subsequent elections have not included Eastern Ukrainians and therefore do not represent popular sovereignty.

The idea that the Ukrainian language existed before the late 18th century is garbage. The Ukrainians intentionally changed their language to distinguish themselves from Russians. This is no different than the Americans political decision to removed the 'u' from the British words labour and honour to distinguish themselves from the British.

The Ukrainians and Russians are not distinct people. Ukrainians are just Russians of a certain political persuasion who have intentionally modified their language. At what point do we decide the people using 'ze/zer' pronouns are distinct and therefore entitled to an independent country?

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Russia was never a superpower, the Soviet Union was a superpower ( which included Ukraine, the Baltic States, Kazakhstan, Georgia Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova etc). Russia will never be a superpower again without those countries, an Putler knows that.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, which was entitled to after the Soviet Union collapsed in exchange for security, with Russia agreeing not to invade Ukraine. Since 1990 Russia invaded Ukraine 2 times and stole Crimea, Dombas and Luhansk. If Ukraine had nukes capable of hitting Moscow and St Petersbourg, this would not have happened. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukranian lives were save, and those people would have enjoyed their lives, not rotting in a coffin as they do now, thanks to the Russian "brotherly" love.

Russia is an extremely aggressive nation, they have conflicts and unsolved issues with all their neighbours, even with China. Also they stole some Islands from Japan AFTER the end of WW2 . So Russia cannot be trusted and it is not trusted by its neighbours. The US never tried to steal Cuba's land, or Mexico's (lets talk about after WW2 when the UN was created and lets not go back to stone age). They promised Cuba that they will never invade Cuba if they remove the nukes from their territory, a promise that the US kept since 1960's. Russia on the other hand did not keep its promise to Ukraine. See the difference between these 2 nations, between these 2 people? Can you see who's not trust worthy here? And why the Eastern European nations do not trust Russia? This is just one small example, there are hundreds of examples. Another one is that Russia, everytime they have a disagreement with another nation, they send photos of their nuclear weapons, threatening them with a nuclear strike, or invade their air space even 30 times/day. You can do as much whataboutism as you wish, but there's no country on the face of the earth that does that!

So the Eastern European nations have 2 choices - 1 to build nuclear weapons capable of destroying Moscow and all the other major Russian cities or to join NATO. There's no other option! Russia made sure they have no other options. Germany for example could build the nuclear bomb in 6 months, Poland probably in 2-3 years, Romania the same. This won't be a big issue for them, but nobody will allow them to own nukes like Russia. Ain't that double standards?

Sweden and Finland are joining NATO Because of the Russian invasion, they don't trust Russia. They want NATO's protection against a dictator gone mad! The NATO' expension is Russia' fault 100%! Just look that is happening with 2 neutral countries, Finland and Sweden!

NATO has not forced any country to join. They joined on their free will because of Russia. If you want less NATO, then stop being a bully and respect the territorial integrity of tour neighbours! It is very easy and simple to do! As the US is doing in regards to its neighbours 😉

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