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Roman Dmowski on the Ukrainian

question
We present a previously unpublished text by Roman Dmowski on Ukraine. The material
comes from the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration.
[A penetrating, at times even prophetic text by Roman Dmowski from over 80 years ago
deserves to be thoroughly explored - admin].

How the Germans created Ukraine and to what end.

I. Liberation of nationality
One of the most important issues of our policy, both internal and external - is the Ukrainian
question. It is commonly conceived as one of the issues of nationalities that awoke to
independent life in the nineteenth century, raised their speech from a folk narrative to the
dignity of a literary language, and eventually achieved an independent state existence. In this
notion, on the map of Europe - the appearance of a separate Ukrainian state - is only a matter
of time, and not far away. This notion is too simple. The Ukrainian question in its present
form far exceeds the boundaries of the local question of nationality: as a question of
nationality - it is far less interesting and less momentous than as an economic-political
question, on the solution of which great things depend in the future balance of power not only
of Europe, but of the whole world. It is its importance that must be understood above all in
order to take any self-conscious position in it. A Ukrainian policy that does not reckon with it
will be insane.
About the questions of nationality, a whole series of which the history of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries has put forward and resolved, it must be said in general that they are
neither as simple nor as similar all to each other as they appear at a superficial glance.
A classic example of national revival and a model for other nationalities was presented by
the Czechs. In a country where only the rural population spoke Czech and all other strata
were German, a Czech national movement began in the early 19th century. Czech national
movement, which developed a literary language and created a rich literature in it, boasting a
number of poets and scholars of great measure; it organized itself brilliantly in the economic
field, achieved superiority in the country's manufacturing, conquered the cities on this path
and produced guiding social strata; organized itself efficiently to fight for its rights and
interests, and led an extremely energetic, purposeful policy that gave Bohemia a prominent
role in the Habsburg monarchy; finally, at the partition of that monarchy, it not only won for
Bohemia an independent state existence, but achieved the incorporation of Slovakia,
Hungarian Ruthenia and part of the Polish lands.
After all, such an impressive story of the revival of a nation that had been destroyed not only
politically, but also civilizationally, is unique. We will not find another similar example. It
can only be understood by remembering that the Czechs, as a nation in their own right, had a
long history of almost a thousand years, that Czech civilization was not destroyed until the
17th century, that as late as the 16th century, the golden age of our civilization, our writers
stated that the Czech language, as older in civilization, was richer and more highly developed
than Polish. Such a long and so recently interrupted tradition of its own and high
civilizational life, which other awakening nationalities did not have, gave the Czech national
movement a rich content and became the main basis of its power.
In parenthesis, it should be added that the Czechs at one time played a major role in the
struggle against Rome, taking a prominent part in the Reformation and in the secret unions
behind it. The tradition of these unions has been renewed by Czech politicians in recent
times, which has given them close relations with influential elements in Europe and America,
and vigorous support for their cause by secret organizations. This, however, has taken a
strong toll on their young state and on the spirit of its politics, and the future will only show
whether this will not entail great difficulties for it.
The question of nationality grew up both among the peoples of the national revival and in the
public opinion of Europe, under the influence of three main factors:
1) the French Revolution, which brought out into the spectacle of history a nation that existed
independently of the state and took into its own hands power over the state;
2) the Polish question, which occupied the attention of the whole of Europe in the first half of
the 19th century, the question of a historical nation, civilizationally independent and
possessing a rich political ideologyUkraine would face the great issues of the great state from
the first moment. First of all, the attitude towards Russia. The Russians would have to be the
world's most infirm nation to easily reconcile themselves to the loss of a vast area containing
their most fertile lands, their coal and iron, which accounts for their possession of kerosene
and their access to the Black Sea. Then there is the exploitation of that coal and iron with all
its consequences in the country's system and economic life. A great issue is presented by the
Black Sea coast, ethnically non-Ukrainian, the relationship to the Donskoye lands, to the non-
Ukrainian Crimea and even to the Caucasus.
The Russian nation, with its historical traditions and outstanding state instincts, gradually
came to grips with these issues and resolved them in its own way. The
new Ukrainian nation would have had to find its own ways of dealing with all these tasks
right away, and would have
unfailingly learned that it was beyond its strength.
True, there would be those who would take care of it, but this is where the tragedy occurs.
There is no human force capable of preventing the Ukraine, detached from Russia and
transformed into an independent state, from becoming a confluence of the world's affaires,
who are now very cramped in their own countries, capitalists and capital seekers, organizers
of industry, technicians and merchants, speculators and schemers, slaughterers and organizers
of all kinds of prostitution: Germans, French, Belgians, Italians, English and Americans
would be hurried to the aid of local or nearby Russians, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, and
finally, most numerous and important of all, Jews. A whole peculiar League of Nations
would have gathered here...
All these elements, with the participation of the cleverer, more business savvy Ukrainians,
would have formed the leading layer, the elite of the country. After all, it would be a special
elite, because probably no country could boast such a rich collection of international
scoundrels.
Ukraine would become an ulcer on the flesh of Europe; and the people dreaming of
producing a cultured, healthy and strong Ukrainian nation, maturing in its own state, would
find that instead of their own state, they have an international enterprise, and instead of
healthy development, a rapid progression of decay and decay2 and deprived of its own state;
finally, 3) romanticism in literature, turning to the spiritual wealth of its own race, elevating
the value of folk tradition as a source of poetic inspiration and spiritual strength of the nation.
However, it cannot be said that the spontaneous movement of nationality that grew out of
these sources was the main reason for their emancipation, their political career, so to speak.
As soon as the idea of nationality gained its footing in 19th century Europe, the diplomacy of
the great powers understood that in many cases it could be exploited brilliantly in the struggle
against the enemy. It was also exploited above all in the Eastern Question, against Turkey.
The Balkan nations owed their liberation primarily to the fact that powerful states sought to
destroy Turkey's position in Europe.
The powers that partitioned Poland also perceived in the 19th century that by stirring up the
question of nationality in the area of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Poles
could be enormously weakened and the Polish national area mightily reduced. They began to
produce nationality movements by plan, by their own means.
A classic example in this regard is the beginnings of the Lithuanian movement. After the
suppression of the [18]63-4 uprising, Milutin's famous plan for organizing education in the
Congress Kingdom was aimed at extracting all possible elements in the country from under
the Polish influence, all the people who spoke Russian, Lithuanian, even German and Jewish.
The grouping of these elements in possibly separate secondary schools, which, by the way,
were all Russian, led to this.
Under this plan, the Mariampol Gymnasium was intended for the sons of Lithuanian-
speaking landowners of the northern part of the Suwałki Governorate. The additional Polish
language
instruction that existed in schools for Poles was replaced in this school by Lithuanian
language instruction, the first textbooks of which were compiled by order of the government.
Subsequently, ten scholarships for Lithuanians, alumni of the Mariampol Gymnasium, were
established at the Moscow University. All the first Lithuanian national activists came out of
these scholarships. Much later only (already without the support and against the views of the
Russian government) they moved the movement from the Kingdom to Kaunas, promoting it
primarily in the seminaries.
Austria had already more or less done the same among the Ruthenian population in eastern
Galicia.
Prussia at one time even tried to patent the invention of Kashubian and Mazurian nationality
in its official statistics; however, this invention was subsequently renounced.
Thus, any question of nationality must be viewed from two points of view:
1) what does a given nationality represent as a separate ethnic unit, in terms of language,
civilization, historical traditions? what is its coherence?
2) who, against whom, for what purpose seeks to organize it into a new state?
From both of these points of view, the Ukrainian question presents itself as a very
complicated, and therefore very interesting, subject.

II. Ukraine as a nationality

The word "Ukraine," which until recently still meant the borderlands in the southeast of
Poland, has taken on a new meaning in the political language of recent times. In today's
stance on the Ukrainian question, Ukraine is understood to mean the entire area whose
population speaks mostly Lesser Slavic dialects, an area that is home to nearly fifty million
people.
The East Slavic, or Ruthenian, dialects, which at first differed little from one another, have
grown greatly in number through colonization of sparsely populated areas from the
Carpathians to the Pacific, and through assimilation of their populations. A clear
differentiation of them into Greater and Lesser Belarusian factions - a third, Byelorussian
, must be added - occurred only after the destruction and devastation of the Grand Duchy of
Kiev by the nomadic Polovtsians. The Great Belarusian language, Russian, was formed in the
forested area between the Volga and Oka rivers, where Slavic settlers gradually merged with
Finnish tribes and which remained under the Mongol yoke for two centuries. It became the
language of the Muscovite state, later Russia, and produced a great, rich and original
literature.
 In contrast, Malyorussian speech became the speech of the Southwest, which entered more
and more into the sphere of Polish rule. It was the speech of Subcarpathia, which for a short
time formed its own state, the Kingdom of Halych, and the speech of settlers advancing under
the protection of Polish power deeper and deeper into the steppe, farther and farther east,
beyond the Dnieper River, from Red Ruthenia through Podolia, Kievshchyna, Chernihiv and
Poltava provinces, and absorbing the steppe elements into themselves. After the loss of these
provinces to Poland, and then after the partition of Poland, the advance of these settlers
eastward, beyond the Don, and southward, toward the Black Sea, did not cease, and the
further spread of Malorussian speech did not stop. Hence the vast area it now occupies.
The Malorussian population differs from the Great Russian population not only in speech.
The very fact that the latter colonized forest areas and mixed with Finnish tribes, while the
former spread on the steppe, absorbing its wandering inhabitants, must have created a big
difference. An even greater one resulted from the difference in historical fortunes. While the
latter, having remained for a long time in the sphere of Mongolian rule, molded itself under
its influence, this one succumbed to stronger or weaker Western and Polish influences, and
was even drawn into the sphere of influence of the Roman Church to a large extent through
the ecclesiastical union. It can even be said that the differences in character, psychology are
greater than the differences in speech.
After all, it must be said that there are great differences in natural conditions and even greater
differences in historical destinies
between the various lands where Malorussian speech, or Ukrainian speech as it is spoken
today, resounds.
Beginning with the Subcarpathian lands, which already belonged to Poland nearly a thousand
years ago, and from Casimir the Great until the first partition were continuously an integral
part of the Crown, which finally never came under Russian rule, and ending with the Black
Sea coast and the late colonized lands east of Poltavshchyna, which never saw Polish
rule, one can divide the area of Malorussian speech into what seven or eight separate entities,
each with a different history. Hence the deep spiritual, cultural and political differences
between the various factions of the Malorussian-speaking population, and the enormously
poor stock of what is common to all the factions. The Ukrainian question stands in contrast to
the question of all other resurgent nationalities. There, in each case, it is a matter of a few or a
few million of a relatively homogeneous population, while here it is a matter of tens of
millions, for that, breaking up into very diverse territorial groups. With this diversity, one can
speak of the existence of the Ukrainian nation only with great license.
Nevertheless, the very fact of the existence of a people that cuts itself off clearly from its
neighbors or those living with it in the same lands by speech, customs, character, and finally
by religion or ritual, already raises an issue that, under favorable conditions, appears on the
political terrain, either as a result of the aspirations of activists coming out of that people, or
by the machinations of states trying to win it in their interests. This was unavoidable and in
the area of Malarussian speech.
The issue was born simultaneously, in the middle of the nineteenth century, at two distant
points. A spontaneous movement, taken up by pure and disinterested people seeking a
separate cultural and literary expression for the distinct spirit of their people, appeared at this
time in Zadneprzan Ukraine. Its main representative was the poet Shevchenko.
It was no accident that his cradle was this very land. The former Chernihiv and Poltava
provinces were the most stylish Ukraine, the most racially beautiful and spiritually lush. This
land gave birth in the first half of the 19th century to the great writer Hohol (Gogol), who,
although he wrote in Russian, expressed the spirit of Ukraine in his work. It also remained the
focus of the Ukrainian movement in the Russian state.
The Russian government did not put obstacles in the way of this cultural and literary work,
although it looked at it with an unwilling eye. It treated the movement as regionalist. The
Poles, on the other hand, understandably gave it sympathy and encouraged it to transform
itself into a political one. Their desire was to win it against Russia. This was a quite logical
aspiration. In a country where the Russian element was trying to flood everything, it was
necessary, for its own defense, to fuel any aspiration for national opposition to Russia.
Beginning with the uprising of 1863, on whose banners St. Michael was placed next to the
Eagle and the Pogo, and ending with the Russian Duma, in which an autonomous Ukrainian
group was formed following the example of the Polish Circle, there has constantly been some
connection of sympathy between Polish politics in the Russian state and the Ukrainian
movement.
The second point where the issue arises is in the Austrian partition, Eastern Galicia. There
the origins are quite different. There, the Austrian government manufactures the Ruthenian
question in order to weaken the Poles. As it was said in Galicia, "Count Stadion invented the
Ruthenians." Hence, the question of the movement there stood at once as a political question,
while the work on cultural revival was treated rather as an ancillary procedure to politics.
It was a purely local issue, a question of the Austrian state, encompassing eastern Galicia and
northern Bukovina, the Ruthenians (Ruthenians) became legally-politically one of the
Austrian nationalities. Not all of them recognized themselves as such: in addition to the few
elements considering themselves Poles (gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus), a strong faction
(Old Ruthenians) considered themselves Russians and used the Russian language in their
cultural life, considering Little Ruthenian speech only as a folk dialect. This trend was fueled
and fueled by Russia, which until the 1914 war looked to Eastern Galicia as its future
conquest.
It was not until the end of the last century that people began to speak of a "Ukrainian"
nationality populating both East Galicia and the south of the Russian state, and the
"Ukrainian" question emerged as an issue of the political future of the lands populated by this
nationality. Since then, in Austrian political language, the word "Ruthenians" has been
quickly supplanted by the new term "Ukrainians."

III. Ukraine in German politics

The ease with which the Viennese political spheres jumped
from the local, narrow notion of
Ruthenians (Ruthenen) to the broad notion of Ukrainians and turned the internal Austrian
Ruthenian question into an international Ukrainian one was astonishing. It would be outright
incomprehensible if it were not for the profound change that occurred contemporaneously at
the end of the last century in the position of the Habsburg monarchy.
Austro-Hungary, which had been bound to Germany by an alliance for a dozen years or so,
exchanged this alliance at the end of the century for a deeper, closer relationship, leading, on
the one hand, to Germany and Hungary of the monarchy, threatened in their rule by other
nationalities, to give a strong foothold in the Germany
of the Reich, and, on the other hand, to subordinate Austro-Hungarian diplomacy to the
external policy of the German Empire. Even then, for the stirrings of Austrian politics that
could not be understood in Vienna, there was an explanation in Berlin.
Well, at that time, the all-German political literature began to engage vividly in working out
the concept of a new state - the Greater Ukraine. At the same time, a German
consulate was established in Lviv, not for German citizens, who were virtually non-existent
in eastern Galicia, but for political cooperation with Ukrainians, which was publicly revealed.
It was also revealed that there was a lively action in the area of Ruthenian affairs by the
Union for the Defense of the Eastern Borderlands (Ostmarkenverein), founded in Germany to
fight Polishness. It turned out that with the swap of the Ukrainian question, the center of
gravity of politics on this issue shifted from Vienna to Berlin.
The question now is why Germany, which does not have a Ruthenian population in its state,
became so keenly preoccupied with this issue. It could not have been an idealistic,
disinterested desire to support a resurgent nationality, so much as that interest in the issue was
coming out of the government and from spheres representing partitionist German policy. It
was a winning of the issue in German interests. Against whom?
In the period leading up to the World War, Germany looked to Russia as the field of its
economic exploitation and the sphere of its political influence. Even outside Germany's
borders, Russia was sometimes viewed as part of the wider German empire. From this
position, they sought to weaken her both politically and economically: their aim was to make
her incapable of opposing them in any field.
It was at the end of the last century that Russia, which mainly saw the wealth of the
Malyorussian lands in their incredibly fertile chernozem, began to vigorously exploit the iron
and coal deposits found there in abundance and to
build its own industry on them, calculated not only for domestic demand, but also for foreign
markets in the East. For Germany, this meant not only a reduced Russian market for their
imports in the future, but also new competition in Asian markets.
On the other hand, Germany at the end of the last century became stronger in Turkey and
began to carry out the work of completely controlling it. Here the great detriment to them was
Russia's position on the Black Sea and its access to the Balkans. All these dangers and these
difficulties were removed by the bold idea of creating an independent, large Ukraine.
Moreover, considering the cultural and national weakness of the Ukrainian element, its
heterogeneity, the presence on the seacoast of various ethnic elements that had nothing to do
with Ukrainianism, the abundance of the Jewish population in the country, and, finally, a
fairly significant number of German settlers (in Kherson and the Crimea) - one could be sure
that the new state would succeed in taking under strong German influence, putting its
exploitation in German hands and completely directing its policies. An independent Ukraine
promised to be an economic and political subsidiary of Germany. By
contrast, Russia without Ukraine, deprived of its grain, its coal and its iron, would remain a
territorially large but economically incredibly weak state, with no prospect of economic
independence, doomed to eternal dependence on Germany. In turn, cut off from the Black
Sea and the Balkans, it would cease to have any say in the affairs of Turkey and the Balkan
states. The territory would remain entirely the domain of Germany and its auxiliary, the
Habsburg monarchy.
From the point of view of the goals of German policy toward Russia, the greatest work of
this policy would undoubtedly be the great Ukraine. After all, there was someone else against
whom Germany considered the Ukrainian plan salutary.
When the Polish question in the second half of the nineteenth century dropped off the agenda
of international affairs and turned into an internal issue of the three partitioning powers,
German policy was the only one that had its eyes open to the whole question. It did not share
the optimism of Russia and Austria and did not stop fearing the return of the issue to
international affairs. Bismarck did not hide this, and Bülow too openly said that Germany
was fighting not only its Poles, but the entire Polish nation.
The Germans understood that the rapid progress of their policy on the world stage would
lead to a great conflict. And moments of great clashes between the superpowers have this in
common, that then issues suppressed in peacetime invade the international terrain. The Polish
question was not so stifled that it could never surface again; on the contrary, at the end of the
19th century a political revival movement began in Poland, one great national camp was
forming in all three partitions, testifying that the new Polish generations had learned
something, speaking a truly political language that had not been heard in Poland for a long
time.
The appearance of Poland on the international stage, as a great nation, would have been a
great defeat for German policy. If this nation could not be destroyed, it had to be made small.
And the simplest way to do
this was to create a Ukrainian state and push its borders deep into Polish lands as far as the
sounds of Ruthenian speech could reach.
The Ukrainian plan was thus a way of dealing a mighty blow to Russia and Poland at the
same time.
This plan on paper came to fruition. That paper was the treaty signed in 1918 in Brest-
Litovsk by an ad hoc delegation of the Ukrainian Commonwealth on one side, by Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria on the other. It remained on paper, because Germany,
powerful until recently, at that moment was only capable of signing papers. It remained as a
testament to imperial Germany, in the difficult post-war era awaiting executors.

IV. Ukraine in world politics

After the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian question entered a new phase. With the federalist
system of the Soviet state, that part of its territory where the majority of the population uses
the Little Russian speech became a Ukrainian republic, with a disputed scope of
independence and with the official Ukrainian language. At the same time, after Poland was
reconstituted as a result of the World War, part of the lands of the former Republic with a
Ruthenian-speaking population, and among them the former East Galicia, an important focus
of the Ukrainian movement, became part of our state.
In this state of affairs, the Ukrainian question was not considered settled either by the
Ukrainians or by those factors that cared about their cause for one reason or another.
Fermentation on its grounds did not cease, and the endeavors directed toward the separation
of the Ruthenian lands from both Soviet Russia and Poland did not cease. These endeavors
even triggered the famous expedition to Kiev on the Polish side in 1920, the reasons and
political goals of which have not yet been adequately explained. It changed nothing
fundamentally in the state of the Ukrainian question, only that the Peace of Riga that
followed established the borders of Soviet Ukraine in the west, removing Poland from much
of the territory it had forcibly occupied before. In those early years after the World War and
the Russian Revolution, it was not yet anticipated that the Ukrainian question would soon
become of global importance.
As everyone knows today, the 1914-18 war, which in eastern Europe brought primarily deep
political upheaval, for the rest of the world, and especially for western Europe, became a
great economic upheaval. It played this role not only by destroying much of the wealth of
nations and disorganizing the system of economic relations that existed before it, but also,
and to a much greater extent, by brilliantly accelerating the process that was already
underway before it, which consists primarily of the industrial decentralization of the world.
This process brings disaster to countries where industry has hitherto been centralized.
These effects of the war, which were not properly appreciated at first - for it seemed that the
economic
malaise was only temporary - are being felt more and more strongly the farther we are from
the war. It is increasingly apparent that the governments of the countries are incapable of
remedying them, and the spheres directly concerned, the representatives of big capital, are
showing more and more energy and ingenuity in searching for means of rescue. A
favorite idea being worked on today by many bold minds, not so much political as financial,
is the distribution, by peaceful agreement, of manufactures among the countries of the world,
leading some to remain producers, while others agree to remain consumers of this or that
commodity. Whoever would want to advance from consumer to producer would be
considered an enemy of the established world order. The idea is that the economically and
politically leading countries today, producing at ever higher prices, would be protected
from the competition of other countries that, able to produce more cheaply, have begun
to develop their industries in recent times.
After all, the realization of this unremarkable idea, despite the existence of the League of
Nations and a whole host of other aids, is not easy. One of the biggest obstacles standing in
its way is considered to be Soviet Russia. It clearly mocks the efforts of capitalist Europe and
America to save the established world trade order, as evidenced by Stalin's recent speech in
Moscow. These taunts could remain words without substance if Russia were deprived of the
coal and iron it possesses in abundance precisely on Ukrainian territory. To detach Ukraine
from Russia, then, would be to pull its teeth, secure it from its competition and condemn it to
the role. eternal consumer of the products of foreign industry.
In connection with that one, a second great idea occupies a prime place on the agenda of
world affairs today. The
importance that the automobile and the aeroplane have acquired today in peace and war, and
the increasing use of oil engines, above all in ships, have brought the until recently modest
kerosene to the forefront of raw materials extracted from the interior of the earth. If the states,
hitherto reigning in the economic system of the world, manage to concentrate all, or almost
all, kerosene in their hands, their reign could be secured for a long time, provided, it is to be
understood, that some technical upheaval would not deprive kerosene of its present
importance.
Hence the idea of dividing the world into the few kerosene holders, thus privileged among
themselves, and the underprivileged rest, who may receive this precious fuel only from those,
or not at all, e.g. in case of war.
Even this modest amount of kerosene, which is found in our Subcarpathian region, was a
major obstacle to settling the issue of eastern Galicia at the peace conference.
The overwhelming amount of kerosene known today is found in America. The
United States produces more than 69% of all kerosene in the world. In addition, Venezuela
ranks second in world production, Mexico fourth, and finally Colombia, Peru and Argentina
produce sizable amounts. On all this kerosene rests, or hopes to rest, the American hand.
In our old world, kerosene is possessed in smaller quantities by Europe (primarily Romania,
then Poland) and Asia. Persia (exploitation in English hands) ranks fifth in world production,
Dutch India ranks seventh, smaller quantities are produced in British India, Japan and China.
In recent years, the English discovered kerosene in Iraq and began exploiting it.
After all, the richest sources of kerosene in the old world, representing nearly half the
production of all of Europe and Asia, and capable of producing much more, are in the
Caucasus (Baku). Thanks to them, Russia today ranks third in the world in kerosene
production. Thus, the second big idea of today's world device program crashes into Soviet
Russia.
Ukraine does not have kerosene - it could have some if the Polish lands with Drohobych and
Boryslav were annexed to it - but, if one grasps its territory broadly
enough, reaching all the way to the Caspian Sea, as it is beginning to do, then the detachment
of Ukraine from Russia entails cutting off the last one from the Caucasus and liberating
Caucasian kerosene from its dominion.
This ties the Ukrainian issue to the most topical world issue today - the kerosene issue.

V. Prospects for the Ukrainian state The Ukrainian question

cannot be treated in the same way as one treats the question of the first better nationality,
awakened to political life in the 19th century. It surpasses all others in its importance because
of the number of people who speak Lesser Russian, as well as the role of the area it occupies
and its natural resources in world political issues.
By the end of the last century it had already taken a prominent place in the policy plans of
Germany, under whose patronage it was so widely placed. The reconstruction of the Polish
state did not diminish, but rather increased its importance in the sights of German policy:
with its solution are associated the hopes of changing the German-Polish border and reducing
Poland to an area where it would be an insignificant state, completely dependent on
Germany.
And the economic side of the issue, which plays such a great role in the sights of the
Hohenzollern power, is even more momentous for today's Germany, with its massive
economic difficulties. It was undoubtedly on the mind of the head of the German
government, among others, when he recently pointed out in his speech the main source of
Germany's financial and economic troubles in the scheme of things politically east of
Germany. In recent years, thanks to the coal and iron of the Donetsk Basin and Caucasian oil,
Ukraine has become an object of keen interest to representatives of European and American
capital and has taken its place in their plans for the economic and political arrangement of the
world for the near future.
To this must be added - not the least of which is the role that Ukraine, alongside Poland,
plays in issues of Jewish politics.
Thanks to this, and a number of other minor causes, such as the interests of Russia's former
creditors and those whose industrial and agricultural estates remain on the territory of
present-day Soviet Ukraine, and finally the hopes of certain Catholic circles for the
establishment of ecclesiastical union in Ukraine, the Ukrainian question cannot be said to
suffer from a lack of sympathy in the world. Certainly, if the
separation of Ukraine from Russia were to take place, powerful spheres would use all their
influence and means to ensure that the thing would not end with the creation of some
relatively small state. Only a large Ukraine, as large as possible, could lead to the resolution
of those issues that have given the Ukrainian question such widespread importance.
Ukraine, detached from Russia, would make a great career. Would it be made by the
Ukrainians?... The
young, awakening to their role as historical nationalities, as a result of their poor stock of
those traditions, concepts, feelings and instincts that make up a nation from the human
cluster, and as a result of their
lack of political experience and training in governing their own country, coming to an
independent state existence, come face to face with difficulties they do not always know how
to deal with. Even we, who have not ceased to be a great historical nation, as a result of a
relatively short break in our state being, after the reconstruction of the state showed great
inexperience and great ineptitude in dealing with the tasks that fell on us. Fortunately, usually
few in number and occupying a small area, they form small states where they have issues of
lesser caliber to deal with.
After all, Ukraine is not some Lithuania of Kaunas with a population of two and a half
million, where the most difficult issues lie in its finances and can be solved for the time being
by selling off forest leeks in advance.
Ukraine would face the great issues of a great state
from the first moment. First and foremost, the attitude toward Russia. The Russians would
have to be the world's most infirm nation to accept easily the loss of a huge area containing
their most fertile lands, their coal and iron, which accounts for their possession of kerosene
and their access to the Black Sea. Then there is the exploitation of that coal and iron with all
its consequences in the country's system and economic life. A great issue is presented by the
Black Sea coast, ethnically non-Ukrainian, the relation to the Donskoye lands, to the non-
Ukrainian Crimea and even to the Caucasus.
The Russian nation, with its historical traditions and outstanding state instincts, gradually
came to grips with these issues and resolved them in its own way. The new Ukrainian nation
would have had to find its own ways of dealing with all these tasks right away, and would
have unfailingly learned that it was beyond its strength.
True, there would be those who would take care of it, but this is where the tragedy occurs.
There is no human force capable of preventing the Ukraine, detached from Russia and
transformed into an independent state, from becoming a confluence of the world's affaires,
who are now very cramped in their own countries, capitalists and capital seekers, organizers
of industry, technicians and merchants, speculators and schemers, slaughterers and organizers
of all kinds of prostitution: Germans, French, Belgians, Italians, English and Americans
would be hurried to the aid of local or nearby Russians, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, and
finally, most numerous and important of all, Jews. A whole peculiar League of Nations
would have gathered here...
All these elements, with the participation of the cleverer, more business savvy Ukrainians,
would have formed the leading layer, the elite of the country. After all, it would be a special
elite, because probably no country could boast such a rich collection of international
scoundrels.
Ukraine would become an ulcer on the flesh of Europe; and the people dreaming of
producing a cultured, healthy and strong Ukrainian nation, maturing in its own state, would
find that instead of their own state, they have an international enterprise, and instead of
healthy development, a rapid progression of decay and rot.
Whoever supposes that with Ukraine's geographic location and area, with the state of the
Ukrainian element, with its spiritual and material
resources, and finally with the role that the Ukrainian question has in the world's economic
and political position today, it could be otherwise - has not a penny of imagination.
The Ukrainian question has various advocates, both within Ukraine itself and outside its
borders. Among the latter in particular, there are many who know well where they are going.
After all, there are also those who portray the solution of the issue by detaching Ukraine from
Russia as very idyllic. These naive ones would do best by keeping their hands off it.

VI. Russia and Ukraine

From what has been said here about the Ukrainian question, it does not follow that the
Ukrainian people and everything that comes out
of them are seeking separation from Russia. As for the people, it must be said that at the
level of culture at which the people of this part of Europe find themselves, almost their only
concern is their economic affairs, and their attitude to the state depends on how these matters
are treated by the state ruler. Besides, even in the most civilized countries, a nation's political
aspirations are primarily those of its enlightened strata. When it comes to the intelligentsia,
which comes out of the Lesser Russian people in the south of Russia, no small part of it
considers itself simply Russian: not only does it satisfy its cultural needs in Russian, but it
has a Russian political ideology: in turn, it looks upon Lesser Russian speech as a Russian
dialect. Others - and these are growing rapidly in number today - consider themselves
Ukrainians, strive to develop the Ukrainian literary language and defend its official rights, but
for the most part consider Ukraine an integral part of the Russian state. One's attitude toward
present-day Russia depends on who is a Bolshevik and who doesn't want to be one, or has a
crossed path to it.
When it comes to Russians, with the exception of perhaps suicidal doctrinaires, there are
none among them who would grant Ukraine the right to break away from Russia and form its
own state
, independent of it. Some consider the petro-Russian people to be just like Russians; others
look on in a friendly manner at their cultivation of their literary language; a third, finally,
grant them the right to one degree or another of political separateness, but all consider
Ukraine to be part of the Russian state, forever linked to it.
This is not to say that the Ukrainian question, with all the factors that create and support it, is
not a serious and dangerous issue for Russia. Ukraine, as the most serious part of the Russian
state in economic terms, is the land on which all of its future development depends. Having it
in the war is no less important.
The present Soviet Russia, like the former Czarist Russia, is the most military state in the
world. Its army is often looked upon primarily as the Red Army, destined to work in tandem
with the world revolution. It seems that the Soviet government itself likes its militarism to be
viewed in this way. Meanwhile, when we take a closer look at things, we have to conclude
that this is first and foremost the Russian army, whose existence and size are triggered by the
need to maintain the entirety of the state and defend its borders.
In various parts of it, Russia is threatened by uprisings. We recently saw an uprising in
Azerbaijan, a country with a virtually Turkish population. It was an uprising not the first and
not the last. Azerbaijan is Baku, and Baku is kerosene; and kerosene today, unless it is in
English or American hands, is taking ownership of a strong political ferment. Increasingly, it
is being followed by the appearance of another strange liquid on the surface of the earth -
blood. Incidentally, besides the Americans and the English, there are other nations, mainly
the Germans, who think they would know how to deal with kerosene. We also encounter
these special properties of kerosene in our Podkarpacie region, where political ferment is very
strong in relation to the amount of kerosene. In this oil area we have to deal with foreign
entrepreneurs, not only industrial, but also political: these, like those there, revive the
movement with the help of foreign capital.
Besides, it is not only oil Azerbaijan that is ready to spice up Soviet Russia under favorable
circumstances with considerable internal difficulties.
The matter of defending the borders against an external enemy is most serious in the Far
East, and promises to be threatening in the distant future. The contact
established with China, which is incomparably closer than it was under Czarist Russia, no
longer allows for stagnation in Chinese affairs: it is necessary either to make Bolshevism in
China or to war with China. The moment the Kuomintang, or any other Chinese government,
deals internally with its communists, it will undoubtedly begin to press Russia to oust it from
its positions in the Far East. The Soviets, it seems, understand this well: hence China
occupies the first place among their interests.
This is not the place to dwell at length on China. It
is enough to point out first of all that the Chinese, having the most overpopulated country in
the world, are among the most energetic colonizers. This energy of theirs has intensified in
recent times: in the last straight few years, they have advanced the colonization of so-called
Inner Mongolia - which for Russia is not indifferent - so brilliantly that it has turned into a
Chinese country. Even more important for Russia is that the same thing is being done in
Manchuria. Soviet Russia has already had a fierce conflict with China in Manchuria recently,
and must be prepared for a new one in short order. In turn, war with China promises to be
less and less of a toy, not only because it is assimilating the European art of war and
exercising itself militarily in its civil wars, but also, and above all, because of its economic
and technological evolution of recent times.
China is a great agricultural country. However, they are also and have always been a great
industrial country. Only, cut off from the world, entrenched in the old Chinese production
methods. They are
now switching to European methods with great speed. Having all the most important raw
materials in abundance, they are increasingly converting grain into flour, cotton and silk fiber
into cloth, ore into iron and steel, sand into glass, etc., in factories built according to the latest
requirements of European technology. This is facilitated by the fact that they are one of the
world's richest countries in coal. A thesis war with China will increasingly be a war against
an industrial state, and that sounds very serious.
If Russia were to be deprived of Ukraine - and thus coal, iron and kerosene were stripped
away - its prospects for opposing China in a war would soon become slim. The
story of the near future would be one of state advancement and Chinese colonization toward
Lake Baikal, and then reliably beyond. This would be Russia's undoing, from the point of
view of more than one politician, a desirable one. After all, the time would come, and perhaps
quite soon, when European nations would perceive and even feel that China is too close. This
position makes it imperative for Russia, whatever government may rule in it, to defend
Ukraine as its land, with the sense that its loss would be a death blow to it.

VII. Views of Realization

With all of Ukraine's importance to Russia, and with Russia's farthest-reaching readiness to
defend it, and finally with all of its militarism, it is conceivable that this valuable country
could be torn away from Russia. Russia's military strength would not be sufficient to wage a
successful war simultaneously on two fronts, and a strong assault on it from the West in the
event of its war in the Far East, which is very possible even in the near future, would have to
end fatally for it. Then the Ukrainian program could become a reality.
After all, for there to be an enemy occupation of Ukraine, that enemy must be Poland and
Romania. For
the greatest powers of the world to want to tear Ukraine away from Russia and be ready to
sacrifice much for this, their intentions will remain only good intentions if the main
executors of their will are not Poles and Romanians, or at least Poles themselves.
This is where the whole difficulty of implementing the Ukrainian program occurs.
The Romanians understand well that they would at least pay for building a Ukrainian state
with Bessarabia. They know full well that any appetite for Bessarabia that surfaces from time
to time on the part of the Soviets originates not in Moscow, but in Kharkov and Kiev. Were it
not for Moscow's brake, the situation in this matter would be much sharper. For Romania, it
is safer to have as a neighbor a large state whose policy necessarily shifts its center of gravity
more and more to Asia, than a smaller state that centers its interests on the Black Sea. Hence,
awakening enthusiasm in Romania for tearing Ukraine away from Russia is not an easy thing.
Even more important in this matter is the situation, we don't want to say politics, of Poland.
For one of Poland's greatest misfortunes lies in the fact that the decade that has elapsed since
her reconstruction has not been sufficient for her to produce a program of clear, consistent
state policy that corresponds to her position and her interests. Its political split, which
occurred so glaringly during the World War, has not yet ended, although it is fast
approaching its end. The political absurdity of associating with the Central Powers and
bending the entire program of Polish politics to their views has not abolished itself
immediately. The camp that represented this absurdity bound together on the ground of
domestic politics the various elements that gave it support in foreign policy matters, without
understanding them or considering them less important. This gave him the strength to impose
his external policy on the country, in which it is unclear what was a conscious program and
what was simply a habit from past times, from which unmoving thought could not free itself.
Hence, in the policy of the Polish state, we see constant resistance to what was being
imposed, what was the result of the logic of the position, constant attempts to derail it, to
convert it to the paths on which it used to follow in connection with the central states. This
reflected fatally on the international position of the Polish state and even had a negative
impact on the policy of our ally, France.
Fortunately, the experience of ten years and the political maturation of elements that until
recently for matters of external policy did not have cells in their brains, makes Polish thought
quickly unify in these matters; fortunately, we say, because no state can endure two directions
of external policy for a long time, and sooner or later it must pay dearly for such a luxury.
And in relation to the Ukrainian issue, Polish opinion is close to complete unification.
Our position on this issue is very clear. Although we may have the faintest idea about
Ukrainian aspirations, we do have a written document, which is the official program of the
Ukrainian state. This is the Treaty of Brest. Ukrainians who conspire with our conspirators
may even sincerely declare many things today, but a healthy policy cannot be based on
declarations by individuals or organizations, or even official representatives of the entire
nation. It must look first and foremost at what lies in the instincts, in the aspirations of the
peoples and in the logic of things. Whatever the Ukrainian state might be, it would always
have to strive to encompass all the lands where Ruthenian speech resounds. It would have to
strive not only because such are the aspirations of the Ukrainian movement, but also because,
wishing to stand firm in the face of Russia, which would never accept its existence, it would
have to be as large as possible and have the most numerous army. Poland would thus pay a
much higher price than Romania for building a Ukrainian state. After all, this is only one side
of things.
An independent Ukraine would be a state where German influence would dominate. This
would be the case not only because today Ukrainian activists conspire with and have the
support of Germany; and not only because this is what Germany dreams of and has Germans
and Jews in the Ukrainian area who would be their support; but also, and above all, because
the complete realization of the Ukrainian program at the expense of Russia, Poland and
Romania, has a natural, most reliable protector in Germany and must bind Ukrainians to it.
Poland, with the existence of a Ukrainian state, would find itself between Germany and the
German sphere of influence, one might say, a German protectorate. There is no need to
visualize what it would look like then.
Finally, as we said above, the great Ukraine built today would not be so Ukrainian in its
leadership elements and would not present healthy relations on the inside. It would truly be a
boil on the body of Europe, whose neighborhood would be fatal for us.
For a nation, especially a nation like ours that is young and has yet to educate itself to its
destiny, it is better to have as a neighbor a powerful state, even if very foreign and very
hostile, than an international brothel. For all these reasons, the program of an independent
Ukraine cannot count on Poland to stand behind it, much less to shed blood for it. And this
the Polish public already understands very well. We may be dissatisfied with the border line
of the Riga peace, but this does not play a great role in our politics. We may regret, and
undoubtedly heartily regret, our compatriots who even in larger concentrations today live
within the borders of Soviet Ukraine, and the Polish property that others have left there, but
these feelings cannot derail us from the path dictated to us by the good of Poland as a whole,
and its future.We may even sympathize with Russia's French creditors, but we will tell them
that their revindications, although most legitimate, have nothing to do with the great goals not
only of Poland, but also of France.
It seems that the Ukrainian issue no longer has a place in our external policy. Thus, in view
of our position as a neighbor of Russia, and of Soviet Ukraine in particular, the
implementation of the Ukrainian program looks more than doubtful. The final deletion of the
Ukrainian question from the program of our external policy will entail one primarily
momentous result for our state. The treatment of the Ruthenian question in the Polish state as
its internal, and only internal, issue will cease. The temptation to set fire to one's own house
in order to get one's neighbor's house taken from it will disappear.