Mediaboss Marketing

Note from LeftEast: Recently, we ran across Alexander Nogovishchevs very impressive MA thesis entitled Political Communication in the USSR in the early 1960s: Discussing the CPSU Program, which proposes to examine the Soviet Union of that period (and as a whole, really) as a socialist project and to take seriously its Marxism. In the process, using canonical historical material, it reaches very fresh conclusions of major import to any leftist seeking to make sense of the Soviet experience. We decided to interview the author.

Please, tell us a little about the Program its origin, content, and consequences.

The history of writing the draft Program of the CPSU in 1961 is more than forty years long. During Stalins time, there were numerous initiatives to write such a program, but none of them came to fruition. The system worked successfully without the Program since all strategic decisions were formalized by party resolutions at congresses.

After the war, the party returned to the idea, when it became necessary for the first time to redefine the development of the state. Thus, the drafts of the draft Program of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) of 1947 appeared. They contained many innovations of the supposedly thaw period: the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries, the construction of communism in a few decades, and others.

From 1958 to 1961, the preparation of the Program began in earnest. This was because Khrushchev and his team were looking for conceptual innovations that would distinguish them from Stalinism, not only for rhetorical, but also for ideological, political, and economic reasons. In 1959, the period of full-scale construction of communism was proclaimed. At this time, a reform plan began to be drawn up.

Khrushchev approached the preparation of the Program more inclusively, but not more democratically. Unlike Stalin, he involved not only party workers in the drafting of the document but also civil servants from the Academy of Sciences.

The discussion of the draft Program was both unprecedented and ordinary. What made it unprecedented was its scale: many newspapers and public organizations were involved, and the entire Soviet population was intended to be involved in the discussion. What made it ordinary was the fact that the approaches used by the initiators of the discussion were very typical of the Thaw.

The repressive logic of Stalinism began to gradually recede: dissenters were no longer understood as direct enemies. Instead, they were perceived as ignorant.. The task of the party apparatus was no longer to destroy the enemy but to educate the student. But what both of these logics had in common was that they were authoritarian in their own way. Even allowing for discussions and suggestions from citizens, their role was reduced to useful remarks. The ones that were accepted were purely technical; there was no politics in them. Most of the political statements were either ignored, either because of the unprogrammatic content or redirected to the relevant bodies, where they were added to the archives.

The program was written during a period of extraordinary optimism: in April of that year, the first man was launched into space, and social benefits began to reach their then-unprecedented development. This created both many optimistic expectations among the population and skepticism. Both optimism and skepticism received their development in the form of a collective alternative political program from those proposals, letters, and objections from citizens that we have. So, optimistic people believed that 20 years was too long, and they wanted to speed up the process of communist development. Some of them proposed the construction of pilot communities and, the transition to a cashless economy.

Skeptics believed that communism wouldnt be established in those terms. Some of the proposed more stable, but not less radical measures, such as the collectivization of countryside recreational houses (dachas), yachts, cars, and other scarce objects and items that can be used in rotation.

Despite the large number of alternative proposals, there were no political consequences from their letters, except for the disappointment that came in 1980 from communism not coming. Almost all the proposals made were only placed in the Soviet archives and were not taken into account, except for various complaints. For example, the government responded to outrage about the lack of pensions for collective farmers, which was decided in 1964, although not in full.

With hindsight, however, the political proposals may be significant for researchers of the Soviet to show that the path that led to the collapse of the USSR had alternatives. The assessment of their prospects is a matter of debate, but I believe much more plausible than was previously thought. Some works on the subject also show that political dissent was much more complex than the generally accepted notion of dissidence. Consequently, the number of people involved in this dissent was much higher than previously thought.

Is it fair to call your work a study of socialism with a human face based on the populations reaction to one of its main documents the Program of the Communist Party of the USSR of 1961?

Yes and no. Im not fond of the term socialism with a human face because it is closely related to a well-known dichotomy of leftist ideas. It is premised on the idea that old orthodoxies must inevitably evolve exclusively towards deradicalization and erosion of their communist content. That is, you can be either radical and outdated or modern and moderate. In this logic, any socialism is seen as either a self-marginalizing thing or a self-liberalizing thing.

My research describes the political reactions of Soviet citizens to the discussion of the 1961 CPSU Party Program. I try to show that among them there were not only loyal but also completely dissident, pragmatic as well as exotopic (out-of-place) statements. My study concerns a group of people distinct from all these other groups. This group was too politicized to be exotopic, too concerned not only with their own but with the common good to be pragmatic, too hesitant to be loyal to the regime, and too loyal to be dissident. This group of people was part of Soviet socialist discourse, but not in the same way that the highest Soviet officials were. It was independent from the official authorities, and also from the dissidents. This group represents another form of political expression in the USSR. But traditionally it was not considered in historiography as an independent problem until now.

The very discourse of the Soviet citizens I am examining had not only similarities but also differences with socialism with a human face. While there are certain programmatic similarities, conceptually it called for a leap forward rather than a modernization of the current state of affairs. I think its more correct to call it a kind of communism that breaks out of the familiar context of Sovietness. By this, I mean that the status quo in the USSR should be considered the post-war period, not the pre-war period. Consequently, I consider a human face, or more precisely, attempts to find it to be the norm, not its absence. I do not take the position of a deformed workers state or any other allegedly spoiled socialism. On the contrary, I believe that the Soviet Union was not moving towards its degradation, but towards its maturation in a more democratic, inclusive, and stable way, which was not possible during the years of revolution or Stalinism. Although this reassembly of the socialist project eventually ended up in failure, I do not believe that the USSR could not have accomplished it at all this is one of the main political conclusions from my research.

But if we take socialism with a human face to be some democratic iteration of socialism, then of course yes, one can draw parallels between my research and what the term represents. But I tend to think of this term as a stage of socialism without the revolutionary context. Just as French liberal democracy stabilized in the second half of the 19th early 20th century, Soviet socialism, in my opinion, entered a stage of stabilization (unfortunately, unsuccessful).

You write that new materials are hardly used today to interpret the Soviet Union as a socialist project. Changing this trend is one of the main methodological contributions of your work. Could you explain why this trend is observed in the current political context?

With few exceptions, the trend toward localized studies is now more popular. How Soviet people dressed, what kind of medical treatment they got, how they received information all of these are important research questions, although my research is rather different.

I also understand the trend of searching for commonalities between the USSR and the USA or Western European countries. This is because earlier, when the Soviet Union itself still existed, there was a lot of comparative research on ideology and politics.

I am a leftist, and I came to history as a science because I want to change the world. But I am not satisfied with the classical (and non-classical) leftist answers. I believe that the experience of the USSR, especially the post-war experience, has been undeservedly thrown out of leftist theory and leftist consideration. It is considered too revisionist by the orthodox left, while the progressive left finds in it too many regressive aspects incompatible with a contemporary progressive left agenda (authoritarianism, conservatism, patriarchy, and so on). I believe that to reassemble leftist discourse today, it is important to reject our biased view of the Soviet socialist heritage and to look at it in its own right. Not only do we as leftists have to interpret the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union has the right to oppose our political concepts with its existence and practices that do not fit into either orthodox or progressive Marxist concepts.

I stand in strict opposition to those who deny Soviet socialism the status of socialism simply because subjectively they dont like it. Although I have a sympathetic view of my research object, I also see many negative aspects of the USSR. However, I dont believe that for leftists the very concept of socialism should indicate something good a priori. Just as there are many different capitalisms for liberals and right-wingers, and they all prefer a particular one rather than all of them together, so too, I believe, should the left. Otherwise, I dont see the point of such a concept if it is so dependent on the actors and their political intentions.

I aim to show that the research lacuna has not been filled: we still have something to say about the Soviet past as a socialist project. We need to return to this question again because the possibilities for answering it are much wider than they were 60-70 years ago. The collapse of the USSR has brought a large number of historical sources into circulation, and the distance from Soviet society makes it possible to approach the question less emotionally.

In this sense, I am neither an apologist nor a critic of the Soviet Union. I believe that the Soviet Union is a research problem that the left faces, which can only be dialectically resolved. It cannot be solved either by embracing it or rejecting it. What is needed is a set of fundamentally new conceptual practices that lie fundamentally outside current Marxist models. I will say that I have been researching this issue as part of a different, more political intellectual project. I am in the process of publishing my book on the Russian radical left movement (1988-2022), its intellectual practices, its crisis, and ways of overcoming it. In it, I try to answer in more detail the question of the possible foundations of the methodological impasse.

What is political subjectivity and why/how does the problem of political subjectivity haunt Soviet historiography?

In many ways, it is a conventional construct, which I use to separate the space of the political, which is everything, from the old notion of politics as a contest of ideas, programs, projects, and their public defense.

Initially, reflection on political subjectivity and subjectivity emerged from the totalitarian school as a way of understanding the place of citizens within a totalitarian system. Revisionists, however, expanded this notion by emphasizing the non-obvious practices of the Soviet system, where there is a place not only for one-party politics and one-candidate elections but also for complaints, patron-client relations, the use of official rhetoric for their ends, et cetera. Alexei Yurchak wrote about spaces that did not exist at all in the form that many have sought before him.

Despite its obvious merits, all such approaches have led to the Soviet being quite rarely discussed as political in the narrow sense, and hence socialist. I, on the other hand, consciously return to a narrow notion of the political as something that requires an awareness of oneself as a political person. For me, it is fundamentally important to separate people who, for example, complain in the name of communism that its roof is leaking, from people who propose the introduction of alternative elections, who write open letters pointing out public problems, who speak not only for themselves, but also take the liberty of speaking on behalf of an entire collective and interest group.

My research deals with the fact that there are political forces even under socialism and that this is potentially normal for the system. These political forces may not only be part of the system or revolutionaries in relation to it; there is also what we would call in a more open system a moderate opposition.

For the left, recognizing such phenomena will allow it to break down the dichotomy of capitalist democracy and socialist authoritarianism. This perspective can yield much more than abstract philosophizing about popular sovereignty.

The focus of your research is the reception of the Program in the expanded public sphere of the Thaw era. What was that reception like? Could you be more specific about the social groups that participated in this public debate?

In my research, I identified five groups of statements, of which I chose to work with only one. I was interested in that group of people who, even with the utmost skepticism about the politicization of Soviet citizens, cannot be excluded from the list of politically active people. They took the liberty of speaking not only on their behalf but also on behalf of the collectives; they proposed innovations that required not taking into account simply their opinions about the placement of commas and the use of words in the text or changing the financial situation of individuals. So, if proposals for solving specific material problems of one person or group can be reduced to just pragmatic practices, then proposals affecting the Soviet society as a whole cannot be reduced to such practices. For example, proposals to introduce alternative elections cant be considered pragmatic. These proposals werent so much focused on local problems as they demanded reforms of the entire Soviet system or its aspects.

If we take this community of people in social terms, it was very diverse: it included workers, collective farmers, old and new Party members. I would like to emphasize the latter separately: very often the Communist Party in the USSR is seen as a kind of apparatus detached from the population and opposed to it. However, the party was a way of both political and career realization in the Soviet Union. So it is worth saying that the question is not how much the official or unofficial discourse generated within and by party circles was shared by the population, the discourse of the population was often shared by party ranks up to the republican apparatus. To some extent, this correlates with the party-democratic movement that Roy Medvedev tried to asses to create a subject of political change to transform socialism in a more democratic and social direction.

Not all the proposals presented politically had a left-wing political coloring. But conventionally right-wing statements were quite marginal. I do not venture to say how widespread right-wing sentiment was in the USSR, since not every right-winger will send a letter discussing a socialist program. However, the very existence of repeated socialist, and yet, independent and not unambiguously dissident statements, suggests that a socialist opposition could potentially be formed in the Soviet Union, moderate towards the Soviet system, but still radical towards capitalism.

Your work draws on, but largely diverges from, the revisionist tradition of Soviet historiography. Could you describe the main directions of your polemics with the existing historiography?

We have a fairly serious fundamental disagreement. They are looking for commonalities between the Soviet Union and other modernities, while I am trying to reopen the question of what makes the USSR different. For me, as a leftist researcher, it is important to separate the socialist from the contextual. I stand on the position that the USSR was an early socialist, with features potentially immanent to any socialism. My task is to try to identify such features in light of the rich work of contextualizing the Soviet experience, which the revisionists have already done. My polemic is no longer with them as individual revisionists but with the general historiographical position.

I polemize with Alexei Yurchak more directly. I show that the performative shift he writes about, if it did indeed begin, did so in somewhat different boundaries. I believe that although Stalins death catalyzed some processes in Soviet society, it was not decisive. Even under Stalin, there were already attempts at democratization. Yes, they were not as visible as in the thaw, but the inertia of the system and the authoritarian nature of governance remained and such cases can be found both earlier and later, during both the Brezhnev and Stalinist periods! For me, it is not so much the exact nature of the proposed measures that matters so much, but the dynamics itself. Although I am taking an individual case confined to a fairly narrow period, conceptually I am trying to look at the whole of Soviet history and give it an interpretation on a larger scale.

Do you think that by focusing on questions of material and cultural everyday life, the revisionist tradition of Soviet historiography de-politicized the USSR as a project, and thus removed the political from political economy?

If we mean the political in the narrower criteria that I am taking, then the question arises: who is to be considered a revisionist? Alexei Golubevs recent book The Life of Things: the Materiality of Late Socialism touches on political things in a narrower context. But the context he introduces through his study of materiality is more politically illuminating of the Soviet system than of Soviet citizens. Despite this, I like Golubevs study a lot, and I find it a fine exception to the descriptive practices of many of my colleagues.

What is the relationship between consumer communism and the political subjectivity of Soviet citizens? Your discussion about the presence of a strong egalitarian vector in citizens appeals is particularly interesting.

Alexander Fokin, who has studied the topic previously, distinguishes between ascetic and consumer communism. These represent two conceptual approaches to communism. While asceticism is about tightening ones belts, consumerism is about getting economic benefits here and now. I am not in favor of the latter concept, because it is very difficult to separate the reception of communism and the use of it for personal gain. Politics and pragmatics are so closely linked here that it is hardly possible to distinguish between them.

In a way, I am taking both the easiest and the most difficult path at the same time. I fully take into account all possible skepticism about the politicization of such statements addressed to the 1961 Program. My task is to show that even using all intellectual possibilities to deny the political character of such statements, there is a group of judgments that do not fit into this skepticism even in its extreme form. It is therefore legitimate to distinguish a group of people. My task is not so much to define boundaries as to show that even in the most pessimistic scenario the object of study exists. Hence, it deserves to be a separate problem.

Based on this, I try to analyze what these people are saying even when we are maximally skeptical of their statements. The egalitarian character of these statements is noticeable even in them, which suggests that independent socialist discourse in the USSR is a much broader problem than dissident organizations or individual intellectuals.

Aleksandr Nogovishchev is a MA in history and Russian left activist. His key interests include: contemporary left radicalism, Soviet & post-communist history, intellectual & political history, socialist law & political theory, left & (post) marxist history and studies.He also is a main editor of Russian political resources: Democratic Communism in YouTube and Zloy Sovetolog in Telegram.

Originally posted here:
Was the USSR Socialist?: an Interview with Alexander Nogovishchev - Lefteast

V

eterans Day is observed in the United States on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. It was formerly known as Armistice Day and was given its new name in 1954 at the end of the Korean War to honor all veterans. Veterans Day is observed with memorial ceremonies, salutes at military cemeteries, small-town parades, homes with a flag, and the wearing of poppies.

This day was initially named Remembrance Day, along with a separate Remembrance Sunday by the Commonwealth. To be in London for their celebration during those two days, with my wife, lives in our memory. An ocean of Poppies abounded, flags were flying, church bells rang, and the atmosphere was somber with thanks.

Veterans Day is a time of remembrance that the older generation, along with a new generation of veterans, recognize with their families and friends. At the exact hour of 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, many throughout our nation will be saluting our nations flag and wearing remembrance poppies in honor of those who gave their last breath in securing the freedom that their living brethren so enjoy. It is a day of deep personal thought about the realities that created our nation as a Constitutional Republic.

Veterans slowly fade away, as do all good citizen soldiers, knowing they helped secure a better and safer life for our families, nation, and world. They were not heroes; they were just ordinary citizens from all walks of American life dedicated to preserving their goodwill for their beloved country. Veterans and their families can stand proudly, knowing they did their duty and honored their country without rancor during some of its most troubled and dangerous times.

The older veterans presently living in Northern Virginia throughout their 20th-century military service and most of their military and civilian lives were engaged with the containment of Communism. Communism seemed poised to spread indefinitely, and then it collapsed like a house of cards. It had violated one of the basic tenets of civilization, Thou shalt not kill.

After the collapse of Communism, many opined that the newly established world order would be forever peaceful. However, the opening of the 21st century has created a new generation of veterans fighting a new set of adversaries violating this same tenet of civilized people, Thou shall not kill.

American patriots and their families have been bearing the brunt of many conflicts since before the Revolutionary War. All had a continuous outpouring of brotherly love for one another and their units. The reasons, in my opinion, for our closeness as military veterans: We were personally a part of that essential national organization dedicated to preserving freedom and protecting our families and citizens, the U.S. military. We were proud to be so and to do so. And we remain so.

The many reunions of veterans throughout Northern Virginia that take place every year are the result of an ethos first noted by the ancient Greeks. Phillia never leaves the individual, and the individual never leaves the military. That ethos, brotherly love, remains to the last. It is the unselfish nature of service to the nation of each in the uniform of our countrys military forces that once again brings us together for the nationwide celebration of Veterans Day, Nov. 11, to embrace our Oath of Allegiance, to serve our nations citizens, to salute our flag, and to protect our nations Constitution. And each asks, What more could we have done?

Richard L. Spencer, Ph.D., is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel living near Fort Belvoir.

Read more:
Remembrance Day: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - Fairfaxtimes.com

WASHINGTON A New York man was sentenced on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, on a felony assault charge for his actions during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His actions and the actions of others disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election.

Edward Rodriguez, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was sentenced to 36 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release for assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and inflicting bodily injury. Rodriguez pleaded guilty on Mar. 13, 2023, in the District of Columbia.

According to court documents, on Jan. 6, 2021, Rodriguez deployed bear attack deterrent spray on multiple police officers during the riots outside the U.S. Capitol Building. The assault was captured on video posted to social media. Rodriguez was also seen among a crowd of protesters at the plaza level of the west side of the U.S. Capitol, where he pointed a spray canister at visibly marked law enforcement officers manning a barricade on the plaza and sprayed the officers with a bear attack spray before he retreated into the crowd. Rodriguez also was recorded on video being interviewed on the scene by an independent reporter. In that video, he stated, Here in America, we fight back. We will never surrender to dictatorship, corruption, communism, or socialism. We the people will never put up with their bullsh-t.

Additionally, in body-worn camera video from Metropolitan Police Officers (MPD), Rodriguez was recorded as he deployed bear attack spray at MPD officers stationed at the West front barrier of the Capitol grounds. During portions of these videos, Rodriguez wore a red mask, but for brief moments, he pulled the mask down below his face.

Rodriguez was arrested on July 9, 2021, in Brooklyn, New York.

This case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia. Valuable assistance was provided by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York.

The case was investigated by the FBI's New York and Washington Field Offices. Valuable assistance was provided by the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Capitol Police.

In the 34 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,200 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 400 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, a felony. The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

Follow this link:
New York Man Sentenced on Felony Assault Charge for Actions ... - Department of Justice

(Washington, D.C.) Congressman Glenn Grothman (WI-06) has introducedH. Res. 801, a bipartisan resolution recognizing the cultural and historical significance of the Hmong New Year.

Grothman is joined by Representatives Bryan Steil (R-WI), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), Dean Phillips (D-MN), Jim Costa (D-CA), Scott Peters (D-CA), Sara Jacobs (D-CA) Michelle Steel (R-CA), David Valadao (R-CA), Dina Titus (D-NV) and Young Kim (R-CA).

Wisconsin is the state with the 3rd highest Hmong population and I am privileged to represent one of Wisconsins largest Hmong communities. Each year, I attend the New Year celebrations in my district and am looking forward to attending them again this year in places like Oshkosh and Sheboygan,said Grothman.These celebrations of thanksgiving are an honor to attend the food, music, and dance make these festivals truly special events. The Hmong people will always be dear to my heart for the important role they played helping the United States fight communism in the Vietnam war. I am glad that both sides of the aisle have come together to recognize Hmong Americans significant role in our communities and their pursuit of the American Dream.

The Hmong New Year is a significant cultural tradition in Minnesotas Fourth District, which is home to our nations largest Hmong population,said Congresswoman McCollum.With this resolution, I join my Hmong neighbors and constituents in recognizing the holiday, giving thanks for the harvest, and celebrating the year to come.

Congresswoman Jacobs said,Hmong New Year is celebrated across San Diego and I am proud to recognize this important holiday with my colleagues from both parties in this resolution. I join my Hmong neighbors in giving thanks and celebrating the year to come.

I am proud to join my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to recognize the cultural and historical significance of the upcoming Hmong New Yeara time to honor their ancestors and give thanks for the harvest. I wish everyone who observes the holiday a safe and happy celebration,said Congressman Fitzgerald.

In the Milwaukee-area, the Hmong New Year holds special meaning because of our vibrant Hmong communities and the rich traditions and culture they preserve.It is a time to give thanks and to enjoy family and community, things that are even more valuable in the midst of this pandemic,said Congresswoman Moore.

Congressman Pocan added,The annual Hmong New Year celebrations are a treasured part of Wisconsins community and culture, and we welcome the opportunity to recognize this wonderful tradition. I am happy to support this resolution honoring the Hmong community in Wisconsin and nationwide.

Hmong New Year is one of the greatest and most valued traditions in our San Joaquin Valley. Each year, this celebration draws 100,000 people to honor the rich culture of the Hmong people and welcome the New Year. I am proud to co-sponsor this bipartisan resolution that recognizes the importance of Hmong heritage, and its an honor to represent the Hmong community,said Congressman Costa.

The Hmong New Year is traditionally celebrated at the end of the rice harvest season in Laos and Southeast Asia in late November and early December. In the United States, the Hmong New Year traditions have carried over, occurring from October through December, and have become significant celebrations for Hmong Americans and many others.

Click here to view Grothman floor remarks on the Hmong New Year.

Click here for the full text of the resolution.

View post:
U.S. Rep. Grothman: Bipartisan Hmong New Year resolution - WisPolitics.com

For a group of journalists and scholars, the Nazigate scandal in Parliament back in September seemed an entirely predictable outcome of a broader movement that, they argue, has distorted realities about the Holocaust for decades.

While the story has largely disappeared from international news headlines over the past month, those same journalists and scholars warn that the factors that made such a scandal possible remain deeply entrenched in the Canadian government and civil society.

In this article, we explore the history leading up to the moment when the House of Commons gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a Waffen SS veteran who was introduced as having fought against the Russians during the Second World War.

Some historians see public commemorations that ostensibly recognize victims of both Nazism and communism as part of the problem.

Following the Nazigate scandal, some media commentators and public officials downplayed its significance and suggested that Hunkas unit, the 14th Waffen SS Division, commonly referred to as the Galicia Division, was innocent of any war crimes.

On October 2, Politico ran an op-ed that suggested the public has been conditioned to believe that the Waffen SS primary task was committing genocide and claimed that describing every SS veteran as a criminal is an oversimplification of history. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared the entire Waffen SS to be a criminal organization.

The Politico article echoed longstanding sentiments held among some nationalist Eastern European diaspora groups in Canada. To this day, monuments in Edmonton and Oakville honour veterans of the Galicia Division.

These venerations are typically justified by the fact that the veterans were nationalists who wanted to fight the Soviet Union. This narrative generally equates Nazism and communism as two equally deadly ideologies, and is reflected in Black Ribbon Day, also known as the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.

It is an officially recognized public commemoration in Canada, but derided by critics as a negligent act of antisemitism and historical distortion for which the Canadian government bears considerable responsibility.

Historians and scholars have argued that Black Ribbon Day is inextricably linked with a revisionist historical theory known as the Double Genocide Theory. Advocates of this theory argue that the people of Europe suffered from two genocides: The first committed by the Soviet Union and the second by Nazi Germany.

The idea asserts that the people of Eastern Europe were caught between two equally tyrannical and genocidal superpowers, and that the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis came after the Soviet Union committed a genocide against the predominantly Christian population of Western Ukraine.

Black Ribbon Day is recognized by Canada, the United States and the European Union on August 23, the day that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was signed in 1939, and a little more than a week before the Nazis invaded Poland, starting the Second World War.

Critics say the problem with the Double Genocide Theory is twofold. First, it insinuates that the Holocaust was predicated on an earlier Soviet-led genocide. Second, by drawing a false equivalence, it trivializes the near universally accepted importance of the Holocaust as a genocide that is generally considered to be in a category of its own.

The industrialized mass murder of Jews in Europe via slave labour and death camps came about only after nearly a decade of state-sponsored dehumanization of the Jewish people by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This genocide built on centuries of antisemitism that had been normalized by political and religious leadership, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.

No nation acted to prevent the genocide that was clearly going to happen, not least because of pervasive antisemitism and the common association of Jews with Bolshevism. When Jews came to Canada seeking asylum in June 1939, mere months before the Nazis invaded Poland, the Mackenzie-King government turned them away.

Roughly one in four Jews murdered during the Holocaust were killed with bullets, often by neighbours, with weapons handed out to local collaborators by the Nazis as they invaded the Soviet Union beginning in the summer of 1941. This happened before the Final Solution was adopted as official Nazi policy at the Wannsee Conference of 1942.

Even before Auschwitz and Sobibor began operating as extermination camps, Hitler found willing participants to carry out his plan among local fascist collaborators that emerged from the Baltics to the Balkans and the Black Sea.

Nearly all modern, international, legal understandings of human rights are themselves a consequence of the Holocaust. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and all the legislation, policies, laws and related declarations that have come since stated that it was conceived because of the Holocaust.

Among mainstream professional historians, the enduring consensus is that no other genocide in human history has affected as many people, been so destructive, reached such levels of unimaginable horror, or has been as impactful, as the Holocaust. In fact, to deny or distort the reality of the Holocaust is a crime in many countries.

The idea that the Holocaust was a reaction to earlier Soviet-led crimes, a position held by some commentators such as Askold Lozynskyj, a New York attorney, president of the Ukrainian Free University Foundation, and formerly president of the Ukrainian World Congress between 1998 and 2008, is highly criticized. The theory primarily refers to the Holodomor, the mass starvation, primarily of ethnic Ukrainians, during the Soviet famines of 1931-1933.

The Holodomor is considered to be a genocide by many historians and national governments, including Canada. However, the Holodomor is not generally considered to be a genocide of equal magnitude to the Holocaust.

Further, there is a substantial scholarly debate on whether the Holodomor fits the legal definition of a genocide. Stephen G. Wheatcroft, regarded by some as the foremost international expert on Soviet agricultural policies of the interwar period, has argued that while Stalin was criminally responsible for exacerbating the crisis, brutalizing peasants, and covering up the incompetence of the state and its agricultural and economic policies, the Holomodor was fundamentally accidental. The undisputed consensus among historians is that irrespective of the specific genocide debate, the Holodomor was a crime against humanity.

The problem, according to historian Dovid Katz, with the implicit argument of Black Ribbon Day and the Double Genocide Theory that the Holocaust was predicated on the Holodomor and that they are equivalent genocides is that this is based on the antisemitic myth of Bolshevism being a Jewish conspiracy.

In an interview with The Maple, Katz explained that far-right, ultranationalist, Eastern European historical revisionists are obsessed with revising the history of the Holocaust and Second World War by way of a number of cunning ruses. He explained:

Historians, and scholars interviewed for this article including Katz, Per Anders Rudling (an expert on Ukrainian ultranationalist collaborators) all pointed out that the first stage of the Holocaust began with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the Wannsee Conference of 1942 when Hitler invoked the Final Solution for the murdering of Jews in Europe.

A consistent aspect of this phase of the Holocaust was enthusiastic support for the Nazis among the nationalist elements of the remaining local populations, despite many of these having no connection to the Holodomor or the Soviet famines of 1931-1933.

Commemorating Black Ribbon Day in Canada goes back at least as far as 1986. At the time, the new policies of glasnost and perestroika were opening Soviet society to reform, but this also brought about new challenges to Soviet authority by various ethnic communities within the union and its sphere of influence.

Long unanswered or repressed historical questions began to be asked. In a nearly simultaneous mirroring of what was occurring in the Soviet Union, North Americans began to ask hard questions of their own governments, particularly on the highly controversial and emotionally charged issue of alleged war criminals from Eastern Europe who had found refuge in Canada and the United States.

However, while the Americans created the Office of Special Investigations under the Justice Department in 1979, there was far less interest in investigating similar claims of war criminals having found refuge in Canada after the war. In fact, some researchers recall rumours of former Nazis freely wandering the streets of Canadian cities.

Alvin Finkel, emeritus professor of history at Athabasca University, told The Maple of a peculiar memory from his childhood growing up in the north end of Winnipeg.

Finkel recounted that his father pointed out people on the street, claiming they had fought with the SS, or had otherwise collaborated with the Nazis. Although it didnt mean much to Finkel as a child, as an adult it sparked his curiosity.

When Finkel began investigating the matter in the 1980s, he found substantial, albeit heavily redacted, records at Library and Archives Canada, and published an article on his findings in the Journal of Canadian Studies. But the newspapers werent interested.

The Globe and Mail told me that they'd already published on this, which was a lie, said Finkel. There was a little more honesty [from the Edmonton Journal], saying that they didn't want to offend the Ukrainian community in the city.

When prime minister Brian Mulroney convened the Deschnes Commission to finally investigate the matter in 1986, the commission was hamstrung. As explained by Karyn Ball, a University of Alberta professor who specializes in historical memory and the Holocaust: They set the parameters so narrowly for their investigation of criminality [of the Waffen SS], that they basically blocked out all the crimes that were committed by Waffen SS members before they joined it.

While some collaborators on the Eastern Front joined the SS directly, others volunteered for a wide variety of other Nazi military units, including auxiliary police, some of which were later reformed as SS units. Roman Shukhevych, who had led the Nazi-allied Ukrainian Insurgent Army, had previously commanded auxiliary police units of the wartime German army.

Per Anders Rudling explained in an interview with The Maple that commemorating Black Ribbon Day also coincided with the John Demjanjuk ordeal in the United States.

Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian-American autoworker who came to international attention in the mid-1980s when he was deported to Israel to stand trial for his actions as a death camp guard during the Second World War. Rudling noted that in a 1986 edition of Ukrainian Weekly the promotion of Black Ribbon Day shares editorial space with tributes to Demjanjuk, on how to raise money for him, and even an ad on how the Ukrainian nation is on trial in Israel.

Demjanjuk was ultimately convicted in 2012 as an accessory to mass murder while he was a death camp guard at Sobibor.

Support for Demjanjuk represented part of a larger trend. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communism in Eastern Europe ushered in a new era of nationalism, as well as new opportunities for historical revisionism. In the 30 years since, a small cadre of far-right ultranationalists with particular influence both in Eastern Europe and on the international stage, have, as Katz explained, elevated some of the most brutal and prolific collaborators and perpetrators of the Holocaust to the status of national hero on the grounds that they were anti-Soviet activists.

Shukhevych, a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator responsible for the murders of tens of thousands, and who is commemorated with a monument in Canada, is one of the better known examples of this phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the Progress Report revealed last month that the University of Albertas Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) received donations and endowments worth $1.4 million in the names of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen reported this week that a panel to discuss the Waffen SS was quietly cancelled at the university after professors complained that the CIUS continues to engage in whitewashing Nazi crimes.

As Canadians are now acutely aware, some suspected Eastern European collaborators found postwar refuge in Canada precisely because they were considered reliably anti-communist.

Katz and Rudling believe that there are legitimate victims of communism, and that they ought to be commemorated, as a specific day of recognition provides an opportunity to educate and discuss the nuances and details of the historical record.

But Black Ribbon Day, they said, is too sullied by deliberate efforts to obfuscate historical reality to be of any use.

It is high time for Canada and the other leading democracies to establish a day to commemorate communisms victims, said Katz. It is time to relegate Black Ribbon Day to the proverbial dustbin, and to understand that efforts to downgrade the empirical reality of the Holocausts genocide must be resisted.

Taylor C. Noakes is an independent journalist and public historian from Montreal.

With files from Alex Cosh.

Processing your application Please check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. There was an error sending the email

Here is the original post:
'Nazigate' Has Been Quickly Forgotten, But Scholars Warn Its ... - The Maple