The De-Russification of Ukraine Pt 4, Europe's 1st Concentration Camps.

The Fate of the Galician Russians during World War 1

In my last post I shared some quotes from Lenin where he expressed his pro Austrian sentiment in World War 1 saying it would be better for Russia if Austria won because Russians were a slave race who were only good for oppressing others. Given what Austria did to the Russians of Galicia during World War 1 it’s especially sick that Lenin to this day has several monuments in pretty much every Russian town. Many pro-Russian Westerners think that the “real” Ukraine is limited to Western Ukraine, but this is incorrect, there is no real Ukraine at all if we are speaking of an organic Ukraine. While Western Ukraine wasn’t ever part of the Russian Empire it was populated by Russians who were ethnically cleansed or brutalized into becoming “Ukrainian” by first Austria and then the USSR. From UA-Reporter.com

The mass genocide of the Galician Ruthenians during the First World War has not yet received adequate coverage in modern historiography. In Soviet times, the Russian theme was banned. Official Russian historiography does not seem to be interested in this topic.

Ukrainian researchers today mostly stand on the positions of diasporic historiography, which during the Cold War tried to impose the thesis of the allegedly different ethnic origin of Ukrainians and Russians and the centuries-old ethnic antagonism existing between them. Studying the events that took place during the First World War in the lands of modern Western Ukraine will allow us to rethink some of the postulates introduced into scientific and mass circulation by Soviet and Ukrainian emigrant historians after 1917.

Before the First World War, most of the lands inhabited by Rusyns were part of Austria-Hungary (Eastern Galicia – since 1772, Bukovina – since 1774 and Ugric Subcarpathian Rus – as part of the Kingdom of Hungary since the 13th century. Researchers determine the number of Rusyns in Austria-Hungary by the beginning of the 20th century as being between 3.1 to 4.5 million people.

https://ua-reporter.com/news/talergof-i-terezin-zabytyy-genocid-rusinov

The “Rusyns” being referred to above are just East Slavs, aka Russians. The language they spoke was just rustic Russian. That Western Ukraine should have Russians running around everywhere from the start is expected when you realize that Lvov itself was founded by a Russian King. Frome a Russian history blog:

Daniel of Galicia named Lvov after his son Leo in 1256 (there are other versions stating in 1240, but still by the same prince). and in that year Lvov appears in appears in documents for the first time.

About Daniel of Glacia:

A representative of the senior branch of Vladimir Monomakh's descendants, Prince Daniel was born, according to various sources, either in 1201 or in 1204. In 1205, after his father's death, he became the Prince of Galicia under the real power of the princely boyars, who soon overthrew him. Since 1215, Daniel had been the prince of Volhynia, and by 1231, he had completed the unification of the Volhynian lands, which he had commanded during the battle with the Mongols on the Kalka River in 1223. Although the Russians were defeated, Prince Daniel demonstrated his personal bravery and military prowess.

In 1230, Daniel finally took control of Halych, but it wasn't until 1238 that he fully established himself there. In 1240, he occupied Kiev, becoming the Grand Prince of Kiev. In 1245, in the Battle of Yaroslav, Daniel of Halych defeated the forces of the Galician boyars and the Polish-Hungarian troops, marking the end of a nearly 40-year struggle for his father's inheritance.

This marked the beginning of a new era in the history of Southwestern Principality Rus.

The lands of Galicia and Volhynia were the gates of Russia, through which the Russian principalities and European states maintained constant contact in the Middle Ages.

https://ukraina.ru/20190611/1023862386.html

I don’t have much faith in the accurateness of official history but as per the canon story Lvov was Russian and constituted the Western border of this Russian Kings Domain. Everyone knows that the term “kraie” in Russian means an edge, border, a shore or something like that. From the English Wiki about the word Ukraine:

Wiki is about as PC and therefore pro Ukrainian as it’s possible to be while at least pretending to be objective. Even they are admitting that from the very first time the word appears in 1187 until the 18th Century it had one specific meaning that had nothing to do with an ethnic group called Ukrainians. This means there is no way Danial of Galicia was a Ukrainian and Galicia was in fact the “edge” or “border” of Rus domains at the time. In short order this borderland territory would be lost to the Poles but the people living there would not become Ukrainians for many centuries. Life.ru writes:

In the 14th century, the city came under Polish rule, and later under Austrian rule, which led to its de-Russification in the early 20th century, forcing all those who identified as Russian or Ruthenian into concentration camps.

During the period when Western Ukraine was under Polish rule the Poles would start settling the territory turning it into a real melting part with all the ensuing benefits and vibrancy which would explode into fairly savage pogroms during WW2 against the Poles and the jews they brought with them. By the time the Red Army occupied Western Ukraine in 1939 about 36% the population of Western Ukraine considered themselves Polish, and 37% were Russian or self-conscious Ukrainians. Then 15% were apparently “Belarussian” and there were a bunch of jews and whoever. The Poles and jews dominated the urban centers.

Life.ru explains:

Was Lvov Ukrainian in those years? No. According to local officials the city had a population of 312,000. 63.5% were Polish, 24.1% were Jewish, 7.8% identified as Ukrainian, 3.5% were Ruthenians (Russians).

https://life.ru/p/1524008

When Western Ukraine fell under Poland after World War One being either a self-identifying Ukrainian or Russian was basically illegal and only Jews and Poles were involved commercial activities or government service with Ukrainians and Russians being limited to an impoverished, illiterate agrarian cast. The Poles conducted a fairly brutal de-Ukrainization of Western Ukraine when Poland inherited the Austrio Hungarian Empires Galician Possessions. Austria Hungary had sponsored Ukrainian Departments in Universities as a means of de-Russifying/Ukrainization of the East Slavic local intellectuals and the Poles promptly shut these down. The Ukrainian language was banned in State and Educational Institutions and even the “term” Ukrainian to describe an Indvidual dropped out of use. During this brief period between 1920 and 1939 the Polish Occupation Government referred to Ukrainians as either “little Poles” or more commonly cattle. Personally, I think these are all good policies and in an alternative reality where Russia has a chance of winning the SMO I would hope that the RF would adopt similar policies. However, the Poles went above and beyond all this and outright confiscated what little good agricultural land was available in Western Ukraine. The Poles basically re-instated the old feudal system of the Polish Lithuanian Common Wealth, Polish military settlers took over the agricultural land and the local Ukrainians literally became serfs with no rights whatsoever on their former land. This is exactly why the Banderist would be much more interested in massacring Poles than in fighting the Soviets and just like under the Old Commonwealth the jews lived very well in Polish Ukraine hence the Banderist targeted them frequently as well. However, these “Ukrainians” were a product of many years of de-Russification under Austria Hungary which culminated in outright ethnic cleansing during WW1. From a Russian History Blog in regards to Austrio Hungarian policy in Western Ukriane:

In the 70s of the 19th centuries, the Austrians tried to introduce the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, which led to a pre-revolutionary situation so they abandoned the idea. Then the reformers acted more cunningly: they abolished several Russian letters ("yat", y, ъ) and introduced two of their own. New spelling was introduced by order in schools, courts and other departments. Textbooks were printed only in the new dialect, and teachers in schools, especially rural ones, were recruited from among Russophobes.

Further - more. In 1890, the deputies of the Galician Sejm Romanchuk and Vakhnyanin announced from a high rostrum that the people of Galicia were not Russian, but Ukrainian. Nationalist Mykhailo Hrushevsky was tasked with writing the history of the Ukrainian people, which had never existed before. Persecution of the Orthodox faith began. The Russian Uniate Church was headed by a Pole - Count Sheptytsky. The seminary stopped accepting young people with Russian beliefs and took only ardent Russophobes. Over time, under the influence of Ukrainianizing teachers and priests, the worldview of the majority of Galicians changed. They began to consider themselves Ukrainians, not Russians.

All this was carried out with the complete connivance of the tsarist regime. He did not realize the danger of what was happening and did not interfere. Not a penny was allocated for the fight against Ukrainization until 1909. Well, in 1909, the emperor for the first time donated a pitiful 15 thousand rubles for these purposes at the request of Stolypin. In fact, tsarism betrayed millions of Russians in Galicia, but the people there, especially in rural areas, did not accept Ukrainianism for a long time. As a result, even in the 1910s of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Galicians considered themselves Russian people.

https://dzen.ru/a/ZTQaWExkrQ-bl0mP?ysclid=md3c8w3cqy438174579

Anyone who has read my previous posts dealing with the de-Russification of Ukraine should remember the Bolshevik Hrushevsky. It’s just such a darkly hilarious fact of history that “Ukrainian” history as we know it was written by an Astrain Agent/Bolshevik just like Lenin. And today the hohols rage and rage at the USSR when it was the USSR that gave Russian identity in Galicia the coup de grace. Anyway, that’s obviously a pro Russian source but there is absolutely no lie there whatsoever. The phenomenon of Moscow not even remotely giving a shit about Russians stranded abroad in enemy territory is nothing new at all and we need to understand that the Romanovs were not Slavs and accordingly they were not concerned with the wellbeing of Slavs, much less Russians in particular. History doesn’t rhyme so much as it’s just the exact same story over and over again if we are speaking of Russia. Notice though that even right up until the 1910s lots of Galicians still hadn’t adopted Ukrainian identity. Come World War 1 the Austrians, the people Lenin was championing would move from soft de-Russification to outright ethnic cleansing against Galicians who resisted the Ukranian astro turfed identity being imposed on them. From Lenta:

When Galicia, a historical region in western Ukraine, is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the events of World War II and the SS division of the same name, formed from Ukrainian volunteers. However, only a hundred years ago, Galicia (the Russian name for the region) was known not as the center of the Ukrainian national movement, but as a stronghold of Russian and Orthodox culture in Austria-Hungary. The Austrians, not without reason, suspected the locals of sympathizing with Russia, and with the beginning of the First World War, a form of paranoia began with the search for Russian spies and agents of influence. The fight against the Russian threat ended with the creation of the first concentration camp in Europe and the genocide of the local population

I seriously can’t say that the Austrians did anything wrong from a logical standpoint, the locals really were pro-Russian and therefore dangerous because they were literally Russians. I just seethe about it because I’m a Russophile. This BTW is why I don’t blame Stalin for deporting the Volga Germans no matter how much edgy rightwingers cry about him doing so. If you are an Edge Lord who berates the USSR over the Volga Germans you ought to also cry about what the Austrians did the Galician Russians, but I know you won’t. Anti USSR hyper signaling really is just a facade for anti-Russian sentiment amongst roughly 45-50% of internet storm troopers. But as we are going to see here what the Galician Russians went through at the hands of the Austrians was every bit as bad as what the Volga German went through. From the same Lenta Article:

The fight against Russian intelligence agents put the Austrian government in a difficult position. On the one hand, it is impossible to shoot everyone who is suspected of sympathizing with Russia. After all, this is Europe and not the Middle Ages. On the other hand, those arrested simply ceased to be placed in existing prisons. It was then that the authorities thought about creating new camps.

The technology of creating concentration camps was successfully tested by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 and by the Germans during the suppression of the uprising in Namibia in 1904. However, what was permissible in faraway Africa by the harsh standards of the early 20th century seemed savagery in Europe. But this did not stop the Austrians.

In September 1914, the first group of Rusyns arrived at the Talerhof concentration camp. More precisely, then there was only a name, and the camp itself did not yet exist. A section of a field in the foothills of the Alps, fenced with rows of barbed wire and soldiers around the perimeter. And that's it. The first barracks appeared in Talerhof only in the winter of 1915. Before that, people lived in the open air for six months, in the rain and snow. The conditions were so harsh that in December, Priest John Mashchak wrote in his diary that 11 people were bitten to death by lice.

In such conditions, diseases spread rapidly. The inhabitants of Talerhof suffered from cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, scurvy, tuberculosis and other diseases that became fatal due to the weakened state of people. The epidemics were so ferocious and the treatment so useless that one in five prisoners died in the first six months.

Hunger also took many lives. The prisoners of the concentration camp received a fifth of the already meager army ration. This is how the prisoner Talerhofa describes it: "There was no need to think about normal food: tart bread, often raw and sticky, made from the waste of the lowest standard flour, horse chestnuts and grated straw."

ttps://lenta.ru/articles/2018/09/02/galicia/

There are some pretty blood chilling stories of torture taking place at these camps and perhaps they are exaggerated but there is definitely some truth to them IMO for the following reason:

The guards in the camps of Terezín and Talerhof were mostly Bosnians, but according to Vavrik, their former brothers behaved most frenziedly: "A soulless German could not get his iron boots into the soul of a Slavic Rusyn as deeply as this Rusyn who called himself a Ukrainian."

Источник: Why did the Austrians build concentration camps for Russians in 1914 - Russian Seven
© Русская Семерка russian7.ru

The Austrians consciously put either Bosnians or proto hohols as staff at these camps. We read in my last post about the de-Russification of Ukraine that the USSR recruited proto hohols to oversee collectivization in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic. If we have no problem believing that Collectivization in the Ukranian SSR was a brutal affair where lots of people were killed and tortured why would it be different here in Galicia when proto hohols were given free rein to brutalize Russians who were rejecting the fake Ukrainian Identity?

There were many "Mazepas" among the camp guards. And they, currying favor with the Austrians, did not spare even their relatives who ended up in Talerhof for suspicion of Russophilia. The Galicians killed the Galicians.

https://dzen.ru/a/ZtgkuSJxP3ymYvpf?ysclid=md3eosofl4112372617

Mazepa is a reference to the Cossack Hetman Mazepa who sided with Sweden against Russia during the Great Northern War. If you have no trouble believing that SBU tortures pro Russians than you should have no problem understanding that yes conditions at these camps were horrific. There are some pretty grim photographs of people being hung, crucified etc such as the thumbnail to this post that are easily locatable on Russian Language internet but I’m not going to engage in non-contextual atrocity porn posting, I only want to establish that conditions at these camps were no better than what the Bolsheviks would meet out. Since we are speaking of Ukraine than we should note that the same people brutalizing Russians on behalf of Austria would than do so on behalf of the USSR 20 years later.

From the Life article once more:

Were there spies among the local Orthodox population? It's possible. The Russian General Staff, of course, was preparing for war and certainly had its agents in the ranks of the Austrian army, but it was impossible and inexpedient to recruit thousands of people. The actions of the Austrians in this case strongly resemble the methods of the Soviet state security agencies, which identified thousands of agents of foreign intelligence services throughout the country.

However, the Soviet comrades clearly did not work well in comparison with the Austrians. In Austria-Hungary, denunciations were encouraged not only ideologically, but also financially. In their manifestos and proclamations, the military and administrative authorities promised from 50 to 500 crowns to anyone who denounced a Ruthenian.

We read in my last post about just how pro Austria and pro Ukrainian Lenin was and maybe it’s not a coincidence that the USSRs approach to rooting out spies and saboteurs so closely resembles the Austrian method? Obviously paying people to make denunciations is going to net you many thousands of denunciations in very short order and the investigators aren’t going to be able to verify every case. They will imprison first and basically check up on everything….roughly never. There wasn’t a general criterion for who was to be imprisoned besides a general suspicion that an individual might be pro-Russian so naturally the entire Galician Russian intelligentsia was arrested, then the Orthodox Priests and then anyone who was denounced. It would not be an exaggeration to say that being Russian in Galicia during WW1 was kind of just waiting to be repressed. The proto hohols had free reign over the Russians and you need to remember this was wartime and what happened to suspected spies and saboteurs during wartime in those days? And the thing is the Austrians were probably correct to not trust the Galician Russians. When the Russian Army briefly conquered Galicia the local Russians met them as Liberators after all. When Galicia again fell to Austria a local account claims the following:

Ivan Terletsky was dragged along the road. The Magyars were choking with laughter and joy when they saw the body of a Russian villager beating against sharp stones and hard ground, bleeding thick blood. In the village of Bukovina in the same county, Magyar Hussars shot and interrogated 55-year-old peasant Mikhail Kot, the father of 6 children. And what an inhuman revenge was taking place in the village of Tsunev, Gorodosky district! There , Austrian soldiers arrested 60 peasants and 80 women with children. The men were separated from The women were placed by the trees. The soldier threw a noose around their necks and hung them one by one. After a few minutes, the rest of the soldiers removed the bodies, and the living were bayoneted. Mothers, wives and children witnessed this savage massacre. Is it possible to put into words their despair? No, there are no words or power for that! In the village of Zaluzhye in the same district, soldiers brutally shot 5 peasants: Ivan Koval, Ivan Mikhailishin, Grigory Sned, Stanislav Dakhnovich and Vasily Stetsyk, and in the neighboring village of Velikopol, out of 70 peasants arrested, the Magyars stabbed with bayonets.: Ivan Oliarnik, Semyon Bendu, Vasily Yatsyk, Vasily Kmet, Maria Kmet, Pavel A shepherd whose arms were broken earlier. And that wasn't enough for them! When they left, they took the young girls with them. With each passing day of brutal slaughter, the bloody work of the executioners grew in size. In the village of Kuzmin, Dobromilsky district, the Austrians hammered iron hooks into the walls of huts and hung people on them. In one day, 30 peasants were hanged. In the village of Trostyants, they tortured Matvey Kassian, Ivan and Evstafy to death. Klimovskikh and shepherd Dudu. In the village of Kvasenin, a rabid officer shot a peasant Pavel Korostensky just because he failed to explain to him where the Russian intelligence service had gone In the village of Kretsovaya Volya, and soldiers hanged peasant Peter Tkach from a willow tree. All these horrors happened in Dobromilsky district. According to the denunciation of gendarme Kholyava, peasants were hanged in the village of Vygoda, Dolinsky district: Matvey Petrik, Ivan Gainyuk, Osip Fedinyak, Dorofey Sosnik, Elena Coverdan. Together with the gendarme, a degenerate named Vinnitsky raged in the outskirts, stunned An “independent man," and he was guided in his insignificant actions by something other than an “idea.”, Like an insatiable thirst for profit: whoever was arrested gave a rich ransom for himself, he set free; whoever had no money ended up on the hook.

https://makeevdon.narod.ru/pages/files_sbor/Terezin.i.Talergof.pdf

Notice that the account names names and specifically says that all these executions were taking place based on denunciations that were motivated by financial gain. And would Hungarians not be brutal towards people that had met Russian troops as liberators? If you are going to wave this all away as lies than you are just coping. This account isn’t even talking about the concentration camps; these are just reprisals against Russian villagers which is totally understandable in its proper historical context. The war was going badly for Austria and the Austrian military probably with some justification did not trust these Galician Russians. Like the 3rd Reich would do a few decades later the Austrians outsourced their punitive operations to the absolute most vile scum in Europe besides the jews themselves.

The general consensus amongst the very few historians that have looked into this episode of Russian/Ukrainian history is that between the concentration camps and punitive operations described above that around 60k Galician Russians were murdered/died during World War 1 out of total population of around 1.5 million. Considering that the population of self-conscious Ukrainians was twice as high this population loss would hit the Galician Russians hard. The intelligentsia in particular was wiped out completely. We often hear that it was especially cruel that the USSR wiped out the Russian intelligentsia, but the NKVD had an Austrian Template that they were working off of. And actually, the USSR just outright created the Ukrainian intelligentsia from the people that murdered the Galician Russian intelligentsia. On top of the 60k that were murdered and died of exposure or diseases in the camps many Russians simply fled with the retreating Russian Army because they correctly suspected that reprisals were incoming further compounding the effects of the ethnic cleansing. Ironically Czechs and Poles in the Austrian Parliament protested against the excesses of the anti-Russian crackdown in Galicia:

All Muscophile deputies in the Austrian parliament were arrested. In 1915, the trial of seven Russian activists, including deputies Dmitry Markov and Vladimir Kurilovich, began. Dmitry Markov behaved incredibly courageously at the trial, and when asked about his political views, he openly stated:

"I am protected by the truth, and the power of truth is irresistible. This truth is my national idea, the idea of the cultural and national unity of the Russian tribes.

In spite of the fact that today this idea has been crushed by the heavy stones of hostile political aspirations, I am convinced that this idea, this truth of mine, will find its way to the light! And since the goal of Ukrainianism is negative, namely, the destruction of the single national culture of the Russian tribes, I do not consider it a cultural movement, I consider it contrary to culture, and for these purely cultural reasons I am not a supporter of Ukrainianism.

All the defendants were sentenced to death. Russian politicians interceded for them, the king of Spain asked for pardon, and their death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Those who did not ask to pardon the Russian activists were their colleagues, Galician-Ukrainian politicians. When Polish members of parliament protested against the terror in Carpathian Rus and Galicia, declaring that 30,000 had been executed and 80,000 internees, that this barbarism should be stopped, the Ukrainian deputies did not support the protest. Deputy Vladimir Kurilovich, who was sentenced to death, recalled the trial:

«… they read the indictment – stupid phrases and fairy tales that could not convince any lawyer, but convinced the famous Ukrainian chauvinist – Pavlyukh, who behind my shoulders, on the bench, roars, foams loudly: "Hoferretern aufchengen!" – to hang the traitors! Then hundreds of witnesses pass. The Germans, Czechs, and Poles give testimony either favorable to us or indifferent to us; but our "twins" fantasize (I won't say – I'm sorry – they are delusional), and everyone finishes: Crucify! Crucify Russia! Save Austria!"

https://history.wikireading.ru/321586?ysclid=md3jbx3iwh66771146

This spectacle being described is like Shakespearean tragedy. I can seriously relate to everyone involved except the hohols themselves. What the pro-Russian Galician activist is saying is just plain true, Ukrainization is anti East Slavic and no Russian can support it. The Austrians wanting kill them is also understandable, there is a war on with Russia and people like this are dangerous. The Czechs and Poles also are understandable; some want to stop the carnage because empowered Ukrainians are seriously scary and barbaric people and who knows who they will come for next. Those who worry about this say as much and those whose hatred of Russians is greater than their sense of human decency or self-preservation just don’t care but they won’t outright support the hohol death squads because European man had more dignity than that back then. Sadly, that’s not the case today. The only people that I just don’t get are the foaming at the mouth hohols, but what is described above is exactly how they act today. The Poles just coming in and enslaving them after the war honestly makes sense, what else can you do with such people? This is why as long as Ukraine exists and has deep pocketed benefactors Russia is in danger and this is why while I’m not a hyper preachy anti Soviet I also have no particular love for the USSR either. Nurturing these vermin and creating a country for them at Russia’s expense on Russian historical clay is unforgivable. The fact that the modern hohol rages against the USSR first and foremost just illustrates his utter lack of self-awareness and retardation as well as that of his brain-dead supporters. Please take note that the Polish Parliament member said 30k had been executed and 80k detained, considering that the Russian population in question was around 1.5 million the scale of the repression was definitely enough to tip the balance in favor of the proto hohols. Thats 30k executed as of the middle of 1915 and around 60k would be dead before it’s all over. Plus, we had the refuges who just fled with the Russian Army. Perhaps history wouldn’t have been any different and when the Poles came, they would have just ethnically cleansed these Russians all the same. In any case I think this all enough to establish that the idea that Galicia has always been Ukrainian is nonsense.

What I take away from all this is just what a total dark, sick joke Russian history is. The Tsars looked the other way while all this was going on. While Imperial Moscow was overflowing with Germanophiles Ukrainian proto hohols are screaming long live Austria down with Russia while back then the Tsars were more German than any Galician piglet. Reality really do be dumber than fiction in the Slav lands. Imperial Moscow didn’t give a shit about any of this because culturally they had much more affinity for the Austrians than the Russians being Ukrainianized. This was all Austrias internal business involving people they had nothing in common with anyway. Remember one of the biggest accusations that the Bolsheviks hurled at the royal family was that they were all German agents, and what made it stick was that it appeared so credible. That Lenin was also a German agent is neither here nor there, the point is nobody was representing Russians and that hasn’t changed to this day. If anybody read my post about the death of the Imperial Army, you will remember that concurrent with the ethnic cleansing of the Galician Russians the Ukrainization of the Russian Imperial Army was taking place to disastrous effect. While proto hohols were murdering Russians in Galicia the Imperial Army was being subject to a woke pro Ukrainian social experiment. There is no history more tragic, more absurd, more darkly humorous than Russian history. BTW my Russian wife didn’t even know about this stuff with the Galician Russians. It wasn’t taught in Soviet Schools because the USSR was pro Ukrainian, and it isn’t taught today because Moscow is still pro Ukrainian.