Poland and Lithuania became a joint kingdom in 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Jadwiga and the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, so most of the land that is now Belarus ended up under Polish rule anyway. Although Poland and Lithuania at the time of their union were equal (on paper anyway), in reality Poland, by having perhaps a larger population and more wealth, and a 300-year headstart in being a Catholic Christian country (with the benefits implied), ended up the dominant partner. The Lithuanian elites melted into the Polish aristocracy (szlachta) and lost their Lithuanian identity and culture, and Lithuanian farmers and artisans (who came under the Catholic Church) ended up no better off than other groups of people including Orthodox Eastern Slavs under Polish aristocratic rule.

The Poles kept all these different peoples, Lithuanians, Galicians, Volhynians and others alike, at arm’s length by employing Jews (who could read) to administer their estates and collect taxes from their peasant tenants. It was this situation, with Jews employed as bailiffs and tax collectors, that later became the context for the disastrous and tragic relations between Jews and the peoples ruled by the Polish elites, starting with Bohdan Khmelnitski’s 1648 Cossack rebellion against Polish rule. The rebellion culminated in massacres of thousands of Jewish people in cities and towns by Cossacks and other peoples oppressed by Polish rule, after Polish elites fled and left Jewish people (the majority of whom having had nothing to do with working for their Polish feudal overlords, and who were just as oppressed as the peasants who killed them) in their shtetls to their fate.

The name of Bohdan Khmelnitski was anathema to Jewish people for a long time before World War II because of the huge scale of the violence and killings.

Bear all this in mind, when Poland decides it’s going to resurrect its beloved Commonwealth over western Ukraine.

by: Refinnejenna

by Claudiu Secara

It rarely happens to be able to witness the mating rituals of the elephants, but this is one such time. The elephants in this case are the Anglo-Saxons, the Russians and the Chinese. They are triangulating the rest of the world, playing their hierarchical positions within their international intercourse.

Is it about the Donbas, or is it about Taiwan? Or maybe about de-dollarization?

I think that ultimately it is about the WEF Agenda. That is, it is about the demographics, and it is indeed about the limits of growth, but with a twist.

The Barbarians are at the Gate! That is the concern of the Western elites. The jungle is encroaching on civilization’s garden. That is real, and it is a major concern. Hence the mysterious events of the last 30-40 years. We do need a new world order!

Now, as I have written in other essays, there are a number of red flags about many of the major events in the last 30-40 years. The war in Ukraine is only one such example. See The Fake War. Since September 2022, more bizarre things have happened in this war. Suffice it to remember the Prigozhin saga, the missing shells game, all the talk about the tanks, and the F-16s, which don’t make it to the front – and when a few do show up, they are all in a state of functioning incapacitation, etc.

Sure, there are centers of resistance against Russia taking over the whole of Europe. Witness the die-hards in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics. They know what they know. But they will get their lesson and will fall into line.

Then we have other strange situations. The frozen $300 billion of Russian funds that are about to be confiscated – if only the Western banks can locate them! and even if they do, Western principles and legal scruples prevent the West from actual confiscation. But no legal scruples prevent them from issuing an inapplicable arrest warrant for Putin, the President of Russia, on the basis that Ukrainian children are being sheltered in Russia from the ravages of the war. Oh, yeah, and that’s when in the West, the child welfare gestapo snatch children from their parents’ arms for as little as yelling at the child.

And how about 9/11, obviously a fake, controlled demolition, as any child can see.

But the question is: why do the Russians and the Chinese go along with such a glaring embarrassment of a fake event? Seeing and listening to all the higher-ups of these countries toeing the Anglo-Saxon line is a humiliating spectacle, evincing their servitude and their impotence.

The Corona virus ruse is another glaring example. Against all medical knowledge and all practice over hundreds of years, why did these colossal superpowers, armed to the teeth and ready to spill blood in order to defend their sovereignty and national dignity, why were they all subservient to a piece of paper issued by the WHO, in unison locking down their populations for a pandemic that was not? And furthermore, why did they all poison the blood and the DNA of their national constituencies, the bedrock of their national sovereignty, when they all could have just voted a different resolution at one of the 5-star hotel WHO conferences, and do away with the madness?

Even more bizarre is the phenomenon of Selling Off the West’s Patrimony for One Ruble But Why?

At the very time of an existential war by the West against the up-and-coming challengers, Russia and China, we have the strange phenomenon of the large scale transfer of technology and know-how to China that occurred over the last 40 years. Now the same is happening with the transfer of technology, for a token fee, to Russia.

Company after company, major and not so major, after having invested heavily – transferring their technology, training the Russian workforce in Western methods of management, production and marketing, etc., – they are told to sell it all to the Russians for a ruble, thus legitimizing the ownership of this massive transfer of know-how and modernizing of the Russian economy overnight as a competitive alternative to the West.

Isn’t it the most glaring conspiracy under the full view of the confused populations? – But Why?

Are we actually going to see the demolition of Western hegemony as a result of all these developments? Are we going to see the dollar going out of existence? Is digital currency going to replace the financial overlording by the Western banks? (Could that be one positive outcome?)

Well, we just read that Russia has halted those much-heralded transactions with India on the basis of Rubles and Rupees. Why? Because of a “surplus of rupees, which stands to reach the equivalent of over $40 billion this year, in Russia’s coffers, caused by the growing trade imbalance between the two countries”.

It turns out getting rid of the dollar overnight is more complicated than that.

Yes, on the face of it, the pendulum has swung away from the West. It is the time to reassess the situation.

What is the alternative for the Western Garden in the absence of a controlled management of the growing disparities between the West and the rest of the world? Poverty? But hopeless poverty triggers hopeless actions. We see what is happening in the Mediterranean. At the risk of their lives, more and more people are finding ways to invade Europe. More and more people are taking to the highway and crossing the Rio Grande, etc.

There are certain voices who argue for tall fences, for patrol boats, for tough legislation providing for the returning of illegal immigrants to their countries of origin.

Is that the answer? Yes, as long as we are dealing with hundreds of people. Yes, when we are dealing with thousands of people. But what happens when millions show up at the gate? They are hungry, desperate, and cornered.

I see the answer to these prospects in the events that are taking place these decades. It is about a controlled transfer of economic development on the basis of three world power centers. The Russian sphere from Vladivostok to Lisbon. The Chinese sphere in Asia. And the Anglo-Saxon for the G5. Africa remains to be sliced between each one of the three. The Middle East is shared more or less at the center of the pie.

The plan is for a controlled distribution of . . . control, among the three. With the rest of the world subordinated to the three. And the Anglo-Saxons as the Primus inter pares. First among equals.

That assures the illusion of democracy in the Anglo-Saxon world while the rest are managed by authoritarian governments.

The dollar is diminished but remains more equal than its equals. The world is now manageable, and population growth can be controlled through the agency of the other two superpowers.

And the West, now, with the probable loss of Europe, can go on playing its arbitrage game for another generation or two.

Ed. Note: Today, the little nations of the Austrians and the Hungarians are trying hard to present themselves as normal nations. But it was only a hundred years ago when they ruled over a large multi-ethnic melange of nations not only with an iron fist, but really with a genocidal, criminal mindset. They ruthlessly executed Romanians, Serbs, Ruthenians, Slovaks, etc. Below is a good reminder of the fate of the Ruthenians, and in passing Bukovinians (i.e., Romanians). The novel Pădurea Spânzuraților (The Forest of the Hanged) by Liviu Rebreanu (1922) describes the same period from the Romanian experience.

By Dmitry Plotnikov, a political journalist exploring the history and current events of ex-Soviet states

Galicia, a historical region in the West of Ukraine, is currently the center of the country’s nationalist movement. However, things were once very different. A little over a hundred years ago, representatives of opposing Russophile and pro-Ukrainian political movements competed for the loyalty of the local Ruthenian population, also known as Rusyns. Galicia’s Russophiles welcomed the beginning of the First World War as a step toward an anticipated reunion with Russia. However the Ukrainian movement remained loyal to Austria-Hungary. With the help of the latter, Vienna killed off the Rusyn intelligentsia, which it considered a “fifth column”. To accomplish this, the Hapsburgs set up concentration camps.

What happened next amounted to a genocide.

The beginning of the tragedy

By the start of the First World War, the Russophile movement in Galicia was experiencing tough times. As a result of the “divide and rule” policy implemented by the Austrians, the movement suffered a split. The oldest and most respected organizations ended up in the hands of pro-Austrian leaders who advocated Ukrainian, not Rusyn, identity.

After the army of the Russian Empire crossed the border on August 18, 1914, and launched an offensive in Galicia, mass repressions swept through the region. People fell victim to the rage of the Austrian authorities over trifling matters – like possessing Russian literature, being a member of a Russian society, having a Russian education, or just sympathizing with Saint Petersburg. In some cases, people were arrested just for calling themselves Russians. Prisons were full of “enemies of the state” and “dangerous Moscow agents”, and the streets were lined with gallows.

“Those suspected of ‘Russophilia’ were hung on these trees in front of the windows. People were hung right on the trees. They would hang there for a day, then would be taken off and others would take their place… ” recounted one of the peasants in the Gorodetsky district. The repressions primarily affected the intelligentsia and Orthodox priests, most of whom completed spiritual studies in the Russian Empire.

FILE PHOTO. Austro-Hungarian servicemen pose against the background of three hanged men executed on August 30, 1914 in Mukachevo. © Wikipedia

Repressions against the intelligentsia were followed by those against the general public. Anyone who was thought to sympathize with Russia or Russian culture became a suspect. This included people who had once visited Russia, read Russian newspapers, or were just known as “Russophiles.” Military courts worked around the clock and a simplified procedure of legal proceedings was introduced for cases of suspected treason.

Members of Galicia’s Rusyn movement who chose the “Ukrainian way” actively participated in the repressions. Pro-Austrian politicians prepared lists of “unreliable” suspects and based on mere accusations, and arrested anyone who sympathized with Russia. As Russophile public figure Ilya Terekh described, “At the beginning of the war, the Austrian authorities arrested almost the entire Russian intelligentsia of Galicia and thousands of peasants, based on the lists handed over to the administrative and military authorities by the Ukrainophiles.”

“People who recognized themselves as Russian or simply had a Russian name were seized indiscriminately.

Anyone who possessed a Russian newspaper, book, sacred image, or even a postcard from Russia was grabbed, abused, and taken away. And then, there were gallows and executions without end – thousands of innocent victims, seas of martyr blood and orphan tears,” said another Russophile, Julian Yavorsky.

FILE PHOTO. Talerhof in 1917, the place where the camp executions were carried out. © Wikipedia

In October 1914, the Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin, who served as a medical assistant at the front, wrote in his diary: “When I got to Galicia … I felt and saw the living images of the times of the Inquisition.” Prishvin described the feelings of the Galician Rusyns toward Russia as follows: “Galicians dream of a great, pure, and beautiful Russia. A seventeen-year-old schoolboy walked with me around Lvov [now Lviv, then Lemberg] and spoke Russian without an accent. He told me about the persecution of the Russian language. Students were not even allowed to have a map of Russia, and before the war he was forced to burn books by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.”

Hell on earth

The prisons of Galicia were not big enough to accommodate all the repressed. On August 28, 1914, there were two thousand prisoners in Lviv alone. It was then that the Austrian authorities decided to establish concentration camps. In September 1914, the huge Thalerhof place of incarceration was set up in Styria. The first prisoners were delivered on September 4. According to the testimonyof one of the survivors, priest Theodor Merena, prisoners were “people of different class and age”. They included clergy, lawyers, doctors, teachers, officials, peasants, writers, and students. The age of the prisoners ranged from infants to 100-year-olds.

Occasionally, Ukrainian activists who were loyal to the Austrian regime were accidentally placed into Thalerhof. Most of them were removed quickly. One later recalled that all prisoners had a chance to escape by giving up their Russian name and registering as “Ukrainians” in the “Ukrainian list.”

Up to the winter of 1915, there were no barracks in Thalerhof. People slept on the ground in the open air despite the rain and frost. The camp’s sanitary conditions were awful. The latrines were uncovered and used by twenty people at a time. When the barracks were built, they were overcrowded, housing 500 people instead of the intended 200. The prisoners slept on straw beds which were rarely replaced. Naturally, epidemics were widespread. In just two months following November 1914, over three thousand prisoners died of typhus.

“In Thalerhof, death rarely came naturally – it was injected through the poison of infectious diseases. Violent death was commonplace in Thalerhof.

There was no question of any treatment of the sick. Even doctors were hostile toward the prisoners,” wrote imprisoned Rusyn writer Vasily Vavrik.

The prisoners weren’t provided with any adequate medical care. In the beginning, Thalerhof didn’t even have a hospital. People died on the damp ground. However, when the hospital barracks were finally built, the doctors gave almost no medicine to the patients.

FILE PHOTO. Talerhof. Cemetery “under the pines” in 1917. © Wikipedia

To instill fear, prison authorities constructed poles throughout the camp and regularly hung “violators” on these poles. The violation could be a mere trifle, like catching someone smoking in the barrack at night. Iron shackles were also used as punishment, even on women. Moreover, the camp was supplied with barbed wire, observation towers with sentries, barking dogs, posters with slogans, propaganda, torture facilities, a moat for executions, gallows, and a cemetery.

The camp operated for nearly three years and was closed down in May 1917 on the order of Charles I of Austria. The barracks stood on the site until 1936, when they were finally demolished. 1,767 corpses were then exhumed and reburied in a common grave in the nearby village of Feldkirchen.

The exact number of victims in Thalerhof is still disputed. The official report by Field Marshal Schleer dated November 9, 1914, stated that 5,700 Russophiles were imprisoned there at the time. According to one of the survivors, in the autumn of the same year there were about 8,000 prisoners. Twenty to thirty thousand Russian Galicians and Bukovinians passed through Thalerhof in total. In the first year and a half alone, about 3,000 prisoners died. According to other sources, 3,800 people were executed in the first half of 1915. Overall, in the course of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian authorities killed at least 60,000 Rusyns.

Remembering the forgotten

In the period between the two world wars, the former prisoners strived to preserve the memory of the tragedy that affected Galicia’s Ruthenians and to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Thalerhof. The first monument was erected in 1934, and soon similar memorials appeared in other parts of the region. In the years 1924-1932, the Thalerhof Almanac was published. It provided documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts of the genocide. In 1928 and 1934, Thalerhof congresses, which gathered over 15 thousand participants, were held in Lviv.

FILE PHOTO. The procession of the participants of the Talerhof Congress on the occasion of the opening of the monument to the victims of Talerhof, 1934. © Wikipedia

Galicia became part of the USSR in 1939. Even before Soviet times, there was an unspoken ban on the topic Thalerhof, because the very fact of Russian existence in Galicia was seen as an impediment to Ukrainization, which was actively cultivated in Western Ukraine following World War Two. After Galicia and Volhynia became part of the USSR, most Russophile organizations in Lviv were closed. However, memorial services by the monuments continued. As the eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the events grew older and died, a new generation of Galicians was brought up in the spirit of atheism and took on a Ukrainian national identity. As a result, fewer and fewer people came to the memorials.

In modern Ukraine, the Rusyn genocide isn’t publicly discussed. Thalerhof is not mentioned in any school textbooks on the history of the country. The idea that Russians once lived in Galicia – the proud center of “Ukrainian culture” – does not fit the nationalistic ideology of contemporary Ukraine. Most young people have never even heard of Thalerhof.

The tragedy marked the end of the Russophile movement in Galicia. All those who did not submit and did not take on a Ukrainian identity were physically annihilated. Just a few years after the tragic events, public views changed. The region came under the influence of other movements and politicians. When Austria-Hungary fell apart after the First World War, Galicia turned into a powerful center of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

FILE PHOTO. Bird’s-eye view of the Talerhof concentration camp. © Wikipedia