this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Yeah I don't think "Ukrainians will never forgive the Red Army for liberating them from Nazis" meant "Ukrainian government", sorry. More likely, this person thinks Ukraine was on the side of Nazis in WW2 which I'm seeing quite a lot too (not looking for examples though, sorry)
How is it any different from saying "Americans" do such and such when their representatives say awful things? We know that there are American comrades, and we know that there are likely a great number more comrades in Ukraine. I really don't think the post was meant to disparage all Ukrainians. Just the ones that support what their representatives are saying.
Americans and other imperial core nations directly benefit from imperialism, this is the real reason why no communist party can take off the ground there, not any ephemeral reppression. Ukrainians on the other hand are the victims of imperialism and it's their country that is right now ravaged by a war. You wouldn't go around blaming Bangladeshi people for politics that keep them in crumbling sweatshops, even though it's comprador Bangladeshi politicians who sign off those policies for the benefit of Western capitalists. The same way when comprador Nazi politicians of Ukraine sacrifice their people in a war for the benefit of Western capitalists, you shouldn't blame Ukrainian people for it.
Your question is no different from someone asking "if it's ok to say whites do such and such, why can't I say blacks do such and such"? The difference is between the oppressor and the oppressed, the perpetrator and the victim. White supremacy is not every single white persons fault and noone can singlehandedly end it, but whites are collectively benefitting from it and thus should take responsibility. Western people, working class included, have some responsibility for sustaining imperialism, because it does benefit them - all the sweat, blood and tears are outsourced to other nations so there's no reason for Western working class to rebel.
Those dynamics have to be understood if we're to achieve any change at all and it's actually sad I had to type this out.
Lemmy ate my reply. But the short version is that I actually do mostly agree with you. I try not do this myself, but it is linguistically difficult to speak more narrowly about the Nazis in Ukraine. I just think it's a wee bit of a stretch to assume that the comment you referenced actually refers to all Ukrainians.
It's not difficult to call Nazis Nazis.
Zhukov was right when he said "We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it." The West immediately went on to put Nazi generals in charge of NATO, Canada nurtured Banderites who would never see a day of freedom in Ukraine, all this simply because Nazism is an organic outgrowth of European settler-colonial project (same as Zionism), it's the ugly side of Western liberalism.
Turning this around against Ukraine made my blood boil because Ukraine was one of the primary victims of Nazism along with Belarus, over two million Ukrainians enslaved and sent to German industries for forced labour, over five million slaughtered, entire villages razed to the ground, mass rapes organised by Nazi officers, mass shootings by SS death squads and Banderites, things Western education mostly glosses over. Even the 30s famine has nothing on the destruction Nazis wreaked on Ukraine.
I doubt you can imagine the generational trauma people raised in the USSR have. Watch "Come and See" and understand we were raised by people who lived through this. Liberation from Nazis is not a laughing matter for us, which is why the grandma with red flag resonated so deeply with so many post-Soviet people (https://youtu.be/DfeflkpcOi4).
Ukraine was a founding member of the USSR, Ukrainians were the largest ethnic group in the Red Army after Russians, with over 5 million serving (https://i.imgur.com/62j4OYo.jpeg). It's Ukrainians who did the liberation, and it's the West who never forgave them for it and is now destroying them in a proxy war against Russia, after putting Banderites in power.
I'm sorry but the comment I referenced comes out of a deep ignorance and arrogance typical to Westerners. No they didn't say "every single Ukrainian" but they generalised Ukrainians in an extremely ahistorical and offensive manner.