grasp of the political situation, no comprehension of the complex world that they are simplifying into their stereotypes, no sympathy for impulses toward reconciliation that are manifest on all sides, certainly no sense of responsibility for nurturing these impulses. This gang of three has no stake in Ukraine - Mr. Safer leaves for home immediately after reading his lines into the camera, Mr. Wiesenthal lives in Vienna (where needing to get along with Germans but not Ukrainians, he expediently concludes that Germans weren't as bad as Ukrainians), and Yaakov Bleich - unhappy in his discovery that in slinging mud he has become muddied, every day more deeply convinced that he has been miscast in this role of rabbi of Ukraine - we may expect will shortly be catching a plane for home. What do any of them care if they are stirring up a hornet's nest in Ukraine? The Jews who are left behind in Ukraine, who have a stake in Ukraine, who need to get along - to these 60 Minutes does not give air time. It's the irresponsible ones with nothing to lose who are able to offer the more sensational testimonials. And not only does 60 Minutes' trio of provocateurs have nothing to lose from chaos erupting in Ukraine, they have this to gain - that if chaos does erupt, they will be able to play the role of prophets who foretold its coming, and they will do this quite overlooking that they helped it come. CONTENTS: Preface The Galicia Division Quality of Translation Ukrainian Homogeneity Were Ukrainians Nazis? Simon Wiesenthal What Happened in Lviv? Nazi Propaganda Film Collective Guilt Paralysis of the Comparative Function 60 Minutes' Cheap Shots Ukrainian Anti-Semitism Jewish Ukrainophobia Mailbag A Sense of Responsibility What 60 Minutes Should Do PostScript What 60 Minutes Should Do (1) 60 Minutes owes its viewers a detailed correction, a retraction, an apology. The product was defective, it is dangerous, it must be recalled. Acknowledging that Ukrainians are upset or that they are protesting is not a correction, it is not a retraction, and it is not an apology. Directing attention to Ukrainian feelings is 60 Minutes' way of deflecting attention away from its own negligence. 60 Minutes has valiantly investigated and exposed hundreds of corrupt, or merely erring, people and institutions - the time has come to turn the focus inwards and to investigate and expose itself. Of course this can only be done objectively by an external investigator relying on his or her own independent staff. Inviting such an external investigator to do a 60 Minutes story is the right thing to do; it will be appreciated and admired; it will raise 60 Minutes' integrity from its currently lowered position to a new pinnacle. Damage control won't work. If 60 Minutes really wants respect, it should broadcast a story on itself and call it "The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes." As the misinformation that was planted in the original twelve-minute segment will take longer than twelve minutes to uproot, 60 Minutes should devote an entire nominal sixty minutes to its correction, retraction, and apology - only such a substantial allocation of time can begin to undo the damage. At the other extreme, a correction, retraction, and apology confined to Mailbag will be next to worthless. (2) 60 Minutes should upgrade its research library by acquiring at least the two-volume Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, the five-volume Encyclopaedia of Ukraine, Orest Subtelny's Ukraine: A History, and Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews. This seems a modest investment to plug a huge and dangerous gap in awareness. (3) But books are nothing if they are sitting on the shelves of biased researchers. Find out who contributed to the travesty of "The Ugly Face of Freedom" and get rid of them. And don't worry about their careers - with their special talents, they will be able to get good jobs with supermarket tabloids writing about sightings of Elvis Presley and UFO landings. (4) 60 Minutes should examine with a more skeptical eye materials concerning Ukrainians, and concerning Eastern Europeans generally, that come from biased sources. As a minimal step, 60 Minutes could adopt the rule of thumb that anyone who considers Eastern Europeans to be sub-human might better be assigned to some other topic. (5) 60 Minutes should not be afraid to consult sources capable of balancing a biased story. There are a large number of historians and other academics (some of whom are Ukrainian or East European, some of whom are Jewish, some of whom are both, some of whom are neither) that could have told 60 Minutes at a glance that "The Ugly Face of Freedom" was bunkum. (6) 60 Minutes should rethink its heavy-handed reliance on the gimmick of interviewing by ambush by means of which the side favored by 60 Minutes is apprised in advance of the nature of the interview, has a chance to organize his thoughts, and comes out looking good whereas the side ambushed is misled into believing that the interview will be supportive, but then is hit with questions that are hostile and for which he is unprepared. The ambushed interviewee is discomposed, flustered, fumbles in trying to collect his thoughts, the camera zooms in on his confusion, and he appears duplicitous. It may be a tried-and-true formula, but it doesn't fool every viewer and constitutes poor journalism in the case where the interviewee is innocent, where he would have granted the interview even if he hadn't been misled as to its intent, and where nothing more damning is extracted from him other than his consternation at having been betrayed. (7) In order to permit the viewer to verify the accuracy of a 60-Minutes translation, the original statement should remain audible and not be muted to the point of unintelligibility, and transcripts provided by 60 Minutes should include the original of any statements that had been broadcast in translation. (8) 60 Minutes should rely on professional translators with accredited competence in the original language who might be counted on to provide an undistorted translation. Particularly, 60 Minutes should expect that if it relies on a Russian who merely claims that he understands Ukrainian, it is inviting the sort of biased mistranslation that it did in fact get in its broadcast. (9) 60 Minutes should not tackle a complex, multi-faceted story unless it is willing to invest sufficient resources to get it right. In a typical 60 Minutes story - say the exposing of a single corrupt individual - the number of issues involved, and the amount of data that is relevant, is small, can be gathered with a modest research outlay, and can readily be contained within a 12-minute segment. "The Ugly Face of Freedom," in contrast, presented conclusions on a dozen topics any one of which would require the full resources of a single typical 60 Minutes story to present fairly - and so, little wonder that most of these conclusions turned out to be wrong. (10) 60 Minutes should heighten its awareness of the distinction between raw data and tenth-hand rumor. A hospital administrator examining a document and explaining how he knows that it is a forgery is raw data from which 60 Minutes might be justified in extracting some conclusion; that Symon Petliura slaughtered 60,000 Jews is a tenth-hand rumor which 60 Minutes is incompetent to evaluate and which might constitute disinformation placed by a special-interest group intent on hijacking a story and forcing it to travel in an unwanted direction. (11) 60 Minutes should ask Mr. Safer to resign. Mr. Safer's conduct was unprofessional, irresponsible, vituperative. Mr. Safer has demonstrated an inability to distinguish impartial reporting from rabid hatemongering and as a result has no place in mainstream journalism. He has lost his credibility. Mr. Safer, too, will be welcomed by the supermarket tabloids where he will find the heavy burden of logic and consistency considerably lightened, and the constraints of having to make his words correspond to the facts mercifully relaxed. (12) 60 Minutes should do a story on Simon Wiesenthal and assign it to a reporter and to researchers who have the courage to consider objectively such politically-incorrect but arguable conclusions as that Mr. Wiesenthal's stories are self-contradictory and fantastic, that his denunciations have sometimes proven to be irresponsible, and that he spent the war years as a Gestapo agent. CONTENTS: Preface The Galicia Division Quality of Translation Ukrainian Homogeneity Were Ukrainians Nazis? Simon Wiesenthal What Happened in Lviv? Nazi Propaganda Film Collective Guilt Paralysis of the Comparative Function 60 Minutes' Cheap Shots Ukrainian Anti-Semitism Jewish Ukrainophobia Mailbag A Sense of Responsibility What 60 Minutes Should Do PostScript PostScript A discussion relevant to the above critique concerns third-party attempts to incite Ukrainian-Jewish animosity and can be found within the Ukrainian Archive at Ukrainian Anti-Semitism: Genuine and Spontaneous or Only Apparent and Engineered? The relevance lies in the fact that The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes which you have just read above has been the target of a crude attempt at anti-Semitization, and at the discreditation of the author, myself, as is documented particularly at Lubomyr Prytulak: Enemies of Ukraine anti-Semitize The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes. HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES HOME DISINFORMATION PETLIURA 1441 hits since 23Mar99 Symon Petliura An Introduction Long after Symon Petlura had gone into exile and was living in Paris, armed resistance broke out again and again in his name in Ukraine. Indeed, even today his name is still regarded by the Ukrainian masses as the symbol of the fight for freedom. Symon Petliura: An Introduction Is Symon Petliura the man who "slaughtered 60,000 Jews"? Symon Petliura is relevant to the Ukrainian Archive primarily because he led the fight for Ukrainian independence at the beginning of the twentieth century, and secondarily because Morley Safer in his infamous 60 Minutes broadcast of 23Oct94, The Ugly Face of Freedom, summed him up this way: Street names have been changed. There is now a Petliura Street. To Ukrainians, Symon Petliura was a great General, but to Jews, he's the man who slaughtered 60,000 Jews in 1919. Or is Symon Petliura a fighter for Ukrainian independence? But as the documents in this PETLIURA section will begin to suggest, Safer's contemptuous dismissal is not quite accurate and does not quite tell the whole story. We can begin with a few short excerpts to provide background on Petliura from his entry in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine: Petliura, Symon [...] b 10 May 1879 in Poltava, d 25 May 1926 in Paris. Statesman and publicist; supreme commander of the UNR Army and president of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic. (T. Hunczak in Danylo Husar Struk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1993, Volume III, p. 856) After the signing of the UNR-Polish Treaty of Warsaw in April 1920, the UNR Army under Petliura's command and its Polish military ally mounted an offensive against the Bolshevik occupation in Ukraine. The joint forces took Kiev on 7 May 1920 but were forced to retreat in June. Thereafter Petliura continued the war against the Bolsheviks without Polish involvement. Poland and Soviet Russia concluded an armistice in October 1920, and in November the major UNR Army formations were forced to retreat across the Zbruch into Polish-held territory and to submit to internment. (T. Hunczak in Danylo Husar Struk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1993, Volume III, p. 856) In late 1923, faced with increased Soviet demands that Poland hand him over, he was forced to leave for Budapest. From there he went to Vienna and Geneva, and in late 1924 he settled in Paris. In Paris he founded the weekly Tryzub, and from there he oversaw the activities of the UNR government-in-exile until his assassination by a Bessarabian Jew claiming vengeance for Petliura's purported responsibility for the pogroms in Ukraine (see Schwartzbard Trial). He was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. (T. Hunczak in Danylo Husar Struk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1993, Volume III, p. 856) The above reference to Petliura's assassin being motivated by Jewish vengeance can be taken in two ways: literally or as part of Kremlin-manufactured plot. Assassinated by a Jew? In the first case, if the assassination was indeed the work of a lone Jew longing for vengeance, then it might not be amiss to wonder whether there has ever been any great Jewish leader who has been assassinated by a Ukrainian for wrongs committed by Jews against Ukrainians, or for any other reason for that matter. If not, and I think not, then one might wonder also what the respective statistics might be for all cross-ethnic assassinations of leaders and officials of not only the highest rank, but of any rank as well, and to wonder finally whether any differences in such statistics might be attributable to a differential incitement to vengeance within Jewish and Ukrainian cultures. Or assassinated by the Kremlin? However, crediting Bessarabian watchmaker, Yiddish poet, and assassin Shalom Schwartzbard's claim that he murdered Petliura to satisfy a Jewish longing for vengeance is possibly to be taken in by Kremlin disinformation, as the following passage explains (where the spelling becomes "Schwarzbart"): According to Bolshevist misinformation, the Jews are to blame for the murder of Petlura. [...] The choice of the person who was to commit the murder has always served as the basis for the invention of lies and legends about the actual murder itself. They have always chosen persons to whom - in the event of their arrest - credible tales about motives other than the orders of the Kremlin, motives of a personal or political character, could be imputed, so as to conceal the fact from the court that the order to murder was issued by Moscow. In the case of Petlura, a Jew, Schwarzbart, was instructed by Moscow to carry out the murder. He received orders to give himself up of his own accord to the police as a Communist agent, in order to start a political trial in this way. Thus there was a two-fold purpose behind this murder: to murder Petlura who was a danger to the Bolsheviks, and to direct the political trial of this murder in such a way that the person of Petlura and the Ukrainian government which he represented, as well as the national liberation movement, which was a danger to Moscow, could be defamed from the political point of view. It was Schwarzbart's task during this trial to conceal the part played by the Russian GPU in this murder and to pose as a national avenger of the Jewish people for the brutal pogroms committed against them by various anarchist groups, who operated in Ukraine during the years of the revolution, that is from 1919 to 1921, and in the interests of Russia also fought against the Ukrainian state. The blame for the pogroms carried out by these groups was to be imputed to Petlura. By planning the trial in this way the Russians managed to gain a two-fold success. In the first place, they succeeded in winning over most of the Jews in the world for the defence of the Communist agent Schwarzbart and in arousing anti-Ukrainian feelings, which, incidentally, persisted a long time, amongst the Jews, and, secondly, as a result of the unjust verdict of the Paris court, the Russians and other enemies of an independent Ukraine were able to obtain "the objective judgement of an impartial court in an unprejudiced state," which could then be used in anti-Ukrainian propaganda. For years the Russians made use of this judgement in order to defame Petlura in the eyes of the world and to misrepresent the Ukrainian state government which he represented and the Ukrainian liberation movement as an anti-Semitic, destructive and not a constructive state movement, which would be capable of ensuring human democratic freedoms to the national minorities in Ukraine. The jury of the Paris court, who consisted for the most part of supporters of the popular front at that time and of socialist liberals, refused to believe the testimony of the numerous witnesses of various nationalities, which clearly proved that Petlura had neither had any share in the pogroms against the Jews, nor could be held in any way responsible for them. They ignored the actual facts of the murder, and by their acquittal of the murderer rendered Bolshevist Moscow an even greater service than it had expected. Thus Moscow scored two successes. But it did not score a third, for the Paris trial did not help Moscow to change the anti-Russian attitude of the Ukrainians into an anti-Semitic one or to conceal its responsibility for the murder of Petlura from the Ukrainians. (Anonymous, Murdered by Moscow: Petlura - Konovalets - Bandera, Ukrainian Publishers Limited, London, 1962, pp. 8-9) Three reflections arise from the Schwartzbard assassination: (1) Juror historians. One wonders whether the jurors in a criminal case are competent to arrive at a fair determination of historical truth, or whether they are more likely to bring with them personal convictions of historical truth which are likely to be unshaken by the evidence. (2) French justice. The acquittal of a self-confessed assassin might be an outcome peculiar to French justice. Other Western states might more typically require the conviction of a self-confessed assassin, and consult his motives only to assist in determining the severity of sentence. A comment which in part reflects on the French acquittal: It is a strange paradox that the once so sacred right of asylum, even for the spokesmen of hostile ideologies and political trends, nowadays does not even include the protection of the fundamental rights of life of the natural allies of the West in the fight against the common Russian Bolshevist world danger. (The Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Munich, December 1961, in Anonymous, Murdered by Moscow: Petlura - Konovalets - Bandera, Ukrainian Publishers Limited, London, 1962, p. 65) (3) True-believer assassins. If an assassin is sent by the Kremlin, then is it necessary for the Kremlin to find one who is personally committed to the assassination? The answer is yes. This is because a Soviet assassin sent to Paris has some opportunity to defect and to seek political asylum. He might choose to do so to escape totalitarianism, to raise his standard of living, to avoid going through with the assassination, and in the Petliura case to avoid the punishment that was being anticipated from the French courts. On top of that, he must realize that once he has carried out the assassination, he becomes a potential witness against the Kremlin, and so might find the Kremlin rewarding him with a bullet to the back of his head for the success of his mission. Thus, it is essential for the Kremlin to ensure that the assassin be energized with a zealous committment to his mission. One way to achieve such committment is to hold his family hostage. Another way is to incite in him a thirst for revenge based on wrongs done to his people. Thus, even if the Kremlin did order the assassination of Petliura, and even if the Kremlin's selection of a Jew to perform the assassination was for the political reasons outlined in the quotation above, it may nevertheless be true that a Jewish thirst for revenge played a useful role, and that all the Kremlin had to do to inspire the requisite motivation was to propose the disinformation that Petliura was the appropriate target of that revenge. Pogromist or fighter for independence? The Encyclopedia of Ukraine entry ends with: [S]ince the mid-1920s he has personified, perhaps more than any other person, the struggle for Ukrainian independence. The personification seemingly also extends to the issue of the pogroms that took place in Ukraine during the revolutionary period of 1918-1920, and Petliura has frequently been invested with the responsibility for those acts. Petliura's own personal convictions render such responsibility highly unlikely, and all the documentary evidence indicates that he consistently made efforts to stem pogrom activity by UNR troops. The Russian and Soviet authorities also made Petliura a symbol of Ukrainian efforts at independence, although in their rendition he was a traitor to the Ukrainian people, and his followers (Petliurites) were unprincipled opportunists. (T. Hunczak in Danylo Husar Struk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1993, Volume III, p. 857) A continuing threat to the Kremlin. Petliura's leadership of the fight for Ukrainian independence did not end with his withdrawal from the field of battle: Long after Symon Petlura had gone into exile and was living in Paris, armed resistance broke out again and again in his name in Ukraine. Indeed, even today his name is still regarded by the Ukrainian masses as the symbol of the fight for freedom [...]. (Dr. Mykola Kovalevstky, in Anonymous, Murdered by Moscow: Petlura - Konovalets - Bandera, Ukrainian Publishers Limited, London, 1962, p. 28) However real the continuing resistance that was carried on in Petliura's name, the Russian and Soviet authorities - in order to justify Cheka executions - indiscriminately cited Petliura as the author of real and imagined anti-Soviet actions. For example, summarizing the year 1921 alone, historian Sergey Petrovich Melgunov relates: Particularly large was the number of Petlura "conspiracies" then discovered. In connection with them sixty-three persons (including a Colonel Evtikhiev) were shot in Odessa, batches of fourteen and sixty-six in Tiraspol, thirty-nine in Kiev (mostly members of the intelligentsia), and 215 in Kharkov - the victims in the latter case being Ukrainian hostages slaughtered in retaliation for the assassination of certain Soviet workers and others by rebels. And, similarly, the Izvestia of Zhitomir reported shootings of twenty-nine co-operative employees, school teachers and agriculturalists who could not possibly have had anything to do with any Petlura "conspiracy" in the world. (Sergey Petrovich Meglunov, The Red Terror in Russia, London, 1925, pp. 88-89) Thus, if the impression gleaned from the Shapoval volume is correct (to the effect that the control of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD lay overwhelmingly in the hands of Jews), then the situation might be summarized by saying that even while Jews were in reality pogromizing Ukrainians throughout Ukraine (as we saw in the Melgunov quotation immediately above), they were simultaneously pogromizing Ukrainian leaders in the diaspora, as by the assassinations of, among others, Symon Petliura (1926) in Paris by Cheka agent Schwartzbard employing a handgun, of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets (1938) in Rotterdam by GPU agent Valyukh employing a package bomb, of Lev Rebet (1957) as well as Stepan Bandera (1959) both in Munich and both by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky employing a poison pistol loaded with cyanide. This same Bohdan Stashynsky eventually defected to the West where he confessed to the two above assassinations, thereby demonstrating the reasonableness of the distrust that the Kremlin might feel toward its own assassins, as well as the reasonableness of the unease that the assassins might feel concerning being distrusted. Cause and effect. As is often the case with respect to historical events, the thread of cause and effect is difficult to untangle. When Petliura makes the following statement in his Army Order No. 131, he assumes that pogroms cause an opposition to Ukrainian independence: Our many enemies, external as well as internal, are already profiting by the pogroms; they are pointing their fingers at us and inciting against us saying that we are not worthy of an independent national existence and that we deserve to be again forcefully harnessed to the yoke of slavery. However, it is also plausible that causality proceeds in the opposite direction - that Jewish opposition to Ukrainian independence causes pogroms. Of course, the causal link can act in both directions simultaneously, with pogroms and opposition each fuelling the other in an escalating spiral. Who might start such a spiral and who might encourage it? Petliura views the pogroms not as spontaneous, but as incited by "adventurers" and "provocateurs." If he is right, then we may ask who might have sent these adventurers and provocateurs? Who might have been paying them to do their work? Perhaps the answer is those who might have preferred to absorb chunks of a dismembered Ukraine rather than coexisting with an independent Ukraine - most particularly, Russia and Poland. And perhaps those who wanted to increase emigration of Jews out of Ukraine - the Zionists. Russia, Poland, and Zionism benefitted from pogroms on Ukrainian territory. All who wanted to live peacefully in Ukraine - whether they were Ukrainians or Jews - suffered from the pogroms. To see the links to the documents in the Petliura section, please click on the PETLIURA link below. Borys Martos Government Proclamation 12Apr1919 The scum of humanity Above all the Government will not tolerate any pogroms against the Jewish population in the Ukraine, and will employ every available means for the purpose of combating these abject criminals, dangerous to the State, who are disgracing our nation in the eyes of all the civilized nations of the world. Borys Martos (1879-1977) was a Ukrainian political leader, co-operative organizer, and educator. From a Government Proclamation To the People of the Ukraine Riwne, April 12, 1919 To preserve the peace and to maintain public law and order - as the first condition of a free life for all citizens of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic - the Ukrainian Government will fight with all its power against violations of public order, will strike the brigands and pogrom instigators with the severest punishment and expose them publicly. Above all the Government will not tolerate any pogroms against the Jewish population in the Ukraine, and will employ every available means for the purpose of combating these abject criminals, dangerous to the State, who are disgracing our nation in the eyes of all the civilized nations of the world. The Government of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic is certain that the Ukrainian people - who themselves have suffered national slavery through many years and are conscious of the worth of national freedom and therefore proclaimed before all things the national-personal autonomy of the minorities in the Ukraine - will support the Ukrainian Government in eliminating these evil-doers who are the scum of humanity. HOME DISINFORMATION PETLIURA 625 hits since 23Mar99 Arnold Margolin The Jewish Chronicle 16May1919 Interview on Petliura The pogroms have been perpetrated by the people of the Black Hundred and by provocateurs for the purpose of discrediting the Ukrainian government. An Interview with Dr. Arnold Margolin in 1919 The Jewish Chronicle London May 16, 1919 Dr. Arnold Margolin, Head of the Ukrainian Diplomatic Mission in London, Chairman of the "Jewish Territorial Society" in the Ukraine, was born in Kiev (in 1877), attended Kiev University, and established himself in Kiev as an attorney. Since 1903 he had been noted as a counsel for the defense of the injured in pogrom excesses. Besides, he participated as a counsel for the defense in many agrarian and political court trials. For his revelations in the well-known Beilis case he was prosecuted by the Minister of Justice of that time, Shcheglovitov, with the result that the further practice of law was forbidden to him. He has taken part in the Ukrainian Movement for many years, and has occupied himself with social problems in the Ukraine. After the Revolution he was a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Federalist Party, and for a time he was Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. In the spring of 1919 he went to Paris as a member of the Ukrainian Peace Delegation. Since January 1920 he has been the head of the Ukrainian Diplomatic Mission in London. - What is the attitude of the Jews toward the new Ukrainian State? On the question of independence of the Ukraine the Jews were split into two camps. On the one side there were the assimilated Jews who having been brought up in the All-Russian political spirit took a stand hostile to the new Ukrainian State. On the other side there were the majority of the Jews - the nationalists, Zionists and the Jewish Socialist Parties - who declared their sympathy for Ukrainian endeavors. The Jews who were themselves an oppressed nation welcomed with sympathy the national struggle of the Ukrainians. The Jews were also split as to their attitude toward the socialist program of the new state. The left wing of the Bund and Poalej-Zion went hand-in-hand with the left Ukrainian parties that were for the exclusion of the bourgeoisie from the government. The majority of Jews were on the side of those Ukrainian parties that interceded for the West-European political system. But in spite of these differences, almost all Jewish parties and organizations recognized the right of the Ukrainian nation to its independence. What is the attitude of the Ukrainian government toward the Jews? In the Ukraine which together with Galicia has a population of 40 millions there live 3 1/2 million (8%) Jews. After the Revolution the ruling power in the Ukraine rested in a parliament in which all parties of the country, including Jewish, were represented. That parliament ("Tsentralna Rada") granted the Jews more freedom and rights than they had anywhere in Europe at any time. All national minorities, of course Jews too, were granted autonomy. It must be stressed also that the Central Council (the Parliament) set up a Supreme Court to which those lawyers were appointed as judges, who had had courage to take a stand against the Russian government during the Beilis trial. - Here Margolin narrated the fate of the Ukraine after the overthrow of the Tsentralna Rada and during the rule of Hetman Skoropadksy, and then continued: Hetman's rule lasted only eight months. [After its overthrow] the Petlura Government renewed the autonomy of national minorities and again appointed Jewish ministers, viz. Mr. Goldelman and myself. Jews belong also to the diplomatic missions which have been sent abroad by the Ukrainian government. The noted Jewish historian, Dr. Wischintzer, one of the editors of the Jewish Encyclopedia, is the secretary of the Ukrainian legation in England. How does this government's attitude agree with the fact of anti-Jewish pogroms? There is a difference between pogroms which, unfortunately, have occurred now in the Ukraine, and pogroms in Russia during the tsarist regime. While the tsarist government had itself instigated and organized pogroms, the Ukrainian government is in no way responsible for them. In November 1918 I myself saw the proclamations of the government in the Ukrainian villages and cities which very vehemently condemned the pogroms and explained to the Ukrainian people that the Jews are Ukrainian fellow-citizens and brothers to whom full rights are due. When, however, demoralization had set in the units of the Ukrainian army, its worst elements began to plunder. Again the Ukrainian government rose vigorously against the pogroms, punishing with death the perpetrators of the pogroms and expressing its sorrow for the victims. To my regret, I must state that the latest pogroms which, as far as I know, took place during the months of February and March were exceedingly serious. They have been perpetrated by the people of the Black Hundred and by provocateurs for the purpose of discrediting the Ukrainian government. These occurences made a shocking impression upon me, and at the end of March I tendered the government my resignation. I recognized that fact that the government was blameless; I found it, however, hard to occupy an official post in a country in which my brothers were slaughtered. My resignation was not accepted and the government requested me to continue in my official duties, at least abroad. Now I am one of the four representatives of the Ukraine at the Peace Conference. There is no anti-Semitic tendency in the Ukrainian government. Margolin denies that Jews are playing an important role in the Bolshevist movement, as it is generally assumed. To be sure, there are also Jews among the Bolshevists, but among Jews in general the Bolshevists constitute merely an insignificant minority. The Jewish Zionist and other patriotic organizations received 70% of the votes at all elections. There were no Jews at all among the Russian sailors who played such an important part in the Bolshevist revolution. The fact that there are seemingly so many Jews among the Bolshevists, Margolin attributed to the circumstances that Jews distinguish themselves in all activity by their great energy, and hence the impression arises that there are many Jews in each political party. (The Jewish Chronicle, London, May 16, 1919, in F. Pigido (ed.), Material Concerning Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Years of the Revolution (1917-1921): Collection of Documents and Testimonies by Prominent Jewish Political Workers, The Ukrainian Information Bureau, Munich, 1956) HOME DISINFORMATION PETLIURA 539 hits since 25Mar99 Symon Petliura Jewish delegation 18Jul1919 Provocation of reactionaries and imperialists The delegation asked for granting of an opportunity to Jewish intellectuals to work toward strengthening Ukrainian statehood, and for protection of the Jewish population against the excesses which have taken place as the result of provocation on the part of various Russian reactionaries and Polish imperialists who thus wish to discredit the whole Ukrainian cause in the eyes of Europe. Reception of a delegation of Jewish citizens by Petlura. On July 17 of this year the Commander-in-Chief Petlura received a delegation of Jewish citizens at the Office of the Directorate in Kamenets-Podolsk. The Delegation included: Dr. Meier Kleiderman, the representative of the Jewish community; Alterman, the representative of the Zionist organization; Gutman, the representative of the rabbis; Kreis, the representative of artisans; Bograd, the representative of the Poalej-Zion Party. Petlura addressed the Delegation with a short speech in which he declared that he himself as well as the government were always standing on the side of the Jewish people, and were waging war against those elements who incited the unenlightened masses to various excesses against Jews. The Commander-in-Chief invited the representatives of the Jewish people to a closer cooperation of both peoples for the good of the Ukrainian State, for, only with united forces would it be possible to look after the interests of both peoples, which had always been identical. The Jewish delegation assured the Supreme Commander that all strata of the Jewish people, hand-in-hand with the Ukrainian people, would defend the independent Ukraine, because only a Ukrainian democratic government could guarantee full rights to the Jews. The delegation asked for granting of an opportunity to Jewish intellectuals to work toward strengthening Ukrainian statehood, and for protection of the Jewish population against the excesses which have taken place as the result of provocation on the part of various Russian reactionaries and Polish imperialists who thus wish to discredit the whole Ukrainian cause in the eyes of Europe. Petlura pledged himself to apply the severest measures in suppressing the crimes of the anti-Jewish agitators, and asked the delegation in particular to exert their influence also upon the Jewish population behind the battlefront that they should support the Ukrainian Army in its struggle against the Bolshevists. (Trudowa Hromada, July 18, 1919.) HOME DISINFORMATION PETLIURA 486 hits since 25Mar99 Symon Petliura Decree of Cabinet 18Aug1919 Enemies organize pogroms The Ukrainian and Jewish peoples both of whom work at the reconstruction of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic, find themselves in the face of the common enemies who are trying to sow discord and anarchy in order to destroy the Ukrainian Republic which they hate. Decree of the Cabinet Council of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic. August 18, 1919. (Record of the Proceedings No. 171) The Cabinet Council, after hearing the report of the Minister for Jewish Affairs, Mr. P.A. Krasny, on the situation as it appeared in connection with the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine - particularly in Kiev - and in connection with the reaction of public opinion abroad, resolve as follows: The Ukrainian and Jewish peoples both of whom work at the reconstruction of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic, find themselves in the face of the common enemies who are trying to sow discord and anarchy in order to destroy the Ukrainian Republic which they hate. For this purpose your enemies organize pogroms, spin provocative news about pogroms in the Ukraine so as to exploit them for their people - with the help of the Polish ruling classes, or of