Jewish Bubba: Jews Relating History of Ukraine to Russia

Nadene Goldfoot

Russia is still at it, trying to claim part of Ukraine as their own land. Ukraine had an interesting birth. A part of Scythia in antiquity, Ukraine was largely settled by Greuthungi, Getae, Goths, and Huns in the Migration Period, while southern parts of Ukraine were previously colonized by Greeks and then Romans. In the Early Middle Ages it was also a site of early Slavic expansion.

Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and its history is marked by periods of Russian rule and periods of relative independence:

Jews immigrated to the Ukraine in waves from Khazaria, the Calliphate, and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries.

In 14th and 15th centuries, majority of Ukrainian territories became part of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia, while Galicia and Zakarpattia came under Polish and Hungarian rule.

Jews came from Central Europe to Ukraine in the 14th to 15th centuries, and from Poland in the 15th to 17th centuries. Several massacres of Jews took place there during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprisings of the 17th to 18th centuries.

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Kingdom of Poland

In 1708, Russia gains control of eastern Ukraine after the Battle of Poltava, which crushed the Swedish army led by King Charles XII.
By 1764–1781, Catherine the Great incorporates much of central Ukraine into the Russian Empire, abolishing the Cossack Hetmanate. Then, in 1795, after the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the western part of present-day Ukraine is split between Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Notice, Ukraine is orange (6)
In 1922 The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (U.S.S.R.) is established.The Soviet Empire was made up of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The Soviet Union had eight leaders; first being Lenin, during its existence from 1922 to 1991. Unlike countries in which a president or prime minister is the designated head of state, the leaders of the USSR mostly assumed power by becoming the head of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, in addition to any other roles they may have taken on along the way.
The Soviet government in the 1920's promoted Jewish settlement in the Ukraine with funds of the American Joint Distribution Committee, in the regions of Kalinindorf, Zlatopol, and Stalindodrf: and by 1930, there were 90,000 Jewish agriculturists there.
Jewish economy and culture suffered under Soviet rule. About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived there before World War II, but under Nazi rule the Jewish people who had not fled to Russia were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians in 1941 to 1942.
Ukrainians were especially hard on Jews during WWII by aiding and abetting with the Nazis.
First General Assembly in Odessa of the "Zionist Land Workers in Syria & the Holy Land," 1890 (National Photo Collection of Israel); still from video of Volodymir Zelensky and administration officials in Kyiv, released on Facebook Feb. 25, 2022.
Zelenskyy has positioned himself as an anti-establishment and anti-corruption figure. As president, he has been a proponent of e-government and of unity between the Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking parts of the country's population. His communication style makes extensive use of social media, particularly Instagram. His party won a landslide victory in the snap legislative election held shortly after his inauguration as president.
Volodymyr Zelensky has gone from a TV personality playing their president to the actual President of Ukraine! That TV president was just what they needed!
As for being Jewish, Grandfather Semyon's father and three brothers were killed in the Holocaust. In March 2022, Zelenskyy said that his great-grandparents had been killed after German troops burned their home to the ground during a massacre. His grandmother survived World War II after leaving Kryvyi Rih in an evacuation of Jews to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and returned to Ukraine after the war.Zelensky's father, Oleksandr Zelenskyy, is a professor and computer scientist and the head of the Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at the Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, is a retired engineer. His grandfather, Semyon Zelenskyy [uk], served as an infantryman, reaching the rank of colonel in the Red Army (in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II;
As much of the world expresses sorrow and solidarity with the Ukrainian people—and admiration for its president, Volodymyr Zelensky today—the ironies of history abound. To students of Jewish history, it is a source of near incredulity that the same recurrent site of mass violence against Jews—from the Khmielnitsky massacres of the mid-seventeenth century to the brutal killing fields during and after World War I to the bloodlands soiled by Nazi murderers in Operation Barbarossa in 1941—is home to a fledgling democracy and an unlikely and inspiring Jewish president. And yet, Ukraine, like history itself, is multidimensiona.
How Russia often mis-interprets situations. During the World War, Jews were often accused of sympathizing with Germany and often persecuted. Pogroms were unleashed throughout the Russian Civil War, perpetrated by virtually every competing faction, from Polish and Ukrainian nationalists to the Red and White Armies.
31,071 civilian Jews were killed during documented pogroms throughout the former Russian Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. A majority of pogroms in Ukraine during 1918–1920 were perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists, miscellaneous bands and anti-Communist forces.
Jewish mothers would mar their sons somehow to keep them out of the army which started taking the boys as children. They were put on the front lines and died first. This was reason enough to seek out immigrating to America! By 1924 America's door shut down to Jews.
It was also home at one time to the world’s largest population of Jews and the place of extraordinary Jewish cultural vitality from Poltava in the east to Lviv in the west, not to mention the jewel of Odessa in the south.
By 1970 the Jewish population was officially put at 777,126 and at 484,129 in 1989.
Here we are in 2024 with Biden giving the green light to Ukraine to shoot longer-range missiles into Russia in response to their attacks. This could lead to a world war. Biden will be stepping down by January and Trump will start serving his 4 years as President. Biden, a Democrat that lost, has seen how more militant the USA is by the Republican win. Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022. The USA is a NATO country.