Real Estate
MOSCOW. (Political commentator Leonid Mlechin...
opera, circus, or a comedy with a costume change. There is nothing idyllic about Ukraine's decision to come under control of the Russian tsars. Nikolai Gogol wrote that the Ukrainians did not want this because "they indulged in freedom, had the wild Cossack spirit and wished to live their own life."After the February 1917 revolution in Russia, Ukrainians tried to establish their own state, but it collapsed after two years and not only because Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky sent the Red Army to Kiev. Many Ukrainians wanted to be with Russia. Some Ukrainians found themselves in Poland. The Ukrainian nationalists said bitterly that after World War I, the Poles received their own state, and the Ukrainians did not.
Hatred of the Poles was so strong that in the fall of 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine without a problem. But as soon as the Soviet leaders started accelerated collectivization and mass deportations, the situation changed.