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History shared the fate of Kolchak's government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What he brought to Europe from America was an abstract idea, old and European, and at first his foreign colleagues treated it as such.
As to their desire for independence, we declared ourselves willing to recognise this, provided the Ukrainians on their part would agree to the following three points: 1. The negotiations to be concluded at Brest-Litovsk and not at Stockholm. 2. Recognition of the former political frontier between Austria-Hungary and Ukraine. 3. Non-interference of any one state in the internal affairs of another.
Polish territory extended eastward into the Ukraine; now that must be cut off and dropped into the lap of Russia. Another arm extended north, separating Eastern Prussia from Western. That too must be cut off and fall to Prussia.
But it was not merely the absence of colour and beauty in dress, or the want of national character and distinction a plainness that would afflict even a Russian peasant from the Ukraine or a Tartar from the further Caspian. It was the uncleanliness of the garments themselves that would most horrify the peoples not reckoned in the foremost ranks of time.
In Germany the head of the Republic is an honest saddler. In Austria the chief of the government until recently was the assassin of a prime minister. The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an asylum. Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said to have a record which might of itself have justified his change of name from Braunstein.
Let Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilow, Wolhynia, Ukraine, and Podolia be animated by the same spirit I have seen in great Poland, and Providence will crown with success the holiness of your cause; it will recompense this devotion to your native country which has made you such an object of interest, and has obtained for you the right to my esteem and protection, on which you may rely under all circumstances."
On these grounds they had demanded the cessation of the civil war. The Committee pointed out that the Mensheviks were making demagogic use of the difficulties of the food supply, due in part to the long isolation from the Ukraine, the Volga district and Siberia, for which those Mensheviks who had worked with the White Guard were themselves partly responsible.
Nevertheless, in his anxiety to see Madame Hanska, he had begun to think out economical ways of getting to Ukraine. He was not very well at this time, and in August he went to Sache, to see whether his native air would revive him. His next action would be astonishing to any one unacquainted with his extraordinary recklessness.
On his return he found the Cossacks of the Ukraine gravely dissatisfied with the government and the empire. The viciousness of the court had been reported to them; they were oppressed both by the clergy and the judges, and they only wanted a leader to break out into open revolt. Pugatscheff saw the golden opportunity, and presented himself.
The Rada, through its delegation, had appealed to the governments of the Central Empires for direct military aid against the Soviets, which had by that time completely defeated the Ukrainians. Thus did the petty-bourgeois democracy of the Ukraine, in its struggle against the working class and the destitute peasants, voluntarily open the gates to foreign invasion.
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