Association of United Ukrainian Canadian members seen in a 2018 image. Image credit: AUUC Edmonton/’X’

Written by: Marthad Umucyaba

As the Canadian government claims to support the political rights of Ukrainians, an examination of their hostility towards progressive Ukrainian Canadians shows their support is not genuine.

The Association for United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC) has been persecuted by the government since the beginning stages of World War Two, in 1940, up until 1991, during the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Ignorance of AUUC’s concerns has been the trend since.

The battering ram used by the government were Ukrainian Nazi immigrants from the Waffen SS 14th Division, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who fled punishment from the Soviet Union after the war crimes and atrocities they committed in World War II. These fascist remnants joined a Nazi front group in Canada whose founding was led by the Canadian government, called the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (UCC), now known as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. The UCC has been used to stifle the voice of the progressive, pro-Soviet AUUC and elevate anti-communist myths like the Holodomor.

Anti-Communist policy in Canada such as NORAD, designed to complete the global encirclement by NATO of the Soviet Union, and support for the CIA’s Operation Aerodynamic, which in turn supported the Nazi merger of the OUN and UPA into the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) [Aerodynamic Vol. 35, page 1], were also enabled by the anti-Soviet environment created by the UCC, to the benefit of NATO during this period.

The political and social roots of the AUUC

The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association, the precursor to the modern AUUC, was formed by descendants of refugees fleeing the first World War and persecution from the rightist and anti-communist governments of both Imperial Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as Ukraine was split into the territories of both nations at the time.

An organisation representing Ukrainian diaspora interests became necessary after the mass internment of those Ukrainian immigrants by the Canadian government in 1914, under the War Measures Act. The internment was done under the perception that Ukrainian immigrants were ‘enemy aliens’ from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, rather than allied with Imperial Russia, Canada’s and the British Empire’s ally at the time. After the Russian Revolution in 1918, when Ukraine was officially formed, the ULFTA has been defending the legacy of the Soviet Union, and its central role in restoring the national dignity of Ukraine, as a socialist nation, ever since.

The origins of AUUC’s chief opposition, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress

The Canada Files reached out to the AUUC to explore the organisation’s history and the history of the rightist UCC.

According to Glenn Michalchuk, AUUC’s National President, the Canadian government banned the Association for United Ukrainian Canadians and then shamelessly looted their assets to help form what was then called the Ukrainian Canadian Committee in June 1940 [Windsor Star, July 12, 1943].

The AUUC was called the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) during this period, and was forced to change its name and register as a non-profit as a result of this government repression. The ULFTA were only reinstated in 1943, according to Michalchuk, in the latter stages of World War Two, after the Victory of Stalingrad.

The Ukrainian Canadian Committee was formed using dispossessed kulaks, monarchists and far right Ukrainian nationalists, in other words, members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), even as they clearly became allies of Nazi Germany and collaborated with the occupation. The Canadian government did not start recruiting Nazis after World War Two. They in fact began recruiting Nazis as their allies, the UK and the Soviet Union, were fighting them from 1941-1943, during World War Two, to be used as bludgeons against left wing and progressive sentiment in the Ukrainian community.

As an added punchline, the legal pretext that was used to ban the ULFTA to begin with was an ordinance that was ‘necessary’ under the Defence of Canada Regulations [Windsor Star, July 12, 1943]. It should be noted that the AUUC was aligned with the Soviet Union, who were allied with Canada against the fascist Axis alliance at the time.

It should be mentioned that the AUUC was actively speaking out against the importation of Ukrainian Nazis right after World War II, trying to warn the Ukrainian and general public at large five years later, in 1948. However, after all of that hard work plundering the ULFTA/AUUC in order to build the UCC, one could hardly expect the Canadian government to let a good Ukrainian fascist organisation like the UCC go to waste.

Canada allows bombing of AUUC building in Toronto

On October 8, 1950, the Toronto Ukrainian Labour Temple was bombed while multiple evening events, including a children’s concert and teenage social dance, were running at the venue. There were no deaths only because the six-inch spikes laced into the explosive all shot upwards towards the ceiling. Roman Rakhmanny, a proud Nazi who ‘fought the Russians’ (The Gazette, Monday, October 16, 1950), editor for the Ukrainian Echo, and Ukrainian Canadian Committee member at the time, accused the AUUC of launching a false flag operation on its own building, in order to tarnish the ‘good name’ of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division.

The AUUC retorted by viciously criticising Roman Rakhmanny’s refuge in Canada, his association with the Galicia Division and other far-right Ukrainian nationalists, and subsequently demanded an investigation from the police [The Gazette, Monday, October 16, 1950]. The police, rather expectedly, did not pursue the culprits vigilantly, and no arrests were made, according to Michalchuk.

Operation Aerodynamic, the plan to use the UHVR against the Soviet Union, would start running in 1953. Canada’s Operation REDSKIN (Aerodynamic Vol. 17, page 1), using these Nazi war criminals sheltered in Canada was still in the ‘early stages’ in 1959, with US government coordination.

The Deschênes Commission

Repeated warnings came from the Canadian Jewish Association (CJA) and the AUUC not to allow Nazis in to the country had come since 1948, including a very open one during a Canadian Cabinet deliberation in 1950 [Windsor Star, July 16, 1985]. Before 1953 for the US and 1959 in Canada, sheer anti-communism drove the importation of these Nazis. For Canada, the initial pretence of not importing Nazis who volunteered for the SS was ended in 1950, the same year as the bombing of an AUUC building.

From 1953 and 1959 on respectively, the need to run anti-Soviet operations as part of NATO such as the US’ Operation Aerodynamic and Canada’s Operation REDSKIN took precedence, and heinous war criminals from World War Two continued to be allowed into the country.

The case of Joseph Mengele, a particularly nefarious individual infamous for being known as the “Angel of Death”, who “performed medical experiments” at the Auschwitz concentration camps, was the basis upon which Canada’s Deschênes Commission was opened in 1985.

Only 45 suspected “war criminals” were found, and of those, the Commission sought to only investigate 32. In fact, by the commission's own admission:

“The decision in the Vitols case, however, proved how very reluctant judges might be to find against those not accused of personal involvement in war crimes, but rather of collaboration with the Nazis…”

The commission found that ‘blanket accusations’ were made against members of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division and other Nazi collaborators from Ukraine, such as Chrystia Freeland’s father Michael Chomiak, who ran a Nazi propaganda paper in Poland. As Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese noted for Esprit de Corps:

“Deschênes either ignored or appeared to be unaware the Waffen SS – which the Galician Division was part of – had been declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg Trials. This omission is particularly incredible as Canada participated as one of the allied nations in the prosecution of war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King actually visited the court and attended some of the trials.”

For those wondering how Yaroslav Hunka slipped through, sparking Nazigate, refer to the results of this commission in 1985 and the answer will be obvious.

The Price for Ukraine’s “political rights” and “independence”

Umucyaba: “…Is it [the Ukrainian Government] just too hostile to your politics, your views for any dialogue to happen between the AUUC and the current Ukrainian government?”

Michalchuk: “It has not been possible and it has not been possible for a long time because of the political shift that took place in Ukraine following its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, and it’s embarking on…really a Eurocentric political course…I’ll give you an example; when Zelensky came to Canada, who was he hosted by? He was hosted by The Ukrainian Canadian Congress…There’s no relationship [between AUUC and the Ukrainian government] that way.”

Naturally, since political dialogue with the AUUC’s home country is impossible because of their ties to pro-Soviet politics, the case has been exacerbated by the government’s reaction to Ukrainians who garner even a small level of sympathy for Russia within Ukraine. The ethnic cleansing by Ukraine of the majority Russian-speakers in the Donbass and the crackdown on Ukrainian Communists was just the beginning. There’s a hit list, called Myrotvorets, on ‘pro-Russia’ Ukrainians and activists that even small children will find themselves on, and all of the left opposition in Ukraine has been removed. The ‘political rights’ and ‘democracy’ that Ukrainians are supposedly fighting for don’t exist.

The ‘independence’ gained after the split from the Soviet Union has also revealed itself to be a complete fraud. Ukraine began to attack the Donbass peoples in 2014 who declared independence after the Maidan coup that year, after corruption was used as a pretext to remove the former President, Victor Yanukovych, and install a fascist government.

After the coup, publicly-owned and agricultural land were auctioned off as soon as possible via ProZorro (Canada was preparing the grounds for this years via an ‘aid’ program before the coup), and corrupt officials like Stephan Kubiv were permitted to loot banks with impunity. Canada would spend nearly $20 million CAD on an ‘aid’ program post-coup, to facilitate the spread of ProZorro’s usage in 16 Ukrainian cities.

The land rights that Ukrainians had when they were part of the Soviet Union, and even the degree of land rights that existed before the Maidan coup, have been trampled on. There’s now a good chance that the hills and trenches that Ukrainians are dying on are the property of the US company Monsanto.

The current state of the ‘fight for democracy’ in Ukraine stands with Russia not only repelling every attack aimed at advancing past the first line of defence in the Donbass, but also with Russia mounting a deadly counter-offensive of its own. This happens in the context of Russia capitalising on the United States having to choose whether to use its limited military productive capacity to defend their settler colony Israel from an enraged Middle East or whether to continue pumping resources into Ukraine’s corrupt and fascist military.

With nearly 500 000 soldiers dead, and nearly one million Ukrainians wounded, millions having to flee Ukraine and 300 000 new disabled Ukrainians since the start of Russia’s SMO at the time of this article, there’s no valuable hill left for a Ukrainian to die on.

The political climate in NATO countries will have to improve to the point where the rights of left-wing Ukrainians within Ukraine and throughout the diaspora can begin to be respected. Either that or NATO residing citizens will have to get fed up with wasting money on this imperialist project. Until then, the Ukrainians conscripted into this fruitless war will have to choose between dying needlessly or saving themselves with a surrender call sign of 149.200 to “Volga”, as tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have done already.

The choice will have to be made quickly, since, as a Russian military video says, it will be their ‘final chance’ (0:45). That is, if they haven’t been drugged out of their senses (41:03-42:15) by the Ukrainian Army which forced them into combat to begin with (which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have sought to avoid, by hiding from conscription).

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Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.

He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.

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