It was in the run-up to the Second World War. Czechoslovakia was about to fall apart. It was not only the Sudeten Germans that rebelled and wished to be joined to the Third Reich; it was also Slovaks, one of the two brotherly nations – the other were Czechs – that made up Czechoslovakia. The Slovak and the Czech languages are like two sides of the same coin, i.e. very close to each other. If you master one of the languages – either Czech or Slovak – you will have no difficulties understanding the other while reading or listening. There will even be a specific time drag during which you will not figure out whether you are reading or listening to Czech or Slovak. That’s how close those languages are. And yet, and despite this relatedness of blood and customs, of the DNA and culture, Slovaks, or to be precise, those who happened to be the nation’s leaders, were hell-bent on separating Slovakia from Czechia, cost it what it may. Yes, cost it what the may, because in the process they were willing to cooperate even with Konrad Heinlein’s Sudetendeutsche Partei against Prague, they were ready to look for help from Berlin or even to join Slovakia to Poland, a Slavic nation, whose language, however, is not as closely related to Slovak as Czech is. Let it sink in: Slovak elites preferred to ally themselves with powerful Germany in order to destroy Czechoslovakia and harm Czechia without having a second thought that maybe confronted with the Third Reich on their own they would not be long for this world.
The same was true of the then Polish elites. They, too, saw a chance in the fact that Czechoslovakia was coming apart at the seams with the separatist Sudeten Germans supported by the Third Reich on the one hand, and the separatist Slovaks on the other. Warsaw, too, wanted to have a stake in the unfolding events, grab a chunk of Czechia and, possibly, subordinate Slovakia. The Polish elites naively thought and expected to be viewed by Berlin as partners in carving this part of Europe. Before long they learnt it the hard way that not only were they not regarded as anything remotely to being partners: in a year’s time Poland was invaded by Germany and deleted from the political map within a couple of weeks. A disaster that the Polish elites brought upon themselves or rather upon the nation that they had led into the abyss, because the elites for the most part worked or wormed or bribed their way out of hell into one of the Western countries, with most of them never to return.
Fast forwards, Yugoslavia. Slovenians and Croats loathed Serbs so much that they were willing to associate themselves with Muslim Bosnians and Albanians while going to war against Belgrade; they were even willing to trade their political sovereignty with the Western powers for aid in making the life of Serbs miserable. NATO began bombing Serbia into the Stone Age and carving the former Yugoslavia into ever smaller parts, but never mind that! The most important thing that Croatian elites cared about was to do harm to Serbia. That was about anything that mattered. Just like Slovaks in the run-up to the Second World War they, too, preferred the protection of the European Reich. Were they afraid that from then on they would be confronted with a power incomparably stronger and more sinister than Serbia? Nay. Who would have cared?
How about Czechia and Poland who had joined NATO on the eve of the alliance’s strikes against Belgrade? Did it cross the mind of the elites of those nations that one of these days they, too, might be subjected to sanctions and bombings if only they dared not to walk in lockstep with their overlords? Nay.
A bit more forwards, Ukraine. In 1992 Ukraine emerged as an independent state with a territory that it had never ever had in its history, with over 50 million inhabitants, a well-developed industry, broad access to the Black Sea and large areas of some of the most fertile soil that the world can boast. Consider it for a moment: Ukraine had a huge territory not because it took it from Russia with the sword or at gunpoint. Ukraine had a huge territory because it so pleased the Bolsheviks to create a large Ukrainian republic, and because it later pleased the leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev to add to it the Crimean Peninsula. The only thing that the responsible Ukrainian elites were tasked with was to preserve that precious possession. What did they do? They acted in ways that were far worse than what the elites of Slovakia and Croatia did. Why worse? Because Ukrainian elites did not need to fight for their independence from Moscow: it was served them on a platter. Slovaks needed to conspire with Berlin and Warsaw against Prague; Croats needed to conspire with Berlin, Washington and God knows who else against Belgrade. Ukrainian managers did not. That is, they were obviously backed by the West, but there was no fight when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Ukrainians took or received Ukraine as a huge chunk of the heirloom after the deceased Soviet Union, and… they did their best to waste it, to bleed it dry, to turn it into the West’s bridgehead against Moscow. What for?
Why did the Slovaks want so desperately to tear their nation awat from Czechs even at the price of allying themselves with Germans and Poles? Why did the Croats (and Slovenians) so badly want to deal a mortal blow to Serbia, again allying themselves with the West, among others with Germany, the same Germany that had invaded and destroyed Yugoslavia a few decades earlier, in 1941? Why did the Ukrainians need to ally themselves with the West to senselessly ruffle Moscow’s feathers? Why could they not be pleased with what they had at the outset, in the year 1991? An independent Ukraine of that large territorial size and so numerous population as it emerged in the 1990s was a godsend and there is no exaggeration to it! Sadly, Ukrainian elites have been ready to fight their Slavic brothers outside and within their borders asking for help not only Germans whose forefathers used to exterminate Ukrainians by the tens of thousands, but also Poles, with whom Ukraine has had a hard time throughout centuries! What for?
Why is it so easy for the powers that be to put neighboring and ethnically closely related nations – Slovaks and Czechs, Croats and Serbs, Ukrainians and Russians – at loggerheads? What have those nations ever gained or what will those nations ever gain by being at loggerheads with each other? The Slovak state that emerged from the ashes of Czechoslovakia was a puppet state controlled by Berlin. As a reward, it was Berlin – Slovakia’s protector – that forced Slovakia to cede chunks of its southern territories to Hungary! Poland, which supported Slovakia in the latter’s separatist policy, was soon – as mentioned above – attacked by Germany and the German army enjoyed the support of the Slovak troops! True, the contribution of the tiny Slovak units was negligible, but the symbolic meaning of the event is gargantuan! The Polish elites were so hell-bent on destroying Czechoslovakia and elevating Slovakia only to receive a nice thank-you from the latter in a few months’ time!
Today Poland supports Ukraine against Russia, the same Ukraine with which Poland shares a history of mutual massacres and wars, and today Poland has been invaded by Ukrainians with the Polish nation growing more and more impatient with their presence. The first signs of conflicts begin to emerge here and there, recently most notably over Ukrainian agricultural produce that has dumped the Polish market. Whose interests does the Polish commitment in Ukraine serve?
Croatia used to be independent from Serbia as early as in 1941, when Germany destroyed Yugoslavia. Croatia used to be independent for a couple of years in name only. Sure enough, it did the biddings of Berlin. Whose biddings is Zagreb doing at present? If, as Croats claim, it was so hard to by overwhelmed by Serbs, how much harder must it be to be overwhelmed by the big European conglomerate of states?
What good do all the mentioned Slavic nations expect from the fact of fighting each other and doing someone else’s bidding? Their elites either did not pay attention during their history classes or… or they are not acting in the interests of their nations intentionally.
Croatia (or Slovenia, for that matter) and Slovakia did not want to send their deputies to the respective parliaments in Belgrade and Prague where their deputies would have held in between a third and a half of all the seats, but they are more than willing to send their deputies to the European parliament where they hold a tiny, negligible, insignificant number of seats. Where’s the sense?
Unlike Belarus, which is allegedly ruled by a dictator, Ukraine has followed the path of democracy made by Washington D.C. and approved by Brussels E.U. Now, the population of Belarus has remained stable for the last thirty years with barely an appreciable change whereas that of Ukraine has been… halved. A loss that is larger than that suffered during the Second World War. Which country has faired better? How about other factors? How about economy, war and peace? In plain English, given the choice, would you like to live under President Lukashenko or President Zelensky and/or his predecessors? Would you like to live under President Putin or President Zelensky and/or his predecessors? An unpleasant thought, huh? An unfair comparison?
As of now, Ukraine has already been destroyed (partly even long before the ongoing war); Poland, whose leaders wanted to play big and carve Czechoslovakia in 1938, was mercilessly destroyed a mere year later (today’s Polish leaders, too, want to play big); Slovakia, which separated itself from Czechoslovakia, later took part in the German invasion of the Soviet Union (what for?), and consequently was destroyed and subjugated by the Red Army in a few years’ time; Croatia, having murdered Serbs in concentration camps, was subjugated by Tito’s communists at the war’s end. They all – Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Ukraine – have been but playthings at the hands of the powers that be, flexing their muscles and making believe that they want to pursue the policies that they are compelled to pursue, policies like accepting the green agenda or accommodating Third World people or doing away with swaths of their economies or coming to grips with the new normal in morality. The elites of these countries of whatever political persuasion are sure to continue in the footsteps of their predecessors. Croats and Serbs, Slovaks and Czechs, Ukrainians and Russians, Poles and Russians are certainly going to be pitted one against the other also in the nearest and remote future. You just cannot help it. It runs in their DNA.
