Checking with PeZook, apparently the birthplace of Polish and Ukrainian nationalism is roughly in the same area. So in a way, it's like they share the same mother, but have been stabbing each other silly from day one and before.Simon_Jester wrote:The area in question is physically adjacent to the Balkans and shares some of the same problems (foreign conquerors dividing up the land and stirring things up in the 18th century and earlier, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russian Empire trying to impose order by various means that caused long term trouble and the rise of nationalism in the 19th).
Poland had a huge Cossack revolt somewhere in the 16th or 17th century that was fueled by resentment of Polish Boyars who were confiscating land from the Cossacks etc. Add in the religious resentment of Polish Catholicism being spread around, the revolt led to Polish priests and etc. being targeted. Quite a lot of people died, of the order of a million or something.EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnytsky_Uprising
Oh I do know that. But there's a serious bit of historical amnesia going around right now in Ukraine and the Baltic states.Thing is, the Ukrainians were going to be targets too. There was no place in the Nazis' "New Order" for any large population of Slavs. And the Ukraine was definitely on Hitler's list of lands worth colonizing by Germans.
Poland has its own historical amnesia issues but that's a separate topic.
