Halfway to Liberation: Ukrainian Cold War Émigrés and the Pitfalls of US Strategic Ambivalence

• In Event: Between Hope and Disillusion: Émigré Perspectives on U.S. Cold War Liberationist Ideals

Abstract

As the rhetoric of liberation grew more intense in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Ukrainian question presented American proponents of political warwafe with a perplexing dilemma. On one hand, Ukraine stood out as a prime target for destabilizing Stalin’s USSR: it was the second most populous and significant Soviet republic, wielded a vote in the UN, possessed the formal trappings of a state, harbored a potent anti-Communist insurgency, and maintained historically close ties to Central Europe. Despite these compelling factors, Washington exhibited an unusually cautious approach to leveraging the Ukrainian card for destabilizing the adversary. Having hundreds of thousands of anti-Communist Ukrainian non-returnees after 1945, American strategists opted for an ambivalent stance regarding support for Ukrainian independence.
This paper seeks to elucidate the reasons behind this strategic ambiguity and to chronicle the endeavors of political exiles to advocate for changes in the status quo. What strategies did Ukrainian exiles employ to overcome the reluctance to exploit the Ukrainian card for internal destabilization of the USSR? What successes were achieved through public lobbying and psychological operations against the Communist adversary? The Ukrainian case underscores that, in the eyes of the Washington establishment, the Iron Curtain separating the western border of Soviet Ukraine from its Socialist neighbors was perceived as significantly more formidable than the dividing line on the Elbe River. Strategic uncertainty regarding Ukraine persisted as a constant feature of American policy toward Eastern Europe until the conclusion of the Cold War, and to a considerable extent, persists to this day.

Author

• Oleksandr Avramchuk, John Paul II Catholic U of Lublin (Poland)