JFK Supported Ukrainian Independence

Oliver Stone's so-called documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, makes a big deal out of JFK's anti-imperialist credentials. Indeed, in 1953 JFK published a speech by Lev Dobriansky in the Congressional Record that supported Ukrainian independence.

(H/T: Jerry Shinley)

Senator John Kennedy wrote:

I am familiar and sympathetic with the efforts of the branches of the Ukrainian Congress Committee in Boston, Pittsfield, New Bedford, and other cities in Massachusetts, to keep alive in the United States an understanding of the fact that the Ukraine has a long tradition of independence.

Here is the text of Lev Dobriansky's speech:

Dobriansky had this to say about Russian and Soviet imperialism:

The bondage of Russian imperialism which was ruthlessly imposed on the now 3 million Georgian nation in 1801, on the 10 million Byelorussian nation at the end of the 18th century, on the 25 million Moslem Turk peoples of Turkestan by 1842, on the 3 million Moslem people of Azerbaijan in 1828, on the 10 million non-Russian Cossack peoples in 1708, and on the now 40 million Ukrainian nation in 1783 -- this bondage was destroyed by the sweeping non-Russian revolution for national independence. Large independent republics were established, which for a time even Russia recognized. But it was not long that Russian Bolshevism took off where Tsarist Russian imperialism left off. The newly created states of Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, which today exist in the same state of enslavement to Moscow as do the other non-Russian nations in the Soviet Union, escaped the destructive onslaughts of Soviet Russian imperialism. The independent republics of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Cossackia were not as fortunate in this early period of Soviet imperialism.

Dobriansky concluded with a plea for independence:

As somewhat of an insult to your intelligence, you may hear, too, that the non-Russian peoples do not desire their independence or separation from Russia. Aside from the open historical record, it seems strange, indeed, that peoples in Africa, barely emerging from barbaric conditions, should clamor for their independence, while nations with civilized backgrounds even older than Russia's would be content to be ruled by a power which has dispensed only tyranny. The living expression in the free world of this profound desire for national independence is the greatly organized non-Russian emigrees themselves. What he was unable to learn from untainted scholarship, many a student on the Harvard Russian Research Center team to Europe learned from this living expression. In the formulation of psychological strategy against the deadliest enemy yet uncountered we can scarcely afford such luxury of time and misdirected effort.

And yet Oliver Stone continues to parrot the Vladimir Putin line. Independence for the Ukrainian people doesn't seem to interest him much at all.

James DiEugenio had this to say:

I do not condone the invasion of Ukraine.

I think it was a mistake. I am just trying to understand it based on the Russian point of view and what I think has been a misreading and mishandling of the issue on America's part.

I could have tolerated troops being sent into the Donbass and the declarations of independence there..

I think that after that would have happened then Putin could have been in a strong position to make a deal.

Trying to understand it based on the Russian point of view??? The most you can say is that you "do not condone the invasion of Ukraine."

Here is how everybody can help the people of Ukraine.

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