THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES 109
lines must be recognized, even if Russia is to be regarded as a
single organism for political and economic purposes. It seems
to me important that this should be made clear, for I am of the
opinion that the Soviet measures against the national-cultural
movement in the Ukraine are by no means, as is sometimes
asserted, according to the desires of the non-Communist
Russians. Least of all are they in accordance with the views
held by leaders of the Russian minorities in such countries
as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and
Roumania (Bessarabia).
Baron Steinheil, the president of the Union of Russian
Minorities in Poland, expressed this view in his New Year's
manifesto of 1934. "The Ukrainian question must be cleared
up/3 he said. "... We must admit that part of the population
[meaning that of the Ukrainian districts of Poland] describes
itself as the Ukrainian people." Baron Steinheil goes on to say
that such a view conflicts with the historical truth that this
population actually forms part of the greater Russian stock.
Nevertheless, it is the case that the Ukrainians are distin-
guished by special peculiarities of language and tradition. "In
view of all these circumstances," he said, "our policy must
be not opposition to Ukrainianism as a distinctive feature,
but opposition to Separatism.5'
Baron Steinheil thus clearly declared that the Russian
minorities oppose only Ukrainian separatism, but do not deny
that the Ukrainians form a distinct ethnographic group.
Finally he has a word to say in criticism of the Great Russian
chauvinists. "The Separatist movement is promoted not only
by the Samosttniki [Separatists], but also sometimes by people
who stand on the Great Russian platform, but fail to recognize
the many valuable properties of local peculiarity and confuse
it with separatism. . . ."The manifesto concludes as follows:
- "It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to clear up the whole
situation and to seek to promote a feeling of respect for all the
historic peculiarities of the populations of Volhynia, Galicia