S8 Ep301: SHIFTING BORDERS AND THE FIGHT FOR GALICIAN IDENTITY Colleague Professor Eugene Finkel. Finkel shares the story of his grandfather, Israel (Lev), a Jew from Galicia who was drafted into the Red Army despite growing up in Poland without speaking Russian. T

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

SHIFTING BORDERS AND THE FIGHT FOR GALICIAN IDENTITY Colleague Professor Eugene Finkel. Finkel shares the story of his grandfather, Israel (Lev), a Jew from Galicia who was drafted into the Red Army despite growing up in Poland without speaking Russian. This illustrates the complex history of western Ukraine, which experienced Austrian tolerance regarding language compared to Russian repression and forced assimilation elsewhere. Finkel notes that Russian fear of Ukrainian nationalism in Galicia was a key driver for World War I. Following the 1917 Russian Empire collapse, a short-lived Ukrainian state emerged, but the region was eventually partitioned between the Soviet Union and Poland in 1939. NUMBER 2
1863 UKRAINE

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Batchel, visiting with Professor Eugene Finkel.
0:08.4	His new book is intent to destroy Russia's 200-year quest to dominate Ukraine.
0:12.6	The war in Ukraine now, a tragedy for Europe.
0:16.4	In 1940, a young man named Israel is Finkel, changes his name to Lev and joins the Russian army bravely and goes off to war for several years.
0:29.1	Eugene's grandfather.
0:31.1	Grandfather or great-grandfather, professor?
0:33.5	Grandfather.
0:34.0	Grandfather.
0:34.0	Grandfather.
0:35.0	And a demonstration that though he was Jewish, though he was from Galicia, which is back and forth between Poland's empire and the Russian Empire, he fights nobly for the Russian great patriotic war. That is important to fix because the Imperial Project had periods of peak and periods of valley.
0:59.0	We're probably in the valley of valleys right now.
1:02.2	Your grandfather, what was his relation to Moscow?
1:05.7	How did he think of Moscow, professor?
1:08.5	Well, for, you know, first 20-something years of his life, he had absolutely no relations
1:14.4	to Moscow.
1:16.3	He grew up, he was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1:20.5	He grew up in Poland.
1:21.7	He didn't speak a word of Russian until he was drafted into the Red Army.
1:26.7	And his story is not unique, right?
1:29.4	We talk about Ukraine and Russia, but there is also a part of Ukraine, which was not part of the Russian number until relatively late until World War II, essentially.
1:44.6	And that's the Western Ukraine, Galicia, area around three, which was part of the Polish
1:51.9	kingdom and then also Hungarian Empire.
	...

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