Managing the difficult past: Ukrainian collective memory and public debates on history

Abstract

This article analyzes the status of difficult historic events in Ukrainian collective memory. Difficult elements of collective memory are defined as those which divide society on basic matters, such as identity and national cohesion, and events which are being actively forgotten because of the role of Ukrainians as perpetrators. Three such issues were analyzed: World War II and the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Holocaust, and the ethnic purge of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1945. Utilizing data from quantitative and qualitative studies, the author showcases the significance of these issues for contemporary Ukrainian identity and Ukraine’s relations with its neighbors. In particular, the evaluation of World War II and the role of the UPA in Ukrainian history polarizes Ukrainian society to a great degree. At the same time, this element of national history is used to construct a common, anti-Russian identity. The difficulty of relating to the memory of the Holocaust and the ethnic purge in Volhynia is of a different character. These events are problematic for Ukrainian collective memory because they demand a painful settling of accounts with the past. At present, only Ukrainian elites are willing to work on these subjects, and only to a limited degree, while the common consciousness either denies or ignores them altogether.

Keywords:

• collective memory
• national identity
• Ukraine
• Holocaust
• OUN-UPA

Notes

1. There exists a vast literature on the subject of the specificity of collective memory, especially concerning policies of remembrance in Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from the collaborative tome edited by Blaecker and Etkind, see also Pakier and Wawrzyniak (2015) and Kubik and Bernhard (2015).

2. Ukrainian disputes about the subject were described by Marples (2008), among others. An exhaustive review of Ukrainian intellectual discussions on this issue can also be found in the anthology “Strasti za Banderoiu.”

3. Here and elsewhere, unless I state otherwise, whenever I use the term “Ukrainians” I mean all the citizens of Ukraine, regardless of their ethnicity. This simplification is necessary due to the limited length of this article and the sources that were used.

4. The term “vernacular” refers to Will Kymlicka’s book Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Mulitculturalism and Citizenship (2001); it is a conscious reference and an attempt to transfer this term from the area of nationalism studies to memory studies.

5. Some of the more interesting works of this kind include Richardson (2004), Jilge (2007), Ivanova (2008), Grinchenko and Olynyk (2012), Rodgers (2006), Zhurzhenko (2013), Narvselius and Bernsand (2014), and Yurchuk (2014).

6. The last such studies were conducted in the 1990s by Yaroslav Hrytsak and Natalia Chernysh, and dealt with the diversity of opinions about the past in Eastern and Western Ukraine, as well as other subjects. See the special issue of the journal Ukraina Moderna from 2007, entitled “Lviv-Donetsk: socialni identychnosti w suchasnij Ukraini.” There are currently two very interesting, large international projects devoted to this issue, but their results are not fully available yet: “Region, Nation and Beyond. An Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Reconceptualization of Ukraine” (http://www.lvivcenter.org/en/researchprojects/stgallenproject/) and “Memory of Vanished Population Groups in today’s East-Central European Urban Environments. Memory Treatment and Urban Planning in L’viv, Chernivtsi, Chisinau and Wroclaw” (https://memoryofvanishedurbanpopulations.wordpress.com/).

7. The author’s own research includes over 90 qualitative interviews conducted in Zhovkva in Western Ukraine in 2007–2010 (with representatives of various generations) and a similar number of interviews (with representatives of the older generation) collected between 2006 and 2010 in Central Ukraine and Volhynia (Zhytmoyr, Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, and Volhynia Oblasts) for the project “Poles in the East” (http://polacynawschodzie.pl/) by the KARTA Centre Foundation.

8. REB Group Page, http://rb.com.ua/PR_Pobedy_2013.pdf. Accessed December 15, 2015.

9. REB Group Page, http://rb.com.ua/PR_Pobedy_2013.pdf. Accessed December 15, 2015.

10. Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, http://dif.org.ua/ua/publications/press-relizy/sho-obednue-ta-rozednue-ukrainciv.htm. Accessed December 15, 2015.

11. Recently (in 2014 and especially in 2015) some moderately successful attempts at reaching an agreement over memories of World War II took place – see, for example, the celebration of Victory Day in Kyiv in 2015, which retained most of the Soviet symbols, but added some new, Western-oriented ones – for example, focusing on the victims, and the introduction of the poppy flower as a leading symbol of the ceremony. However, it is too early to tell whether these attempts have been successful. See Pastushenko (2015).

12. Rating Group, http://ratinggroup.com.ua/products/politic/data/entry/14092/. Accessed December 15, 2015.

13. Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, http://dif.org.ua/ua/publications/press-relizy/sho-obednue-ta-rozednue-ukrainciv.htm. Accessed December 15, 2015.

14. Rating Group, http://ratinggroup.ua/files/ratinggroup/reg_files/rg_upa_ua_102015.pdf. Accessed December 15, 2015.

15. It is important to note that the Demokratychni Initsiatyvy poll did not include annexed Crimea and the Luhansk oblast, where rejection of the OUN-UPA and Bandera as national heroes is overwhelming. The Rating Group does not specify which oblasts of the East were included in the survey, but it is likely that they excluded the abovementioned regions too. This does not invalidate the entire argument about the increase in OUN-UPA approval, but it indicates that the shift might not have been so dramatic.

16. Interview with Y., female, born in 1932 in Berdychiv (Zhytomyr oblast), conducted in 2008 in Zhovkva by the author.

17. For more information about the shaping of national history in Ukrainian textbooks, see for example Popson (2001), Richardson (2004), and Zashkilniak (2009). For a more recent overview of the UPA issue in broader Ukrainian historical politics, see the chapter “Dynamics of Memory 1985-2014” in Yurchuk (2014, 64–155).

18. Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich Page, http://www.osw.waw.pl/pl/publikacje/analizy/2015-02-04/nowe-tendencje-w-ukrainskiej-polityce-historycznej. Accessed December 15, 2015.

19. In this regard, the laws concerning national remembrance which were passed in May 2015 are of special importance. For an analysis of the laws, see Himka (2015b). To read the laws in English, see the Institute’s website: http://www.memory.gov.ua/laws/law-ukraine-legal-status-and-honoring-memory-fighters-ukraines-independence-twentieth-century; http://www.memory.gov.ua/laws/law-ukraine-condemnation-communist-and-national-socialist-nazi-regimes-and-prohibition-propagan. Accessed April 4, 2016.

20. Part one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1bX6em5PRs, part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxGbJ-RyuTU. Accessed December 15, 2015.

21. See for example the activities of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies: http://www.holocaust.kiev.ua/eng/. Accessed April 4, 2016.

22. A good example of this is the discussion surrounding Omer Bartov’s book Erased (2007) at Ukraina moderna http://uamoderna.com/arkhiv/11-pamiat152009. Accessed November 4, 2016.

23. A good summary of the status of the Holocaust in Ukrainian memory and historical policy is a text written by possibly the best expert in this subject, Himka (2013).

24. Ivanova (2008) reached the same conclusions in her studies on Ukrainian youth: in the families of her respondents, the Holocaust was mentioned only if one of the grandparents/parents had Jewish roots.

25. A useful term here is the concept of competitive victimhood. See Noor, Shnabel, and Halabi (2012); used in the Ukrainian context – Jilge (2007).

26. The text is also the fullest analysis of Ukrainian debates about Volhynia up to the year 2003. Another interesting study is Kasianov (2006).

27. See Panorama Kultur Page, http://pk.org.pl/publikacje/Pojednanie_Galicja_PL_A.pdf; http://www.pk.org.pl/publikacje/pojednanie_przez_trudna_pamiec_wolyn1943.pdf. Accessed December 15, 2015.

28. Interview with S., male, born in 1931, conducted in 2008 in Zhovkva by the author.

29. Interview with I., male, born in 1978, conducted in 2010 in Zhovkva by the author.

30. The lack of remembrance of Poles murdered in a neighboring village is discussed in Jacek Nowak’s book (2011).

31. A project dedicated to commemorating the “Righteous” – Ukrainians who saved Poles and Poles who saved Ukrainians during World War II, organized by “Brama Grodzka” and “Panorama Kultur” in Lublin and the Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University in Lutsk may serve as an example of such activities. Some publications mentioned in this text are the results of this project.

32. Tsentr Razumkova, http://www.uceps.org/ukr/poll.php?poll_id=454. Accessed December 15, 2015.

33. Tsentr Razumkova, http://www.uceps.org/ukr/poll.php?poll_id=550. Accessed December 15, 2015.

34. Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, http://dif.org.ua/ua/publications/press-relizy/sho-obednue-ta-rozednue-ukrainciv.htm. Accessed December 15, 2015.

35. It is worth mentioning that the discussion concerning the Polish–Ukrainian difficult past in Poland is not limited to events in which Poles were the victims. Considerable attention is also devoted to the postwar “Operation Vistula,” a mass deportation of Ukrainians who remained in Poland to the newly obtained Polish northwest, which was taken from Germany. Perhaps an issue that could receive more public scrutiny (and thus could somehow encourage Ukrainian partners to respond) is the interwar period, and in particular Polish authorities’ contemptible policies toward the Ukrainian national minority.

36. Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, http://dif.org.ua/ua/publications/press-relizy/sho-obednue-ta-rozednue-ukrainciv.htm. Accessed December 15, 2015.