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Acknowledgment
The author thanks the issue editors, Dirk Moses and Diana Dumitru, as well as John-Paul Himka, Aliza Luft, Per Anders Rudling, and the anonymous reviewer for insightful and timely feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno 32 (Digital Dante Edition, translator Allen Mandelbaum), Columbia University, 2019, https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-32 (accessed 20 July 2023).
2 Paweł Pieniążek, “Ukraine is Reclaiming Land and Tracking Down Collaborators,” Public Seminar, 9 May 2023, https://publicseminar.org/essays/ukraine-is-reclaiming-land-and-tracking-down-collaborators (accessed 28 June 2023).
3 Haluzevyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bezpeky Ukrainy (HDA SBU) (Rivne), spr.6615, ark.10.
4 This individual had to make similar such calculations when the Nazis arrived in Tuchyn in 1941, as well, but that is a separate discussion. On what transpired in Tuchyn in the first months of the Nazi occupation, see Jared McBride, “The Tuchyn Pogrom: The Names and Faces Behind the Violence, Summer 1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 36, no. 3 (2022): 315–33.
5 While collaboration was not ignored by journalists and scholars prior to 2022, it did not enjoy the attention or relevance the current invasion has brought it. For relevant articles on the pre-invasion period (with a focus on the Donbas), see Tanya Zaharchenko, “In the Ninth Circle: Intellectuals as Traitors in the Russo-Ukrainian War,” in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. Gelinada Grinchenko and Eleonora Narvselius (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 197–212; Valentina Shaikan, Kateryna Datsko, Nina Ivaniuk, and Alim Batiuk, “Collaborationism and War Crimes as Phenomena in the Information Society,” Advances in Economics, Business, and Management Research 129 (2020): 116–26; Ihor Losiev, “Viina Ukrainy z Rosiieiu i kolaborantstvo. Derzhava povynna reahuvaty,” Krym.Realii, 4 October 2019, https://ua.krymr.com/a/ihor-losiev-viina-ukrainy-z-rosiieiu-i-kolaboranstvo/30197846.html (accessed 12 August 2023); Tetiana Popova, “Pro kolaboratsionizm,” Radio Svoboda, 28 February 2018, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/29066348.html (accessed 12 August 2023).
6 Serafima Taran, “Zakon o kollaborantakh: kogo i kak nakazhut,” Fokus, 17 March 2022, https://focus.ua/politics/509553-zakon-o-kollaborantah-kogo-i-kak-nakazhut.
7 For an excellent summary of the Russian occupation as of winter 2023 and reflections on a host of important themes, see Tatiana Zhurzhenko, “Terror, Collaboration, and Resistance,” Eurozine, 17 January 2023, https://www.eurozine.com/terror-collaboration-and-resistance (accessed 12 August 2023).
8 On identifying collaborators within Ukrainian security forces, see Andrew E. Kramer and Valerie Hopkins, “Zelensky Takes Aim at Hidden Enemy: Ukrainians Aiding Russia,” New York Times, 18 July 2022.
9 For useful introductions to the theme, see Jan T. Gross, “Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration,” in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath, ed. István Deák, Jan Tomasz Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15–35; Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Kollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust. Ein analytisches Konzept,” Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 21 July 2020, https://docupedia.de/zg/Rossolinski-Liebe_kollaboration_v2_de_2020 (accessed 17 July 2023).
10 For edited volumes that span the continent, see Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps, eds., Complicated Complicity: European Collaboration with the Nazis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021) and the special issue, “Collaboration: A Comparative Perspective,” in European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 15, no. 2 (2008). For volumes on Eastern Europe, see Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinkert, and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, eds., Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003); David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo, eds., Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust. Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004); Peter Black, Béla Rásky, and Marianne Windsperger, eds., Collaboration in Eastern Europe during the Second World War and the Holocaust (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2019).
11 Three important books among many on the theme, Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York: New Press, 1998); Julian T. Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972).
12 A selective list of recent work includes, on Belarus: Franziska Exeler, Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022); Leonid Rein, The Kings and the Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011); Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besetzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998); Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust. Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). On Ukraine: Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004); Tanja Penter, Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass, 1929–1953 (Essen: Klartext, 2010). On Russia: Jeffrey Jones, Everyday Life and the “Reconstruction” of Soviet Russia During and After the Great Patriotic War, 1943–1948 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Pub, 2008); Mark Edele, Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Johannes Due Enstad, Soviet Russians Under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
13 On memory politics, see the excellent edited volume by Grinchenko and Narvselius, Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal (in particular, the introduction 1–27) and Harald Welzer, ed., Der Krieg der Erinnerung. Holocaust, Kollaboration und Widerstand im Europäischen Gedächtnis (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007). On punishment literature, see discussion below.
14 Broad overviews of WWII in Europe continue to reflect new views on the war, see Vesna Drapac and Gareth Pritchard, Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Empire (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) and Philip Morgan, Hitler’s Collaborators: Choosing between Bad and Worse in Nazi-occupied Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), while popular press accounts continue unabated, see Ian Buruma, The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II (New York: Penguin Press, 2023).
15 For thoughtful theoretical interventions, see Vesna Drapac and Gareth Pritchard, “Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: Towards a Social History of Politics in Hitler’s Empire,” Journal of Social History 48, no. 4 (2015): 865–91. For an example of work that seeks a broader comparative frame for the Second World War, see Aviel Roshwald, Occupied: European and Asian Responses to Axis Conquest, 1937–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
16 Outside of Europe, see the recent book, Helena F.S. Lopes, Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
17 Peter Davies, Dangerous Liaisons: Collaboration and World War Two (Harlow: Longman, 2004).
18 James Mace Ward, “Legitimate Collaboration: The Administration of Santo Tomás Internment Camp and Its Histories,” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 5 (2008): 159–201.
19 For similar approaches, Jeffrey W. Jones, “‘Every Family Has its Freak’: Perceptions of Collaboration in Occupied Soviet Russia, 1943–1948,” Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (2005): 747–70; Franziska Exeler, “The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union,” Slavic Review 75, no. 3 (2016): 606–29. For an overview of the term's moral valence, see, Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1–11, 240–8; Drapac and Pritchard, Resistance and Collaboration, 37–8.
20 Among the most useful on this topic, see Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, “Traitor or Hero? Ukraine Finds it Tough to Identify Russian Collaborators,” CNN, 9 June 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/europe/ukraine-hunt-for-collaborators-intl/index.html (accessed 28 June 2023); Mari Saito, “Fear and Suspicion as Ukraine Hunts for Traitors in the East,” Reuters, 28 July 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fear-suspicion-ukraine-hunts-traitors-east-2022-07-28 (accessed 28 June 2023); Andrew E. Kramer and Maria Varenikova, “As Russia Retreats, a Question Lingers: Who Counts as a Collaborator?” New York Times, 22 September 2022; Yaroslav Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators – and the Finger-Pointing Begins,” Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2022; Joshua Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine,” The New Yorker, 30 January 2023; Jamie Dettmer, “Spy Hunt or Witch hunt? Ukrainians Fear the Two are Merging,” Politico, 4 May 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/spy-witch-hunt-ukraine-russia-war-traitor/ (accessed 28 June 2023); Jamie Dettmer, “In Ukraine, Collaboration Cases Aren’t Always Clear-cut,” Politico, 12 May 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/in-ukraine-collaboration-cases-arent-always-clear-cut/ (accessed 28 June 2023).
21 Robert Klemko and Isabelle Khurshudyan, “In Ukrainian Villages, Whispers of Collaboration with the Russians,” Washington Post, 4 May 2022.
22 Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
23 Michael E. Miller and Samantha Schmidt, “In Kherson City, Sympathies for Russia Complicate Reintegration into Ukraine,” Washington Post, 22 November 2022.
24 Dettmer, “Spy Hunt or Witch Hunt?”
25 Mansur Mirovalev, “Ukraine Investigates, Attacks Those Who Collaborate with Russia,” Al Jazeera, 11 July 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/11/what-awaits-turncoat-ukrainian-officials (accessed 17 July 2023).
26 Elena Roshchina, “Tsarev predlozhil sdat’ Kryvoi Rog, Vilkul otpravil ego vsled za russkim korablem,” Ukrainskaia Pravda, 20 March 2022, https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/03/20/7332961 (accessed 17 July 2023). For examples of people from Zelenskyy’s own party collaborating with the Russians, see Mirovalev, “Ukraine Investigates” and Zhurzhenko, “Terror, Collaboration and Resistance,” 13.
27 Andrew E. Kramer, “Russia’s Grave Miscalculation: Ukrainians Would Collaborate,” New York Times, 7 May 2022.
28 Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
29 Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators.”
30 See, for example, “The father told Advokat that he was a patriot who hated what his son had done and he agreed to come in and give the SBU his statement later in the week,” in Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk, “Ukrainian Security Officers Hunt the Enemy Within: ‘Agents’ for Russia,” Washington Post, 11 November 2022.
31 For an overview and more theoretical considerations on the theme vis-à-vis collaboration see, Narvselius and Grinchenko, “Introduction,” in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory, 8–9.
32 Talk of suspicion and distrust appearing suddenly in “sleepy hamlets” illicit this concern, despite otherwise strong reporting in this article: Saito, “Fear and Suspicion as Ukraine Hunts for Traitors in the East.”
33 Klemko and Khurshudyan, “In Ukrainian Villages, Whispers of Collaboration with the Russians.”
34 Saito, “Fear and Suspicion as Ukraine hunts for Traitors in the East.”
35 Franco Ordoñez, “Another Casualty of Russia’s War: Some Ukrainians No Longer Trust Their Neighbors,” NPR, 26 October 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/10/26/1130710836/another-casualty-of-russias-war-some-ukrainians-no-longer-trust-their-neighbors (accessed 17 July 2023).
36 Klemko and Khurshudyan, “In Ukrainian Villages, Whispers of Collaboration with the Russians.”
37 Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators.”
38 Stefanie Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine is Alive and Well,” Foreign Policy, 17 January 2023.
39 On the legality of targeting suspected collaborators extrajudicially, see Shane Darcy, “Confronting the Collaborators,” OpinioJuris, 7 November 2022, http://opiniojuris.org/2022/11/07/confronting-the-collaborators (accessed 14 August 2023).
40 For the original 3 March 2022 law, see the text here: “Pro vnesennia zmin do deiakykh zakonodavchykh aktiv Ukrainy shchodo vstanovlennia kriminal’noi vidpovidal’nosti za kolaboratsiinu dial’nist’”, https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2108-20#Text (accessed 12 August 2023). For discussion of the laws and how they have been put into practice, see a series of articles by the Ukrainian Helinski Group, “Analityka vid Suddiv ta Advokativ. Seriia Publikatsii vid Vypusknykiv Osvitnikh Prohram UHSPL,” https://www.helsinki.org.ua/articles/analityka-vid-suddiv-ta-advokativ-seriia-publikatsiy-vid-vypusknykiv-osvitnikh-prohram-uhspl (accessed 13 August 2023). Also, see “Ukraine’s Plan to Prosecute Collaborators,” Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 6 September 2022, https://iwpr.net/global-voices/ukraines-plan-prosecute-collaborators (accessed 12 August 2023); Petr Sapozhnikov, “Za poslednie dni Ukraina osvobodila ogromnuiu territoriiu. Shto teper’ grozit kollaboratsionistam, sotrudnichavshim s Rossiei?” Meduza, 14 September 2022, https://meduza.io/cards/za-poslednie-dni-ukraina-osvobodila-ogromnuyu-territoriyu-chto-teper-grozit-kollaboratsionistam-sotrudnichavshim-s-rossiey (accessed 12 August 2023); and Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
41 “Ukraine’s Plan to Prosecute Collaborators,” IWPR.
42 Numbers vary from article to article, and it is hard to find a definitive number. On the 5,000 number, see Tania Matiash, “V Ukraini vidkryto blyz’ko 5 tysiach kryminal’nykh provadzhen’ shchodo kolaboratsionizmu, – Min’iust,” LB.ua, 7 April 2023, https://lb.ua/society/2023/04/07/551317_ukraini_vidkrito_blizko_5_tisyach.html (accessed 12 August 2023).
43 For an informative study by leading human rights groups in Ukraine on how the laws have been applied in practice, see “Prytiahnennia do Kryminal’noi Vidpovidal'nosti za Vchynennia Kolaboratsiinoi Dial’nosti: Analiz Diiuchoho Zakondavstva, Praktyky ioho Zastosuvannia ta Propozytsii Shchodo Zminy Zakonodavstva,” 24 December 2022. The report can be accessed here: https://www.vplyv.org.ua/archives/7204.
44 “Ukraine City Hunts for Traitors: ‘Every One of Them Will Be Punished,’” France 24, 11 December 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221211-every-one-of-them-will-be-punished-kherson-hunts-for-traitors (accessed 12 August 2023).
45 “We don’t work like the Russians,” is one example from the head of the National Police in the Kharkiv region, see Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators”: and on this point, see Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
46 Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine is Alive and Well.”
47 For a very useful review of legal approaches to the theme in historical context, see Shane Darcy, “Coming to Terms with Wartime Collaboration: Post-Conflict Processes & Legal Challenges,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 45, no. 1 (2019): 75–137; Shane Darcy, To Serve the Enemy: Informers, Collaborators, and the Laws of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
48 For a Ukrainian lawmaker's criticism of the legal terminology, see Oleksii Leonov, “Kolaboratsionizm: ochevydnyi zlochyn z neochevydnymy oznakamy,” Ukrinform, 27 July 2023, https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-polytics/3741121-kolaboracionizm-ocevidnij-zlocin-z-neocevidnimi-oznakami.html (accessed 14 August 2023). On the broader question of how to prosecute, see Lorenzo Tondo, “‘A Difficult and Painful Question’: Ukraine Ponders How to Punish Collaborators,” The Guardian, 4 June 2022.
49 For a helpful overview of the issue, see Zhurzhenko, “Terror, Collaboration and Resistance,” 15–7.
50 Two journalists wrote, “There is a seething anger within the Ukrainian government at teachers who bent to the Russian authorities.” Kramer and Varenikova, “As Russia Retreats, a Question Lingers.”
51 Tondo, “‘A Difficult and Painful Question’”; Lister and Fylyppov, “Traitor or Hero?”
52 Kramer and Varenikova, “As Russia Retreats, a Question Lingers.”
53 There are similar concerns about other categories of people who remained under the occupation like business owners and farmers, see Zhurzhenko, “Terror, Collaboration and Resistance,” 14–5 and Elizabeth Piper, “Insight: Traitor Next Door? Fear Stalks Kherson After Russian Occupation Ends,” Reuters, 18 May 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/traitor-next-door-fear-stalks-kherson-after-russian-occupation-ends-2023-05-18 (accessed 12 August 2023).
54 Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
55 Saito, “Fear and Suspicion as Ukraine Hunts for Traitors in the East.”
56 Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine.”
57 Drapac and Pritchard, Resistance and Collaboration, 39–40.
58 Tondo, “‘A Difficult and Painful Question’”; Kramer and Varenikova, “As Russia Retreats, a Question Lingers”; Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators”; Dominique Soguel, “In Ukraine, Russian Collaborators Flee or Face Justice,” Christian Science Monitor, 20 January 2023, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2023/0120/In-Ukraine-Russian-collaborators-flee-or-face-justice (accessed 12 August 2023).
59 Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 95–101.
60 Kramer and Varenikova, “As Russia Retreats, a Question Lingers.”
61 Saito, “Fear and Suspicion as Ukraine Hunts for Traitors in the East.” The importance of popular participation is also echoed by SBU, see Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine is Alive and Well.”
62 Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine Is Alive and Well”; “Ukraine City Hunts for Traitors: ‘Every One of Them Will be Punished.’” Some government figures have also decided to put the names of alleged collaborators online before any investigations take place, see Oleh Haliv, “‘Khto ie kolaborantom mozhe vyznachyty lyshe sud’: u Miniusti poiasnyly, iak karaiet’sia spivpratsia iz okupantamy,” Radio Svoboda, 10 April 2023, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/kolaboratsionizm-zakon-kolomiyets-minyust/32357018.html.
63 Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine is Alive and Well.”
64 Igor Burdyga, “The Problems with Ukraine’s Wartime Collaboration Law,” OpenDemocracy, 16 August 2023, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-kherson-wartime-collaboration-law-problems-amendments (accessed 12 September 2023).
65 Ordoñez, “Another Casualty of Russia’s War.”
66 Richard Lloyd Parry, “‘Suspicious’ Neighbours Caught up in Ukraine’s Hunt for Collaborators,” The Times, 29 April 2022; Soguel, “In Ukraine, Russian Collaborators Flee or Face Justice.”
67 Dettmer, “Spy Hunt or Witch Hunt?”
68 Soguel, “In Ukraine, Russian Collaborators Flee or Face Justice.”
69 Lister and Fylyppov, “Traitor or Hero?”
70 Mstyslav Chernov and Yuras Karmanau, “Ukraine Cracks Down on ‘Traitors’ Helping Russian Troops,” AP, 29 April 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-europe-kharkiv-51c514b6dc9cc1f935e018e4877222cc (accessed 12 August 2023); Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine”; Dettmer, “Spy Hunt or Witch Hunt?”
71 For a similar concern regarding another theme from the current war and Second World War, see Franziska Exeler, “Filtration Camps, Past and Present, and Russia’s War Against Ukraine,” Journal of Genocide Research 25, nos. 3–4 (2023): 15–9.
72 On this point, see Timothy Snyder, “The Causes of the Holocaust,” Contemporary European History 21, no. 2 (2012): 163.
73 For an overview on the theme, Istvan Deak, Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II (Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2015). For selections from a growing literature on trials, see, Vanessa Voisin, L’URSS contre ses traîtres: L’épuration soviétique: 1941–1955 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015); Franziska Exeler, “The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union,” Slavic Review 75, no. 3 (2016): 606–29; Tanja Penter, “Local Collaborators on Trial: Soviet War Crimes Trials under Stalin (1943–1953),” Cahiers du Monde russe 49, nos. 2–3 (2008): 341–64; Diana Dumitru, “An Analysis of Soviet Postwar Investigation and Trial Documents and Their Relevance for Holocaust Studies,” in The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Response, ed. Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, Alexander M. Martin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 2014), 142–57.
74 Penter, “Local Collaborators on Trial,” 342. For another consideration of the arrest numbers, see Exeler, “Ambivalent State,” 607.
75 The total number of wartime collaborators (based on Soviet definitions) in Ukraine likely exceeded 200,000 (author’s estimate).
76 As an example, see Diana Dumitru, “The Gordian Knot of Justice: Prosecuting Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Stalinist Courts for ‘Collaboration’ with the Enemy,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 22, no. 4 (2021): 729–56.
77 Penter, “Local Collaborators on Trial,” 349–51.
78 For a clear overview of this argument, see Exeler, “The Ambivalent State” and Exeler, Ghosts of War.
79 Jones, “Every Family Has its Freak,” 753–9.
80 On the later trials, see especially, Alexander V. Prusin, “The ‘Second Wave’ of Soviet Justice: The 1960s War Crimes Trials,” in Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays across Disciplines, ed. Norman J.W. Goda (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018), 129–57.
81 In addition to weighing down the judicial system already overwhelmed with investigating Russian crimes, there are long-standing concerns about corruption within the judicial system itself, see William D. Meyer, Under Assault: A Status Report on the Ukrainian Justice System in Wartime (Stockholm: International Legal Assistance Consortium, 2022), http://ilacnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ILAC_-Ukraine-Status-Report-on-Justice-System-July-2022.pdf (accessed 12 August 2023).
82 Polling from late 2022 shows popularity for strong measures against collaborators, see Geoff Dancy, Kathryn Sikkink, Mykhailo Soldatenko, and Patrick Vinck, “Russia’s Willing Collaborators: Ukraine Needs a Measured Lustration Policy to Strengthen Security and Rebuild Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, 8 June 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russias-willing-collaborators (accessed 12 August 2023).
83 On pre-2022 lapses, see Zhurzhenko, “Terror, Collaboration and Resistance,” 19 and on calls for more radical approaches to punishment see the work of the Kyiv-based NGO, Chesno, discussed here, Glinski, “Russia’s Fifth Column in Ukraine Is Alive and Well,” and this op-ed, Tetiana Selezn’ova, “Pislia kontrnastupu: vyklyky deokupovanykh terytorii,” Ukrains’ka Pravda, 14 July 2023, https://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2023/07/14/7411304 (accessed 14 August 2023).
84 For policy suggestions on this front, especially important discussion about the use of lustration in a wider historical context, see Dancy et al., “Russia’s Willing Collaborators” and Varleriia Kolomiiets’, “Zrada chy sproba vyzhyty: v chomu vidminnist’,” Ukrains’ka Pravda, 13 April 2023, https://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2023/04/13/7397700 (accessed 12 August 2023). For similar arguments, see also Simon Schlegel, “What Will Ukraine Do with Russian Collaborators? Revenge Would Be a Mistake,” The Guardian, 26 June 2023. I do not endorse any policies in this respect.
85 Lev Golinkin, “Investigation: Some 1,500 Statues and Streets Honor Nazis Around the World — Including in Germany and the U.S.,” The Forward, 27 January 2022. https://forward.com/news/481224/the-many-monuments-that-still-honor-fascists-nazis-and-murderers-of-jews and for Ukraine specifically: https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine (accessed 9 August 2023).
86 Iurii Korzhov, “Memorializatsiia postati Petra Samutina v s. Tashan’,” in Osobystist’ u Lokal’nomu Istorychnomu Prostori: Pereiaslavshchyna, ed. O.A. Horbovyi and T. IU Hahaiko (Peresilav – Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi: Drukarnia Ruta, 2020), 78–81.
87 For other examples, see the Golinkin map referenced above. On debates surrounding Ukraine’s memory laws and decommunization efforts, see David R. Marples, “Decommunization, Memory Laws, and ‘Builders of Ukraine in the 20th Century,’” Acta Slavica Iaponica (Slavic and Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University), Tomus 39 (2018): 1–22.
88 The sole line on Samutyn’s wartime activities speaks volumes in this lengthy obituary from a prominent diaspora newspaper: “ … he joined the German army, and in 1941 he was sent to the Eastern Front,” see O. Zinkevych, “Heneral P. Samutyn – Voiak, Strateh, Doslidnyk (Soldier, strategist, and researcher),” Svoboda, 29 July 1983.
89 As one example, Adrian Karatnycky, “Ukraine’s Traitors Have a Long and Sordid History,” Foreign Policy, 4 September 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/04/ukraine-treason-traitors-collaborators-russia-war-espionage-occupation-security (accessed 12 September 2023).
90 See the excellent point about how difficult it would be for anyone to determine what constitutes collaboration in the context of Galicia during the civil wars of 1918–1922, Drapac and Pritchard, Resistance and Collaboration, 38.
91 There are estimates that 200,000 people could be guilty of collaboration in Crimea, see “Pislia deokupatsii Krymu pid stattiu pro kolaboratsionizm mozhut’ potrapyty 200 tysiach liudei – Tasheva,” Radio Svoboda, 18 May 2023, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-krym-deokupatsia-kolaboratsionizm/32417764.html (accessed 13 August 2023); Elina Beketova, “Behind the Lines: Crimea’s Collaboration Conundrum,” CEPA, 29 June 2023, https://cepa.org/article/behind-the-lines-crimeas-collaboration-conundrum (accessed 13 August 2023). For updates on ongoing cases, see reporting at Sudovyi Reporter: https://sudreporter.org/tag/kolaboraczionizm/ (accessed 12 August 2023); Ukrain’ska Pravda, https://www.pravda.com.ua/tags/5b1ab7068ab84/ (accessed 12 August 2023).
92 On fleeing collaborators, see Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Koshiw, “Collaborators with Russian Forces are Fleeing, Say Ukrainian Officials,” The Guardian, 13 September 2022. On recent efforts to include Interpol, see “National Police Sends Interpol Data on Suspected Collaborators Who Fled to EU,” The New Voice of Ukraine, 15 July 2023, https://english.nv.ua/nation/national-police-sends-data-on-suspected-collaborators-who-fled-to-eu-to-interpol-50339222.html (accessed 12 August 2023). On historical precedent, see Martin Dean, “Where Did All the Collaborators Go?” Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (2005): 791–8.
93 On historical blind spots regarding gender and collaboration during the Second World War, see Vesna Drapac, “Collaboration and Resistance in the East,” in The Routledge History of the Second World War, ed. Paul R. Bartrop (London: Routledge, 2021), 504–6.
94 One article highlights resentment towards female hospital employees who dated Russian soldiers with one employee remarking, “They wanted to fix their personal lives, but chose the wrong men. Now, they are despised by the entire staff,” see Trofimov, “Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators.” For a longer exposé on the theme with a story from Bucha, see Alice Speri, “Enemies Within: A Ukrainian Woman Protected Her Daughter from Russian Soldiers – and Was Accused of Collaborating With the Enemy,” The Intercept, 27 September 2023, https://theintercept.com/2023/09/27/ukraine-russia-war-crimes-sexual-violence-collaborators/. On the longer legacy within Ukraine, see Vanessa Voisin, “The Soviet Punishment of an All-European Crime, ‘Horizontal Collaboration’,” in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters, ed. Grinchenko and Narvselius, 241–64; Daria Rudakova, “Soviet Women Collaborators in Occupied Ukraine 1941–1945,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 62, no. 4 (2016): 529–45.
95 Early efforts to work with court cases can be seen in this article that examines 116 cases, see Grigorii Pyrlik, “Kommentarii v sotssetiakh, spory na lavochke i real’naia pomoshch’ agressoru. Kogo v Ukraine sudiat za kollaboratsionizm – i k chemu prigovarivaiut,” Nastoiashchee Vremia, 21 October 2022, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/kogo-v-ukraine-sudyat-za-kollaboratsionizm/32091861.html (accessed 14 August 2023).
96 For an overview of the relevant literature that would help with comparative framing, see Darcy, To Serve the Enemy, 22–51, 138–70.
97 “Antenora,” in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (London: Routledge, 2000), 49–50.
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Jared McBride
Jared McBride is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of California-Los Angeles. He is a historian who specializes in the regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century and whose research interests include nationalist movements, mass violence, the Holocaust, interethnic conflict, and war crimes prosecution. His research has been funded by Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and has been published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, The Carl Beck Papers, Ab Imperio, Kritika, and Slavic Review. He is completing a book manuscript on local perpetrators and interethnic violence in Nazi-occupied western Ukraine.