Content area
Full text
As we become increasingly aware of the tragic past, how can we avoid fuelling resentment along national lines in the present?
July 2016: President Petro Poroshenko kneels before the monument to the victims of Volyn tragedy. Source: President of Ukraine.Volhynia, a border region in the northwest of present-day Ukraine, is almost completely absent on Europe's landscape of memory. Here, in 1943, a section of Ukraine's nationalist underground massacred the region's Polish population. These events, despite being one of the largest mass killings of the Second World War, are barely known in Ukraine today. Across the border, though, "Wolyn 1943", as the events are known, is gradually moving to the very centre of Poland's memorial culture, and is playing a significant role in Polish attitudes towards Ukraine.
I have been active in discussions of Volhynia in both Poland and Ukraine since the mid-2000s. While expressing my views I have often had an uncomfortable feeling of being presented (and perceived) as "a Ukrainian voice", though I am not at all interested in defending or denouncing any national tradition. Instead, I believe it is crucial to consider how researchers can move beyond the predictable logic of two "national truths" and negotiating the best diplomatic formula to define what happened in Volhynia.
Instead, we should ask two questions: i) How can we study the events in Volhynia in their local complexity as well as the comparative transnational framework? [1] ii) What can we learn from research on the Volhynian massacre not in terms of national martyrdom, but in terms of individuals' behaviour in an extremely violent and dynamic situation when one's ethnicity (ascribed or self-identified) leads to collective responsibility and, therefore, life or death?
What happened in Volhynia in 1943?
Located in the northeast of pre-war Poland, Volhynia was an agricultural region with 2.1m people, with three major ethnic groups: Ukrainians (almost 68%), Poles (16.5%) and Jews (9.78%). [2]
In 1939, the region was occupied by the Soviet troops, in 1941 - by the German Wehrmacht. Soon afterwards the Volhynian Jews became the victims of Germany's "Final Solution". After the battle of Stalingrad in 1943, which made the Third Reich's defeat and the re-ordering of borders in Europe pretty much predictable, the Bandera wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian...