Historiography of the Volyn tragedy

This article presents the historiography of the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia during World War II.

Polish historiography

Communist Poland

The Polish historiography of the Volyn tragedy during the dictatorship of the communist party can be broken down into 3 periods:
# End 1950-1960s.
# First half of the 1970s
# Second half of the 1980s

In the early People's Republic of Poland, the question of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict was never a subject of independent studies. A Ukrainian historian Roman Hrytskiv believes that the Polish Communists avoided this subject as it could raise questions regarding the Polish population in Western Ukraine. [Грицьків, pp. 148-149] The theme of UPA "terrorism" was occasionally brought up in order to affirm the actions of the "people's government". Polish studies branded all Ukrainian nationalist organizations as anti-Polish, criminal and collaborationist.

New studies were initiated in the early 1970s based on factual information, however under the influence of the Soviet historiography, Polish historians continued to expound the mistaken Soviet concept of Ukrainian bourgeoise nationalists, although viewed in their own specific manner. This category includes the works of Ryszard Torzecki, [Torzecki R. "Kwestia ukraińska w polityce III Rzeszy 1933-1945" - Warszawa, 1972] who explained the reason for the conflict as Hitlerite politics based on the tenet of divide and conquer, the chauvinism of Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian-Polish disagreements in the interbellum, which were used by the Nazis in their interests. Similar concepts were formulated by A. Szczesiak and W. Szota in a publication [Szczesniak A. B., Szota. W. Z. "Droga do nikąd. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i jej likwidacja w Polsce" - Warszawa, 1973] that was soon removed form sale and libraries. Officially the book was dedicated to the activities of the Ukrainian nationalists in the interbellum but it also explained that the conflict had its origins in the late 19th century, and that the Volyn tragedy was a continuation of the terror campaigns of 1918-1939. This work also investigated in detail the Ukrainian-Polish negotiations from 1942-45 to stop the conflict and to unite to fight a common foe - the USSR. This study brought about a re-evaluation of the UPA within the USSR itself.

The next significant study was published in the mid 1980's by Edward Prus - "Heroes under the sign of the Trident" [Prus E. "Herosi spod znaku tryzuba: Konowalec - Bandera - Szuchewicz" - Warszawa, 1985] (1985) which employed a journalistic and propagandistic style. Prus was the first to introduce the terms and concepts such as the Ukrainian "slaughter" ({ _pl. rzeź of Poles. He compares the anti-Polish actions in Volyn and Galicia without the use of academic citations. According to a Ukrainian historian R. Hryckiw, Prus's work has no scientific merit. The use of a journalistic style, falsification and manipulation only reflect the state at which Polish historiography had reached in the last years of the communist Poland.

Independent Poland

Year 1989 marked the end of the Polish totalitarian state and a new era in Polish historiography. In the light of Polish independence the subject of the Ukrainian-Polish relations became a growing concern. The first study to be published was Tadeusz Olszański [Łukaszów Jan (Olszański T. A.) Walki polsko-ukraińskie 1943-1947 //Zeszyty Historyczne 1989 - 90 - pp. 159-199] (1989) article which shattered previous understandings of the OUN. The reason for the Volyn tragedy is ascribed by him to the inadequate policies of the Polish government in the interbellum and the destruction of the moral society during the Soviet and German occupations. Olszański introduces the term "de-polonisation" and suggests that the OUN expected a return to the situation that existed in 1918. De-polonisation started in Volyn in 1943 and Olszański divides it into 3 periods:
# Individual assassinations up till December 1942
# Activation and de-polonisation January-April 1943;
# Organized attacks on Polish self defence from May 1943.

Olszański underlines the influence of numerous provocations by the NKVD and Soviet partisans in the occupied zones in directing conflict against the UPA. Retaliatory actions by Polish forces and the negative view of the Polish underground to Ukrainian independence were also factors. In the second period Olszański states that the Polish underground and the communists initiated a number of anti-Ukrainian terrorist actions. Ukrainian responses were restrained as at this time negotiations were being undertaken for a united Ukrainian-Polish front against Moscow.

Zbigniew Kowalewski's study (1993) stated that the role of the auxiliary police and its collaboration with Soviet Polish diversionist-partisan groups provoked the Ukrainians to use force, however these actions were not just those of the OUN and UPA, but also Soviet partisans, auxiliary police and other independent groups. Kowalewski introduces the thesis regarding the reason why OUN changed its strategy regarding the Poles in 1944-45 in order to form a unified Polish-Ukrainian front against the USSR. This would explain the wave of OUN propaganda spread in the Polish population regarding the formation of a unified front and the cessation of retributive actions. The Ukrainian and some sections of the Polish population understood that without an independent Poland there could not be an independent Ukraine.

Another tendency in Polish historical studies fuelled by the previous studies done under the Communist regime. One of the first such studies was undertaken by J. Turowski and Władysław Siemaszko in 1990, based on 350 eyewitness accounts by veterans of the Polish Home army regarding the anti-Polish terror in Volyn.

The fall of the Communist system in Poland also gave fuel to two directions in Polish historiography regarding the Ukrainian-Polish conflicts:
# Liberal-democrаtic and
# Nationalistic.

The first group has focused on the reasons for the inter-ethnic conflict in Western Ukraine. This group is subscribed to by most professional historians. The second group focuses on the problems of anti-Polish terror by the UPA. This movement is supported by former inhabitants of Volyn and Galicia and members of the various Kresy societies.

Тhe Polish emigre centre in London at this time began to actively support a nationalist view on the Volyn tragedy. In 1992 a magazine called "Na rubieży" began publishing studies by W. Siemaszko, E. Prus and Wiktor Poliszczuk. Attempts were made to document the Polish victims of Ukrainian nationalists with the inclusion of unchecked or sometimes falsified information. Numerous memoirs were also published dominated by the works of E. Prus [Prus E. Bluff XX wieku. Londyn, 1992, Idem. UPA armia powstańcza czy kurenie rizunów? - Wrocław, 1994] .

The liberal-democratic movement is represented by works by Ryszard Torzecki [Torzecki R. "Polacy i Ukraińcy. Sprawa ukraińska w czasie II wojny światowej na terenie II Rzeczypospolitej" - Warszawa, 1993.] which reviewed the thesis put forward during the communist administration and developed an orienteer for further scholarship. Torzecki argues that the territorial integrity of Volyn lay in the Polish population. From this point of view the author examines anti-Polish actions and the spontaneous actions of the peasants and the influence of OUN propaganda on their fight for social justice. Describing concrete incidence of terror in Volyn, he states that the pivotal moment for the development of bloodshed came with the transfer of armed Ukrainian police into the forests. This act raised the number of OUN-B dependent groups with people previously experienced in the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Secondly it initiated a mass movement of Poles into the ranks of he auxiliary police, which further escalated the situation. The author however postulates that anti-Polish terror may have been planned, it had as its main purpose to chase out the Poles. Torzecki also states that the raid by Sydir Kovpak introduce a significant destabilizing factor to the region and initiated the formation of Ukrainian National Defence - the group which first initiated the anti-Polish actions. The discussions between the Polish and Ukrainian sides were doomed to failure because they were based on tactical considerations.

Although Torzecki states that in 1943-44 the attempts to curtail the conflict between Ukrainian and Polish nationalism were doomed to failure, in his opinion it was OUN-UPA that could have stopped the conflict and did not. In his evaluation of the problem he also lays blame personally on Roman Shukhevych who was accustomed to dealing with problems from a position of force and would consider using terror on the civilian population.

In his 1997 study [Filar W. "Burza" na Wołyniu. Z dziejów 27 Wołyńskiej dywizji Piechoty Armii Krajowej - Warszawa, 1997] , Filar came to the conclusion that the sole result of the actions of OUN and UPA were to destroy the Polish population. This he bases on a command given by "Klym Savur" regarding the liquidation of he urban Polish population. Information about this command was obtained from a criminal deposition of Yuri Stelmashchuk which existed in the archive of the SBU in Volyn. The command was apparently a secret one given orally by D. Kliachkivsky to liquidate all Polish elements in the region. Filar comes to the conclusion that UPA consciously aimed their actions against the civilian Polish population. He also concludes that the UPA made its priority the extermination of Polish elements rather than fighting the occupiers. [Filar W. "Burza" na Wołyniu" - pp. 46-77] Filar's arguments were aimed at providing credible reasons for the undertaking of the Operation Wisła by the Polish Communist government. [Filar W. "Rozważania i polemiki w sprawie operacji "Wisła"//Przed akcją Wisła był Wołyń" / Oprac. red W. Filar. Warszawa 2000 - pp. 126-137]

Filar's thesis was criticized as being tantamount to rehabilitating the acts of the communist administration and as being politically incorrect by Grzegorz Motyka and Rafał Wnuk. [Motyka G. Wnuk R. "Pany i rezuny. Współpraca AK-WiN i UPA w latach 1956-1947" - Warszawa, 1997] The authors put forward the thesis that in order not to have a repetition of the acts following 1918, the leaders of the UPA proclaimed to the Polish population that they were to leave Ukrainian territories by July 1943 and in order to speed up this exodus a "planned restricted terror" was launched. However, due to certain conditions (in particular the Soviet aligned partisans) the situation in Volyn went out of control. Mass murders began on July 11, 1943 when in 167 population centres simultaneous actions were launched. This created a panic in the Polish population. Rather than the expected results of population migration many Poles joined partisan groups or the auxiliary police and organised defense leagues. As a result the actions of the OUN and UPA provoked the Poles to "bloody counter actions".

G. Motyka and R. Wnuk point out that at the end of WWII there was a real potential for Polish-Ukrainian dialogue and understanding. As a result the two anti-communist forces UPA and WiN signed tactical agreements regarding further cooperation. A new era in Polish-Ukrainian relations for the struggle for freedom meant that former conflicts were lost their principle meaning. [Motyka G, Wnuk R. "Pany i rezuny", pp. 86-130]

In a further study in 1999 Motyka states that the conflict between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples ended in 1945. After that UPA fought against the Communist government in Poland and not against the Polish population, as opposed to the Poles who continued their terror against the Ukrainian population and the Polish communists who under the guise of fighting the Ukrainian nationalist underground deported the Ukrainian population in 1947 [Grzegorz Motyka; "Tak bylo w Bieszczadach: Walki polsko - ukraińskie w latach 1943-1946", Warszawa, 1999. pp. 146-7, 442-443] . Motyka states that the anti-Polish terror in the Fall of 1943 and the conflict in the Lublin area in January-March 1944 were a result of the "Vilyn massacre" and the attempts by the Poles to make a Polish corridor to Lviv in their "Storm" (Burza) operation.

After the marking of the "Wisla" action the theisi of a planned "Volyn terror" became mainstream in Polish historiography. Attempts were made to blame OUN and UPA in crimes against the civilian population. More eye witness accounts were collected and published in 2000 (edied by W and E Siemaszkiw) collection "Genocide, done by Ukrainian nationalists against the Polish population of Volyn 1939-1945" [Siemaszko W., iemaszko E. Ludobyjstwo dokonane przed nacionalistyw ukrainskich na ludnosci polskiej Wolynia 1939-1945 - Warszawa, 2000.] .

On a solid documentary base, the authors attempted to convince the reader of the genocidal character of the anti-Polish actions of the UPA. The first volume gives a chronological and geographical listing of 1686 witnesses, archival information etc. The second volume gives the authors interpretation of these events, a summation of Polish casualties, names of the perpetrators and other documents.

However, the authors shed their academism aside when they included numerous unsupported statements such as that the anti-Polish terror was part of a wider plan, apparently devised at the III conference of the OUN etc. Despite the numerous criticism, until recently the work has been the most thorough study in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of this period.

With the 60th anniversary of the Volyn tragedy in 2003 a third era in the study of Ukrainian-Polish conflict has started.

In 2002 Grzegorz Motyka, finding all the previous concepts regarding the anti-Polish actions of the UPA inadequate, suggested viewing the Ukrainian-Polish relations from the point of view of the question of Ukrainian insurrection during the war. Encouraged by the mass desertion of the Ukrainian police, Dmytro Kliachkivsky initiated a wave of UPA attacks against the Nazi and the Soviet partisan forces in February 1943, despite the contrary decisions of the III Conference of the OUN. In order to "optimize conditions", "unwanted elements" which collaborated with the Germans and the Soviets were "removed". According to MotykaFact|date=July 2008, "Klym Savur" gave the liquidation order on July 11. The initial attacks were directed against the Polish underground. In February 1944 because of the Collaboration of the Poles with the Soviets the decision was made to resettle the Polish population back to within its ethnic borders. In cases where this did not happen the Ukrainians were to liquidate all males (Motyka notes that in all the commands it is noted that women, children and the elderly were to be left untouched) and burn property. However, by Autumn 1944 anti-Polish actions stopped and terror was used only against those who co-operated with the NKVD., and that the Ukrainians leaders had understood that it was time to unite with the Poles against the USSR. Polish actions against the Ukrainian civilian population were restricted and punitive in their nature according to Motyka. They were done by the Polish auxiliary police, the self defense leagues and the AK and also by Red partisans formed from ethnic Poles. In his latest studies,Fact|date=July 2008 Motyka attempts to synthesize the main concepts of both current directions in Polish historiography, analyzing and understanding the problem of anti-Polish terror in Volyn, the reasons and the results (Polish reaction) in order to induce the Ukrainians to officially condemn the activities of the OUN and UPA.

According to Roman Hrytskiv [Грицьків, pp. 148-170] a characteristic of Polish historiography is the national component in its understanding of the problem. This is evident by the treatment of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict as an episode of purely Polish history; focusing attention to the anti-Polish terror of the UPA and demanding that the Ukrainians condemn these actions; the treatment of the anti-Ukrainian actions of the Polish underground to a secondary position, and the moralisatory and emotional style of exposition of materials the inclusion of materials whose authenticity is questionableFact|date=July 2008 (memoirs, eye witness accounts, works of literature etc). At the same time, it is in Poland that the professional study of Ukrainian-Polish conflict was started. Polish historians were the first to thoroughly study and analyse the facts of this conflict, developed a periodization, collected a significant number of Polish historic sources and developed a number of alternative methods of studying the problem.

Ukrainian historiography

The issue of the Volyn massacres was largely non-existent in Ukrainian scholarly literature for many years. Until 1991 independent Ukrainian historic research was only possible abroad, mainly in the USA and the Canadian diaspora. However, despite publishing a number of works devoted to the history of UPA, the Ukrainian emigration researchers (with only few exceptions) remained completely mute about the Volyn events for tens of years.

Notes

References

* [http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/ece/research/intermarium/vol7no1/wnuk.pdf "Recent Polish Historiography on Polish-Ukrainian Relations during World War II and its Aftermath"] , Rafał Wnuk, Institute of National Remembrance, Lublin
* Грицьків, Роман - "Польська Історіографія Українсько-Польського збройного конфлікту часів Другої Світової війни" by Roman Hrytskiv, published in the collection "Українсько-Польський конфлікт під час другої світової війни"; Book 2, Lviv 2003
* cite book | last = Motyka | first = Grzegorz | authorlink = Grzegorz Motyka | title = "Antypolska akcja OUN-UPA w ukraińskiej historiografii" in "Antypolska akcja OUN-UPA 1943-1944. Fakty i interpretacje" | pages = 141-146 | language = Polish | year = 2003 | location = Warszawa | isbn = 83-89078-09-0 | publisher = IPN