Between Hitler and Stalin: Lessons from the History of Ukraine

Jarosław Suchoples, Stephanie James, and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (eds.), World War II Re-explored: Some New Millennium Studies in the History of the Global Conflict (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019), 2019

In the 1930s and 1940s, Ukraine experienced political violence on an unprecedented scale. Political violence by the Soviet government and the German occupation authorities resulted in the death of millions, through starvation, deportations, and massacres, and left wounds which still have not fully healed. Independently of the Soviets and the Nazis, mass political violence was carried out also by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) whose ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews left up to one hundred thousand dead, a legacy which could not be openly discussed or researched, neither in the Ukrainian SSR, nor in communist Poland. The Soviet Ukrainian historiography reduced the Ukrainian Nationalists to hangmen and collaborators with Nazi Germany, whereas emigre nationalists constructed an elaborate cult of these groups as heroes and martyrs. This instrumentalization of the recent past produced mutually exclusive narratives. Following the two Maidan revolutions in 2004 and 2013/2014, there have been ambitious attempts by the Ukrainian government to produce a new historical canon, in which the most radical wing of the OUN figures prominently. This narration requires some topics to be avoided altogether, whereas others are treated in a highly selective fashion. Official memory policy has triggered stormy discussions about the recent past, reflecting deep divisions in a post-Soviet Ukrainian society which has only begun the process to come to terms with a difficult past.

Memory Crash. Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s - 2010s, 2022

This account of historical politics in Ukraine, framed in a broader European context, shows how social, political, and cultural groups have used and misused the past from the final years of the Soviet Union to 2020. Georgiy Kasianov details practices relating to history and memory by a variety of actors, including state institutions, non-governmental organizations, political parties, historians, and local governments. He identifies the main political purposes of these practices in the construction of nation and identity, struggles for power, warfare, and international relations. Kasianov considers the Ukrainian case in the context of a global increase in the politics of history and memory, with particular emphasis on a distinctive East-European variety. He pays special attention to the use and abuse of history in relations between Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.

Russia’s War in Ukraine: Implications for the Politics of History in Central and Eastern Europe, 2023

Russia launched against Ukraine not only a conventional war but also a war in the sphere of historical memory. Russian historical politics threatens the existence of the Ukrainian people, denies the viability of their state, and asserts that Ukrainian history is inseparable from the history of Russia. Ukraine is forced to defend its historical memory, which has become an object of strict control by the state. This control includes legislative regulation of history, promotion of heroism, utilisation of past tragedies and traumas, and efforts to destroy everything related to the memory of the adversary, such as monuments, toponyms, and literature. The politics of memory of Ukraine can be summarised by the slogan “Get away from Moscow!”, which was used by the writer Mykola Khvylovy in literary discussion in the 1920s. The target of such politics is the establishment of a unified vision of the past; the destruction of all historical and cultural ties with Russia, denial and prohibition (potentially even leading to criminal liability) of Russian and Soviet historical narratives; and mental mobilisation of all Ukrainians around the anti-colonial, anti-communist, conservative, nationalist historical narrative, linked to the discourse of the “thousand-year” national liberation struggle against the “eternal” enemy – Russia.

Henry Hale and Robert Orttung, eds., "Beyond the Euromaidan: Comparative Lessons of Reform for Ukraine" (Stanford University Press)., 2016

Neither whataboutism, nor negationism, isolationism or escapism will help Ukrainians to alleviate the accumulating embarrassment that Kyiv’s glorification of war-time ultra-nationalists creates among its friends in the EU, North America and other world regions. The various lapses of Ukraine’s misconceived memory policies, especially during the last two-and-half years, are now hitting back, as they provide plenty of convenient manipulation material for the Kremlin’s propagandists, proxies and sympathisers. They undermine the trust of Ukraine’s major foreign partners in Kyiv’s project for a modern European Ukrainian state, at a time when Ukrainians need their help most.

Memory Studies, 2017

Reporting from the events of the so-called ‘Euro-revolution’ in Ukraine 2013–2014, the Western media were prompt to point out the excessive use of national symbols, including those connected with the memory of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations ‘OUN’ and ‘UPA’, which for some periods of time had cooperated with Nazi Germany and were involved in the killing of civilians. By using a postcolonial perspective, the article aims to explain this phenomenon, as well as a number of other elements of the politics of memory in contemporary Ukraine, such as the so-called ‘Decommunization Laws’ adopted in 2015. Special attention is paid to Frantz Fanon’s idea of ‘anticolonial nationalism’ and Homi Bhabha’s idea of hybridity and their realization in Ukraine.

The official politics of memory in Ukraine since 1991 have been as ambiguous and inconsistent as the politics of officialdom in general, both domestically and internationally. This ambiguity stems from the hybrid nature of the post-Soviet regime that emerged from the compromise between the former ideological rivals (“national democrats” and “sovereign communists”), but also reflects the hybrid and highly ambivalent nature of Ukrainian postcolonial and post-totalitarian society. Since 1991, official politics, including the politics of memory, had been masterminded in such a way so as to not only exploit the societal ambivalence inherited from the past, but also to preserve and effectively intensify it for the future.

Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s, 2023

This essay focuses on analyzing the history of the evolution of the nationalist memory narrative in recent memory politics in Ukraine. It observes the political rehabilitation of the radical nationalist movement and its leaders and organizations, followed by public recognition and glorification, and the evolution of this memory narrative since the beginning of the 1990s from local memory to the centerpiece of the state politics of memory. This article examines the memorialization and commemoration of the nationalist movement at regional and national levels (sites of memory, memorial dates, renaming of topographical objects, movies, TV series, etc.), policies aimed at the promotion of the nationalist historical myth, political controversies, roles of major actors, public debates on these issues, societal responses, and international disputes.

Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 2020