Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

The first transport of displaced persons departed on 7 May 1944. It carried around two thousand individuals. In the initial period, fifteen to twenty individuals were placed in one car. This triggered protest from Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Chernyshev, which resulted in thirty to thirty-five individuals being placed in one car “in conformity with the standards.” In this way, the already difficult travel conditions got even worse as winter came. In some transports no stoves were available. Due to freezing weather, in transport no. 49339, which departed from Ternopil’, twelve children died and many other individuals fell ill. The displaced persons were transported for example to the Komi Republic and to Irkutsk oblast’, where they were used as labor during tree felling and in mining. In 1944–45, a total of more than thirty thousand individuals were displaced and transported deep into the USSR.23

Numerous party members frequently criticized the NKVD Internal Troops for their ineffectiveness. NKVD commanders refuted these accusations, arguing that many of their failures resulted from the lack of reliable information received from the NKGB and within the NKVD itself. During a meeting in Rivne oblast’, defending himself against these claims, General Bragin astutely reminded the employees of the party obkom that without the involvement of the Internal Troops the party would not have been able to operate in the field and that his soldiers fight “and at the same time they endure many hardships, eat too little, have too little sleep and risk their necks.”24 Bragin argued that the NKVD troops showed… excessive “humanism.”25 He said:

Sometimes we are afraid to burn down a house, whereas it is absolutely necessary to burn it down without any hesitation. I don’t mean to say that our goal should be to burn houses down—the Soviet man never resolves any problems in such a manner, however, whenever this is necessary, when the right moment comes, then this is what we should do.26

He went on to say that should such facts emerge, “I’m not talking about [instances of] large-scale arson / then please take into account that the right moment had come and that it was necessary to do this.”27

The example of the above-mentioned statement by General Bragin shows that during the clashes the Internal Troops units were merciless towards their enemy: killing the wounded fighters was a common practice, and the soldiers did not bother about accidental victims. Another common practice was to break the guerrilla fighters’ resistance by setting fire to farms in which they were given shelter. This happened even in the situation when their presence was reported by the farm owner himself. The Soviets were entering areas in which, according to their propaganda, they could expect a warm welcome. Meanwhile, in reality, they met with distrust on the part of the local population, and they were constantly at risk of being attacked by guerrilla fighters. Frequently, the response of the NKVD Internal Troops was to treat all inhabitants of areas where the UPA was active as “criminals.” As a consequence, during their dragnet operations they often killed innocent people and later, in their reports, presented these victims as killed guerrilla fighters. For example, on 21 October 1944 fifteen NKVD soldiers came to the village of Kryvenke in Probizhna raion in Ternopil oblast’ to displace “families of criminals.” They were attacked by guerrilla fighters, lost three soldiers, and withdrew. On the next day, a unit commanded by major Polyaski and lieutenant Moldovanov arrived and carried out “a wild pogrom of the village.”28 Ten villagers: men aged between sixty and eighty, were shot dead (apparently the younger ones managed to escape), and forty-five farms were burnt. Five of the individuals who were killed were family members of Red Army servicemen.

Soviet documents contain descriptions of many such cases of lawlessness and abuse. It is likely that many more were never discovered by inspection bodies, and that this is why no accounts of these events can be found in the archival materials. In its resolution of 10 January 1945 even the Central Committee of the Ukrainian branch of the party admitted that “unacceptable incidents” had happened when the NKVD and the NKGB burnt down houses and killed individuals who had no links with the guerrilla movement, as a result of which they “discredited both themselves and the Soviet authorities.”29

The almost blatant violation of the USSR’s official legal norms by Soviet officers likely indicates that this was a common practice. The situation could not have been different—on the one hand, the Soviets were forced to maintain “the Soviet rule of law,” but on the other, they were expected to deliver immediate results in their fight against the guerrilla fighters and the underground movement. This meant that the number of individuals killed and arrested was expected to increase month by month. Reports sent to the headquarters were carefully read and thoroughly analyzed. Any decline in combat activity was immediately noticed and condemned. When faced with the choice whether to be “law-abiding and humanitarian” and expose oneself to the risk of being accused of ineptitude (or in the worst case—of supporting nationalists) or to break the law and expose oneself to the less likely risk of being accused of abuse, most people chose the latter option.

This behavior was welcomed by the Soviet leadership. On 10 January 1945, in Lviv, during a meeting of party activists and officials responsible for economic affairs in Lviv oblast’, the 1st secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Nikita Khrushchev explained the rationale for the repression in the following way:

They simply won’t respect us if we don’t take relevant measures, all members [of the resistance movement—GM] should be arrested, those who deserve it should be tried, or perhaps hanged, the remaining ones should be sent (read: deported—GM) and this will be the time when we will know that everything is OK and the people will know that we will take a hundred in exchange for a single individual... They need to be afraid of our revenge.30

It should be noted that the Soviets were aware that this type of behavior discouraged the local population from supporting the communist rule. Moreover, the local residents likely had the feeling that they were under occupation. This is why, at least from 1945, the Soviets tried to reduce the scale of lawlessness and abuse in order to win over a portion of residents of Volhynia and Galicia and engage them in the fight against the OUN-B and the UPA.

Although in 1944–45, the Soviets did not manage to eliminate the guerrilla movement, they did force the Ukrainian leadership to disband the bigger units. In the end, in 1946 the leadership of the OUN and the UPA decided to abandon the “insurgent-guerrilla fight against the superior strength of the communist regime”31 and switch to deep conspiracy. The authorities continued to fight these small groups of underground activists until the mid-1950s.

In 1944–45, the activity of the OUN-B and the UPA in the USSR was at its most intense. Over that period, according to Soviet statistics, the Ukrainian guerrilla movement carried out 6,600 armed operations. The strength of the UPA is confirmed by the fact that its units were capable of waging regular battles with the NKVD Internal Troops. According to official information, in 1944–45 the Soviets carried out 39,773 “chekist-military” operations against the OUN and the UPA. They killed 103,313 members of the underground movement and guerrilla fighters, detained 110,785 individuals, and 50,058 members of the OUN and the UPA emerged from the underground, having appeared before amnesty committees. In addition, 13,704 deserters and 83,284 individuals evading military service in the Red Army were arrested. These figures, plus the thirty thousand deported individuals, give a total of a staggering more than 390,000 people (it should be noted that around five million Ukrainians lived in the two regions).32

There is no doubt that the NKVD troops delivered the Ukrainian underground movement and the guerrilla movement a series of heavy and painful blows. Operations carried out by the NKVD Internal Troops contributed to a reduction in the scale of activity of the guerrilla movement, and most importantly they offered some degree of protection to the government apparatus built by the communists. This is why the activity of the NKVD Internal Troops should be viewed as an important factor that facilitated the post-war Sovietization of western Ukraine.

However, what is shocking is the scale of the acts of repression which accompanied the actions of a purely anti-guerrilla nature. They affected nearly every family in the western oblasts of Ukraine.

There is no doubt that the Soviets applied the principle of collective responsibility, repressing thousands of innocent people, often with only a loose or non-existent connection to the nationalist underground. Such ruthless treatment of the inhabitants of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia was not a result of the cruel methods of combat used by the OUN and the UPA. The Soviet troops showed similar brutality during counter-guerrilla operations conducted at that time in the Baltic states, and even in Poland, where in July 1945, during the operation in the Augustów Forests, at least 592 local inhabitants were arbitrarily declared “bandits” and subsequently executed without trial.33 It should also be noted that the involvement of such large forces and resources in Galicia and Volhynia by the Soviet repressive apparatus contradicts the popular thesis about the lack of social support for the OUN and UPA. Certainly, the underground could not have survived for so long without the broad support of the local population, who saw it as the only force resisting communist violence.

This is why in these regions the memory of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army is the idealized memory of an organization fighting above all else for Ukraine’s independence. When in 1991 Ukraine declared independence, following the collapse of the USSR, honoring the memory of the UPA was allowed in private ceremonies and at the local government level. Following the Revolution of Dignity, pursuant to a special law passed by the Verkhovna Rada in 2015, the UPA was recognized as a pro-independence organization at the state level. It is worrying that the official narrative most frequently “omits” the dark pages in the history of this organization and the crimes it committed against the civilian population. However, it should be remembered that the underlying motivation behind such an attitude is closely bound up with the memory of Soviet crimes.

1 This research was funded by the National Science Centre (Poland) (decision no. DEC-2012/06/M/HS3/00284).

2 The following publications on the NKVD Internal Troops are worth mentioning: Vnutrennie voiska v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945 gg. Dokumenty i materialy (Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1975); Ispytannye voinoi. Pogranichnie voiska (1939–1945 gg.) (Granitsa, 2008); T. Cariewskaja, A. Chmielarz, A. Paczkowski, E. Rosowska, and S. Rudnicki (eds.), Teczka specjalna J. W. Stalina. Raporty NKWD z Polski 1944-1946 (Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Instytut Historyczny UW, Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, Archiwum Państwowe Federacji Rosyjskiej, 1998); “Osobye papky” Stalina i Molotova pro natsional’no-vyzvol’nu borot’bu v Zakhidniy Ukraini u 1944–1948 rr. Zbirnyk dokumentiv (Piramida, 2010); Grzegorz Motyka, Na białych Polaków obława. Wojska NKWD w walce z polskim podziemiem 1944–1953 (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2014); and A. Kokurin, N. Petrov, and R. Pikhoia (eds.), Lubianka VChK–OGPU–NKVD–NKGB–MGB–MVD–KGB 1917–1960. Spravochnik (Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratiia, 1997).

3 For more on this subject, see John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd,” Canadian Slavonic Papers LIII, no. 2–4 (2011): 209–43; Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Oldenbourg, 1997); and Dieter Pohl, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Western Ukraine,” Shared History—Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939–1941, ed. Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, and Kai Struve (Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007), 305–31.

4 The “anti-Polish operation” carried out by the UPA between 9 February 1943 and 18 May 1945 covered several voivodships of the Second Polish Republic, an area that was inhabited by at least one and a half million Poles. The actions of the Ukrainian guerrilla movement resulted in a total of around a hundred thousand individuals being killed. Another between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand individuals were forced to flee to save their lives. Particularly important publications on the Volhynia-Galicia crime include: Ryszard Torzecki, Polacy i Ukraińcy. Sprawa ukraińska w czasie II wojny światowej na terenie II Rzeczypospolitej (Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1993); Andrzej Leon Sowa, Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie 1939–1947 (Towarzystwo Sympatyków Historii, 1998); Władysław Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939–1945, vol. 1–2 (Wydawnictwo von Borowiecky, 2000); and Grzegorz Motyka, Od rzezi wołyńskiej do akcji “Wisła.” Konflikt polsko-ukraiński 1943–1947 (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011). For more on the history of the region see: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Basic Books, 2010).

5 The literature on the UPA is extensive. During the Cold War, the following studies were written from the perspective of OUN members: Lev Shankovs’kyi, “UPA,” in Istoriya ukrayins’koho wiys’ka 1917–1995 (Svit, 1996); and Petro Mirchuk, Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya 1942–1952. Dokumenty i materialy (Cicero, 1953). As a rule, the crimes of the UPA were ignored in these works. The history of this formation was presented in a similar way by many books written in Ukraine after 1991, see e.g. Petro Sodol, Ukrains’ka Povstancha Armiia. Dovidnyk (Proloh, 1994); Ivan Patryliak, Vstan i borys’, slukhay i vir. Ukrains’ke natsionalistychne pidpillia ta povstans’kyi rukh 1939–1960 rr. (Czasopys, 2012); and Anatoliy Rusnachenko, Narod zburenyi. Natsional’no-vyzvol’nyi rukh v Ukraini i natsional’ni rukhi oporu v Bilorusiyi, Lytvi, Latviyi, Estoniyi u 1940–1950-kh rokakh (Universytets’ke vyd-vo “Pulsary,” 2002). Attempts to reconcile the history of the UPA with liberal-democratic values can be found in Iuriy Kyrychuk, Ukrains’kyi natsional’nyi rukh 40-50-kh rokiv XX stolittia: ideolohiia ta praktyka (Dobra sprava, 2003); and Yaroslav Hrytsak, “Tezy do dyskusiyi pro UPA,” in Strasti za natsionalizmom. Istorychni ese (Krytyka, 2004). Among works published outside of Ukraine one should point in particular to: Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult (ibidem Verlag, 2014); Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in Western Borderlands (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Alexander Statiev, “The Strategy of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists in Its Quest for a Sovereign State, 1939–1950,” Journal of Strategic Studies 43, no. 3 (2020): 443–71; Řepa Tomas, Banderovci. Politické souvislosti následky zneužití tématu komunistic-kou propagandou, návaznost na hybridní konf likt v současnosti (Academia, 2019); and Serhiy Kudelia, “Choosing Violence in Irregular Wars: The Case of Anti-Soviet Insurgency in Western Ukraine,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 27, no. 1 (February 2013): 149–81.

6 For more on the topic of post-war deportations in western Ukraine see Tamara Vrons’ka, Upokorennia strakhom: simeyne zaruchnytstvo u karal’niy praktytsi radians’koi vlady (1917–1953 rr.) (Tempora, 2013); and Stanisław Ciesielski, Grzegorz Hryciuk, and Aleksander Srebrakowski, Masowe deportacje ludności w Związku Radzieckim (Adam Marszałek, 2004).

7 The 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 23rd and 24th Motor Rifle Brigades.

8 Dmytro Viedienieiev and Oleksandr Lysenko, “Proiavy teroru i teroryzmu v protystoianni radians’koi vlady ta OUN i UPA v zakhidnoukrains’komu rehioni pisliavoennoi doby,” in V. Lytvyn and V. A. Smolii (eds.), Politychnyi teror i teroryzm v Ukraini. XIX-XX st. Istorychni narysy (Naukowa dumka, 2002), 753.

9 Anatolii Kentii, Ukrains’ka povstans’ka armiia v 1944–1945 rr. (Institut istorii Ukrainy NAN, 1999), 155.

10 Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karal’na systema v Ukraini 1917–1953, vol. 2 (Viis’ko Ukrainy, 1994), 482, 488.

11 Oleksandr Vovk, “Do pytannia pro naibil’shu bytvu UPA pid Hurbamy,” in Drohobyts’kyi kraeznavchyi zbirnyk. Spetsvypusk do 60-richchia UPA (Kolo, 2002), 125–37; Vnutrennie voiska v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 627–628; and Ihor Marchuk and Oleksandr Tyshchenko, Hurby: kviten’ 1944-ho (Mizhnarodnyi Poligraficznyi Tsentr, 2002), 5–18.

12 Vovk, “Do pytannia pro naibil’shu,” 125–37.

13 Litopys UPA, vol. 39 (“Litopys UPA,” 2003), 41.

14 Russian State Military Archive (RGVA), f. 38724, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 136–37. A description of combat activities of an independent unit for fighting UPA band formations, 29–30 August 1944.

15 Litopys UPA, vol. 39, 44–45.

16 State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. 9401 [Stalin’s so-called Special Files], op 2, d. 92, ll. 248–53.

17 Ibid. NKVD reports indicate that 115 “criminals” were killed and another 281 captured, in addition, more than seventy-four individuals evading military service and four deserters were captured.

18 RGVA, f. 38778, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 17–18, 20.

19 RGVA, f. 38698, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 14–15.

20 GARF, f. 9401, op 2, d. 95, ll. 361–62.

21 Rafał Wnuk, Leśni bracia. Podziemie antykomunistyczne na Litwie, Łotwie i w Estonii 1944–1956 (Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, 2018), 331. Ramanauskas survived the torture, however, a year later he was sentenced to death and executed on 29 November 1957. It is worth noting that such cruel torture was still being used at a time when the underground had already been extinguished.

22 RGVA, f. 38690, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 83–84; d. 19, l. 75.

23 Grzegorz Hryciuk, Przemiany narodowościowe i ludnościowe w Galicji Wschodniej i na Wołyniu w latach 1931–1948 (Adam Marszałek, 2005), 293–99.

24 Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine in Kyiv (TsDAHOU), f. 1, op. 23, d. 924.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Bilas, Represyvno-karal’na systema, vol. 2, 576.

29 Litopys UPA. Nova seriia, vol. 3 (“Litopys UPA,” Natsional’na Akademiia Nauk Ukrainy, Derzhavnyi Komitet Arkhiviv Ukrainy, 2001), 120.

30 Quoted after: Yuriy Kyrychuk, Narysy z istoriyi ukrains’koho natsional’no-vyzvol’noho rukhu 40–50 rokiv XX stolittia (Lvivskii Natsional’nyi Universytet imeni Ivana Franka, 2000), 139.

31 Quoted after: Kentii, Narys borotby OUN-UPA v Ukraini, 22.

32 Viedienieiev and Lysenko, “Proiavy teroru i teroryzmu,” 770–71.

33 On the so-called Augustów round-up, see further Miotła Stalina. Polska północno-wschodnia i jej pogranicze w czasie obławy augustowskiej w 1945 roku, ed. Łukasz Adamski, Grzegorz Hryciuk, and Grzegorz Motyka (Centrum Polsko-Rosyjskiego Dialogu i Porozumienia, 2019).

History Education and Reconciliation: The Ukrainian Nationalist Underground Movement in Secondary School Curricula, Textbooks, and Classroom Practices (1991–2012)1

Oksana Myshlovska

Abstract: Using the history education and conflict transformation lens, this article studies the representation of the Ukrainian nationalist underground in secondary school curricula and textbooks during the period between 1991 and 2012. In particular, the article reviews the representation of the conflict between the nationalist organizations and the Soviet regime, a topic that has not been studied in detail to date. In addition, the article discusses the role of history teachers as mediators of official curricula and textbook narratives about the nationalist movement in different regions of Ukraine on the basis of focus group discussions conducted with schoolteachers in thirteen regions in 2011 and 2012. The article finds that textbooks generally offer mono-perspectival, simplified, and mono-causal narratives when it comes to the history of controversial issues and conflicts. These narratives are presented in a positivist manner, with an emphasis on recounting “historical facts.” The parties in the conflict are presented in an asymmetrical manner, with the nationalist movement increasingly “indigenized” and the Soviet side delegitimized. Overall, such representations serve to limit the possibilities for conflict transformation and reconciliation. Focus group discussions with teachers show that, in some cases, teachers play a conflict mitigating role by presenting multiple perspectives on conflictual issues in the classroom and inviting discussion of wrongdoing by all parties in the conflict. In other cases, teachers see their role as reproducing the official narratives and teaching their students “historical facts.”

Keywords: OUN, UPA, World War II, school curricula, textbooks, teaching of history, conflict transformation, reconciliation