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NKVD Internal Troops Operations against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1944–451

Grzegorz Motyka

Abstract: The Internal Troops of the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (the NKVD) were a special-purpose unit established to fight guerrilla movements and “internal enemies.” Documents declassified following the collapse of the USSR indicate that “pacifications” carried out by the NKVD Internal Troops were brutal and very extensive. Analysis of activities targeting the Ukrainian underground movement in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in the final period of World War II and immediately after its end suggests that once the front had moved through these regions large-scale dragnet operations to eliminate major Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) units were immediately launched. In time, these operations covered the entire region. What followed were operations carried out by smaller pursuit groups which constantly operated in the field. The NKVD repression targeted not only members of the underground movement but also large groups of civilians. In principle, collective family responsibility was observed; there were numerous instances when defenseless individuals were killed—in reports they were described as armed “criminals.” The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UPA enjoyed genuine support on the part of the local Ukrainian population, which is why, despite huge losses, they continued their underground fighting activity until the mid-1950s. However, as early as the turn of 1945 and 1946, due to the activity of the NKVD, large guerrilla fighter units were demobilized and adopted the tactics known as “deep underground.” In this period, nearly four hundred thousand residents of this region, i.e., almost every family, were affected by Soviet repression. The memory of these acts of repression has contributed to the emergence of the cult of the UPA in present-day Ukraine.

Key words: NKVD Internal Troops, OUN and UPA, Stalinist-era repression, dragnet operations targeting guerrilla fighter movements, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, deportation.

The Internal Troops of the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) were an important element of the Soviet repressive apparatus. This unit was formed back in 1918 (as the Military Corps of the VChK (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission)) and from its early days was viewed as the armed wing of the communist party, intended to perform special tasks. The assumption was that it should be composed of soldiers who were particularly enthusiastic about communist ideals and ready to carry out repressions against anyone considered an enemy of the revolution.

The NKVD troops began to play a special part following Germany’s attack on the USSR. Pursuant to a Sovnarkom decision of 25 June 1941, these troops were responsible for ensuring security to the rear of the Red Army. To this end, the NKVD troops were expected to fight the enemy’s sabotage and disruption groups and criminal groups, track down spies, protect transportation routes, organize patrolling activities, and finally, prevent marauding and desertion. However, when the Red Army launched a counteroffensive, the NKVD troops were tasked with fighting the national guerrilla movements and carrying out acts of repression, i.e., arrests and deportations, targeting any “reactionary elements” in the areas under communist rule.2 Archival materials declassified following the collapse of the USSR indicate that the pacification of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia was particularly bloody. It affected as many as several hundred thousand individuals, including those killed, arrested, and deported. Despite its magnitude, until the end of the twentieth century this operation remained practically unknown to a wider public.

In the pre-war period, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were parts of the Polish state. They were inhabited by more than five million Ukrainians and one and a half million Poles (as well as around seven hundred and fifty thousand Jews, most of whom were murdered during the Holocaust). In September 1939, these areas were seized by and illegally annexed to the USSR; from 1941 they were occupied by the German army; and at present they make up the western part of the Ukrainian state. These areas saw the operation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which was formed in 1943 and was subordinate to the Banderite wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). Its purpose was to fight for the creation of an independent, united, and de facto mono-ethnic Ukrainian state.

Immediately after the German attack on the USSR, Ukrainian nationalists counted on the emergence of an independent state similar to Croatia ruled by Ustaše, and therefore they supported the attacking Wehrmacht by organizing a series of diversions. They also took part in numerous anti-Jewish pogroms.3 However, the members of the body established in Lwów/Lviv by the OUN, which proclaimed itself to be the Ukrainian government, was interned. Hitler decided to include Eastern Galicia in the Generalgouvernement—the German administrative unit for those parts of Poland which had been not annexed by Germany in 1939, whereas Volhynia became a part of “Reichskommissariat Ukraine.” In this situation, the Bandera followers also joined the anti-German underground. At the beginning of 1943, OUN-B created numerous partisan units called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). They began to fight against the German police forces, though in a limited way (which did not prevent the UPA making an agreement with German intelligence in 1944) and they started an open war with the communist partisans.

One dark episode in the history of this organization is the “anti-Polish operation” launched on 9 February 1943 with the intention of physically eliminating (by killing or expelling) the Polish population in all areas which—according to the OUN and the UPA—were to become parts of the future Ukrainian state. Brutal, genocidal purges lasted until the beginning of 1945, and as a result about 100,000 Poles were killed. At least 1–2 thousand Jews in hiding also fell victim to the OUN and the UPA.4

However, the leadership of the OUN and the UPA viewed the USSR as the biggest threat to Ukrainian independence aspirations. Mindful of the experience of the 1930s, when in Ukrainian lands belonging to the USSR the communists provoked artificial famine as a result of which three million people died, the leadership feared that Ukrainians living in Volhynia and Galicia might suffer the same fate. This is why the activity of the Ukrainian underground movement increased considerably once the front had moved through these areas. Local residents were called on to boycott the Red Army mobilization and prohibited from providing the obligatory in-kind contributions. UPA members killed local activists and attacked the newly-created village councils. The guerrilla movement spread into vast wooded areas and in both regions met with massive support on the part of the local Ukrainian population.

In mid-1944, the UPA reached the peak of its development. More than a hundred sotnias (the equivalent of a company or a squadron) had between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand guerrilla fighters. When this number is increased by groups of conspirators organized in units covering a major portion of Ukrainian villages and by numerous supporters, it can be assumed that UPA units were able to mobilize up to a hundred thousand individuals. The spirit of resistance was reinforced by rumors being spread suggesting that the Soviets intended to “physically annihilate” the Ukrainian nation and planned to displace all Ukrainians from the two regions to Siberia.

Although as early as the beginning of 1943 the communists were aware of the fact that the UPA existed (they knew it for example from reports provided by their own guerrilla movement), initially they tended to disregard or at least to underestimate the UPA’s strength and influence.5 One breakthrough moment was when General Nikolai Vatutin, a hero of the Battle of Stalingrad, was seriously wounded in an ambush laid on him by the UPA in February 1944 (he died of his injuries several weeks later in a hospital in Kyiv). In March 1944, the activity of the UPA was examined by the State Defense Committee of the USSR. A decision was made to boost forces responsible for fighting the guerrilla movement on the one hand, and carrying out large-scale repressions against members of the underground movement and their relatives, on the other. Recommendations were issued for example to organize public executions and to displace “criminals” and their families.6 To tarnish the image of the resistance movement, from the beginning in official language guerrilla fighters were referred to as “Ukrainian-German nationalists,” which was intended to suggest that the OUN and the UPA had close ties to the Nazis.

In Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, activities targeting the Ukrainian underground movement were commanded by People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Ivan Ryasnyi, his deputy Tymofiy Strokach, and People’s Commissar of Security Affairs of the USSR Sergei Savchenko. In October 1944, the Soviets managed to reconstruct the network of Soviet security bodies, i.e., the NKVD/NKGB, to which the NKVD Internal Troops were operationally subordinate.

It was to some degree natural for the NKVD Internal Troops to bear the main responsibility for carrying out operations targeting guerrilla fighters. By 25 March 1944, the 9th Ordzhonikidze Division and the 10th Sukhumi Division of the NKVD Internal Troops arrived in Volhynia and Podolia. They had just finished the deportations of the Chechen and the Kalmyk populations. Apart from that, eight Motor Rifle Brigades of the NKVD Internal Troops7 were ordered to go to Volhynia, alongside the 18th cavalry regiment and a special armored battalion from the 1st Feliks Dzerzhinskii Division. According to official statistics, each brigade was supposed to be composed of five battalions with a total of 4,050 soldiers,8 however, in fact the NKVD units were numerically smaller than this. According to Anatoliy Kentiy, Ukrainian historian and expert on the history of the UPA, as at 9 October 1944, 26,304 soldiers of the NKVD Internal Troops were involved in the fight against the underground movement in Western Ukraine.9 In October 1945, the NKVD Internal Troops were reorganized to form the 62nd, 65th, 81st, and 82nd divisions of the NKVD Internal Troops. According to official plans, each division was to be composed of four regiments, each comprising 1,450 soldiers; however, in fact hardly any of these units had as many soldiers. As at 1 February 1946, 22,907 soldiers of the NKVD Internal Troops were involved in the fight against the underground movement in Western Ukraine.10

Immediately after the front had moved through this area, the NKVD troops launched “chekist-military” operations which guerrilla fighters referred to as the “red broom.” Major forces encircled big wooded areas alongside the villages situated there, and combed them one by one. During these operations all armed guerrilla fighter groups were destroyed and all men aged sixteen to sixty were detained and checked. Operations of this type brought considerable results, especially in the initial period.

The Soviets decided to carry out one of the first such operations following the ambush in the Kremenets Forest in which General Vatutin was fatally wounded. The action carried out on 21–27 April involved four brigades of NKVD troops, a cavalry regiment, an armored sub-unit (15 tanks) and light air force. The Soviet forces were composed of a total of more than fifteen thousand individuals.11 More than four thousand guerrilla fighters from the UPA-North and UPA-South command groups were encircled, however, only between two and a half thousand and three thousand of them carried any weapon; the remainder were fighters who had recently been forcibly recruited. Alongside these fighters, at least around a thousand civilians were encircled. The heaviest fighting happened on 23 and 24 April when the Soviets started to comb the forests simultaneously from all sides. On 24 April, near Hurby (now a small village in Rivne oblast’), guerrilla fighters managed to repulse three consecutive attacks by the NKVD. However, due to the fact that the situation was difficult, the UPA decided to break out of the encirclement at night, leaving the entire heavy equipment, the wounded fighters, and the civilians behind. On the morning of 25 April, following a brief clash, UPA units, split into three groups, broke out of the encirclement and separated themselves from the enemy. Despite this, on 25–27 April the Soviets continued to comb the forests near Kremenets (Ternopil’ oblast’) and to spot small groups of remaining fighters hiding in the forest. If we were to believe Soviet reports, as a result of this operation 2,018 individuals were killed and another 1,570 arrested. The following pieces of equipment were seized, among other things: a U-2 plane, seven guns (mainly 45 mm guns), fifteen mortars (2–120 mm), forty-two light machine guns, thirty-one sub-machine guns, and 298 rifles. In their clashes with the guerrilla fighters, the NKVD Internal Troops lost eleven soldiers who were killed and another forty-six who were wounded. A different account of the events can be deduced from figures provided by the guerrilla fighters. They reported 136 fighters killed and another seventy-five wounded; apart from that the NKVD reportedly murdered around a hundred civilians.12 The figures provided by the NKVD regarding the losses suffered by the enemy should be contrasted with the number of items of weaponry seized: it is worth noting that these would not be sufficient to arm the individuals killed, not to mention the prisoners of war.

By August 1944, the dragnet operations covered the entire Volhynia, and subsequently, as the Red Army moved on, they covered consecutive regions of Eastern Galicia. On 7 August 1944, having received intelligence information from “active participants in the UPA,” the Soviets found out that a major UPA group was operating in the Kariv Forest and in Piddubtsi (now in Volyns’ka oblast’)—it was composed of up to 1,400 individuals including around four hundred who were well-armed and dressed in German uniforms. At dawn on 29 August, a specially formed operational group of at least seven hundred NKVD soldiers (from the Internal Troops and the Border Troops), additionally backed by Red Army units, encircled the Kariv Forest.13 Heavy fighting lasted all day. When fighting was discontinued overnight, the guerrilla fighters used the opportunity, splitting into small groups and “permeating” through the Soviet lines. In the morning, the dragnet operation was resumed, but only very small groups of guerrilla fighters remained in the encircled area; these were eliminated one by one. The Soviets estimated the Ukrainian losses at 625 individuals killed. They themselves admitted to having lost as many as thirty-two soldiers killed and another forty-eight wounded, with one soldier missing.14 The estimates provided by the guerrilla fighters were totally different. According to figures provided by the UPA, a mere ten guerrilla fighters were killed and around twenty wounded. Two UPA fighters were taken prisoner.15

In November 1944, the Soviets decided to modify the principles of their anti-guerrilla operations and to adopt a new method, the so-called “blocking” method (blokada), against the guerrillas. From then on, the entire area covered by a dragnet operation was to be divided into ten to fifteen sections, each containing two to three villages. Each of these sections was to be “taken care of” by a company of NKVD troops responsible for fighting the underground (comprising 80–120 men). The operation was to be launched in all locations simultaneously. First, all residents were to be gathered in one place and anyone who might have “wronged the Soviet authorities” was categorically requested to identify themselves. Next, the NKVD soldiers were to thoroughly search all houses and outbuildings one by one. They were instructed to look for any potential entries to shelters and hide-outs. A single farmyard could even be searched several times. The soldiers were accompanied by party activists, who organized propaganda meetings and collected outstanding in-kind contributions. Show trials and executions carried out on the spot were to boost the propaganda message. A dragnet operation of this type was to last uninterruptedly for five to seven days.16

Between 29 December 1944 and 4 January 1945, most likely the first such operation according to the new scheme was carried out by the 19th Brigade of the NKVD Internal Troops, which “cleansed” the Rohatyn area in Stanislav oblast’. The success of the experimental use of the blocking method in Ukraine encouraged the Soviets to use it in other republics of the USSR as well, including the Baltic states. Official recommendations regarding the use of this method came from Lieutenant General Moisei Sladkevich, deputy commander of the NKVD Internal Troops. His order no. 19/10-00114 issued on 17 February 1945 contained detailed instructions as to how such operations should proceed.17

At the beginning of 1945, Soviet dragnet operations reached the Carpathian Mountains. Between 18 January 1945 and 10 February 1945, in Stanislav oblast’ 1,678 “criminals” were killed and 1,716 were captured, 4,820 emerged from the underground, having appeared before special amnesty committees, ninety-nine farmers were subject to repression for offering support to the guerrilla movement, and 1,115 bunkers were destroyed. Between 24 January and 2 February, the Soviets carried out an operation in Halych district, which involved the 19th brigade backed by eighty-five activists. Seventy-five mass meetings were organized, among other actions. They were attended by ten thousand individuals. One hundred and five guerrilla fighters were killed and another 674 taken prisoner.18

Between 12 and 24 March 1945, the 19th Brigade carried out a chekist-military operation in the raions of Tlumach and Tysmenytsia (Stanislav oblast’). Starting at dawn on 12 March, 850 soldiers divided into thirteen combined companies thoroughly searched around seventy villages and khutors (small villages). Concurrently, political officers spread their propaganda message during meetings with the local population organized by the NKVD. During the operation, 266 guerrilla fighters were killed and another 798 captured; 269 individuals were accused of supporting the underground movement and arrested. Three deserters were detained alongside 207 individuals evading military service. Another 1,347 individuals identified themselves voluntarily as wrong-doers. Fifty-nine “criminal” families—a total of 142 individuals—were displaced. Four hundred and thirty-eight shelters containing food and other provisions were found (some of them had been set up by farmers in order to hide their produce and assets so as to avoid the obligation to provide the required in-kind contribution) alongside fourteen shelters with arms. During the operation, there were ten minor clashes with UPA fighters in which the NKVD lost three soldiers killed and another four wounded.19

The operation carried out on 21 March 1945 near the village of Sadzhava in Bohorodchany raion, Stanislav oblast’, was a major success for the Soviets. It involved a violent confrontation of an UPA kuren (the equivalent of a battalion) known as “Smertonostsy” with an NKVD unit. 110 insurgents were killed. Another operation in Stanislav oblast’ was carried out between 17 and 29 April 1945. It covered the difficult mountainous areas of Zhabe, Yabluniv, Kuty, Zabolottya, Kolomyia, Yaremche raions. Two UPA kurens were stationed there (including the one led by “Nedobity”) together with nine training sotnias (squadrons). According to the Soviets, the operation triggered panic among the guerrilla fighters. The units scattered and moved on in small groups. 547 “criminals” were killed, 2,502 were captured, and 1,745 individuals identified themselves. The Soviets lost two soldiers killed and another twenty-six wounded.20

The operations carried out by the Soviets in winter 1945 decimated the Carpathian UPA units. They were also intended as a signal that the Soviet leadership was not going to leave even the most remote areas unattended. Once a wave of major cleansing and blocking operations swept through the region, the NKVD tried to “saturate” the area covered by guerrilla fighter activity with Reconnaissance-Pursuit Groups (RPG) which patrolled the area, organized ambushes in locations where guerrilla fighters were likely to appear, and also covered those officers who contacted their spy network. Deployment of small garrisons of NKVD troops in bigger towns enabled the pursuit groups to chase guerrilla fighters whenever these carried out their actions; some of these groups were specially appointed to fight specific units. The use of dogs was recommended during such pursuit. Throughout this period, based on information provided by spy networks, targeted operations to eliminate the spotted guerrilla fighters were being carried out as well.

Frequent NKVD dragnet operations forced the guerrilla fighters to remain constantly vigilant. They made some fighters doubt in the prospects of victory. In addition, they forced the fighters to operate in small groups only—this, in turn, enabled the Soviets to send smaller sub-units, which were constantly maneuvering in this area, to carry out operations against guerrilla fighters. Although most of these operations (and there were literally thousands of them) failed to bring any positive results, they triggered constant tension in the areas “infected with criminal activity.”

During combat activities, units of NKVD troops were accompanied by at least one or two officers representing operational security bodies. They contacted the spy network, made decisions regarding operational deployment of specific soldiers, and carried out interrogations of captured guerrilla fighters and members of the underground movement on the spot immediately after the clashes. Although no monograph discussing the NKVD’s investigative methods has been published, one thing is certain: these methods were surprisingly effective. Available materials indicate that Soviet officers were capable of pressurizing a major portion of arrested individuals into speaking. Heroic attitudes were rare. What is the most surprising is the speed at which members of the underground movement cracked under interrogation—and it was frequently the speed that determined whether the information obtained was useful (there were cases when the detainees disclosed the hiding place of their closest family members within one or two hours). Perhaps the answer to this puzzle can be deduced from a medical report compiled regarding the last commander of the Lithuanian underground movement, Adolf Ramanauskas, who was captured on 12 October 1956. Three days later, he was taken to hospital unconscious and the doctors described his condition in the following way:

The right eye is covered by a hematoma, six wounds on the eyelid have been found … they were most likely inflicted on him using a thin wire or a nail which was inserted deep into his eyeball. Numerous hematomas on the abdomen, the middle finger of his left palm has been cut off … a major bloody scar was revealed on the right-hand side of his scrotum … both testes and both deferent ducts have been removed.21

There is no reason to think that the NKVD operating in Ukraine was more lenient than its equivalent operating in Lithuania.

In addition, the NKVD troops used all sorts of tricks. One of such tricks involved provoking the UPA to attack in locations where ambushes had been set up. On routes which were particularly frequently attacked by the UPA, situations were staged involving for example a car breakdown. A portion of soldiers remained hiding in a truck filled with weapons ready to fire, whereas several others were busy mending the vehicle. Sometimes a poorly protected car “broke down” in a location where another group of Soviets had already secretly assumed their positions. In addition, ambushes were set up for example in the vicinity of village grocery stores immediately following the delivery of goods, and near trucks with supplies whose drivers were “thoughtless” enough to leave them in the village overnight. The Soviets also set up ambushes near the bodies of killed guerrilla fighters and near the agent who stayed in the village overnight. For example, on 4 December 1945 an NKVD operational group killed three UPA members in the village of Ustya in Ternopil oblast’. Their bodies were left where they were killed, however, an ambush was secretly set up in the vicinity of this location. On the same night, another three guerrilla fighters were killed in this ambush.22

One important method of fighting the guerrilla movement involved forced displacement of the civilian population. In line with recommendations issued by Beria, the deported individuals included not only those who were suspected of contacting the underground movement but also entire families of identified members of the underground. These measures effectively intimidated the local residents and discouraged them from supporting the activity of the underground movement. Although they were unable—for example, for technical reasons—to displace entire nations, the communists focused their repressive measures on families of individuals linked to the guerrilla fighter movement and the underground movement. The lists of names of individuals to be deported were compiled by an NKVD/NKGB officer.

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

Introduction

Historically, the emergence of nation-states was compounded with the establishment of national history-writing and school history education as means of nation and state-legitimization (Berger et al. 1999). Representations of the past play an important role in shaping social identities and intergroup relations. As distilled messages about the nation’s past, school textbooks and history teaching are fundamental in shaping such representations. School history education continues to play the state-legitimizing, national identity and citizenship education roles, especially in newly independent states in the situation of fragile or contested legitimacy (Carretero 2011; Carretero et al. 2012; Williams 2014).

There has been a growing body of research in several academic fields such as social psychology, education, conflict transformation, and memory studies that explores the connection between the social representations of the past in school curricula, textbooks, and history teaching, and conflict transformation and reconciliation in societies divided by a past or ongoing conflict (Carretero et al. 2012; Cole 2007; McCully 2010; McCully 2012; Zembylas et al. 2016; Bentrovato et al. 2016; Psaltis et al. 2017). It has been noted that the national framework of history-telling can reproduce intergroup prejudice and impede conflict transformation and reconciliation. National master narratives that propose a one-sided vision of the past politically defined by the dominant groups and homogenizing textbook narratives that promote an ethnic definition of a community, and ignore or obfuscate past conflicts, ingroup past wrongdoings, divisions, and grievances, can prolong conflict and obstruct reconciliation. Research in several academic fields has produced a better understanding of the approaches to the representation of the past and history teaching that can contribute to conflict transformation and reconciliation. In the case of Ukraine, the tendency towards instrumentalization of divisive topics related to the history of World War II has intensified as a result of the mobilizations during the Euromaidan protests and the violent conflict that escalated in April 2014 and is the focus of ongoing peacebuilding and conflict transformation projects.

Handling the topic of World War II, and above all the fighting on the fringes of the war by the nationalist underground movement based in Western Ukraine—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (which split into two rival factions in 1940—the OUN-B (banderivtsi) and the OUN-M (mel’nykivtsi)), the Poliska Sich of Taras Bul’ba-Borovets’ (bul’bivtsi) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—has been perhaps the most challenging task in school history education in post-Soviet Ukraine. Controversial issues related to the OUN and UPA include the OUN ideology inspired by extreme nationalist and fascist movements of the interwar period in Europe, collaboration with Nazi Germany, participation in the Holocaust, internal violent struggle between nationalist factions, and the murder and ethnic cleansing of the civilian population. Over the last decade, there has been a growing number of critical publications, mostly by scholars outside Ukraine, about these controversies (Rudling 2006; Marples 2006; Marples 2007; Rossoliński-Liebe 2010; Himka 2011; Rudling 2011; Motyka 2013). Given the centrality of World War II in the “memory wars” in Ukraine, the representation of the war, including of the nationalist underground movement, in school curricula and textbooks, and its handling in the classroom, has been studied by several scholars (Popson 2001; Rodgers 2006; Jilge 2006; Marples 2007: 241-256; Rodgers 2007; Korostelina 2010; Ostriitchouk 2013: 303-311; Klymenko 2014).

Among controversial and divisive issues, it is the conflict between the nationalist underground and the Soviet regime that is still the most painful for Ukrainian society. According to the Soviet estimates, between 1944 and 1956, 155,108 members of the UPA, the OUN, and other sympathizers of the underground movement were killed by the organs and military forces of the Soviet security services (from the Ukrainian initials, the NKVS, NKDB, MVS, MDB and KDB) and 103,866 were arrested and 87,756 of them indicted for their participation in the nationalist movement. The OUN and UPA carried out 14,424 actions including 4,904 terrorist acts, 195 diversions, 645 attacks on the party-soviet organs, collective farms, motor-technical stations (MTS), and other institutions. The overall number of casualties is estimated to be 30,676 (Kul’chyts’kyi 2005: 439).2

This article adds to the existing research on the representation of the nationalist movement in curricula, textbooks, and in teaching in two important ways. First, it uses the history education and conflict transformation lens to study the representation of the nationalist underground in 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 subject which has not been studied in detail to date. Second, it studies 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 school teachers in the framework of the project “Stereotypes, Tolerance and Strategy of Teachers of History” implemented by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and funded by the Renaissance Foundation, and the international project “Region, Nation and Beyond. A Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Reconceptualization of Ukraine.” Focus group discussions with teachers of history at general secondary schools and schools teaching in minority languages were carried out in 13 cities of Ukraine (Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Simferopol, Zhytomyr, Lutsk, Uzhhorod, Chernivtsi, and Chernihiv). There were 14 focus groups of 7 to 13 participants each (132 participants in total) conducted in December 2011–January 2012. Discussions were conducted using a semi-structured approach: a combination of a set of questions on inter-ethnic tolerance, themes, and controversial issues in school textbooks and teaching practices with an open discussion.

First, the article provides an overview of research in the fields of social psychology, education, and conflict transformation in relation to history teaching and reconciliation. Then it studies the context and the representation of the conflicts involving the nationalist organizations and the main controversies related to them in seven editions of school curricula and fourteen textbooks for the tenth and eleventh grades published between 1994 and 2012 (the list of curricula and textbooks can be found in the list of references). It also analyzes the evolution of methodological approaches in these textbooks. Finally, the article studies the role teachers play as mediators of official curricula and textbooks.

History Teaching and Conflict Transformation

Research on history teaching and conflict transformation has focused, on the one hand, on the connections of groups to their past through narratives, memories, identities, emotions, and beliefs that can perpetuate intergroup divisions and distrust, and, on the other hand, on how social representation modes, teaching approaches, and pedagogies can contribute to conflict transformation and reconciliation. Psaltis et al. (2017: 2) define reconciliation as:

a process and outcome [that] entails the shift from an identity position in the representational field of mistrust, high prejudice, low quantity and quality contact, low perspective taking, low forgiveness and high threats (realistic and symbolic) into a position of high trust, low prejudice, high quantity and quality of contact, high perspective taking, high forgiveness and low threats (realistic and symbolic).

Essentially, the approach to conflict transformation and reconciliation in the area of history education studied by social psychologists and scholars of conflict resolution concerns the transformation of ethnocentric master narratives that reproduce essentialist and reified forms of identity and social representations of the past and the cultivation of “historical literacy” that promotes critical thinking, multiple perspectives, and reflective attitudes to historical representations (Seixas 2004). Studies in social psychology and conflict transformation point out that the teaching of history as heritage (Lowenthal 1996), essentialist representations of the past and identities, presentation of single, one-sided and dogmatic narratives of past conflicts that victimize and glorify the own group and delegitimize and vilify the “enemy group” can legitimize and protract past conflicts and limit the possibilities for conflict transformation and reconciliation (Carretero et al. 2012; Psaltis et al. 2017). Approaches that can contribute to conflict transformation and reconciliation include transformative history teaching that teaches students historical thinking skills, and promotes multiperspectival approaches to sensitive and controversial issues, critical understanding of the conflictual past, and regret for ingroup past wrongdoing (Wineburg 2001; Seixas 2004; Psaltis et al. 2017). Social psychologists also focus on the promotion through history education of processes of humanization, empathy, intergroup contact, and dialogue which can help groups become more inclusive, open-minded and accepting of the “other” (Psaltis et al. 2017: 5).

There is an emerging body of empirical research that evaluates the impact of history teaching on intergroup attitudes and relations. Tsafrir Goldberg (2017) has studied the effects of teaching the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict using a comparative empirical method (involving groups of self-selected Jewish and Arab-Israeli high school students following three different approaches to the study of history) on intergroup attitudes, perception of in-group responsibility, and intergroup interaction. His research confirms the findings of other studies that have established that official single narratives reduce interest in the other’s perspective which can replicate glorification and victimization of the own group and justification of its role in the conflict. By contrast, the dual-narrative approach, which stresses mutual acknowledgement and affirmation for both sides’ narratives, nonjudgmental listening and perspective-taking, empathy for the other’s suffering, and humanizing the views of the other, increased interest in the other’s perspective, especially among Arab Israelis. This approach can reduce competitive victimhood and enhance empathy for the out-group perspectives, and critical thinking can decrease biases and the influence of political affiliation on in-group responsibility and increase critical reflection on self-legitimizing narratives (Goldberg 2017: 280). Goldberg (2017: 293) concludes that teaching multiple perspectives has a potential to serve the goals of increasing intergroup perspective-taking motivation and improving intergroup deliberation on conflict, and that the outcome does not risk learners’ national identification and esteem. The limitations of the study were the sample of students, its voluntary nature, the duration of the research, and the application in an extracurricular setting. These limitations, however, do not invalidate the findings.

Goldberg’s (2017) study also produced evidence that confirmed the assumptions concerning the effect of the stronger party’s acknowledgment of responsibility on the weaker party’s reconciliatory attitudes. This finding is important for the context of asymmetric power relations in relation to past conflicts in Ukraine. To date neither Ukraine nor Russia nor their respective successor communist and other leftist parties or veteran organizations have accepted responsibility for the violent acts committed during the Soviet period, and the transitional justice process that started in the late 1980s has mostly concerned the rehabilitation of victims of past wrongdoing.

Teachers play an important role as mediators of official curricula and school textbook narratives and conciliators of different social memories and narratives in the classroom. Their own values, mapping of in- and out-groups, and definitions of community are reflected in the teaching of history and shape the meaning of national identity transmitted in the classroom and the reproduction of intergroup prejudice (Korostelina 2015). A classroom can be seen as a communicative space where teachers can choose between commutative styles and teaching strategies, from a traditional patriotic approach based on factual knowledge to a critical and multiperspectival one that contests national myths and involves critical self-reflection and learning to respect other positions, rights, and values (Kello and Wagner 2017: 206–7).

Some of the studies that have covered the topic of the Ukrainian nationalist underground (Popson 2001; Jilge 2006; Marples 2007: 241–56; Korostelina 2010; Ostriitchouk 2013: 303–11; Klymenko 2014) have also discussed some controversial issues related to the OUN and UPA but have not systematically reviewed the evolution of their representation in school curricula and textbooks, and none of the studies has examined in detail the narratives and interpretations of the conflict between the OUN and UPA and the Soviet regime in school history education. There are only a few studies that have examined how teachers perceive their role and how they deal with divisive and controversial historical issues in different regions in Ukraine. Research has found that teachers have been adapting official messages to the regional and local linguistic and historical particularities or have been altogether ignoring the official discourse (Rodgers 2006 and 2007; Korostelina 2015). This article aims to examine to what extent various approaches to history education in Ukraine have been informed by the mechanisms which can contribute to conflict transformation and reconciliation.

Representation of Controversial Issues and Conflicts in School Curricula and Textbooks
The Context

In the late 1980s, the era of glasnost and perestroika foregrounded the restoration of justice, condemnation of the Stalinist crimes, rehabilitation of the victims of mass repressions, the restoration of historical truth, and the investigation of the “blank spots” of history. At a republican level, amid these processes, the history of the Ukrainian SSR was established as a separate subject. Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi, a leading historian focusing on the interwar period at the Institute of History at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, noted that during the period of general disorientation in the late 1980s the Communist Party delegated considerable responsibility for the development of a new concept of republican history studies to the Institute of History (Kul’chyts’kyi 2016). For Kul’chyts’kyi (2016: 329, 336), the early 1990s was a period in which the Ukrainian people was liberated from the “simulacra of the Deformed world,” the Communist phraseology and ideological clichés, and discovered their “own,” “real” history “that played an exceptional role in the creation of ideological preconditions for the national-liberation struggle at the beginning of the 20th century.” With the introduction of the subject of history of the Ukrainian SSR, one of the immediate tasks for historians during that period was, according to Kul’chyts’kyi (2016: 339), “the healing of the historical memory of society by creating textbooks and auxiliary manuals for pupils and students and all those who wanted to know the unfalsified [nespotvorene] distant and recent past of their own people.”

In 1989–90, at the request of the editorial house “Radyans’ka shkola,” Kul’chyts’kyi together with his colleague from the Institute of History (from 1990, the Institute of History of Ukraine (IHU)) Yurii Kurnosov prepared a brochure with materials for the study of history in the ninth and tenth grades. In 1990, at the request of the Ministry of Education, the IHU developed a series of new history school textbooks. Kul’chyts’kyi mentions that after harsh criticism by the “national-democratic forces” of the first history textbook for the tenth and eleventh grades (which covers World War II), a conceptually new textbook was produced in 1992. Later on, the Ministry of Education resisted pressure from the communist and socialist fractions in the parliament to “restore the concept of Soviet textbooks” (Kul’chyts’kyi 2016: 340) and refused to modify the new approach proposed by the IHU that equated the UPA soldiers with Soviet partisans as two branches of the resistance movement (Kul’chyts’kyi 2016: 347). Kul’chyts’kyi (2016: 340) hoped that the exceptional role the IHU played in the formulation of the textbook policy and in the “formation of the historical consciousness of teachers and the next generation” would be adequately recognized one day.

Since the early 1990s, there have vibrant discussions among scholars, educators, and state officials about approaches to school history curricula, textbooks, and teaching. A renowned Ukrainian historian Natalia Yakovenko (2002 and 2005) launched a discussion about the need to reconsider approaches to school history textbooks adopted in the early 1990s. According to Yakovenko, the textbooks of the first decade of independence played an important role in the de-sovietization and the formation of new values, the most important of which concerned the nation state. The priority after the first decade was to reconsider the “state-creating” and nation-centered version of the past which was given the status of the only true one and clashed with a variety of “historical memories” surrounding schoolchildren outside school. A Working Group on the Monitoring of Textbooks of History of Ukraine was initiated by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory in 2007. The group was chaired by Yakovenko and consisted of historians from different regions of Ukraine. It analyzed twelve Ukrainian history textbooks from the fifth to the eleventh grade level. The first report published by the group in 2008 highlighted that textbooks confused ethnic and political definitions of the nation, adopted an ethnocentric vision of history that disregarded the diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious character of the Ukrainian nation, and focused predominantly on political and military history (Shkil’na 2008). The solutions to these issues proposed by Yakovenko (2009) and the monitoring group (Shkil’na 2008) were to present society as a totality of many social groups with their own antagonistic or common interests and behaviors based on the ideas and symbols of their time; to cover a variety of behavioral motivations of various groups without placing them on opposing sides but looking for common values; and to reconsider the primacy of the focus on state interests in history narratives over individual stories and institutions beyond the state. In the second report, the group expanded its recommendations on how to deal with conflicts in which Ukrainians fought against each other (World War I, the 1917–20 period, and World War II). According to the group report, a textbook needed to explain the positions of opposed groups, look for common values for the representatives of different worldviews, and explain diverse understandings of patriotic duties, different beliefs, and motives, all of which deserve to be understood (Propozytsii 2009: 14). The working group developed a draft school curriculum on the basis of its own recommendations in 2009. This article analyzes the content of this curriculum and compares it with the official versions approved by the Ministry of Education. Another important initiative to promote tolerance and multiperspectivity in school history education was undertaken by the Association of History Teachers “Nova Doba” in cooperation with the European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO). However, neither the Working Group nor the Nova Doba reform efforts led to fundamental restructuring of the curricula and textbooks during the period considered in the article. Petro Kenzior, a member of the board of Nova Doba, noted that the feedback that the organization received from the government was that while Nova Doba’s proposals were interesting, they were for the textbooks of the future (Interview with Petro Kenzior, 22 July 2019, Lviv).

School Curricula

This section studies the representation of the OUN and UPA in the 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2009, and 2012 curricula for the subject of history of Ukraine (Prohramy 1996; Prohramy 1998; Prohramy 2001; Prohramy 2005; Prohrama 2009; Pometun, Hupan and Freiman 2009; Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2009; Prohrama 2012; Prohrama 2012a; Prohrama 2012b) as well as in a draft curriculum developed by the working group in 2009. It analyzes the choice of terminology used to refer to the nationalist movement, coverage of controversial issues, and methodological approaches. During the Yushchenko presidency, three different versions of the secondary school curriculum were developed for different levels of specialization in history (standard, specialized, and non-specialized). All three versions are studied in the present article.

All the curricula analyzed here followed the approach introduced by Kul’chyts’kyi in the early 1990s whereby the Soviet partisans and the underground movement are regarded as two currents of the anti-Nazi Resistance movement in Ukraine—a compromise solution used in the official curricula to balance the conflicting regional versions of national memory. Notable changes in the curricula concerned the use of terms to refer to the nationalist organizations and the coverage of controversial issues. While the OUN and UPA were referred to as the “underground movement” or simply OUN or UPA in the earlier curricula, they were called the “Ukrainian liberation movement” for the first time during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010). The mention of the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State (the proclamation of independence by the OUN-B at the beginning of Nazi occupation in June 1941 in Lviv) was introduced in the 1996 curriculum, removed in 1998, re-introduced under Yushchenko in 2009, and removed again under Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014) for the standard level. During the Yushchenko years, the message about the OUN and UPA became highly contradictory. While praising the OUN and UPA as “the Ukrainian liberation movement,” some difficult issues such as the participation of Ukrainians in the German armed forces and in the SS Halychyna Division and the Polish–Ukrainian conflict were introduced for the first time. During the Yanukovych years, the terms “Volyn tragedy” and “collaborationism” were introduced to the curricula.

In the 2004 curriculum, approved at the end of the Kuchma presidency during the premiership of Viktor Yanukovych, the expected learning objectives included the ability to compare different points of view concerning the OUN and UPA actions during the war and to provide one’s own assessment of events. A section on local history was added to each theme (Prohramy 2005). In the curriculum for the standard level, the expected learning objectives included the ability to define the reasons for the creation of the UPA (Prohrama 2009). The curriculum for pupils not specializing in history included as the expected learning objectives the ability to “analyze, summarize, compare and critically evaluate different points of view” (Pometun, Hupan and Freiman 2009). The 2012 curriculum returned the expected learning objectives in relation to the OUN and UPA defined in the 2004 pre-Yushchenko curriculum (Prohrama 2012).

The 2009 draft curriculum developed by the Working Group provided a broader revision of the approach to the representation of the OUN and UPA than the official curricula. Most importantly, the Soviet partisan movement and the OUN-UPA fight were not depicted as two branches of the Resistance movement to the Nazi occupation but were presented as two separate themes. Other differences were that the draft curriculum referred to the OUN and UPA as the “radical nationalist movement,” positioned the OUN ideology in a broader European context of radical movements, and highlighted the tension between the goals of the fight for an independent Ukrainian state and the methods used. Part of the draft curriculum was also dedicated to questions of economy, culture, education, science, and everyday life of people for each historical period, with the aim of decentering the focus on national political and military history. At the same time, the draft curriculum also used both the terms “radical nationalist movement” and “Ukrainian liberation movement” to refer to the OUN and UPA.

School Textbook Narratives on Controversial Issues in the History of the OUN and UPA

One of the first pilot textbooks by Kul’chyts’kyi, Kurnosov, and Koval’ (1994) dedicated only a few paragraphs to the OUN and UPA and described the OUN as devoted to the fight against Poland, the spiritual renaissance of the nation and its historical traditions, and the creation of a sovereign Ukrainian state. It mentioned that the organizations were characterized by an atmosphere of deep patriotism and self-sacrifice in the name of the national idea (ibid.: 217). The authors carefully formulated the collaboration between the OUN and UPA and Nazi Germany and justified it by the fight against a common enemy: “with the approaching of the Red Army, the relations between banderivtsi and the occupants often acquired the character of neutrality or even mutual assistance in view of a common threat” (ibid.: 240). The textbook considered the organizations as participants in the Resistance movement along with Soviet partisans (ibid.: 241).

The textbook by Turchenko, the second edition of which appeared in 1998, expanded considerably the discussion of the OUN and UPA in comparison with the earlier textbook. It included a description of the OUN’s origin, ideology, and methods of action, and an excerpt from the OUN program among original documents. The main focus was the OUN and UPA contribution to the achievement of state independence. The textbook explained “the uncompromising methods of struggle that could unite all national groups around the goal of independence” adopted by the OUN by the fact that “legal methods of struggle were not suitable for the creation of an independent united [soborna] Ukraine in the existing system of international relations in Europe. Because of this, politically active Ukrainians were losing faith in traditional values of Western democracy” (Turchenko 1998: 289). Turchenko described the ideological stance of the OUN as based on the concept of “integral nationalism” developed by Dmytro Dontsov that declared the nation as an absolute value and the achievement of independence as an ultimate goal for which all methods were acceptable. The author recognized that the ideology had a totalitarian character but justified it by general European tendencies of the time and stated that: “Unlike the European totalitarian ideologies (National Socialism, Fascism and Communism), Ukrainian ‘integral’ nationalism emerged in the circumstances of the oppressed nation and aimed to achieve its [the nation’s] independence without infringing on the independence of other nations” (Turchenko 1998: 289). Turchenko (1998: 290) also mentioned that the main means of the OUN struggle were terrorist acts, the victims of which included Ukrainians who did not share the policies of the organization.

Similar to the 1994 textbook, Turchenko (1998: 328) described the OUN and UPA as an anti-Nazi Resistance movement oriented towards the creation of an independent Ukrainian state along with the Soviet movement guided by Soviet slogans. The textbook dedicated two pages to the discussion of the Soviet partisan movement and twice as much to the OUN underground struggle in 1941–42. On collaboration between the OUN and Nazi Germany, Turchenko (1998: 331) stated that the OUN “bestowed certain hopes on Germany” at the beginning of the war, seeing Bolshevism as a common enemy for both the OUN and the Germans. He mentioned the creation of the Nachtigall and Roland battalions manned by the Ukrainians seen by the OUN-B as the core of a future Ukrainian army. Some other narrative elements were also positioned in the framework of the struggle for independence: the proclamation of independence of Ukraine on 30 June 1941 by OUN-B, the action of the OUN “expeditionary groups” beyond Western Ukraine which led to “the spread of independentist views” in eastern Ukraine (Turchenko 1998: 333), and the evolution of the OUN’s ideology in 1943. The conflict with the Polish armed groups was explained by the fact that Poles aimed to restore Poland in its pre-war borders, and it was claimed that “the victims of these political antagonisms [between Poles and Ukrainians] were mainly civilian peasants” (Turchenko 1998: 352). Turchenko (1998: 358) only briefly mentioned the creation of the SS Halychyna Division in 1943, indicating that the Hitlerites envisioned it as playing the role of a “fifth column” and that its creation was opposed by the OUN-B.

The textbook published by Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva in 1998 toned down the celebratory language used to describe the commitment and sacrifice of the OUN and UPA in the 1994 pilot textbook. At the same time, the textbook referred to the OUN as “the driving force in the national-liberation struggle” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998: 210). Similar to Turchenko (1998), Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva (1998: 195–96) explained the OUN’s adoption of the integral nationalism ideology by the dominance of extremist movements in interwar Europe, the authoritarianism of the Polish authorities, and the failure of liberal politicians of the previous decades to gain independence for Ukraine. The textbook discussed the reasons for collaboration with Nazi Germany in the following way: “the Ukrainian nationalists saw the German nationalists humiliated after the defeat in the World War as a natural ally in the struggle with the occupant states.” It noted that the use of terror by the OUN was a means to achieve independence for Ukraine (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998: 196). The authors (ibid.: 212) mentioned that the battalions Nachtigall and Roland, manned by Ukrainians in German army uniforms, were commanded by two Ukrainians, Roman Shukhevych and Yevhen Pobihushchyi, both Hauptsturmführers of the SS, and explained their creation by OUN’s goal of achieving the independence of Ukraine. While the 1998, 2000, and 2003 textbooks co-authored by Kul’chyts’kyi mentioned the association of Shukhevych with the SS, a textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval published in 2005 (34) removed the mention.

The textbook by Malii and Reyent (2001) described the integral nationalism ideology that justified any action in the name of the nation and state independence along the same lines as Turchenko’s 1998 textbook. The textbook by Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi (2002) also provided a similar narrative. It explained the creation of the OUN by the hopelessness of the efforts to defend the Ukrainian nation’s right to self-determination in a parliamentary way and the failure of pro-Soviet illusions. Similar to other textbooks, it acknowledged that the OUN ideology was totalitarian but argued that it could not be equated with fascism because it emerged in the context of an oppressed nation struggling for national statehood (Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002: 202–3). Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2003: 84) expanded the discussion of the integral nationalism ideology in comparison with the previous textbooks and described it as a phenomenon that was “fully independent” from Italian fascism, German national socialism, and communism, as it was not a fully-fledged doctrine. Another textbook that appeared the same year by Hupan and Pometun (2003) included a rather short fact-based description of the OUN (less than one page, excluding biographies of Dmytro Dontsov and Stepan Bandera) with only one paragraph about the ideology and without any discussion of the broader European context as was the case in other textbooks. Both Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2003) and Hupan and Pometun (2003) referred to the OUN as a nationalistic organization, rather than describing it as a national-liberation movement as some other textbooks had done.

The 2005 textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval described the struggle between different factions of the nationalistic movement that did not appear in previous textbooks. The relations between the OUN and UPA and Nazi Germany at the end of the war, when the defeat of Nazi Germany became clear, were described as “mutual non-aggressiveness” (which replaced the term “mutual assistance” in the earlier versions of one of Kul’chyts’kyi’s co-authored textbooks) (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005: 41). Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2005: 41) also provided a more detailed description of the SS Halychyna Division which was supported by many Ukrainians except for the OUN-B. Finally, the textbook included a brief description of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict. According to the authors, the conflict was started by the mass execution of the Ukrainian population in the Kholm and Pidliashshia regions by the Polish Armia Krajowa in 1942 followed by an anti-Ukrainian action in Galicia and an anti-Polish one in Volyn in 1943. The authors concluded that “Volyn, Galicia and Zakerzonnia became the places of bloody encounter of the two sides, the victims of which were thousands of Ukrainians and Poles” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005: 41–42). The textbook by Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 15) claimed that the OUN was “[t]he only organized group that started to fight against Stalinist totalitarianism in the Western Ukrainian lands at the beginning of the 1940s.” Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 59) mentioned that collaborative relations between Germany and the UPA were established in June 1944. The authors also stated that during the last months of the war, the UPA applied repressions against those who refused to join the army and undertook actions against its own “unstable members.” The authors cited a message by Shukhevych who called upon the OUN to exterminate everyone who recognized Soviet power (Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman 2007: 61).

The 2008 textbook by Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko had largely the same narrative about the nationalist organizations as Turchenko’s 1998 textbook. The only change was that Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko (2008: 70–71) underlined the spread of the pro-independence movement in Donbas, the south of Ukraine, and even in the Crimea. However, the authors noted that the Soviet and OUN representatives of the Resistance movement were divided by different visions of the future of Ukraine. They concluded that,

notwithstanding the fact that the fight for independence did not cover the entire country during the war, it is difficult to overestimate its impact on the future of the Ukrainian people. Together with the liberation struggle of 1917–1920, it became part of the historical consciousness of the Ukrainians and prepared them for the declaration of independence on 24 August 1991.

Another textbook by Turchenko published in 2011 for pupils specializing in history only slightly revised the narrative about the OUN and UPA in comparison with the earlier textbooks by the same author. One of the amendments included the introduction of a new section on collaborationism. However, the phenomenon was discussed in general terms without mentioning the OUN and UPA. Turchenko noted that an auxiliary administration, which included the local government, auxiliary police, and voluntary military units, was created by Germans from the local population who wished to collaborate with the occupants guided by the instinct of survival (Turchenko 2011: 31–32). Furthermore, Turchenko (2011: 52) updated the description of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict by adding a short paragraph about the “Volyn tragedy”—“the mass extermination of the local Polish and partly Ukrainian population in the region.” He also expanded the description of the SS Halychyna Division, explaining its creation by the German wish to exploit the human potential of Ukraine as “cannon fodder” and adding that military units of other countries of Europe were part of the Wehrmacht (Turchenko 2011: 58).

The 2011 textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva for the standard level provided a very short discussion of the OUN and UPA, however, it was a major revision of the narrative by the same authors. It used the term “liberation movement” instead of “Resistance movement” to refer to both Soviet partisans and the OUN and UPA. In the section on the liberation movement, the authors discussed the phenomenon of collaborationism in general terms without connecting it to concrete organizations. The narrative singled out part of the population of Poland and Romania annexed before the war who voluntarily collaborated with the occupants as they still did not consider themselves as citizens of the USSR. The textbook also mentioned that there were those who took part in punitive actions against civilians (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 48). Finally, the authors questioned and trivialized the national character of the nationalist movement: “The OUN tried to attach a national connotation to the underground-partisan struggle but overall it had a social-political character” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 107).

Similar to Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva (2011), the textbook by Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011) for the standard level added the discussion of collaborationism. The authors stated that “the Ukrainian national organizations collaborated for some time with the German civil and military bodies hoping for the revival of the state independence of Ukraine. However, very quickly the Nazis dissipated these illusions” (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011: 41). They also explained the military collaboration of the Ukrainian nationalists with the Germans in the form of Nachtigall, Roland, the SS Halychyna, and, by the end of the war, the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) by the organizations’ intention to create the Ukrainian armed forces (ibid.). Furthermore, they mentioned that among residents of Ukraine who joined the German auxiliary police were those who committed crimes against humanity. They explained collaborationism not only by survival strategy in the conditions of occupation, anti-Semitism, and propensity to violence in society but also the Soviet repressions and terror in the 1930s in Soviet Ukraine and Western Ukraine (ibid.: 43).

Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011) discussed in detail the conflict between different factions of the nationalistic movement. In relation to the SS Halychyna Division, the textbook mentioned that while the OUN-B opposed the creation of the division, the division’s training centers were used for UPA training (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011: 48). The textbook also included a short description of the conflict between the Armia Krajowa and the OUN and UPA. The conflict was explained by the Armia Krajowa’s intention to take under its control the lands lost by the Polish state in 1939 and the enlistment of Poles by the German occupation authorities in the auxiliary police to carry out punitive actions against the Ukrainian civilian population. At the same time, Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 49) mentioned that both parties contributed to the rise in animosity in Western Ukraine whose victims included “not only armed insurgents but also more than hundred thousand civilian residents, both Poles and Ukrainians.” The textbook also revisited the interpretation of the OUN and UPA as a resistance movement. Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 48) referred to the OUN and UPA as a “national-liberation movement” and argued that in contrast to the Soviet partisans supported by the state, the UPA could rely only on its own forces and the support of the population. The authors concluded that the UPA did not see itself as a resistance movement but an insurgent movement which fought for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state against all those who constituted a threat to the Ukrainian statehood. They also discussed the spread of the OUN underground organizations in central and eastern Ukraine.

The last textbook considered in this article is the one by Pometun and Hupan for the standard level published in 2012. It included the discussion of “collaborationalism.” According to Pometun and Hupan (2012: 25), those who suffered as a result of collectivization, Holodomor, or mass political repressions inflicted by the Soviet regime tended to collaborate with the Germans. Collaborationists participated in the German armed forces, and served as guards in concentration camps, police, and in the local administration. Pometun and Hupan (2012: 26) discussed the Ukrainian nationalistic movement in the framework of collaborationism, however, at the end they acquitted the movement: “Hitler and his associates refused to support the state-creating projects of the Ukrainian nationalists… The German occupation did not give any chances for Ukrainian political collaborationism.”

In terms of methodological innovations, at the end of the 1990s, some textbooks (Turchenko 1998; Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002) started to include sections with excerpts from original documents (for example, the OUN program) and questions for discussion at the end of each textbook section. For example, the textbook by Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi (2002: 204) included a question asking schoolchildren to reflect on whether terrorist activities could be justified. Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 3) stated that the role of their textbook was to allow schoolchildren to formulate independent views about the events of the past. The authors claimed that in order to achieve this, they tried to present the material in a neutral way in the form of documents and tables without their own interpretations, and to include social history and the history of everyday life. The textbook also included excerpts from the OUN and UPA documents and from the report by the Working Group of Historians created by the Governmental Commission on the Study of the OUN and UPA Activity, as well as citing some academic historians. However, these additional sources mostly provided factual information without raising any controversial issues. Turchenko’s textbook (2011) included a list of additional academic literature comprising several sources which cover some controversial issues related to the OUN and UPA (such as works by academic historians Yaroslav Hrytsak and Ihor Iliushyn). The textbook by Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 5) emphasized the importance of teaching schoolchildren to form their own conclusions and critically assess sources instead of simply memorizing facts and reproducing the textbook narrative. At the end of each section, Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva (2011) introduced questions for discussion in class, and asked schoolchildren to express their own opinion about certain issues and to work with historical documents. They also introduced oral history accounts (accounts by ordinary people, participants in historical events) which, according to them, made it possible to “comprehend general historical tendencies, and humanize and vivify the past” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 4). The authors also stated that their textbook encouraged critical thinking and did not provide definitive answers (ibid.).

In summary, all the textbooks analyzed here contain a limited discussion of controversial issues related to the nationalist underground and tend to establish simple causalities between historical events. Overall, the textbooks present a single narrative of divisive and controversial events of the past without mentioning that some issues are disputed and controversial and that there are different social representations. Initially, the first post-Soviet history textbooks described the OUN and UPA as characterized by deep patriotism and self-sacrifice in the name of an independent Ukrainian state. While more controversial issues such as collaborationism, the SS Halychyna Division, the ethnic cleansing of civilians, and the Holocaust were later included in the textbooks, the descriptions have remained general and without discussing the involvement of the nationalist underground in these events. Collaboration with Nazi Germany was described as “neutrality or even mutual assistance in view of a common threat” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Kurnosov, and Koval’ 1994), certain hopes placed in Germany by the OUN in view of their common enemy (Turchenko 1998), or seeing Germany as “a natural ally in the struggle with the occupant states” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998). In view of political priorities of the present, textbook authors adjusted their narratives on collaboration. During Yushchenko’s presidency, “neutrality or even mutual assistance” was replaced with “mutual non-aggressiveness” and the association of Shukhevych with the SS was removed (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005). During the Yanukovych years, the textbooks introduced the term “collaborationism,” however, most textbooks did not include the OUN and UPA in the framework of this discussion (Turchenko 2011; Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011), and the two textbooks which included the organizations (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011; Pometun and Hupan 2012) justified and acquitted collaboration by the hope of the “revival of the state independence of Ukraine.” Only one textbook (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011) questioned the national-liberationist nature of the nationalist movement.

From the early 1990s, the OUN and UPA were legitimized at the national level through association with the dominant state-legitimizing narrative of the Soviet period of Victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. Soviet partisans and the OUN underground movement were presented as two currents of the anti-Nazi Resistance movement in Ukraine in all but the last two analyzed textbooks. Such representations ignored and obfuscated the conflicts and divisions. Furthermore, the OUN and UPA were described in some textbooks as representing the views of the entire population of Western Ukraine and even of the entire country. One textbook directly connected the OUN and UPA fight to the achievement of post-Soviet independence (Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko 2008). Some textbook authors constructed the narrative of a victimized nation by arguing that the OUN ideology differed from those of other totalitarian movements of interwar Europe as it was an ideology of an oppressed nation that aimed to achieve independence (Turchenko 1998; Malii and Reyent 2001; Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002). Some textbooks also justified the use of violence in the name of the fight for independence and the ineffectiveness of “legal methods of struggle” for an independent state. Past conflicts were obfuscated and their impact minimized. The conflict in Volyn was described as the “Polish–Ukrainian antagonism” or the “Volyn tragedy” and some textbook narratives stated that it was started by the Polish side. Thus, since the institutive period in the early 1990s, narratives about the nationalist underground have only been marginally modified with the change of government, however, more fundamental changes proposed by the Working Group and the Nova Doba have not been implemented.