The memory of Volhynia
Jan ROKITA
‘The letter signed by thirteen prominent Ukrainians began with a noble “request for forgiveness for the crimes and wrongs committed”. The authors asked us not to make “ill-considered political declarations” on the upcoming anniversary of the Volhynian Slaughter,’ writes Jan ROKITA
.Eighty years ago, fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) started a mass killing campaign of Poles living n Volhynia. In a short time, hundreds of Polish villages were burned to the ground, claiming the lives of men, women and children. New historical research, in particular the investigation conducted with great attention to historical detail by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), leaves no room for doubts – in 1943 some of the Ukrainian leaders planned and ordered the ethnic cleansing of Poles who had lived in the Ukrainian borderlands for centuries. This plan was modelled after Germany’s ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, and the timing was politically calculated to coincide with the German forces’ disarray and retreat from the Ukrainian region following Stalingrad. According to the order documented by historians, Klym Savur, the infamous UPA commander for Volhynia and Polesie, pursued this specific goal. He ordered to ‘exploit the favourable moment of the German troops’ departure’ to ‘undertake a major operation to eliminate the Polish element.’
Until its end, the 20th century was a time of demons for Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, amidst this malevolent century, Poles and Ukrainians forged their own fratricidal hell. The beginning of the century marked Governor Michał Bobrzyński’s unsuccessful attempt to foster lasting understanding between Poles and Ukrainians in Galicia (in fact, the fault for this fiasco lay with the Catholic bishops, lacking even the most rudimentary understanding of politics). One did not have to wait long for the consequences – the bloody battles for Lwów perpetuated the hostility on both sides but also created the moving patriotic legend of the Lwów Eaglets. Piłsudski and Petlura’s anti-Soviet alliance was like a beckon of hope for overcoming the doom of mutual hostility. Yet it proved to be a mere mirage when Poland betrayed its defeated, despairing allies. Then the Second Polish Republic implemented a truly insane nationalist policy in the borderlands, leading to village pacifications before the Brest elections and, in retaliation, the terrorism of Ukrainian nationalists. It is crucial to bear in mind that the Volhynian Slaughter was the apex of this accursed chain of 20th-century incidents. Its end was marked by a violent epilogue, with battles in the Bieszczady Mountains and the mass deportation of Ukrainians by the communist order. Following that, almost half a century of Soviet tyranny over Poles and Ukrainians ensued.
Two years after the victory of the Maidan Uprising, on the eve of the anniversary of the Volhynian Slaughter, we received a letter addressed to Polish ‘brothers and sisters’, signed by thirteen prominent Ukrainians. Among them were the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk and Patriarch Filaret, respectively, alongside two former Ukrainian presidents and a handpicked group of scholars from the civic elite born on the Kyiv Maidan. The Letter of the Thirteen began with a noble ‘request for forgiveness for the crimes and wrongs committed’. But more importantly, its authors asked us not to make ‘ill-considered political declarations’ on the upcoming anniversary of the Volhynian Slaughter, given that Ukraine still lacked the historical time to mentally confront its own past. The Thirteen wrote: ‘The Ukrainian state has yet to fully form an integrated and dignified position regarding (…) its own responsibility for the past, as well as the future.’
That plea continues to echo in my ears whenever the anniversary of the bloody Sunday of July 11 – the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in Volhynia – draws near. Unfortunately, this request went unaddressed at the time. A year later, following provocations by fanatics on both sides, the so-called ‘war of monuments’ broke out against the backdrop of the commemoration of Polish and Ukrainian victims of the Second World War. Kyiv angrily announced a ban on the ‘search, exhumation and commemoration’ of Polish victims, to which the head of the Polish diplomacy responded with deplorable threats to block Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO. It appeared that the fading idealistic aspirations for a liberal and pacifist world, a defining feature of our era, coupled with the violent ‘return of history’ (as famously phrased by Robert Kagan), would inevitably drive our nations back into the abyss of a fratricidal inferno. Things were even more dramatic as they were taking place amid the roar of Russian howitzers and mortars decimating Ukrainian soldiers in the ‘Debaltseve cauldron.’
However, the quarrel did not escalate, and Providence gave us another chance . Poland’s consistently ‘Promethean’ policy pursued since 24 February 2022, along with the spontaneous reaction of Poles to the wartime misfortunes that befell our neighbours, gave rise to a sincere sense of Polish-Ukrainian brotherhood. The gloomy memory of the 20th-century demons seemed to be replaced by the older memory of our shared historical homeland. But the demons soon turned out to be dormant, not chased away. The Polish-Ukrainian brotherhood is too recent to be indestructible. This has become evident recently through the behaviour of the spokesperson for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who believed it was his duty to advise President Zelenski on what and how to speak about the anniversary of the Volhynian Slaughter. As a result, a dirty wave of old animosities between the two nations, so far subdued by the war, flooded the Internet.
The memory of the horrific acts committed by Ukrainian nationalists continues to live on in the hearts of millions of Poles, having been concealed for generations and therefore carrying even greater weight. One would be deluded to think that it disappeared overnight with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nor has disappeared the Ukrainian sense of injustice and humiliation inflicted by Poland, which had developed over three centuries and can easily be revived by instructions on how Ukrainians should understand their own history. The wounded national pride of a country that has only recently re-entered the European historical stage, and in highly dramatic circumstances, could quickly rekindle bitterness against the ‘Polish masters’, who could never rid themselves of their contempt for Sienkiewicz’s ‘Cossack rabble’. Even a writer as liberal, pro-European and passionate about Polish culture as Oksana Zabuzhko felt the urge to appeal to the long-standing Polish complex in the wake of the appalling threats made by the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry a few years ago. ‘It’s all about total subordination,’ she said. ‘Symbolically, it’s like the Polish court and the Ukrainian rabble; it’s clear who takes their hat off to whom. You have no idea how irritating that is.’
The Letter of the Thirteen issued in 2016 spoke the truth – Ukraine needs a historical time to deal with its past. When it was supposed to do that considering it only came to life as a subjective entity after the Orange Revolution but soon became entangled in a serious political crisis and only truly emerged during the bloody struggles of the Kyiv Maidan and the heroic defence against the Russian invasion. The future may see an easier reconciliation of Polish and Ukrainian perspectives on history, as there is already a multitude of contemporary Ukrainian heroes, whom both our nations will remember with equal reverence as defenders of ‘our freedom and yours’. The hex that hovers over our collective memory – asserting that major criminals (such as the previously mentioned Klym Savur) were also the last heroic protectors of an independent Ukraine and died at the hands of the Soviets – will finally sink into the past.
It’s important to emphasise that the aim here is to narrow the gap between our evaluations of history, not embracing a constructivist notion of unifying the memory of both nations. There is no need to pressure Ukrainians to adopt the Polish view of the past or to insist on writing a common history textbook. The belief that the common memory of different nations can be remoulded like Play-Doh is one of the naïve, pseudo-liberal superstitions of our time. The point is to make sure that the innocent victims of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia are duly remembered and that this chapter of history is finally closed. For Poles, the Volhynia massacre will forever remain a monstrous and incomprehensible crime that cannot be justified by any of the old injustices or grievances we have inflicted on the Ukrainians. The time may not be far off when the Ukrainians become a nation sufficiently strong and grounded in history to feel that they no longer need to look for excuses or mitigating circumstances for that crime.
