Europa 1939–1945, eds. Christoph Dieckmann et al. (Wallstein, 2003), 151–83; Vladimir Melamed, “Organized and Unsolicited Collaboration in the Holocaust,” East European Jewish Affairs 37, no. 2 (2007): 217–48; Wendy Lower, “Pogroms, Mob Violence and Genocide in Western Ukraine, Summer 1941: Varied Histories, Explanations and Comparisons,” Journal of Genocide Research 13, no. 3 (2011): 217–46; Kai Struve, “Rites of Violence? The Pogroms of Summer 1941,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 24 (2011): 257–74; Per Anders Rudling, “Terror and Local Collaboration in Occupied Belarus: The Case of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118,” Romanian Academy “Nicolae Iorga” History Institute Historical Yearbook 13 & 14 (2011 & 2012): 195–214 & 99–121; Kai Struve, “Tremors in the Shatter-Zone of Empires: Eastern Galicia in Summer 1941,” in Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires, eds. Omer Bartov and Eric Weitz (Indiana University Press 2013), 463–84; Frank Grelka, “Politics and Military Actions of Ethnic-Ukrainian Collaboration for the ‘New European Order’,” in Revisionist Politics in Europe, 1938–1945, eds. Marina Cattaruzza and Dieter Langewiesche (Berghahn, 2013), 126–41; Yuri Radchenko, “‘We fired all cartridges at them’: Ukrainische Hilfspolizei and the Holocaust on the Territory of the Generalbezirk Kharkiv, 1941–1943,” Yad Vashem Studies 41, no. 1 (2013): 63–98; Kai Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft, ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijüdische Gewalt: Der Sommer 1941 in der Westukraine (DeGruyter-Oldenbourg, 2015); Olesya Khromeychuk, “Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces During the Second World War,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association 100, no. 343 (2016): 704–24; Kai Struve, “Anti-Jewish Violence in Summer 1941 in Eastern Galicia and Beyond,” in Romania and the Holocaust: New Research – Public Discourse – Remembrance, ed. Simon Geissbühler (ibidem-Verlag, 2016), 89–113; Raz Segal, Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2016); Per Anders Rudling, “Dispersing the Fog: The OUN and Anti-Jewish Violence in 1941,” Yad Vashem Studies 44, no. 2 (2016): 227–45; Jared McBride, “Who Is Afraid of Ukrainian Nationalism?” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 3 (2016): 647–63. There is a separate and, by now, large body of scholarly literature devoted specifically to the L’viv pogroms of summer 1941 which is not listed here.
18 In chronological order, since 2017: John-Paul Himka, “Former Ukrainian Policemen in the Ukrainian National Insurgency: Continuing the Holocaust outside German Service,” in Lessons and Legacies XII: New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education, eds. Wendy Lower and Lauren Faulkner Rossi (Northwestern University Press, 2017), 141–63; Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2018); Andriy Usach, “The ‘Eastern Action’ of the OUN(b) and the Anti-Jewish Violence in the Summer of 1941: The Cases of Smotrych and Kupyn,” Euxeinos: Governance and Culture in the Black Sea Region 9, no. 27 (2019): 63–84; Ivan Katchanovski, “The OUN, the UPA, and the Nazi Genocide in Ukraine,” in Mittäterschaft in Osteuropa im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust / Collaboration in Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust, eds. Peter Black, Béla Rásky and Marianne Windsperger (New Academic Press, 2019), 67–93; Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Survivor Testimonies and the Coming to Terms with the Holocaust in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia: The Case of the Ukrainian Nationalists,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 34, no. 1 (2020): 221–40; Struve, “The OUN(b), the Germans, and Anti-Jewish Violence in Eastern Galicia during Summer 1941;” Radchenko, “The Biography of the OUN(m) Activist Oleksa Babii in the Light of His ‘Memoirs on Escaping Execution’ (1942);” and John-Paul Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944 (ibidem-Verlag, 2021).
19 Per Anders Rudling, “The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications,” Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies 5, no. 1 (2016): 26–65.
20 Peter W. Rodgers, “Contestation and Negotiation: Regionalism and the Politics of School Textbooks in Ukraine’s Eastern Borderland,” Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 4 (2006): 681–97; idem, “‘Compliance or Contradiction’? Teaching ‘History’ in the ‘New’ Ukraine: A View from Ukraine’s Eastern Borderlands,” Europe-Asia Studies 59, no. 3 (2007): 503–19; and David Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Central European University Press, 2007).
21 On this issue, see: Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Yuliya Yurchuk, “Memory Politics in Contemporary Ukraine: Reflections from the Post-Colonial Perspective,” Memory Studies 12, no. 6 (2019): 699–720; Yuliya Yurchuk, “Global Symbols Local Meanings: The ‘Day of Victory’ after Euromaidan,” in Transnational Ukraine? Networks and Ties that Influence(d) Contemporary Ukraine, eds. Timm Beichelt and Susann Worschech (ibidem-Verlag, 2017): 66–89.
22 On the role of anniversaries in public space and collective memory, see John Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton University Press, 1994).
23 See the latest (as of early 2021) discussion of this issue: Andrei Portnov, “Bandera: Priglasheniie k spokoinomu razgovoru,” Colta.ru, 11 January 2021, https://www.colta.ru/articles/specials/26340-andrey-portnov-bandera-istoriya-i-mif (accessed on 19 January 2021).
24 On the securitization of history in the post-Maidan Ukraine see Yuliya Yurchuk, “Historians as Activists: History-Writing in Times of War. The Case of Ukraine in 2014–2018,” Nationalities Papers (2020): 1–19. On other cases of the securitization of memory and history in Eastern Europe, see Maria Mälksoo, The Politics of Becoming European: A Study of Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War Security Imaginaries (Routledge, 2010); Vlad Strukov and Victor Apryshchenko (eds.), Memory and Securitization in Contemporary Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). A trend towards securitization is also observable in Ukrainian religious affairs: Denys Shestopalets, “Church as an Existential Threat: The Securitization of Religion in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” Journal of Church and State 62, no. 4 (2020): 713–39.
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