School Textbooks

This survey of school textbooks is not intended to be comprehensive but rather to provide a general overview of what has been written recently in Ukraine about the events under discussion.

The article then introduces the views of V. Stetskevych, who authored a book on the Second World War published in Dnipropetrovs'k in 1992. Stet- skevych contends that Second World War history should be regarded as part of the history of the Ukrainian people, rather than war history per se.

One can begin the survey of textbooks with a short monograph written for students in grade five by Viktor Mysan, the second edition of which was pub­lished in 1997, and which has been cited earlier in conjunction with the im­portant article by Nancy Popson.⁴ The topics are neatly divided into subject areas and the explanation of events is clear and simple, but also in its own way quite ideological.

Concerning the start of the Second World War, Mysan states that the population of Western Ukraine greeted the Soviet army happily, but the new Soviet order brought the creation of collective farms, a ban on religion, and punished those people who wished to see a free Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were occupiers rather than liberators. Yet “from the first days” of the war the Ukrainian people began to struggle against the plunderers [the Germans] and Partisan units, and underground organizations rose up.⁶

Already the book would surely confuse the average 10-year-old because the author makes no distinction between the Soviet Partisans and the UPA, other than to state that the UPA fought on two fronts until the end of military op­erations because its members did not want either Fascists or Russian Bolshe­viks on Ukrainian lands.

F. H. Turchenko has written a new history of Ukraine for the tenth grade that provides a more detailed outline of the 1932-33 Famine. The Famine is described as one of the worst atrocities of Stalinism against the Ukrainian people, and the reason for it is cited as punishment for those villages that re­fused to accept the new kolkhoz system at the start of collectivization. State procurements drained the lifeblood of the villages, and famine arose as a re­sult.

The lavishly illustrated history of Ukraine edited by Volodmyr Lytvyn and others leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that the 1932-33 Famine was an organized act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. It is described as a physical assault and an attack on people's consciousness. After the Famine, the authors write, Ukraine in effect became a colony of Moscow.

In a more recent account, O. D. Boyko provides a section on the “Causes of the Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933.” He points out that historians have failed to reach a consensus on this question. Western historians have a ten­dency to cite national-political factors. He cites James Mace's explanation that Moscow wanted to curb the spread of Ukrainian nationalism among the peas­antry as this was a threat to its imperial interests. Thus Stalin, Kaganovich, Postyshev, and others planned in Moscow the destruction of the Ukrainian peasants as the most nationally conscious sector and tried to realize this goal in Ukraine by means of the mass famine of 1932-33. This position is sup­ported by Robert Conquest and by French researcher Alain Bezancon who focuses on the planning behind the operation. On the other hand, Boyko writes, some Russian, Ukrainian, and Western historians (V. Danilov, N. Iv- nyts’kyi, V. Marochko, N. Werth, and others) consider that the Famine re­sulted from various social and economic causes, first and foremost the en­forced grain procurements that were unwarranted and based on coercive poli­cies in the countryside. Boyko then states his view that the most acceptable position is that of the collective authorship of the monograph “Stalinism in Ukraine” (V. Danylenko, H. Kas’yanov, and S. Kul’chyts’kyi), who have ex­plored the diverse perceptions and analyzed available sources and reached the conclusion that the various hypotheses need to be combined to come up with the correct analysis, that both economic and political factors lay at the root of the tragedy. Still, the researchers have been unable to come up with a firm figure of the number of victims. Conquest cites 5 million deaths; Werth from 4 to 5 million; and Kul’chyts’kyi 3.5 million. The data of V. Tsaplin, on the other hand, indicate 2.9 million deaths in 1933 alone. Many of the deaths could have been avoided had Stalin offered help, this author states.¹¹

Turchenko, cited above, together with P. P. Panchenko and S. M. Tym- chenko, published another history textbook in 2001, the second part of which covers the period after 1939. The early section of the book deals with the So­viet annexation of Western Ukraine at the outset of the Second World War in September 1939. The authors note that the population of Western Ukraine, hoping that all would turn out well, offered a warm greeting to the Red Army. Soviet propaganda declared that the Red Army had crossed the border in or­der to forestall a Nazi occupation. In conditions where the population was completely ignorant of the secret agreement between Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Union, this propaganda had a significant psychological impact on local Western Ukrainians. They hoped for a reunion with the “East Ukrainian brothers,” and the image of the Soviet soldier as a liberator was enhanced by the longstanding Polish-Ukrainian animosity in the region. The authors point out that many of the omens for the change of ruler were good: the Ukrainian national intelligentsia welcomed the spreading of a network of Ukrainian schools, higher educational institutes switched to the Ukrainian language, and the L’wow Jan Kazimierz University became known as the L’viv Ivan Franko University. The opera theater began to function in Ukrainian and was re­named the Theater of Opera and Ballet “Ivan Franko.” Ukrainian newspapers also began to appear. However, the new authorities also brought with them a system of acute political terror. The NKVD eliminated political parties, in­cluding the Prosvita Society, which had been very popular. Its leaders, like many others, were declared “enemies of the people” and imprisoned. Whole­sale arrests followed, including of lawyers, bank managers, the leaders of co­operative societies, priests, and middle and richer peasants.¹²

Along with the more prominent officials, the three authors continue, stu­dents and pupils of senior classes were also arrested and without any trial they were interned and later deported to the eastern regions of the USSR. This was done to intimidate the population and prevent opposition. The authors de­scribe how the NKVD put 59 members of the OUN on trial, most of whom were students and the youngest only fifteen years of age. Forty-two people were sentenced to death. In 1939-41, 10% of the population of Western Ukraine was imprisoned, and the immediate victims were Poles, but Ukraini­ans followed soon afterward. This short period of Soviet rule convinced the population, the authors maintain, that its future lay not in integration into the Soviet Union but in the creation of its own independent Ukrainian state. However, the authors provide no evidence for such a claim, which appears premature in the context of this period. The authors mention briefly, with re­gard to the early part of the German-Soviet war, the creation of a Central Headquarters of the Partisan movement headed by P. K. Ponomarenko in May 1942, and the Ukrainian headquarters under T. Strokach formed in June 1942. There follows a much lengthier section on the OUN, which is dealt with in great detail. The authors do not conceal their disapproval of the OUN-M for its rapprochement with the Germans, or their approval of and respect for the OUN-B under Bandera. They maintain that the OUN-B represented the majority, and that Bandera, not discounting the possibility of cooperation with the Germans, supported the creation of a Ukrainian army and began an active struggle for an independent Ukraine, leaning on the forces of the Ukrainian people.¹³

The main theme therefore is of the OUN-B in the war years. The authors state that the Nazi leadership of Germany, rejecting the concept of Ukrainian statehood, nevertheless agreed to cooperation with the OUN, which they hoped to use in the struggle against the Red Army. They agreed especially to the formation of the Nachtigal and Roland battalions, which were staffed with Ukrainian nationalists, and were to be deployed for acts of sabotage in the USSR. For its part, the OUN-B considered these formations the nucleus of a future Ukrainian army. There follows a detailed description of the declaration of independence of 30 June 1941, which is portrayed as a heroic act that had the support of Metropolitan Sheptyts'kyi. The Germans responded by dissolv­ing the government formed by Yaroslav Stets'ko and arresting Stets'ko and Bandera. The repressions, the authors write, affected the attitude of the Ro­land and Nachtigal battalions, the troops of which refused to carry out Ger­man orders. They were thus disbanded and their Ukrainian officers arrested. The OUN began preparing its own armed forces for a struggle with the occu­piers and began to spread its underground network. The authors describe the expeditionary groups that accompanied German forces into the major cities of Eastern Ukraine. Reportedly, they had orders to set up civil organizations in each settlement, but their situation was rendered difficult by the refusal of the Germans to support an independent Ukraine. The portrayal of the impact of these groups appears exaggerated. The authors write, for example, that in the Donbas region the expeditionary group organized an independent under­ground, which led a campaign under the slogans “Down with Hitler! Down with Stalin! Soviet power—without the Bolsheviks!” Presumably the advocacy of Soviet power was offered to assuage a largely non-nationalistic part of the population. According to the authors, the support for Ukrainian independ­ence, especially in Left-Bank Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine, came as a com­plete surprise to the Germans. The occupants saw with alarm that the leaders and members of the expeditionary groups united not only the local intelligent­sia, but also young people, workers, and peasants.¹⁴

The authors discuss the UPA and what they term “the defense movement in 1943” at some length. They mention that among those executed at Babyn Yar was Olena Teliha, the well-known Ukrainian poetess, and that after No­vember 1941, the occupation regime received orders to arrest and eliminate all leaders and members of the OUN underground. However, coordinated efforts between the OUN and the Soviet underground were hindered by deep ideological differences and both sides would reveal the whereabouts of the other to the Gestapo with tragic consequences. In Western Ukraine, the social basis for the national movement was wider than elsewhere, and members of the OUN were subject to relatively light acts of repression by the German oc­cupiers. Several units of the OUN united under joint leadership in Volhynia and Polissya and received the name Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The date 14 October 1942 is the day of the creation of the UPA. The authors cite approv­ingly the Partisan raids led by Kovpak, and they provide a figure of up to 220,000 people in Partisan formations and the non-nationalist underground at various times during the war. The formation of the UPA in its OUN-B variant is discussed without detail as to the in-fighting that occurred among the differ­ent groups. The conflict that followed is described exclusively in terms of the German-UPA conflict. Hitlerite terror, combined with Soviet sabotage and Partisan formations, as well as Polish military formations made the situation desperate for the Ukrainian inhabitants.¹⁵ Again the link between the Parti­sans as heroes and Partisans who opposed the national liberation movement requires better explanation. However, it is a sign of the failure to not have de­veloped a clearly delineated theme for pupils, even after ten years of inde­pendence. Clearly now the OUN and UPA have been designated as the forces of national liberation, but the attitude taken toward the Soviet forces is uncer­tain. As yet, it is not uniformly hostile.

In 2002, a new history of Ukraine appeared in Kyiv, edited by H. D. Temka and L. S. Tupchienka. The book provides individual biographical information about the leading figures of the Ukrainian national movement, which is de­picted as a response to Polish assimilation policies and the “repression” of 800 villages in Eastern Galicia from the spring of 1930 onward. Dmytro Dontsov is not assigned biographical space but is described as the main ideo­logue of the OUN. The biography of Bandera is detailed for the period from his membership of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in 1929 until he became leader of the Revolutionary Wing of the OUN at its Second Con­gress in 1941. The next statement pertains to 1947 and his election to the military wing of the OUN, leading the armed struggle of the Ukrainian na­tional underground movement against Soviet power. Bandera's writings, it is stated, supported the concept of Christian revolutionary-liberation national­ism and the independence of Ukraine. Mel'nyk is listed as heading the moder­ate wing of the OUN after its split in 1940, with nothing of note cited for his activity between 1941 and 1959. The authors write that on the eve of the Sec­ond World War both wings oriented themselves in different ways toward po­litical and military assistance from Germany. The leaders of the OUN were guided by Dontsov's formula that Ukraine would liberate itself in the shadow of a German invasion of the Soviet Union. The German people from 1918 to the end of the 1930s were respected in Ukrainian lands as representatives of enlightenment and sophisticated behavior—a statement that might reflect the relatively civilized military occupation of Ukraine in the later months of the First World War. What the authors presumably are trying to do is limit the damage of Ukrainian links with Hitler's regime on the part of the nationalists. Thus on 14 April 1941, Andrii Mel'nyk wrote a letter to Hitler in which he suggested that the German leader create a Ukrainian state under German pro­tection extending from the Danube and Carpathians, to the Caspian Sea, the mountains of the Caucasus, and including Crimea, Bessarabia, half of the Vo­ronezh and Kursk oblasts and part of Belgorod oblast! Mel’nyk projected that Ukraine would border Kazakhstan on the Volga River, while the Russian Far East could be colonized by Japanese settlers. He promised to join his forces with those of Hitler and the wing of the OUN under Bandera.¹⁶

Temka and Tupchienka then outline Stets’ko’s aborted attempt to form a Ukrainian government in L’viv, which is portrayed as an independent action rather than one in which the Ukrainians openly solicited the support of the Germans. A laudatory biography of Stets’ko is included. Hitler’s response to the Ukrainian declaration of independence was rapid, the authors state, and on 5 July, the same day that Stets’ko formed his government, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow and four days later Stets’ko and 300 OUN activists were detained, many of whom were later executed. They describe another abortive attempt to set up a Ukrainian national government in Bukovyna on 1 July 1941 after the Romanian army had left this region at Stalin’s request. The Germans subsequently turned down requests for cooperation from Mel’nyk and others in July. The role of the expeditionary groups in Kyiv and other cit­ies is highlighted and the authors express regret that the members of the two wings of the OUN were unable to unify. This book devotes unusual attention to the UPA established by representatives of the exiled UNR government un­der Taras Bul’ba Borovets’. In the summer of 1941, the text reads, Borovets’ formed the UPA-Polis’ka Sich with some 6,000 men. It attacked the retreating Red Army and helped the Germans to transfer production facilities and raw materials to the Reich. The Germans disbanded the unit on 16 November 1941, but as the military situation changed, a new treaty between the German commanders and the UPA was signed on 23 November 1942. Simultaneously in 1942, the authors note the treaty between the OUN-B and OUN-M, made in order to enable the two wings to combine actions against the Germans, Polish nationalists, Soviet Partisans and bandit groups made up of Red Army deserters. From 9 April, the OUN-B had begun negotiations with Borovets’ about a common political platform based on Bandera’s ideas, which included elimination of the Polish population. The conflict that followed during the OUN-B’s enforced takeover of the UPA from Borovets’ is well described, as well as the open fighting between the OUN-B Security Service, on the one hand, and the OUN-M and the UPA-Polis’ka Sich on the other. Borovets’, the authors write, turned himself in to the Germans following the murder of many of his colleagues by the OUN-B Security Service.¹⁷

The book’s coverage of the Volhynia massacres is short but balanced, and includes a comment from Kubiiovych that “If the OUN-B-UPA continues to conduct war against six enemies, they will lead Ukraine to the grave.” It high­lights the assaults on sixty Polish settlements on 11-12 June 1943 on the or­ders of the OUN-B. In civil war situations, some 40-50,000 people from both sides were killed in the conflict with the Poles. Also, during 1943 the OUN conceived of the idea to ask the West to defend Ukraine, based on the model by which the Japanese ruled the Philippines. There follows a detailed account of the formation of the SS Division Halychyna which, the authors note, came after the formation of two Latvian SS Divisions and one Estonian SS Divi­sion, the creation of the Russian Liberation Army under Vlasov, and military units of other Soviet peoples. The initiative for the Ukrainian Division came from Galician governor Otto Waechter, and had the support of Kubiiovych’s Ukrainian Central Committee, which provided unanimous backing. However, since there were some Germans who held a negative attitude toward such an enterprise, a decision was made not to permit the creation of an all-Ukrainian army, but merely a regional Galician unit led by the SS. The officer corps was also mixed German and Ukrainian. Prior to its creation, both the UPA and the OUN had a negative attitude toward it. The Division’s military actions and its transformation in 1945 into an exclusively Ukrainian force under General P. Shandruk are elucidated carefully. When the war ended, the British refused to repatriate the Division troops and they were given permission to settle in Britain. The final section devoted to the war is occupied with the Soviet-UPA conflict. The malevolent and ruthless role of N. S. Khrushchev, First Secre­tary of the CPU, is explained in more intricate detail than in most sources, particularly his application of mass terror in Western Ukraine. The authors also note that the number of mass arrests far exceeded the actual figures for UPA insurgents and therefore the majority of those killed or arrested must have been “peaceful citizens.”¹⁸

The authors conclude this remarkably candid outline in the following way. They write that the end of the German-Soviet war, and the victory over Fascist Germany and Imperial Japan failed to bring peace and calm to Ukraine. The OUN-B had no hope of overcoming the powerful Soviet Union and therefore its uprising was doomed to failure. In turn, in terms of turning the world against Soviet power and its ideology, the narrative states, the nationalists also did not succeed, despite their brave examples in the conflicts that lingered. But the vi­cious vendetta of the Soviet authorities against the population of Western Ukraine erased any positive aspects of the changes brought by Soviet rule. A regime which brought industrialization, a cultural renaissance, the eradication of illiteracy, and a strengthening of Ukrainian culture. But they all came at a very high price. They were impeded by Sovietization, and the malevolence and colonial behavior of the new rulers deeply alienated the population.¹⁹ This ex­planation for disaffection in Western Ukraine, combined with the comments about the ideological and military failure of the OUN-UPA struggle, provides a much more realistic perusal of Ukraine in this pivotal period than do most of the new histories. Indeed, one could posit that the brutality of Soviet rule—or as it is sometimes described: the period of the second Soviet occupation—was more likely a conduit to later demands for independence than the insurgency of the UPA. What Temka and Tupchienka stress is that the mass arrests and de­portations embraced a broad section of the population, much of which had no part in the military conflict. All too often the insurgency and popular disaffec­tion for the Soviets are accepted as one and the same thing, with the UPA de­picted as the manifestation of such discontent.

A book that appeared in the same year by V. D. Mironchuk and H. S. Ihoshkin devotes space to the subject of Ukrainian nationalism, and of what it comprised. The authors date the impact of nationalism in Western Ukraine to the 1920s, and analyze the role of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). The OUN's formation under Konovalets in 1929 is discussed. The authors write that OUN ideology was based on “integral nationalism,” which put feeling above reason, national interest above individualism, and was dedi­cated to achieving Ukrainian independence by all possible means. At this time totalitarian tendencies developed in many European countries. However, Ukrainian integral nationalism cannot be compared with Italian or German Fascism since it developed in an environment in which governmental struc­ture was lacking. The OUN began with acts of terrorism and the movement was only strengthened by Polish acts of repression that followed the assassina­tion of Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in June 1934. However, the mur­der of Konovalets' in Rotterdam in May 1938 left the OUN leaderless on the eve of one of the most decisive periods in European history. The Nazi-Soviet Pact that followed in August 1939 and the secret Soviet-German Treaty of 28 September 1939 are described as cynical acts as the two powers were happy to carve up Polish territory. Nevertheless, the authors questionably add, work­ers in Western Ukraine were delighted to welcome the Red Army initially be­cause they saw the unification of the region with the Soviet Union as protec­tion against Germany.²⁰ The statement echoes official Soviet propaganda of the time, and most recent accounts posit that the welcome to the Soviet forces signaled relief at the end of Polish rule and/or support for the reunion of Ukrainian ethnic territories.

The penultimate book in this general survey appeared under the authorship of an editorial team led by M. O. Skrypnyk. Like Mironchuk and Ihoshkin, the team refuses to accept official Soviet excuses for signing the pact with Hit­ler. If this pact is to be properly evaluated, one author writes, it meant an end to attempts to create a bloc of anti-Fascist states. True, it may have been an attempt of the Soviet Union to avoid a war with Germany, but the protocols, which were kept secret for fifty years, place the USSR on the same moral level as Nazi Germany and can be qualified as an agreement between two aggres­sors. The OUN is introduced as one of the most influential forces in the terri­tory of Western Ukraine with the goal of establishing an independent Ukraine. The author, however, makes a clear and partial delineation between the two branches that emerged in 1940. While both relied on Germany to accomplish their main goals and felt it inevitable that Germany would be victorious in its eastern conflicts—thus allowing for the creation of a Ukrainian state—the OUN-M offered unconditional support. The OUN-B, on the other hand, con­sidered the alliance with Germany to be temporary, as it regarded Germany, along with the USSR, as enemies of Ukrainian independence. Repression of the OUN-B began after Germany demanded that the Act of Independence be annulled. In similar fashion, the UPA is described as a massive popular movement that included all Ukrainian partisan formations, including the OUN-M. The UPA took it upon itself to protect the local population from the anarchy imposed by the occupiers and from German conscription of foreign labor. An open armed struggle with the Fascists began in February 1943 and had such scope that the Germans were obliged to bring in 10,000 troops to try to crush the uprising. As whole areas came under UPA control, the Soviets also panicked and moved their own forces into the area, resulting in conflict between the UPA and Soviet Partisans. The Polish issue is limited in this book to a brief comment about associated casualties and deaths of peaceful resi­dents because of their ethnicity.²¹

The Soviet-UPA conflict receives extensive attention. In general, the au­thors are favorable to the goals of the UPA and, like others, they condemn the barbarity of the Soviet regime in the early postwar years, singling out Khru­shchev as the worst culprit. This book gives a good indication of the massive scale of operations, with the Soviet side deploying more than 200,000 soldiers and officers, and both sides using brutal methods, provocations, and indulging in bestial acts that fostered mutual enmity, hatred, and deep divisions in West Ukrainian society. The book, more than other sources, takes into considera­tion the historical background of the occupied region, with local popular cus­toms, strong religious beliefs among the population, and a traditional local way of governing the area that was completely unlike that in the rest of Ukraine. These people, it is stressed, had nothing in common with the Soviet way of life. As the Soviet front line moved westward, UPA's task was to pre­vent Soviet control over Western Ukraine, and it established Ukrainian gov­ernment structures in a territory of over 150,000 square kilometers while con­ducting widespread armed actions in 1945. Many UPA leaders perished in the conflict that followed, eventually forcing the UPA to change its tactics and resort to underground guerrilla warfare, avoiding overt confrontation and rely­ing on ambushes and sudden attacks. In consequence, “tens of thousands” of military personnel and Soviet employees lost their lives, while the Soviet side responded with mass repressions. After the death of Shukhevych in 1950, vet­erans of the resistance could not expect any reconciliation on the part of the government. The authors condemn Soviet methods, which they say only made the situation worse. In May 1945, while the whole world was celebrating the victory over Fascism, Khrushchev was in L'viv meeting local oblast leaders and the NKVD at a secret venue to discuss the coming crackdown, which would see the arrests of villagers, OUN family members, representatives from the intelligentsia, and Greek Catholic priests. Over 500,000 Western Ukraini­ans would be deported. The active operations ceased but, the authors empha­size, the authorities failed to stop passive opposition in this region.²²

We return finally to the textbook by Boyko, cited above with reference to the Famine of 1932-33. In his comments on the Famine, Boyko essentially takes a moderate line, outlining the various perspectives and then stating that they need to be combined to provide the most accurate perspective. On the OUN and the UPA he is less equivocal. They are regarded as the main organs of liberation that were turned on both totalitarian state: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Boyko accepts that from July 1944, on the initiative of the OUN-B, the movement evolved in a democratic direction. He acknowledges that there was an agreement of non-aggression between a small part of the UPA located in the hills on the German side of the front, and the Wehrmacht, but adds that the step was compelled by the situation of the respective sides in July 1944. OUN-UPA actively strived to take on the role of a “third force” in the war in order to attain Ukrainian independence. The book contains a sec­tion on the “struggle of the OUN-UPA with the Soviet machine of repres­sion,” the title of which provides a good indication of the contents but does not differ fundamentally from other recent sources in its general line. Boyko then includes a section on Operation Vistula that is unusually detailed, and is outlined under the heading “Mass repressions of the Soviet regime against the population of Western Ukraine.” Operation Vistula, he writes, was the conclu­sive stage of the process of resettlement of the Ukrainian population from the territory of Zakerzonnya (Lemkivshchyna, Posyannya, Pidlyashshya, and Kholmshchyna), organized by the USSR and the temporary government of Poland. The author divides the process into three stages: the first, of “volun­tary resettlement,” from September 1944 to August 1945; the second, of “forced deportation,” from September 1945 until August 1946; and the third, Operation Vistula, from April to July 1947. The first stage saw the removal of 81,000 residents, and the second 482,000. The third was a response to the assassination at the hands of the UPA of Polish Deputy Minister of Defense, K. Swierczewski. The “repressive action” was coordinated with the NKVD and the Czechoslovakian army, which blocked the southern and eastern bor­ders of Poland. According to Polish figures, says Boyko, 140,500 people were deported, 3,800 of whom were interned in the Jaworzno camp, and over 650 were killed.²³

From the books surveyed at all levels of the school and university system of Ukraine, it can be seen that the narrative of events critical to the history of Ukraine in the 20th century, which can be called decisive in the formation of a national history, has changed radically from the Soviet period. However, the change, though fundamental, appears to be still in process and is not simply a case of what was right in the past is now wrong. On the Famine, for example, there does not appear yet to be a very clear narrative and issues such as its origins and whether or not it constituted an act of genocide—a statement that would be accepted in Ukrainian circles of North America as no longer merit­ing discussion—have yet to be resolved. The consensus on the emergence of the OUN is that it reflected the political environment of the time and the harsh political conditions of interwar Poland. Most sources make a distinction between the pro-German line of the OUN-M, and the more tactical position of the OUN-B. Historians seem to go out of their way to try to show that the OUN-B formed an alliance with the German army for its own purposes. In doing so, they have a tendency to start the story with 30 June 1941 and to ignore the earlier and close cooperation between the OUN-B and certain ele­ments in the Hitler government, particularly the German army and intelli­gence forces. The Nazi-Soviet Pact is treated in unanimous fashion as a cyni­cal action on the part of the Stalin regime, though there is disagreement as to why one of its consequences—the warm welcome given to the Soviet invaders of Western Ukraine—occurred. The formation of the UPA is regarded as the beginning of a long liberation struggle. Some authors frown upon the attempt to eliminate the Poles of Volhynia, others see it as part of a mini-war in which both sides suffered. The leadership of the OUN-B in UPA's struggle is an ac­cepted fact, as is the heroism of that struggle. The general histories place that contest in the context of the quest for an independent Ukraine that was suc­cessful in 1991. Despite the inconsistencies in the narrative, and despite some of the horrors and depravity carried out by both the Soviets and the UPA, it is possible to perceive the future emergence of a very clear narrative of libera­tion that would examine the evolution of modern Ukraine from a struggle that took place in a relatively small and alienated part of the modern country.