The Debates on the 60th Anniversary of the Volhynia Massacres
On the 60th anniversary of the events in Volhynia, there was an extended exchange of opinions between various sectors in Poland and Ukraine, at both the official and unofficial levels.
Our priority is with those letters and articles that appeared in Ukraine and would have been familiar to a large proportion of the Ukrainian public. Both sides sought some form of redress, though those making the most demands were naturally Poles—the victims in this instance—while Ukrainians offered defensive explanations or alternative versions of events. What is clear is that from the Ukrainian perspective, and particularly those who supported the notion of recognition of the UPA, the anniversary had the potential to do a lot of damage. Above any other event in the history of the UPA (and of the OUN-B, which provided the instruction to carry out the ethnic cleansing), Volhynia in 1943-44 is the most damaging in its impact on the reputation of the insurgents. From the Ukrainian perspective, to generalize somewhat, the accusations have been narrow and one-sided. Furthermore they tend to neglect the early problems in the Polish-Ukrainian relationship when the Poles were clearly in the ascendancy and failed to fulfill their mandate to give autonomy to the region of Eastern Galicia, treating it instead as a virtual colony and conducting a brutal Pacification policy and transplanting Polish farmers to occupy lands in ethnically Ukrainian regions. The Poles, in their turn, fail to comprehend the unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to acknowledge guilt in wholesale massacres for which there is no lack of evidence and which undoubtedly had the overall goal of cleansing an entire region of Poles. Such an admission, in the Polish view, would help to ameliorate relations with a friendly neighbor, and it is often pointed out that Polish democrats, writers, scholars, and others overtly supported the independence of Ukraine and have maintained close and regular ties with their Ukrainian counterparts. In short, Volhynia is something of a stumbling block to what would otherwise be a complete friendship. This is largely because of the obdurate and illogical stance of those who support a different perspective of OUN-UPA as freedom fighters, quasi-democrats, and heroes who sought only the long-term goal of an independent Ukraine.These dilemmas were outlined succinctly in an article by UK-based scholar Katarina Wolczuk in 2002, on the eve of the anniversary. She writes that at the level of society, the Volhynia issue still has the potential to cause friction between the two neighbors and that the preparations for the commemoration had the potential to exacerbate matters. In her outline, she comments that the military wing of the OUN—the UPA—carried out acts of ethnic cleansing that led to the deaths of 60-100,000 Poles in the period from March 1943 until early 1944. The goal was to ensure a Ukrainian “takeover” of both Vol- hynia and Eastern Galicia by bringing about the complete removal of the Polish population. She maintains that the shocking impact of the massacres was worsened by the fact that the UPA had the overt assistance of peasants from nearby Ukrainian villages. The Poles subsequently conducted retaliatory actions that caused the deaths of between 15,000 and 30,000 Ukrainians. The Polish head of National Security, Marek Siwiec, wrote a letter to Viktor Medvedchuk, then head of Ukraine's presidential administration, concerning the anniversary. Among the suggested actions that Ukraine might take, Siwiec included: erecting monuments, cleaning up and designating the graves of the Poles that were killed, as well as a symbolic action like the one made by German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1970, when he kneeled before the Monument of Heroes to commemorate the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto destroyed by the Germans in 1944. Wolczuk perceived several serious difficulties that the Ukrainians faced in responding to this request.31
In the first place, Ukrainian society failed to reach a consensus on the OUN and UPA.
The organizations received very diverse responses, from veneration to outright hostility. The main supporters of these organizations were right and center parties that had support in Western Ukraine, as well as the West Ukrainian public and the Ukrainian Diaspora. Other areas still adhered to the former Soviet perspective that OUN-UPA members were “bourgeois nationalists” and Nazi collaborators. The current debates in Ukraine negate the efforts to condemn or to praise OUN-UPA and render it difficult to respond in any meaningful way to the 60th anniversary of the Volhynia massacres. The year 2003 also preceded a year of presidential elections in Ukraine. Wolczuk maintains that President Leonid Kuchma, who had been in office since 1994, had lost moral credibility as head of state after he was implicated in the killing of an opposition journalist,32 whereas the opposition contender for president, Viktor Yushchenko, was highly popular in Western Ukraine, where the UPA was venerated. The issue could therefore be used as a political tool to undermine Yushchenko, who might be accused of being a nationalist sympathizer. The second issue was the expectation of the Poles that an apology would be forthcoming, and as a result, they seemed to some to be prepared to demand that their own version of events be accepted wholesale by the Ukrainian side. Seeking an apology in this way would only complicate inter-state relations and have an adverse effect on relations at the societal level, Wolczuk writes.33Pressure on the Polish government comes from right-wing political forces that seek redress for events that have become emblazoned in the historical memory of many Poles, with feelings of anger and resentment that have been simmering for years. In the eyes of many Poles, the events constitute a clear act of genocide at the hands of Ukrainians. In Wolczuk's opinion, the increased tension over the issue forced the Polish government to take the lead and demand an apology in order to offset the demands of the right-wing forces.
In this way, however, Poland may have missed an opportunity for reconciliation by focusing exclusively on deaths and the victimization of Poles rather than on the two sets of victims, and the atrocities on both sides. Historians are also not in agreement over the nature of the massacres and have deployed a variety of phrases to describe them, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and the more inoffensive “anti-Polish actions.” Wolczuk adheres to the view that the killings had deep historical roots and the violence occurred after a lengthy period of mutual grievances. The Polish case tends to ignore the behavior of the interwar Polish government toward its large Ukrainian minority. Wolczuk feels therefore that an opportunity to put an end to “prejudice and negative stereotypes” may be missed during the 60th anniversary commemoration.34 Her article offers a perceptive illustration of the main problems and why the issue has persisted in Ukrainian and Polish narratives without any real prospects of resolution.An angry depiction of the Ukrainian side of these events was authored by Evhen Dudar in an open letter to Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller in November 2002. The letter was written in response to a statement that there are no Poles today who feel any sympathy toward the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Dudar maintains that such a statement plays into the hands of Moscow. He wonders whether there is anyone in Poland who recognizes that the UPA had no prospects of conquering Moscow or Warsaw but was solely concerned with defending its own lands from foreign conquerors. An honest Pole whose country had been oppressed by Moscow and Berlin should be more receptive, in his view, to a Ukrainian who was repressed for an even longer period by others, including “Polish chauvinists.” Poland, he continues, conducted a policy of colonization with regard to its eastern borderlands and its transplanted colonists constituted the dregs of the Polish nation who would try to steal from others.
Two years later these colonists were sent to Siberia, along with Ukrainians, by the new Soviet authorities that had set Ukrainians free from the Polish yoke, but only to impose their own rule. Moscow also “sold” Poland to Hitler, who removed the Bolsheviks from Ukraine then conquered the land himself. Ukrainians had no choice but to take up arms, says Dudar. In fact all the nations that suffered occupation could begin legitimate resistance. However, unlike Ukrainians, they had established state structures, created their own armies, and received international recognition. By contrast, Ukrainians had nothing but “a burning desire for freedom” and implacable hatred toward the occupiers.35Dudar writes that “some of our historians who still worship the Kremlin mother” follow their Moscow masters and mutter about alleged collaboration- ism of the UPA. This is patently absurd, he says, because the very definition of a collaborator is someone who works or fights on the side of the enemy against one's own government. Yet Ukraine had no government of its own to betray. Moreover, it was those puppet regimes propped up by the imperialists that were collaborationist in nature. The historians who put forward such accusations are collaborators themselves for they serve another state. This is a rather curious mode of argument to make in the period of independence in that it appears to insinuate that those who criticize OUN-UPA are indirectly or directly enemies of Ukraine. Dudar acknowledges that there was some brutality on the Ukrainian side, but UPA soldiers were most ruthless toward themselves with the rule about using the last bullet to kill oneself rather than surrender to the enemy. He tells Miller that “your own AK and Armia Ludowa” troops were also brutal toward Ukrainians, a situation exploited by Stalin. He writes that he knows a Ukrainian from the Lemkiv region who as a child witnessed the arrival of Poles in his native village to carry out Operation Vistula.
Everyone was herded into the local church, which was then set ablaze. The Ukrainian was the only one to survive but suffered multiple burns and remained severely disabled for the rest of his life. The perpetrators of this hideous crime might well be alive, he reflects, perhaps they receive a state pension and are considered war heroes. To him it is great paradox that in independent Ukraine those who fought for her independence are neglected, hungry, and often scorned, while its foes are respected heroes who can ridicule opponents with impunity. Dudar asks whether Mr. Miller and his officials have to humor a “red electorate” or whether he is in perennial debt to Moscow.36A more sophisticated analysis is offered by Maksym Strikha, who attended a joint Ukrainian-Polish forum of journalists and experts at Ostrih on the 60th anniversary of the Volhynia events. For Strikha two moments remained in his mind: an OUN veteran who had been in the camps at Kolyma was baffled by the fact that in the Gulag they had sung the same songs and stayed together with AK soldiers. The veteran wondered who was benefiting from their quarrel. The other was a conversation with a Polish intellectual who pondered in a private conversation why Ukraine had not admitted responsibility for the Volhynia tragedy. The Poles had condemned Operation Vistula, Poland was Ukraine's only advocate in discussions with the West (presumably about possible EU membership and others) and yet Ukraine did not even wish to take a step forward and acknowledge the horrors that had occurred six decades ago. Strikha comments that there are no simple answers to such seemingly obvious questions. The Vistula Operation was ordered and carried out by the new government of Communist Poland. This fact made it easier for the Polish Senate, staffed mainly with members of the anti-Communist Solidar- nosc movement, to adopt a resolution condemning the operation. However, a similar resolution failed to find its way through the Sejm despite the best efforts of Ukrainian ambassadors and liberal groups. President Kwasniewski later came forward with a statement condemning the Vistula campaign. By contrast, the Ukrainian government could not take responsibility for the murders in Volhynia because no such government existed. The OUN-M expressed its repulsion toward these events as did the head of the initial UPA, Taras Bufba-Borovets'. The highest spiritual authority, Metropolitan Andrii Shep- tyts'kyi, also condemned the murders.37
Strikha states that although the murders were carried out under the auspices of the Bandera faction, the situation was complex. Lebed', the provisional leader, in the absence of the imprisoned Bandera, refused to support the ethnic cleansing—the statement incidentally runs counter to most other analyses, which maintain that the decision was Lebed's. However, the regional division in Volhynia headed by Klym Savur (Dmytro Klyachkivs'kyi) took the lead in giving the go-ahead for what was a peasant vendetta against the Poles caused by immediate and much older grievances. Strikha therefore asks: who is supposed to apologize for the mass murder of Polish civilians, which clearly did take place? Should it be the state, which to date has not recognized the UPA, the Volhynia inhabitants, or the heirs of the combatants? Even if the current Ukrainian government should take moral responsibility, this step would not receive a positive response from Ukrainians, for the image of Kuchma and his associates had been badly tarnished by the scandal over the murdered journalist. Intellectuals in Ukraine lacked influence and were split into warring camps, and inhabitants of Volhynia and the combatants remain too burdened by the painful memories of the gruesome deaths suffered by Ukrainian women and children at the hands of the Poles. Nevertheless, Strikha feels that an apology would still be the best step in order not to worsen Polish- Ukrainian relations and already prevalent anti-Ukrainian feeling. The Ukrainian elites must take responsibility. The author laments that historians on both sides have yet to free themselves from the mire of past thinking. On the Polish side he cites the “anti-Ukrainian creed” of Eduard Prus in his work “The moons in Beszczady."38 On the other side is the Communist xenophobic discourse that the Soviets inherited from the Russian Empire, and exemplified in current times by the poet-academician Borys Oliinyk. For these people, writes Strikha, Poles are not Slavic brothers, like Russians and Belarusians, but Catholics, masters, and aggressors.39
Strikha reaches the heart of the problem when he writes that some people are afraid of admitting the truth about Ukrainian crimes against civilian Poles, since this admission might impede the process of rehabilitation of the UPA. He believes that rehabilitation would be instrumental in bringing about a change of attitude toward the Volhynia tragedy. Once the UPA is recognized as an official Second World War combatant, then it would be easier for people to admit obvious facts; like any other army of that time, the UPA had its share of murderers and criminals. On the other hand, he concludes, the Polish elite should remember one thing: if the mood of revenge becomes predominant in Poland, it would eventually transform the Eastern Polish border into a border with a new Eurasian commonwealth, whether this latter is some sort of Slavic Union or an organization of regional integration. He feels that this development would not be in the national interests of Poland.40 In assessing this interesting article, which avoids tarring one side or another, it seems that Strikha is more concerned about national interests than in writing an in-depth study that might benefit historians. His overall goal is to destroy the existing versions of historical narratives, by which one side might traditionally be described as the enemy of the other, as well as the Soviet version—he perceives it as a version that derives from much earlier times in the Tsarist period—by which conflict is the foundation stone for all historical interpretations. In essence, this describes the problem of a new Ukrainian narrative of national history, namely that it has proved difficult for Ukrainian historians to break free completely from the way history was written in the past. The Volhynia tragedy is particularly problematic in that it occurred within a much larger and epic conflict between two totalitarian powers. The destroyed state, Poland, was returned to Europe only following the First World War after more than 120 years of absence from the continent of Europe, while the would-be Ukrainian state experienced only a few weeks of independence in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
A response of sorts to Strikha appeared two weeks later in the same journal by Bohdan Oleksyuk, a Volyn resident, and member of the Institute of Open Politics in Kyiv. Oleksyuk reveals that when talking to his fellow Volhynians, he would often hear that prior to 1943-44 Ukrainians and Poles had coexisted happily. Many of them could not comprehend what occurred on 11 July, when Polish settlements were set on fire. There is some speculation that it began on the other side of the Buh River, when Poles burned Orthodox churches and Ukrainian villages. In the summer of 1942, it is known that the German authorities, with the assistance of Ukrainian auxiliary police, began to expel some 200,000 Poles from four districts of the Lublin region. Ukrainians from neighboring territories were settled on the evacuated lands. The Polish underground responded with retaliatory actions in the course of which many Ukrainians died, while others became refugees and settled in Volhynia with a marked antipathy toward Poles. But why then, Oleksyuk asks, would the massacre have occurred in Volhynia when it originated on the other side of the Buh? It was clear—and here he repeats the familiar line—that the conflict between Poles and Ukrainians could only be to the benefit of the Germans or the Soviet regime. Oleksyuk maintains that a lack of courage prompts some people to seek culprits elsewhere rather than among their own. He recalls the account from a schoolteacher that in one village students at the local school were asked to gather memoirs from witnesses of and participants in the tragic events of 1943-44. But many were unwilling to talk, perhaps because of their strong feelings of guilt. He feels that there must have been a few Ukrainians who rescued their Polish neighbors and provided them with shelter. Such actions could exonerate Ukrainians in the eyes of many Poles. At a Polish cemetery Oleksyuk came across a monument that stated in Ukrainian “Countrymen, rest in peace.” He concluded that some Ukrainians considered Poles to be their neighbors and compatriots. However, upon reading the Polish part of the plaque, he realized his mistake. The monument had been erected and written by Poles, not Ukrainians. The new Ukrainian elite, Oleksyuk writes, must be honest and principled when dealing with the issue of Volhynia. Unfortunately, and here he cites the archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Lyubomyr Huzar, who stated that there were many thoughtless politicians for whom hatred of the Poles is the essence of being Ukrainian, and their national consciousness cannot transcend such sentiments. Huzar stated that both sides must forgive the other for the evil committed.41
Not all agree with such a moderate approach. One of the most prolific historians in Ukraine, Volodymyr Serhiichuk, has devoted two recent books to the Volhynia issue. The first, published in 2000, is a direct response to Wiktor Poliszczuk's 1999 volume on the OUN-UPA.42 Serhiichuk maintains that land is tied to ethnic groups historically, and the OUN took up arms and fought heroically to preserve the right to inhabit the lands of its members' ancestors. In his introduction, he asserts Ukrainian claims to the lands of Volhynia and Galicia, going all the way back to the period of Kyivan Rus'. During the period of the Second World War, he says, citing Mykola Lebed, the Polish nation was not the enemy; rather the struggle was aimed against the Polish government. The same mode of thinking also applied in the case of Russia. As a historian, Serhiichuk had access to formerly secret archives not seen by the Canadian-based Poliszczuk. He uses these sources to advance his main thesis, which is that wholesale and unjustified massacres of Poles in Volhynia on the orders of the OUN did not occur, and that the entire portrayal of events is based on fabrications by Soviet and Polish authors. These events are encapsulated in the phrase “Polish-Ukrainian armed conflict during the Second World War.” He asserts repeatedly that the lands in question were historically Ukrainian, and had been conquered by Poles only in 1349 during a period of weakness of the Galician-Volhynian principality. He comments that even old Polish maps indicate that these territories belonged to “the Ukrainian people.” In making these statements, he makes reference to statistics on the ethnic makeup of these regions, but restricts his data to rural areas—most likely because in the urban areas Ukrainians constituted only a small minority.43
Serhiichuk raises the question: why did the Poles use force in 1918-19 to prevent the creation of a Ukrainian state in an area in which Ukrainians were the majority population? In his section on the Second World War, he provides information on the close links between the Poles and the German occupation regime in the border regions. Resistance to the occupiers, he writes, came from the Ukrainians who “urged the Poles to join them and direct their weapons against the common enemy,” Hitler. But in fact the Poles in general turned their arms against Ukrainians. Poles also feature in his book as close allies of the Bolsheviks, and he cites the formation of a Polish Partisan unit named after Feliks Dzerzhinsky. This friendship led to the escalation of violence in Volhynia, in his view. Ukrainian retaliation was directed against those Polish villages that had become the bases for the “anti-Ukrainian war.” He quotes OUN documents which declare that the organization was targeting Polish colonists, most of whom had arrived in the area in the interwar years. Those Ukrainians who did commit atrocities were dealt with summarily by the OUN Security Service (SB), and perpetrators were punished.44 There are now almost daily reports in the Polish press about Ukrainian atrocities against Poles during the war, writes Serhiichuk, but UPA's policies were directed primarily against the Communist Party and its terrorist armed formations. Concerning the civilian population, the UPA subscribed to the strictest tolerance and humanity. Sometimes the Polish villages provided shelter for the insurgents. The number of Polish victims is not known and could only be established in Serhiichuk's view by a joint Ukrainian-Polish commission. Nevertheless, the removal of Poles from these lands for the most part was not a consequence of UPA's campaigns. Rather the Polish Communist leaders demanded that the Soviet Union accelerate the transfer of the Polish population to former German lands in the west in East Prussia and Pomerania during the bitter winter of 1946.45
Serhiichuk returns to the theme in his 2003 book on the “Volhynia tragedy.” Once again it is based on information culled from the Ukrainian Central Archives, and the argumentation and tone of the book are aggressively antiPolish, and express strong sympathy if not outright support for the OUN and UPA. He compares the “ethnic cleansing” on both sides of the border and from his viewpoint, the Polish cleansing of Ukrainians was incomparably worse than the Ukrainian cleansing of Poles. Until the present, he points out, neither Communist nor Democratic Poland has admitted responsibility for the cruelties carried out by Poles against Ukrainians during Operation Vistula. Supposedly the deported Ukrainians lived comfortably in the houses vacated by Germans, but this is a misleading image in the author's view. As for the massacres of Poles, there are today many Ukrainian cultural figures who think that Ukraine must take responsibility for that tragedy. Serhiichuk is not among them. He thinks it would be more logical to ask Poland for an apology for the crimes carried out against Ukrainians. The book he is writing is partly in response to the monograph by Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka, which he views as very one-sided in its approach.46 Serhiichuk believes that Polish losses have been grossly exaggerated, and sometimes are cited as being as high as 500,000. Whereas Motyka maintains that the anti-Polish actions of OUN- UPA began in April 1943, Serhiichuk retorts that they occurred on lands populated from earliest times by Ukrainians and on which Ukrainians made up an absolute majority. The OUN liquidated only elements that actively opposed a Ukrainian state, whereas Poles of all political hues were dedicated to the destruction of Ukrainians, including the AK and the Polish underground. Ukrainians, on the other hand, demonstrated in their propaganda of 1943 that they did not want a war with Poles, even though organs such as the Ukrainian Central Committee in Krakow were concerned by Polish massacres of Ukrainians in the districts of Krakow and Lublin, which claimed “hundreds of lives.” The Poles were so firmly opposed to Ukrainians, however, that even the Germans co-opted their services.47 However, the possible connection between ethnic cleansing of Poles and their willingness to work with the Germans is not explored.
Serhiichuk continues by listing a number of villages in which there were Polish police collaborators. UPA leader Klym Savur then allegedly warned them to stop helping the Germans. Whereas the Poles in the book appear to support either the Germans or the Soviet Partisans, the Ukrainians are invariably described as 100% behind Stepan Bandera. The situation deteriorated when a large band of Soviet Partisans arrived in Volhynia. Their Polish supporters were singling out Ukrainians and this was why Ukrainians in Volhynia turned on the Poles. According to the OUN perspective, the Poles had committed the double sin of collaborating with both enemies of Ukrainian interests. Serhiichuk portrays the Polish Partisan leaders as debauched and vindictive and the leader of the Home Army in L'viv as an avowed Communist. In some regions the Germans encouraged the Poles to turn on the followers of Bufba-Borovets'. In the summer of 1943 there were many victims on both sides. While Poles suffered the highest casualties in July; the number of Ukrainian victims was higher in October. Was the latter a backlash to the first attack? Serhiichuk does not say. What he does do is try to use statistics to bring down the number of Polish victims by showing that deportations and executions in earlier times had already depleted the Polish community of Vol- hynia.48 Finally, when there seems no option but to deal with the fact that the OUN-B ordered the wholesale massacre of the Poles, Serhiichuk reverts again to a 600-year history of conflict marked by Polish duplicity. He therefore maintains that it is time that Poles apologized to Ukrainians for “genocide.” But they have not, “and we should not be surprised by that fact.”49 The book uses primary sources selectively to present a partisan version of history that in every instance favors the Ukrainian version of events and denigrates the Poles at every opportunity. It is thus a diatribe rather than an academic work and serves mainly to fan the flames of ethnic conflict.
In similar fashion, a survey of Ukrainian-Polish relations by Serhii Hra- bovs'kyi begins by recognizing that both the Polish elites and the population at large are interested in the partnership with Ukraine. They would like to see a democratic Ukraine with a market economy. Therefore in the political climate of Ukraine in 2003, Polish sympathies were on the side of the Ukrainian opposition. However, he feels, the Polish intellectual elite and artists are interested in developing relations only with those Ukrainian counterparts who express pro-Polish sentiment, or adhere to the principles of post-modernism, with its characteristic distancing from questions of nationhood. The attitude of Poles to average Ukrainians is considerably more negative, as these people are usually guest workers, gangsters, and prostitutes. The main historical problems separating the two peoples, in Hrabovs'kyi's opinion are Volhynia, OUN- UPA, the Division Halychyna, and Ukrainian nationalism. The majority of Poles are convinced that the UPA are murderers, arsonists, rapists, and Nazi collaborators, and Ukrainian nationalists belong in the “garbage bin of history.” In their view, he writes, the responsibility for the Volhynia events rests 99% with Ukrainians. Poland requires a nonnationalist Ukraine, serene and always ready to acknowledge the influence of Poland on its own history. In this respect he perceives little difference between intellectual Poles and the rest of their compatriots. They are under the delusion, in this author's view, that a non-Ukrainian Ukrainian state can be a reliable partner. However, the only reliable partner would be a Ukraine in which UPA combatants are recognized as heroes, and in which soldiers of the Division Halychyna will receive historical recognition.50
Hrabovs'kyi counters traditional Polish attacks on the UPA and Ukrainian nationalism (this concept is left undefined) by pointing out the inconsistency of Polish “nationalists” who make use of the vocabulary and documents of the NKVD and KGB regarding OUN-UPA, but refuse to use these same sources with reference to the Home Army, the non-Communist Polish underground, and the Polish political emigration. He concludes his account with a question: Does Poland aspire to friendship with a Ukrainian state in which the streets are named after Feliks Dzerzhinsky and ruled by the methods of Iron Feliks, or would a better partner for Poland be a Ukraine that descended from the UNR, the country in which monuments to the Petlyura-Pilsudski alliance will be erected?51 Presumably his statement implies that either Ukraine would be a country that remained under Soviet influence or one based on independent traditions. His article followed closely a joint declaration by the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine and the Polish Sejm on the 60th anniversary of the Volhynia tragedy.52 Hrabovs'kyi was not the only Ukrainian observer to take exception to this joint statement. Viktor Radionov comments that approving such a declaration was tantamount to demonstrating one's own inferiority vis-a-vis Poland. If such a gesture was needed in order for Ukraine to acquire admission into Euro-Atlantic structures, then the price, in his opinion, was too high. Ukraine could only enter Europe proudly, as a free nation. Radionov speaks of the “unheard of impudence” of the Poles. The groundless demands that Ukraine should apologize and the sluggishness and apathy of Ukrainian politicians led to a negative reaction in Volhynia and Galicia. The people were in his view incensed at the kowtowing to Warsaw and to the new efforts to accuse Ukrainians of all sorts of crimes and to shift the blame “onto our peo- ple.”53
Radionov continues with heightened invective. He asserts that one reason why a joint-declaration could be adopted was because of a so-called “fifth column” in Ukraine. While his organization, the OUN, was picketing the Polish Embassy with slogans such as “Volhynia is Ukrainian land!” and “OUN and UPA are our heroes!”, Maksym Strikha, to Radionov's dismay, wrote in an earlier issue of Ukrains'ke slovo that for centuries, Galicia and Volhynia belonged to both Ukrainians and Poles, and that these lands had become ethnically Ukrainian only as a consequence of the postwar deportations carried out by Stalin and Beria. Radionov is emphatic: Volhynia and Galicia have always been Ukrainian lands, and this fact has been proved conclusively by historians like Hrushevs'kyi and others. No knowledgeable historian would write such nonsense about a common land.54 His diatribe here and in an earlier article in the same venue provoked a response from Bohdan Oleksyuk, who comments that Radionov did not understand what sort of guilt Ukrainians had to repent for during the struggle for independence. What do we wish to justify, Olek- syuk wonders? Is it the cleansing from Ukrainian lands of the Polish population by means of slaughter of civilians, including women, children, and the elderly? Radionov represents in his view a tendency to talk only “about our own victims.” In fact, the joint declaration indicated a growing awareness of Ukrainian victims on the Polish side of the border.55 These points are echoed by Viktor Zamyatin writing in Den' who cites the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam Michnik, that it would be disastrous, with regard to the Volhynia issue, if chauvinistic anti-Ukrainian forces in Poland and their anti-Polish counterparts in Ukraine took the initiative. Both nations to some extent suffer from the “innocent victim syndrome.”56