On April 11-12, the Ostroh Academy National University hosted the first round of its forum of Ukrainian and Polish experts and journalists: The Volyn Tragedy: How Do We Live with this Burden? Nearly 70,000 participants came to Ostroh from across Ukraine and Poland, including renowned scholars Myroslav Popovych, Grzegorz Motyka, Maksym Strikha, and Andrzej Frischke. The forum organizers are the Polish Embassy in Ukraine (Polish Ambassador Marek Ziolkowski attended the all sessions), Ostroh Academy National University (Rector Prof. Ihor Pasichnyk), and Polish-Ukrainian Bez Uperedzhen [without prejudice] club of journalists.
The discussion extended over four sessions that can be divided into a historical section (Analysis of the Progress of Ukrainian and Polish Historians’ Research of the Volyn Tragedy), journalistic section (Analysis of Publications and Mass Media Coverage of the Volyn Events), political science section (The Impact of Historical Conflicts on the Contemporary Bilateral Polish-Ukrainian Relations), and sociological section (Can the Stereotypes, Fears, and Prejudices Resulting from the Negative Historical Connotations Be Overcome?).
It will be recalled that an arrangement has been reached for the participation of Presidents Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland in the July 11 events dedicated to the Volyn tragedy. During his visit to Italy, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn requested that Pope John Paul II address Ukrainians and Poles in connection with the anniversary of the Volyn events of 1943-1944. The Pope assured Deputy Lytvyn that the Vatican will undoubtedly issue a statement regarding these events.
All four sessions, with the sociological and political science sessions arguably the most successful, aroused a lively discussion in the assembly hall of the Ostroh Academy. But so far only the key aspects should be stressed. The session studying the role and participation of the mass media in highlighting the Volyn events (primarily by the Ukrainian mass media, represented by Lviv native Andriy Pavlyshyn) raised many questions. To illustrate, central mass media were mentioned only in passing (the article by K. Bondarenko in Dzerkalo tyzhnia [Mirror of the Week] and the article by SDPU(O) head Viktor Medvedchuk carried in The Day). Apparently, the Lviv journalist has not seen anything beyond the Castle Hill in Lviv. During the last month alone The Day carried a series of articles by such noted authors as Academician Yaroslav Isayevych (Lviv), Professors Yury Shapoval (Kyiv), Taras Hunchak (USA), Candidate in History Ihor Iliushyn (Kyiv), as well as articles by The Day staff writers Viktor Zamyatin, Serhiy Makhun, and Natalia Malimon, to name but a few. The Day readers had a chance to get to know the opinions of Polish authors Marek Siwiec and Jacek Kuron. Without a doubt, Lviv mass media do not reflect the whole situation in Ukraine. But we have to admit that even in Kyiv only a few television channels have highlighted the Volyn events.
The moral and ethical component in the assessment of the Volyn events has also escaped our attention. And this is where psychologists and philosophers, not the politicians, should help the historians. According to Myroslav Popovych, corresponding member of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, “Every nation has the right to fight tyranny and take up arms against it. But war crimes are unacceptable. War criminals in any uniform fighting for any army must be punished. We do not make mechanical decisions and are not guided by some unknown force. We make conscious decisions and have to face the responsibility for our actions. Within this context, a greater importance is attached to the structure of the human psyche that determines the choice of decisions available to the person in question.”
Perhaps only now are the Polish and Ukrainian authorities beginning to realize that mixing the academic and political aspects of the matter can lead us only to a dead end. We need goodwill and willingness to understand the arguments of either side. Unfortunately, the arguments of the Polish side mostly rest on the two-volume book by Wladyslaw and Ewa Siemaszko, Genocide of the Polish Population of Volyn by Ukrainian Nationalists in 1939-1945, which is a graphic example of a black-and-white perception of history.
Undeniably, aside from positives there are numerous sad dates in our common Ukrainian-Polish history. Therefore, to quote Serhiy Kot, Ph.D. in history, “Among the formulas acceptable to both sides are joint mourning and sorrow. At that time Ukrainians were fighting for their national rights and independence, while the Poles were fighting for their country. All this happened on the territory of Volyn.” Ukrainians and Poles alike must unconditionally condemn the violence that came from either side — no motivations can blot out the bloody count of many thousands of lives lost during the confrontation between the two peoples in the years of World War II — and dissociate political speculators from this matter. And such steps must be taken on a bilateral basis. All one-sided generalizations — for example, the Poles are planning to build a monument to the 27th division of the Home Army in Warsaw bearing the inscription: “As a result of the terror and genocide by Ukrainian nationalists, mostly from OUN-UPA, against the Polish population of Volyn in 1939-1945 approximately 60,000 Poles were murdered.” Meanwhile, Ukrainian youths marched through the streets in Ostroh posting handbills reading, “Repent, Poland!” without taking into account Ukrainian-Polish relations within the broader context of the history of the interwar period — carry new dangers, by raising the issue of the Volyn tragedy in a spirit unacceptable for either Kyiv or Warsaw.
