Competing Memories Of Communist And Nazi Crimes In Ukraine

international SEMINAR
the resistance of the targeted population and to record and preserve the memory of the
catastrophe. The famine was peasant-oriented but that part of the peasantry, which collaborated
with the authorities and profited from the upheaval, accepted the Communist
regime’s interpretation of the events. Disregard for the famine was cultivated in the
party and state administration, the OGPU and other repressive organs, the activists sent
in from the RSFSR and the Ukrainian industrial centers. Peasantry in the Ukrainian
republic overwhelmingly belonged to the Ukrainian ethnos; Russians and Jews were
predominantly urban dwellers and only a small percentage of their community suffered
from the famine. 10 Imposing Stalin’s make-believe world on the Soviet society, the Soviet
regime diligently expurgated the “non-existent” tragedy from the collective memory
that it molded for its people, and gradually even the survivors pushed the unpleasant and
dangerous recollections to the back of their minds. However, as surveillance reports on
the attitudes of the Ukrainian population reveal, at the outset of the German-Soviet war
Ukrainians had not completely forgot the famine 11 .
From the perspective of Ukrainian history, the tragic events of WW II began with
the occupation of Transcarpathian Ukraine by Hungary and the forced annexation of
Western Ukraine by the USSR. Much of the subsequent German-Soviet War was fought
on Ukrainian soil, resulting in colossal loss of human life and material destruction, as
both belligerents evacuated or deported millions of Ukrainians, practiced scorched-earth
policy during their retreat, and used Ukrainian population as slave labor or cannon fodder.
The famine, the reign of terror (Yezhovshchyna), and the two years of repressions
in the newly annexed Western Ukraine made the German attack on the Soviet Union
seem like a deliverance from Stalinist tyranny. Many Ukrainians in the Red Army voluntarily
surrendered or deserted; draft dodging was rampant. The advancing German
army was welcomed by the Ukrainian civilian population not only in Western Ukraine
but also in many Central and Eastern parts of the country. It was only after the maltreatment
of Soviet PoWs and the atrocities of the Nazi administration became widely
known that Ukrainians realized that they had only exchanged one tyrant for another.
Many Ukrainians had remained loyal to the Soviets from the beginning; over two million
were evacuated into the interior of the USSR while others joined the Soviet partisans.
Eventually, many millions, from all regions of Ukraine, served in the Soviet armed forces
where they underwent Soviet indoctrination about the war itself. Still, millions refused to
be reconciled with the Stalinist regime. They wanted Ukrainian independence and supported
the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), joined or aided the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (UPA), or backed the creation of the Waffen SS Division “Halychyna”
within the German armed forces. Events and forces originating outside Ukraine split the
Ukrainian population into two hostile camps, not over their allegiance to Nazi Berlin
and Communist Moscow, but over their loyalty or hostility to the Soviet Union. Divided
consciousness generated and nurtured conflicting memories of the war. This division of
the Ukrainian society during the war was accompanied by another split, regarding its
Jewish minority.
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