This text is dedicated to the reception of monuments which were produced as a result of the memory work that was discussed in the previous chapters. Without enquiring how memory is received one cannot fully understand how the process of remembering works, as memory strategies are not formed in isolation and they aim at certain audiences. Young pointed out:

public memory and its meanings depend not just on the forms and figures in the monument itself, but on the viewer’s response to the monument, how it is used politically and religiously in the community, who sees it under what circumstances, how its figures enter other media and are recast in new surroundings.¹

Ideologues can with great efforts unificate the public representations of history but not their individual interpretations. As Erll pointed out:

a ‘memory’ which is represented by the media and institutions must be brought to life by individuals, by members of a community of remembrance, who may be conceived of as points de vue (Maurice Halbwachs) on shared notions of the past. Without such actualizations, monuments, rituals, and books are nothing but dead material failing to have any impact in the societies.²

A lack of response from these audiences makes the whole memory politics redundant as it shows that there is no need and interest in dealing with the past addressed by memory actors. There should be a certain demand from the side of the public that would form the offer from the side of active memory entrepreneurs. Here I present a small-scale bottom-up approach that shifts attention away from the state and regional memory politics and considers agents of remembrance at the level of individuals who are not directly involved in the production of memory.

The material for analysis was gathered in two different ways: first, I asked students of a college and a university to write the essays on the topic “The memory of World War Two as it is represented in the Rivne cityscape”; second, I collected interviews at the monument to Klym Savur in Rivne. References to a city’s memoryscape and the monument of the Klym Savur were used as a trigger for discussions on individuals’ knowledge about the OUN and UPA. What is actually known about history by individuals who every day encounter representations of memory that matter so much in the elites’ battles? Having at hand the results of analysis of the process of memory production we can now answer the following question: does the individuals’ image of the past differ from the image propagated by memory entrepreneurs? Do the views of those who witness the monument reflect the meanings which are invested by memory actors? What is decisive in the formation of individual interpretations of history?

Troubled Knowing: Students’ Essays on War and Memory

In my pursuit to access the recipients’ knowledge of history I first addressed students of the Rivne Cooperative Economics and Law College (RCELC) who were in their second year of study (i.e. between 17-18 years old). The selection of this institution was done for two different reasons: first, the specific location of the college – its close vicinity to the monument of Klym Savur, to the chapel built in memory of Klym Savur, to Stepan Bandera street, as well as to a couple of Soviet-era war memorials. All these details made me think that students will be facilitated in their task to write short essays on the topic “The memory of World War Two as it is represented in the Rivne cityscape.” The second reason was a purely practical one – having acquaintances at this college made it easier for me to get access to the students.

At the college there is no special education program for historians, all the students are supposed to take a general course in Ukrainian and world history. Only those students who wished wrote essays, it certainly meant that not all the students who had been asked to write an essay, wrote it. The weakness of this method was that students were allowed to write an essay at home if they did not feel ready to write it in the class. Thus, the moment of spontaneity and originality was lost, but on the other hand, students had more time to think about the question and, if needed, look for the answers in some sources or ask their families or colleagues. In the end I received 15 essays. All those who volunteered to write the essays were females.

The essays were very different in content and length. Some students just listed the events of the war without giving any evaluation or personal conclusions. On the other hand, even the selected passages shed light on what an author considered important and worth mentioning. The essays differed in size, ranging from two or three paragraphs to four full pages. What I got in the essays was quite unexpected. First, students made some changes in the title of the essay itself and the notion of “memory” disappeared from the question in many works. The titles ranged from “Ukrainians in the WWII” to “Rivne in WWII.” Probably, those titles reflected more the essay topics that the students were accustomed to write in history lessons. Second, from the essays it became quite obvious that students predominantly do not relate the history of the Second World War with the history of the UPA. Third, in all the essays Ukrainians (often interchangeably referred to as Rivne residents) were portrayed as heroes, and Germans as absolute evil, without any intermediate descriptions. Russians, or any other ethnic groups, were almost always not mentioned at all. In most instances the Soviet master-narrative structured the students’ narratives with the emphasis on heroism and self-sacrifice that led to the Great Victory. In some essays, though, we could trace influences of both Soviet and Ukrainian national schemes of history.

Not a word was said in all 15 essays about any “site of memory” related to the OUN or UPA. Even in the instance when Stepan Bandera street was mentioned in the context of the memorial plaque to the “people killed in the Second World War” that was constructed in this street (no connection between the street’s name and the memory of war was made):

In the area of the present Bandera street in 1967 the memorial plaque was erected in honor of the Rivne residents who lost their lives in the war.³

Almost all sites of memory mentioned by the students were related to the Soviet grand narrative of war that did not include any mention of the UPA. Thus, one student wrote: “close to Rivne Ethnographic Museum there is a bunker of Reichskomissariat Ukraine that has remained here from the period of German occupation under Erich Koch.”⁴ Of note, the Soviet master narrative was reproduced in almost all of the essays. Thus, Rivne oblast' was mentioned as “partisan land (partyzans’kyi krai), the place of active resistance against the fascist occupation,”⁵  Soviet partisans are presented as patriots and defenders of their Motherland:

With the aim to pull together and strengthen the activity of patriotic forces on 19 December 1942 the TsK KP(b)U [Central committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine] took the decision to let the party led by Begma to organize the Rivne underground oblast committee (obkom).⁶

The main heroes mentioned are partisans and Soviet commanders. The names of Red Army General Mykola Vatutin and of partisans who operated on the ground were repeated in several essays.⁷ In the evaluation parts the essays mainly repeat the heroic ethos established by the Soviet official narrative. As one of the students put it: “I believe that the Soviet Army was the most courageous in the whole world.”⁸

A well-distinguished feature of the essays was that those students who referred to their grandparents' recollections wrote in a more emotionally charged and personalized way:

From stories I heard from my grandmothers and grandfathers I know that the war brought a lot of sorrow to many people and took lives of many. Although my grandparents did not live in Rivne then and were still children they do remember those events. My grandpa had to leave his native land (Poland) in Operation Vistula and live in the east of our country, and only much later he moved to Rivne oblast’. The war has affected a lot of Ukrainians and it will remain in the memory, in tearful and painful recollections (emphasis added).⁹

Thus, the personal dimension of suffering and loss are shown when the author comes to describing recollections. Of note, students who mentioned their grandparents' experiences mentioned them in conclusions, in a way as if the thoughts of their grandparents were presented as their own evaluation and assessment of war.¹⁰

Another student whose grandparents lived in a village described the life of peasants during the war as the most difficult: “the peasants suffered the most because they were killed and they were murdered by famine (yih moryly holodom).”¹¹  The phrase “murdered by famine” gives connotations to another node of cultural memory in Ukraine – the famine of 1932-33, known as Holodomor (literally murder by famine). As it will be discussed below, Holodomor was rather often associated with UPA history which gives us hints that the main theme of suffering shapes the memory of both the UPA and famine.

Moreover, students who referred to their families used the most affected language: “It was a horrible time,” "towns and villages were without people, all in ruins,”¹²  “My grandfather told me a story about his father who was in the war. He had lived through terrible years.”¹³  Some essays become very detailed when it came to personal recollections of students' grandparents:

My relatives dug a bunker and hid there, they were sleeping on the ground, covered with straw, they had a cup and a spoon, they swept out footprints so that no one could find them. Their house was destroyed, they dug the bunker near the place of the house, at that site they used to have a kitchen garden. In this horrible bunker they survived. Unfortunately my grandpa is dead now. But when I asked him about those years he used to say: “learn well because you are a future Ukrainian and all the future depends only on you and your strength!” (emphasis added).¹⁴

Thus, we see how the student reproduces her grandfather’s admonishment governed by the grammar of prophecy, whereas one’s future is seen as threatened by past experiences of suffering unless one is strong and performs well at school.

Those narratives, which refer to family experiences, get more complicated when they contain some reflections on individual choice, personal morals in the harsh conditions of war, where the boundaries between perpetrators and victims blur:

The most horrible thing is that even at that time our people (svoi ludy) wanted to be patriots and killed their friends and neighbors (emphasis added).¹⁵

Some students did mention the OUN and the UPA in a rather obscure context: “Roman Shukhevych assisted in the liberating of Rivne territory by founding here the Ukrainian republic.”¹⁶  In this instance it is not clear what the student means. This note, though, indicates that there is some reflection on the role of Shukhevych in the war, and especially with a positive association to liberation.

In those essays where the UPA is mentioned, the UPA’s struggle is represented as the struggle against all occupants - Russians, Poles, and Germans:  

The UPA protected people against the Russian occupants. ... UPA soldiers were fighting for the freedom of the state against German occupants, against Polish and anti-Ukrainian forces, against Russian occupants. They were real successors of the Cossack tradition, they were not mobilized to the UPA by force, with hardships they sought out weapons, and swore to fight to the death. In the case of deadlock they preferred suicide to being taken in captivity. They are the real knights of Ukraine. A nationalist means a person who serves his or her nation and not the other state. ... On 5 July 1941 Germany took Bandera to Berlin for interrogation. On 15 September 1941 first mass arrests took place. Hundreds of people ended up in concentration camps and prisons.¹⁷

Such cases indicate that the UPA for students directly means all Ukrainians, which makes it possible for them to compare the UPA against Russians and all the “anti-Ukrainian forces” on a mere ethnical basis.

A presupposed all-inclusive collective agent such as “Ukrainian people” is perhaps best seen in the passages where students write about the killing of the Jews. The Jewish population is presented as some foreign community who are just temporarily present in the supposedly ethnically homogeneous region:

Rivne during the Second World War was the place of hiding of Jews.[…] In Rivne there is still the monument to the victims of political repressions. The Jews suffered the most. Out of the 27,000 Jews of Rivne 21,000 were killed (emphasis added).¹⁸

In this instance we see that Jews are recognized as the “most suffering” group, although they are shifted out from the life of the city, they were just “hiding” there. Furthermore, the killings of Jews are associated with political repressions, not with their ethnicity. When speaking about mass killings, students first of all underline “Ukrainian” losses:

In November 1943, the Gestapo murdered more than 350 prisoners of Rivne prison among them were the most nationally conscious representatives of local intelligentsia and clergy.¹⁹

Notably, in all the cases where the murder of Jews was mentioned, it was never referred to as the Holocaust. Probably, this term is not yet integrated into the vernacular. The fact of mentioning of Jews as a separate group of victims, however, suggests that the Soviet historical scheme is undermined by new trends of thought (although they are only rarely present in the essays).

The problem of collaboration on the part of the local population with the Nazis is totally omitted in the essays. Half of the students explicitly stressed the fact that the power in the occupied Rivne was in the hands of the fascists, and not Ukrainians. Thus, Ukrainians had no responsibility for any of the cruelties committed on their land.

While speaking about fascists the students often use emotionally charged language referring to Nazis as “monsters” (neludy) and “cruel people.”²⁰

Significantly, the Ukrainian-Polish conflict in Volhynia was not mentioned directly by any of the students. Two instances when Poland was mentioned refer to the stories mentioned above where the student's grandfather had to leave Poland in the course of Operation Vistula. This forced resettlement is represented as a loss of the Motherland followed by the hardships of deportation. Another instance is mentioning the Poles in respect of the UPA struggle “against Polish and anti-Ukrainian forces.”²¹ Nevertheless, no further discussion was held about the character and consequences of such an anti-Polish struggle or who are meant by the term anti-Ukrainian forces.

As I did not get much information about the memory of the OUN and UPA from the essays of the college’s students, I addressed another group of students, this time of the Rivne Slavonic University with slightly amended questions. I decided to reformulate the question and asked specifically about the OUN and UPA in several stages: What do you know about the OUN and UPA? Which monuments, streets, memorial places in our town are connected to the memory of the OUN and UPA? Is it important to commemorate the OUN and UPA in monuments and streets?

History students were specifically rejected. The group that was chosen were English language students in the fourth year of study, which means that they were about 21-22 years old. They wrote essays directly in class while I was sitting with them and waiting. So, this time students did not have a chance to consult any books or people. They had about an hour to complete their essays. In contrast to the first group, the essays I got from the second group were much shorter, possibly because they did not have any chance to contact anyone for advice or to look up information in the literature or somewhere else. So, in this case I got “pure” knowledge, something that is already in their minds if they are asked about the OUN and UPA without warning and what they can give as first-hand answers without any preparation. In sum, I got 13 essays, not one of the group rejected the chance to write, perhaps, my and their teacher's presence did not give them the choice. In this group too, all the students were females.

In respect of the first question concerning factual knowledge about the OUN and UPA, the answers were very limited. Some students wrote honestly that they did not know anything. Some wrote a sentence or two, often with mistaken facts, the following being an example: “the main leaders of the UPA were Bandera, Mel’nyk and Klymov.”²²  Obviously this student had heard something about Klym Savur and got the name confused. Some students associated Symon Petliura with the history of the OUN and UPA.²³ This might indicate that the UPA takes the same place as the UNR in the imaginary space about national liberation and independence. It echoes the strategies of memory politics undertaken by regional national elites who promoted commemoration of both the UNR and OUN and UPA simultaneously.

Elsewhere in the essay a student tackled the difficult knowledge of collaboration whereas she stressed the primacy of the aim of such collaboration understood as the possibility to gain independence:

In the beginning the UPA hoped that Hitler would help them [in fighting for Ukrainian independence], but it did not happen. The UPA were fighting against the Red Army, Poles, and Germans.²⁴
            
The UPA always fought for the independence of Ukraine. In the beginning they placed great hopes on Hitler but their hopes were in vain. They were fighting against the Red Army.²⁵

In one of the essays a student referred to her own family when writing about the UPA: “My grandpa who is now 84 is very much pro-UPA. He even wanted me to read about them in some books.”²⁶

Most probably, the student did not have much interest in listening to her grandfather’s advice as she did not write any specific answer to the question about the UPA. Still her grandfather’s attitude to the UPA might well have influenced the student’s views on them, as in the evaluative part the student wrote that she “strongly supports the idea of commemorating the OUN and UPA.”²⁷

While having a rather limited knowledge about the history of the OUN and UPA, the students referred to their everyday experiences to answer the question about the sites of memory:

I do not know a lot about the memory of the OUN and UPA in Rivne but in Kostopil' region there is a special day in October (I do not remember the exact day, though)     which specifically commemorates the UPA. In our school years we were taken to that monument [on that day], there was a red and black flag mounted near the monument. The ceremony in honor of the UPA memory took place there. My street is also named in their honor Vulytsia Povstans'ka (Insurgent Street).²⁸

A lack of knowledge about the OUN and UPA means that she might not be interested in these commemorations as such, still being socialized through school she does know about the existence of special days, ceremonies and monuments dedicated to the nationalists. She also knows that they merit honor even without knowing who they actually were. The mere fact of commemoration makes her believe that such honor is deserved.

Some students referred to both their home town and to Rivne when speaking about the commemoration:

In summer in my hometown (Zdolbuniv) there are special events in honor of the UPA. I know that in Rivne there is a monument to one of the commanders of the UPA on Pushkin Street.²⁹

This “one of the commanders of the UPA on Pushkin Street” is Klym Savur. This monument was mentioned by two more students without mentioning the exact name but knowing that some UPA leader is memorialized in Pushkin Street.³⁰

Students seemed to have the fewest troubles in answering the third question concerning their opinion about the commemoration of the OUN and UPA. Even those students who honestly wrote that they had no idea about who the OUN and UPA were, wrote that it is very important to honor them because “each Ukrainian has to know his own history.”³¹

One student emphasized the moral obligation to honor the memory of those who fought for independence:

The UPA was fighting for the independence of Ukraine, so that next generations could have a decent life, it would be egoistic on our part not to honor their memory.³²

This view is echoed in several essays:

I think that we have to know and respect our history, remember the people who gave their lives for victory, for our independence.³³

They were protecting us from our enemies that is why we need to honor them.³⁴

The UPA wanted only the good for Ukraine.³⁵

Some students explicitly praised the politics of memory that supports commemoration of the OUN and UPA and associated the politics with the state, not the region, or the city:

I personally support the idea and am positive about such a reaction of the state [building the monuments] towards the people who gave their lives for future independent Ukraine. In such a way, the Ukrainian state is upholding the consciousness of Ukrainians.³⁶

Thus, the main imperative to commemoration in view of the students was the obligation of Ukrainians to know “their” history. Another key reason is the moral obligation to honor the memory of those who fought for independence, whereas independence is perceived as a guarantee of the “decent life.” Moreover, commemoration of the OUN and UPA is linked to upholding the consciousness of Ukrainians, which indicates that in the view of the students the memory of the OUN and UPA is regarded as an integral part of national identity. All this goes in tandem with our argumentation about the grammars that govern the narrative of the OUN and UPA. We see that these grammars govern the narratives of the students essays as well, both where they reproduce the Soviet scheme of history or the national one.

To sum up the findings from all 28 essays, the students demonstrated a rather limited knowledge of factual history, but all seemed to have predominantly positive views on the OUN and UPA. The first group of essays, where students had more time for preparation and could reflect on the war memory in general, demonstrates that the history of the OUN and UPA is viewed as separate, but parallel, to the history of the Second World War. Several essays mentioned the UPA and presented Rivne as “the partisan land.”

But the UPA is presented as a party that took an active part in liberation as well. In such a way both schemes of history, the Soviet and the Ukrainian national one are entangled in the production of the students’ narratives on war memory. In the essays, the UPA struggle is presented as an “impact event” in Assmann’s understanding of the events that concern “moments of rapture that challenge the psychic and cultural continuity of a group or a nation.”³⁷

These events are articulated through impact narratives that “revolve around a hot kernel or what has been called ‘the access of the Real’ in contentious and competing attempts at reshaping and reinterpreting them, always coping with the essential non-representability of the impact event.”³⁸  In the case of the OUN and UPA, the difficult knowledge about killing of “their own folk” is reshaped and reinterpreted in such a way that the “patriots” are forced to kill their compatriots, or in other cases the UPA together with the Red Army are presented as “liberators” whereas the whole past saturated as it is with conflicts and tensions disappears, it gets repressed and displaced so that the only thing that is left is “liberation.”

The second group of essays, in particular, demonstrates the abundance of such displacements. Although students could not provide “facts” on the given episode of history, they all had demonstrated their “emotional knowledge” on the topic, whereas such concepts as “independence,” “liberation,” “decent life,” “victory” served as a ground of positive beliefs and evaluations that formed their knowledge about the past. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that personal every-day experiences (e.g. school visits to memorial places) and “passive” observation influenced students’ perceptions of the OUN and UPA not less than factual knowledge that they gained at school, university, or through their family. The family brings new aspects into students’ narratives. Family memories make the narratives more emotional and engaged which becomes evident in the evaluative part, whereby attitudes of one’s grandparents are presented as those of students themselves.

“We Must Remember Their Sacrifice”

Visitors’ Perspective on the OUN and UPA’s Past

In this part I scrutinize the visitors’ views on a particular monument which I hope will shed light on the way the past of the OUN and UPA is perceived by people who are not directly involved in the memory production process. James Young claimed that ‘how and what we recognize in the company of a monument depends very much on who we are, why we care to remember, and how we see.’ At first, I wondered what people see when they pass by the monument and what they think about the history this monument represent. I used the monument to trigger their thoughts about the history. This part of the chapter presents the results of the interviews conducted near the monument to Klym Savur which was built in Rivne in 2002. I tried to find answers to the following questions: How do people who are neither politicians nor professional historians or civic activists deal with contradictory events in history?  Which meanings are conveyed to people when they look at the monument? How does the history represented in the monument relate to the identity of the interviewees?

A monument may stay unnoticed for many, but when asked to reflect on its meaning people start making sense not only of the monument but also of the history embodied in that monument.

In previous chapters I came to the conclusion that in the discussions about the UPA and the necessity of its commemoration the most predominant themes are: 1) self-sacrifice and victimhood of the whole Ukrainian nation; 2) the presentation of independence as the highest value that justifies all wrongdoings; 3) emphasizing the anti-Soviet/communist/Russian aspect of the UPA struggle. Remembrance of the UPA is presented as establishing historical justice and reclaiming national history. The adherence to the heroic narrative of the UPA is equated to a “real Ukrainian-ness,” hence promoted as a marker of national identity.

This part of the study deals with the “response” of people who encounter the proposed representation of the past exemplified by the monument. Do they recognize in the monument the same themes that they were supposed to recognize (as planned by the “producers” of memory)? Do they see such dealings with the past as appropriate or important? I envisioned in my plans a very simple task: to conduct surveys in the form of very structured questionnaires. However, the pilot survey conducted with a couple of respondents showed that people were more eager to speak than I expected and their answers often did not fit into my prepared variations of answers. As a result, the detailed answers for some questions prevailed and my surveys ended up in the form of semi-structured interviews. More detailed reflections on the past on the part of visitors significantly helped me better understand the complexity of memory and remembrance, although the process of collecting the data became more complicated.

In general, the interviews were made on the 15 and 16 October 2011 at the monument to Klym Savur with the passers-by who were willing to spend a couple of minutes to share their thoughts on the monument and on the history it embeds. The days for the interviews followed the Day of Foundation of the UPA. I expected that on these days the respondents would have more vivid images about the UPA, as it seemed more probable that people occasionally heard about the holiday on radio or TV, saw the celebration near the monument or even took part in the celebration.

In a sum, I conducted 52 semi-structured interviews. Interestingly, men were more eager to answer the questions than women, so as a result I got 14 female and 38 male respondents.

Most of the interviewees did not know who the person represented in the monument was (only four people knew who he was), although almost all of them said that they saw the monument plenty of times (only four visitors said that they had never noticed it).

“Ukrainian Heroes and Real Patriots”

When asked who this person could be judging only from the monument’s appearance, most of the people made a guess that it was a soldier (11 respondents), a military hero or a war hero (9 respondents), a Ukrainian/national patriot (5 respondents), someone connected to the Ukrainian independence (3 respondents), some “banderivets’” (1 respondent) or Stepan Bandera (2 respondents), or some UPA hero (7 respondents). Some people said that it was a poet or writer (12 respondents). People connected this monument to the period of independence of Ukraine and in their explanations often added that if this monument is quite new that means that it is built for someone who fought for independence – either a person connected to the UPA or to the UNR. Only two respondents thought it was a monument to a Red Army soldier.

Although most of the people had trouble to identify to whom the monument was in the first instance, when they were informed that it was a monument to Klym Savur, most of them said that they heard this name for the first time (one person answered that he knew that there is a street in Rivne with this name, but he did not know who this person was). But when asked to guess who the person could be, people again linked this name either to the UPA (most of the cases – 26 respondents) or the UNR (14 respondents). Thus, people tend to associate the monuments built in the independent Ukraine with these specific episodes of history represented as periods of struggle for independence.

As in the case of the students’ essays, the interviews demonstrated that state independence, national liberation, and the struggle against occupiers are those foci from which the history of the UPA is narrated by most people. Although most of people had troubles with giving some details on the UPA, they all agreed that the UPA were fighting for independence (42 respondents), they were a liberation army (2 respondents), Ukrainian patriots (2 respondents), fighters against Soviet and fascist occupiers (2 respondents), and the opposition to the Soviet regime (4 respondents). Interestingly, in three cases out of four, where the UPA was described as “opposition,” the respondents expressed a kind of sorrow when they were speaking about the UPA, the sorrow that there is not some version of the UPA at present:

They were a kind of opposition, active opposition which we do not have now. They were for independence and against Soviets and fascists.³⁹

Speaking about the past, people are not only oriented to the past exclusively. They position the past into the context of the present wherein their evolutions and attitudes are shaped by the expectations for the future. In the cited excerpt, we can perceive a sense of nostalgia for the strong opposition against the ruling authorities of today.

When asked against whom the UPA was fighting, the predominant answer was: “against both fascists and Soviets.” Only four people answered that the UPA fought against Soviets only, two people thought they fought against fascists only, and one person said they were fighting on the side of fascists (interestingly the latter one nevertheless thought that it is worthwhile commemorating the UPA in the monuments regardless of the fact that in the respondent’s mind the UPA were backing the fascists).   

In the answers to the question whether it is necessary to commemorate the UPA particularly in such monuments, the visitors expressed their evaluation of the past, which was most valuable for a better understanding of people’s attitude to the UPA. I came to the conclusion that death being linked to the war and struggle is perceived as sacrifice and is seen as a good reason for the commemoration and remembrance, as these passages demonstrate. The predominant attitude can be demonstrated by a short comment made by one of the respondents: the UPA were “Ukrainian heroes and real patriots.”  This is the main focus through which the history of UPA is perceived, as some excerpts demonstrate:

They were fighting for independence, we must commemorate them.⁴⁰

It was during the war. But I think that if there were no war, there still would have been the UPA. We always wanted independence... Patriotism and heroism have to be remembered and commemorated. They were fighting to the death, they knew they would be killed, but they were still fighting. We must remember their sacrifice.⁴¹

Family Brings Complexity

When asked about the celebration of the Day of the UPA, people often started to share their family memories and personal recollections first and foremost connected to the celebration of Victory Day. Initially it appeared odd to me, but then I understood that the festive atmosphere and personal recollections of the end of the war obviously was a part of almost every family history and made Victory Day such an important point in memory that was mentioned by many.

As a result, most of the respondents said that they never celebrate any event related to the UPA. Only two people said they celebrate the Day of Foundation of the UPA, others knew about such a day but said that they celebrate the religious feast of The Holy Mother of God – Protectress (Pokrova) on that day, but not the Day of the UPA. Most of the respondents said that they celebrate Victory Day (43 respondents): either by going to parades or watching parades on TV (21 respondents), giving flowers to veterans (12 respondents), going to demonstrations or meetings (4 respondents), laying flowers at the monument (1 respondent), or simply having time with friends and family (3 respondents). People in their 50-60s said that on Victory Day they go to cemeteries and put flowers to the graves of their relatives who fought in the war (7 respondents).⁴²

Strikingly, people were eager to speak about their families and related the questions asked during the interviews to their family experiences. Almost all of the respondents in their 40-60s said that they lost someone in the war, or mentioned some relative who was in the war. They said that Victory Day was the day when they remembered these relatives. Some said that they celebrate Victory Day by going to church and praying for the souls of those who were killed in the war or died afterwards. Only nine respondents said they did not celebrate Victory Day. Sometimes people stressed that the holiday means the “victory over fascism” for them although they do not celebrate the day in any special way:

It is a holiday for me, because I know that it is a day of victory over fascism. But I do not do anything special on this day.⁴³

Although none of the respondents who shared their family stories said that they had some relatives in the UPA, some of them seemed positive about the commemoration of the UPA soldiers while linking their family members’ stories to their own evaluation of the UPA:

My grandfather was in the Red Army. My grandmother told me horrific stories about how the Soviets killed hundreds of the UPA soldiers in the village nearby. It was terrible. Now, it is good that there are such monuments, because these UPA people were also killed… for somebody it is very important to honor them. But it is important for all of us to know our history.⁴⁴

Sometimes the evaluations of history got more complicated in the instances where the people referred to family memories where they had some negative experiences with the UPA:

My mother told me a lot about banderivtsi [Bandera’s men]. They were for independence, but they killed a lot of Ukrainians. She told they were afraid of them. When Soviets killed some banderivets’ in their village the villagers were afraid to bury them. Even the relatives of the killed… Either they were afraid or thought it was a disgrace to have such relatives who killed their own folk.⁴⁵

They (UPA) were fighters for independence, but their methods were questionable. My grandparents had different stories about them. You know, they killed Ukrainians too.⁴⁶

Such instances show that people have some troubles in dealing with the difficult knowledge about the past which they got from their families. They have to face contradictions and accommodate them into a generally glorious picture of the UPA which is promoted in the region. The fact that the UPA were killing “their own folk” arouses questions and doubts. In these instances people make their own decisions on how to relate their subversive “private” knowledge with established public representations:

Maybe there are people who need these commemorations, I can understand it. But I do not support their [the UPA’s] methods. Their methods of fighting are unacceptable.[…] They were fighting for the independence of Ukraine but they were killing everyone like the fascists.⁴⁷

Another respondent expressed his views in the following way:

Why not have such monuments? It is very difficult to say now who was right and who was wrong. It is all our history. My grandpa was in the Red Army... I know it was a difficult time.⁴⁸

Time and again, in the respondents’ narratives, the independence of Ukraine functions as a lifeline in taking a decision on how to evaluate wrongdoings presented in the aura of sacrifice for the nation. Notably, in the abovementioned responses the bereaved are those who belong to their “own folk,” whereas there is no explicit mentioning of other nationalities. The UPA heroism is mainly questioned as soon as it is related to the attacks against other Ukrainians. Thus, the space of victimhood is predominantly occupied by Ukrainians in the imagination of the recipients.

Space of Victimhood

The theme on victimhood is another focal point through which the history of the OUN and UPA is narrated in the interviews. Indeed, about one fifth of respondents positioned the UPA struggle into the years of the Holodomor (10 respondents). Such a link between the UPA and the Holodomor let us think that the history of the UPA is placed in the space of victimhood of the Ukrainian people as whole. Of note, this placement is also realized through commemorative practices. Holodomor and the monument to Klym Savur get linked together on the anniversaries of the Holodomor. As a respondent, who happened to be a history teacher, replied:

It (the monument to Klym Savur) was built in 2002. I often bring my schoolchildren here. I am a history teacher. On the Holodomor anniversary we come here to tidy up and clean up near the monument. We also meet with veterans, both Red Army and UPA veterans. I come here to participate in meetings organized by Ukrainian People’s Party (UPP).⁴⁹

The positioning of the UPA in the same space of meaning as the Holodomor makes it easier to accommodate difficult knowledge about the wrongdoings of the UPA with the glorious representations of their deeds in the monuments. What we can also conclude from the kind of responses cited above is that the acceptance of a new portrayal of the past does not presuppose the denial of the old one.

As the abovementioned response demonstrates the respondent’s occupation as a history teacher and affiliation to the UPP makes her engaged in memory work and the shaping of new remembrance, but it does not exclude adherence to other kinds of remembrance as well, as meeting with the Red Army veterans, for instance. These two seemingly opposite kinds of war commemorations mutually enforce each other, whereas the fact that both the Red Army and the UPA fought and were killed in the war make both of them worth remembering and commemorating. Importantly, family history strengthens this coupling:

They (the UPA) were fighting for the independence of Ukraine, against both fascists and Soviets. My grandfather was killed in Warsaw on the 5 May, 1945, and I understand that we have to remember both Red Army veterans and the UPA veterans.⁵⁰

Death on the battlefield matches the UPA and the Red Army and thus the ideological differences of the rivalries diminish. Indeed, as Reinhart Koselleck contended: “Whether dressed in hope or cloaked in grief, symbols of death last longer than any individual case. Although the individual case of death may fade, death is nonetheless still in store for every observer.”⁵¹  The only identity that matters is that of the dead fallen in the war. Put bluntly, even where recipients had no idea about who the UPA was, the mere fact that it was a fallen soldier easily identified from looking at the monument made them think that he was worth remembering and commemorating. In such a way:

[t]he formal language specific to war memorials is obsolete without ceasing to speak. Evidently, this language outlives its unique, politically and socially determined causes, so that the signs are no longer understood politically but remain comprehensible nonetheless.⁵²

To sum up, through the analysis of the interviews I came to the conclusion that the UPA is narrated from the perspective of independence and liberation. The UPA is positioned in the space of victimhood closely connected to such an unquestionable symbol of victimhood for many Ukrainians as the Holodomor. Difficult knowledge presented in the interviews relates mainly to the killings of our “own folk” by the UPA, the relationship to other nationalities is not reflected. The same tendency was observed in the analysis of the students’ essays. Their reflections on history refer to the Soviet and the UPA’s glorious pasts wherein both traditions of remembering reinforce each other.

The interviews showed that at a grassroots level the vision of the UPA went beyond the binary - Soviet/anti-Soviet, Ukrainian/anti-Ukrainian, which is promoted in the political discourse, as we saw in the Chapters III and IV.

On the other hand, both the interviews and the students’ essays demonstrated that the history of the Second World War and the history of the UPA are perceived as two separate stories (often separated in time). Of note is that I observed the same representation of war in the Rivne Ethnographic Museum, where the history of the Second World War and the UPA was presented in two separate rooms. When I asked Ihor Marchuk, the historian who was curator for these exhibitions, why these two themes of history were separated, he explained that it was difficult to combine them into one common space, as they were so different.⁵³

Despite of the fact that the history of the Second World War and the history of the UPA are perceived as two separate stories, the image about the Second World War has a decisive impact upon respondents in their understanding of the UPA. The mere fact of war and death in the battlefield makes the fallen soldier a hero, while other details of history that would present a difficulty are shifted out of the memory space. They are not repressed or silenced, they are overshadowed by the topoi of independence, sacrifice, struggle, liberation, and independence.

Furthermore, the history of the UPA as it is remembered is closely connected to other, perhaps more significant, historical themes of victimization – such as the Holodomor. This (imagined) connection makes it problematic to have a critical (non-emotional) distance to the UPA, it enables ironing out the “unpleasant knowledge” about atrocities committed by the UPA to other nationalities as well as to Ukrainians who did not support the UPA’s cause.

Amalgamated Memory

I refer to these mixed memories as amalgamated memories. I borrow the term “amalgam” from chemistry, which means “a soft mass formed by chemical manipulation, esp. a soft or plastic condition of gold, silver, etc. produced by combination with mercury; hence, now, any mixture of a metal with mercury, a mercurial alloy.”⁵⁴  Speaking of amalgamated memory I apply its idiomatic meaning of mixture and combination that still preserves its meaning of alloy but as a result of combination of different ingredients becomes something new but unstable, whereas meanings fluctuate and changed very quickly.⁵⁵ When ingredients are mixed, the amalgam is soft and docile, to make it hard two conditions are needed: time and meshing into the mold. With the flow of time and under favorable conditions the amalgam gets harder and finally it becomes indistinguishable from the mold.

The mold, in our case, is an established template of remembrance. It provides patterns of remembrance. It is not necessarily a conscious and well-elaborated strategy. It works by facilitating meaning- and sense-making, so that each new event needs not be put in a new narrative pattern, but can be reproduced and interpreted quickly inside the existing pattern. Such patterns are produced by grammars of remembering, as discussed above.

The present peaceful co-existence of parallel memories does not, though, imply that there is no potential for conflict that can be ignited at certain points of time and in certain contexts. Exhortations to past historical injustices were not the latest things used for mobilization and perpetrating new injustices.  History shows us that people who lived together for decades can seemingly instantaneously be turned into bitter enemies and have a desire to fight to the death.

Concluding Remarks

My findings show that the memory of insurgency and the memory of Soviet victory in the war peacefully co-exists in the personal narratives of most of my interviewees. Competing memories in the political discourse are reconciled in the amalgamated memory at the grassroots level, whereby the memories do not exclude each other but rather supplement each other, or even reinforce each other.

Although the political parties promote the memory of the OUN and UPA in a way that demands from the public to abandon one memory at the expense of another, the public’s response to this is rather the opposite – people tend to “internalize” several traditions of remembering simultaneously. Perhaps the best illustration of such denial to choose between memories is found in the students’ essays. But, as stressed, the nature of such memory is that it is in fluctuation. The time will come when this amalgam will solidify and establish itself in the cultural memory of the nation, but what kind of memory it will be is too early to say, especially when we take into account the turbulent years of recent Ukrainian history. One clear feature which can be distinguished for the time being is that the memory of victory in the Second World War and the history of the war in general becomes more and more “Ukrainianized,” as we saw throughout the narratives of both producers and consumers of memory politics. Hence, the reclamation of history as envisioned by national democrats and intellectuals in the 1980s yields results.

First published in: Yuliya Yurchuk, Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in post-Soviet Ukraine. Stockholm: ACTA 2014, pp. 216–234.

Юлія Юрчук захистила дисертацію «Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Post-Soviet Ukraine» в січні 2015 року в Стокгольмському Університеті. Наразі працює в Центрі вивчення країн Балтії та Східної Європи в Університеті Сьодерторн, Стокгольм. Займається вивченням політики пам’яті в Україні і в балтійських державах, насамперед, пам’яті про Першу і Другу світові війни.

1. Young, James E. The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, Yale University Press, 1994, p. xii.
2. Erll, Astrid. “Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction” In Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nunning (eds.), Media and Cultural Memory: an International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin, 2008, p. 5.
3. Kateryna Z., Essays written by students of RCELC, October 6, 2011, (hereinafter Essays/RCELC).
4. Kateryna Z., Essays/RCELC.
5. Olga P., Essays/RRCELC.
6. Ganna S., Essays/RRCELC.
7. Novak, Ostafov, M.I. Potapov, I.M. Muzychenko, Sydir Kovpak were among the names of Soviet partisans mentioned in the essays.
8. Hrystya M., Essays/RCELC.
9. Dana K., Essays/RCELC.
10. Vlada R., Dana K., Essays/RCELC.
11. Ksenia P., Essays/RCELC.
12. Ksenia P., Essays/RCELC.
13. Moroz Y. Essays/RCELC.
14. Ksenia P.Essays/RCELC.
15. Ksenia P.Essays/RCELC.
16. Vlada R Essays/RCELC.
17. Melena L.Essays/RCELC.
18. Lubava K. Essays/RCELC.
19. Kateryna Z. Essays/RCELC.
20. Teresa G. Essays/RCELC.
21. Melena L. Essays/RCELC.
22. Natalia Z. Essays/RCELC.
23. Larysa A. Essays/RCELC.
24. Natalia Z. Essays/RCELC.
25. Oksana V. Essays/RCELC.
26. Orysia F. Essays/RCELC.
27. Orysia F. Essays/RCELC.
28. Alina K. Essays written by Rivne Slavonic University students, 12 October 2011 (Essays/RSU).
29. Natalia Z. Essays/RSU.
30. Nadia P. Essays/RSU; Oksana V. Essays/RSU.
31. Olena M. Essays/RSU.
32. Olga K. Essays/RSU.
33. Oksana V. Essays/RSU.
34. Nadia P. Essays/RSU.
35. Lena O. Essays/RSU.
36. Lesya D.Essays/RSU.
37. Assmann. Impact and Resonance, p. 31.
38. Ibidem, p. 32.
39. Respondent G., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
40. Respondent G., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
41. Respondent O., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
42. Only two people said they celebrate the Day of Foundation of the UPA, others knew about such a day but said that they celebrate the religious holiday Pokrova on that day, not the day of UPA.
43. Respondent O., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
44. Respondent K., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
45. Respondent Nn., Interviews, Rivne 16.10.2011.
46. Respondent Y., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
47. Respondent J., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
48. Respondent S., Interviews, Rivne 15.10.2011.
49. Respondent Kk., Interviews, Rivne 16.10.2011.
50. Respondent Kk., Interviews, Rivne 16.10.2011.
51. Koselleck, Reinhart. “War Memorials: Identity Formation of the Survivors.” In Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Daniel Levy (eds.), The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford, 2011, p. 370.
52. Ibidem.
53. Marchuk, Ihor. Interview. Rivne, 10 October 2011.
54. Oxford English Dictionary.
55. I specifically do not use the term hybrid memory, which also presupposes coexistence of several mnemonic narratives in one. I refer to a new term in order to emphasize that neither of the elements in such a mnemonic construction is stable, they are in constant move and re-conceptualization.