Volhynia, the AK and the UPA. Why is the historical dispute with Ukraine so difficult?
In a conversation on Marcin Strzyżewski's channel, I explain why the Polish-Ukrainian dispute over the past, although it essentially concerns only the years 1939-1947, stirs such enormous emotions. I clarify the structural difference between the Home Army and the UPA, why I call the UPA's anti-Polish campaign a genocide, and how contemporary "presentism" makes us experience the past as part of the present.
I begin with the observation that professional historians from Poland and Ukraine have reached convergent positions on most issues of the shared past, from the times of Mieszko I and relations with Rus all the way to the 20th century. The only watershed generating fundamental differences is the period 1939-1947, with particular emphasis on the UPA's anti-Polish campaign. The problem is that contemporary memory is dominated by the national paradigm: we experience events from decades ago personally, almost as part of our own biography. The structural distinction is key for me. The Home Army was a regular part of the Polish Armed Forces subordinate to the government in London, an extension of statehood. The UPA was a "party militia" of a specific nationalist grouping that aspired to statehood but never obtained legitimacy or state structures. This is why I read Kyiv's commemoration of the UPA today as a politically painful signal for Poland.
On Volhynia, I draw on Raphael Lemkin's definition of genocide: what matters is the documented intention to destroy a national group, and the reports of the cichociemni infiltrating the UPA, cited by Professor Grzegorz Motyka, confirm the planned character of the cleansing. I criticize attempts to create symmetry by historians like Volodymyr Viatrovych, who presents Volhynia as an equal war between two sides, or Bohdan Hud, who interprets it as a spontaneous "popular uprising." I distinguish a planned crime, like the UPA campaign, from a retaliatory one. I cite Professor Ihor Hałagida's research documenting victims among the Ukrainian civilian population resulting from AK reprisals. I classify Operation Vistula unambiguously as a communist crime: General Stefan Mossor's document originally used the phrase about a "final solution to the Ukrainian question."
I also reject the thesis of "Polish colonization" of Ukrainian lands. Drawing on the research of Professor Natalia Starczenko, author of "The Ukrainian Worlds of the Commonwealth," I show that the First Polish Republic was a common state of Ruthenians and Poles: kings of Ruthenian origin, like Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, sat on the Polish throne, and the Ruthenian language served an official function. Finally, I introduce the concept of "cultural presentism": after 1989 we lost a vision of the future, which pulled the past into the present. History ceased to be academic analysis and became a "campfire story," fuel for current politics. The myth of the UPA is used today as fuel in the resistance against Russia, omitting its anti-Polish character. I warn against an "overdose of history," paraphrasing Nietzsche, because it prevents nations from building relations based on present security needs.