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Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine

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The full title of this monograph is Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. Author David R. Marples is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a Director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, since 1996.

Professor Marple's numerous awards include: SSHRC Major Research Grant, 2009-2012 (History, Memory, and World War II in Belarus); University of Alberta Senate, Beyond These Halls Award, Individual-Faculty, 2009; Delta Khi Teaching Excellence Appreciation, 2009; University Cup, 2008; Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2008; The Philip Lawson Award for Excellence in Teaching, June 2007; Promoted to University Professor, September 2006; Killam Annual Professorship, 2005-06; Alberta Centennial Medal, 2005; Appointed Honorary Lieutenant Colonel, 6th Intelligence Division, Canadian Armed Forces, April 2005-2008, 2009-2012; Recipient of the 2003 J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research; SSHRC major research grant, 2003-2005; SSHRC major research grant, 1996-1999; McCalla Research Professorship, 1998-99; Faculty of Arts Research Prize for Full Professors, 1999; Shevchenko Gold Medal, Ukrainian Canadian Committee (national), 1999; and, Listed in Canadian Who's Who and The Dictionary of International Biography.

Heroes and Villains is the twelfth book that Professor Marples has authored; it was published by Central European University Press in 2007. The cover design is by Sebastian Stachowski; the cover photography is by Lubomyr Markevych.

The cover depicts a monument in Kyiv (made in 1947 by sculptor Vuchetich) to Russian General Nikolai Vatutin, a Soviet military commander during World War II who was born near Kursk, Russia in 1901 and who died near Kyiv, Ukraine in 1944. The inscription is in Ukrainian: 'To General Vatutin from the Ukrainian people.' Since other Soviet heroes all have inscriptions in Russian, Bohdan Fik, in his 1997 article, posits that the reason for the Ukrainian inscription may have been that he was killed by nationalist Ukrainians. Panteleimon Vasylevs'kyi, in a related article, agrees with the reason behind the assassination of Vatutin. According to the nationalist version of events that slowly took shape after Ukraine became independent, the hero of the war became regarded as an enemy of Ukrainians.

Fik wrote in 1997 about what he perceived to be Vatutin's crimes against Ukrainian youth born from 1924 to 1926. According to Fik, Vatutin (at the time, a commander in the Red Army in charge of liberating Kyiv) dispatched 250,000 Ukrainian young men from the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Poltava regions to certain deaths in the cold waters of the Dnipro River. In the 1980s, some Moscow newspapers reported that those who could not swim were shot so that they "did not instinctively drown others when crossing the river at Kyiv." As a result, writes Fik, UPA sentenced Vatutin to death for crimes against the Ukrainian people--his cortege was attacked on the border of Rivne and Zhytomyr oblasts. Vatutin was wounded, had his leg amputated, and later died of gangrene in a hospital.

Professor Marples writes that Vatutin's case is interesting because of the juxtaposition of two heroic narratives during the war: that of the Ukrainian nationalists and that of the Soviets. Apropos is the selection of that particular photo, too, since the narratives within are complemented throughout with not only heroes and villains, but also with contradictory characters, with evincing evidence, with viewpoints at variance, and with the manifest and the masked competing--opposite sides of a spectrum presented on a platter for digestion and deliberation.

Heroes and Villains is, as Professor Serhy Yekelchyk (University of Victoria) states: "an innovative and courageous study of how postcommunist Ukraine is rewriting its Stalinist and wartime past by gradually but inconsistently substituting Soviet models with nationalist interpretations." This study is grounded in journalism and reading of Ukrainian scholarship from the last two decades and delves into issues such as the Great Famine of 1932-33 (the Holodomor), the role of the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents (OUN-UPA) during World War II, UPA's conflict with the Red Army and Soviet Security Forces, and the Ukrainian-Polish conflict.

Dr. Yekelchyk is a Ukrainian-Canadian historian of Ukrainian and Russian history. He received his B.A. from the University of Kyiv and his M.A. from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In the early 1990s, he did research in Australia, then moved to Edmonton to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in 2000. He was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan the following year. Since 2001, Dr. Yekelchyk has taught at the University of Victoria at both the Department of History, and is now Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. Much of Dr. Yekelchyk's recent wok focuses on Stalinist culture and political life.

As Professor Marples states: "The efforts to reinterpret the events of the Second World War in order to create heroes out of 'villains' and to reexamine former heroes accordingly are incomplete. Many of the versions of the past are unclear and subjected frequently to new interpretations. Moreover, the war years are the most difficult in terms of historical memory because new narratives often coincide and clash with the results of new archival research. To date, despite a plethora of articles that seek to reshape the image of the OUN and the UPA, the impact of Soviet propaganda has still not been entirely eradicated."

In the opening of the Preface, Professor Marples states that albeit independent Ukraine emerged in August, 1991 and was ratified by a national referendum in December, 1991, the roots of the modern state are to be found under Mikhail Gorbachev in the period of Perestroika with the emergence of civil society. It was at that time that Ukraine began the process of building a new nation: accepting existing borders and eventually agreeing to be a non-nuclear state with its own currency and constitution.

As the title states and as Professor Marples expounds, Heroes and Villains examines the construction of a national history. Several interpretations of the past and several national histories are, arguably, existent. In Ukraine's case, the Soviet narrative is the one in place--albeit it's clearly obsolete and has been superseded. Nonetheless, that Soviet interpretation has remained influential in certain regions of Ukraine, particularly those of the south and the east--and, that Soviet interpretation continues to influence the way the residents of Ukraine perceive their state.

The focus of this volume is limited to the 20th century and what Professor Marples considers to be the most formative period: 1928-1953 (the years under the leadership of Stalin and their impact on the Ukrainian SSR [as Ukraine was then termed] and independent Ukraine). That period of Ukraine's history represents it's most tragic and one of the most profoundly influential in forming contemporary thinking about the modern nation and its relationship to the past for it's during this period that the most tragic and dramatic experiences took place: the Holodomor (the Famine of 1932-33), the impact of the Nazi-Soviet Pact wherein Ukraine's western territories were incorporated into the USSR, the Purges; the German invasion; the national insurgency in the western regions during which bitter fighting resulted as conflicts between several players occurred: "the retreating Germans, the advancing Red Army, the local Polish population, and the local Ukrainians."

Dr. Marples readily admits that a monograph concentrating on discourse and narratives about events, rather than the 'reality' of what actually occurred will face some criticism, and he address those concerns in the Preface.

The backbone to this monograph is the question: 'how are these events portrayed in contemporary Ukraine?' Since the modern state seems predicated on the way it views its past, this is the raison d'ętre. Two common elements of Ukraine's association with her past are introduced: victimization and glorification. Professor Marples elaborates and articulates both sides, saying explicitly: 'one could argue, however.' Defining moments for modern Ukraine are postulated by Professor Marples as those which may have occurred in the Stalin period, but he also states that there were other events which could be fitted into the general pattern.

In the Contents are included: a map of Ukraine; a 12-page Preface; two-pages of Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Independent Ukraine Reviews the Past; Chapter 2: The Famine of 1932-33; Chapter 3: The OUN, 1929-43; Chapter 4: Making Heroes: the Early Days of OUN-UPA; Chapter 5: UPA's Conflict with the Red Army and Soviet Security Forces; Chapter 6: The Ukrainian-Polish Conflict; Chapter 7: Writing New History in Ukraine; Chapter 8: Assessments; Conclusion; a 22-page Bibliography (newspapers, journals, and periodicals); and, a 27-page Index.

The Acknowledgements chapter recognizes that research was funded by a major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Special thanks are given to the librarians and the staff of the Central Scientific Library, Kharkiv V.N. Karazin National University; the Kherson Honchar Oblast Archives; and the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Materials and references were supplied by author and Professor Terry Martin (currently the Loeb associate professor of the social sciences at Harvard University, also affiliated with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, his grandmother grew up in the Russian empire...lived through the revolution in 1917-19) and author and Professor Mark Von Hagen (formerly of Columbia University, he teaches Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian history at Arizona State University).

Heroes and Villains is a meticulously prepared, objective observation of Ukraine's past in which opposing sides are presented in an unbiased manner utilizing scores of sources as the heroes and villains who created a national history in Ukraine are examined and discussed. Five stars plus for riveting reportage in an impartial, courageous study, which monitors journals, monographs, and the media, and offers a survey of school textbooks from 1987-88, while conveying both sides and providing analyses.

Addendum: Readers, you're invited to visit each of my reviews--most of them have photos that I took in Ukraine (over 600)--you'll learn lots about Ukraine and Ukrainians. The image gallery shows smaller photos, which are out of sequence. The preferable way is to see each review through my profile page since photos that are germane to that particular book/VHS/DVD are posted there with notes and are in sequential order.

To visit my reviews: click on my pseudonym, Mandrivnyk, to get to my profile page; click on the tab called review; scroll to the bottom of the section, and click on see all reviews; click on each title, and on the left-hand side, click on see all images. The thumbnail images at the top of the page show whether photos have notes; roll your mouse over the image to find notes posted.

Also, you're invited to visit my Listmania lists, which have materials sorted by subject matter.

This detailed work uses many mostly-Ukrainian sources.

The LITOPYS UPA series is said to select documents in a favorably-tendentious manner. (p. 162). (This finds corroboration from Dr. Edward Prus, who professed familiarity with German documents, and once informed me of selectively-quoted German documents).

Many writings on UPA exploits, such as those of Lew Shankowsky, make implausible claims, and are probably pseudo-histories. (pp. 137-on). Marples, based on the paucity of evidence from German documents, doubts if the UPA ever engaged the Germans in significant combat (pp. 146-147), and concludes: "The notion, widely disseminated today, that the army turned its forces on the two totalitarian enemies simultaneously, is far-fetched. The UPA had two enemies [one being the Soviets] but the other one was the Polish population in Volhynia and Galicia...the UPA initiated an ethnic cleansing of the Polish population of Volhynia which, as we have seen, took up to 60,000 lives. It was conducted with a brutality not seen again in Europe until the civil war in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's." (p. 310).

There do exist a few indirect German allusions to UPA attacks on Germans, which it promised to stop in return for such favors as non-interference in the killing of Poles. (p. 147). Obviously, to the extent that the UPA itself didn't collaborate with the Germans, it wasn't for lack of trying.

Among Ukrainians, serious consideration of the OUN-UPA's crimes has been hindered by their decades of misuse by the hated Soviet Communist authorities. Defenders of the OUN-UPA continue to use "Ukrainians killed Poles and vice-versa" relativizations. Nevertheless, some contemporary Ukrainian authors (Maksym Strikha, Bohdan Oleksyuk; pp. 225-228) are willing to examine the OUN-UPA genocide of Poles without denials or blame-the-victim tactics. Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Koval' points out that the OUN security force, the SB, was modeled and organized by the Gestapo, and: "Almost all of its leaders were graduates of the German military school in Zakopane, Poland, in 1939-40." (p. 149). Some Ukrainian historians question the genuineness of the OUN's post-Stalingrad (August 1943) abandonment of fascism in favor of democracy. (p. 142, pp. 195-196). Author Marples, unlike some OUN-UPA apologists, recognizes UPA-analyst Wiktor Polishchuk as a historian. (p. 131).

The magisterial work of Siemaszko and Siemaszko, on the genocide in Volyn, has been criticized by Ukrainian historian Il'yushyn, who used ad hominems, even implying that Polish authors shouldn't be believed. (pp. 212-214). The only specific error he could find was a trivial one: An entry which listed the deaths of nine Poles as the deed of the UPA when, according to NKVD archives, the latter was responsible.

There is no moral or tactical symmetry between past Polish injustices to Ukrainians and the OUN-UPA genocide, and Marples rejects any such rationalization: "One could hardly find a better example of a victimization complex being used to justify a wholesale massacre." (p. 237). AK actions followed, not preceded, the genocide. (p. 213). Marples also realizes that the Polish killings of Ukrainians in the Zamosc region, often cited as a provocation of the OUN-UPA genocide, was actually directed at collaborationist Ukrainian police and settlers taking part in Odilo Globocnik's de-Polonization project. (p. 227). Unfortunately, Marples repeats Snyder's rather silly "UPA led by immature, angry young men" exculpation (p. 150), which, taken seriously, insults ethical young men everywhere.

After the second Soviet occupation of the area, the UPA was almost eliminated by mid-1945 (p. 169) before undergoing a major revival owing to Soviet repression. According to NKVD documents, in the period 2/1944-12/1945, 50,000 UPA and allies surrendered, 103,000 were killed, and 127,000 were captured. (pp. 131-132). In 1944-1953, there were 153,000 UPA deaths and 203,000 deportations. (p. 297). Of the 31,000 Soviet-side losses, 5,750 were NKVD, soldiers, and militia; 2,590 were "Strebki'; while over 15,000 are identified only as "members of collective farms". About 790,000 Poles were expelled from the western Ukraine in 1944-1946 (p. 216), of which most came from Ternopil' (234,000) and L'viv (219,000).