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Collaboration and Collaborators in Ukraine During the Second World War: Between Myth and Memory

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Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Mykola Borovyk offers a summary of the formation and transformation of the public presentations and assessments of collaboration during and after the Second World War in the USSR, and later on in independent Ukraine. On the base of oral history sources, he examines vernacular models framing the presentation of wartime collaboration and collaborators in autobiographical accounts. Focusing on the textual peculiarities of the oral autobiographical recollections, Borovyk explores relations between official representations of history and collective memory of the war and collaboration outside the sphere of elite memory actors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Penter, T. cites a typical extract from a complaint of a Galician resident sentenced for collaboration: "I come from Western Ukraine and I grew up with the awareness that my homeland is (panskaia) Poland, and the hatred of the Poles for the Ukrainian people has strengthened in me a budding holy patriotic feeling. And when I lost my work under German occupation in 1941, I was forced to serve in the police, but I did it not out of ideological persuasion but to make a living. Accordingly I was totally unaware of the fact that I betrayed my homeland, as I have lived in this new homeland for only one year. And this consciousness could not arise at all, because in such a short period of time it just could not enter my head, my crippled mind, corrupted as it was by anti-Soviet bourgeois propaganda…“ here, p. 352.

  2. 2.

    The role of Judenrats in the facilitation of the Holocaust agenda, their moral evaluation still remains the subject of a heated debate. For Soviet repressions against Jews who survived Nazi and, more often, Romanian occupation and were charged with collaboration, see Penter 2008: 353–354.

  3. 3.

    See Dean 2000, Golczewski 1998, Pohl 2002, Pohl 1997 for the involvement of Schutzmanschaft-Bataillonen in the extermination of the Jewish population.

  4. 4.

    For more details on on the involvement of local administration in the persecution and murder of the Jews in Ukraine see Eikel, Sivaieva 2014.

  5. 5.

    About forming Soviet policy toward sexual collaboration see Chap. 10 by Voisin in this volume.

  6. 6.

    For an example of a model textbook on the USSR history that was in use at the time when most of our respondents were graduating from school, see История СССР, 1961.

  7. 7.

    For analysis of the discussion on the history of the OUN and UPA in Ukraine within this period see Marples 2007, Jilge 2004/2005, Yurchuk 2014.

  8. 8.

    For historical politics in Russia in the 2000s see Дубин 2010; Копосов 2011.

  9. 9.

    Any mention of Vlasov in a positive way, especially given the problematic reliability of this episode, is all the more surprising if one takes into account the fact that his figure was the main symbol of treason and collaboration in the Soviet times and piecemeal attempts of his rehabilitation on the wave of criticism of Stalinism have not been successful either in late USSR, or later in Russia and Ukraine. About it see Chap. 44 by Tromly in this volume.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Maria-Theresia-Straße 21, München, 81675, Germany

    Mykola Borovyk

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  1. Department of Ukrainian Studies, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

    Gelinada Grinchenko

  2. Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Eleonora Narvselius

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Borovyk, M. (2018). Collaboration and Collaborators in Ukraine During the Second World War: Between Myth and Memory. In: Grinchenko, G., Narvselius, E. (eds) Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66496-5_12

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