Poland has been a good neighbor to Ukraine. Warsaw has been one of Kyiv’s chief supporters in the European Union, and a staunch supporter of Ukraine as it faces Russian aggression in the Donbas.
But past conflicts between Poland and Ukraine cast a shadow on their present cooperation – Poland’s ruling party is displeased with Ukraine’s present glorification of its Insurgent Army and nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. Many in Poland consider them to have been terrorists, responsible for the mass murder of Poles.
Ukrainians, in return, present such a view, seeing it as a foreign interpretation of the country’s history.
Many in both countries want to put the past behind them. For instance, Witold Wascivocsky, the Polish foreign minister, said during a meeting of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, on Feb. 8 that bilateral cooperation between Poland and Ukraine must be based on the truth, and not become a hostage of the past.
But it seems other Polish politicians do not want to move on.
“I said clearly to President (Petro) Poroshenko that the Ukrainian flag will not come to Europe, as we cannot agree with the fact that in recent years Ukraine built the cult around people responsible for the genocide of the Poles,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of Poland’s ruling Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Rule and Justice, or PiS) party, told Polish magazine Do Rzeczy in an interview on Feb. 5.
“It was hard to compete with the cruelty of the Germans at that time, but they (the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) managed it. We (the Poles) have shown great patience. But everything has its limits,” Kaczynski added.
In particular, controversy rages over an incident in 1943, called the Volyn Tragedy in Ukraine and the Volyn Massacre in Poland. The difference in terms reflects the different historical view of the event in the two countries.
In July, the Sejm, Poland’s parliament, voted to declare the Volyn Tragedy a genocide of Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. According to the resolution approved by the Polish lawmakers, Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered more than 100,000 citizens of the Second Polish Republic on the territories of Volyn and Galychyna during 1943-1945. These territories are today partly in Rivne and Lutsk oblasts in western Ukraine.
The document did, however, acknowledge that the actions of the Ukrainian nationalists had caused a bloody reaction from Poles.
“We cannot forget about Polish actions in revenge, which also lead to the mass killing of Ukrainian villagers on those territories,” said the document.
Nevertheless, there was an aggrieved reaction in Ukraine to the resolution. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on July 22 that the Sejm’s decision could be used as a political tool.
“We should forgive and be forgiven,” Poroshenko wrote. “Only together we can overcome the tragic moments of our common history. And I hope we will continue on that course.”
War crimes
In general, most Poles’ attitude toward Ukrainians is tolerant and positive. In the 1990s, the Poles had a stereotypical view of Ukrainians as greedy contrabandists, cleaning ladies, and construction workers. That has changed since the Orange (2004) and EuroMaidan Revolutions (2013-2014), with Poles now seeing Ukrainians as young, ambitious professionals, who come not only to make money or study, but also contribute to the diversity and prosperity of Polish society.
Wascivocsky said Poland granted more than 1.5 million visas for Ukrainians in 2016, 650,000 of which were employment visas, as Ukrainian workers are valued in Poland.
All the same, Poles are disturbed by Ukraine’s admiration for its wartime insurgent army, nationalist groups, and the nationalist icon Stepan Bandera, and see this as support for their violent methods.
Volodymyr Viatrovych, the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 13 that the popularity of Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has grown in Ukraine because of Russia’s aggression and the war in the Donbas.
“In modern Ukrainian society, Bandera is a primarily a symbol of resistance against Russia. Today, Ukraine feels abandoned by the world, and the Insurgent Army for us is a sign that we have the strength to fight on our own,” said Viatrovych.
“We should not condone collective responsibility. We were at war, and soldiers of both sides – Polish and Ukrainian – committed war crimes. But that doesn’t mean all the Ukrainian insurgents or all of the soldiers of Poland’s Armia Krajowa were criminals,” the expert said.
The Armia Krajowa or the Home Army, was the resistance movement fighting for Polish liberation from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Provocations
Viatrovych said such frictions were normal for any neighboring countries, as their histories have dark pages: wars, conflicts, pressure, and dictatorship. But there is no mutual hatred between modern Ukrainians and Poles, he said.
However, Polish nationalists have been conducting anti-Ukrainian actions, such as an attack on a Ukrainian fighters’ commemoration ceremony in Przemysl, a city in south-western Poland in July, or the shouting of “Death to the Ukrainians!” during the Orląt Przemyskich i Lwowskich (Eagles of Przemysl and Lviv) commemoration march in December.
The video shows Poles shouting “Death to the Ukrainians!” during the Orląt Przemyskich i Lwowskich (Eagles of Przemysl and Lviv) commemoration march in December.
Orlata is a nickname for the Przemysl soldiers who fought against Ukrainian forces and the Red Army during the Second World War.
In January, a group of nationalists beat up three Ukrainian students after an argument over the status of Lviv, the western Ukrainian city that until 1939 was part of the Second Polish Republic.
In return, vandals daubed the walls of Poland’s Consulate General Building in Lviv with the words “Our land.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin condemned that action on Twitter.
Wiktor Swincicki, the international projects’ inspector for the city council of Lublin in eastern Poland, told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 14 that he had first noticed a rise in anti-Ukrainian political actions after 2010, after President Viktor Yushchenko had posthumously given Bandera the award of Hero of Ukraine.
Since then, many PiS politicians have been promoting the idea that the Volyn Tragedy episode has never been properly resolved – Ukraine has never officially apologized for the actions of its citizens in the 1940s.
“In such circumstances, many Poles see Bandera’s hero status, the renaming of the streets and monuments in his honor, as a slap in the face, and disrespectful. That’s why Poles disapprove of the ‘Slava Ukraini’ slogan, so popular in modern Ukraine. They think the insurgent army fighters cried the same words during their massacre of the Poles,” said Swincicki.
First steps
During his visit to Poland in July, Poroshenko laid flowers at a monument to the victims of the Volyn Massacre in Warsaw. He was the first Ukrainian president to do so, and he even knelt as a mark of respect.
Presidential Minister Krzysztof Szczerski told the Rzeczpospolita news website in September that Polish President Anjey Duda “greatly appreciated” Poroshenko’s gesture, saying that Ukraine’s president had taken a step on the road to reconciliation over the tragic events.
Viatrovych said it would be wrong for Ukrainians to acknowledge that the Volyn Tragedy was an act of genocide against the Poles. But terming this event the Volyn Massacre, as Polish historians do, is incorrect as well, because it isolates the massacre from the context of other historical events that occurred before and after.
“The conflict between the Ukrainian and Polish insurgent armies lasted from 1942 to 1947. In 1943, (the year of the Volyn Massacre) indeed we have mostly Polish victims of the war. But there were numerous recorded cases of war crimes against Ukrainians civilians committed (at other times) by Polish insurgents,” Viatrovych said.
The expert said the both countries must admit to and condemn the war crimes committed by their forces during the war, and name those who are to blame.
He said the topics of the Volyn Tragedy and Polish-Ukrainian war should be taboo for politicians of both countries, as it was clear to him that the dispute could be used to ruin relations between the two nations.
“Forgive and be forgiven. Leave history to the professionals,” Viatrovych said.
