Conclusion

Summary

The eleven cases of wartime occupation discussed in this book have been arranged under three umbrella themes: patriotism, civil war, and colonial legacy, respectively. These have been intended to serve as comparative frameworks rather than denoting hard-and-fast typological categories. They do not come close to exhausting the pool of potential organizing principles, nor are they mutually exclusive. Patriotism was, obviously, a hotly contested issue in all these societies, not just those that retained a semblance of unitary sovereignty or administrative continuity. Deep internal divisions and inter-factional violence were not restricted to those countries included in the civil-war section. Even the category of colonialism has ragged boundaries. For example, Ukrainians’ pre-war relationships with Poland and the Soviet Union were more complicated than can be captured by a reductionist characterization of them as either victims of imperialism or not. Indeed, one of the effects of this comparative exercise has been to highlight the plasticity – particularly under the high-pressure circumstances of occupation – of concepts such as “patriotism,” “civil war,” and “anti-colonial struggle.” That said, some broad patterns marking relations of occupiers with occupied can be discerned.