Yury Boshyk (ed.), Ukraine during World War II

Summary

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta is a major centre of research and scholarship in Ukrainian studies, particularly those concerning the modern period. The book under review, published under its auspices, deals with a most significant and sensitive subject of our century, the Second World War. A symposium on the Ukraine and Ukrainians during the Second World War was held in Toronto in 1985; scholarly papers on a number of issues concerning Ukrainians and related to the war situation read at this conference are published in this volume. The combination of historical research (Part I) with the issue of war criminals in postwar Canada and the United States (Part II) seems artificial and geared primarily to politics and publicity. The inclusion of some original documents (Part III) is both useful and illuminating. This review is concerned with the first part only, and will deal primarily with the issue of Ukrainian-Jewish relations

Yury Boshyk, the editor, raises in his introductory remarks some crucial points concerning both information and attitudes. One might hope that the gradual opening of Soviet and Ukrainian archives to professional and unbiased research will be helpful. It is already the case that for some time Yad Vashem, the Israeli Remembrance Authority, has been permitted access to documentation in Soviet archives relating to the Second World War. These documents may shed new light on such a highly controversial issue as Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis in the persecution and extermination of Jews. A continuing study by Dr Aharon Weiss of Yad Vashem on the Ukrainian underground in western Ukraine may also add considerably to our understanding of that period. As is well known, Jews and Ukrainians tend to present opposing views and interpretations of the war years. Historians on both sides are also divided in their views. A striking example is the first conference on Ukrainian-Jewish relations held in 1983.

Orest Subtelny, in his discussion of the 1939-41 Soviet annexation of western territories, attempts to draw a comparison between the Soviet and Nazi occupations. Although until recently such an analogy would have seemed far-fetched, the latest exposures of Stalinist crimes make such an argument more plausible.