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Peasants into Perpetrators: The OUN-UPA and the Ethnic Cleansing of Volhynia, 1943–1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jared McBride
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Abstract

The Ukrainian nationalist-led ethnic cleansing campaign against Poles in Volhynia during 1943–44 has long been the subject of international tension and contentious public and scholarly debate. This article analyzes the topic through a microhistorical lens that looks at one ethnic cleansing operation in the Liuboml´ area of Volhynia that killed hundreds of Poles. Using newly declassified materials from Ukrainian secret police archives, alongside more traditional testimonial sources, I demonstrate that not all participants were prepared nationalist ideologues eager to kill. Rather, there was a range of actors involved in the massacres and the Ukrainian nationalist leadership was able to recruit average peasants to participate in ethnic cleansing through diverse mechanisms. This disaggregation of the killers and their motives not only contributes to growing social science research on mobilization for violence, but also challenges assumptions inherent in the double or triple occupation thesis frequently used to explain violence in Volhynia from 1939 to 1945.

Type
World War II: Occupation and Liberation
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , Fall 2016 , pp. 630 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2016

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References

Research support for this article was provided by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the United States Department of Education, Fulbright-Hays Program. The author would like to thank Jeffrey Burds, J. Arch Getty, Gail Kligman, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Per Anders Rudling, David Sabean, and the participants of the Georgetown workshop. Special thanks to Tarik Cyril Amar, Michael David-Fox, and Aliza Luft for their help. The author also thanks the editor, Harriet L. Murav, and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback.

1 Ukrainians whose names have been Russified in archival documents are left in the form in which I found them.

2 Haluzevyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bezpeky Ukrainy (HDA SBU), spr.67454, tom 4, ark.188.

3 Despite great efforts by the KGB to place Bubela at the crime scene, no incriminating evidence was found.

4 Bubela’s daughter claimed he was not at the mass shooting of Jews, but was “at home sick”—a common excuse used by local policemen during criminal investigations. Interview with Ekaterina Gul΄ conducted by the author, Krymne, Ukraine, November 26, 2011.

5 Among the works using this term for the events in Volhynia of 1943–1944, see in particular the work of Timothy Snyder, who uses “ethnic cleansing” for “violent policies aiming to clear territories of national enemies, though not to kill every man, woman and child.” Timothy Snyder, “The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943,” Past & Present, 179, no. 1 (May 2003), 197. Similarly, Norman Naimark, in Fires of Hatred describes the “intention of ethnic cleansing” as to “remove a people and oft en all traces of them from a concrete territory.” Norman, Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Harvard, 2001), 3 Google Scholar. For a brief review of the academic debate over the term “genocide,” see Scott, Straus, “Contested Meanings and Conflicting Imperatives: A Conceptual Analysis of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no.3 (November 2001), 349–75Google Scholar.

6 Petro, Balei, Fronda Stepana Bandery v OUN 1940 roku: Prychyny i naslidky (Kyiv, 1996), 141 Google Scholar.

7 The verb for cleanse in Ukrainian, chystyty, and the noun chytska, were used by the OUN-UPA leadership as euphemisms for murder and violent expulsion. Other terminology used by the leadership during the ethnic cleansing campaign, such as liquidate, exterminate, and destroy is discussed in more detail below. For an example of forced expulsion see Tsentral΄nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Hromads΄kykh Ob΄iednan΄ [TsDAHOU], f.1, op.23, spr.927, ark.11.

8 Snyder, “Causes,” 197 Google Scholar.

9 On the debates, Agnieszka, Pasieka, “Re-enacting Ethnic Cleansing: People’s History and Elitist Nationalism in Contemporary Poland,” Nations and Nationalism, vol. 22, no. 1 (January 2016): 63–83 Google Scholar; Georgiy, Kasianov, “The Burden of the Past: The Ukrainian-Polish Conflict of 1943–44 in Contemporary Public, Academic and Political Debates in Ukraine and Poland,” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences 19, no.3/4 (September-December 2006): 247–59Google Scholar; Grzegorz, Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der polnischukrainische Historikerdiskurs über den polnisch-ukrainischen Konflikt 1943–1947,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 57, no.1 (2009): 54–85 Google Scholar; David R., Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest, 2007), 203–8Google Scholar.

10 Among the omissions are Michael, Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar and Naimark, Fires of Hatred. Works on ethnic cleansing with passing references to Volhynia, sometimes with errors, include Benjamin, Lieberman, Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe (Chicago, 2006), 208–10Google Scholar; Philipp, Ther, The Dark Side of Nation States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe, trans. Charlotte Kreutzmüller (New York, 2014), 121–22Google Scholar; Philipp, Ther and Ana, Siljak, Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham, 2001), 137,143,173–74Google Scholar. An exception to this trend is Alexander, Prusin, “Revolution and Ethnic Cleansing in Western Ukraine: The OUN-UPA Assault against Polish Settlements in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, 1943–1944,” in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe , Steven Béla Várdy, T. Hunt Tooley, Agnes Huszar Vardy, eds., (Boulder, 2003), 529 Google Scholar.

11 A prominent example is Volodymyr V΄iatrovych, who argues there was no ethnic cleansing, but a civil war between Poles and Ukrainians. Now director of the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine, V΄iatrovych has always worked to absolve Ukrainian nationalist organizations of war crimes. Volodymyr, V΄iatrovych, Druha pol΄s΄ko-ukrains΄ka viina, 1942–1947 (Kyiv, 2011)Google Scholar. For one of many critical reviews, see Per Anders Rudling, “Warfare or War Criminality?” Ab Imperio 1 (January 2012), 356–81. On V΄iatrovych’s career: Jared, McBride, “How Ukraine’s New Memory Commissar Is Controlling the Nation’s Past,” The Nation, August 13, 2015 Google Scholar.

12 Scholars using KGB archives include e.g.: Eric Steinhart, Grzegorz Motyka, Per Anders Rudling, Oleksandr Melnyk, Diana Dumitru, Tanja Penter, and Jeffrey Burds.

13 Throughout the article, the terms “local auxiliary policemen” or “policemen” refer to the local police forces that served the Germans. They are oft en referred to as Schutzmannschaft en, as well.

14 I discuss the import of this paper’s findings for social-science research on mobilization for violence below.

15 Grzegorz, Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii (Warsaw, 2006), 240 Google Scholar.

16 Snyder, “Causes,” 208 Google Scholar.

17 Snyder, “Causes,” 212. On Ukrainian nationalist thinking about violence and ethnic cleansing, see Krzysztof Lada, “Ukrainian Topos of Oppression and the Volhynian Slaughter of Poles, 1841–1943/44” (Ph.D. diss., Flinders University, 2012).

18 Marco, Carynnyk, “Foes of Our Rebirth: Ukrainian Nationalist Discussions about Jews, 1929–1947,” Nationalities Papers 39, no. 3 (May 2011): 326 Google Scholar.

19 See the full document: Serhii Kul΄chyts΄kyi, ed., OUN v 1941 rotsi. Dokumenty. V 2-x ch. Ch.1 (Kyiv, 2006), 65–176. The document has received little attention. On its meaning, see Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution’ of Summer 1941,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no.1 (2011), 93–95; Carynnyk, “Foes of our rebirth,” 329–32.

20 Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Vyshchykh Orhaniv Vlady i Upravlinnia Ukrainy [TsDAVOU], f.3833, op.2, spr.1, ark.32.

21 TsDAVOU, f.3833, op.2, spr.1, ark.38.

22 Alexander V., Prusin, The Lands Between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870–1992 (Oxford, 2010), 129 Google Scholar. On summer 1941, see Kai, Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft , ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijü dische Gewalt Der Sommer 1941 in der Westukraine (Berlin, 2015)Google Scholar.

23 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [GARF], f.7021, op.71, d.44, l.5.

24 Milton Turk, Testimony #1979, USC Shoah Foundation.

25 Marco, Carynnyk, “ ‘Jews, Poles, and Other Scum’: Ruda Rozaniecka, Monday, 30 June 1941” (Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Danyliw Research Seminar, University of Ottawa, 23–25 Oct. 2008), 20 Google Scholar.

26 TsDAVOU, f.3833, op.1, spr.46, ark.36–37.

27 For a Soviet partisan report on the burning of villages, see TsDAHOU, f.1, op.23, spr.585, ark.28.

28 Snyder, “Causes,” 202. See also Grzegorz, Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Aft erlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult (Stuttgart, 2014), 239 Google Scholar; Alexander, Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge, 2010), 85 Google Scholar.

29 Mykola, Lebed, UPA: Ukrains΄ka Povstans΄ka Armiia (Munich, 1946), 53 Google Scholar.

30 For Zbignev Kaminski’s testimony, see Instytut Pamię ci Narodowej, et al., eds., Polacy i ukraińcy pomię dzy dwoma systemami totalitarnymi 1942–1945, Tom 4 (Warszawa-Kijó w, 2005), 180–202. Though not an impartial source, Taras Bul΄ba-Borovets΄ stated that Lebed wanted to cleanse Volhynia of Poles. Taras, Bul΄ba-Borovets΄, Armiia Bez Derzhavy: Slava i trahediia ukraï ns’koho povstans’koho rukhu: spohady (Winnipeg, 1981), 251, 253, 272 Google Scholar. Former OUN-m member, Petro Balei also mentioned Lebed’s desire to do so. Balei, Fronda Stepana Bandery v OUN 1940 roku, 196–97.

31 On Kliachkivs΄kyi, see the account by Ihor, Marchuk, Komandyr UPA-Pivnich Dmytro Kliachkivs΄kyi “Klym Savur” (Rivne, 2009)Google Scholar and on Shukhevych, Per A. Rudling, “Szkolenie w mordowaniu: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i Hauptmann Roman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku,” in Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych: Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach południowej-wschodniej Polski w latach 1939–1946, Bogusław Paź, ed. (Wrocław, 2011), 191–212. On Shukhevych and Kliachkivs’kyi’s rise to prominence, see Jared McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears’: Ethnic Diversity and Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Volhynia, Ukraine, 1941–1944” (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 2014), 272–76.

32 HDA SBU, f.13, spr.372, tom 1, ark.56.

33 For a balanced overview of these debates, see Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 303–10; see also Ivan Katchanovski, “Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide or Ukrainian-Polish Conflict? The Mass Murder of Poles by the OUN and the UPA in Volhynia?” (Paper presented at the 19th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Columbia University, New York, April 24–26, 2014). Nearly a dozen contemporary Ukrainian publications refused to publish Katchanovski’s work on the premeditated ethnic cleansing of Poles.

34 On terminology: OUN-UPA leaders oft en used the term “likvidovuvaty” (likvidirovat΄ in Russian) or “liquidate” as a euphemism for murder, not only for the murder of Poles, but also other victims, including Jews, Czechs, and Ukrainians. For some examples see HDA SBU, f.13, spr.371, tom 1, ark.340; HDA SBU, spr.67430, tom 2, ark.81; Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Rivnens΄koi Oblasti [DARO], f.R-30, op.2, spr.37, ark.69; HDA SBU, f.13, spr.372, tom 5, ark.21–6; HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.42. For the use of these terms quoted above in the text see Lebed, UPA, 53; Polacy i ukraiń cy pomię dzy dwoma systemami totalitarnymi, 180–220; Balei, Fronda Stepana Bandery v OUN 1940 roku, 141, 196–7; HDA SBU, spr.11315, t.1, ch.2, ark.16; HDA SBU, f.13, op.65, spr.S-9079, tom 1, ark.168–9 and f.5, spr.67424.

35 HDA SBU, spr.67430, tom 2, ark.110–1 or GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.133, ll.84–6. SB member, Ivan Iavorskii, received a similar order to kill all “Russians, Poles, Czechs, Jews, Roma.” GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.133, ll.53–4 or GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.398, ll.7–9. See also Kutkovets on these orders: TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, spr.351, ark.52.

36 Volodymyr V΄iatrovych, mentioned above, is the main proponent of these ideas.

37 Petro R., Sodol, UPA, They Fought Hitler and Stalin: A Brief Overview of Military Aspects from the History of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 1942–1949 (New York, 1987), 20 Google Scholar. For criticism of this argument see: Jared, McBride, “Who’s Afraid of Ukrainian Nationalism?,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 647–63Google Scholar.

38 This thesis has found its way into English-language publications; see Mat Babiak (edited by Paul Robert Magosci), “Ethnic Cleansing or Ethnic Cleansings? The Polish-Ukrainian civil war in Galicia-Volhynia,” Ukrainian Policy (co-published by Euromaidan Press): at ukrainianpolicy.com/ethnic-cleansing-or-ethnic-cleansings-the-polish-ukrai nian-civil-war-in-galicia-volhynia/ (last accessed March 28, 2016).

39 Lebed, UPA, 53.

40 Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Ukrainian Resistance: The Story of the Ukrainian National Liberation Movement in Modern Times (New York, 1949), 79 Google Scholar.

41 Himka made a similar remark when discussing Ukrainian denial of the OUN-UPA’s participation in the Holocaust. John-Paul, Himka, “Vyznannia popry znannia,” Krytyka 7–8 (July-August 2010): 153–54Google Scholar. There is a history of Ukrainian nationalists denying involvement in mass murder while justifying the violence. A 1926 OUN publication (Surma) explained post-World War I anti-Jewish violence by “Jewish behavior toward the Ukrainian population, their Russifying and Polonizing mission” that “engendered the hatred of the Ukrainian population for the Jews and created the grounds for the pogroms, against which” Ukrainian forces were “helpless.” Quoted in Carynnyk, “Foes of our rebirth,” 317.

42 Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 311–12Google Scholar.

43 According to Snyder, 50,000 in 1943 alone. “Causes,” 202. For an overview of the numbers involved, see Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 410–13.

44 TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, spr.351, ark.9.

45 Snyder, “Causes,” 223.

46 Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 331–35Google Scholar.

47 Located at both: TsDAHOU, f.1, op.23, spr.931, ark.38 and DARO, f.R-30, op.2, spr.16, ark.94. As Naimark noted, “Ethnic cleansing involves not only the forced deportation of entire nations but the eradication of the memory of their presence.” Fires of Hatred, 192.

48 Vasyl΄ Behma report from May 28, 1943 to Nikita Khrushchev and Timofii Strokach: TsDAHOU, f.1, op.22, spr.75, ark.37–43.

49 Ivan Shitov March 30 report to Strokach, amended and relayed by Strokach to Khrushchev on April 21, 1943, see TsDAHOU, f.1, op.23, spr.523, ark.44. There are many more references to the killings in other reports, see TsDAHOU, f.1, op.22, spr.49, ark.12; TsDAHOU, f.1, op.22, spr.55, ark.46; TsDAHOU, f.1, op.22, spr.507, ark.50.

50 On these German reports see Tadeusz Piotrowski, Genocide and Rescue in Wołyń : Recollections of the Ukrainian Nationalist Ethnic Cleansing Campaign against the Poles during World War II (Jefferson, 2000), 206–14; Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass, 2004), 287. On the Polish reports, Piotrowski, Genocide and Rescue, 193–205.

51 For Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) references to violence against Poles in Sarny and Oleksandriia (now Rivne) raions, see GARF, f.7021, op.71, d.41, l.94; GARF, f.7021, op.71, d.70, l.11; and recently declassified post-war Soviet trials that refer ence the killing of Poles see HDA SBU (Rivne), spr.R-6426, spr.13169, spr.17009. For references to the ethnic cleansing of Poles in the USC Shoah Collection: Testimonies of Jacob Nagiel #15645; Shirman Grigorii #29420; Edith (Ida) Kimelman #47959; Avram (Niuma) Anapol΄skii #32206; Vera Shchetinkova #45238; Ferdynand Martynowicz #49047.

52 For some examples, see Leon Popek, ed., Wołyński testament (Lublin, 1997), 97, 109, 115–16, 139, 155–56; Jerzy Dębski and Leon Popek, Okrutna przestroga (Lublin, 1997), 107, 208; Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, 296–97.

53 Piotrowski, Genocide, 83–4Google Scholar.

54 Prusin, “Revolution,” 529 Google Scholar.

55 For a list of early UPA units in winter and spring 1943, see Marchuk, Komandyr UPA-Pivnich, 41.

56 For more on Stel΄mashchuk see Marchuk, Komandyr UPA-Pivnich, 36; McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 271–76.

57 For a sanitized history of the Turiv group leaving out ethnic cleansing, see V. Novak, “V Pivnichnozakhidnia okruha ‘Tuiv,’ in Yevhen Shtendera, ed., Litopys UPA, Tom 5 (Toronto, 1984), 96–134.

58 “Ozero” is also described at times as a zahin.

59 HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.43–44.

60 Klymchak is also known as “Pavliuk” and “Lysyi” and his zahin is also called “Pyliavtsi” in some documents.

61 HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.45.

62 Two different interrogation sessions revealed information about this meeting and directive. In Stel΄mashchuk’s arrest file there is a February 20, 1945 interrogation where he mentions the Kolki meeting with Savur, although he does not mention the Polish directive explicitly. The trial summary from August 6 does however note the orders to kill Poles. In a February 28 interrogation there is an explicit reference to the directive and this source is quoted in the text. For the February 20, 1945 testimony, see HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.45, 94ob-95. For the February 28, 1945 testimony, see the original copy at GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.399, l.18 and copies in Ukraine at HDA SBU, f.13, op.65, spr.S-9079, tom 1, ark.168–9 and f.5, spr.67424. The Litopys UPA collection also has copies of the February 9, 20, 22, 23 and June 20 interrogations. Oleksandr, Ishchuk and Kokin, S.A., eds., Litopys UPA, New Series, Vol. 9 (Toronto, 2007), 430–53Google Scholar.

63 See the June 24, 1943 letter from Stel΄mashchuk to Lebed in HDA SBU, spr.11315, t.1, ch.2, ark.16. I and other authors have not been able to review this file directly due to recent archival restrictions. Nonetheless, the file has been cited by Vladyslav Nakonechnyi, formerly the director of the Communist Party Archive in Luts’k. Nakonechnyi had access to this file and regularly cited it in his work. Polish academic and non-academic writers have also cited and reproduced documents from this file. For further background, see Katchanovski, “Ethnic Cleansing,” 5–6,9–11. For Nakonechnyi see V.A. Nakonechnyi, Volyn’—kryvave pole viiny (Ternopil’, 2006), 104–5,116–7,126. For Polish works see Władysław Filar, Przed akcją “Wisła” był Wołyń (Warsaw, 1997), 33–7; Piotrowski, Genocide, 180; Grzegorz Motyka, Od rzezi wołyńskiej do Akcji “Wisła”: Konflikt polsko-ukraiński 1943–1947 (Kraków, 2011), 130. It bears emphasis that well-respected Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka uses this document.

64 On connections between Stel΄mashchuk and Lysyi see HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.44; HDA SBU, spr.11315, t.1, ch.2, ark.16. There is some confusion regarding whether this was a zahin or kurin.’ Stel΄mashchuk mentioned putting Klymchak in charge of the “Buh” zahin initially in spring 1943, but in late summer, all participants mentioned operating in a kurin΄ under Lysyi or Klymchak. For background on the Lysyi zahin, see Volodymyr Koval΄chuk, “Taemnytsi Pol΄ovoi Sumky ‘Klym Savur’ (za materialamy SBU),” Mandrivets,’ no.5 (Sept./Oct. 2012), 62; Oleksandr Denyshchuk, ed. Borot΄ba UPA proty niemts΄kykh okupantiv. Khronolohiia podii. U 2–kh tomakh. T.1: Volyn’ (Rivne, 2008), 263– 64, 275, 291, 295.

65 HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.46.

66 On Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka in Polish literature, see Leon Popek and Andrzej Krzystof Kunert, Ostrowki: Wolynskie Ludobojstwo (Warsaw, 2011); Leon Popek, Wołyński testament. Władysław Filar, Wolyn 1939–1944 (Torun, 2003), 99–100; Motyka, Od rzezi wołyńskiej, 146–50; Grzegorz Rąkowski, Wołyń Przewodnik krajoznawczohistoryczny po Ukrainie Zachodniej (Pruszków, 2005), 55–56. For the relevant Siemazsko entries, see Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo, 492–96, 502–10, 513–52. On the exhumation in 1992, Roman Mądro, “Badania masowych grobów ludności polskiej zamordowanej przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich w roku 1943 w powiecie lubomelskim. Część II—Przebieg i wyniki ekshumacji w Ostrówkach,” Archiwum Medycyny Sądowej i Kryminologii, tom 43, no.1 (Kraków, 1993), 64–78.

67 For extensive discussion of these police forces see Chapter 3 in McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,” 183–257.

68 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.136.

69 It is unclear from the documentation whether Bubela lied about his participation. See HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 4, ark.187 and HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.41–2.

70 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.26.

71 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.161.

72 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 4, ark.187; tom 22, ark.26.

73 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.29.

74 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.136.

75 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.161–62.

76 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.137.

77 Popek, Ostrowki, 99,122–23,135–36.

78 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.168; tom 4, ark.137. 79. HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.137.

80 In a similar account, Oleksandr Povshuk recalled how the UPA held a banquet before attacking Polish villages in June 1943 in the Rivne area. TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, spr.344, ark.118.

81 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.137.

82 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.186.

83 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.30.

84 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.162.

85 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.138.

86 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.138. Note similar victim and perpetrator testimony on the flares recorded decades apart. Compare Rybachuk’s testimony from Soviet archives with that of Maria Pendel, a Polish survivor. HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.138 and Popek, Wołyński testament, 115–16 (translated in Piotrowski, Genocide, 89).

87 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.186.

88 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.167.

89 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.162, 169.

90 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.208.

91 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.30–31, 209–10.

92 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.138.

93 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.161.

94 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.208.

95 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.187.

96 Popek, Ostrowki, 120–21.

97 Popek, Wołyński testament, 155–56 (translated in Piotrowski, Genocide, 87). For other examples of victims recognizing their killers as neighbors see Popek, Ostrowki, 122–23.

98 Note matching perpetrator and victim testimony. Zeniuk recounted shootings into pits, see HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 5, ark.187. For witness testimonies on the same shootings, see the Kuwałek family (Janina and Czesław) in Piotrowski, Genocide, 83–86.

99 Popek, Ostrowki, 107.

100 Popek, Wołyński testament, 100–5 (translated in Piotrowski, Genocide, 86–87).

101 Popek, Ostrowki, 106, 117, 137; Piotrowski, Genocide, 86, 90; Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo, 506.

102 HDA SBU, spr.11315, t.1, ch.2, ark.16. Also cited in Filar, Przed akcją “Wisła,” 34; Piotrowski, Genocide, 180. 103. HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark. 45.

104 Polish testimony notes one Ukrainian leader on a white horse participating in killings. Popek, Ostrowki, 143.

105 This is the same Redesha who bragged about his other killings to Soviet authorities, so he was not protecting himself in his testimony. HDA SBU, f.13, spr.1020, ark.174.

106 A notable exception to this trend is Ihor Il΄iushyn’s balanced and well-researched publications.

107 For more discussion of Redesha, see McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,” 235–45.

108 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.163.

109 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 28, ark.175–76.

110 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.162.

111 It is possible to extend this discussion to the role of the OUN’s security service, the SB. In this operation, the SB and UPA worked together, despite the SB’s separate command structure. The Krymne SB included former policemen, as well as civilians.

112 Motyka has discussed a similar situation: in the summer of 1943 the UPA gathered men from the village of Janόwka for an action against Gaj, ordering them to bring axes and pitchforks. Grzegorz, Motyka, Cień Kłyma Sawura: Polsko-ukraiń ski konflikt pamięci (Gdańsk, 2013), 98 Google Scholar. For another example, see the testimony of Adam Demchuk, a Kostopil΄ raion resident, participating, perhaps under compulsion, in the Ivanova Dolyna action HDA SBU, f.13, spr.1020, ark.15–22. On the issue of forced recruitment by the OUN-UPA, see McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 258–313.

113 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 22, ark.163.

114 Omer, Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in Buczacz, 1939–1944,” East European Politics and Societies 25, no.3 (August 2011): 486–511 Google Scholar.

115 For recent works see Timothy, Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York, 2015), 152, 156, 165, 214 Google Scholar; Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010), 196, 485–20Google Scholar; Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 154–78Google Scholar; Jan T., Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar.

116 On the collaborator trope, Gross, Neighbors, 117, 156; Marci, Shore, “Conversing with Ghosts: Jedwabne, Zydokomuna, and Totalitarianism,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no.2 (June 2005): 352 Google Scholar; John, Connelly, Mark, Roseman, Andriy, Portnov, Michael, David-Fox, and Timothy, Snyder, “Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” Journal of Genocide Research 13, no.3 (September 2011): 350 Google Scholar; Timothy, Snyder, “What We Need to Know About the Holocaust,” New York Review of Books, September 30, 2010, 81 Google Scholar. For criticism of this trope see McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 250–51.

117 Snyder, “Causes,” 209. Snyder made the argument that the OUN-B infiltrated the Soviet police from 1939–1941 and thus gathered experience about specific methods and possibilities of mass violence. There is little evidence, however, that the OUN-B successfully infiltrated the Soviet police to any serious degree and it is unclear why OUN-B leaders needed Soviet experience to understand the potential efficacy of mass violence to achieve political goals.

118 McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 267–78. Stel΄mashchuk did serve briefly in an early militia in Zhytoymr in the summer of 1941, but there is no evidence of his participation in mass killings under the Germans. HDA SBU, spr.22085, ark.26–9.

119 Extensive archival research, including an analysis of over 1,000 policemen, shows hardly any personnel overlap. McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 97–115, 278–99.

120 The quote is from Rich’s analysis of the Ukrainian personnel in the L’viv militia of 1941–2. David Alan Rich, “Armed Ukrainians in L’viv: Ukrainian Militia, Ukrainian Police, 1941 to 1942,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 48, no. 3 (2014): 273. 121. Snyder, Black Earth, 214, 372.

122 The same reservations about the “double occupation” thesis are shared by Christopher Browning in his recent review of Black Earth. Christopher Browning, “A New Vision of the Holocaust,” New York Review of Books, October 8, 2015. This author’s larger study of this topic will be present in the forthcoming manuscript on violence during the Nazi occupation of Volhynia.

123 Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 160 Google Scholar.

124 Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 158–62. Elsewhere, I underscore the complex conditions under which men become involved in groups and organizations that kill. McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 300–13. On the same point, Stathis Kalyvas argues that the “absence of alternatives oft en produces collaboration irrespective of the level of popular satisfaction or lack thereof, which may be then wrongly interpreted as a reflection of legitimacy,” Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, 2006), 93.

125 McBride, “ ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears,’ ” 293–94Google Scholar.

126 HDA SBU, f.13, spr.1020, ark.173–74.

127 Popek, Ostrowki, 107, 123. For an overview of the coercion thesis, Ivan Ermakoff, Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications (Durham, 2008), 61–91.

128 HDA SBU, spr.67454, tom 4, ark.188.

129 For useful reviews of this literature see Evgeny, Finkel and Scott, Straus, “Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and Future Areas of Inquiry,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 7, no.1 (2012): 56–67 Google Scholar; Erica, Chenoweth and Adria, Lawrence, eds., Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict (Cambridge, Mass, 2010)Google Scholar; For examples of specific cases, Aliza, Luft, “Toward a Dynamic Theory of Action at the Micro-Level of Genocide: Killing, Desistance, and Saving in 1994 Rwanda,” Sociological Theory 33, no.2 (June 2015): 148–72Google Scholar; Jocelyn, Viterna, “Pulled, Pushed, and Persuaded: Explaining Women’s Mobilization into the Salvadoran Guerrilla Army,” American Journal of Sociology 112, no.1 (July 2006): 1–45 Google Scholar; Macartan, Humphreys and Jeremy, Weinstein, “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008): 436–55Google Scholar.