A democratic socialist genocide?

Tadeusz Piotrowski is a Polish-American professor based in New Hampshire. His book "Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn" deals with a little known campaign of ruthless ethnic cleansing during World War II in Volhynia, an area in the western part of the Ukraine.

During the interwar years, Volhynia had been controlled by Poland. During the war, control over the area shifted several times between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was active in Volhynia. The UPA was the armed wing of the OUN-B, a fascist and terrorist organization led by the notorious Stepan Bandera. The OUN-B had a record of collaboration with Nazi Germany, but also had several fall outs with the Germans. Nominally, the UPA was an independent force, fighting both the Nazis and the Soviets. In reality, they concentrated their attacks on the Communists, while attempting to win Nazi support.

Professor Piotrowski documents that the UPA had other interests as well. They waged a ruthless war of extermination against Polish villages in Volhynia. By killing men, women and children of Polish nationality and burning down their settlements, the UPA hoped to create an ethnically pure Ukrainian region. Unsurprisingly, they also attacked Jews. Interestingly, the UPA systematically terrorized the Ukrainian population as well, more or less forcing the local peasants to enlist in the UPA on pain of death. Naturally, they also killed Ukrainians who were brave enough to aid the Poles, not to mention Ukrainians suspected of Communist sympathies. Finally, UPA also forced two competing nationalist groups, OUN-M and another "UPA", to join their forces. The leader of the other "UPA", Taras Bulba, complained that the UPA spend more time attacking Polish civilians than waging a war against Communists and Nazis!

"Genocide and rescue in Wolyn" contains both eye witness accounts of the massacres, county by county, a general historical overview of the OUN-B and the UPA, and excerpts from various contemporary documents. In some documents, the UPA blames the Poles for collaboration with the Nazis. Piotrowski admits that thousands of Poles in Volhynia did join the Nazi-controlled local police forces, but only after the *Ukrainian* collaborators had quit and joined the UPA! Besides, it was the OUN-B and the UPA which were guilty of most of the Nazi collaboration. Also, the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Poles of Volhynia started long before the Nazi decision to recruit Poles, and had always been a stated aim of the OUN, a predecessor to the OUN-B.

I admit that this book might strike the general reader as very obscure, and will perhaps mostly interest advanced students of Polish or Ukrainian history. (The anti-Jewish activities of the UPA are mentioned mostly in passing.) My interest in this subject is due to the fact that the UPA attempted to pass themselves off as "democratic socialists" (!). Some left-wing groups were fooled by these pretences after the war, including the Fourth International and the supporters of Max Schachtman in the United States. The primary conduit seems to have been one Ivan Majstrenko, a refugee from the Soviet Union who formed a small left-wing group on arrival in the United States. I believe it was called the UPRP. Still during the 1990's, some left-wing magazines published glowing accounts of the "democratic socialist" UPA which fought both Hitler and Stalin. This is quite absurd, indeed, even perverse. Piotrowski's book isn't the first scholarly exposure of the UPA. Unfortunately, many left-wingers don't want to be weaned from their little myths.

Perhaps "Genocide and rescue in Wolyn", written by a survivor of the terrible carnage in Western Ukraine, can open the eyes of some people.