Institutes of Trauma Re-Production in a Borderland: Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania by Per Anders Rudling
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Essay Institutes of Trauma Re-production in a Borderland: Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania by Per Anders Rudling ver the past few decades, we have trend started in Western Europe. It was France that frst observed a new trend across Europe: criminalized denial of the Holocaust in 1990, a move that “memory laws,” aimed at regulating would be copied by many other countries across Europe. the writing of history. In several coun- However, in regard to institutionalization of memory tries these have been accompanied by gov- through government agencies, Poland and Lithuania ernmental organizations set up to shape, form and police were at the forefront. Poland established the precursor what is referred to as “national memory.” This phenom- of the current Institute of National Remembrance in enon is prevalent in those states of east-central Europe, 1991, Lithuania followed suit in 1992. Today, no less than where signifcant eforts have been vested in controlling fourteen countries have laws dedicated to the denial of the representation of Soviet and Nazi legacies. This essay the Holocaust, and the number of institutes of nation- focuses on one transnational space, the former eastern al memory continues to rise, in particular across the borderlands of interwar Poland, known as Kresy Wschod- post-socialist space.3 The impetus of using state institu- nie, a region exposed to some of the most brutal aspects tions to enforce a particular interpretation of history has of both National Socialist and communist rule. The area antecedents in the communist era, but the activities of is now part of four independent states: Belarus, Lithu- these institutes of “national memory” straddle a number ania, Poland and Ukraine. This essay aims at discussing of activities, including popularizing scholarship, gate- some of the problems associated with the legislated keeping of archives, and instrumentalization of history. “national” memory in those countries.1 It is intended as While they are often led by trained historians, these do a cursory overview2 of some of the institutions and some not always follow practices and standards of their profes- key issues, to be further explored in the hereafter follow- sion. For one, they operate on the behalf of governments, ing contributions from each of those four countries. using history to pursue ideological agendas. Their pre- ferred venues are not academic, peer reviewed journals, ontrary to what one may surmise, the phenomenon but what they refer to as “popular-scientifc” fora. They C of history legislation and setting up institutes of often do not adhere to standards of note apparatuses and national memory is a recent one, which, in its current accuracy, and do not, like academic historians, seek to form, can be dated to the early 1990s. Moreover, the be free of tendency.4 Various terms have been suggested 55 Essay for this curious phenomenon; they have been referred to term and its use were fraught with problems. In 1948, as as “memorians,”5 “dogmatic intellectuals,”6 “mnemonic the United Nations Convention on Genocide (UNCG) warriors,”7 “memory managers,”8 and “information war- was drafted, Stalin’s USSR and Chang Kai-Shek’s Repub- riors.”9 John-Paul Himka (b. 1949) has described politics lic of China were veto-wielding permanent members of history as a “disease” which afects all post-communist of the UN Security Council and thus had a decisive say counties.10 As this volume illustrates, the phenomenon is over the defnition of genocide. Unsurprisingly, Joseph wider, and not limited to post-communist Europe. Stalin “was among the most vocal opponents of extend- ing Convention protection to political groups.”15 In May, lthough the budgets, mandates and institutional 1948, Platon Morozov (1906-1986), the Soviet represent- A frameworks of the memory institutes difer, there ative in this process, argued that: “Crimes committed are similarities. As to the institutes that are the main for political motives are not connected to propaganda of focus of this study, they share the total- racial and national hatred and cannot itarian interpretive framework and the therefore be included in the category heavy stress on victimization. Klas- Not least the covered in the notion of genocide.”16 Gran Karlsson (b. 1955) argues that memory of While the Soviet bloc were not the post-Soviet history writing tends to the Holocaust, its only ones to oppose the inclusion of “place blame on a communist ideology political groups – they were accom- which no longer enjoys any signifcant representation and panied by South Africa and a number popular support, identifying Lenin management, has of Muslim countries17 — the 1948 and Stalin and their closest hench- been surrounded Convention, as one observer notes, men as culprits, while Soviet society by controversy “breathes politics.”18 While the UNCG at large remains innocent, oppressed, and generated covers “acts committed with intent to subjugated and totally subjected to the destroy, in whole or in part, a national, arbitrary rule.”11 significant inter- ethnical, racial or religious group, as national attention. such,”19 it specifcally and explicitly Use and Abuse of History omits political groups, thus excluding The literature distinguishes between mass killings by the Khmer Rouge use and abuse of history, though there is no consensus re- in the 1970s and the Soviet Union during the 1930s and garding the terms.12 In her essay in this volume, Florence 40s.20 Frhlig argues that one such distinction is that of recog- The bitter irony of Stalin playing a decisive role in the nition of wrong-doings and self-victimization. Memory, drafting of the Genocide Convention was not lost on hun- she notes, “remains captive to the symptom of obsession dreds of thousands of refugees who had fed his regime. and makes memory waver continually between use (rec- Émigré groups picked up the term, applying it defantly ognition of the victims) and abuse (victim status).” – and generously – against the Soviets.21 From the 1940s onwards, Lithuanian émigrés presented a tally of over Genocide and Memory 700,000 genocide victims in Lithuania.22 In 1950, geno- Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine not only share a common cide allegations were picked up by Mikola Abramchyk history, but also display similarities in terms of govern- (1903-1970), leader of the émigré Rada of the Belarusian mental memory management. Not least the memory of People’s Republic, who accused the Kremlin of “genocide the Holocaust, its representation and management, has of my nation.”23 Genocide claims similarly played a cen- been surrounded by controversy and generated signif- tral role in the memory culture of the Galician Ukrain- icant international attention.13 A common trope in the ian émigrés from the 1940s, though, in the immediate memory discourse in all three states is the generous postwar years, the focus was on the NKVD execution site application of the term “genocide,” and the centrality in Vinnytsia, massacres of inmates in the NKVD prisons it occupies in their memory discourses. The term itself in West Ukraine in 1941, and post-war deportations from is linked to the eastern borderlands. Raphael Lemkin West Ukraine.24 Some collaborated in multi-nationalist (1900–1959) and his main critic, Hersch Lauterpacht networks, the most prominent being the anti-Bolshevik (1897–1960) were both educated at the university in the Bloc of Nations (ABN), bringing together the successors city today known as L’viv.14 From the very beginning, the of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Lithu- 56 Essay anian Activist Front, and the Ustasha, who afrmed each communities, which, following the establishment of the other’s genocide claims in their publications.25 Ofce for Special Investigation (OSI) in the 1980s, jointly rejected allegations of war criminality.35 emkin did not regard the Ukrainian famine of L 1932–33 to be genocide in 1948 when he developed Holodomor his concepts for the genocide convention. Rather, this Similar to the case of the Armenian diaspora, the Galician came later, as the impoverished lawyer increasingly Ukrainian diaspora elevated the 1932-1933 famine to the sustained himself by speaking on behalf of various groups centerpiece of its modern history for the semicentennial of refugees and expellees. Over the 1950s he infated anniversary. In 1983, the frst “famine-genocide” memo- his concept of genocide to include German policy in rial was erected, in the city of Edmonton in Canada.36 occupied Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine, and Slovenia, It was to be followed by several others in Winnipeg, and all communist crimes, including the deportations of Windsor, and other cities. From the mid-1980s, terms Lithuanians, Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaign, and like “Ukrainian Holocaust,” “the Ukrainian genocide,” the 1956 Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising.26 and “famine-genocide” were increasingly replaced by the Lemkin’s approach does not lack critics; historian Anton neologism Holodomor and coupled with the fgure seven Weiss-Wendt (b, 1973) points at one concern associated million (or higher).37 The term is the preferred nomen- with the use of an ever-expanding defnition of genocide: clature of those who regard the famine as deliberate “when everything is genocide, nothing is genocide.”27 On genocide, aimed at exterminating the Ukrainian nation, his part, Lauterpacht was concerned that the UNCG’s an interpretation which occupies a central position in focus on groups would undermine the protection of the memory culture of the Ukrainian