UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Struggling for peace : understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in southeast Poland (1943-2007) Lehmann, R.N.M. Publication date 2009 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Lehmann, R. N. M. (2009). Struggling for peace : understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in southeast Poland (1943-2007). General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:29 Sep 2021 STRUGGLING FOR PEACE Understanding Polish-Ukrainian Coexistence in Southeast Poland 1943-2007 Rosa Lehmann Struggling for peace Understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in southeast Poland 1943-2007 Doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam ISBN/EAN 978-90-9024178-4 Copyright © 2009, Rosa Lehmann Cover design: Rosa Lehmann and David Niemeijer Photos and illustrations: Rosa Lehmann and David Niemeijer All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. This Ph.D. thesis was financially supported by the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. Struggling for peace Understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in southeast Poland (1943-2007) ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op donderdag 14 mei 2009, te 10:00 uur door Rosa Natasja Marja Lehmann Geboren te Amsterdam Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. O.D. van den Muijzenberg Co-promotores: Prof. dr. P. Romijn Prof. dr. C.J.J. Vermeulen Overige leden: Prof. dr. H. Flap Dr. A.W.M. Gerrits Prof. dr. C.M. Hann Prof. dr. J. Verrips Dr. A.A. Ziba Faculteit der Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen Table of Contents Tables and Maps v Preface vii 1 Introduction: Understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence 1 2 On the escalation of ethnic violence: Perspectives on the Polish-Ukrainian conflict (1939-1944) 11 Introduction 11 The survival instinct of population groups: the Polish-Ukrainian conflict 1939- 1944 12 The individual will to survive: the vicissitudes of a Polish partisan 1939-1946 19 Initiation into political violence: the German enemy 20 Escalation of political violence: the Ukrainian enemy 21 Continuation of political violence: the invincible opponent 23 Conclusions 26 3 From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action: Exploring Poland’s struggle with its Ukrainian minority (1944-1989) 31 Introduction 31 Trials and tribulations: ‘Polish ways’ of solving the ‘Ukrainian Problem’ 33 Brother’s keeper: the Party’s struggle against nationalism and discrimination 42 Two sides, one coin: revisiting ethnic cleansing and affirmative action 48 Conclusions 52 4 Social(ist) engineering: Taming the devils of the Polish Bieszczady 55 Introduction 55 Patterns of high-modernist planning: the socialization of the countryside 58 Blemishes on high-modernist planning: the failing Polish state 63 Untamed by nature: disputed hegemony in a pioneer society 68 The pioneering experience: assessments of a socialist engineering project 72 Conclusions 76 ii Struggling for peace 5 State, church and local response: The fall and rise of a Greek Catholic parish in socialist Poland 79 Introduction 79 A church, a people and a community under siege 80 Local responses: opposition and accommodation 84 A village conflict: the struggle between two religious communities 88 From defeat to victory: the return to power of the Greek Catholic church 91 Conclusions 94 6 Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage: The case of the Lemkos in Poland 97 Introduction 97 Introducing the Lemkos 98 The infra-structural conditions: the implications of the policy of ethnic cleansing 101 The condition of the socialist economy of shortage: contests over representativeness 105 Conclusions: the socialist heritage and the Lemko emancipation movement 108 7 The strength of diversity: A micro-history of ethnic conflict and coexistence in rural southeast Poland 111 Introduction 111 Part 1. The ethnographic present: cross-cutting cleavages and weak ties 113 The argument 113 Socio-economic stratification 115 Political diversity 117 Cultural and religious heterogeneity 118 The Komacza case: a cross-cutting system of alliance 119 Part 2. A short history of conflict: from Polish-Ukrainian civil war to coexistence 121 The armed Polish-Ukrainian conflict in Komacza 121 From fraternity to dissension: Ukrainian discord in Komacza 126 From violent to peaceful relations: Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in Komacza 129 Contents iii Pacification at work: the strength of diversity 133 Conclusions 139 8 Conclusions: Explaining Polish-Ukrainian coexistence 143 Macro level contrasts: from a weak to a strong Polish state 144 Macro level transitions: the strength of a homogenous nation-state 148 Micro level transitions: the strength of diversity 152 Conclusions: the dynamics of peaceful coexistence 155 Bibliography 163 Summary 175 Samenvatting 181 Streszczenie 187 Tables and Maps Tables Table 3.1 Criminal and politically inspired offences committed immediately before, during, and after Operation Vistula in the Rzeszów province 37 Table 4.1 Depopulation in the research area in southeast Poland 1921-1950 59 Table 4.2 Depopulation and repopulation in the Komacza rural district 1921-1988 60 Maps Map 2.1 Poland 1923-1944 15 Map 3.1 Population movements, Poland 1944-1952 35 Map 4.1 Location of the research area 56 Map 6.1 Southeast Poland 99 Map 7.1 Repopulated, relocated, and destroyed villages in the current Komacza rural district 124 Preface Obrigkeiten, Behörden, übernatürliche Mächte mischen sich von Oben in alles ein, kommandieren herum, machen, was sie wollen, und unten der Mensch ist Machtlos. Janosch (1972: 5) Die Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken, nicht unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Umständen. Karl Marx (1852: 21) My father left Germany at the age of 19 to escape the grim postwar German society, and, not insignificant, military service. He married my mother, a Dutch girl from a small provincial town. Several years later my father applied for Dutch citizenship and became a member of the Dutch Communist Party (CPN). As communists, our parents introduced me and my brother to the wonderful tales of world revolutions and to the ‘real existing’ socialism in Eastern Europe. The iron curtain was still up and strong when my parents took us to visit the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union during summer vacations in the early 1980s. Even though I did not like what I saw, it was during these travels that my interest was raised in what was then called the ‘Second World’. As a teenager, my attention was drawn to the above quoted illustrious Germans, the novelist Janosch and the political philosopher Karl Marx. The works of these authors touch on one of the major paradoxes of human existence: the confinement of people to their historical, social, and economic circumstances as well as their ability to manipulate fate and change their circumstances. Or, to quote Janosch (1972: 5) again, “wie oft ist es nicht so, daß einer kommt, was macht, und schon fällt alles ganz anders aus.” In other words, base and superstructure weigh heavily on people but it is these same people who, in the final instance, may make a difference. This insight has been one of the major motivations behind the present work. Marx’s introduction to historical materialism in “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” and Janosch’s sensitive portrayal of humankind in “Cholonek, oder der lieber Gott aus Lehm” did not make me a Marxist. However, their works did lay the basis for my later interest in anthropology. Marx’s conclusion that “it is not the viii Struggling for peace consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness” provided one explanation as to why people think and act the way they do (Marx (1859) quoted in Bottomore and Rubel 1963: 67). In a similar way, Janosch’s portrayal of life in a nineteenth-century Upper Silesian small town beautifully revealed how people’s histories profoundly affect their feelings, expectations, rationalizations, and behavior. Janosch’s work links up with this study in still other ways. Born in 1931 in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia, Janosch wrote about his own childhood experiences: an alcoholic and abusive father, the rise of Nazism, the outbreak of the war, and the family’s escape from Hindenburg, which was turned into the Polish Zabrze after the war’s end. Janosch was one of millions of Germans who left Soviet occupied Poland in the years following the end of the Second World War. During my first anthropological fieldwork in Poland in 1992, I was confronted with the massive impact of wartime upheaval in Poland’s southeastern regions.