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Struggling for peace : understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in southeast (1943-2007)

Lehmann, R.N.M.

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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 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 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 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 . The iron curtain was still up and strong when my parents took us to visit the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the 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. Most of my Polish and Ukrainian informants came from families who had severely been affected by wartime destruction and by the voluntary and involuntary wartime and postwar population transfers. This study emanates from this rather disturbing finding. It is to the millions of uprooted people in postwar Central and Eastern Europe that I dedicate this book. When I considered starting a PhD study on Polish-Ukrainian coexistence, Ot van den Muijzenberg and Hans Vermeulen of the University of Amsterdam, my professors and mentors for many years, supported my project and agreed to supervise it. The research project got a head start when I received a research grant from the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research in 1995. I am much obliged to both staff and students of the ASSR for facilitating my research activities and for offering me a fertile academic environment during those first years. For their support and encouragement I would like to thank in particular Anton Blok, Jeremy Boissevain, José Komen, Anna Ostrowska, Hans Sonneveld, Bonno Thoden van Velzen and Jojada Verrips. The end of the grant term in 1999 marked the beginning of a new phase. I started working as a freelance researcher and stopped working on my PhD project for several years. In 2006 the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) and the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) offered me an affiliation. I thank Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Wichert ten Have, Hans Blom and Marjan Schwegman, former and present directors of respectively the CHGS and NIOD, for their kind hospitality and for making available to me the facilities of their institutions. The meetings and discussions with my colleagues from the CHGS and NIOD, in particular with Karel Berkhoff, Hans Blom, Peter Romijn and Ton Zwaan, were a challenging and continuing source of inspiration. There are many people and institutions, which were very helpful during the various stages of my fieldwork. Thanks are due to Professor Zdzisaw Mach and Professor Hieronim Kubiak of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków for offering university facilities Preface ix and for taking up the task as mentors. My many meetings with scholars in the field of Ukrainian and Eastern European studies in and outside of Poland have been of invaluable assistance. In particular I would like to thank Olena Du -Fajfer, André Gerrits, Professor Chris Hann, Bogdan Horbal, Ewa Michna, Susyn Mihalasky, Professor Paul Robert Magocsi and Jacek Nowak for their help and advice. Special thanks go out to Andrzej Zi ba for his tireless efforts to keep me informed and updated, for introducing me to numerous scholars and institutions, and for his supportive criticism of my work in progress. Grzegorz Bryda, Bartosz Gomo ka, Jaros aw Kady o, Elbieta Kijowska and Ewa Klekot helped me out during various stages of fieldwork. I thank them for their enthusiast assistance and for their help in refining my Polish and getting to know my way around in the libraries and archives in Poland. Krystyna Bryda invited me in her home during a course; I thank her for her generous hospitality and friendship. I wish to express my gratitude to Anna Ostrowska, Anna Orla-Bukowska, Dorota and Piotr Zabrzycki, Agnieszka and Grzegorz Bryda for their warm friendship, support and encouragement along the way. They made my stays in Poland much more pleasant and continue to provide a living link with what had become, at least for a while, my second homeland. This thesis also owes its existence to those institutions that kindly granted me access to their files: the Central Archives of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych) in , the local branches of the Central State Archive (Archiwum Pastwowe) in and Przemyl, the Archive of the Ministry of Interior and Administration (Archiwum MSWiA) in Warsaw, the Central Bureau of Statistics (GUS) in Krosno and Warsaw, the National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa) in Warsaw. Thanks to the helpful staff that made research so much easier. Thanks also to Eugeniusz Misi o, director of the Ukrainian Archive Foundation, who gave me a crash course on how to use archives (and how to investigate the Polish-Ukrainian relationship), to Stanis aw St pie, director of the South-Eastern Research Institute, who kindly invited me to visit his institute on several occasions, to Jerzy Motylewicz, who helped me retrieve valuable documents from the State Archive of Ukraine in Lwów, and to Fr Dean Adam Dubec, Archbishop of the Orthodox Przemyl- Nowos decki diocese, who generously gave me access to his church archive. I am most obliged to the Komacza rural district authorities, in particular Barbara Warcho and Stanis aw Bielawka, for giving me all the support I needed during my visits to Komacza. I am especially indebted to Boena Fija kowska, who as district secretary helped me out in all sorts of bureaucratic matters. Despite my regular visits to her office she never lost her patience and always helped me out efficiently and professionally. This is also the place to thank Tadeusz Baj, Piotr Skocki and Ewa Domaska-Ciukaj, for giving me their time, expertise and support during the fieldwork. x Struggling for peace

This book would not have been possible without the hospitality and generosity of all those people, who spent so many hours of their time with me recounting their (life) stories. I owe a very special thanks to them. Access to the villagers was made easier thanks to the kind hospitality of the local parish priests. I acknowledge Fr Pipka, Fr Bogdan Kiszko, the late Fr Dec, Fr Szumigraj, and Fr Martyniuk for their generous help and support. Wadysaw Guycz became my key informant and friend. He passed on to me his knowledge and passion for local history, spent hours discussing my many questions, and helped building a village genealogy. For this I am most thankful. If not for my hosts, Józef and Irena Wocza ski, my field research would have been far less pleasant and successful. They not only helped me getting access to the village community and introduced me to their extended family and friends, they also offered me a true home. There are no words to thank them enough for the support and love they gave me. My heartfelt thanks go out to Tomek and Justyna, my new brother and sister, to Marysia, Sawka, Darka, Janek, Andrzej and Mariusz. Their love, support and encouragement have been invaluable to me. I am much indebted to family and friends for countless instances of help, and to all those who have contributed in many ways to the completion of this book. In particular I would like to thank my parents, who have instilled in me a fascination for Europe’s brutal and revolutionary history. I should like to thank Anton Blok, Chris Hann, Tom Inglis, Longina Jakubowska, Zdzislaw Mach, Ot van den Muijzenberg, David Niemeijer, Rudo Niemeijer, Peter Romijn, Hans Vermeulen, Andrzej Ziba, Ton Zwaan, and the anonymous journal referees for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the chapters. I am grateful to Peter Mason for the English translation of Chapter 2 and to Elwira Skpska for the Polish translation of the Summary. Remaining mistakes are, of course, entirely my own. Most heartfelt thanks go to my supervisors Ot van den Muijzenberg and Hans Vermeulen for their unfailing loyalty, patience and understanding, for their sensitivity in not pressing or constraining me but instead allowing me to work at my own pace and in my own way. Without their personal commitment and helpful guidance I would never have managed to come through with this project. In a later phase, Peter Romijn joined as a supervisor. Our monthly meetings and discussions helped me back on track. I thank him for his indispensable enthusiasm, feedback and encouragement all along the way. My greatest debt goes to David—my husband, teacher, critic and friend—and to our daughters Femi and Bente. I thank David for his love, confidence and support, which enabled me to complete my research. Femi was always there to ask whether I finished my book yet, but was generously patient when I explained her that time had not yet come. Bente always cheered me up, especially at times when I could not see how this study could ever be finished. I thank them for their love, patience and constant encouragement. Most of all, they keep reminding me of what is important in life.

1 Introduction Understanding Polish-Ukrainian coexistence

To be sure, measured against the universe of possible instances, actual instances of ethnic and nationalist violence remain rare […] Ethnic violence warrants our attention because it is appalling, not because it is ubiquitous. Rogers Brubaker and David Laitin (1998: 424)

This book grew out of my interest in the question how populations with a troubled past coexist on a day-to-day basis, in peacetime, in wartime, and in the aftermath of war. I began my intellectual journey by investigating Polish-Jewish relations in contemporary Poland. My choice of subject was no coincidence. I was still a teenager when I watched the documentary Shoah on Dutch television. For me, and the people watching with me, Claude Lanzman’s documentary established a permanent association between Poland and the Final Solution of European Jewry by Nazi Germany: concentration camps, memorial sites, rescue and betrayal, peasant backwardness, sorrow, resentment. By the early 1990s, following the fall of communism in Poland, intellectuals and academic scholars in and outside of Poland had just begun to explore the ‘blank spots’ of Poland’s national history (cf. Irwin-Zarecka 1989; Polonsky 1990; Bauman 1992; Kersten 1992). This quest inevitably begins with Polish anti-Semitism and the Shoah. The widespread view that Polish-Jewish relations are irredeemably poisoned by anti-Semitism also impacted my own preconceptions. In 1992, when I went to Poland to carry out my research, I was fully prepared to meet with resistance and hostility on the part of my Polish informants. However, the research findings did not meet my own expectations. During the regular visits I paid to a large number of peasant households in Jaliska, a former town, now village, in southeast Poland, my peasant informants were more than willing to tell stories about their former Jewish neighbors, ‘their Jews’ as they would call them. Even if there was hatred and hostility between the Polish and Jewish communities in the village, it was other qualities that prevailed in the relationship: affection, commitment, admiration, surprise about ‘weird’ Jewish customs and observances, and dismay about the sudden and violent death of their one-time Jewish neighbors. These findings inspired me to focus on 2 Struggling for peace patterns of reciprocity and co-operation between the Polish and Jewish communities rather than on conflict. Detailed analysis of archival materials as well as interviews with Poles living in the research village and Jewish survivors born in the village but living elsewhere today, revealed a pattern of Polish-Jewish interdependence that gave rise to a far more complex picture than is generally assumed (Lehmann 2001, 2004). The focus on peaceful coexistence set me on a track that gained increased significance with the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The outbursts of massive ethnic violence in the Yugoslav successor states surprised and worried many contemporary observers, as did other upsurges of ethnic nationalism and conflict in countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The fall of communism resulted in violent persecutions against the Turkish and Albanian minorities in respectively Bulgaria and Macedonia in the early 1990s (Koinova 2001). The new Russian Federation began a series of wars against secessionist Russian republics, of which the Chechen wars (1991-96; 1997-99) were the most violent and devastating (Tishkov 2004). In 1990, short-lived, but violent clashes occurred between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians in the Romanian city of Târgu Mure (Constantin et al. 2005). These and other conflicts led the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1992: 8) to conclude that “because we live in an era where all other human relations are in crisis, or at least somewhere on a journey towards unknown and uncertain destinations, xenophobia looks like becoming the mass ideology of the 20th century fin de siècle.” In a similar vein, UN ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1993: 53-4) prophesized a new Pandemonium: “There is a further fact attendant upon the end of the age of totalitarianism, which is the persistence of ethnicity […] This surely is where we must anticipate the violent clashes of communities and states in the years ahead.” Amidst these prophecies of ethnic violence Poland remained an oasis of peace. Unlike some of my Dutch colleagues (cf. van de Port 1995; Duijzings 1999), I was able to carry out my research without physical danger. What is more, I witnessed efforts to critically explore the Polish-Jewish past and repair Polish-Jewish relations. It was only with hindsight that I discovered how relatively peacefully the emancipation of another ethnic group gained ground during the 1990s. I got acquainted with Poland’s Lemko minority during my fieldwork in Jaliska and during fieldtrips organized by the ethnographic department of the Kraków based Jagiellonian University. At the time, the blossoming of a Lemko identity and culture was articulated on attractively peaceful terms, involving group members as well as non-group members, scholars as well as intellectuals, specialists in Poland as well as outside of Poland (cf. Magocsi 1990; Best 1992; Dziewierski et al. 1992; Chomiak 1995; Czajkowski 1995; Michna 1995b; Sitka 1996; Hann 1997). At another level, the Polish-Ukrainian national dialogue proceeded peacefully too. Besides Poland’s (including the Lemkos, who since World War II officially belonged to Poland’s Ukrainian minority), the dialogue also involved the populations of the Ukrainian Soviet Introduction 3

Republic. The Polish-Ukrainian dialogue gained urgency with the establishment of the independent Ukrainian Republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Poland became its most enthusiast defender (Snyder 2003; Grünberg and Sprengel 2005). When I began my research in 1997 I was determined to explore the vicissitudes of a troubled Polish-Ukrainian relationship. There were plenty potential causes of ethnic and national conflict between the newly established democratic Poland and Ukraine: frontiers without historical legitimacy; new and fragile democratic rule; apprehensive political elites; memories of civil war and ethnic cleansing from the first half of the 20th century (Berdychowska 1992; Snyder 2003). But whereas wartime conflicts and ancient rivalries took centre stage in Yugoslav politics in the 1990s, in Poland the painful and controversial events in Polish-Ukrainian history were tackled in an open public debate that not just involved politicians or interest groups; it also included the academia, press, and non- governmental organizations (cf. Stpie 1990-2000; Ziba 1991a, 1991b; Misio 1993; Stegner 1997; Snyder 1999; O rodek KARTA 2001; Stegner 2002; Grünberg and Sprengel 2005). The fact that diverse Polish and Ukrainian viewpoints in Poland—involving, among others, questions of national belonging, claims to lost properties (such as houses, forests and land), apologies for wrongs done in the past—were resolved by compromise rather than violent conflict prompted me to ask the negative question: Why did Poles and not behave like Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in former Yugoslavia? Why is it that after the regime change in 1990 massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland, despite a history of ethnic hostility and violence? The above research question, I found out later, was also at the heart of two other studies: one by the anthropologist Frederic Bailey (1996) and one by the historian Timothy Snyder (2003). The Yugoslav catastrophe led Bailey back to his fieldnotes from his research in Bisipara, a village community in eastern India that he had studied in the 1950s. Even though Bailey did not find an answer to the question why ethnic strife might or might not get out of hand (there were too many variables involved to make comparisons useful), he did get a clearer picture of the people he had been studying forty years before. The argument advanced by Bailey about the people from Bisipara is that certain taken-for- granted ways of coping with everyday life, the habit of calculating material payoffs and, above all, a wariness of excess tended to limit the space available for the extremes of ethnic hatred. Snyder’s study of centuries of modern nation-building in the region covering present-day Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Byelorussia attempts to explain how modern nations arise, but also, and more particularly, why ethnic cleansing takes place and how nation-states make peace. At the heart of his study lies the paradox that, where Yugoslavia disintegrated and plunged into armed conflict in the 1990s, Poland pursued political security by means of peace negotiations and a ‘return to Europe’. Snyder’s thesis is that Poland’s foreign policy (especially vis-à-vis its eastern neighbors) was crucial in the 4 Struggling for peace process of building a stable geopolitical order in Northeastern Europe in the early post- communist era. And yet, concern about the fate of post-Cold War Europe inspired most scholars to focus not on peace, but on the alarming upsurge of ethnic and national strife. Hobsbawm (1992: 7) again: “All are comprehensible as symptoms of social disorientation, of the fraying, and sometimes the snapping of the threads, of what used to be the network that bound people together in society […] Belonging together, preferably in groupings with visible badges of membership and recognition signs, is more important than ever in societies in which everything combines to destroy what binds humans together into communities.” In an effort to assess the relevance of Hobsbawn’s argument for the post- Soviet Bloc, the anthropologist Katherine Verdery (1992: 8) confirms that social disorientation has a broad and fertile ground in Eastern Europe. The rise of, what she calls, ‘ethno-nationalism’ undoubtedly is one of its results. However, drawing on her fieldwork in Romania, Verdery maintains that East European ethno-nationalism, besides social disorientation, has numerous other causes, mainly relating to the history of the region’s nationalisms and to the nature of communist party rule. Verdery fits into a tradition of anthropologists who have attempted to bring together ethnicity, nationalism and projects of state-making (cf. Fox 1985; Williams 1989; Cole and Wolf 1999). The major question that is being asked by her and by others is when and why ‘difference’ becomes politically relevant. Since this question is directly linked to the question when and why ‘difference’ is of lesser political importance, Verdery’s analysis is very relevant for the case at hand. Verdery (1994) sees state formation as the most salient socio-political context in which ethnicity is produced. By instituting homogeneity as normative, state building gives socio-political significance to the fact of difference: “It groups them as differences of ethnicity, gender, locality, class, sexuality and race, each of these defined as particular kinds of difference with respect to the state’s homogenizing project” (Verdery 1994: 46). A vital means for generating the homogenization of culture is national ideology, which establishes what should be the homogenous culture against which all others will be rendered “visible-as-different” (Verdery 1994: 46-7). Verdery proposes a comprehensive agenda for the study of ethnicity in relation to nationalism: to investigate both the historical processes that have produced particular political forms (‘nation-states’) and also the kinds of internal homogenization that these nation-states have sought to realize in their different contexts (Verdery 1994: 48). Verdery fits in yet another tradition of anthropologists, namely in that of those who have tried to make sense of social trends, including (but not exclusively) the upsurge of ethno-national conflict, in communist and post-communist societies. For the sake of argument (and with due respect for the subtleties of the variety of perspectives advanced by a great variety of scholars in this field) I will here distinguish between just two Introduction 5 perspectives: (1) those who lay emphasis on the discontinuities in social relationships as a result of the socialist transformation (cf. Dragadze 1993; Verdery 1993); (2) those who stress the continuities in social relationships in spite of the socialist transformation (cf. Wedel 1992; Potter 1993; Hann 1996). It should be noted that both perspectives are, among others, a response to a third perspective that finds little adherence among anthropologists but that is advocated by a large public of observers of the former Eastern Bloc: those who deny any significant influence of the socialist transformation and assume the primordial character of ethnic and national sentiments. Exponents of the latter perspective take the view that such sentiments had been held in ‘cold storage’ or had been placed under a ‘heavy lid’ for four decades—once the thaw set in and the lid was removed suppressed conflicts began seething to the surface. This viewpoint is exemplified by the following excerpt from an essay by a Polish political scientist: “Neither World War I, World War II nor the Cold War had successfully driven the proverbial ‘wooden stake’ through the ‘heart’ of ancient hatreds and feelings of mutual distrust. Such emotions simply remained dormant and continued to simmer, waiting for the day when they could again bubble to the surface” (Bednarczyk 1995: 45). The above perspectives require different levels of investigation. Emphasizing the “peculiarities of socialism”, Verdery (1993: 172) advocates a “macro-systematic” approach—as opposed to the “interactional, the psychological, or the micro-level” approach—for the study of socialist societies. In a similar way, Verdery (1994: 48) urges her colleagues to “become political scientists and historical sociologists” to analyze the nature of nation-states “with a sophistication which anthropology has not really cultivated”. In her view perhaps the work by the earlier mentioned historian Snyder (2003) would set a fine example. Emphasis upon the survival of traditional cultural forms under socialism, on the other hand, presupposes micro level investigations, as these may illustrate the significant impact of culture upon the various forms that socialism has taken locally. Chris Hann (1993b) is right to state that the importance of micro-scale ethnographic work should not be underestimated. The qualitative evidence and extended case studies, he argues, add to accounts of socialism that can usefully complement the type of understanding achieved in other disciplines. “At its best,” writes Hann (1993b: 9), “the anthropological approach can offer a fully satisfying account of ‘how the system really works’, the pays réel as opposed to the pays légal, including the influence of specific cultural traditions upon its operation.” In other words, macro and micro level approaches provide complementary insights; a full understanding can only be acquired by combining these two approaches. So far I have said little about the vast amount of conflict literature that has been produced following the outbreak of massive ethnic violence in post Cold War Europe. Theories on violent ethnic conflict can be of explanatory value with respect to both 6 Struggling for peace occurrences and non-occurrences of ethnic violence. This is indeed the direction that is taken by a number of conflict theorists (cf. Fearon and Laitin 1996; Brubaker and Laitin 1998; Fearon 1998; Laitin 1998; Kolstø 1999, 2002). Pål Kolstø (2002), for instance, has attempted to explain both the presence and absence of violent conflict in a number of Post- Soviet successor states by employing and testing a wide range of theories on ethnic conflict. The methodological challenge of such comparative analysis is real, for theories on ethnic conflict, as a rule, involve many overlapping variables (legacy of socialist Party rule, dissolution of totalitarian regimes, ethnic dividing lines, discrimination, on-the- ground resentment and fear, weak democracies, myths of eternal conflicts) that may contribute to contradictory outcomes: protracted peace or civil war. Going through the heap of possible explanations, Kolstø (2002) does find predictable patterns: theories based on an assessment of the resources and opportunities available to various groups seem to provide better explanations for the absence or presence of ethnic strife, while theories that focus on grievances and relative discrimination are of much less explanatory value. Scholars in this conflict theoretical tradition have pointed at two important issues. First, they warn for an overestimation of the salience of ethnic and nationalist violence in the post Cold War world. Theories on ethnic conflict erroneously lead one to believe that violent, irreconcilable conflicts would emerge in areas that until now have been quite tranquil. That being the case, they suggest that peaceful coexistence (variably called “ethnic”, “interethnic” or “social” peace), rather than violent outbursts, should be considered the social norm (cf. Fearon and Laitin 1996; Brubaker and Laitin 1998; Kolstø 2002). Second, they insist that interactions in the ethnopolitical field by definition are highly conflictual. Ethnic peace should therefore not be defined as the absence of ethnic conflict, but as the absence of violent ethnic conflict. Seen from this perspective, violent and non-violent conflicts are conflicts of a radically different type. The assumption held by this tradition of scholars is that as long as the threshold that leads to killing has not been crossed, the risk of further escalation remains much smaller. “By contrast, where it has been crossed,” writes Kolstø (2002: 5), “an entirely different game of ethnopolitics is on the board”. In a similar vain, Brubaker and Laitin (1998: 426) argue that violence “is not a quantitative degree of conflict, but a qualitative form of conflict, with its own dynamics”. Motivated by the above line of reasoning, my definition of peace in this study is the absence of violent conflict. How, then, can a violent conflict be distinguished from a nonviolent conflict? And, for that matter, when is a conflict ‘ethnic’? The fact that “heterogeneous phenomena” are “too casually” lumped together as ethnic violence points at the quite problematic nature of these distinctions (Brubaker and Laitin 1998: 423). Firstly, violence can take many forms (structural, systematic, incidental, random) and can be different in scale (ranging from a single abuse or physical injury to civil wars claiming thousands of deaths). Secondly, a conflict may be interpreted or presented as ethnic even Introduction 7 when it is not, or may be transformed into an ethnic issue even when originally the conflict had no ethnic significance. If we argue, as Brubaker and Laitin (1998) do, that violence is not a degree of conflict but a form of conflict, than the scale of violence is irrelevant. It also excludes cases of structural violence (in contrast to overt physical violence) where, according to Marxist theory, the mere threat of force by a dominant group suffices to suppress any resistance. In my definition, therefore, a conflict is violent when it leads to the physical abuse, injury or death of at least one person. A conflict is violent and ethnic when violence is “perpetrated across ethnic lines, in which at least one party is not a state (or a representative of a state), and in which the putative ethnic difference is coded—by perpetrators, targets, influential third parties, or analysts—as having been integral rather than incidental to the violence” (Brubaker and Laitin 1998: 428). Even when insights from the conflict literature can be useful, I should stress that my approach to the problem of peace is different from that pursued by conflict theorists: whereas their focus is on the (non-)production of violence, my focus is on the production and consolidation of peace. Put differently, my thesis is that peace, like violence, has a rhythm, dynamic and logic of its own. This approach of peace-as-the-product-of-a-process has a clear analogy with the approach of war in a recent study by the political scientist Stathis Kalyvas. In The logic of violence in civil wars, Kalyvas (2006: 389) argues that war, especially civil war, is a transformative phenomenon, in that it transforms individual preferences, choices, behavior, and identities. The main way in which civil war exercises its transformative functions is through violence. Hence, violence works as an independent variable once civil war begins. The view that underlies my study is that peace is a transformative phenomenon as well, and that peace, once it has been established, develops its own dynamics and works as an independent variable too. The idea of peace as a process that is produced by individuals and groups at various levels of society has important theoretical implications, which have been summarized below. I should note that this summary largely draws on the analytical discussion by Kalyvas on ‘war as a process’ (2006: 388-92). Firstly, collective and individual preferences, strategies, values and identities are continually shaped and reshaped in the course of action, as are intragroup loyalty, disloyalty, support, and enmity. It is therefore inaccurate to assume that identities and preferences are frozen in their wartime or prewar, socialist or pre-socialist, manifestations. Secondly, individuals cannot be treated simply as passive, manipulated, or invisible actors; instead, they often manipulate central actors into helping them fight their own conflicts. Thirdly, local interests, strategies, preferences, and cleavages do not automatically overlap with those experienced, or perceived of, at the central level. From this follows a fourth theoretical implication: micro-dynamics are of utmost importance if one wants to understand occurrences of violence and non-violence. The process of inferring on-the- 8 Struggling for peace ground-dynamics from the macro level will almost certainly generate biased assumptions. Vice versa, an analysis of micro-relationships without reference to high-level politics will fail to present a comprehensive picture. Therefore, theories of war and peace should incorporate a multilevel analysis, simultaneously accounting for the interaction between rival political elites, between elites and the population, and among individuals at the local level. The research agenda outlined above covers a wide range of themes that require different theoretical and methodological approaches. In my study of the Polish-Ukrainian relationship I have tried to incorporate them as complementary ways to answer a single research question—why did the regime change in 1990 in Poland not lead to violent ethnic conflict, despite a troubled past? The chapters all focus on rural southeast Poland where I conducted fieldwork starting in 1997, with periodic visits to the research area until 2008. Most of the fieldwork was done in the rural district Komacza ( Komacza), now part of the southern Podkarpackie province. My choice of the Komacza rural district was based on two considerations: (1) my acquaintance with the area during my earlier research in the adjacent Jaliska rural district; (2) the enduring presence in the area of Poles and Ukrainians before, during and after the Second World War. Having been the locus of violent Polish-Ukrainians confrontations during and in the aftermath of the Second World War and of non-violent Polish-Ukrainian coexistence afterwards, this area presents an exemplary case to investigate the transformation of micro level Polish-Ukrainian relations. Fieldwork in the Komacza rural district was complemented with archival research and a study of literature covering the wider region and country. The chapters were originally written as articles, some of which have already been published while others have been submitted for publication. My exploration of the Polish-Ukrainian relationship begins where many political leaders in post-communist Eastern Europe found legitimacy for their nationalist wars—in traumatic memories of civil war and ethnic cleansing. Chapter two explores the conditions that gave rise to the Polish-Ukrainian ethnic cleansings during the Second World War. In explaining the causes of the ethnic cleansings and the ensuing civil war I follow Snyder’s (2003) analysis of the decay of political culture (including the elimination of political elites, institutions and parties) and the advancement of genocidal processes in wartime Poland. The escalating force of ethnic cleansing is illustrated with the biographical account of a Polish participant in the ethnic cleansing. The third chapter discusses the state-initiated, non-genocidal ethnic cleansing policies following Poland’s liberation from Nazi Germany. Next to describing the ways in which the successive Polish governments pursued their homogenization project, the chapter also attempts to explain the wavering policies towards Poland’s minority populations—on the one hand violent and severely repressive, on the other allowing for controlled liberties and Introduction 9 offering protection. Secondary literature has been used to outline the macro-process of nation-building in postwar Poland. This is complemented with archival documents to highlight trends and aberrations in the nation-building process. The issue of discontinuity resulting from the process of socialist transformation is addressed in the fourth chapter. The chapter explores the process of social engineering in the research area by Poland’s socialist leadership in the 1950s and 1960s. Using Scott’s (1998) analysis of high-modernist utopian engineering schemes, two questions are addressed: first, what were the conditions that gave rise to the failure of socialist engineering, and second, what were the consequences of this failure for relationships at the local level? My discussion of the intended and unintended consequences of socialist engineering draws on a variety of sources: contemporary ethnographic studies and publications (in particular newspaper articles and biographical accounts) as well as anthropological fieldwork. The issue of cultural continuities under socialism is dealt with in the fifth chapter. Next to language, religion formed the foremost important element of the ethnic identity of the people living in the research area. But whereas the atheist socialist state condoned (albeit with reluctance) the Roman Catholic religion, it did not tolerate the Greek Catholic religion. This became painfully clear when in 1961 the communist authorities proceeded to close down the Greek Catholic parish church in the research village Komacza. Drawing on archival sources and interviews from Komacza, this chapter chronicles local forms of accommodation and resistance to a socialist authoritarian regime and illustrates how a Greek Catholic community was able to survive and maintain its religious and ethnic identity despite intense political repression. The sixth chapter discusses the impact of socialism on processes of identity formation in post-communist Poland. Drawing from the example of the emancipation of the Lemkos in post-communist Poland, Verdery’s (1993) thesis that Eastern Europe’s once-socialist societies are strongly predisposed to ethno-nationalist conflict is being put to the test. In particular, her argument of the ‘economies of shortage’, that put a premium on nationalist appeals by which competitors could be excluded, proves to be of theoretical significance in explaining the ‘contested issues of representation’ among Poland’s Lemko political elites in the 1990s. Chapter seven seeks to explain the peaceful modes of interaction between Poles and Ukrainians in Komacza. Following Flap’s (1997: 212) lead that social network theory, and more in particular “the crisscross argument”, may contribute to the problems of order and cohesion in conflict-prone post-communist societies, this chapter analyses current notions of identity as well as current modes of interaction between individuals and groups in the research village through the spectrum of cross-cutting social ties (cf. Gluckman 1966; Granovetter 1973; Flap 1985). The case study suggests that a dynamic system of 10 Struggling for peace alliance, guided by cross-cutting cleavages and cross-cutting social networks, contribute to resilience to violent ethnic conflict at the community level. Chapters one through seven document the Polish-Ukrainian relationship over a period of more than sixty years: from the outbreak of the Polish-Ukrainian clashes in 1943 to the present. This forms the basis for the concluding chapter in which the key factors that have contributed to a peaceful articulation of the Polish-Ukrainian relationship after 1990 will be outlined. The assumption that underlies all chapters of this volume is that peaceful coexistence, like violent conflict, should not be treated as a natural, self-explanatory outcome. Peace, like violence, is worked on at every step in the process; it is a continuous struggle involving especially those who are part of the contested domains of modern statehood. My attempt will be to demonstrate just that: the contestations, complexities and contradictions—in short the dynamics—of peaceful coexistence. 2 On the escalation of ethnic violence Perspectives on the Polish-Ukrainian conflict 1939-1944*

We were fighting by Leshniov. A wall of enemy cavalry rose all around us. The new Polish strategy was uncoiling like a spring, with an ominous whistle. We were being pushed back […] The front at Leshniov was being held by the infantry. Blond and barefoot, Volhynian muzhiks [peasants] shuffled along crooked trenches. This infantry had been plucked from behind its ploughs the day before to form the Red Cavalry’s infantry reserve. The peasants had come along eagerly. They fought with the greatest zeal. Their hoarse peasant ferocity amazed even the Budyonny fighters. Their hatred for the Polish landowners was built of invisible but sturdy material. Isaac Babel (1924: 116)

Introduction

This fragment from the 1924 collection of stories Red Cavalry by the Jewish Russian writer Isaac Babel provides a clear and succinct survey of the social history of the border area between Poland and Ukraine in the first half of the last century: the largely impoverished, illiterate and agrarian local population; the feudal relations in the villages and on the estates; the tense relationship between Poles and Ukrainians; and, lastly, the long tradition of ethnic violence in the region (cf. Klier and Lambroza 1992; Hryniuk 1993; Magocsi 1996; Sysyn 2003). Babel wrote Red Cavalry on the basis of his wartime experiences as a correspondent and soldier in the First Cavalry Army during the two-year war between Poland and the Soviet Union (1919-1920). The region had just witnessed the end of another war, that between the brand-new , which had re- emerged from the ruins of the First World War, and the equally young West Ukrainian People’s Republic (1918-1919). Both wars, which were concluded in favor of the Polish Republic, had a disruptive effect on the lives of large sections of the population of

* This is a revised version of an article published in ‘Politiek geweld: Etnisch conflict, oorlog en genocide in de twintigste eeuw’, Zwaan, Ton (ed.), Amsterdam: Walburg Pers, 2005, pp. 75-98. The original article appeared in Dutch and was translated to English by Peter Mason. 12 Struggling for peace

Volhynia and . The ongoing front line fighting, the partisan struggle, banditism and pogroms cost more than a million lives between 1918 and 1920. These events were a foretaste of the horrors of war that were to take place on a much larger scale only two decades later. The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939 marked the beginning of a particularly violent period. The level of violence was determined to a large extent by the destructive intentions of the respective regimes. Six years of war, occupation, poverty, hunger, reprisals, deportations and genocide claimed millions of victims among the inhabitants of occupied Poland and Ukraine. In addition, the civilian population suffered another, equally bloody war, when the nationalist (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA) commenced a campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1943 that cost the lives of tens of thousands of mainly Polish civilians and provoked a Polish-Ukrainian civil war, in which rival nationalist Ukrainian and Polish partisans engaged in a life and death struggle, claiming the deaths of several other thousands. The question that is raised in this chapter is why the wartime Polish-Ukrainian conflict spiraled into such lethal violence. Two complementary explanations will be offered. The first one deals with the larger political context in which the conflict took place. The excellent analysis of the wartime Polish-Ukrainian conflict by the historian Timothy Snyder (2003) in The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, , 1569-1999 will provide the basis for reflection on the political context of the conflict. A second explanation addresses the consequences of the conflict for local relationships. The vicissitudes of Waldemar Lotnik, who became caught up in the bloodbath as a teenager and as a Polish resistance fighter, will serve as a source for reflection on the dynamics of political violence. Lotnik published his memoirs in Nine Lives. Ethnic conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands in 1999.1 On the basis of these complementary accounts it is demonstrated how three factors can lead to an escalation of conflict into destructive violence and war: the emergence of a political power vacuum and the concomitant disappearance of the state monopoly of violence; the intensification of the struggle for survival on the part of groups and individuals; and the presence of evil as an everyday— and therefore extremely brutalizing—phenomenon.

The survival instinct of population groups: the Polish-Ukrainian conflict 1939-1944

Babel experienced it in person—the political dispute concerning the legitimate leadership of and Galicia was going on long before the start of the Second World War. Poles formed a minority in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands: Poles and Ukrainians

1 The memoirs were recorded and edited by Julian Preece, a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury. On the escalation of violence 13 comprised equal thirds of the population, while the remaining third was divided among Byelorussians, Jews and a smaller number of Russians and Lithuanians (Davis and Polonsky 1991: 3; Gross 1991: 64). The region’s rural population comprised largely of Ukrainians predominating in the south, and Byelorussians, Russians and Lithuanians inhabiting the northern provinces. The urban population consisted largely of Poles and Jews, but as this was foremost an agrarian region (81 percent rural) Poles and Jews inhabited the rural areas as well (Gross 1991). Aiming at the political control of this highly fragmented periphery in which non-Poles dominated, the Polish interwar government embarked on a policy of . Hence, it adopted Polish as the official language in state institutions, including schools and universities. In addition, it excluded non-Poles from government service. Most significantly, while turning a blind eye to the already existing land shortage, the central authorities facilitated the settlement of tens of thousands of Polish colonists (many of them war veterans) on the region’s estates (Gross 1991: 64; Petersen 2002: 122). “By every status indicator—language, educational policy, government and military service, land redistribution”, writes Petersen (2002: 122-3) “Poles were on top”. The repressive and discriminative state policies created bad blood among members of the minority populations. Opposition to Polish domination was strongest in Galicia. During the 1930s, small groups of Galician Ukrainian extremists organized armed attacks on Polish estates and committed numerous acts of sabotage (Mazur 2001; Petersen 2002). Galicia was also the base of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Its founders were veterans of the Polish-Ukrainian war who had seen their dreams—an independent Ukraine—crushed by military defeat. The radicalism of this group of Ukrainian nationalists was manifested at several levels. At the strategic level, they aimed at the complete overthrow of the status quo, and thus, of Polish (or any other form of foreign) political domination in the region. At the political level, they claimed absolute control over all territories (including parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the USSR) in which Ukrainians predominated. At the ideological level, they promoted the idea of a homogenous, ethnically pure Ukraine. Accordingly, during the first congress held in 1932, the OUN leadership decided that “only the complete removal of all occupiers from Ukrainian lands will allow for the general development of the Ukrainian Nation within its own state” (quoted in Snyder 2003: 143). These so-called “occupiers” comprised all non- Ukrainians who lived in the alleged Ukrainian territories, including Poles, Slovakians, Byelorussians, Jews, Romanians, Russians, and Lithuanians. Adhesion to the principle of ethnic cleansing in word is not the same as the actual implementation of an ethnic cleansing campaign, especially if one bears in mind that the rhetoric of the expulsion of population groups was common parlance in Poland as well as in other parts of Europe in the 1930s (Kersten 2001; Snyder 2003). In the 1930s, the Polish 14 Struggling for peace police and military still had the upper hand: they ruthlessly, but successfully, repressed violent Ukrainian opposition (Mazur 2001; Petersen 2002). Meanwhile, Poland’s political establishment marginalized the OUN by branding it a ‘terrorist organization’ and denying it a legal existence (Motyka 1999; Snyder 2003). Snyder (2003) stresses that during the 1930s the OUN merely operated on the margins of society and was supported only by a handful of war veterans and a smattering of disenchanted intellectuals. The moderate nationalists, represented by the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO), had a far wider coverage than the OUN. Also other political movements, including socialism, agrarianism and communism, enjoyed much larger support among the Ukrainian population (Snyder 2003: 152). However, the renewed question of legitimate leadership of the region following the outbreak of the Second World War turned the political balance upside down. The Soviet invasion of Poland’s eastern provinces in September 1939 and the subsequent Germany invasion in June 1941 opened up new perspectives for Ukrainian nationalists (Map 2.1). Even moderate nationalists who had previously followed the parliamentary road in favor of the Ukrainian cause saw no reason to support the return of Polish control in the area. Meanwhile the masses were out to exact revenge on those who had been instrumental to, or otherwise symbolized, Polish political domination. In the process, several thousands of people died, mostly Polish settlers, who were killed by their neighbors (Gross 1991: 65). The Soviets encouraged such local initiatives and made full use of local anti-Polish sentiments to establish control in the area. But whereas Soviet policy did succeed to reverse the ethnic hierarchy in Poland’s former eastern borderlands (with Poles at the bottom and Ukrainians higher up in the social hierarchy), it had not been able to win over the non-Polish masses for a ‘proletarian revolution’. “Many Soviet civilians […] were glad to see the Soviet regime go”, writes Karel Berkhoff (2004: 3). Especially the events in the months before the defeat of the Soviet army revealed that the Soviet regime “neither trusted nor cared about those citizens who were slipping from its control” (Berkhoff 2004: 33). Political deception, intense political persecution, deportations, and an effective scorched-earth policy left the apprehensive masses on the verge of anarchy and starvation. Nazi Germany’s invasions of the Soviet Union in June 1941 ended Soviet rule in the area, producing again a power vacuum that, to quote Petersen (2002: 96), triggered “masses of leaderless individuals milling around in the streets, celebrating the end of the hated Soviet occupation, looking to even scores with collaborators.” This time, their principal victims were Jews, who became collectively accused of collaboration with the Soviets. The new German authorities conveniently exploited the anti-Jewish and anti- Polish sentiments among the non-Polish populations. They too recruited Ukrainian policemen to assist in mass killings, this time not of local Poles but of local Jews; they On the escalation of violence 15

Map 2.1 Poland 1923 – 1944

engaged the Ukrainian Central Committee (a German imposed political body of Ukrainians) to create Lebensraum for Germans; they never protested when Ukrainians used their power and arms to persecute Polish civilians in Volhynia in 1941 and 1942. But when Ukrainian partisans turned to challenging Nazi rule, the German authorities changed sides and instead supplied Poles with weapons. These (fruitless) attempts by the Germans to preserve control in the region inevitably led to the exacerbation of tensions between Poles and Ukrainians and to an exceptionally rapid growth of nationalist armed groups (Snyder 2003). 16 Struggling for peace

“The Soviets and Germans reversed status orderings and destroyed stable hierarchies”, concludes Petersen: “Powerful emotions followed, strong desires developed, violent actions resulted” (2002: 135). But even if the wartime collapse of power relations created new political opportunities and, by that means, provided the basis for radical ambitions and violent actions, such a collapse in itself does not explain why violence between Poles and Ukrainians became so virulent and so widespread. “Most fundamentally”, writes Snyder (2003: 158) “how Poles and Ukrainians treated each other was transformed by their contact with the practices of the occupiers, both of whom classified individuals and deported or killed according to classification”. Between 1939 and 1941 hundreds of Ukrainian militiamen assisted in the Soviet deportation of at least 400,000 Polish “class enemies” (some 3 percent of the total population in Galicia and Volhynia), of which an estimated 20,000 were killed (Snyder 2003: 163). Subsequently, between the summer of 1941 and the winter of 1942, some 12,000 Nazi-trained Ukrainian policemen (mostly young men) took part in the killing of more than 200,000 Jews in Volhynia (Snyder 2003: 160). The presence of thousands of Ukrainian men experienced in genocide had a sure impact on the form and scale that the Polish-Ukrainian conflict would eventually assume. The Soviet and Nazi occupying forces had done much to wipe out the cultural, political, and professional Polish and Ukrainian elites and their organizations. This was not without considerable consequences. Snyder (2003: 163) makes a point of stating that the “demoralization and decimation” of the Ukrainian and Polish elites was “perhaps the most important cause of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict.” The collapse of the old framework of political and moral leadership contributed to a further militarization of society and to a considerable narrowing of the political spectrum. Authority in occupied Poland was no longer represented by political parties, governments or civil representatives, but by military organizations such as partisan armies and self-defense militiamen. When the conflict was at its fiercest, it was military superiority rather than moral responsibility that played the decisive role, so that the moderates eventually lost ground to the extremists. On the Polish side the Polish (Armia Krajowa, AK) was by far the largest and most efficient army; moreover, it was recognized and supported by the Polish government in exile. Other groups of Polish partisans were under the command of the Polish Home Army, but represented a particular political current (such as the Peasant Battalions), while yet others (such as the extreme right-wing National Armed Forces, NSZ) opposed the Polish Home Army. It is indicative that the Polish government in exile in London, which was recognized by the Western Allies, had no authority at all in Volhynia, not even among its ethnic Polish subjects. The government representatives in London were painfully surprised by the participation of ethnic Poles in the German administration and by the massive influx of ethnic Poles into the German police after the On the escalation of violence 17

Tombstone in the old, overgrown Jewish cemetery of . Wola Michowa, May 2005

first Ukrainian attacks on Polish villages in the summer of 1943. The government in exile was powerless in the face of these events (Snyder 2003: 173). On the Ukrainian side, the contrast with the prewar situation was even sharper. There was no representative of the state to help organize a home army or to act as a political intermediary. Of the broad political field that had existed before the war, only the extreme right was left as a political force. It was in fact the OUN, the organization with very little political support among the local population during the interwar years, that survived the Soviet and Nazi occupation. Moreover, even within the Ukrainian right the radical political visions soon overruled the moderate ones. The radical wing of the OUN eventually succeeded to take over the leadership of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) by remorselessly eliminating its political rivals, which in fact involved a true fratricide that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians (Snyder 2003: 164). In the absence of any political opposition, the OUN-UPA leadership committed itself to the most radical of all solutions: the physical elimination of the Poles from the alleged “Ukrainian lands” (Snyder 2003: 165; Berkhoff 2004: 281). In the spring of 1943, after a series of German military defeats along the German- Russian front, Ukrainian policemen left en masse German employ to join the UPA. As soldiers of the UPA, they embarked on a second genocidal mission: the systematic 18 Struggling for peace expulsion and killing of the local Polish population. UPA soldiers and special security forces systematically selected and attacked villages that were partly or entirely inhabited by Poles. For attacks on larger Polish settlements or on mixed Polish-Ukrainian settlements, the UPA partisans mobilized local peasants, who were offered material inducements to join in the slaughter (Snyder 2003: 169-70). By July 1943 virtually all of the Ukrainian partisan groups were allied with the UPA, making it large enough, with its 20,000 or so troops and some 40,000 soldiers, to conduct simultaneous actions in a substantial area (Snyder 2003: 170; Brown 2004: 221). Estimates of the number of Poles killed by the UPA in Volhynia and Galicia between March and December 1943 range from 40,000 to 60,000 men, women and children. These figures include Jews who had survived the Endlösung and who had gone into hiding in the villages (Snyder 2003: 170; Brown 2004: 221). As a reaction to the UPA attacks, thousands of Polish men and women joined the Soviet partisans, who created new Polish units, and the German occupying forces, who armed them in exchange for information about the UPA (Berkhoff 2004: 294). Many others sought refuge in villages and towns with larger Polish populations where they, again helped by Germans or by the Home Army, established self-defense outposts (Snyder 2003: 172). The Soviet partisans, the Polish partisans, the Polish Schutzmannschaften and self- defense units began the counterattack in the autumn of 1943, when they plundered and wiped out the population of countless Ukrainian villages. Attempts by the Polish government in exile to mediate in the conflict were in vain. Repeated calls by the Polish Home Army to the Polish partisans and self-defense militias to join the Home Army and to stop the killing of defenseless civilians fell on deaf ears (Snyder 2003: 173-4). There was no turning back for any of the fighting parties. As Brown has written:

All […] groups fatally punished villagers who helped the other side. As villages burned and the survivors were left homeless, they went to the forests and joined one underground group or another. As a result, many people signed on to the nationalist or Soviet partisan cause not out of conviction, but because they had nowhere else to go (Brown 2004: 221).

The Polish reprisals against the Ukrainian civilian population provided propaganda material for the UPA. A notice from the UPA periodical Idea and deed from July 1943 reads: “The Ukrainian population in the northwestern Ukrainian lands has started to respond to the terror and provocation by the Polish settlers, secret agents, and Communist cells with self-defense, destroying all hidden enemies of the Ukrainian people” (quoted in Berkhoff 2004: 292). In fact, the systematic use of propaganda and nationalist rhetoric played a decisive role in the outbreak of a total civil war between the two populations. “By murdering individuals in the name of the nation,” writes Snyder (2003: 175), “ethnic cleansers not only humiliate, infuriate, and nationalize the survivors, they make individuals On the escalation of violence 19 of their own group the targets of national revenge.” What had started in Volhynia as an attack on people within carefully selected locations became, through the predictable reprisals, the nationalist vocabulary and the propaganda, a war of one people against another. This self-fulfilling prophecy of ethnic violence is, according to Snyder, “a simple political truth that ethnic cleansers have exploited throughout the twentieth century” (2003: 175). In wartime Volhynia and Galicia this “simple political truth” culminated in the following OUN-UPA order:

Liquidate all Polish traces. Destroy all walls in the Catholic church and other Polish prayer houses. Destroy orchards and trees in the courtyards so that there will be no traces that someone lived there. Destroy all Polish huts in which Poles lived earlier […] Pay attention to the fact that when something remains that is Polish, then the Poles will have pretensions to our land.2

Ukrainian and Polish cleansers had the political tide on their side. Years of foreign occupation, intervals of power vacuum, as well as the extremely brutal Nazi and Soviet persecutions had made the extremists on either side the most successful political force in Volhynia and Galicia in 1943. In a setting where legitimate political rule was contested, mass killings were sanctioned, and civil society was decapitated, the Polish-Ukrainian conflict assumed genocidal proportions.

The individual will to survive: the vicissitudes of a Polish partisan 1939-1946

The OUN-UPA ethnic cleansings sparked a Polish-Ukrainian civil war that spread rapidly over large areas. Starting in Volhynia (the northern part of Poland’s former eastern territories) the war extended to Galicia (south) and to the Chelm and provinces (west). By winter 1943, Ukrainian and Polish partisans were locked in an extremely bloody armed conflict on the west side of the Bug river. Village after village was leveled with the ground. Meanwhile, Polish partisans of the Peasant Battalions (Bataliony Chlopskie) committed the same crimes against humanity that the Ukrainian freedom fighters had done. Even units of the Polish Home Army took part in the attacks on Ukrainian villages from the spring of 1944 on. All in all, Polish and Ukrainian partisans in the Chem and Lublin provinces each managed to wipe out some 5,000 of the civilian population of their opponents in the period between 1943 and 1944 (Snyder 2003: 176). One of the Polish partisans who became involved in these bloody Polish-Ukrainian confrontations was Waldemar Lotnik.

2 Excerpt from TsDAHO Ukrainy from early 1944, quoted in Brown (2004: 221). 20 Struggling for peace

Initiation into political violence: the German enemy

Waldemar Lotnik, born in 1925 in Modryniec, a village near Lublin, was fourteen years old when the war broke out. As the son of a Polish officer Lotnik was particularly receptive to the sense of adventure and heroism evoked by resistance to the German occupying forces. Three of Lotnik’s five uncles joined the partisans. And there was Baron, a youth from the village, who went into hiding in the woods together with his Jewish girlfriend and her brother. Baron had managed to get his hands on weapons during the disturbances in September 1939 and made a living by robbing local Ukrainian farmers and officials. His actions gradually took on more of a political character, and when he had killed a Ukrainian overseer whom the villagers hated and two SS men within a week, his days were numbered. The corpse of Baron, riddled by machine-gun fire, was hung up in the centre of the village with a notice in German, Polish and Ukrainian attached around his neck saying: “Anyone who raises his hand against a German citizen or soldier will be punished like this murderer” (Lotnik and Preece 1999: 25). The deterrent had the opposite effect: it confirmed Lotnik’s conviction that it was better to take up arms against the enemy and to die a hero’s death rather than to patiently suffer humiliation at the hands of the Germans. Lotnik ran away from home twice to join the Polish resistance but each time he returned unsuccessfully. It was not until the spring of 1943, by which time he was eighteen years old, that he managed to join a local unit of the Peasant Battalion. He was accepted after he had given proof of his dedication with a local youth resistance group that organized evening attacks on German depots modeled on the example of their dead hero Baron. Lotnik’s decision to join the Peasant Battalion was both idealistic (his grandfather had been a member of the Peasant Party before the war) and pragmatic (it was the only armed group of partisans that was active in the neighborhood). From the summer until the late autumn of 1943 he took part in sabotage actions and attacks on German targets. Until the spring of 1944, when the unit was overwhelmed by a superior force of 20,000 Kalmuk soldiers,3 the turnover among the soldiers was reasonably balanced. New recruits from all strata of the population rapidly replaced the dead and wounded. Larger groups, including units of Polish police who had deserted from the Nazi Wehrmacht and locally operating Polish groups of partisans, also joined the Peasant Battalion unit. At crucial moments the

3 Soldiers from the Caucasian and Asiatic Soviet republics. The Kalmuks originally formed an important part of the Russian Red Army, but they deserted from the Red Army in large numbers in the course of the war. On the escalation of violence 21 unit could also count on the support of the stronger and better-equipped communist and nationalist resistance groups.4

Escalation of political violence: the Ukrainian enemy

In the autumn of 1943 the focus of attention of Lotnik’s unit increasingly shifted from attacks on German targets to the defense of the Polish civilian population against attacks by Ukrainian militiamen. Lotnik’s unit drifted away from its original mission—the liberation of Polish territory from the German occupying forces—and became ever more deeply involved in a war with divisions of the UPA army and irregular Ukrainian armed groups. This war effaced everything else and was so violent that Lotnik’s recollections of his period as a partisan are mainly linked to the six months in which he took part in this war, from the autumn of 1943 until his arrest by the Germans in April 1944. The bloody confrontations began with a relatively small and insignificant incident: the surprise visit by a German Wehrmacht soldier and two Kalmuk escorts to Laskuv, a village that was the base for Lotnik’s unit. The German soldier went back home in the evening. The two Kalmuk soldiers, blind drunk, stayed behind, but were shot when they tried to get their hands on the two daughters of their host. When the German soldier returned on the following day to pick up his escorts, he was shot as well. A German attack was now inevitable; the Germans arrived on the following day in the early afternoon. A heavily armed German military convoy with more than a hundred Wehrmacht and SS soldiers was driven from the village without much difficulty by Lotnik’s unit. The Germans failed to react, but as if it had been arranged, the Ukrainian militiamen shifted their attention from the east of the River Bug, where they had been burning down Polish villages and wiping out the population, to the Lublin province on the west side of the river. During a first wave of liquidation, conducted by a Ukrainian death squad, seven Polish resistance fighters were tortured to death, including two of Lotnik’s uncles who had temporarily returned to their parental home. Lotnik happened to be out on a mission that night and was passing the house. He followed it all from a safe distance and swore to avenge the violent death of his uncles. Once he had returned to his unit, it was clear to everyone that something was about to happen. The Peasant Battalion set out for Modryn, the Ukrainian village next to the village where Lotnik had been born. Just before arriving in the village, the commander gave his men the following order: “Don’t burn, don’t loot. Just shoot young, able-bodied men. If anyone resists, make sure you shoot him before he shoots you. We have to teach them that they cannot take out selected Polish citizens and kill and torture them” (1999: 65). Sixteen Ukrainian men were executed in Modryn that

4 In fact Communist and nationalist resistance groups fought one another during the wartime but they both maintained contacts with units of the Peasant Battalions. 22 Struggling for peace evening. It was an easy job; the families were familiar to Lotnik’s unit and the victims and their families did not put up any resistance. The first step towards a ruthless war had been taken. A week later the Ukrainians retaliated by completely burning down a Polish settlement and raping the women of the village. The Peasant Battalion replied with an attack on a Ukrainian village, which was bigger than the Polish village that had suffered the same fate. This time, two or three men from Lotnik’s unit disobeyed the commander’s orders: they killed women and children too. The Ukrainians retaliated by seizing a village with five hundred Polish residents and torturing to death everyone who fell into their hands. At this Lotnik’s unit attacked two large Ukrainian villages. The Ukrainians replied by deploying all of their men in a massive attack on no less than five Polish settlements. German-trained Ukrainian troops who had been deployed in wiping out the Jewish population on the east side of the River Bug also took part in this operation. The fighting, Lotnik concludes, grew bloodier and bloodier and escalated completely:

Each time more people were killed, more houses burnt, more women raped. Men became desensitized very quickly and kill as if they knew nothing else. Even those who would otherwise hesitate before killing a fly can quickly forget they are taking human lives. In fact, in order to kill it is necessary to forget that the victims are human; as soon as contact is established, it becomes difficult to pull the trigger. On both sides teenagers were the worst perpetrators of atrocities (1999: 66).

The scenes in the villages were indescribable, but Lotnik, who was confronted by them every day, still has them imprinted on his retina.

We moved through three Polish villages twenty-four hours after a Ukrainian attack. Houses and ruins still smouldered; charred bodies littered the ground in front of the buildings; the corpses of small children, who had been thrown onto the burning roofs, now lay where they had fallen, their heads smashed open […] The naked remains of women often showed signs of mutilation—their vaginas had usually been slit open. Even small girls had been carved with knives and bayonets […] We dug a few graves and carved the number of bodies buried in each onto makeshift wooden crosses. Many remained unburied (1999: 66-7).

Numbed by the excessive consumption of alcohol during the breaks in the fighting and with the adrenaline pumping through his veins during the orgies of violence in the villages, Lotnik, who was the youngest of his unit, was no better than the other soldiers. He too plundered, killed and raped, careful throughout it all to maintain his reputation as a fearless resistance fighter. “I wanted my comrades to trust me and respect me,” Lotnik explained, “killing was the only way to earn their respect” (1999: 73). This desire did not prevent the suffocating corset of the principle of an eye for an eye from sometimes becoming too tight On the escalation of violence 23 for him. Lotnik describes a number of moments when he was no longer able to do what was expected of him: to rape and kill his defenseless victims. He rescued one girl from the hands of a comrade and let her escape, and responded to a mother’s prayers not to shoot her son dead; the bullets only grazed her son and Lotnik left him behind as if he were dead. One day Lotnik disobeyed the commander’s order to shoot an old man. The commander then shot the man himself. To Lotnik’s great relief, the commander never mentioned the incident again. In clear moments, Lotnik felt particularly uneasy about the excessive violence that was used against their Ukrainian victims. He is confident to state: “I never saw one of our men pick up a baby or small child with the point of a bayonet and toss it onto a fire; I saw the charred corpses of Polish babies who had been killed that way.” But he asserts in the same breath: “If none of our number did that, then it was the only atrocity that we did not commit” (1999: 59). In Lotnik’s view the excessive violence used by some members of his unit did not do the general cause any good. When one day his unit came across a pile of Ukrainian bodies, one of the younger partisans named Polecat took a wooden stake he had found lying at the roadside and shoved it up the backside of one of the corpses. Lotnik: “It was no business of mine what he did, he lived for blood and what he did to the living was far worse”. Yet later Lotnik regretted not having stopped him. “I realized that any Ukrainian who found the body would assume that the man had been impaled while still alive. I did not say anything to Polecat, nor stop him on other occasions, because he would have thought me weak” (1999: 67). It was early 1944 when Lotnik’s unit and divisions of the AK (numbering over two thousand soldiers) participated in a corporate massive attack on two UPA bases. The attacks resulted in a brief pause in the reciprocal hostilities, but once the AK soldiers had retreated and the UPA had mustered a new force, the violence broke out again in full force. The military superiority of the UPA and the Nazi Wehrmacht resulted in a quick defeat of the Peasant Battalions in the region. Of Lotnik’s unit only fifty members survived the ambushes, hunger and cold. In spring 1944 Lotnik was caught by Kalmuk soldiers and handed over to the Germans.

Continuation of political violence: the invincible opponent

Lotnik’s arrest by the Germans by no means ended his career as a soldier. After his liberation from the Majdanek concentration camp, he went to a Soviet recruiting centre in the hope of joining the army, the navy or the air force. “We could not think of peace,” Lotnik recalled. “The food was good and we slept in barracks in the city, waiting for a full vetting” (1999: 120). After an interview with an official of the Soviet Secret Service (NKVD), Lotnik was drafted as a pilot for the air force of the Red Army. As a budding pilot under the new regime, Lotnik was recruited and trained as a Soviet intelligence agent. 24 Struggling for peace

A brief crash course at an elite school in the Soviet Union made an indelible impression, but failed to make him a loyal Soviet adept. After receiving a tip-off about his imminent arrest, Lotnik escaped from his superiors in May 1945. During a vacation leave that he spent in his native village, just before his desertion from the Red Army, Lotnik became involved in yet another form of local armed resistance. A distant cousin and fellow villager had talked him into this. “Bartek told me excitedly that the Home Army needed horses and carts for the Polish evacuation and was offering hard cash for carts recovered from Ukrainian families now trekking eastward.”5 Lotnik was skeptical at first, but he joined his cousin nevertheless. “I had already seen the difference in the size of the loads carried by the Polish and Ukrainian carts, and he persuaded me that duty demanded I assist the Polish population”. During a couple of intense weeks the two cousins (with Lotnik dressed in his Soviet Air Force uniform and speaking his best Russian) successfully attacked one Ukrainian family after the other and sold the stolen booty to a Home Army collecting point a few miles away. “To Polish eyes, this was not theft but the reclaiming of goods looted from Polish villages. Our objective was to stop the goods disappearing forever into the Soviet Union”(1999: 160). It was May 1945 when Lotnik once again joined the partisans in the Lublin province, this time to fight the Soviet occupying forces. He joined a unit of the Free Polish Cavalry that consisted largely of deserters from the Polish Red Army. The cavalry regarded its task as the defense of the Polish nationalists, who were being arrested in thousands at a time throughout the country, against the NKVD militias. Its hopes were set on intervention by the Western Allies to put an end to the Soviet occupation of Poland. Between May and July 1945 Lotnik was involved in as much action as he had been during his time with the Peasant Battalion, but this time he was no longer the youngest; he had a platoon under his command and was called lieutenant by his men. During a meeting of Poland’s anti-communist resistance forces with the regional command of the Polish Home Army in July 1945 a delegate of the Polish government in exile announced the end of armed resistance. He reasoned as follows: the Western powers do not want to burn their fingers with Poland and will not intervene to help those fighting for a free Poland. Therefore, there is no point in continuing the struggle, and while it is still possible in the postwar chaos to escape the attention of the communist authorities, everyone is well advised to assume a new identity and to go back to Civvy Street. The commander of Lotnik’s unit followed the advice and demobilized his unit. Thereupon the

5 In September 1944 the representatives of the Polish Committee of National Liberation and the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR) signed a treaty on the so-called “repatriation” of all ethnic Ukrainians from Poland to the USSR and of all ethnic Poles from the USSR to Poland. As a result of this treaty, around 480,000 Ukrainians left their native homes in Poland and some 780,000 Poles left their native homes in Ukraine between 1944 and 1946 (Misio 1996). On the escalation of violence 25

“In honour of the members of the civilian militia who were killed while maintaining law and order in the years 1944-1946: Bogaczewicz Bolesaw, Klosowicz Mieczysaw, Kruczek Tadeusz, Solon Edward. They rest in peace.” Wola Michowa, May 2005

ex-soldiers were issued with civilian clothes, new passports, and money for the journey. They also had to surrender their weapons. “I discovered that I was more attached to my machine gun than to my horse and I kissed it farewell,” Lotnik (1999: 181) recalled. “If no one had been looking I might even have shed a tear for it—after all it had saved my life more than once”. But even at this point Lotnik had no intention of returning to civilian life. He could not see any future for himself in a communist Poland and therefore decided to flee to the West. When Lotnik reached liberated American territory in August 1945, he immediately reported to the Free Polish Corps, upon which he was taken on as a soldier in the tank regiment of the Second Warsaw Mechanized Weapon Division on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Exactly one year later, in August 1946, Lotnik and a group of other Polish soldiers left the Italian port of Ancona for Edinburgh. The Polish communist government had begun a campaign against the Free Polish Army in the summer of that year, alleging that it harbored aggressive intentions. In reaction, the British government established the Polish Resettlement Corps to assist the demobilized Polish soldiers with integration in civilian life in one of the Western countries. Lotnik was present when General Anders, the commander-in-chief of the Free , convinced his soldiers to join the new, virtual corps: 26 Struggling for peace

I am not here to give orders or words of command. What I have are words of friendly advice from an old soldier to his fellow soldiers. Very shortly you will be discarding your uniforms and emigrating to the four corners of the earth. All I request is that you concentrate in countries where you can remain in touch and return to arms when need be (1999: 205).

Lotnik joined the Polish Resettlement Corps and, like General Anders, chose to settle in Great Britain. So at the age of twenty-two, Lotnik’s soldiering days were over and he started out on a new life as a civilian in a new country.

Conclusions

The literary form offers unprecedented opportunities for the exploration and comprehension of the phenomenon of violence that would probably make a sociologist or historian jealous. Babel’s stories about the battles of Volhynia and Galicia have in that respect a special, universal value. In an epilogue to the Collected Works of Isaac Babel (1979) the Dutch translator Charles Timmer reasoned that Babel was out not just to present a naturalistic description of the horrors of war, but “by penetrating the violence and by a psychological shock, to reveal the core of humanity beneath the layers of inhumanity.” Long before Hannah Arendt (1963) drew her conclusions in a Report on the Banality of Evil, or Christopher Browning (1992) more recently did in Ordinary Men, Babel had already arrived at his sobering conclusion: cruelty and barbarism are the consequences of everyday actions by everyday people rather than the result of deviant, psychopathic behavior. Isaac Babel himself would become a victim of the violent Soviet regime and could no longer bear witness to the mass killings that were to take place two decades later in the same region. The way in which violence sucks people in and escalates, reaching a point of no return, is the thread running through the stories of Isaac Babel, the research of Timothy Snyder, and the vicissitudes of Waldemar Lotnik. The Ukrainian serf with a bleak future, swept along by the turmoil of events, plotted revenge against his Polish lord. He did so in a situation in which violence was not just tolerated, but was positively encouraged. The war veterans of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918-1919 were still in their prime when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany invaded their major political opponent, the Polish state. They saw a golden opportunity in a situation in which violence was tolerated and encouraged. The Ukrainian police who massively left German employ to join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1943 lost their homes, families and relatives when they On the escalation of violence 27 deserted, giving them an immediate new reason to take vengeance on the ‘Polish enemy’.6 These Ukrainian soldiers, most of them young “lads” in their teens and twenties, exerted such strong psychological and physical pressure on Ukrainian civilians that they had no choice but to participate in the mass killings too (Berkhoff 2004: 292-8). Men like Polecat, the main torturers in Lotnik’s Peasant Battalion, had lost their brothers, sisters, parents, wives and children during a Ukrainian attack; they lived to avenge the deaths of their loved ones on the Ukrainians. The story of Lotnik shows how difficult it is to lay down one’s arms once they have been taken up; it was only in the complete absence of a setting of armed conflict that he was able to return to civilian life. The mechanism of the escalation of violence is an exceptionally traumatic experience for those directly involved, as is shown in the epilogue by Julian Preece, the writer and editor of Lotnik’s biography. Unprepared for what was to come, Preece initially assumed that Lotnik’s experiences in the notorious Majdanek concentration camp would form the emotional core of the book. In the end Lotnik needed only some twelve hours to tell the story of Majdanek. It took him about eighty hours, on the other hand, to recount his memories of his boyhood in Kremenetz, a garrison town at the southernmost point of interbellum Poland. “What began to puzzle me and, increasingly, to irritate me”, Preece writes, “was the way he emphasized his own acts of kindness to Ukrainian schoolchildren […] The frequency and scale of his acts of generosity bordered the incredible” (1999: 207). It was not until Preece and Lotnik started to work on the material for the later chapters of the book that he realized what Lotnik had been trying to tell him, and especially why. Lotnik’s point was that during the interwar years Poles and Ukrainians had got on with one another and that the violence unleashed by their Ukrainian neighbors came as a total surprise. The urgency of this message for Lotnik lay in the fact that the outburst of violence was “inexplicable to someone of his background” (Preece in Lotnik and Preece 1999: 208). The question of why peaceful citizens—neighbors, relatives and friends in their everyday lives—are prepared to kill one another from one day to the next is also at the centre of Snyder’s analysis. He seeks an answer to this question in the political constellation of the moment: the military defeat of Poland (1939), the destruction of the Polish and Ukrainian political elites (1939-1942), and the implementation of genocidal programs by the Soviet and the Nazi occupying forces (1939-1944). The increased militarization of society and the disintegration of the state monopoly of violence enabled a relatively small group of Ukrainian extremists to make a successful breakthrough. The definitive breakthrough of this group in 1943 set the ball rolling: the ethnic cleansing

6 It was common German policy to execute the family of a policeman who deserted. If he deserted with his weapons, the whole of his village was wiped out. Retaliation was carried out immediately, usually with the assistance of newly recruited Polish police (Snyder 2003: 173). 28 Struggling for peace actions launched by this group provoked the Polish survivors to take their revenge on the Ukrainian civilian population. The result was an intensive life-and-death struggle by two ethnic groups who once lived as neighbors in adjacent or mixed villages, who before the outbreak of the war went to the same village schools, visited each other’s churches, and even intermarried. In a context in which persecution and oppression were commonplace, this struggle for survival degenerated into an extremely bloody armed conflict. As an eyewitness to the violent Polish-Ukrainian confrontations, Lotnik could barely catch sight of the larger dimensions of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict. That does not alter the fact that his first-hand account does shed some light on the question why violence broke out on such a massive scale and why this violence was so uncompromisingly brutal. Lotnik’s account reveals how violence implicates people, escalates and dehumanizes them: the survival instinct, that dominates all else, of people who, whether they want it or not, are dragged into the conflict; the demoralizing routine of killing; the political opportunism of those who take part in the war; and, finally, the impossibility of returning to Civvy Street once someone has been caught up in violence. Moreover, Lotnik’s testimony lends support to the thesis that civil war is brutal precisely because it is a war of neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend. “Civil war often transforms local and personal grievances into lethal violence”, writes Kalyvas (2006: 389), “once it occurs, this violence becomes endowed with a political meaning that may be quickly naturalized into new and enduring identities.” In other words, civil wars produce violence that tends to assume simultaneously a highly brutal and deeply intimate character (cf. Keeley 1996; Blok 1998; Peterson 2000; Spencer 2000; Brown 2004; Kalyvas 2006). It was this vicious—often intimate and personal—violence and retaliation for violence that gave the wartime Polish- Ukrainian conflict a particularly appalling connotation. As Brown sums up:

The battles between insurgents were often personal, fought between neighbors and family members. They skirmished for this village, that bend in the river, this churchyard. In the wake of the highly technical and efficient mass killing of the Axis and Allied powers, inhabitants of the borderlands killed each other in ones and twos with simple tools. They killed with rifles, but more often, to save ammunition, with the butts of rifles, with knives, sickles, or the blunt surface of a wall. Short on technology and firepower, they fought with brute force of muscle, and so in the [Soviet and Nazi] reports the warfare is defined as “barbaric”—described as such by men whose profession was to kill quickly, massively and impersonally behind the cover of the legitimized violence of the state (Brown 2004: 222).

The two perspectives of Snyder and Lotnik on the violent Polish-Ukrainian conflict between 1939 and 1944 complement one another on a number of major points. While Snyder puts his finger on the moment at which a political conflict between two population groups becomes caught up in a violent acceleration, Lotnik offers insight into the social and psychological consequences of the violent confrontations for those directly involved. On the escalation of violence 29

Snyder defines the social and political context of violence; Lotnik describes the individual experience of violence. Both perspectives are essential for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of violence. They lead us to the universal elements that play a role in the escalation of violence: the power vacuum, the struggle for survival, and the banality of evil. And they bring to light parallels with other conflict-ridden areas. Lotnik’s experiences are shared by countless others who become involved in violence: by the seventeen-year- old youth, son of a Polish-Ukrainian couple from the village of Doshne in Volhynia, who in 1943 was forced to assist in killing fellow Polish villagers to prove his Ukrainian identity and to retain his right to live (Berkhoff 2004: 295), and by the many thousands of other (child) soldiers who were and are deployed all over the world during violent conflicts—in Cambodia in the 1970s, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s, and in Sudan and Congo today.

3 From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action Exploring Poland’s struggle with its Ukrainian minority 1944-1989*

The fundamental value of our [Polish] nation lies hidden in the deep, humanistic meaning of the Marxist slogan: “There can be no free nation, when it suppresses other nations”.

Aleksander Saw (1958b: 31)

Introduction

Bearing in mind that the term ethnic cleansing has become commonplace in descriptions of genocidal practices as in, for example, former Yugoslavia, this chapter will address another side of ethnic cleansing: the implementation of an unparalleled process of demographic engineering in the former Polish People’s Republic during the immediate postwar years. Following Bookman (1997), the term “demographic engineering” is used to refer to the organized efforts by Poland’s postwar political leadership aimed at altering the relative sizes of minority and majority populations in the quest for political control. Even though Poland’s political leaders did not shun using violence in their desire to reduce the size of minority populations on Polish territory, genocide was not on their agenda.1 They instead relied on alternative strategies: boundary changes, forced population transfers, economic pressure and forced assimilation. Recent scholarship refers to the state-initiated expulsion (forced transfer from one country to another) and deportation (forced resettlement to distant regions within a country) of Poland’s Ukrainians from Poland’s southeastern territories between 1944 and 1947 as ethnic cleansing (cf. Hann 1996; Kersten 1996; Misio 1999; Motyka 1999; Snyder 2003; van der Plank 2004). In principle,

* Accepted for publication in Nations and Nationalism. 1 While Bookman (1997) classifies genocide as an altogether different phenomenon, in my view it should be considered as one of several methods political leaders may deploy in their demographic engineering projects. 32 Struggling for peace these strategies were designed to ‘purify’ a territory, not a population: they were not inspired by racial, religious or ethnic hatred, and were part of a pragmatic and, at the time, not uncommon solution to establishing stable nation-states. The use of the label “Ukrainian” suggests consensus concerning the ethnic and national identity of the people that once inhabited the south-easternmost parts of Poland. While these people had in common that most of them were not Roman Catholic nor spoke Polish as their native tongue, their identity has been much contested since the era of nationalism (cf., Magocsi 1978; Hann 1993a; Ziba 1995a; Hann and Magocsi 2005). Nevertheless, in the immediate postwar years the official name given to the various ethnic groups— including the Lemkos, Boikos, and Hutsuls—was “Ukrainian” and their removal was part of a policy aimed at the permanent resolution of the so called “Ukrainian problem”. In order to avoid anachronisms, I will use the term Ukrainian in much the same way as Poland’s communist leaders did in their times, while acknowledging the fact that the term Ukrainian in and of itself is quite problematic. For similar reasons I will refer to Ukrainians not as an “ethnic group” but as a “national minority”, as it was as members of the Ukrainian “national minority” (mniejszo narodowa) that designated “Ukrainians” could refer to their legal status in People’s Poland, irrespective of their linguistic, religious, or ethnic backgrounds. The ambiguous attitude of Poland’s communist leadership towards Poland’s minority populations, on the one hand violent and severely repressive, on the other allowing for controlled liberties and offering protection for the country’s downtrodden minority populations, will be the main focus of this chapter. Despite the fact that the future of the country was willfully built on the massive expulsion and deportation of almost all its national minorities during the 1940s, in the decades that followed the communist leadership promoted a policy that today would be termed “affirmative action”. This policy was characterized by an effort to redress discrimination as well as the effects of such discrimination in earlier periods. Therefore, active measures were taken to ensure equal social and economic opportunities for minorities. The background of the wavering communist policies towards Poland’s Ukrainian minority will be discussed in three parts. First, the conditions that gave rise to a policy of ethnic cleansing are explored. Next, it is discussed how, in an attempt of the Polish Communist Party to include all members of the Ukrainian minority into Polish citizenship, the policy shifted to one of affirmative action. Finally, it is demonstrated how these seemingly contradictory policies were prompted by the same underlying political motivations. From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 33

Trials and tribulations: ‘Polish ways’ of solving the ‘Ukrainian Problem’

In the formative years of the Polish People’s Republic, from the installation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in July 1944 to the first ‘free’ elections in January 1947, it was political nationalism rather than socialist internationalism that reigned supreme in Polish politics. Paradoxically, the nationalist policy adopted by the postwar communist regime revived the nationalist ideology of “Poland for the Poles” championed by the prewar Sanacja regime. What is more, in the process of building a one-nation state, the communist regime used the racial administrative infrastructure left by the Nazi regime, such as the German Kennkarte (distinguishing Poles from non-Poles) and German concentration camps (serving as convenient locations for the collective punishment of minority groups). The postwar communist regime eventually relinquished the principle most treasured by the prewar Polish Communist Party, namely that of citizenship and equal rights for all. It was in this era of Polish ‘real-socialism’, that the socialist doctrine of proletarian internationalism offered little legal protection to those minorities targeted for expulsion. Just how ‘Polish’ the expulsion policies regarding Poland’s Ukrainian minority were has been questioned by a number of scholars. The Polish historians Grzegorz Motyka (1999) and Marek Jasiak (2001) assert that in all decisive phases directives came from Moscow, or at least that Moscow’s orders were unambiguous and open to single interpretation. Similarly, the American historian Timothy Snyder (1999) signals the decisive impact of Soviet trained officials in the implementation of Poland’s expulsion and deportation policies. Snyder (2003), along with the Polish historian Krystyna Kersten (2001), also points at the larger geopolitical context in which Poland’s postwar expulsion and deportation policies took shape. It may have been Stalin who first conceived of an ethnically homogenous Poland free of “irredentist” national minorities, but it was not without the consent of the Western Allied Powers that he embarked on an impressive demographic engineering project, including the establishment of new ethnographic borders and the transfer of millions of people. This is clear from the following excerpt of a speech by Winston Churchill during a debate on Poland’s postwar future in the House of Commons on 15 December 1944 (in Kersten 2001: 78):

The Poles are free, so far as Russia and Great Britain are concerned, to extend their territory, at the expense of Germany, to the west […] The transference of several millions of people would have to be effected from the east to the west or north, as well as the expulsion of the Germans […] For expulsion is the method that, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble […] A clean sweep will be made. 34 Struggling for peace

At the time Churchill delivered his speech, the Soviet-imposed Polish Committee of National Liberation and the Soviet government had already secretly agreed on the westward shift of Poland’s eastern and western border with 150 miles, thereby removing 85 percent of Poland’s largest national minority—Ukrainians—without the need of having to relocate them (Snyder 1999). The removal of the remainder was secured with the so- called “repatriation” charters between Poland, the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Lithuanian Soviet Republics in September 1944. The charters mandated the voluntary “evacuation” of all Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Russians and Lithuanians living on Polish territory to the Soviet Union, and of all Poles and Jews—having had Polish citizenship in September 1939—living on Soviet territory to Poland (Misio 1996). The new ethnographic border was approved of by the western allied powers during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945, as were the population transfers from east to west and from west to east. The unanimous consensus among the Allied powers that a peaceful Europe could only be attained on the basis of stable, ethnically homogenous nation states also impacted Poland’s domestic attitudes toward the minority populations. The sanctioning of population transfers rendered expulsion policies not just into appropriate, but also into legitimate, political means. The opinions expressed by Polish party officials during a conference in July 1945 in which the future of Poland’s Ukrainians was discussed are indicative for the way the expulsion of Ukrainians from Poland, as of other national minorities, had been accepted as a necessary evil. “We consider it of utmost importance that we live in mutual agreement”, prompted the head of the Ministry of Public Administration, but he added that any Ukrainian demands (such as their full participation in Poland’s political and economic life) could be met only “after the conclusion of the population transfers”. Another delegate judged: “Even though the Citizens are unanimous about their wish to stay here, I don’t think this will be possible. Having agreed with the Soviet Union to establish an ethnographic frontier, we have a tendency to be a nation state, and not a state of nationalities.” His last words were hard to misinterpret: “We do not want to harm anybody, but we do wish to solve the problem of [our] national minorities.”2 In the period between October 1944 and June 1946 an estimated 480,000 people classified as Ukrainians were put on transport to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. These numbers are low compared to those of other expelled contemporaries: Poles (1.7 million) and Germans (8,1 million). Map 3.1 summarizes these as well as voluntary population movements in the first decade after World War II. However, the expulsion of Poland’s Ukrainians from their native villages and towns stands out in one important respect: the military resistance of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to the state enforced resettlement policies. As UPA militancy was answered with state military violence, the

2 Report of the Ukrainian delegation from the Kraków province on the conference at the Ministry of Public Administration in Warsaw on 24 July 1945 (in Misio 1996: 155-8). From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 35

Map 3.1 Population movements, Poland 1944-1952

Source: Based on the Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Magocsi 1998: 164-8).

Ukrainian question increasingly became, more than anything else, a military question. When “voluntary” evacuation to the Soviet Ukrainian Republic turned out to be ineffective, Polish and Soviet army officers ordered the forceful expulsion of all Ukrainian civilians from their native territories. And when the “repatriation” charters approached their end in May 1947, Poland’s leadership came up with another military solution: the deportation of the residual Ukrainian population to distant regions within the country during the so-called military Operation Vistula (Akcja “Wisa”). Poland’s communist leadership typically propagated Operation Vistula as a necessary measure to once and for all smother Ukrainian militancy threatening to endanger the safety and the building of a socialist People’s Republic. This “military necessity” argument was fundamental to a political establishment that consisted largely of veteran officers who had

36 Struggling for peace served their time in partisan armies during the Second World War. Firstly, they were particularly unsympathetic to UPA soldiers who during World War II had not just lent their services to the extremely brutal Nazi regime, but had also engaged in the mass killings of Polish civilians (chapter 2). Secondly, they knew from experience that a guerrilla war could only be won by drastic military measures. Indeed, Operation Vistula did bring the military defeat of the UPA in Poland. “Once most Ukrainians had been resettled,” writes Snyder, “resistance was not only next to impossible, it was essentially pointless” (2003: 200). The question remains, however, to what extent the UPA posed a real threat to Poland’s political establishment to require the physical removal of an entire civilian population. Moreover, if it were true that Operation Vistula had a great military urgency, why was it implemented so late (in April 1947, more than two years after Nazi Germany’s military defeat) and so hesitantly by Poland’s communist leadership? Kersten (1996) points at the fact that Operation Vistula was implemented at a time when military control by the Polish Army in southeast Poland had increased and UPA military activity had decreased. Jasiak (2001) and Motyka (1999) demonstrate that there was a significant lapse in military attention to the issue of UPA militancy in the first years of the existence of the People’s Republic. Instead, up to spring 1947 much of Poland’s military force had been directed to the elimination of the Polish anti-communist underground and to the meticulous preparations of the orchestrated elections of January 1947. This being the case, Motyka argues, with all its forces assembled, the Polish army could have easily defeated the already highly dispersed and decimated UPA, without having to deport an entire civilian population, let alone those who did not sympathize with the Ukrainian underground and who did not identify as Ukrainians. Finally, during the enforcement process, Operation Vistula instead of strengthening the “relative peace” in the region contributed to an intensification of violence and lawlessness. This can be seen from Table 3.1, which summarizes for the Rzeszów province the statistics of all reported offences committed by “unknown civil bands” and by “hostile political elements” in the months preceding, during, and following Operation Vistula. The occurrences of violence and arson significantly rose during the operation. Even after the completion of the operation most statistics remain significantly higher than before its implementation. If not military logic, what else was the reason behind Operation Vistula? Recent scholarship has shown that Operation Vistula, besides an attempt to “resolve the Ukrainian problem once and for all” (General Mossor quoted in Misio 1993: 93), was an attempt to resolve another, much more urgent problem: the agonizing lack of political legitimacy of a Soviet imposed and, by January 1947, falsely elected Polish communist government. “The Polish communist regime stood to gain in popularity by identifying itself with the Polish nation, by combating ‘Ukrainian nationality’”, writes Snyder (1999: 111). “The attempt at hegemony over the idea of the nation had been the major goal of communist propaganda From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 37 from 1943; the genius of excluding the UPA from the national amnesty of February 1947, of prosecuting Ukrainian partisans under different laws than Polish ones, and finally of Operation “Wisa” in summer 1947, was that such actions defined that national community starkly and plainly.” Kersten (2001) likewise argues that the expulsion of non-Poles from Poland encouraged many Poles to cooperate with the Polish Committee of National Liberation and the successive communist governments, even those who might otherwise have been negatively disposed towards the communists. The nationalization of Polish communism gave rise to a contradictory picture of the new regime: “it was seen as a government forcibly imposed by a foreign power, but one that was nonetheless taking care of Poland’s national aspirations” (Kersten 2001: 80).

Table 3.1 Criminal and politically inspired offences committed immediately before, during, and after Operation Vistula in the Rzeszów province

Before During After (February-April (May-July (August-October 1947) 1947) 1947) Violence Manslaughter 52 57 36 Robbery by assault and attacks on militia stations and stations of the Secret Services 465 1,181 784 Injuries 74 96 55 Disappearances 0 6 1 Kidnappings 22 15 0 Arson Accidental 18 46 33 Houses and farms 46 687 432 Bridges; mills; oil pits 0 6 44 Forests (in ha) 78 195 131 Sources: Monthly Reports by the Socio-political Department in Rzeszów to the Ministry of Public Administration. Centralne Archiwum MSWiA. February to June 1947: Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne miesiczne, MAP 112, July to October 1947, MBP 140.

The timing of Operation Vistula was faultless. It was implemented after the falsified parliamentary elections (January 1947), thus distracting the Polish population from the bad press the communist government was receiving in and outside the country, and after the declaration of an amnesty for political opponents (February 1947), which marked the end

38 Struggling for peace of the Polish underground but left the Ukrainian underground (being excluded from the amnesty) as a major threat to state security. When on 28 March 1947 General wierczewski was killed in an ambush by UPA armed forces, the state authorities used this as a pretext to start massive deportation of the Ukrainian civilian population.3 Following wierczewski’s death, a massive propaganda campaign told soldiers and ordinary citizens about the dire necessity of the final “cleansing” (oczyszczenie) of Poland’s southeastern territories from “raiding fascist Ukrainian troops”. Stressing the “shameful” partnership of the Ukrainian and Polish underground forces, the propaganda was instrumental in discrediting all— Polish and Ukrainian—opponents of the communist establishment at once; as enemies to a “democratic” regime, they were the ones who hindered Poland’s resurrection from the ruins of the war (Zajczkowski 2003: 185-6). State propaganda did not stop with the termination of Operation Vistula in August 1947. As matters stand, Operation Vistula became one of the most exploited political maneuvers in the history of People’s Poland (Ziba 1995b), comparable in scale and scope maybe to the massive anti- Semitic campaign begun by Poland’s communist government in 1967, which resulted in the departure of an estimated 15-20,000 Jews from Poland (Pankowski 2008). The answer to the question why Operation Vistula was implemented in the spring of 1947 lies in the above-depicted political realities. Poland’s communists were simply not ready to implement a military campaign like Operation Vistula any time earlier. In the process of pursuing the completion of their new task—the ethnic homogenization of the Polish People’s Republic—the political limits of what was tolerable and what not, as well as the political balance of what was required and what was desired, had to be explored and tested at every step along the way. Come what may, all actions first had to be explained and justified to, next to being accepted by, the higher and lower political cadres. How difficult and painstaking this process of political delegation and decision-making was is clear from the example of Poland’s Lemkos. The Lemkos, who linguistically and culturally were related to their Ukrainian neighbors and had a varied (Rusyn, Ukrainian, or Polish) national identity, were one of the ethnic groups targeted for expulsion. But whereas the state authorities had shown no leniency toward members of the Ukrainian community, their approach toward the Lemkos was much more circumspect. The political assertiveness of the Lemko community on the one hand, and the political indecisiveness of the communist leadership on the other, resulted in an endless tug of war between the local, provincial and central authorities regarding the expulsion of the Lemkos. The increased use of military force by Polish troops in the Krosno and Sanok districts during the first half of 1946 was reason for a number of local communities to issue a

3 The timing, as well as the suspicious circumstances of wierczewski’s death, has led some historians to suggest that maybe his death was not accidental but part of a preplanned chain of events (cf. 1992; Motyka 1999; Jasiak 2001). From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 39 complaint. A petition signed by the village headmen (sotysi) of the Komacza district states that “things are happening here, which are blatantly incompatible with the words spoken by His Highest Citizen the Marshal of Poland, but which are carried out by divisions of the Polish Army.”4 The petitioners argue that since local inhabitants do not identify themselves as Ukrainians, consider themselves loyal Polish citizens, and are as much attached to the Polish soil—on which in fact they have lived for centuries—as are their Polish neighbors, great injustice is done to them if they are forced to leave the country. The petitioners dismiss the policy of “Ukrainization”, which disregards their status as native-born citizens of Poland and their “proven loyalty” to the Polish State, as well as the policy of “collective responsibility”, which first and foremost “hits the innocent” rather than punishes the guilty.5 A second petition written by the village inhabitants of Komacza states “we therefore kindly request […] a generous and immediate withdrawal of our compulsory resettlement to the East, foreign to us in every respect.”6 The residents in the Komacza district were not alone in their protest. Residents of the district and from the town Krosno sent similar petitions to the central authorities.7 The Krosno petition was signed by Polish citizens who, in emphasizing that they had always lived and worked “in best harmony” with their “Lemko brethren”, argued that the “terror and barbarity” that was being exacted on peaceful civilians would remain as a “black stain” (czarna plama) on the pages of Poland’s history.8 The petitions did touch a chord with the central authorities. At stake was the political legitimacy of the communist leadership claiming the control over a ‘new and democratic’ Poland. In April 1946, General Secretary of the Polish Communist Party Wadysaw Gomuka once more decreed

4 Petition by the village headmen of the Komacza district addressed to the Minister of National Defence Marshal of Poland M. ymierski, Komacza, 16 February 1946 (in Misio 1999: 45). 5 Ibid. (1999: 46).. 6 Petition by the inhabitants of the Komacza district addressed to the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Polish Republic, the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Justice, the principals of the Rzeszów province and the Sanok district, Komacza, 18 February 1946 (in Misio 1999: 47-8).. 7 Petition by the inhabitants of the Szczawne district addressed to the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Polish People’s Republic E. Osóbka-Morawski, Szczawne, 19 February 1946; Joint letter by the citizens of Krosno addressed to the General Secretary of the Polish Communist Party Wadysaw Gomuka, Krosno, 29 March 1946 (Misio 1999). 8 Quoted in Misio (1999: 75, 77).

40 Struggling for peace that the use of any force in the resettlement of the Lemkos was “strictly forbidden”.9 In a response to the petitions, the Polish plenipotentiary for evacuation Józef Bednarz explained his new dilemma before the Vice Minister of Public Administration. “I have no evidence in favor of the claim made by the Lemko petitioners that they helped liberate the Polish nation from the Nazi occupier, nor for their current loyalty with respect to the Government of National Unity”, writes Bednarz. “But their reproach that the evacuation in the Sanok district [...] looses its voluntary character with the active involvement of divisions of the Polish Army, makes perfect sense—still, from the technical point of view, and in the light of the struggle against Ukrainian nationalist troops, the [army’s] withdrawal will undoubtedly harm the resettlement operation.”10 To cover up for his uncertainty regarding the status of the Lemkos, Bednarz requested an expert opinion from the general secretary of the Polish Academy of Science in Kraków, who concluded that over the past few decades the Lemkos “did not consider themselves as Poles, but as part of the Rusyn nation”, and that in the last years “Ukrainian influences” had gained increased importance. “During the elections Lemkos never brought out a vote for Polish candidates [...] nor did they resist Nazi occupation. Therefore, if they now claim to be Poles, they do so only because they want to stay in Poland. This Polishness may be considered one hundred percent situational, sincere maybe among the few [Lemko] Roman Catholics.”11 Even though this opinion had the potential of supporting state policy, the vice minister of Public Administration Wadysaw Wolski dismissed it as irrelevant. Sophisticated, hair-splitting commentaries had become redundant because by that time the engineering project had already gained its own momentum. In Wolski’s view, the central administration should busy itself “solely with the technical side of the resettlement operation” and see to it that “the evacuation of the Lemkos is carried out according to general principles.” In other words, the necessity of the resettlement of the Lemkos was beyond doubt and the main task of the Ministry of Public Administration was to carry out the operation as quickly and efficient as possible, if necessary with force. To that effect, and in order to fulfill the quota requirements demanded by their superiors, the provincial and district authorities took refuge in the strategy of “voluntary

9 Letter by the Vice Minister of the Provisional Government of National Unity W. Gomuka to the Vice Minister of Public Administration W. Wolski, Warsaw, 19 April 1946 (in Misio 1999: 104).. 10 Letter by the chief plenipotentiary for evacuation of the Ukrainian population J. Bednarz to the Vice Minister of Public Administration W. Wolski concerning the petitions sent by the Komacza and Szczawne districts, Lublin, 1 April 1946 (in Misio 1999: 92).. 11 Letter of the general secretary of the Polish Academy of Science T. Kowalski to the chief plenipotentiary for evacuation of the Ukrainian population J. Bednarz, Kraków 16 April 1946 (in Misio 1999: 103). From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 41 constraint” (dobrowolny przymus): while acknowledging the clause of “voluntariness” of the resettlement treaty, they sanctioned the active involvement of the Polish Army in the resettlement operation.12 This approach solved the problem to a degree, but not entirely. The lack of clear instructions regarding the issue of who was to be deported and who not— besides the decision that those Lemkos who declared themselves as Poles and who were loyal to the Polish state could stay—resulted in chaos and abuses. “The evacuation operation has failed”, concluded the principal of the Kraków province in a letter of 13 June 1946, “but the hundred percent inclusion of the Lemkos will not guarantee any success either” (in Misio 1999: 212). Operation Vistula ended past failures and unpredictabilities in one fell swoop; this time, the instructions were very clear. The strategic plan of the operation dated 16 April 1947 ordered the evacuation of people from “all shades of Ukrainian nationality, including the Lemkos as well as mixed Polish-Ukrainian families.” In the territories where the UPA was still active, the “complete evacuation” of the population was envisioned, including “Polish civilians, irrespective of their profession, social standing, or party affiliation.”13 Between 28 April and 31 July 1947 over 140,000 inhabitants from the Rzeszów and Lublin provinces were expelled from their homes and deported to distant regions in west and northwest Poland. Despite of the fact that the preliminary plan demanded the “protection of the properties and the personal safety” of the deportees and even warned that the operation should involve the “resettlement and not the pacification” of people, punishment was an essential feature of the operation.14 Individuals suspected of collaboration with the UPA were singled out for beatings or murdered or sent to a concentration camp. Altogether, about 3,936 Ukrainians, including 823 women and children, were taken to the Jaworzno concentration camp (a wartime affiliate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex) where they became subjected to routine torture, typhus epidemics and extreme shortages of food and clothing (Snyder 2003: 200). With the exception of a few locations where Ukrainians were able to stay as indispensable railway workers, through their connections with the administration, by registering as Roman Catholics, or by sheer “chance and coincidence”, to quote Babiski

12 The term “voluntary constraint” is used by the principle of the Kraków province in his letter to the Vice Minister of Public Administration W. Wolski, Kraków, 13 June 1946 (Misio 1999: 212). See also the minutes of the conference organized by the political-educational department of the Kraków province from 7 May 1946 (Misio 1999: 129-132). 13 Project outline of Special Operation “East” (Wschód)—later changed into Operation “Vistula” (Wisa)—drafted by General Mossor and presented to the Polish politburo by Minister of Defense ymierski and Minister of Public Security Radkiewicz on 16 April 1947 (Misio 1993: 93). 14 Project outline of Special Operation “East”, Annex nr. 1 (Misio 1993: 101, emphasis added)..

42 Struggling for peace

(1997: 102), Operation Vistula practically ended centuries of Ukrainian and Lemko presence in the southeastern provinces of Poland.15 The immediate dispossession of the Ukrainian deportees, their deliberate dispersal over a large number of villages and towns in the “”, the liquidation of the Greek Catholic church and the confiscation of church properties; the imposition of penalties for those leaving their designated villages or towns—all these were measures taken to prevent their return and encourage their assimilation in their new places of living (chapters 5 and 6). And so Operation Vistula marked the beginning of a new phase for Poland’s Ukrainians.

Brother’s keeper: the Party’s struggle against nationalism and discrimination

Notwithstanding the physical elimination of virtually all national minorities from Poland, the nationality problem continued to play a dominant part in Polish society and Party politics. “Currently, in terms of the size of the non-Polish population, the nationality problem in People’s Poland does not count for very much” writes Party ideologue Aleksander Saw (1958b: 29) in 1958.16 In fact, at the time of his writing, national minorities constituted no more than two percent—Ukrainians less then one percent—of the total population in Poland. Before the outbreak of World War II these figures had been significantly higher: 30 percent and 14 percent, respectively.17 “Yet the political weight of the nationality problem,” Saw (1958b: 29) continues, “cannot be measured against some numbers. The weight and its dimensions first of all lie hidden in the relationship and coexistence of the Polish community [...] with the minority populations.” Saw’s statement, besides being an expression of the social and political importance of the nationality problem during the 1950s, also points at the willingness of the communist leadership to critically reassess the relationship between Poles and non-Poles in Poland. This ambition was a response to two major developments: the liberalization of the political

15 Babi ski (1997: 102) estimates the number of Ukrainians that had been able to escape the expulsion and deportation policies to at most 50,000 persons out of a pre-deportation total of some 700,000. 16 Saw (1907-1971) served in the Polish People’s Army after World War II and was commander- in-chief of the paramilitary youth organization „Service to Poland” (Powszechna Organizacja „Su ba Polsce”). He was a Party representative and secretary of the Commission of Nationality Affairs (Komisja KC PZPR do Spraw Narodowo ciowych) from 1957 to its abolishment in 1960. The fact that Saw was a Pole of Jewish descent may explain his politically engaged commitment to Poland’s minority issues (Mironowicz 2000 and Zi ba, personal communication). 17 Estimated on the basis of statistics from Magocsi (1998: 131), Saw (1958b: 29) and the Central Statistical Office in Poland (GUS 1995-2006). From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 43 climate in Poland after Stalin’s death in 1953, and the revival of nationalist and antagonist sentiments in the larger Polish society. While the first gave an impulse to the progressive current within the Party bureaucracy, the second was increasingly considered an obstacle to economic and social progress. The collective punishment of Poland’s Ukrainians left an inerasable blot on the Party’s reputation. And it gave rise to strong nationalist sentiments among Ukrainians, but also, and this especially, among Poles. Years of propaganda defending the cause of the country’s ‘National Unity’ had done its work; for most Poles the term “Ukrainian” became synonymous with “UPA bandit”, “fascist” and “Nazi-collaborator”. The strong nationalist and anti-Ukrainian undercurrent in Party propaganda aside, it is worth noting, as Ziba (1995b) does, that the postwar demographic upheaval helped contribute to a quick spreading of these stereotypes all over Poland, even to regions where before 1939 Ukrainians were unknown. The traumatized Polish “repatriates”, who left the Ukrainian Republic in ever growing numbers, brought along recollections of severe persecution and introduced their new surroundings to even more vigorous stereotypes, such as the Ukrainian “cutthroat” (rezun) and “barbarian” (dzicz). In addition, Poland’s residual Ukrainians, classified as “UPA bandits” and resettled to the ‘recovered territories’ during Operation Vistula, formed a constant reminder of the violent Polish-Ukrainian clashes. This provided the setting in which Party propagandists could conveniently manipulate the negative stereotypes that were already firmly rooted in Polish society (Ziba 1995b). The changing attitude of the communist leadership regarding Poland’s national minorities was formalized in a resolution passed by the Presidium of the Council of Ministers in 1954. It reads “National groups in the Polish People’s Republic enjoy constitutionally guaranteed, equal rights in all public, political, economic, and cultural domains […] The existence of relics of bourgeois ideology in the consciousness of a significant part of the population, results in the situation where this basic constitutional principle is often being violated, where [national minorities] are subject to various forms of discrimination, where the Party and Government program is being perverted, and finally, where the factual situation of national minorities is not always in line with the constitutionally grounded legal status of the latter”.18 The document reveals the Party’s criticism of, and growing concern about, recurrent discrimination and violation of rights of minority group members. Letters of complaint about incidents of discrimination and even violence against minority group members—ranging from disrespectful treatment at work, the harassment of school children, to beatings and even ethnically motivated killings— reaching the Political Bureau in overwhelming quantities, added to the apprehensiveness of the central authorities (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 4).

18 Quoted in Mironowicz (2000: ch. 3).

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The nation-wide incidents of ethnically motivated discrimination raised the question why the Party had failed to instill the idea of “proletarian internationalism” in the society at large, despite years of unremitting propaganda. One major political mistake, argues Saw (1958b) in an essay in the Party organ “New Paths” (Nowe Drogi), has been the systematic negligence of the social, cultural and economic needs of the various minority populations. While on the one hand this negligence has contributed to a general skepticism among, and social isolation of minority group members, it has also contributed to the wide acceptance of a “false theory” which holds that the assimilation of Poland’s minorities is inevitable and necessary (1958b: 29). As a result, Saw argues, the Party has developed a blind spot for nationalist encumbrances in the society at large and among Party members: “Empty declarations and slogans, the absence of hard facts in our propaganda as well as the absence of proclamations of internationalism in the broadest sense, that is, of solidarity between nations and nation states, have failed to bring us [anything closer to] brotherly coexistence with our national minorities in a given village, in a given town, or at a given job location” (1958b: 29). Saw’s call for a rightful treatment of all national minorities in Poland, for an adjustment of proclaimed ideals (Marxist-Leninist ideology) and real-existing problems (Marxist-Leninist practice), and for “ideological maturity” in all ranks of the Party bureaucracy, coincided with an unprecedented liberalization of Poland’s nationality policy. In this era of political liberalism (1954 to 1958) much was done to make up for the Party’s blind spot, or quoting Saw, for the fact that “we did not see or did not want to see” the few hundred thousand members of minority populations living in Poland (1958b: 29). In 1955, as a means to “eliminate the exploitation of one man by the other, and to guarantee freedom of cultural expression for each individual, in line with the dictate of peaceful coexistence between nations”, the Central Committee of the Communist Party summoned all Party and governmental institutions to take up a dialogue with and to engage in political work among Ukrainians, in order to increase Ukrainian participation in provincial administration, to regulate their economic support, to solve the problem concerning education in the , and to stimulate the participation of Ukrainian youth in the communist Polish Youth Association. In 1956, after months of consultation with Party and government officials, the Ukrainian Socio-Cultural Society (UTSK—Ukraiskie Towarzystwo Spoeczno-Kulturalne) was established and the editorial board of the Ukrainian weekly “Our Word” (Nasze Sowo) was formed (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 4). A comprehensive political campaign to redress past wrongs and to regain the trust of the minorities was launched with the installation of a Commission of Nationality Affairs (Komisja KC PZPR do Spraw Narodowociowych) in January 1957. The staff of the Commission consisted of representatives of the KC PZPR, including Saw himself, of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and of the leaders of the newly founded From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 45

Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Jewish socio-cultural societies (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 4). The Commission of Nationality Affairs became the chief fashioner of Poland’s nationality policy until its dissolution in March 1960. Under its guidance much was done to fight discrimination, to raise the quantity and quality of special education for minorities, to emphasize the patriotism of communists of non-Polish descent for a large Polish public by demonstrating their contribution to the defeat of fascism and the building of socialism, and to neutralize the two most persistent stereotypes in Polish society: all Jews are directors (dyrektorze) and all Ukrainians are UPA bandits (upowcy) (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 4). Party and non-Party organizations and institutions at all levels of society, including the Polish Press and Radio, were called to participate in meetings to reflect on issues of discrimination and intolerance and on ways to promote and popularize Poland’s non-Polish populations to the larger public. The following excerpt from a Central Committee letter directed to all Party cells and published in the popular press in April 1957 is illustrative of the atmosphere in those days:

[Party members] must fight for rigid observation of the principles of national equality guaranteed in the constitution of People’s Poland. The transgression of these principles through the direct or indirect limitation of legal privileges based on nationality, race, or religion is an act punishable by law. All national minorities have rights equal to those of any Polish citizen: the right to an education in the native language, to cultural organizations, to full respect for and cultivation of their cultural traditions. All citizens of the Polish People’s Republic have an equal right to work and hold any state, social or Party position in accordance with their professional and moral- political qualifications.19

In its new role as brothers’ keeper, the Party showed its allegiance to the ‘humanistic traditions’ of socialism. But it was not humanism alone that inspired the Party leadership to take up the fight against discrimination and inequality. Next to the social and cultural wellbeing of all of Poland’s citizens, the economic progress of the country as well as the Party’s reputation and moral legitimacy were at stake. This is made very explicit in one of first reports of the Commission of Nationality Affairs sent to the Political Bureau of the PZPR in 1957:

The persecution of citizens of non-Polish descent is inhumane and anti-socialist and brings about irretrievable losses to our country […] The discrimination of any social group causes laxity of public and social discipline. It has a demoralizing affect on its victims, and diminishes their human dignity. It paralyses the social and economic activity of the victims, and in the case of emigration, takes from the country thousands of skilled workers […] These facts unworthy of a civilized country reverberate loud echo’s in progressive and democratic circles abroad […] and

19 Quoted in Koloski (2004: 163).

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discredit Poland. The spreading wave of nationalism and chauvinism impedes our progress, weakens the Party, and hinders the building of socialism.20

Not assimilation, but the incorporation and socialization of Poland’s minorities—these were the main objectives of the affirmative action policy adopted by the Party leadership. They had to be instrumental in resolving a number of issues with regard to Poland’s Ukrainians: their social isolation and economic backwardness, their distrust and apprehensiveness toward the Party and the state, and their strong appeal for a return to southeast Poland. The social and economic stagnation of the Ukrainians, the communists believed, next to being a debit entry on Poland’s social and economic account, triggered defensive nationalist responses from indigenous Ukrainians, lent support to the activities of Ukrainian émigré circles, and prompted a Ukrainian mass return to southeast Poland. These issues, as well as the articulation of a Lemko identity by a growing number of Ukrainians, were a thorn in the flesh of the communist leadership. Saw was very explicit in his criticism of the UTSK leadership; he held them responsible for being too susceptible to “external nationalist agitation” and for spoiling the Party’s goodwill. “Agitation for a return under the slogan of ‘preserving’ the Lemko culture is an insane platitude,” Saw (1958a: 61) argued. “Since each kind of nationalism is harmful for the working masses, so is this particular kind of nationalism, aiming at the postponement of the stabilization of the western territories and the prolongation of its transitional status, which in fact is detrimental to both our country, as well as to the economic and social interests of the Ukrainian population.” That each minority group retained a number of schools, folklore groups, one native- language periodical, and one socio-cultural organization certainly helped strengthen the bond between Poland’s national minorities and the Party. But this, according to Laurie Koloski, was much less than they had hoped for (2004: 164). Saw, who confidently claimed that “hitherto distrustful” members of the minority groups “are beginning to look at our Party and at the government with new eyes—the idea of socialism has grown more familiar to them”, did not hide his irritation with the minorities’ growing political assertiveness (1958b: 34). The aim of the Party, Saw stressed in a Commission’s report, is not to satisfy the ambitions of the minorities’ leaders, but to eliminate discrimination and to create the conditions in which minority members feel free to express their social and cultural needs. This view is also expressed in another report from May 1958. “It is mandatory that the socio-cultural societies are aware of the reasons of their existence, in order to have them free themselves of nationalist perversions and accretions, and in order to have themselves pushed back on the road of defending the interests of the minorities

20 Quoted in Mironowicz (2000: ch. 4). From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 47 before the Party and the government”.21 The Commission went on to state that the socio- cultural societies should keep far from meddling into political and economic affairs, and instead, should keep strictly to the task the Party had entrusted them with at the outset: the propagation of socialism and love for People’s Poland and the advancement of the level of civilization by means of socio-cultural work among their members (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 4). In other words, what was tolerable and what not depended on the rationalizations of a Party leadership that was increasingly inclined to take political assertiveness for political disloyalty. “Though minorities actively participated in the newly created socio-cultural organizations and continued to present the authorities with concrete demands”, writes Koloski (2004: 164), “they could not, in the end, transcend official ambivalence, the lack of a coherent minority policy, or the steady increase of party/state control.” Being held in contempt by the Party leadership for displaying their distinctiveness and for making social and political claims, the minority organizations gradually alienated from their target groups and eventually evolved into political instruments for Party propaganda. What is more, since the furtherance of group interests was regarded with extreme suspicion, the socio-cultural work done by minority organizations increasingly involved activities for pure entertainment. From this deadlock, to paraphrase Koloski (2004: 183), there seemed no easy way out: whereas for Poland’s minorities “creating a separate folklore was only the beginning”, for the country’s communist officials “it was the outer limit”. Following reorganization within the Party apparatus in March 1960, issues related to the nationality question were assigned to a newly formed “Nationality Commission” (Komisja Narodowociowa przy Wydziale Administracyjnym KC PZPR) (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 5). In an effort to moderate the political concerns as well as the growing state expenditures, the new Party leadership devised a policy that facilitated the full assimilation of the national minorities into Polish society. This was done in two ways: by incorporating the minority organizations into the socialist market economy and by turning state tolerance towards national minorities from an active into a passive condition—that is, by refraining from interference. In the process, each minority organization was appointed a number of firms and branches of industry. Propagated as a necessary step to drag the non-Polish population into the production process, the central authorities hoped for the self-supporting capacity of the minority organizations in the long run. The experiment became a blatant failure, but it was nonetheless continued for several years (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 6). Meanwhile, in the field of education a similar laissez-faire policy was practiced. Arguing that the process of assimilation should “not be hastened”, but instead should take its “natural course”, the central authorities held back their support. As a result, the number of

21 Ibid.

48 Struggling for peace schools with a curriculum in the minorities’ vernacular dropped significantly during the 1960s (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 6). By the 1970s the nationality question had been pushed back to the margins of political concern. In his speech delivered on 20 February 1976 General Secretary referred to Poland as a one-nation state and spoke of the Party’s imperative to build a society based on a “moral political unity” (Mironowicz 2000: ch. 6). Obliging to the thesis of an ethnically homogeneous Poland, the central authorities considered the nationality question as of secondary importance in the process of building socialism. Minority organizations were tolerated as a necessary evil, because speeding up the process of assimilation, it was believed, would be detrimental to the integration of minority members. The central authorities nevertheless lent a helping hand to the assimilation process. For Poland’s Ukrainians, among others, this entailed the abolishment of Ukrainian education, the destruction of sites of Ukrainian national heritage, and the polonization of Ukrainian and Lemko geographical names in the southeastern provinces during the late 1970s (cf. Urbaczyk 1981; Mironowicz 2000). State propaganda against “” contributed to a revival of the stereotype of the “Ukrainian bandit” and to a defensive retreat of Poland’s Ukrainians into their own social confines (cf. Mokry 1981). During the late 1980s, with the communist regime in decline, a political polarization among Poland’s Ukrainians set in and ever since the political assertiveness of Poland’s Ukrainians has been on the increase (cf. chapter 6, Dziewierski et al. 1992; Mihalasky 2000; Nowak 2003).

Two sides, one coin: revisiting ethnic cleansing and affirmative action

Fifteen years after violent Polish-Ukrainian clashes in Volhynia and Galicia and eleven years after the ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians from Poland, a confident communist leadership committed itself to re-evaluate the much-troubled Polish-Ukrainian relationship. “The Ukrainian question in Poland,” Saw (1958a: 46) explains to his communist readership, “is a sensitive one, painful for both the substantial Ukrainian minority in Poland, as well as for a variety of Polish groups”. The Ukrainian minority, which had been violently pushed to the margins of Polish society during the 1940s, had become core focus of political attention of the communist leadership by the second half of the 1950s. Going beyond anti-discrimination policies, the central authorities took active affirmative measures to ensure equal opportunity for Poland’s Ukrainians and other minority group members in culture, education, employment and Party and state positions. While at first sight this might appear as inconsistent policymaking, on closer examination it is clear that it were the same incentives that gave rise to the subsequent, seemingly incompatible, state policies: appeals for a homogeneous and egalitarian society, political pressure from outside, and the wish for control by an authoritarian regime. From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 49

One important lesson John Skrentny (1996) draws from his study of affirmative action in the is that policy and lawmakers must maintain a moral legitimacy. “Within nations, shared understandings of morality and justice—a moral model—define the basic boundaries of policy and lawmaking”, writes Skrentny (1996: 236). “Anyone wishing to pursue a material interest lessens the risk of illegitimacy by acting within the boundaries of what is considered by the significant political players and audiences legitimate political action.” Conspicuous changes in Poland’s postwar ‘moral model’ produced two distinct and contradictory state policies: ethnic cleansing and affirmative action. Set in their times and contexts both policies remained within the boundaries of what was considered by the contemporary political players and audiences legitimate political action. Even though the ethnic cleansing and affirmative action policies starkly contrasted in regard to their moral content, the political implications of the policies did in certain important respects overlap. Firstly, both policies had proven to be very instrumental in mitigating domestic political crises as well as in strengthening the moral legitimacy of a very vulnerable political regime. In the case of ethnic cleansing, legitimacy was sought from the majority population; in the case of affirmative action, legitimacy was sought from the minority populations. Secondly, both policies were part of a broader homogenizing project. In the first case this was to be achieved through the complete expulsion of minority populations; in the second case homogeneity was to be achieved through the minorities’ complete assimilation and integration. Last but not least, both policies gave preferential treatment to Poland’s minority populations, the first by way of repressive violence, the second by way of repressive tolerance. That proclaimed practices of tolerance are “in many of its effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression” has been most convincingly argued by the sociologist Herbert Marcuse (1965: 81). In his essay Repressive Tolerance from 1965, Marcuse wrote about advanced democratic societies. While not all of his conclusions are compelling, some of his insights are highly relevant for the case of socialist totalitarian states (to which Marcuse himself has a tendency to turn a blind eye). “Tolerance is an end in itself only when it is truly universal, practiced by the rulers as well as by the ruled, by the lords as well as by the peasants, by the sheriffs as well as by their victims [sic]”, writes Marcuse (1965: 84-5). He further argues: “When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted” (Marcuse 1965: 111). What Marcuse describes is a form of tolerance that is repressive, utilitarian and serving the political purposes of those in power. This is not unlike Buzalka’s (2007) concept of artificial tolerance. While Marcuse stresses the repressive aspect, Buzalka, writing about

50 Struggling for peace post-communist Poland, emphasizes the artificial nature of elite-driven discourses on tolerance that effectively serve “to reinforce the dominant worldview” (2007: 149). According to Buzalka (2007: 149), current attempts to promote tolerance “from above” perform particular functions in reinforcing power relations favorable to local religious and secular elites. Even when Polish socialist society was a proclaimed egalitarian society, without class structure and with equal rights for everyone, tolerance in this country was undeniably not an end in itself. Poland’s historical transition in 1944 from one social system to another was not “sparked and driven by an effective movement ‘from below’” (Marcuse 1965: 108). While in fact staged by the Soviet liberator, the transition of Poland’s political system from a capitalist ‘bourgeois’ into a socialist ‘egalitarian’ system turned Poland’s communists into a major political force overnight (cf. Gross 1988). Both these implications, the Soviet influence and the weak political power base of the new communist regime, created the conditions in which military violence and destruction was deemed to be required in the national interest. Just as tolerance was not an aim in and of itself, the ethnic cleansing of Poland’s Ukrainian minority, even though thoroughly uncompromising and excessively violent, was not an aim in itself either, but a means to an end, at least in theory: to build a stable, peaceful and ethnically homogeneous one-nation state in the socialist tradition of mutual tolerance and solidarity among the working classes. It was not racial, religious or ethnic hatred that fuelled the nationalist appeal for a homogeneous Poland. Moreover, the use of violence was a means to regain the monopoly on violence and to enforce state control over anti-communist Ukrainian and Polish armed forces; it was not aimed at achieving homogeneity through genocide. Poland’s new communist leadership truly believed that the expulsion of Poland’s national minorities was a cure-all for all sorts of problems (in particular the problem of its moral illegitimacy) and that it was a necessary precondition for progress in the country. A political momentum was created when the allied leaders were more than willing to sanction such a, quoting Churchill, “clean sweep”. Enforced by a powerless and inexperienced political leadership, Poland’s demographic engineering project slowly gathered momentum and was finalized by means of trial-and-error. For the same reason the affirmative action policies were hardly meant to meet the requirements of Poland’s downtrodden Ukrainian minority. The enhancement of participation of Ukrainians in Poland’s economic and social life gave a much-needed impulse to the social and economic progress of the country as a whole. Ultimately, it provided a means through which the Party leadership could gain the confidence and support of the ‘outside’, non-Party world. It was to this ‘outside’ world—including Poland’s minority populations, the Eastern Bloc countries, and the Diaspora communities in the Western democracies—that the communist leadership directed its energetic attempts From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 51 to promote Poland as a country of comprehensive tolerance, free of racial hatred, nationalism and chauvinism. In this setting, the Party’s self-justification became a means to an end: to ease internal disquiet, to ward off criticism from the West, and to blend in the “brotherhood” of communist nations. Indeed, the signing of a declaration of friendship with the Soviet Republics, the German Democratic Republic, and Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s, committed Poland’s Party leadership to a respectful treatment of Poland’s Ukrainian, Byelorussian, German and Slovakian minorities. “The nationality policy of the communists,” writes the historian Mironowicz in his conclusion, “was characterized by its blatant inconsistency. Internationalist rhetoric and slogans about the brotherhood of nations went hand in hand with efforts aiming at the assimilation of the non-Polish population and at the formation of an ethnically homogeneous Polish People’s Republic” (2000: ch. 7). While some Polish scholars have dismissed this inconsistency as communist hypocrisy and opportunism, it is also true that this inconsistency had been hotly debated by generations of contemporary Polish communists seeking to bridge the gap between Marxist-Leninist doctrine and practice. This is not unlike the efforts by US politicians to reconcile the inconsistencies of affirmative action policies that were introduced in the United States during the 1960s. The dilemma that continues to plague American society, according to Skrentny (1996: 240), is that “both racial inequality and exclusion and affirmative action are rejected for moral/cultural reasons, but many Americans came to believe that the former cannot be rectified without the latter.” The dilemma that Poland’s communists faced is formulated succinctly by Koloski (2004: 183): “There was bound to be a deadlock between minority demands, which involved rethinking Polish statehood and society along multinational lines, and the immovability of the Polish authorities, for whom the integrity of Polish statehood relied in part on retaining its ‘mononational’ character.” In other words, liberties for Poland’s national minorities were controlled liberties and political demands were out of the question. Notwithstanding the sincere intentions of Poland’s communists, even the protagonists of a “socialism with a human face” had failed to reconcile the conflicting demands of the main ethics of communism—equality for all versus everyone is equal. The preceding and successive communist regimes were all trapped into a similar catch-22 situation: allowing liberties to minority groups endangered the quest for national homogeneity; constraints on the liberties of minority groups violated the code of equal rights for all.

52 Struggling for peace

Conclusions

Ethnic cleansing and affirmative action are two distinct political answers to a single political question: how can a state obtain control over and acquire legitimacy among its majority and minority populations? The answer to this question tells a great deal about the political intentions, mentalities, interests and constraints of those who rule the state. The adoption of both ethnic cleansing and affirmative action policies by the rulers of states within the former Soviet East Bloc was not uncommon. Martin (2001: 126) discusses a reverse case. In the 1920s the Soviet Union adopted “indigenization” (korenizatsiia) as a “prophylactic policy designed to defuse and prevent the development of nationalism” by simultaneously favoring the non-Russian minority populations and penalizing the Russian majority. In the course of the 1930s, however, affirmative action was abandoned and reversed, initially by means of a “Great Retreat”, later by a “Great Terror”, which pushed for Russian dominance and victimized the non-Russian populations that had been privileged earlier on. The seemingly contrary policies of ethnic cleansing and affirmative action, as enforced by the Soviet and Polish states, have shown their effectiveness in serving a single goal: the subjugation of minority and majority populations to repressive state control. What happened to the Ukrainian minority in Poland, therefore, was not unique. Many political regimes in the former Soviet East Bloc shared an intrinsic ambivalent attitude with regard to their minority populations. But this ambivalence is not just reserved for rulers of socialist authoritarian states. Western democracies are dealing with similar political issues, just as they are encountering similar pressures and constraints. Skrentny (1996) and Marcuse (1965) make this explicit. Skrentny (1996: 239), unveiling the many ironies of affirmative action in the United States, among others concludes that inequality and poverty “are built into the equal opportunity society.” Marcuse (1965) charged western democracies for having introduced a perverted meaning of tolerance, but his charge could as well be extended to socialist authoritarian states. At the time of his writing, in 1965, tolerance in Poland was turned from practice to non-practice (laissez-faire) and administered to manipulated and indoctrinated individuals, who, quoting Marcuse (1965: 90), “parrot, as their own, the opinion of their masters, for whom heteronomy has become autonomy”. And this was just one way in which the principle of equality and tolerance was being violated, both in the east and in the west. The question remains whether the policies toward Poland’s Ukrainian minority adopted by Poland’s communist leadership can be exposed as hypocrite. It is very likely that at various times the decisions made by Poland’s communist leadership had been motivated by political opportunism. But it was not opportunism alone that inspired Poland’s political leaders to move in certain political directions. One can only agree with Laurie Koloski’s conclusion that instead of “developing a coherent and comprehensive nationalities policy, From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action 53

Poland’s postwar authorities substituted stop-gap measures and crisis management” (2004: 182). At every step in the process of the building of a Polish socialist state, Poland’s communist leadership frantically searched for new ways in which desired ideals could be put into practice. Time and again efforts were made to find pragmatic solutions to urgent political problems. The scope of the solutions, however, was significantly narrowed down by domestic and international moral and political constraints. The most plausible argument, therefore, against the alleged political opportunism of Poland’s communist establishment is that the policies directed towards Poland’s minority populations were consistent with those directed towards the population at large—Poles too became subjected to a policy of homogenization, socialization, and assimilation from the moment the communists assumed power. And Poles too became the victims of the political conjunctures in the process of the building of a Polish socialist utopia.

4 Social(ist) engineering Taming the devils of the Polish Bieszczady*

Introduction

From death and devastation to normalization and restoration—this is the process the Polish Bieszczady lived through just half a century ago. The tempestuous years during and following the Second World War find interesting parallels in a legend explaining the beginning of ancient human presence in this southeastern corner of present-day Poland:

Once upon a time in a long forgotten past devils of all sorts presided over this God forsaken edge of the world. Disturbances, plunder and violations were the order of the day. No wonder that human beings felt no urge to settle here. One day the highest authority in hell sent two special breeds of devils to this peripheral, still nameless, part of the world: Biesy and Czady. Owing to this special reserve of devils the place was called Bieszczady. Since devils cannot do without angels, just as evil cannot do without good, there was an opening for change. But heavenly powers refused to send angels to the Bieszczady reserve. With no heavenly adversaries available, a heads or tail game decided that Biesy would henceforth represent the evil powers and Czady the good powers. Instantly normality was restored and people started to inhabit the valleys and hill slopes of the Bieszczady. They came from all over; from Little Poland, Ru, Wallachia, Slovakia, and Hungary. This seething mass of people mixed in such a way that it is impossible to tell today where they came from. The truth is that they are all from here, from the place where Biesy and Czady play their plain devilish-heavenly tricks since centuries. Sometimes to the good, sometimes to the bad, for it is close to impossible to please all the people at all times (Potocki 2004: 8).

A similar turning point can be observed following World War II. Between 1940 and 1947 disturbances, plunder and violations were rampant in the villages, forests and mountains of the Bieszczady (present-day southeast Poland, see Map 4.1). Nazi persecutions, partisan warfare and expulsion policies left the area virtually vacant with over 90 percent of the former population dead or gone. While still a ravaged land with almost no human habitation in the late 1940s, during the 1950s and 1960s the Bieszczady became gradually filled with migrants from “half of Europe” as it was popularly called.

* Submitted for publication in Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 56 Struggling for peace

Map 4.1 Location of the research area

Rather than by heavenly and evil powers, this process was led by the main earthly representative of political power at that time: the Polish socialist state. The way the successive Polish governments proceeded to restore law and order and pushed on to rebuild this ruined and conflict-ridden part of Poland can be read as an example of high- modernist social engineering. In “Seeing like a State” James Scott (1998: 4) defines high-modernist ideology as “a strong […] version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws.” While high-modernist ideologies originated in the West as a by-product of unprecedented progress in science and industry during the mid nineteenth century, they found fertile grounds in a world captured by warfare, economic depressions, colonialism and revolutions during the twentieth century. In post-war Poland a new revolutionary political leadership was captivated by the potential of a high-modernist socialist order. The immediate assignments that were planned to alter and improve the human condition in People's Poland were in line with the long-term goals of socialism: the country-wide introduction of social, economic and agrarian reform, the Social(ist) engineering 57 socialization of the means of production, the rapid advancement of industrialization and urbanization, the education and acculturation of the masses, and last but not least, the promotion of a secular socialist culture. The introduction of utopian socialist designs in the Bieszczady provided a test case for Poland’s policymakers. Next to socialization and industrialization, the border region also became subject to a massive settlement program. In the socialist scheme of things, the pioneer settlers were crucial for the successful implementation of social change, as it was through their workforce, devotion, and innovation that new modern socialist communities could be created. But settlers arrived in the Bieszczady only hesitantly (their influx peaking in the early 1960s) and in small numbers (thousands of migrants compared to the hundreds of thousands of migrants that settled in the western, newly acquired German territories in 1945) (Jadam 1973). By the late 1960s a reverse trend set in: each year hundreds of new arrivals left the land and farms that they had recently purchased (Biernacka 1974; Jakubowicz 1975). Also, the progress made in the building of a new socialist infrastructure remained far behind that of other parts in the country. In addition, the integration of pioneer settlers into a consolidated and stable society was impeded by the staggering lack of social cohesion among the old and new inhabitants (Biernacka 1974). Scott (1998) presents an insightful account of the logic behind the failure of some of the great utopian engineering schemes of the twentieth century. He points at the hegemonic planning mentality in high-modernist bureaucracy that ignores the essential features of any real, functioning social order and excludes the crucial role of local knowledge and know-how. “The formal scheme,” Scott (1998: 6) argues, “was parasitic on informal processes that, alone, it could not create or maintain. To the degree that the formal scheme made no allowance for these processes or actually suppressed them, it failed both its beneficiaries and ultimately its designers as well.” The example of the Bieszczady is a Scottian example to the extreme—the socialist scheme that was imposed on this area by Poland’s communist leadership was not only parasitic on informal processes, that is, on the people who with their networks and labor became the main carriers of the new social order, it was also to a very large degree dismissive of the crucial role of local conditions, local needs, and local knowledge. Following Scott’s argument, the Bieszczady project was doomed to fail. This chapter explores the background of the failure of state engineering in the Bieszczady and addresses two questions: first, what were the conditions that gave rise to the failure of the socialist engineering project, and second, what were the consequences of this failure for relationships at the local level? One thesis put forward in this chapter is that while it is true that Poland’s central leadership made no allowance for informal processes, it was unsuccessful in suppressing them. A second thesis is that the relative weakness of

58 Struggling for peace the Polish state vis-à-vis the local setting was crucial for later developments in the region. Despite the central state’s ability to use coercive power to bring its ideal designs into being, in practice it left plenty of room for local residents to proceed independently from the state-imposed structure. This relatively high degree of autonomy facilitated the formation of a society with a dynamic of its own, that is, one in which power was contested by diverse social groups, and subsequently, one in which the resulting balance of power was self-attained rather than enforced from the outside. The discussion of socialist engineering in the Bieszczady draws on a number of contemporary studies and publications as well as on anthropological fieldwork carried out by the author in the Komacza and region between 1997 and 2007. Two works are central to this chapter: “The formation of new village communities in the Bieszczady” by the Polish ethnographer Maria Biernacka (1974) who carried out substantial empirical research in the 1960s and 1970s, and the volume “Pioneers: memoirs of settlers from the Bieszczady” that was published in 1975 as the outcome of a public essay contest (Jadam 1975). It should be noted that the above publications mirror the normative values and goals the socialist system set for the authors. Notwithstanding the socialist bias, both authors sensitively portrayed the responses of ordinary people to their new social and economic environments.

Patterns of high-modernist planning: the socialization of the countryside

An exceptionally low population density and thousands of hectares of fallow land in the Bieszczady—this was what characterized the Bieszczady in the late 1940s. Table 4.1 reveals the massive demographic impact of warfare and ethnic cleansing in the research area. Between 1921 and 1950 over 90 percent of the population had vanished from the district. In addition, as a result of the Second World War and the subsequent civil war, more than three-quarters of the buildings had been destroyed; of those that remained over half were unfit for habitation.1 In the eastern most part of the Bieszczady the situation was even more dramatic. As an informant put it, “a gloomy silence” descended on the villages that were left without people and without livestock. The need to repopulate the emptied area was also understood by the central authorities. They embarked on a settlement campaign (akcja osadnicza) that aimed at three targets: to turn the ethnic balance in an area that until recently had been inhabited by a majority of

1 These figures are based on estimates from census data (GUS, 1924; Przeliczenia NSP 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988 na stan w dniu 6.12.1988 r. Tablica 1. Wyd. GUS) as well as from reports by the State Bureau of Repatriation (Pastwowy Urzd Repatriacyjny, PUR): Miesiczne sprawozdania opisowe z akcji przesiedle i osadnictwa r. 1947-9, Archiwum Pastwowe oddzia w Sanoku, zespoy 21 & 22. Social(ist) engineering 59

Ukrainians; to compensate for the population losses that were suffered during the 1940s; to provide for the necessary human capital to build and sustain a new socialist infrastructure.2 Plans for the “polonization” of the Bieszczady were laid out in military and press reports during military Operation Vistula (Akcja Wisa)—the deportation of all Ukrainian residents from Poland’s southeastern territories between April and August 1947 (Misio 1993; Zajczkowski 2003). A military directive from 22 July 1947 reads: “It is in the interest of the state that the territories on which the operational groups […] are active will not remain desert, but rather on the contrary, that their ‘polishness’ be cemented and their safety guaranteed. Therefore, concurrent with the deportation [of Ukrainians from the area], the colonization [of the area] has started as well as the repopulation of former Ukrainian villages.”3

Table 4.1 Depopulation in the research area in southeast Poland 1921-1950

Population Population % Reduction of % Destroyed Rural district 1921 1950 population buildings

Komacza 16,405 1,163 93 90

Cisna 6,361 138 98 97 Sources: (GUS, 1924); Przeliczenia NSP 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988 na stan w dniu 6.12.1988 r. Tablica 1. Wyd. GUS.

Even though encouraged and supported by state agency, the colonization of the Bieszczady proceeded at a slow rate. It was not before the mid 1970s that the population had reached its peak and that the influx (and outflow) of new settlers began to stabilize. The population data for the Komacza rural district in Table 4.2 illustrate this trend; by 1988 the total population did not even equal a third of the prewar population. Most settlers originated from poor peasant households of the overpopulated and impoverished villages of southern Poland, but their places of origin could not be traced to just one single geographical location or background. Settlers arrived from different parts of Poland (in particular from the Tatra mountains, the Lublin, Rzeszów and Kraków provinces) and a small number even arrived from outside of Poland (political refugees from Greece and Polish immigrants from the Soviet Ukrainian Republic) (Biernacka 1973, 1974).

2 In postwar Poland the term “Ukrainian” has become a common denominator for a variety of non- Polish ethnic groups that lived in Poland’s southeastern border region and that became subject to communist expulsion and deportation policies between 1944 and 1947 (chapter 3). 3 General Mossor, 22 July 1947, Rozkaz operacyjne nr 011 Sztabu Grupy Operacyjne “Wisla”, quoted in Misio (1993: 350).

60 Struggling for peace

Table 4.2 Depopulation and repopulation in the Komacza rural district 1921-1988

Village 1921 1950 1960 1970 1978 1988 470 0 25 32 9 8 756 46 96 187 189 251 Darów 224 0 < < < < Dozyca 397 0 87 111 106 80 Duszatyn 182 0 34 52 25 20 Jasiel 289 0 < < < < Jawornik 425 4 3 21 44 28 Komacza 892 377 603 805 843 895 498 167 297 277 190 217 upków (Nowy) 672 0 140 219 450 398 Maniów 392 0 35 74 71 60 Mików 299 0 84 111 96 69 437 0 65 200 194 193 Osawica 723 0 27 22 22 51 583 0 < < < < Preuki 350 < < < < < Radoszyce 981 46 124 177 147 156 Rudawka Jaliska 113 0 < < < < Rzeped 817 90 304 1,058 1,083 1,404 Smolnik 949 47 280 257 207 159 Surowicza 453 0 < < < < Szczawne 748 35 179 198 272 444 Szczerbanówka 129 < < < < < Turzask 684 136 349 402 386 332 Wisok Wielki 2268 170 335 394 329 322 Wola Michowa 777 0 92 103 106 99 542 45 124 109 140 127 Zubesko 355 < < < < < Total 16,405 1,163 3,283 4,809 4,909 5,313 Notes: The table includes all villages that are or were located within the geographical boundaries of today’s Komacza rural district. < Indicates that the village no longer appears in any of the postwar censuses and that the number of people living at this location today is very low, likely less than five persons. Sources: (GUS, 1924). T; Przeliczenia NSP 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988 na stan w dniu 6.12.1988 r ablica 1. Wyd. GUS; Archiwum Pastwowe oddzia w Sanoku: Miesiczne sprawozdania opisowe z akcji przesiedle i osadnictwa r. 1947-9, zespoy 21 & 22.

The new settlers all brought with them their distinctive cultures and lifestyles, not unlike depicted in the legend of Biesy and Czady. On one level, the settlement policy had done away with much of the region’s ethnic and religious diversity (after 1947 most Social(ist) engineering 61 inhabitants were Roman Catholic Poles). On another level, it had contributed to a considerable social and cultural differentiation. Biernacka (1974: 48) suggests that with the advance of years social heterogeneity (ró norodno ) even became a dominant feature of the Bieszczady, to the degree that each individual settlement or village community was unique in terms of its settlement history, its socio-economic make-up, the quality of neighborly relations, and the extent of social and cultural integration at the community level. The social differentiation mentioned by Biernacka (1974) was in stark contrast with the intentions of the state. The region as a whole underwent a gradual transformation into what Scott (1998: 218-9) has termed “state landscapes of control and appropriation”; new social arrangements based on “principles of standardization, central control, and synoptic legibility to the centre” eventually reached the Bieszczady. Hence the standardization of property relations in the villages by means of land reform, the large-scale introduction of State Agricultural Farms (Pastwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne, PGR) and of state-sponsored rural institutions and organizations in the area, the huge investment in large engineering projects (such as Poland's biggest hydro-electrical power plant in Solina), and the establishment of entirely new rural settlements modeled after urban infrastructure planning (the so-called new settlements—wsie nowoosadnicze. New social arrangements were not just implemented in the economic field. Secondary and vocational schools (especially technical and engineering studies) spread rapidly across the region, while literacy and agricultural training courses were organized even in the remotest villages. In addition, numerous social and political organizations and institutions in the villages were established to help promote socialism at the ‘grass-roots level’. In addition to the development of a socialist infrastructure the Polish state also proceeded to socialize the agricultural sector. The process of socialization went through different phases as it was tightly connected to the political conjunctures in the Polish People’s Republic. In his standard work on the politics of socialist agriculture in Poland, Korbonski (1965) outlines the first fifteen years, when Poland’s agricultural planners introduced the land reform, launched the “class struggle” against the kulaks (large peasants), enforced the collectivization of agriculture, and finally, due to the poor economic performance of the state and collective farms, adopted a reverse policy. Alarmed by the massive protests against food shortages and price increases staged by Pozna workers in June 1956, the central authorities gradually began to invest in the private peasant sector, as it now considered the mechanization of private farms to be the right way to raise the country’s output. To that purpose, prohibitions on the sales of heavy machinery and mechanized equipment to individual peasants were lifted. As a means to induce the peasants to buy such mechanized equipment, as well as other agricultural implements, on a 62 Struggling for peace collective basis the agricultural circles (Spódzielnia Kóek Rolniczych, SKR) were introduced (Korbonski 1965).

Urban planning in the Komacza rural district. Moszczaniec, May 2005

Although all overt attempts to collectivize were dropped, the long-range goals of Poland’s agrarian planners still included the socialization of the private agriculture sector in the form of State Farms on which, as Nagengast (1982: 56) put it, “farm workers would be employees of the State in much the same way as industrial workers”. Since even the agrarian planners realized that this aim was unrealistic in the nearby future, they proceeded to transform peasant agriculture “from a traditional way of life to an occupation” (1982: 56). This trend also affected the occupational structure of the working population in the Bieszczady. Next to peasants who gained a living through full-time farming, there were those who were employed by the State Farms and who practiced specific professions as agricultural workers, accountants, electricians, machine workers or engineers. Opportunities to earn non-farm income increased with the development of new industries in the region. The simultaneous engagement of the villagers in the industrial and agricultural, the private and collective sectors, turned them into so-called peasant-workers. According to Biernacka (1974: 202), this trend, which she termed “dual-employment” (dwuzawodowo), was typical for the whole of the Bieszczady (cf. Hann 1985). Social(ist) engineering 63

The socialization of agriculture demanded that policy makers gave preferential treatment to State Farms and state sponsored agricultural circles. Between 1966 and 1970 most of the country’s capital input that was claimed by the agricultural sector went to the reorganized State Farms (Nagengast 1982: 53). In the case of the Bieszczady, where labor was in extremely short supply, this preferential treatment entailed the establishment of penal colonies, which brought a large, unskilled captive labor force to the area. From the late 1960s this captive labor force constituted an important source of labor for a number of State Agricultural Farms in the region (Hann 1985; Cegielska 2006). At the same time, the increasing awareness of central planners of the necessity of production growth in the private sector demanded that they also gave preferential treatment to well-equipped peasants with larger farm holdings. Starting in the mid 1950s a less bureaucratic interpretation of the class struggle and a commitment to issues of productivity and economic performance became more and more fashionable. Poland’s agrarian planners now assumed that larger private farms would be more productive than small farms. Their new task, therefore, was to support large farms, and simultaneously, eliminate small, “inefficient” holdings, while the new landless most preferably were to be incorporated into wage labor in industry and State Farms (Nagengast 1982: 57). The twenty-year development plan (1966-1985) for the Bieszczady displays a similar preference for large-scale specialized farming. It included a sophisticated design for controlled land use. Due to crop production failures in earlier years, the design showed a general preference for livestock production. The new priority of agrarian planners became widely promoted by the district agronomists, the agricultural circles, the village based organizations and the media. Presenting the region as Europe’s biggest potential “tycoon as regards the production of beef, milk, animal skin, wool and cheeses”, a journalist from the newspaper “Life in Warsaw” (ycie Warszawy) suggested that “such an opportunity for the Bieszczady should not be wasted” (Lubak 1974: 1). However, the shift in state priority was detrimental to those peasants who still farmed fewer than five hectares of land, as state institutions would effectively withhold or limit their access to the means of production (such as seed, fertilizers, machinery). In addition, the savings & loan cooperatives gave credits and loans only to those peasants who already had more than five hectares, aspired to enlarge their farms, and had an agricultural education (Nagengast 1982; Hann 1985).

Blemishes on high-modernist planning: the failing Polish state

Resolution no. 271 of the Economic Committee of Council of Ministers of 27 June 1959, popularly called the “Resolution of the Bieszczady”, gave a promising start. Substantial price discounts on the sale of land and building materials (the prices of plots were among 64 Struggling for peace the lowest in Poland), the improvement of veterinary and agricultural facilities, the payment of an additional “Bieszczady premium” for peasants working in the State Farms and cooperatives—all these measures promised a vast potential for those who decided to settle there. The publication of newspaper serials and the broadcasting of radio programs on the region added to its popularity and to its promotion as Poland’s native “Wild West”. The screening of the film Rancho Texas in 1959, produced on location, caused a breakthrough. From a marginal, conflict-ridden region during the 1940s, the Bieszczady became very fashionable among all sections of society by the end of the 1950s (Jakubowicz 1975). However, a decade of development work did not bring the socialist standard of living the designers had hoped for. Of those who arrived in the Bieszczady during the late 1940s only a tiny fraction had survived the first decades of hardship. By 1969, the output of the private and collective sectors continued to fall short of target and vast stretches of excess fallow land were still administered by the State Land Fund. An irreversible shortage of new candidates for settlement, and, at the same time, the massive departure of the first generation of settlers, signaled widespread economic stagnation. Clearly lagging way behind in terms of development, policymakers, journalists and social scientists typically viewed the Bieszczady as a region somehow unfit to be tamed by the civilizing schemes of socialism. Social isolation and hardship had turned the inhabitants of this part of the country into a different—that is, extremely apprehensive and uncooperative—kind of species, a notion which is also voiced by Biernacka (1974: 189):

The unification of the Bieszczady with the rest of the country’s organism […] is not just a matter of constructing a sound infrastructure, of introducing a reasonable agricultural policy, or of ameliorating the living conditions of the people that currently inhabit the area. It is just as well a matter of breaking through a psychological barrier, a barrier, which prevents the people from full participation in the public life and culture of the whole nation and state.

If a “psychological barrier” had indeed been a major obstacle for the smooth integration of the inhabitants into Poland’s national economy, this barrier was the result and not the cause of the all-inclusive social crisis that had captured the Bieszczady since the late 1950s. While holding on to the notion of a “psychological barrier” Biernacka did what many contemporary observers and policymakers did: blame the victim. Doubting the proficiency of the first generation of rural settlers, from the early 1970s onward governmental expert teams supervised the selection of “capable” (waciwi) candidates for settlement (Biernacka 1974: 107). While the screening of potential candidates clearly aimed at a qualitative change in the performance of the private sector, it could not guarantee their eventual success of setting up a farm in the Bieszczady. Jakubowicz (1975) pointed at a number of structural problems that slowed down the consolidation of peasant Social(ist) engineering 65 households: the inhospitable natural environment (difficult soils, extreme temperatures); the lack of human control over nature (impermeable bushes, ineradicable weeds, attacks from wolves, wild boars and mice, recurrent plant diseases); the lack of a basic infrastructure (roads, farms, schools, shops and even houses had yet to be built); and last but not least, the heavy debt burden of the fragile farm households. In fact, the debt burden took on increased significance as soon as the first installment payments were due by the late 1960s. "High above the new villages," writes Jakubowicz (1975: 34), "circles the word ‘finances’; it is with great anxiety and agitation that the villagers speak about this topic, which in fact has taken on the role of [the devils] Biesy and Czady with which the villagers scare their own children." No matter the “capability” of a settler, the low standard of living turned all pioneer settlers into very vulnerable subjects. This vulnerability, in turn, made them highly dependent on their new social environment that could provide them with, and give access to, the necessary means and support. Just how little supportive this new social environment was, is chronicled by Jan Wojdak (1969: 1) in his essay “Bieszczady on its critical point” from February 1969. The fact that it took “twenty damn long years” for the first generation of settlers to reach a decent standard of living inspired him to write about the stagnation of the region’s rural economy. In their late twenties when they settled in the region, now approaching their fifties at the time of writing, the first generation of settlers found themselves at the start of what should have transpired much earlier in their lives: running a profitable farm. Even though this group of pioneer settlers had been aided by the state financially, the state loans (a fraction of what settlers were getting at the time of Wojdak’s writing) were not quite enough to make ends meet—this partly explains their very long lead-time. Wojdak was not able to explicitly criticize the state policies. Still, by demonstrating that a number of problems could have been solved easily, with a fair portion of goodwill and commonsense, he indirectly points at the bureaucratic indolence of the central planners. Let us consider a few issues in some greater detail. The clearance of fields, most of which had not been cultivated for years, sometimes even for decades, was a first obstacle to be taken by the new owners. Considering the fact that the State Farms were always short of labor and that most individual peasants just had their bare hands, this task became officially assigned to the drainage firms that were active in the area. The drainage firms, however, refused to take up their assignment, due to a lack of time, equipment, and personnel. One firm took its responsibility and came with an alternative solution: it proposed to keep in reserve a quota to pay individual settlers who wanted to do the job themselves. A sound plan, according to Wojdak. Why wait for “who knows how many years” for a mechanized “clearance work-front” to be formed by a number of unqualified drainage firms, asks Wojdak (1969: 8) rhetorically? 66 Struggling for peace

Former village site. In the background lime trees with old chapel at location of destroyed Greek Catholic church. Maniów, May 2005.

A much heard complaint was that it was the peasants themselves who slowed down the process of bringing excess fallow land under cultivation. Wojdak points at a number of other factors that have contributed to the stagnation. First, the lack of trained personnel guiding the real-estate transactions hindered the smooth growth of the private sector. For example, in 1968 the sale of 175 hectares of land to 89 individual peasants in the Lesko district was administered by just one person—an employee from the local Agricultural Bank. Since real-estate transactions were subject to time-consuming procedures (involving visits to the field and piles of paper work) much more could have been done if additional staff had been employed. Second, the credit limit for individual settlers in 1969 was still far too low to cover the basic costs for setting up a farm from scratch, which, according to Wojdak, resulted in a substantial delay of production output and in a wavering interest of the private sector to enlarge the area under cultivation. Third, the reluctance of the district authorities to invest in cooperative machinery equipment rentals (Pastwowe Orodki Maszynowe, POM’s) in support of the private sector slowed down the overall economic growth in the Bieszczady. Considering the fact that the district councils in all other regions of the Rzeszów province had been stimulating the organization of such cooperative rentals Social(ist) engineering 67 for years, Wojdak (1969: 8) was very surprised to find that in the Bieszczady the organization of such rentals was "still in its infancy". In a similar way Jan Niebudek (1971) criticizes the failure of state programs and policies to support individual peasants. Listening to the stories of his respondents, all innovative peasants in their prime years who nonetheless balanced on the verge of bankruptcy, Niebudek starts doubting the assumption held by the district state department of agriculture that young age, will power, perseverance and proficiency are the keys to success. Niebudek illustrates his point with the example of Czesaw Narony, farmer in Chmiel (Ustrzyki Dolne district). “I am not a farmer really—I am still a candidate farmer,” explains Narony. “What use is 14 ha of land to me when I lack the means to cultivate it?” His complaint: “Nobody is helping us [farmers] out […] we are simply left to our own resources” (1971: 3). The village-based agricultural circle would not lend him a tractor because it possessed none. The provincial representatives of the association of agricultural circles gave permission to borrow a tractor from a nearby storage, but the district representative of the agricultural circles (Powiatowy Zwi zek Ko ek Rolniczych, PZKR) in Ustrzyki Dolne blocked the decision. The reason: the tractor might become damaged. The excuse: the village Chmiel falls under the aegis of the POM and not of the PZKR. Subsequently, Narony applied for assistance from the POM, but the POM never showed up to plough his fields. The help of the district council (Gromadzka Rada Narodowa, GRN) was limited to a visit of an agronomist during the period in which fertilizers and seeds had to be ordered and bought. “But what is the point of selling fertilizers to me if most of the land that I own lies fallow?” “Somehow all were in their right,” writes Niebudek (1971: 3). The village agricultural circle had so far been unsuccessful in raising sufficient funds to invest in mechanization. A structural shortage of tractors had hindered the POM to lend Narony its services. The decision of the PZKR not to risk a damaged tractor was probably based on experience. The GRN had to see to it that its fertilizing policy be carried out properly. According to Niebudek, the irony of the situation is that all the state institutions seem to fail their primary beneficiaries: the peasants. “One of these days,” writes Niebudek, “another person will be leaving Chmiel. And not because he was a bad farmer or because he was lacking will power.” Narony had dreamt of keeping a modern farm and he had tried hard to make full use of the opportunities the Bieszczady offered him. But at some point his goodwill and perseverance, quoting Niebudek (1971: 3), was “crashed against the wall” of overall “indifference” (oboj tno ) and “incompetence” (niemono ) from the side of the state and its agencies. 68 Struggling for peace

Untamed by nature: disputed hegemony in a pioneer society

For the sake of the design, planners of the new order treated the land that they had subjected to colonization as empty land, thereby ignoring the fact that some Ukrainians and Poles had been able to remain in their villages of birth. Even Biernacka (1974: 78) stresses the indispensable presence of indigenous residents (miejscowi). In her view, the autochthonous population constituted the proverbial “corner stone” in a region that was devastated by war. It was through their continued presence in the area that the indigenous village residents formed a living link with the region’s historical and cultural heritage and that they filled the social and cultural void in the village communities. Biernacka did not explicitly touch upon the issue, but one aspect considerably impacted the colonization process: the residual population filling, not just the cultural and social, but also the political void. Despite their numerical minority in the region, their influence was considerable due to the fact that they lived in the villages that formed the administrative centre within the administrative hierarchy. The political dominance of the residual population is an important theme in the recollections of pioneer settlers that were published in a volume from 1975 (Jadam 1975). One account, that of Jacek Tylka from the village Doyca (Sanok district), is especially revealing of the highly problematic relationship between the new arrivals (pionierze), the local authorities (wadzy), and the residual population (miejscowi). Tylka, unmarried and in his early twenties, decided to leave the coalmines in Silesia for the Bieszczady after reading positive articles in the newspaper. But when he visited the village Doyca in November 1959 he was not very charmed of what he saw. The road leading to the village was practically impassable. The village itself was a muddy stretch of land encircled by a graveyard, solid bushes, and thick forest. There were no buildings at all. This depressing nothingness, plus the hostile attitude of the local official who accompanied the visitors during the field trip, put him off at first.

Then, when the road made a turn to Doyca, secretary [of the local Village People’s Council] Roman Barna pointed at the surrounding fields. “Once these fields were mine,” he told us, or rather Mr. Kodello, because he would not spare us a glance. “But now they are planning to build a border guard post here. How about you,” he addressed the three of us for a change, “you are not planning to buy a farm in Doyca, are you? To tell you the truth, we and the district [authorities], we only bring in settlers from the west, the people who lived here before the deportation” (Tylka 1975: 136).

Mr. Kodello, the employee of the Agricultural Bank in Sanok who attended the fieldtrip as a consultant, dismissed the remark of the local official with a firm “nonsense”. Adding that “Warsaw will never let this happen” the bank employee considered the subject as closed and enthusiastically pointed at the opportunities for future residency. He said that Social(ist) engineering 69 the district authorities would soon proceed to build provisional barracks to give shelter during the first years and that plans were being made to build a new road to the village. In March 1960 Tylka purchased a piece of land. “I was just about to leave Silesia voluntarily for a place where soon enough I would meet with a great deal of hostility”, writes Tylka (1975: 1040). “I thought to myself: ‘Worse luck, but I won’t give in. I certainly won’t let them get me down. After all, the Bieszczady belongs to Poland and not to some kind of Ukraine. Those elderly fanatics will soon leave their positions and make place for young people, who perhaps understand that history cannot be reversed’”. Tylka’s anxiety about alleged Ukrainian dominance and resentment had an ‘obvious’ reason: the fresh memory of the war that had been fought between soldiers of the Polish Army and soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the area (1944-1947) and the successive years of state propaganda depicting Ukrainians as Poland’s worst enemies (chapter 3). These two facts had impacted the views and attitudes of all Polish citizens, including those with aspirations to settle in the former combat zone. Biernacka (1974) found that attitudes such as the one displayed by Tylka were not exceptional. The widespread Polish apprehensiveness about alleged Ukrainian antagonism is substantiated by her empirical data. Fear of Ukrainian antagonism occupied place number one in the questionnaire filled out by her Polish respondents listing the most difficult barriers to overcome in relationships between the village residents (1974: 104). In addition, Biernacka (1974: 195) recorded many instances of conflicts between new settlers and indigenous inhabitants that had their origin in ethnic prejudice, of which the most striking example was the unjust and unfair treatment of pupils from native families by their Polish teachers. But besides ethnic prejudice, the extreme distrust between the new Polish settlers and the residual Ukrainians was caused by social and political factors as well. A first issue that put pressure on the relationship was the disputed status quo of local property relations. With the state having confiscated and nationalized the land of the victims of the post-war expulsion and deportation policies, many new settlers lived in the houses and worked the fields that formerly had belonged to Ukrainians. When in the wake of the political liberalization a considerable number of Ukrainians began to return to their villages of birth, this was much to the anxiety of the Polish settlers. Wojdak (1969: 8) found that in Bereska (district Lesko) Ukrainian returnees ventured to reclaim their former properties and, in the process, did not shrink from intimidating the new owners. He recorded the following words spoken by a former Ukrainian proprietor: “So you don’t want to renounce [my properties] by your own free will? There comes a day when you will have to depart!” Biernacka (1974: 100) learned from her respondents that in Turzask (Sanok district) Polish settlers had first resisted the arrival of Ukrainian returnees, but that later on attempts to oppose their return had been “stifled”. Although Biernacka does not 70 Struggling for peace explain why and how this was done, fact is that a number of Polish villagers eventually gave in, returned their farms to the former proprietors, and left the village. A second issue that generated tensions between Poles and Ukrainians was the competition over resources. In a social environment that was characterized by endemic shortage this competition was unusually fierce. Competition was not just over basic needs, such as food, education, employment or housing. Nor was it just over the means of production, such as state funds, mechanized equipment, building material, seeds or fertilizers. In a region that was extremely scarcely populated and that, on top of it, suffered from chronic demographic imbalance (men by far outweighed women), competition was also over human resources, including labor and female marriage candidates. Tylka’s account provides another telling example. When Tylka arranged for a marriage with his fiancée, a (Polish) schoolteacher who lived and worked in the village Komacza, he found himself confronted with the secretary of the district council once more. Roman Barna: “You certainly do not have my consent! First you disturbed my settlement plans, and now you take away one of our best teachers!” On this Tylka replied: “I am not taking her away, she will be teaching in Doyca.” Barna: “Teaching whom, you mean that miserable tribe of people originating from nobody knows where?” (1975: 145-6). Since both the residual population and the settler population consisted of Poles as well as of Ukrainians, the competition was not just between two ethnic groups. As a matter of fact, competition was between two social groups: the established and the outsiders. Any person from outside attempting to make appeals to scarce local resources constituted a potential threat to members of the established communities. Also here the disputed status quo of local property relations contributed to the apprehensiveness of the established toward the outsiders. Villagers who had survived the turbulent years between 1944 and 1947 had tried their hands at seizing the lands that were left without owners. The active involvement of the local population in negotiating the acquisition of vacant properties with the authorities is documented by the numerous requests sent between 1945 and 1949 to the Village People’s Councils (Gromadzka Rada Narodowa, GRN), in which local villagers bade for agricultural plots as well as for farm dwellings. In addition, villagers used the vast stretches of excess fallow land, popularly termed “nobody’s land” (ziemi niczyjej), to pasture their cattle or to make hay during the summer season. The fact that peasants had been allotted land for private use did not mean that they had been given land titles. This became painfully clear during the land reform, when property relations were drastically revised. The allocation of land to three designated sectors (the collective, the state, and the private sector) meant that from a widely available commodity, land suddenly was made scarce. The demarcation of field boundaries implied that villagers could no longer use the land that was “nobody’s” in the same way as they had done in the years before. Local peasants, peasant lessees (typically from the Podhale and Limanowski Social(ist) engineering 71 districts), as well as village based cooperatives now had to turn to the State Land Fund to lease or buy the land that until then they had been using for free. Also, the nationalization of land and properties that had been left vacant by their previous owners re-opened the dispute on land and property rights among the local residual population. Like in all rural settings, ‘first’ users of land and property appealed to the morality of the community when they claimed property rights to their former houses and fields. That these informal claims were acknowledged (albeit not always accredited) by most local residents and power holders, demonstrates that moral property rights could substitute effectively for formal property rights. This, in turn, besides being a sign of failing state authority, significantly contributed to a profound sense of insecurity among the village residents. It also created a setting in which secretary Roman Barna was in a position to arbitrarily endorse or turn down the requests of his “very own people” (swoje). One field informant Mr. D., member of a Ukrainian family in Komacza who during the 1950s had taken up residence in Turzask, recalls the in-group enmity as follows:

There was this Ukrainian called K. […] K. had a wife. It was his second wife. The woman had been married to another man before […] But her former husband was expelled to the western provinces. When [her former] husband returned I lent him my house. Then troubles started […] First, K. made a blockade on the road. He then notified the local authorities about my visitors. I finally was sentenced for building a so-called “Ukraine” […] The judge said “Mr. D., what is the purpose of all this, why are you building a Ukraine in Turzask?” I asked him: “What kind of Ukraine?” I was not ashamed of what I was doing. I was not afraid then and I am not afraid now […] They came in large numbers – wagons and carriages full of people. Nine families lived with me at a time. When someone asked me to take him in, I did. Of course I did. What if I had been deported for some kind of unjust reason? I would have cried my whole life. My place is in Komacza and I shall die there. So I was glad to take them in. I am not so wicked as those [other] people in Komacza. Yes, we know each other very well. We—”Slovenians”, “” and “great Ukrainians”—this is how they call themselves. Yes, our people and our brethren! No single family from the West was taken in by the people from Komacza. It was such a time.

As is clear from the study of Biernacka (1974) Roman Barna was not alone in trying his political power on outsiders and returnees. She found a similar pattern in three “mixed” villages, that is, villages with a considerable residual population: apprehensive local authorities trying first to intimidate the new arrivals and then, if this did not work, to thwart them in every possible way, meaning that they had to wait months, sometimes even years, for the legalization of their residency status. As most of the new arrivals were poor and had nowhere else to return to, many would “vegetate for years” while waiting for an effective settlement of their case (1974: 77). In a similar way, the 25 families from Doyca, of which the majority lived below subsistence level by the mid 1960s, waited for a solution to their situation. Realizing that it would not help his fellow-villagers much if

72 Struggling for peace they waited for “manna from heaven”, Tylka (meanwhile elected village-head) addressed the issue at the local and regional council meetings. The participant officials did not seem to worry at all about the deteriorating situation of the villagers. An official from the Agricultural Department in Sanok even suggested that those who had plans to leave should do so right away: “The second generation of settlers, who will arrive after you, will already have a considerable head start. For them the conditions will be much better” (Tylka 1975: 152). The fact that people like Roman Barna were not stopped by their superiors from abusing their power, points, among others, at the all-pervasive lack of state control in the region. Local elites could operate independently of the state-imposed structure in securing their own position vis-à-vis the new arrivals. They simply followed their own agenda. Most remarkably their agenda’s were hardly hidden agenda’s. Local elites clearly felt secure enough to play open cards with state representatives from other layers in the political hierarchy. Tylka’s trusted representative, himself the vice-president of the Presidium of the National District Council in Sanok, was very explicit about his factual powerlessness. Although the vice-president gave his support to Tylka both in word and in writing, he confessed that his support would not help him much. “They [the local authorities] have their own agenda, as far as the settlement policy is concerned, and I do not have any influence on it whatsoever.” The vice-president instead prompted Tylka to do as he thought best and to evade official channels. “It is too bad for them [the local authorities] that they do not want to give you a lease-contract. But I can see that you are a smart guy,” he concluded. “A person like you should be doing fine in the Bieszczady” (1975: 138-9).

The pioneering experience: assessments of a socialist engineering project

The uncompromising top-down approach of the socialist planners coincided with the rulers’ overall view that group interests had to be subordinated to the interest of society as a whole, and that societal interest had, in turn, to be subordinated to the interest of socialist construction. During the Third Congress of the Polish Communist Party, held in March 1959, Gomuka asserted that his government could not promise “castles in the air” and that the population could not expect “manna from heaven.” Rather it was necessary “to raise the consciousness of the masses, to develop among the working masses a sense of inseparable unity between their personal fate and that of society, between the interests of individuals and those of the nation.”4 The complete subordination of society to the needs of the state, according to Ray Taras (1984: 70), was the key societal value prescribed by

4 Gomuka, “Report” in Third Congress, quoted in Taras (1984: 70). Social(ist) engineering 73

Poland’s communist leadership from the late 1950s, and it was interpreted literally: “Group autonomy was a function of political attitudes adopted, and society was regarded primarily as an agent of economic development”. Scott’s argument, that high modernist utopian engineering schemes are doomed to fail, has proven its relevance for the case of socialist Poland. The parasitic attitude of the socialist state partly explains the limited success of their designs. The excessive bureaucracy, the repudiation of criticism, and the neglect of local conditions, needs, and expertise implied that systematic malfunctions and deficiencies were easily misunderstood and overlooked and that the discredited, disrespected, and demotivated beneficiaries, besides being distrustful of the planners’ intentions, were inclined to withdraw from the project all together. In the case of the Bieszczady, two other factors have further contributed to the limited success of the socialist designs. Firstly, the contradictory state policies towards the private peasant sector in the three decades following the Second World War, besides destroying the peasants’ incentives to produce, had largely undermined the peasants’ willingness to contribute to the socialization of the agricultural sector. While the excesses of the collectivization period had left the majority of peasants unconvinced of the benefits of social ownership, the inequities of the later system, favoring peasants with large landholdings, had left peasants with smaller holdings cynical about the intentions of the agrarian planners. Moreover, considering the fact that wealthier peasants were “materially as well or better off than many of their working-class counterparts [...] peasants with smaller holdings attempt to emulate the wealthier”, thus in this way, according to Nagengast (1982: 56), “further eroding State efforts to make the idea of socialization palatable”. Secondly, Poland’s central leadership was particularly reluctant to invest in rural areas of secondary economic importance. Since both industry and agriculture had been devastated by the war and population losses had been severe, the new leadership had to make investment choices. In an effort to establish a workers’ state, it chose to invest in the development of heavy industry at the expense of agriculture. The state’s reluctance to invest in rural areas especially hit those who settled in the Bieszczady in the first two decades following World War II: the pioneering peasant settlers, seasonal workers, and forest workers, who gave their prime years, labor, and private savings to the rebuilding of a devastated region. Many of them became worn out shortly after their arrival and sank into deep poverty. And yet, any next shift of settlers, replacing the shifts that had already served their turn, had greater chances of surviving the hardships of life in a pioneer society. The crippling absence of funds to support the settlement of new immigrants resulted in appalling living conditions, but also, in poor administrative management. Such poor administrative management was epitomized by a lack of adequate staff and the absence of

74 Struggling for peace a well-defined overall policy. Policymakers did not anticipate the social, economic, agronomic and judicial consequences of bringing in new settlers to the territory. Problems were solved haphazardly, and new judicial and economic regulations were formulated after the fact, that is, by way of trial-and-error. The lack of competent state employees, as well as the absence of a clear-cut state policy, resulted in a lack of cooperation at all levels of administration. The central, provincial, district and local authorities were at cross- purposes, as every single layer in the political hierarchy followed its own political agenda. In the long term this resulted in the non-fulfillment of plans, even in the rare situation when funds had been made available. It was at this point that, quoting Wojdak (1969), “hopes” for the Bieszczady turned into “disillusion”. State policy during the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by its inconsistency: on the one hand purposeful and ambitious, on the other hand disorganized and laid-back. In fact, it is hardly an exaggeration to describe the policy with respect to the Bieszczady as laissez- faire, with the state refraining from interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights. While this attitude can be seen as a deliberate choice by Poland’s socialist planners to exploit and suppress what Scott (1998: 6) has termed “informal processes” at the base of society, it can also be seen as a negative choice that evolved from a position of weakness. It has been shown that the central government lacked the funds, power and knowledge to implement their engineering project or control relationships at the local level. Here again the pioneering settlers came in handy: their sheer presence concealed the impotence of the central government in the area. In fact, it was the new settlers who turned the balance of power and who explored the opportunities and restrictions of—what in popular speech became referred to as—a hostile, hitherto undomesticated and uncivilized area with “untouched soils” (surowe korzenia). The lack of firm leadership in a particularly incoherent pioneer society was detrimental for the relationships at the community level. It resulted in a fierce struggle for hegemony between diverse social groups that had similar claims to land, housing, labor, and means of production but that held different positions in the local political hierarchy. Lawlessness, reluctant local bureaucrats, intergroup rivalry and intimidation were the order of the day throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It should be noted that this struggle for power was extended to the state organizations and institutions at the village level. This, in turn, significantly reduced their function as vehicles for the state to impose a new social order. One may doubt whether the intensity of this struggle was fully comprehended by the central authorities at that period in time. It is unquestionable, though, that the public awareness of the all-embracing economic stagnation and social instability in the area cast a blot on the political legitimacy of Poland’s central rulers. Adhering to the idea that society can be designed and re-designed, the Bieszczady with its numerous problems and frictions, besides embodying an inconvenient nuisance, posed a Social(ist) engineering 75 challenge to contemporary policymakers, journalists and scientists as well. The devil named is the devil tamed—this adage seemed to have been the underlying premise for the countrywide appreciation of the region as an outstanding sociological test-case: by what means can a devastated, underdeveloped and heterogeneous region become economically and socially viable; how can it link up with the social and economic developments in the wider society? Since most Polish authors accepted the idea that the formation of new, viable communities in the Bieszczady could only be attained in socialist conditions, the answers to the above questions tended to demonstrate presupposed progress. Their conclusions, summarized by Chris Hann (1985: 157), are as follows: in the Bieszczady in the socialist period new social relations have come into existence which have permitted the formation of integrated communities in at least two senses, firstly within each rural locality, and secondly at the level of the region. Therefore, as an exponent of her time, the sociologist Biernacka (1974: 199) ends her thorough analysis with the following conclusion:

There are reasons to believe that the villages of the Bieszczady have the difficult pioneering period of the struggle for survival behind them. The new, encompassing integration is based on the continuous progress of education, culture and living conditions of the people. At present, a more integrated society is emerging, in which people are involved in matters concerning the wider region and in which they are able to think and feel in terms of the whole nation and country.

Biernacka justly signaled a turning point that took place right in front of her eyes. She published her book in 1974, at the height of Poland’s industrial and economic booming decade. Four years earlier, in December 1970, Gomuka was replaced by Gierek, who was more successful, at least for half a decade, in fulfilling the plans of welfare and material benefits for the working masses. By 1974, also the Bieszczady began to share in the economic prosperity that had swayed the rest of the country already for a longer period of time. A considerable increase of the standard of living did spur the integration of the diverse social groups. But unlike what contemporary observers and sociologists believed, this “new reality” was not attained because, but despite, of socialist engineering. Modern socialist designs had laid the basis of a society that was not meant to be but that its designers nonetheless helped building: a fragmented society that was characterized by a high level of social heterogeneity, social inequality, social isolation and idiosyncrasy, as well as by a vulnerable social and political equilibrium. The crux of the matter is that this equilibrium, being attained after decades of struggle, was not imposed on society by state agency; it was self-made. 76 Struggling for peace

Conclusions

State social(ist) engineering had been effective to the degree that it had largely polonized a formerly Ukrainian area and, at the same time, had laid the foundation of a socialist infrastructure in the villages, which included the establishment of cooperative farms, shops, and agricultural institutions, as well as primary and secondary schools. Nevertheless, it had evidently failed to meet a number of its prime objectives. Firstly, the pioneer settlers, who in the state designs were supposed to shed their individual identities and become part of a new uniform socialist community, never discarded their social, religious, cultural, or geographical backgrounds. On the contrary, the heterogeneous backgrounds of the old and new settlers to a considerable degree continued to affect the way in which they lived and interacted. Secondly, the equal distribution of the means of production was corrupted by the wavering support of state institutions, while the equal distribution of income was dwindled by state policies supporting the wealthier farmers at the cost of the smaller farmers. Thirdly, work force remained in such short supply that vast areas of land remained uncultivated and administered by the State Land Fund and State Forestry. The collective sector as well as the private sector only minimally contributed to the national economy. The causes of these failures lie, as Scott (1998) rightly suggests, in the excessive bureaucracy, the repudiation of criticism, and the neglect of local conditions, needs, and expertise by the state planners. But other factors have similarly contributed to the limited success of state engineering. First, the scarcity of state resources contributed to the impotence of the state to enforce its own plans and keep its own commitments. Second, indecisive policymaking and inefficient planning by Poland’s central leadership considerably reduced the effectiveness of any state policy. Third, the considerable heterogeneity within and between the village communities in the Bieszczady left the state without uniform support from the local population. All these factors reinforced the overall impotence of the Polish state vis-à-vis the local communities. With a state being unable to offer at least minimal support, the local population was less inclined to endorse and support state policies. Moreover, being unable to mobilize the local population (or even a single social group) for state purposes, the state failed to establish its grip on the local communities. In the absence of state control, local power holders were in a position to fill the political void in the village communities. The lack of state control had far reaching consequences for relationships at the local level. Lawlessness, reluctant local bureaucrats, intergroup rivalry and hostility resulted from and contributed to the fact that even in the late 1960s the Bieszczady region was still considered a “no-go zone” by Poland’s policymakers. The reputation of the Bieszczady as the devil’s playground and as Poland’s native Wild West touched on a reality that many people felt. As a matter of fact, the pioneer settlers in the Bieszczady lived through similar Social(ist) engineering 77

‘frontier encounters’ as their counterparts in the American West had lived through a century earlier: the taming of the wilderness for the purpose of civilization; the organization of new and innovative ways to use the land; the risk-taking in the exploration of “virgin soils” and new ways of living; the emergence of new pioneer cultures. The frontier in its American usage, however, suggests that the primary human confrontation is between people and nature. It has been shown that such encounters in the Bieszczady first and foremost involved a confrontation between people. In the pioneer communities a fierce struggle for power and resources ensued between those who had settled first and those who arrived later. In the absence of state control, the weakest had to foot the bill for this struggle of power. The lack of state control impacted local relationships in still other ways. Having been left to their own resources people depended on each other whether they wanted it or not. This gave all sorts of tensions in the beginning of the colonization process, when resources were slim and needs were high. But with the advance of years and with the increase of welfare for the individual peasant households, hostile dependency gradually gave way to less hostile and less asymmetrical types of relationships. Under the circumstances—low level of state control; high level of local interdependency—people were simply locked into a modus vivendi, despite their divergent interests and backgrounds. This modus vivendi was self-attained and a delicate balance between the diverse social groups was the result. And so, paradoxically, one of the major advantages of Poland’s social engineering in the Bieszczady lies hidden precisely in the failure of the Polish state to subjugate nature and people to absolute state control. The state wanted total control, but it got local self- determination. It is from this self-determination, even though a continued source of nuisance for the central authorities, that local communities draw their strength to this day. Ultimately, the devils Biesy and Czady took over what the socialist state had considered an ideal playground to develop a utopian socialist society.

5 State, church and local response The fall and rise of a Greek Catholic parish in socialist Poland*

Here, in Poland, we have to go through Purgatory. But our brethren in the East—they go through Hell. Fr Bazyli Hrynyk1

Introduction

Governments and churches tend to compete in the same field. As authorized, hierarchical institutions, they lay claims to territory and to the cultural and national identity of the people they represent. This overlap of interests is what makes the relationships between governments and churches so delicate. It explains why the origin of nation states in Europe often ran parallel to the expansion of and divisions within churches. The so-called ‘state churches’, such as the Russian Orthodox church of Russia and the Anglican church of England, are clear outcomes of such processes. It also explains why secular authorities always enforce some kind of ‘religion policy’, that is, a policy that controls and regulates the freedom of local churches and religious organizations. This chapter discusses one particular example of religion policy, namely the policy implemented by the Polish socialist state with regard to Poland’s Greek Catholic minority. The relationship between the Polish state and the Greek Catholic church (also referred to as Uniate church) in communist Poland was particularly strained. This was because of the hostile attitude of the

* This is a revised version of an article published in ‘State-church relations in contemporary Europe’, Inglish, Tom, Mach, Zdzisaw and Mazanek, Rafa (eds.), Dublin: UCD Press, 2000, pp. 93-112. 1 Quoted in Wojewoda (1994: 5). Bazyli Hrynyk (1896-1977) served as a Greek Catholic bishop for the Przemyl diocese since his appointment by Polish Primate Hond in 1947. He was arrested in 1954 on suspicion of subversive activities and sentenced to six years in prison in 1955. In 1956 he was released after which he resumed his work as a bishop until his death in 1977 (Syrnyk, not dated). 80 Struggling for peace socialist government to churches and religious organizations in general and to Poland’s Greek Catholic Ukrainian community in particular. The aim of the Polish state was to build a secular and homogeneous socialist society. Since ethno-national minorities derive an important part of their cultural identity from religion, religion policy offered the state a particularly effective means of exerting influence on ethnic and religious groups and their organizations. To illustrate the close interrelation between ethnicity, nationality, and religion, I shall examine the fall and rise of the Komacza Greek Catholic parish (southeast Poland, see Map 4.1) in the past four decades. Archival documents and interviews provide detailed insight into how the Greek Catholic community in the village of Komacza coped with the intense political persecution by the socialist state, and how it managed to survive as a community, while maintaining its cultural identity.2 The chapter focuses on the response of the Greek Catholic parishioners when the state closed their parish church in the early 1960s. The first section introduces the village Komacza and discusses the disintegration of the Greek Catholic church as well as its impact on the local parish. This is followed by a description of the strategies pursued by the local parishioners in response to the state interventions. The third and fourth sections explore the implications of this struggle for survival for local relationships. The concluding section contains some comments on the influence of lay people on state-church relations.

A church, a people and a community under siege

Komacza is a rural village of some 900 inhabitants. Today the village is comprised of three parishes, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox, and is inhabited by two ethnic groups, Ukrainians and Poles. The vast majority of Poles are Roman Catholic; the majority of Ukrainians are Greek Catholic. The five Orthodox Ukrainian families that live in the village constitute a tiny minority. The Orthodox parish, established in 1962, is the youngest of the three parishes. The Roman Catholic parish was established in 1927. The building of a Roman Catholic chapel and monastery was completed shortly thereafter. Dating back to the seventeenth century, the Greek Catholic parish is the oldest parish. Before World War II the wooden Greek Catholic parish church served both the local Ukrainian and Gypsy communities. When in the 1870s the railway line was built

2 The archival material used in this chapter is drawn from three collections: the Greek Catholic parish archive in Komacza (henceforth referred to as GCPA); the Roman Catholic parish archive in Komacza, and the archive of the deanery of the Orthodox church in Sanok (ADOC). The archival documents were collected and the interviews conducted during two extensive periods of fieldwork in southeast Poland in 1997 and 1998.

State, church and local response 81 connecting Przemyl with Budapest and passing, among others, through Komacza, Poles started to inhabit the village in ever growing numbers. They too frequented the Masses in the Greek Catholic parish church until they had their own chapel built (interview with Sawka S.). During the 1940s the Germans destroyed the local gypsy and Jewish communities and the Polish authorities expelled and deported most of the residual Ukrainians (chapter 3). This marked the beginning of the end of the Greek Catholic parish in Komacza.

Orthodox parish church in Komacza. Komacza, May 2005

The decline of the Greek Catholic parish coincided with the overall disintegration of the Greek Catholic church in postwar Poland. This process was spurred by a number of factors. First, the westward shift of the eastern border of Poland in 1945 deprived the church of its religious leadership, as it disconnected the Greek Catholic diocese of Przemyl (still on Polish territory) from its main administrative and religious center in Lwów (now part of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine). Second, following the liquidation of the Greek Catholic church on Soviet territory in 1946, the Polish state adopted a similar repressive policy towards the Greek Catholic church. In 1945 the Soviet authorities closed down the Greek Catholic diocese in Lwów and arrested the church leaders. When the

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Lwów Synod of 1946 (organized at the instigation of Moscow) voted for the forced conversion of the Greek Catholic church to Orthodoxy, the Greek Catholic church ceased to exist on Soviet territory.3 Even though the Polish authorities never went so far as to formally ban the Greek Catholic church from Poland, they were clearly out to destroy the church’s infrastructure. This was effectively achieved by means of the expulsion and deportation of both the Greek Catholic clergy and laity from their parishes in southeast Poland between 1944 and 1947 as part of a general demographic engineering project to establish an ethnically homogeneous Poland (see chapter 3). The Greek Catholic church was targeted because the Soviet and Polish authorities considered the church as being subversive and a stronghold of Ukrainian nationalism. Particularly problematic was the subordination of the church to Rome (Majkowicz 1990). This direct link of the church with the imperialist West was seen as providing a gate for counterrevolutionary influences, which the state authorities were unable to control. The strong position of the Roman Catholic church in Poland made state-church relations even more precarious. With the Polish state seeking ‘internal sovereignty’, that is, its superior authority with respect to all organizations in society, its religion policy was primarily aimed at undermining the influence of the strongest and least submissive of all church organization in Poland, the Roman Catholic church (Urban 1996). To that purpose, it broke the 1925 concordat between the Vatican and Poland that, until its abolishment in 1945, had given considerable autonomy to the Roman Catholic church within Poland’s state boundaries. In addition, it formed an alliance with the Orthodox metropolitan in Warsaw, whose traditionally pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian stance suited the state authorities. Finally, it entrusted the Ministry of Public Security with state religion policy, which resulted in extremely repressive methods of state control. Although repression was less rigorous after the political spring of 1956, the involvement of the security organs in religious affairs would dominate church-state relations throughout the socialist period (Dudek 1995; Urban 1996). Ironically, the state attack on the Greek Catholic church drove Poland’s Greek Catholics right into the arms of the Roman Catholic church. In December 1946, after the arrest of the Greek Catholic episcopate by the Soviet authorities, the Vatican appointed Polish primate Hond as special delegate for Eastern Rite Catholics in an attempt to offer some protection to Poland’s vulnerable Greek Catholics. Following the expulsion and deportation of Poland’s Greek Catholics from southeast Poland, the Congregation of

3 Ironically, as all the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church were at this point either in prison or exile, no bishops were involved, making the conversion canonically illegitimate by the canons of both the Orthodox and Catholic churches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Greek_Catholic_Church).

State, church and local response 83

Eastern Catholic churches in Poland decreed that all vacant church properties would henceforth fall under the care and administration of the Roman Catholic church. As the Polish state had broken the concordat with the Vatican it simply ignored these church provisions (Wojewoda 1994). But whereas Poland’s Roman Catholic church was unable to protect Poland’s Greek Catholic church from disintegration, it successfully incorporated Poland’s Greek Catholics into the Roman Catholic church hierarchy. Greek Catholic priests could become active in the Roman Catholic church on the condition that they complete a short preparatory course, no longer celebrate eastern rite Masses, and accept priestly celibacy. This being the only way to fulfill their mission, a new generation of ‘latinized’ Greek Catholic priests was raised in socialist Poland (Sorokowski 1986; Majkowicz 1990). Serving the twenty or so families that survived the expulsion and deportation policies, the Greek Catholic parish in Komacza was one of the few parishes that were still active after 1947. In the early 1950s the parish even had a resident priest, Fr Kalenyuk, former prisoner of the Jaworzno concentration camp, who on high holidays attracted people from far and wide (interview with Pelagia S.). But the situation of the Greek Catholic parishioners was far from secure. As is clear from the stories told in the village, people felt that they had passed through the eye of the needle and that every day could be their last. The extremely tense atmosphere during the last days of fed this idea. The arrest of cardinal Wyszyski in September 1953, who spent a couple of months of his detainment in the Roman-Catholic monastery in Komacza, was one of the consequences of state repression that came very close to the people (Szpara 1996). Even though the Greek Catholic villagers somehow kept on living their lives as they had always done before, their presence was indeed hardly tolerated. Consider the following excerpt from a memoir written by Marian Marczak (1994: 81), Ukrainian and inhabitant of Sanok (30 km north of Komacza), who visited Komacza in the early 1950s.

It was 1952, the period of our Easter. I went to Komacza to visit the Greek Catholic parish church. When we arrived at the railway station, the border guard took us, Ukrainians, apart and locked us up in the waiting room of the railway station. They would not allow us to visit the church. The deputy commander soon explained to us that we would be fined for having entered the ‘prohibited area’. They searched us and took all our money. When they locked us up, one of the elderly women broke into the song “Christos Woskres”. She had tears in her eyes. We all were caught up with this sacramental song. And I was surprised by its majestic sound from the breasts of these elderly women. 84 Struggling for peace

Local responses: opposition and accommodation

Given the tense atmosphere it is hardly surprising that Fr Kalenyuk predicted the end of the Greek Catholic parish after his own death. He knew the state authorities would not allow anyone to replace him (interview with Wodzimierz H.). That was exactly what happened. Fr Kalenyuk passed away on 10 June 1961. Less than two weeks later the newly appointed Fr Zoczowski was called to appear on an interview at the Department of Religious Affairs in Sanok. During the interview Fr Zoczowski was told to refrain from taking up a position as a priest for the Greek Catholic parish in Komacza, and, instead, continue his job as the curate of the Roman Catholic parish. He was told that if he complied he would be left in peace and could keep the keys of the Greek Catholic parish church as a private person.4 Thereupon, Fr Zoczowski informed the villagers that they were no longer allowed to enter their parish church and that he had been forced to resign as the priest of their parish. He also told that under the circumstances he was no longer able to lead the funeral of one of the villagers who had passed away the day before.5 However, to bury a deceased person without a funeral was inconceivable for the villagers. In order to show their disapproval the villagers wrote two letters to Fr Zoczowski in which they implored him to stay on as their pastoral leader and lead the funeral according to the Greek Catholic rite in their own parish church.6 Fr Zoczowski, in turn, forwarded the letters to Przemyl, and asked for the bishop’s permission to meet the villagers’ demands. The bishop gave his support after which Fr Zoczowski gave the funeral service and continued to say Masses in the Greek Catholic parish church.7 On 5 July 1961 two officials of the Department of Religious Affairs demanded the keys from Fr Zoczowski and locked and sealed the church doors. In a short conversation with the priest, the two officials explained that he had acted against the Polish state by leading and organizing the local Greek Catholic parish and by illicitly using state property.8 In spite of the sealed doors, which were clearly meant to discourage the Greek Catholic villagers from practicing their religion, the villagers continued to attend Greek Catholic

4 Report addressed to the Episcopate in Przemyl by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 5 July 1961, the Greek Catholic parish archive in Komacza (GCPA). 5 Report by Fr Zoczowski, GCPA. 6 Letter addressed to Fr Zoczowski by the Greek Catholic parishioners, Komacza, 23 June 1961, GCPA; Letter addressed to Fr Zoczowski by the Greek Catholic parishioners (45 signatures), Komacza, 23 June 1961, GCPA. 7 Report addressed to the Episcopate in Przemyl by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 5 July 1961, GCPA. 8 Report by Fr Zoczowski, GCPA.

State, church and local response 85

Masses, celebrate high holidays according to the Julian calendar, and prepare for Communion with their own priest. They were aided in this by Fr Zoczowski, who had no intentions of stepping back from his commitment as a priest, and by Fr Porbski, the Roman Catholic parish priest, who had invited them to his parish church. Meanwhile, the villagers went on to petition for the reopening of their parish church. In a number of letters directed to the Presidium of the People’s Provincial Council in Rzeszów they demanded the right to free conscience and religion. They enforced their arguments by stressing their absolute loyalty to the Polish state and to the socialist government.9 What followed was a tug of war between civilians appealing for reason and bureaucracy emphasizing standard regulations and laws.10 The argument put forward by the state authorities was that since the church was no longer the property of the Greek Catholic parish, as it had by decree been transferred to the state’s treasury in July 1949, the Greek Catholic parish of Komacza was effectively non-existent [sic]. That being the case, the state authorities further argued, Fr Zoczowski could not be appointed as the head of the parish. In any event, such an appointment would have violated the decree of December 1956 dictating that a parish can only be recognized as such and that a church representative can only be appointed to a post with the consent of the state.11 Considering the fact that the Polish state did not acknowledge the Greek Catholic church as a legal body, the Greek Catholic parish of Komacza found itself in a deadlock situation. This became all the more clear when a delegation of women from Komacza set off to Warsaw to call in the help of the First Secretary of the Communist Party Wadysaw Gomuka in August 1961 and were refused access to the Party headquarter. Below is a fragment of their letter:

We appeal to you with a request and with pain in our hearts. The Greek Catholic church in Komacza has a history of more than three hundred years, but never before have any authorities considered to close down our church […] I am an old woman of 69 years. I have grieved over many losses. I have seen many things. And I have had my portion of suffering in this life. But neither my grandparents, nor my parents, nor I have ever heard of anything like a state forbidding a people to visit their church […] That is why we appeal to you, our dear Secretary […] We know that you gave freedom of religion to others, so why proscribe us Greek Catholics? After all, we obey the commandments of the Polish state, we pay our taxes in time, and of our husbands, fathers, and sons who left Komacza in 1944 only half returned, some of them

9 Letter addressed to the Department of Religious Affairs of the People’s Province Council in Rzeszow (PWRN) by the Greek Catholic parishioners (126 signatures), Komacza, 23 June 1961, GCPA; letter addressed to the PWRN in Rzeszow by Stefan Barna (on behalf of the Greek Catholic parishioners), Komacza, 7 July 1961, GCPA. 10 Letter addressed to Stefan Barna (Komacza) by the PWRN, Rzeszow, 30 June 1961, GCPA; letter addressed to Stefan Barna (Komacza) by the PWRN, Rzeszów July 1961, GCPA. 11 Letter addressed to Stefan Barna.

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seriously wounded, as they fought in the ranks of the Polish army […] That is why, on behalf of all the inhabitants of Komacza, we would like to ask you, our dear secretary, to give the order to open our church and to appoint Fr Zoczowski as our priest. So that we, elderly people, will shed no more tears and live peacefully in our faith until we die.12

Meanwhile, Fr Zoczowski called in the assistance of his Roman Catholic superiors in his dealings with the state authorities, asking for the intervention of the bishop of Przemy l, the Catholic Parliamentary Club, and the Cardinal Primate of the Roman Catholic church of Poland.13 As is clear from the correspondence between Fr Zoczowski and the church authorities, the latter were very much in favor of retaining the Greek Catholic parish in Komacza.14 At stake was the autonomy of the Roman Catholic church. If the Polish state prohibited Fr Zoczowski to take up a position as a Greek Catholic priest, whose appointment by decree of the Vatican fell under the aegis of the Roman Catholic church, the state in fact would interfere with church affairs. In doing this, the church authorities argued, the Polish state violated the right of freedom of religion and conscience.15 The state authorities, on the other hand, holding to the political doctrine of ‘internal sovereignty’, justified the state’s intervention by claiming that the Roman Catholic church, following the decrees of 1949 and 1956, had no rights to succession of the former Greek Catholic parish church.16 The persistent pleas for freedom of religion and conscience from the side of the villagers, the Greek Catholic priest, and from the Roman Catholic church authorities did result in a temporary breakthrough. One year after the closure of the Greek Catholic parish church, on 11 July 1962, the Department of Religious Affairs in Warsaw informed the inhabitants of Komacza that “for the time being” they were allowed to “satisfy their religious needs” in the local Roman Catholic parish church.17 Interestingly, this decision

12 Letter addressed to Wadysaw Gomuka, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), by Katarzyna Szumeldowa (on behalf of the Greek Catholic parishioners), Komacza, 12 August 1961, GCPA. 13 Letter addressed to Cardinal Primate Wyszynski by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 17 October 1961, GCPA; letter addressed to the Catholic Parliamentary Club by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 24 October 1961, GCPA. 14 Letter addressed to the PWRN in Rzeszow by the General Curate of the Episcopate in Przemy l, Przemy l, 20 July 1961, GCPA; letter addressed to the Department of Religious Affairs (Urzd do Spraw Wyzna) in Warsaw by the Episcopate in Przemy l, Przemy l, 20 July 1961, GCPA. 15 Letter addressed to the PWRN in Rzeszów. 16 Letter addressed to the Episcopate in Przemy l by the Depanment of Religious Affairs in Warsaw, Warsaw, 26 September 1961, GCPA. 17 Letter addressed to Katarzyna Szumeldowa (Komacza) by the Department of Religious Affairs in Warsaw, Warsaw, 11 July 1962, GCPA.

State, church and local response 87 was not communicated to the Roman Catholic episcopate in Przemyl or to Fr Zoczowski; the letter was addressed to the delegation of Greek Catholic women of Komacza, who had visited Warsaw a year before. This, and the fact that the letter stressed the provisional character of the solution, seems to suggest that the state authorities were careful not to set a precedent. But whereas the decision showed some goodwill from the side of the Polish state to the local village population, it did not give legal security to the Greek Catholics.18 Fr Zoczowski observed that since the closure of the parish church, church attendance had significantly dropped. The allowance to use the Roman Catholic parish church did not alter this trend; some thirty parishioners (all of them males) had stopped frequenting the Greek Catholic Masses all together.19 Fr Zoczowski also observed that the parishioners were very worried about the future of their church. The prospects were not too bright, as they had heard of other churches that had been pulled down for building material, that were being used as storage depots, or that had been dismantled and taken to open-air museums. The growing dissatisfaction among a significant number of Greek Catholic villagers inspired some to take action in defense of their parish church. In October 1961 a delegation of villagers proposed to Fr Zoczowski that they convert to Orthodoxy for the purpose of saving the parish church. Fr Zoczowski refused angrily; in his opinion conversion to orthodoxy was commensurate with apostasy.20 But the idea had struck a responsive chord in the Greek Catholic community. When the Orthodox deanery in Sanok (which was established in 1958) sent priests to the villages to recruit members for Orthodoxy things developed very rapidly. According to Fr Zoczowski, by the end of September 1962 at least twelve parishioners had signed for membership to the Orthodox church. Those who had signed the petition withdrew their Greek Catholic membership. One of them officially converted to Orthodoxy.21 The deanery of the Orthodox church in Sanok subsequently submitted the list of signatures to the state authorities and asked for permission to open up an Orthodox parish in Komacza. On 28 December 1962 officials of the Department of Religious Affairs transferred the keys of the parish church to the

18 This is clear from a letter sent by the PWRN in Rzeszów to the Episcopate in Przemyl some seven years later (29 October 1969), in which the PWRN gives the Episcopate serious warning and demands that Przemyl stops the Roman Catholic priest in Komacza from giving shelter to the Greek Catholic priest and parishioners. 19 Report on the religious and moral condition of the Greek Catholic parish of Komacza for the year 1961, by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 6 December 1961, GCPA. 20 Report addressed to the Episcopal Curia in Przemyl by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 16 September 1962, GCPA. 21 Report addressed to the Episcopate in Przemyl by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 16 September 1962, GCPA; Report on the religious and moral conditions of the Greek Catholic parish of Komacza for the year 1962, by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, December 1962, GCPA.

88 Struggling for peace

Derelict Greek Catholic church on former village site. Królik Woowksi, May 2005 deanery of the Orthodox church in Sanok.22 The privilege granted to the Orthodox deanery, to use and administer the former Greek Catholic parish church as well as the Greek Catholic cemetery in Komacza, was a fact.

A village conflict: the struggle between two religious communities

The Orthodox takeover gave rise to a serious conflict in the village. Orthodox informants recalled that they were being intimidated by Fr Zoczowski and by a number of Greek Catholic fellow villagers. They were physically attacked, scolded and spat on when they made their way to the church (interviews with Pelagia S. and Wodzimierz H.). Greek Catholic informants, on the other hand, claimed that not they but the Orthodox converts were the aggressors. This is also the opinion expressed by Fr Zoczowski in a report from 16 September 1962, written at the height of Orthodox missionary activity. In this report Fr Zoczowski depicts the local protagonists of conversion as malicious individuals who tried

22 Transaction Protocol of 28 December 1962, archive of the Deanery of the Orthodox church in Sanok (ADOC).

State, church and local response 89 to recruit as many as possible supporters by means of swindle and slander. He found proof of this in a personal conversation with the Orthodox priest who came to collect signatures in the village. The priest told Fr Zoczowski that local villagers had asked him to petition in Komacza and that his intention was to save souls and not to split up the village. Fr Zoczowski further reported that each time the Orthodox priest visited the village he was welcomed by the same group of men. One or two of them usually accompanied the priest during his rounds through the village. Fr Zoczowski suggested that the local petitioners put pressure on their co-religionists to sign the list. He reported that a number of Greek Catholics who had initially signed the list made a complaint to the local police about the rude behavior of the petitioners.23 Even if it were the intention of the visiting orthodox priest to just save the souls of those who wanted to keep to the ‘true faith’, his actions inevitably resulted in a schism within the local Greek Catholic community. That this schism would almost certainly result in frustration, anger and hostilities at both sides of the religious divide was well understood by the Orthodox authorities in Sanok, as is clear from a letter written by Fr Lewiarz, deacon of the Orthodox diocese in Sanok, to his parishioners in Komacza. In this letter the deacon summoned the parishioners to set up a board for the care of the former Greek Catholic cemetery that had just been assigned to the local Orthodox parish. He urged the parishioners to admit each deceased person to the cemetery and avoid any trouble and conflict, as this would induce the state authorities to turn the church cemetery into a communal one. He further insisted that the parishioners keep remembering that they were part of a village in which people once “lived in unity”, a fact which should prevent them from discriminating in the case of an ensuing death. He finally stressed that “everyone has the right to be buried on the cemetery”, even though the administration of the cemetery is in the “hands of the Orthodox church”..24 Tensions reached a climax in 1974 when the local Orthodox priest died a sudden death and his position stood vacant for a couple of months. In a series of letters, the Orthodox Fr Roszczenko, who served at the time as a priest in a neighboring village and who temporarily substituted the deceased priest in Komacza, expressed his worries about the local situation. In early March 1974, he reported that the Greek Catholic Fr Czerwiczak (who had replaced Fr Zoczowski in 1968) encouraged his parishioners to take back by force the former Greek Catholic parish church, using the argument that he as a Greek

23 Report addressed to the Episcopate in Przemyl by Fr Zoczowski, Komacza, 16 September 1962, GCPA. 24 Letter addressed to the Orthodox parish council in Komacza by Fr Lewiarz, Sanok, 1963, ADOC.

90 Struggling for peace

Catholic priest had presided at the funeral of the deceased Orthodox priest.25 A few days later Fr Roszczenko reported the visit of the local police and of the provincial security police to the home of the church elder of the Orthodox parish in Komacza. During this visit the church elder, a man aged in his eighties, was advised to seek the company of his co-religionists when making his way to the parish church.26 The visitors feared an attack by the Greek Catholics to rob the old man of the church keys. The officials also pressed the old man to take good care of himself, as the news had spread that the Greek Catholics ventured a take-over so that they could celebrate Easter in their former church. Why some villagers did and others did not opt for conversion is hard to establish. Membership to either of the two religious communities cut across family boundaries. Still, some of the families that signed for conversion were related through extended family. All Orthodox families of the first generation were ‘native’ to the village (that is, they were excluded from deportation). But then again, other ‘native’ families remained with the Greek Catholic parish. What is remarkable is that whereas women had played an important part in the initial protests against the closure of the Greek Catholic parish church, the villagers who later on pushed for conversion were predominantly men. The Greek Catholic Fr Zoczowski reported that the villagers who withdrew their membership from the Greek Catholic parish between September and December 1962 were male villagers. The Orthodox Fr Lewiarz reported that all attendants (eighteen local villagers and six persons from outside) of the Orthodox Mass held in the local parish church on 30 December 1962 were male as well. The number of female participants gradually increased (there were six women out of a total of thirty-two who participated in the Mass on 7 January 1963), but men remained dominant.27 The prominent role of men in the establishment and maintenance of the Orthodox parish in Komacza in the first years of the parish’s existence points to a conflict between male groups competing for power. The conversion to Orthodoxy by some of the villagers can be explained in terms of a struggle for symbolic power within the village community. At the centre of this struggle was the attempt of the members of the Greek Catholic community to maintain their identity despite attempts by the state authorities to suppress it. The conflict took a decisive turn when a group of villagers separated themselves from the mainstream and took control over the main object of cultural identity of the village: the parish church. This act not only meant a break with the religious and cultural traditions of the village, it also meant a break

25 Letter addressed to the Metropolitan of the Orthodox church BazyJi in Warsaw by Fr Roszczenko, Morochów, 2 March 1974, ADOC. 26 Letter addressed to the deanery of the Orthodox church in Sanok by Fr Roszczenko, Morochów, 15 March 1974, ADOC. 27 Report on the Orthodox parish in Komacza by Fr Lewiarz, Sanok, January 1963, ADOC.

State, church and local response 91 with village solidarity. By forcing the reopening of the parish church through conversion to Orthodoxy, a small group of villagers blocked the recovery of the parish church by the Greek Catholic majority. This stirred up ill feelings. What is more, it marginalized the Orthodox converts. The families that formed the original alliance still make up the core of the Orthodox parish. Over the last three decades the growth of the Orthodox community depended solely on the natural increase of this Orthodox village core. Due to migration and a decrease of birthrates their numbers have declined. Church records registered fifty Orthodox men and women in Koma cza in 1966; in 1997 this number has declined to thirty-three. For comparison, in the same period the number of Greek Catholics in Koma cza has increased by a third.28 Church records from 1972, covering besides Koma cza all the other villages belonging to the respective parishes, registered 1460 Roman Catholics, 750 Greek Catholics and 145 Orthodox.29 These figures suggest that Orthodoxy hardly gained ground in the village and in the larger Koma cza district.

From defeat to victory: the return to power of the Greek Catholic church

Due to its marginal position Orthodoxy in Koma cza never really constituted a threat to the Greek Catholic community. But it took several decades for the Greek Catholic community to accept the status quo and resign from any claims to the local parish church. The firm presence of security organs certainly encouraged the Greek Catholic villagers to keep a low profile. Over time the “temporary solution” had become permanent: the Greek Catholic villagers would visit the Roman Catholic parish church to attend church Masses, which were led by their own priest, on Sundays and on high holidays. Tensions calmed considerably as soon as the men who led the factions left the village (the successive Greek Catholic priests) or died (the local Orthodox protagonists). Also, plans to build a new Greek Catholic parish church, first conceived in the early 1980s, set the Greek Catholic villagers on an entirely different track. Since the Greek Catholic parish was formally non- existent, it needed the support of a wide range of sponsors. The Greek Catholic Fr Teodor Majkowicz, then priest of the Greek Catholic parish in Przemy l, was one of them. Born in the neighboring village Rzeped he regularly gave sermons in a number of villages in the area between 1969 and 1988. Fr Majkowicz promoted the idea of a new Greek Catholic parish church among his Roman Catholic colleagues and superiors and arranged the bulk

28 Statistics on the parish of Koma cza for the year 1966 and 1969, ADOC; letter addressed to the Orthodox Archbishop in Sanok by Fr Martyniuk, Koma cza, 29 December 1997, ADOC; Report on the religious and moral condition of the Greek Catholic parish of Koma cza for the year 1966, by Fr Zoczowski, Kornancza, December 1966, GCPA; Fr Pipka, personal communication. 29 Questionnaire by Fr Porbski, Koma cza 1 February 1972, Roman Catholic parish archives.

92 Struggling for peace of formalities and funds. The legal applicant of the church project was the Roman Catholic parish in Komacza. The legal investor was the Roman Catholic diocese in Przemyl.30

The new Greek Catholic parish church in Komacza. Komacza, May 2005.

Even though local and non-local church authorities primarily carried the church project, it was the local population that was involved in the building of the church. Besides the local Greek Catholic parish priest, the building committee consisted of local villagers who dedicated much of their free time assisting the building process. One of them was Jan D., who served as an acolyte during church services. He spent three years of his life—from 1985 to 1988—in the building pit of what was to become the new Greek Catholic parish church. Volunteer workers, mostly retired men and women and those working in state jobs did much of the work, since they were the ones with spare time to devote to the church project. Since also specialists were needed, people came from all over. They all worked for free, except for the men who laid the concrete foundations. Jan D. recalled the arduous work of a group of elderly women, who were excited about the idea of having their own parish church built. Even when they were urged to take some rest by the others present,

30 Note (Notatka, not signed nor dated), Roman Catholic parish archives. See also Majkowicz (1990).

State, church and local response 93 they persisted with their work saying that this was what they had waited for their entire lives: to make a contribution. Jan D. mentioned that the Roman Catholic diocese covered part of the costs. But a considerable amount was drawn from members of the Greek Catholic community, especially from those with oversees relatives. Even the state, albeit unknowingly, made its contributions. After some squabble with a local (Orthodox) forest ranger, the (Roman Catholic) chairman of the local state forestry department offered the Greek Catholic parish loads of wood (drawn from the communal forest) for free (interview with Jan D.).

Church service in the Greek Catholic parish church in Komacza. Komacza, May 2005

With the Greek Catholic community now venturing its own symbol of religious and cultural identity, the struggle for power entered a different plane. Protests came not so much from the local Orthodox community but from Orthodox circles outside of Komacza. They accused the Greek Catholic parish of committing ‘culture destruction’ and advised against the use of an old cupola from a ruined wooden church (located in the Sanok district and taken down with the accord and assistance of a curator from the Sanok ethnographic museum) in the present building. It came to a meeting of specialists in the local village hall and a visit from an official of the Department of Monuments on site, but

94 Struggling for peace it did not lead to an interference with the building process. The symbolic weight of the new parish church in Komacza is clear from the grand political advertisement during its consecration in 1988. The church authorities stressed that the Komacza parish church was the first Uniate church opened in Poland since 1947. Also, they took the opportunity to commemorate the millennium of the conversion to Eastern Christianity of Kievan Rus, thereby claiming historical rights of the Catholic church as the true representative of the Ukrainian people.31 Present were, besides local and non-local laity, a dozen representatives of the Western and Eastern Catholic churches from all over the world: Rome, Stanford, Philadelphia, Przemyl and other Polish towns. Already in the 1980s, but even more so with the introduction of new political liberties in the 1990s, the reconstruction of the Greek Catholic church proceeded rapidly, resulting in the numerical and material preponderance of Greek Catholics in the Przemyl area. The expansion of the Greek Catholic church runs parallel with the erection of monuments and the introduction of memorial days commemorating Ukrainian victims of Polish repression. During the 1990s the Greek Catholic church has come to present itself as the main spokesman of Poland’s Ukrainians. That being the case, religious identity has become a statement of national identity and vice versa; a plaque on the Greek Catholic parish church of Komacza says ‘Ukrainian Catholic church’. This does not mean that members of the Orthodox community feel less ‘Ukrainian’ than members of the Greek Catholic community. It simply means that the Greek Catholic church is currently monopolizing the symbols that are considered relevant to the history and identity of the Ukrainian people. In other words, members of the Orthodox parish are denied a fair share in the celebration of politically and culturally relevant events. This puts the Orthodox Ukrainians in a still more vulnerable position, which at times results in intensified competition between the two religious factions at the local level.

Conclusions

The liquidation of the Greek Catholic church by the Polish socialist state in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the cultural and national oppression of Poland’s Greek Catholic Ukrainians. A striking slogan at the time was ‘take their churches and you destroy their

31 In 988, at the command of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, the people of Rus embraced Byzantine Orthodoxy. The baptism of prince Vladimir and the subsequent conversion of his people are generally taken as signifying the establishment of the Christian religion among the Eastern Slavs. (The Poles are Western Slavs who adopted Western Christianity in 966). For a discussion of Poland’s Eastern and Western Christian traditions in the wake of the millennium celebrations see also Hann (1988).

State, church and local response 95 culture’. The case study of what happened in Komacza shows this policy had ramifications for the cultural and religious identities of the people involved. The state- enforced closure of the Greek Catholic parish church left the villagers deprived of the main symbol of their cultural identity. This temporary ‘culture void’, resulting from the attempted elimination of shared practices and traditions, gave rise to a sectarian conflict in the village. In this conflict, the different parties had the same objectives in view: the perseverance of local traditions and cultural values. But their opinions about the way to achieve this varied. The battle over the true cultural values eventually led to a schism within the Greek Catholic community and the foundation of an Orthodox parish by some of the Greek Catholic families. Komacza was not the only village that became subject to rigid state intervention. The closure of the parish church in Komacza was part of a general ‘vindication action’ (akcja ‘rewindykacyjna’), during which secret police officials closed and sealed the few remaining Greek Catholic parish churches that were still active. Of these sealed parish churches, between 1961 and 1966, fifteen were reopened by formerly Greek Catholic parishioners who had converted to Orthodoxy. This number eventually grew to twenty-two churches by 1989 (Wojewoda 1994: 66). The ‘vindication action’ also involved the closure of parish churches that at the time were being used by Roman Catholic parishioners. Most of these parish churches were subsequently converted into storage depots for cereals and fertilizers; some were converted into cattle barns (Nacz 1988). This grim perspective may explain the following statement by a Greek Catholic inhabitant of Komacza in 1997: “we owe a thank you to those who took care of our church, because if not for them [Orthodox] our church would surely have fallen subject to destruction and decay.” The case study shows that even under extremely repressive circumstances there may be room for people to develop their own defense strategies and, by this means, manipulate the outcome of state policies. Local initiatives forced the state authorities to seek compromise solutions. As a result, all over Poland numerous Greek Catholic parishes (albeit affiliated to Roman Catholic parishes) were being established: an estimated seventy by the end of the 1980s (Wojewoda 1994: 66). An even greater number of sealed, formerly Greek Catholic, parish churches had been handed over to Roman Catholic parishes. It was this kind of local opposition and accommodation as well as state-church compromise, which in the long run undermined the effectiveness of repressive state religion policy.

6 Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage The case of the Lemkos in Poland*

Introduction

From a recent Polish newspaper clipping:

The regional court in Gorlice, civic department, the third floor. Witnesses enter and leave the courtroom as they are called up to testify in the case at hand. The plaintiff is the Union of Lemkos in Poland. The defendant is the Regional Museum of Nowy Scz. At stake is the identity of Nikifor Krynicki, an artist who lived and worked in Krynica and who died more than thirty years ago. The Union of Lemkos calls for a post-mortem change of Nikifor’s name Krynicki into his supposed real name Drowniak in the exhibit information, as the latter name reveals that the artist was of Lemko descent.

For an outsider this news item is as curious as it is incomprehensible. Who are the Lemkos and why did they start a case at court? Why bother at all about the name of a dead artist who does not even have a chance to speak up in the case at hand? On closer investigation, the attempt by the Union of Lemkos to rehabilitate the late artist Nikifor Krynicki, an artist who, perhaps more than anyone else, symbolizes Poland’s Lemko cultural heritage, coincides with the quest for emancipation by the Lemko minority in Poland since the 1990 election of Poland's first postwar democratic government. The introduction of new political liberties has inspired Lemko activists to bring to the fore their political and cultural claims. What makes these claims interesting is that they are formulated in direct response to decades of political and cultural suppression by the Polish socialist state. Moreover, they reflect the political divisions not just between Poles and Lemkos, but also, and especially, within the Lemko minority group. The chapter begins with a short introduction of the Lemko minority in Poland and discusses the origin of the group and the problem of ethno-national identity. The subsequent two sections explore how socialism set the conditions that shaped current relations within the Lemko community. Two types of conditions will be distinguished: the infra-structural conditions (including changes in demography, habitat, and social cohesion)

* This is a revised version of an article published in Focaal no 33, 1999: pp. 59-73. 98 Struggling for peace and the economy of shortage in socialist systems. Following Verdery’s (1993) analysis for post-socialist Romania, it is argued that the strong emphasis on nationalist ideologies by Poland’s Lemko activists, rather than a mere revival of ancient, pre-socialist political traditions, can partly be explained as a remnant of (good old) socialist rhetoric. The final section discusses the implications of the socialist heritage for the current position of the Lemko minority in Poland.

Introducing the Lemkos

The Lemkos form a tiny minority in Poland. Their numbers are estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000 (Rieger 1995; odziski 1999).1 The native territory of the Lemkos is situated in southeast Poland (see Map 6.1), but the most numerous concentrations of Lemkos today are in the northeast ( and Elblg), northwest (Supsk and ) and southwest of Poland ( and Wrocaw) (odziski 1999). There are little visible criteria that distinguish the Lemkos from the Poles: they dress the same, visit the same schools and are active in a wide variety of professions. But there are also differences: Lemkos and Poles visit different churches (respectively Greek Catholic/Orthodox and Roman Catholic), they speak a different native tongue (respectively Lemko and Polish), and they maintain different networks of social and cultural communication through clubs, festivals, newspapers, and historical memory. In other words, there is a clear perception of cultural distinctiveness among Lemkos and Poles, as they perceive of themselves and each other as people with different origins and backgrounds. In this chapter the term Lemko is used in much the same way that it is presently used by the Lemko inhabitants of Poland and in the current Polish public debates: as a term identifying geographic origin and cultural heritage. It should be noted that the term Lemko bears certain assumptions that are present in most writings about the group. One such assumption is the idea of a pre-existing localized community with a more or less fixed culture. The ethnographic maps assigning to the Lemko people a Lemko homeland (Lemkovina, in Polish emkowszczyzna) are examples of this kind of thinking (cf. Czajkowski 1994; Reinfuss 1998). Another assumption is the idea of a consolidated identity that is commonly accepted and agreed upon. However, the fact that the term Lemko is used complementary with other terms that make explicit statements of a particular national identity (for example, Rusyn, Ukrainian, or Pole) points to the situation

1 Nationality and language did not figure in Poland’s postwar censuses. Although since the 1990s Poland’s Central Statistical Office published several works on religious and ethnic groups in Poland, the variables nationality and language have as yet not been included in the national censuses (cf. Adamczuk and Zdaniewicz 1994; Adamczuk 1995, 1997).

Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 99

Map 6.1 Southeast Poland

where identity is essentially a contested category that is uncertain and in flux.2 Consider the following statement by a contemporary Lemko ethnographer and historian from the Presóv region (Slovakia):

My roots are in Ukraine […] I am a Rusyn, but the language I speak belongs to the Lemko people, Therefore, I can say that I am a Lemko [...] I am a Rusyn, but this does not stop me from being an outspoken Ukrainian as well (Mykoaj Muszynka quoted in Kowalczyk 1997: 9).

It goes beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the origins of the Lemko people at length, but it is useful to address a few key issues in the debate. Twentieth-century scholarship has advanced two alternative hypotheses concerning the origins of the Lemkos. The first hypothesis, advocated mostly by Ukrainian academics (including those based in North American universities), link Lemko settlement in the southwest Carpathians (modern southeast Poland) with the initial settlement of Rus enclaves (remnants of the former Kievan Rus federation) during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The second hypothesis, supported mostly by Polish scholars, links Lemko

2 For an extensive enumeration of ethnic names that over the past two centuries have been used to address the ‘Eastern Slavs’ inhabiting the Carpathian mountain range (stretching from present- day Poland, to Ukraine and Romania) see the work of Magocsi (1978). For a discussion on the processes of identity formation of the Lemkos in socialist and post-socialist Poland see Michna (1995b; 1995a) and Duc-Fajfer (1993).

100 Struggling for peace settlement with the early migrations of the Vlachs (pastoral nomads originating from the Balkan) in the Middle Ages (Mach 1993). While the first hypothesis establishes the Eastern Slav origin of the Lemko population, the second hypothesis establishes the Western Slav origin (albeit mixed with undeniable Eastern Slav influences) of the group (Hann 1985). The two theories are as much historical as they are political and ideological in content. While some use the first hypothesis to claim Ukrainian national identity for the Lemkos, others use it to claim Rusyn national identity. The mixed Wallachian-Polish thesis establishes a non-Ukrainian identity (that is, a Polish or Rusyn identity) for the Lemkos. It is no coincidence that the current name of the people discussed in this chapter (Lemko) and their assumed homeland (Lemkovina) was in fact a “Polish academic invention”, to quote Hann (1985: 29). Polish ethnographers carried out comprehensive academic research on Poland’s Rus populations in the early twentieth century (cf. Falkowski and Pasznycki 1935; Reinfuss 1936; Pieradzka 1939). By demarcating the linguistic and ethnographic boundaries of the Lemkos and other Rus subgroups on Polish territory (such as the Boikos and Hutsuls) the ethnographic studies conveniently served the political objective set by the interwar Polish government: the nominal ‘de-Ukrainization’ of the Eastern Slav populations in the western and eastern territories of southern Poland (cf. Hann 1995). Consistent with this objective, the terms ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Ukrainian’ were entirely banned from Polish bureaucratic language during the interwar period. Poland’s eastern territories, inhabited largely by Ukrainians, were referred to as Little Poland (Mao Polska) and the official name given to its inhabitants was Rusyns (Rusini). Accordingly, the 1921 census (GUS 1924) registered four main “nationalities” in the Lwów voivodeship, which included parts of the Lemko, Boiko, and Hutsul territories: Poles, Rusyns, Jews, and Germans. Most significantly, the 1921 survey does not list Ukrainians as a separate national category for the region. It does, however, list Japanese as a separate category (of which there were none in the Lwów voivodeship), which hints at a peculiar form of political incorrectness of the interwar Polish government (GUS 1924: Tablica Wojewódzka VIII-XIII). In line with this political trend, the term ‘Rusyn’ became increasingly used as a synonym for ‘Ukrainian’ in popular as well as in academic publications, as in for example the work of Romer (1919). Without belittling the role that Lemkos themselves have played in the identification and the labeling of their own group, political manipulations by outsiders have had, and continue to have, major consequences for the Lemkos as a group. An example of such manipulation, mentioned already above, concerns the attempt by the prewar Polish government to detach Lemkos from the much more politically assertive Ukrainians in the east. Other political incentives have led the postwar communist government to do the reverse: it started a campaign during which Lemkos were branded as Ukrainians. The Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 101 impact of this labeling was considerable and eventually led to the massive expulsion and deportation of Lemkos from southeast Poland to the Soviet Union and to the northern and western parts of Poland as Ukrainian terrorists.

The infra-structural conditions: the implications of the policy of ethnic cleansing

The dramatic turning point in Poland’s postwar Lemko history was the military Operation Vistula (Akcja “Wisa”). Between April and August 1947 some 150 thousand Lemkos and Ukrainians were deported from southeast Poland to the newly acquired German territories in west and northwest Poland (see Map 3.1). The official reason for operation Vistula was “military necessity” (Misio 1993). By removing the entire civilian population from the territories in which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was active, the state authorities hoped to deprive the UPA from its wider societal base of support (Pudo 1987; Misio 1993). However, by applying the standard of collective responsibility, and by uprooting tens of thousands civilian Lemkos and Ukrainians, the state authorities willfully pushed for the elimination of the Lemko and Ukrainian communities (not the people) in Poland (cf. Tomaszewski 1991; Misio 1993). The operation had a major impact on the position of the Lemko minority in the wider Polish society: disconnected from their native villages and towns and widely dispersed all over Poland the Lemko minority formed a very vulnerable group of displaced people with little potential for unified political action. An effective method to destroy the cohesion of a people is to break the bonds between its individual members. This was one of the purposes of Operation Vistula. Labeled as “security risks” the Lemko deportees were scattered over many settlements (located at a minimal distance of 30 km from Poland’s western state borders and 20 km from the main provincial cities) throughout north and northwest Poland (Misio 1993). Village communities were split into nuclear families that, in turn, were placed in exclusively Polish environments. The number of deportees per village was not allowed to exceed ten percent of the total village population. This usually meant that no more than two or three families were placed in a single village, while local security officials made sure that these families would not occupy adjacent farms (Pudo 1987; Misio 1993). Further restrictions involved the prohibition to return to one’s family grounds at the risk of being imprisoned as well as the prohibition to leave one’s place of residence without the permission of the security organs (Pudo 1987; Misio 1993). The nationalization of the vacant properties in the Lublin, Rzeszów and Kraków provinces in July 1949 legalized the outcome of Operation Vistula. As the Lemko deportees were now formally dispossessed of their land, houses and forests they literally had no place to return to. Operation Vistula also effectively disrupted religious life for the vast majority of Greek Catholic Lemkos. In the spring of 1947 the Greek Catholic priests, whose numbers had 102 Struggling for peace already been reduced by state expulsion policies and political persecutions in 1946, were deported along with their Greek Catholic parishioners. A decree from July 1947 that regulated the dispossession of the deported civilians also stipulated the impropriation of Greek Catholic church properties. The lack of priests and churches plus the scattered settlement of the deportees made it next to impossible to establish new Greek Catholic parishes after Operation Vistula. Those who wished to worship in church had to turn to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches (chapter 5). Indeed, the Vatican had appointed the Polish Roman Catholic primate as special delegate for Eastern Rite Catholics, while the Polish state had assigned the pastoral care of the Greek Catholics to the Orthodox church (Urban 1996). Whereas a large majority of the Greek Catholic clergy chose to blend in with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, given the fact that this was the only way in which they could fulfill their vocation, a large number of parishioners turned to Orthodoxy, given the similarities between the eastern Catholic and Orthodox rituals and the state-supported Orthodox mission among the Greek Catholics (Sorokowski 1986; Urban 1996). Ethnic minorities never had formal political representation in the Polish People’s Republic. The state sponsored socio-cultural associations, formed during Poland’s political thaw in 1956 and 1957, came close but not quite. Even though each minority had one socio-cultural organization, one periodical in the native language, some folklore groups and some schools, the minority organizations and institutions merely served as instruments for state control (chapter 3). Since an ethno-national Lemko or Rusyn identity was not recognized, nor accorded legal status by the Polish state authorities, the Lemkos were left with no other option but to participate in Poland’s Ukrainian cultural and social life. Although the state authorities denied the Lemko minority any organizational base, they did allow for the preservation of the Lemko cultural heritage in museums and on folk festivals, thereby encouraging a Lemko ‘culture of artifacts’. Pressure towards assimilation in Polish schools, Polish churches and Polish neighborhoods, and simultaneously, pressure towards accepting a Ukrainian identification, resulted in the significant weakening of the Lemko identity (Kwilecki 1974; Pudo 1987). During the late 1950s a considerable number of Lemkos returned to Poland’s southeastern territories while overcoming intense discouragement by government agencies.3 However, no return, no matter how massive, could repair the damage done by Operation Vistula.

3 The number of Ukrainians and Lemkos that returned to southeastern Poland is estimated by Lerelik (1997) at some 20 thousand persons. The number of Lemkos that since 1956 returned to their homeland (emkowsczyzna) is estimated between five and six thousand persons (Rieger 1995; urko 1997). It should be noted that an unspecified number of Lemkos and Ukrainians already ventured (illegal) returns during the early 1950s.

Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 103

After the regime change in 1990 a significant number of Poland’s Lemkos continued to stay with the successor of the Ukrainian socio-cultural association (the Organization of Ukrainians in Poland). In addition, a large number of new organizations and institutions representing sections of the Lemko minority were founded. Political dissension and shifts in orientation and support within the Lemko community caused a high turnover of Lemko minority organizations since the early 1990s. Overall, two main political groupings can be distinguished representing historically competing ‘ideological’ camps on the question of Lemko ethno-national identity: the Union of Lemkos (pro-Ukrainian orientation) and the Lemko Association (pro-Rusyn orientation) (Kowalczyk 1997; Mihalasky 1997). But even when these political orientations have long historical roots in the Lemko community, it is inaccurate to explain current orientations in terms of their predecessors half a century earlier.4 Firstly, two recent developments have spurred the debate over Lemko ethno-national identity in Poland: the post 1989 resurgence of a (largely American based) Rusyn movement advocating the idea of a distinct Rusyn ethno-national identity and the 1991 normalization of the status of the Byzantine Ukrainian (Greek Catholic) church within Poland. While the Rusyn movement actively engages in promoting a distinct Rusyn ethno- national identity among the Lemkos (among others by organizing conferences in the Rusyn ‘homelands’, such as in Poland and Slovakia5), the Greek Catholic church seeks political engagement and support for the development of a Ukrainian ethno-national identity among the Lemkos. The establishment of an independent Ukraine in 1991 certainly spurred the latter trend, as it gave new perspectives on a renewed bond between the Polish and the Ukrainian branches of the Greek Catholic church. Secondly, postwar history altered the political objectives of the Lemko community. Irrespective of their ideological preferences, Lemko activists spend the bulk of their energy demanding compensation for the victims of Operation Vistula. Meanwhile, a number of the claims formulated by Lemko organizations have reached the Polish parliament through the arbitration of representatives of the Ukrainian minority in Poland (Kaczynski 1991). Thirdly, the shift of the geographical centers of Lemko political activity from east to west and from south to north, plus the still scattered settlement of the Lemkos in Poland, significantly impacted the political needs and incentives as well as the strategies of ethnic

4 For an extensive analysis of the political and religious orientations among the Lemkos during the inter-war period see the comprehensive study by Moklak (1997). 5 The first Rusyn World Congress on site was held in Medzilaborec (Slovakia, March 1991); the second in Krynica (Poland, May 1993). One of the resolutions voted by the participants of the second Rusyn World included a call for Lemko-Rusyns to be recognized and accorded legal status within Poland as an ethnic minority distinct from the Ukrainian minority (Mihalasky 1997).

104 Struggling for peace mobilization. Finally, the forced Ukrainization and Polonization of the Lemko minority over the past four decades have significantly changed the political meaning of past dividing lines. Pro-Ukrainian and pro-Rusyn voices can still be heard, but the political motivations and programs of those who profess these national ideologies are different from those of their prewar brethren. An example of a division dating back to the prewar times but that experienced a transformation during the socialist era is the conflict between Greek Catholic (Uniate) and Orthodox sections of the Lemko community.6 The Polish socialist state positively sanctioned Orthodoxy at the cost of Greek Catholicism, which constituted the major religion in southeast Poland during the interwar years. This resulted in a renewed power struggle between Lemko Orthodox and Lemko Greek Catholics after the regime change. At stake is the control over formerly Greek Catholic church property that had been confiscated by the Polish state and appropriated by the Orthodox church after Operation Vistula (cf. 1991a, 1991b). At stake is also the support of the laymen whose dedication to community life is crucial for the maintenance and building of old and new religious communities (chapter 5). Thus, far from being products of old traditions Lemko activists operate in a dynamic, constantly changing political field. Their identities (as well as their political agenda’s and political alliances) are highly dependent on the contexts and the fields in which they operate. This is also what Mihalasky (1997) found when exploring the different terms that are currently being used to denote the Lemkos. Varied usage of the terms do not just reflect ethno-nationalist preference; they also reflect fields of activity and power relations:

In writing on matters of broader national interest, such as the “Vistula” Operation resettlement or the question of compensation for the involuntarily resettled populations, there was an observable tendency to use the “Ukrainian” ethnonym, whereas in dealing with local level activities and concerns (such as language schools, religious relations within a village, or holiday traditions), there was a tendency to favor the term “Lemko” […] This pattern of terminology usage also reflects the success with which the Ukrainian community has managed to forward a coherent, unified agenda in Warsaw. Conversely, the decentralized, loosely organized Rusyn orientation favors grassroots community activity (Mihalasky 1997: 46).

6 The conflict dates back as far as the Union of Brest-Litovsk in 1596, which established the unification of several millions of Ukrainian and Byelorussian Orthodox Christians living under Polish rule with the Roman Catholic church.

Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 105

The condition of the socialist economy of shortage: contests over representativeness

Verdery (1993) gives examples from Romania, but her thesis that socialist systems have a predisposition to use national ideology and that this predisposition is perpetuated in post- socialist politics, is also instructive for the case of Poland. Verdery bases her argument on the main characteristic of socialist systems, namely the nature of bureaucratic competition ruled by processes of horizontal redistribution. In socialist systems competition was for allocations from the central budget. Since claims upon the state budget were usually much bigger than the central budget could support, groups and persons would compete for the attention of central planners. Groups or persons seeking such allocation from the centre had more chances of success if they formulated their appeal in a language compatible to that of the central distributors. With a party leadership whose main objective was to ‘homogenize’ the society at large, appeals to national values became a valuable means of building budgets. The outcome was what Verdery (1993: 180) calls contests over representativeness, meaning that the different applicants justified their claim by saying that their project was more representative of the true national value than someone else’s project or version. In post-socialist Poland the economy of shortage is undergoing a rapid transformation toward an economy of affluence, that is, a capitalist market economy. Still, the funds and resources available for Poland’s minority populations are fairly limited. Also, even when decentralized forms of governance are increasingly taking over from centralized forms of government, funds and resources are still redistributed from the top down. Especially claims of restitution of properties to their former Lemko owners involve the higher levels of decision makers. Once claims could be made for wrongs done in the past and once funds and resources became available for the development of a Lemko culture, language and education, the question that arose was: by whom are the claims made and who will share in the profits? The arguments that are being used to enhance the reasonable opportunity to have claims heard and decided are remarkably similar to the ones put forward by the ‘chief fashioners’ of social ideologies (intelligentsia, agents of certain bureaucratic segments) during socialist times: the minority elites engage in a contest over which project or claim is more representative of the true national (read: Lemko) value than other projects or claims. In any contest over representativeness the chances of success are bigger if the applicant is able to effectively differentiate him or herself from those who make similar claims. Applicants thus tend to advance arguments that ensure them a considerable allocation at the expense of their competitors. This, in turn, requires that the applicant take an intolerant stance against any other (and especially towards identical) claimants: whereas I do, you don’t represent the true cultural, religious, or national values of the group. This mechanism, at least in part, may account for the exclusivist ethno-nationalisms that divide

106 Struggling for peace the Lemko community today (cf. Sidorowicz 1993). Moreover, it may explain the extremely compliant and mild attitudes of the Lemkos vis-à-vis the Poles. The applicant, being still a member of an ethnic minority, should make sure that he or she does not alienate him or herself from the majority population, as this would significantly reduce the reasonable opportunity to have his or her claims heard and decided. It is therefore of utmost importance that the applicant shows his or her goodwill and formulates his or her appeal in a language compatible to that of the central distributors. Consider the following fragment of an interview with a pro-Rusyn Lemko spokesman:

Interviewee: We [the ‘Hospodar’ Citizens’ Circle of Lemkos] seek to stand up for our rights as citizens. Why bother with [issues of] national belonging or regional specifics? We consider such issues of minor importance in the current situation of the Polish Republic. Truth be told, we are loyal citizens of the [Polish] Republic. Our roots are within her boundaries. As for the recognition of our rights, we intend to proceed peacefully, as this—and I mean the avoidance of conflict—is already deeply rooted in our mentality.

Interviewer: Is that possible? To speak up for the farmer’s right, when new generations of Polish settlers still live in former Lemko farms? They obtained these lands as part of the agricultural reform, and they took it in good faith, and—this is of crucial importance—they should not be the ones to be burdened with the responsibility of Operation Vistula.

Interviewee: That is exactly the reason why we do not claim the farms of private Polish settlers. The whole philosophy of our movement is based on the belief that pain cannot be relieved by inflicting pain on others. Nevertheless, we do insist that the state owned forests be returned to their legitimate owners. By privatizing these state forests […] the interests of no single inhabitant of former Lemkovina will be harmed (Semprich 1990).

... and the following fragment of an interview with a pro-Ukrainian Lemko spokesman:

As the Union [of Lemkos] we belief that the Lemkos […] should refrain from launching political goals of the sort that endanger the integrity of the Polish state. As the Union [of Lemkos] we say openly, that we do not seek a new Ukraine in Lemkovina. We only want to guard our language, our customs, and practice the Greek Catholic or Orthodox religion in freedom (Koprowski 1991).

While the above statements by the Lemko spokesmen seem reasonable and fair, the two organizations, which compete in the same political and cultural field, in fact play for high stakes. An example of the consequences of fierce internal competition is the prolonged

Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 107 fight over a former Rusyn boarding school in Gorlice that started in 1989, but that after eight years of struggle has not yet found an end (see Map 6.1). The example illustrates how excessive internal competition impedes cooperation within the Lemko community. In November 1989 the ‘Hospodar’ Citizens’ Circle of Lemkos plead for the return of the building that from 1923 until its confiscation by the state in 1949 had belonged to the Society of the Rusyn Boarding School (Towarzystwo Ruskaja Bursa) in Gorlice. This claim was followed by similar claims by four other Lemko organizations: the Union of Lemkos (in October 1990), the Association of Lemkos (December 1990), the Folk Group ‘Lemkowyna’ (January 1991), and the newly erected Association in support of the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’ (December 1991 and September 1995). In the petitions, which were handed to the highest state institutions (including the chancellery of the President), the claimants explained why the return of the former boarding school was needed and why one organization, and not the other, was the legitimate successor of the prewar Society of the Rusyn Boarding School (Sobolewski 1996). After years of unsuccessful petitioning, all organizations, with the exception of the Union of Lemkos, withdrew their claim in favor of the Association in support of the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’. By this means the pro-Rusyn organizations created a platform against the pro-Ukrainian Union of Lemkos. What the organizations did not like about the Union of Lemkos was that it petitioned for a boarding school that would serve the education of the Ukrainian language (defined as “mother tongue”) and Ukrainian history (so called “native traditions”) to the Lemko youth (referred to as “Rusyn youth from all over Lemkovina”) (Sobolewski 1996). The four organizations unmasked the representatives of the Union of Lemkos as former “members of the elite of the [communist] Ukrainian Socio-Cultural Association”. To claim that the Ukrainian language is the mother tongue of all Lemkos, so they argued, is a “sheer violation of the historical truth”. They therefore appointed the Association in support of the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’ as the “heir apparent” of the prewar Society of the Rusyn Boarding School (Sobolewski 1996). In 1995 the head of the Regional Department in Gorlice, on behalf of the Polish state, assigned the (meanwhile empty) building to the Association in support of the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’ to be used by “all Lemko organizations represented by the Boarding School”. The contract did not contain a clause regarding legal ownership, but it allowed the Association in support of the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’ to use the building for as long as it lasts, and, as was hinted by the head of the Regional Department, “maybe forever”. Today, an outside doorplate informs in two languages (Polish and Lemko) that in the building are seated the ‘Rusyn Boarding School’, ‘Lemkowyna’ and ‘Hospoda’. In order to make good and “accommodative” use of the building, the Union of Lemkos has also been invited to take part in the boarding school’s activities. But the Union has not accepted 108 Struggling for peace the offer to date. Instead it continues to petition for the handing over of the property to the one and only Lemko organization “that truly has the same goals and duties as had the former company”: the Union of Lemkos (Sobolewski 1996).

Conclusions: the socialist heritage and the Lemko emancipation movement

Despite the oppression of ethnic minorities during the socialist era, there has always been limited room for cultural expression in Poland (chapter 3). A plausible explanation for the perseverance of a minimal level of ethnic organization in former socialist Poland is given by Verdery (1993) and lies in a central characteristic of socialist systems, namely the ‘economy of shortage’. In such an economy, shortage is organized and therefore endemic and competition is for resources that are in short supply. In the competition for scarce resources ethnic identity is relevant on at least two levels. Firstly, in the absence of other socio-political organizations or groups, ethno-national mobilization was the only form of political interest-group activity that could be employed with some legitimacy, even if within certain strict limits. Secondly, whether or not an ethno-national group had a meaningful political life as a group, in circumstances of severe shortage ethnic identities served like personalistic ties: when goods were in short supply they preferably went to members of one’s own group (Verdery 1993: 175). As Verdery (1993) convincingly shows, the institutional history of former socialist countries can be held responsible for the fact that their societies are strongly predisposed toward ethno-national conflict. If it is true, as Verdery suggests, that national ideology and national sentiments not just persisted but were even intensified by the political economy of socialism (and not by ‘age-old enmities’ or by ethno-nationalisms of the 1930s), how can we explain the peacefulness of the Lemko emancipation movement today? One explanation, I would suggest, is that ethnic cleansing has worked. The Polish socialist authorities had done away with Ukrainian and Lemko enclaves right from the start through expulsion and deportation. Without belittling the brutal consequences of forced resettlement, the policy that significantly reduced the number of ethnic minority members and that enforced the assimilation and the dispersion of the remainder, has contributed to a decrease of ethno-national threats that ensues from situations where ethnic minorities constitute a significant power in local or semi-local politics. Low population numbers and strong internal political divisions impede Poland’s Lemkos and Ukrainians from mobilizing effectively for collective action. More than that, competition and intolerance is fiercest within these minority groups, which inevitably relieves tension between Poland’s Lemkos and Poland’s Poles. Another explanation for the absence of ethno-national conflict lays not so much in Poland’s socialist heritage, as in the political features of post-socialist Polish society. Ethno-nationalism and the socialist heritage 109

Poland has quickly come to terms with the new social realities following the political transformation of 1989 through the establishment of new institutions responding to the needs of a new democratic society and a decentralization of power. This situation is different in, for example, Romania. The situation in Romania has led Verdery (1993) to conclude that ethno-national resentments in Eastern Europe flare up in an environment that is not equipped to managing them. Since socialist systems tended to spur the destruction of resources and organizations outside the control of the party bureaucracy, it means that former socialist societies are devoid of intermediate institutions for channeling ethnic sentiments, for settling disagreements peacefully, or for offering alternative means of expressing one’s grievances (Verdery 1993: 183). In Poland ethnic mobilization as well as state policies supporting the emancipation of ethno-national minorities smoothly filled up the gap after 1989. This has led to the situation where ethno-national groups make subtle use of a new democratic infrastructure: they found relief-committees in support of their cause, they get representatives of Poland’s ethnic minorities in parliament to do a good job for them, they hand in petitions to the government, they play on the media when needed, and they start a case at court as the final resort. The case of the rehabilitation of the Lemko artist Nikifor that I gave at the outset of this chapter, and the case of the Rusyn boarding school that I dealt with later on, support the notion that Polish society has reached a certain level of institutionalization of ethnicity, to paraphrase Verdery (1993: 183), which for one important thing has helped to prevent ethnic violence of the sort that has occurred in a number of other former socialist countries.

7 The strength of diversity A micro-history of ethnic conflict and coexistence in rural southeast Poland*

A society […] which is riven by a dozen oppositions along lines running in every direction, may actually be in less danger of being torn with violence or falling to pieces than one split along just one line. For each new cleavage contributes to narrow the cross clefts, so that one might say that society is sewn together by its inner conflicts. Edward Alsworth Ross (1924: 165).

Introduction

“In Komacza there are no conflicts,” reads the headline of an article on ethnic and religious relations in a regional weekly of the Polish Communist Workers’ Party from 1988 (Machnik and Pajk 1988). In Komacza, as in other villages in the Bieszczady region of southeast Poland, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Gypsies coexisted peacefully until the outbreak of the Second World War (Lehmann 2001). The Nazis killed and deported nearly all Jewish and Gypsy village residents. Subsequently, Poles and Ukrainians got themselves involved in a bloody civil war (chapter 2). This was followed by the expulsion and deportation of most of the Ukrainian population from the region (chapter 3). Given this history, the newspaper article is striking for two reasons. First, peaceful coexistence in this region seems to be a serious concern for a wider Polish public, which is also evident from a number of more recent scholarly publications on interethnic relations in Poland’s southeastern border area (cf. Babiski 1997; Hann and Stpie 2000; Krochmal 2001; Wojakowski 2002; Buzalka 2007). Second, the article suggests a most intriguing paradox: while it is based on the assumption that religious and ethnic diversity inevitably leads to conflict, the case of Komacza shows that this need not necessarily be the case. Even though tensions between the divergent religious and ethnic groups in this rural district have flared up at various times over the past sixty years, they never assumed the force necessary to threaten peaceful coexistence again.

* Accepted for publication in Anthropological Quarterly. 112 Struggling for peace

This chapter explores why massive violent confrontations did not re-occur after the civil war ended sixty years ago, despite tensions and conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians. What this chapter does not offer is a comparative case study between regions. Instead the focus is on the in-depth transformation processes within one particular location. The empirical data presented in this article are based on extensive anthropological fieldwork1 in the Komacza rural district (see Map 4.1). It is by means of a detailed case history of relationships in this rural district that this study seeks to explain why local relations transformed from violent into non-violent ones. The villages in the Bieszczady region have very diverse settlement histories. As a consequence of diversity in settlement patterns, the proportion of Poles, Ukrainians, Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics and Orthodox differ from village to village. Population densities also vary widely from district to district ranging from 5.8 to 104 inhabitants per square kilometer in respectively Cisna and Lesko.2 Three types of settlement may be identified: 1) settlements that are populated by a population of almost exclusively Polish newcomers; 2) settlements that are inhabited by a mixed population of Polish newcomers and Ukrainian returnees; 3) settlements that due to their administrative function or transport hub had kept a small part of their Polish and Ukrainian indigenous populations and that, starting from the 1950s, in addition received returnees and newcomers. All three settlement types are present in the Komacza district, which has 11.2 inhabitants per square kilometer.3 Komacza itself, a railroad hub and the administrative centre of the district, represents the third type of settlement. While each location is unique in its own way, the transformation processes to which the inhabitants in the Komacza district have been exposed are fairly representative for this part of Poland (cf. Biernacka 1974; Babiski 1997). The chapter begins by exploring the social cleavages and social networks in the Komacza district today. The transformation of these networks and cleavages since the eruption of violence in the 1940s is the subject of the second part. Special attention is paid to the formation of networks in conflict situations. In the third part it is shown how the transformation of social relationships in the local village communities was embedded in the overall transformation of Polish society. It is argued that social relationships at the micro level changed in such a way that for most inhabitants of the Komacza district a

1 Fieldwork was conducted from January 1997 to May 1997 and from September 1997 to February 1998, as well as during a number of shorter visits between 2005 and 2008. 2 Figures from 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmina_Cisna; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmina_Lesko). 3 Figure from 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmina_Komacza).

The strength of diversity 113 resort to violent means to settle a conflict is no longer a relevant option. In a final section the wider implications of these findings are discussed.

Part 1. The ethnographic present: cross-cutting cleavages and weak ties

The argument

Since the early decades of the last century, anthropologists as well as sociologists have come to appreciate the importance of cross-cutting cleavages in maintaining social cohesion in societies—be they stateless, pre-industrial societies or Western parliamentary democracies. Studying the East African pastoralists, the Kipsigis, the British anthropologist Evans-Pritchard (1939) found that simultaneous memberships of the Kipsigis to multiple social institutions (such as warrior groups, age groups and clan systems) strengthened the bonds between otherwise divided individuals and groups, leading to a more cohesive coexistence. Investigating the social paradox of “friendship despite quarrels”, the British anthropologist Gluckman (1966: 10, 138) pointed at the importance of cross-cutting systems of alliance so that “divisions in the ranks of any group, which link its members with its enemies in other relationships, exert pressure to prevent open fighting”. In dealing with the effects of cross-cutting cleavages (as opposed to reinforcing cleavages) on voting behavior in Western parliamentary democracies, the political scientists Rae and Taylor (1970) found that more cross-cutting results in more floating votes as well as in more votes for moderate (non-extremist) political parties. Rae and Taylor consider this non-intended side effect of cross-cutting a crucial element for the enhancement of political stability in parliamentary systems. In a similar way, the Dutch sociologist Flap (1985; 1997) argues that, to the extent that social cleavage involves conflicting loyalties between memberships, especially in a case of cross-cutting social circles, a restraining effect emerges. Flap’s discussion of the “cross-cutting cleavage” argument may be summarized as follows:

• Each society is divided by one or more cleavages or social dividing lines;

• Although a social dividing line does not necessarily involve a conflict—or a conflict of interests—between groups and their members, any social dividing line inevitably turns into a major binding or dividing force in conflict situations;

• If social dividing lines are cut by simultaneous membership to multiple groups, individuals will inherently be bound by conflicting loyalties, as their social capital (i.e., the network that they possess) is distributed among multiple segments of society;

114 Struggling for peace

• In a structure with cross-cutting cleavages the alternative ‘compromise’ has a greater expected utility to opponents and third parties in a conflict situation than the alternatives ‘doing nothing’ or ‘fighting’, as the latter two alternatives almost certainly result in a loss of social capital for each party, and in due course, in a loss of the parties’ social honor.

Central to the “cross-cutting cleavage” argument is that network structures have an influence on the expectations, attitudes and behavior of the people who are embedded in such networks. The argument is that societies with intersecting social cleavages are more peaceful than societies in which social cleavages coincide. Flap makes a point of stressing that the feedback relation between on the one hand network structure and on the other hand behavior and attitude is time-dependent. The mitigating effect of cross-cutting cleavages is likely to be more pronounced if they have structured the lives of people over a longer period of time. Flap: “Persons that find themselves in situations of conflicting loyalties frequently and for long periods will gradually develop strong self discipline and tolerance” (1997: 209). Conversely, segmentation will eventually result in “more impulsive, violent and intolerant attitudes, especially towards members of out-groups” (Flap 1997: 209). Even though cross-cutting ties generally tend to be discussed as a factor of social cohesion, there are others who argue that cross-cutting relations may not always serve this purpose. Schlee (2008), for instance, found that in northern Kenya cross-cutting ties among the Gabra and the Elemo Rendille subclan (which has Gabra roots) were unable to prevent a violent conflict: in 1992 the Gabra attacked the Rendille and captured a large part of the Rendille camels. Schlee further argues that cross-cutting ties, instead of producing social cohesion, resulted in internal divisions within groups: as a consequence of the conflict some Elemo joined the Gabra, while at the same time, a pro-Elemo and anti- Elemo faction was formed among the Gabra. Schlee finally found that cross-cutting ties did fulfill an important function in coping with the consequences of war: some members of the Elemo sub clan found refuge among their Gabra clan brothers who protected them from attacks by other Gabra. Looking at the case presented by Schlee it seems that the cross-cutting ties negatively affected the internal social cohesion of the two groups. However, the question remains what role cross-cutting played in the social cohesion of the overall system. It could be argued that, since cross-cutting ties tend to produce in-group divisions, they must form at least some impediment to conflict escalation, because of the social costs involved in internal division. Also, cross-cutting ties appear to affect the mobilization potential, as internal divisions will reduce the number of participants in intergroup violence. Network models such as described above typically deal with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. The American sociologist Granovetter

The strength of diversity 115

(1973), however, pointed at the importance of weak ties for maintaining social cohesion. In his pioneering paper “The Strength of Weak Ties” he revealed a most interesting paradox: weak ties, often denounced as generative of alienation, are in fact indispensable to individuals’ opportunities and to their integration into communities; strong ties, breeding local cohesion, lead to overall fragmentation (1973: 1378). The cohesive power of low-density networks (weak ties), according to Granovetter, lies in the fact that the latter establish a bridge between various densely-knit networks (strong ties) that, if not for these bridging links, would otherwise never have touched: “weak ties are more likely to link members of different small groups than are strong ones, which tend to be concentrated within particular groups.” (1973: 1376). Granovetter’s argument further asserts that individuals with few weak ties have limited access to information from distant parts of the social system. This lack of information will not only detach individuals from the latest ideas and fashions, but may also put them in a disadvantaged position in the labor market, and may hinder their organization and integration into political movements of any kind. “The macroscopic side of this communication argument”, writes Granovetter (1983: 202) in a reappraisal of his strength-of-weak-ties argument in 1983, “is that social systems lacking in weak ties will be fragmented and incoherent. New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavors will be handicapped, and subgroups separated by race, ethnicity, geography, or other characteristics will have difficulty reaching a modus vivendi”. The above arguments—the “cross-cutting cleavage” argument and the “strength of weak ties” argument—will serve as tools to analyze social relationships and patterns in the research area: fragmented on the one hand, cohesive on the other. Following the “cross- cutting cleavage” argument, two questions have special relevance to the case at hand. First, by what social cleavages are the people inhabiting the Komacza district divided? Second, to what extent does membership to one or another group across the social dividing lines overlap? In order to explore the inbuilt cleavages along which local conflicts may develop, this section begins by briefly reviewing the current dividing lines at the community level. Next, it explores local patterns of cross-cutting relationships to assess the relative importance of the ethnic dividing line. Finally, using Granovetter’s concept of “weak ties”, local patterns of interaction are linked with patterns of interaction across local groups.

Socio-economic stratification

The working population in the Komacza area today is active in seven main economic sectors: agriculture, forestry and forest administration, wood industry, public service, tourism, construction, and trade and commerce. The first three sectors experienced a momentous decline following the collapse of the socialist economy after 1989. Hundreds of village residents lost their jobs following the liquidation of the State Farms (PGR) in the 116 Struggling for peace early 1990s. Former socialist industries, such as the sawmills and related wood production factories, were privatized, resulting in another bulk of jobless villagers. The state forestry, once a major local employer, subsided due to overall budget cuts. The dramatic decrease of job opportunities and state pensions along with the introduction of the free market resulted in increased poverty. Poverty struck hardest in those villages where the majority of the population (mainly Polish newcomers) had relied on work in the State Farms. Many of these former peasant-workers live in multi-storied blocks without access to farmland, leaving them without an opportunity to make a living from farming. In 2005, thirteen years after the liquidation of the State Farms, still more than 40 percent of the welfare aid went to families of ex-State Farm workers and to the families of their meanwhile adult children (cf. Buchowski 2003; Gmina Komacza 2005b). In contrast, residents living in the administrative and economic centers of the district have been able to profit from the new economic liberties. The number of grocery stores and kiosks in the Komacza district, as well as the number of cafes, restaurants, hotels, and bed & breakfast accommodations rose significantly during the early 1990s. Also agro-tourism, a modern form of rural private initiative, experienced a significant growth since the turn of this century. Statistics from 2005 show that of the 743 farms in the district 50 farms engaged in agro-tourism, 15 farms had applied for a EU eco-certificate, while seven farms had already been granted such a certificate (Gmina Komacza 2005a). The unemployment figure for the Komacza district confirms this mixed picture. With 348 registered unemployed residents out of a total of 3618 residents in the working-age, the unemployment percentage of 9.6 percent in 2005 for the Komacza district was relatively high compared to West European standards, but relatively low compared to the Polish average of 18 percent (Gmina Komacza 2005a; GUS 2008). One factor that has significantly contributed to the relatively low unemployment rate in the Komacza district is the massive emigration of villagers abroad. Interestingly, it is not just the young generations, but also the older generations who travel and stay abroad for long periods of time. But then again, not all families have been in the position, or have been successful, in establishing connections and find jobs outside of Poland. The villagers with steady jobs, and/or regular cash flows from abroad, and those villagers who possess their own houses and land, have been able to maintain a standard of living that is markedly different from those who are cut off from such income sources and landed properties. The local divergence in wealth is reflected in the wide range of housing conditions in the villages. From well-kept farm houses to dilapidated wooden shacks without running water and electricity; from handsome little palaces with a garden to tiny apartments without balcony—it is all there and poor families live within steps away from their richer neighbors.

The strength of diversity 117

Buildings of an abandoned State Farm (PGR). Lipowiec, May 2005

Political diversity

With the collapse of the Polish Communist Party in 1989 Poland ceased to be a single- party state. During the 1990s political differentiation at the community level became manifest in two ways. Firstly, by the explosive growth of political groups seeking election, and, secondly, by the wide distribution of votes. During the parliamentary elections in 1997 local residents could bring out their vote for a multitude of political parties covering the whole political spectrum—from far left to far right. Of the ten political parties that sought election in 1997, each party received more than 2 percent of the votes; three parties won more than 10 percent. The municipal elections of 1998 showed a similar pattern with no fewer than 16 local lists to choose from (several of them multiethnic). The active participation of local inhabitants in the new democratic state structure does not necessarily point at increased political equality. Power remains in the hands of those with privileged access to social and public institutions and services. However, after 1989, local power holders, instead of depending on a central government or Party organ, increasingly depend on private, non-governmental sponsors and supporters. It is through the mediation of a number of large NGO’s that sponsors and commissioners have been attracted to finance 118 Struggling for peace and guide a large number of development programs in the district.4 During the late 1990s church organizations and religious charitable foundations have similarly tried to gain ground in the Komacza district, but they have been much less successful than the secular NGO’s. The success of the latter can be explained by the fact that, unlike their religious counterparts, the NGO’s have been able to draw on EU and UN sources and funds. Presently, the Komacza district is part of an extensive, non-local administrative and political network.

Cultural and religious heterogeneity

The large number of cultural events and religious sites in the area point at the region’s rich cultural history, but even more so, it points at the staging and exploitation of cultural difference by its local residents. A leaflet advertising the Komacza district with the intriguing title “Exotics at the border” reads: “Today one of the major exotic attractions unknown in is the culture of the Lemko people” (Bartosik 2005: XII). The notion of the region’s cultural and religious distinctiveness is one that is carefully promoted and cultivated by many: by the local religious leaders, who throughout the year organize church fairs and cultural events in their parishes; by the local lay authorities, who sponsor and organize yearly cultural meetings within the district; and last but not least, by local cultural entrepreneurs, who expose their cultural distinctiveness by setting up private museums and galleries and by participating in folk fairs and workshops. The exposure of the region’s cultural and religious distinctiveness attracts a growing number of cultural tourists and has inspired one of Poland’s finest folk music groups to contribute to the preservation and furtherance of cultural traditions in the region (Mkarska 2006c).5 In 2004 a major Polish television station featured the Komacza district in a program that explores the cultural, natural and historical richness of Poland (Dzikowska 2004). But besides being a commodity that is sold to a non-local audience, local forms of cultural and religious distinctiveness forms the basis of ethnic identification among village residents. Local ethnic identities are based on a shared awareness of cultural belonging. This awareness is signified by a number of outward expressions, such as church affiliation and the language spoken at home. Informants based their ideas of “who is what” on their personal knowledge of family networks and histories. It is on the basis of this knowledge that informants distinguish between “Polish” and “Ukrainian” fellow villagers, the latter

4 Most notably these are the Foundation of Partner Groups for a Green Bieszczady (Fundusz Grupy Partnerskiej Zielone Bieszczady) and the Foundation of the Bieszczady Partnership for the Environment (Fundacja Bieszczadzka „Partnerstwo dla rodowiska”), both members of Carpathian EcoRegion Initiative. 5 The “Orchestra dedicated to St. Nicholas” (Orkiestra pod wezwaniem witego Mikoaja).

The strength of diversity 119 sometimes also referred to as “Lemko”. Using this emic distinction—Poles versus Ukrainians (including Lemkos)—I made the following calculation in my 1997 census of the Komacza village: of the 258 families living in Komacza (village proper) 32 percent had an exclusively Polish background, 38 percent had an exclusively Ukrainian/Lemko background, and 23 percent had a mixed Polish and Ukrainian/Lemko background (7 percent unknown). All Polish families spoke exclusively Polish at home, whereas most Ukrainian families spoke a derivative of Ukrainian at home. The dominant language spoken by mixed families was Polish. Most Polish families were affiliated to the Roman Catholic church, whereas most Ukrainian families were affiliated either to the Greek Catholic or Orthodox churches (cf. chapter 5, Hann 2005). Members of mixed families generally frequented services in the Roman Catholic church, but in some cases family members would frequent both Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic or Orthodox services. These figures show that ethnic and religious diversity is considerable in Komacza. Looking at the pattern of ethnic diversity for the whole district, the 2002 census carried out by Poland’s Central Bureau for Statistics (GUS) reveals a different picture (GUS 2002). Of the 5143 residents living in the Komacza district 89 percent declared themselves Poles, 10 percent identified themselves as Ukrainians, while the remaining one percent identified themselves as Lemkos. In other words, while there is a more or less equal distribution of ethnic Poles and ethnic Ukrainians in Komacza (village proper), ethnic Poles predominate in the Komacza district. This is a direct outcome of the resettlement policies carried out by the Polish state in the first two decades following the Second World War, when most ethnic Ukrainians had been deported from their native villages, and when ethnic Poles had been encouraged to settle in the villages that had been left by Ukrainians. The demographic upheaval resulted in unique patterns of settlement for each single village in the area (chapter 4, Biernacka 1974). On the whole, it gave rise to at least two important demographic features. First, the majority of people that inhabit the Komacza district today have settled in the area relatively recently. Second, the inhabitants have very diverse geographical and social backgrounds. Both features affect local relationships not just between but also within the ethnic communities, an issue that is discussed in greater detail in the second part.

The Komacza case: a cross-cutting system of alliance

In trying to assess the significance and implications of the main dividing lines for local relationships a number of observations can be made. A first observation would be that there is no one-to-one relationship between, on the one hand, ethnic identity and, on the other hand, the various memberships and roles a person may assume. In other words, wealth, social status, political affiliation, and profession are not correlated with a person’s 120 Struggling for peace ethnic or religious identity. There are poor and well-to-do households among Poles as well as Ukrainians, however, most Polish and Ukrainian households earn just enough to make ends meet. Poles and Ukrainians occupy local government positions and are similarly employed in local administration and the state forestry. Election results do not reveal the ethnic or religious identities of the voters, but the local election lists show that Poles and Ukrainians can be found in all political parties. Polish as well as Ukrainian youth attend the local primary and high school. Interestingly, the dropout rate among Polish school kids is higher then among Ukrainian school kids. This may be explained by the fact that Poles outnumber Ukrainians in terms of population size and may also be related to poverty: the bankruptcy of the State Farms has primarily affected Polish families, many of whom live in the villages that depended on employment in the former State Farms. A second observation is that, even though membership to a particular ethnic or religious group to a large extent defines a person’s identity, it does not restrict a person’s radius of action. Finally, it may be noted that the non-exclusivity of social categories allows villagers to establish a wide range of relationships across the ethnic boundary. An example of relationships that cut across ethnic and religious group boundaries are family relations. Almost one quarter of all families living in the village in 1997 had a mixed Polish-Ukrainian background: 60 out of 258 families. The members of another 25 families were affiliated with at least two different church communities. The book of baptism, kept by the Roman Catholic parish priest, gives a revealing picture of the extent to which relationships cut across religious and, consequently, ethnic boundaries during the 1980s and 1990s.6 Of the 89 baptism ceremonies that took place between 1980 and 1996 in Komacza, half of the parental couples were affiliated with two different church communities. For the godparental couples this was as much as two-third. In Komacza today the meaning of baptism is less a religious fulfillment and more a function of the preservation of existing social ties. The primary duty of the godparent, therefore, is to witness and celebrate the most important stages in the life of his or her godchild, such as first communion, graduation from primary and secondary school, marriage, and childbirth. The above relationships are examples of what Granovetter (1973: 1361) defines as “strong ties”; i.e., ties that involve a great amount of time, emotional intensity, intimacy and reciprocal services. As we have seen from the above examples, in a situation of cross- cutting social circles, “strong ties” may have the power to transcend existing social boundaries. This is different for “weak ties”, due to the intrinsic superficial quality of a contact that is established through such ties. Weak ties may not have the power to cut- across existing social boundaries, they do, however, establish a link between individuals

6 Ksiga Ochrzczonych Rzymskokatolickiej Parafii, Archiwum Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Komaczy.

The strength of diversity 121 on either side of the boundary. Such links, based on occasional contacts, can be observed widely in Komacza, where people with different backgrounds meet in the streets, at work, while shopping, in school, and at public meetings. That local networks, as a rule, have a wide geographical reach is illustrated by the background of the pupils of groups 7 and 8 from the secondary school in Komacza. In April 1997 half of these pupils lived outside of Komacza (village proper). What is more, over three quarters of the pupils could trace their family background outside of the Komacza district. Both figures have two important implications for the range of ties in which a single individual—in this particular case, a secondary school pupil—is enmeshed. Firstly, the networks of which the pupils are part always transcend the boundary of the village in which they live. What is more, the networks often transcend the boundary of the district and the province. Considering the large number of local residents who live abroad as emigrants, the networks frequently also transcend the country borders. Secondly, even though the pupils are part of entirely different social circles, the pupils themselves form a bridging link between these separate social clusters. In other words, in addition to being part of densely-knit networks (strong ties) with a wide geographical reach, the pupils are part of low-density networks (weak ties) linking these geographically dispersed clusters of strong ties.

Part 2. A short history of conflict: from Polish-Ukrainian civil war to coexistence

The armed Polish-Ukrainian conflict in Komacza

Following the retreat of Nazi Germany from southeast Poland in 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA), waging an armed struggle for an independent, non-communist Ukraine, and the Polish People’s Army, trying to enforce law and order in a region largely controlled by UPA soldiers, engaged in a war for control of Southeast Poland (chapter 2). “Somehow all villagers were involved in the UPA”, explained the Ukrainian informant Mrs. D. during a ceremony in Komacza in 1997 commemorating the violent death of five local UPA soldiers in 1947. “The UPA soldiers were armed,” Mrs. D. further clarified, “so we gave them food and offered them shelter. We had to, if we wanted to live.” The close proximity of the villagers to local units of the UPA is also stressed by Mr. K., who, at another occasion, explained that soldiers of the Polish army were stationed at the lower end of the village, while Ukrainian partisans had their stronghold at the upper end of the village. “During cease fire, both parties would meet at village gatherings to spend leisure time together. They would play [cards] and drink a few glasses.” It is common knowledge that the “Chrin” unit of the UPA, besides being omnipresent in the village and its surroundings, drew its recruits from the village

122 Struggling for peace population. Informants made no secret of the fact that quite a few villagers who had been active in the UPA left for the Ukraine, Slovakia and North America to escape persecution in Poland during the late 1940s. Mr. B., one of the organizers of the commemoration in 1997, publicly stated on the occasion that the five killed UPA soldiers “died as heroes for an independent Ukraine.” With the UPA depending for its strategic success on the overall support of the local population, and with the Polish Army trying to destroy the local hideouts of the Ukrainian partisans, acts of intimidation, violence, and repression from both sides, were directed as much to the civilian population as they were directed toward each other. Informants still recall the burning of villages, bridges and train tracks by Ukrainian partisan soldiers. An event that informants repeatedly related is the attack on , a village some 20 km away from Komacza, by soldiers of the 34th squad of the Polish Army. During the attack, which was conducted in several waves, an estimated 70 men, women and children, Poles as well as Ukrainians, were killed and most of the village was burned (Smoleski 1998; Misio 1999; Motyka 1999). On 7 April 1946 the same army squad provoked, harassed and finally murdered the Greek Catholic parish priest as well as his oldest son in the yard of their house in Komacza (Misio 1999). Later that day, the army squad took hostage a handful of local male inhabitants from Komacza. The accompanying soldiers harassed the men as they were marched out of the village. The group, growing bigger with still more detainees from other villages, was marched to the nearest district town Sanok (37 km) where they were imprisoned as UPA suspects. One event stands out for its massive impact on the lives of virtually all village residents. On 28 April special forces of the Polish Army, operating under the codename Operational Groups “Vistula” (GO Akcja “Wisa”), proceeded to marshal and deport nearly all non-Polish families living in the Komacza and adjacent districts. Military records reveal that between 28 April and 7 May 1947 from Komacza itself 353 people were deported, while 97 Poles and 171 Ukrainians remained behind (Misio 1993: 418). There were in total nineteen villages in the Lesko and Sanok administrative districts (powiaty) where 15 or more Ukrainian individuals escaped deportation.7 Informants gave a variety of reasons to explain why certain Ukrainian families in Komacza could escape deportation: some were dispensed because they worked at the railway (and thus were indispensable as they had to keep the transports going), some were talked out by their relatives, some were exempted through their connections with local administration.

7 The largest of these were: Komacza (171), Brelików (111), Jankowce (65), Liszna (56), Ropienka Dolna (255), Stakowa (159), Wokowyja (75), Mokre (109 persons), Olchowce (95), and Zagórz (318) (Misio 1993: 410-2, 417-9).

The strength of diversity 123

“Peace to the memory of the victims of the totalitarian system. The village Zawadka Morochosowska: 73 inhabitants were murdered here on 25 January, 28 March, and 14 April 1946.” Zawadka Morochowska, December 2007

The railway station in Komacza served as an embarkation point during the operation. Other embarkation points near Komacza were Szczawne-Kulaszne (13 km east of Komacza) and upków (13 km south). Military records registered 2,026 men, women and children who between 29 April and 7 May 1947 passed through the Komacza embarkation point (Misio 1993: 427-9). In that same period, a total of 47,562 persons and 24,126 animals (horses, cattle and sheep) were transported out of the wider Sanok region (Misio 1993: 427). As a consequence, and as a result of the war and earlier ‘voluntary’ repatriations, 90 percent of the villages in the Komacza rural district were left without inhabitants (Misio 1993: 410-2, 417-9). The degree of depopulation in the Komacza area relative to the 1921 population is illustrated in Table 4.2. This table shows the changes in population for the villages that are located within the geographical boundaries of today’s Komacza rural district. The 1950 population comprised only 7 percent of the prewar total and even as late as 1988 the population was only a third of the prewar total. Map 7.1 shows that many of the villages within the boundaries of the Komacza rural district were never repopulated after the 1940s. The villagers were warned only a few hours in advance. Trapped in a village that was locked down, the villagers had no choice but to obey the soldiers who escorted them to the

124 Struggling for peace

Map 7.1 Repopulated, relocated, and destroyed villages in the current Komacza rural district

Sources: (GUS, 1924). T; Przeliczenia NSP 1950, 1960, 1970, 1978, 1988 na stan w dniu 6.12.1988r, Tablica 1. Wyd. GUS; Archiwum Pastwowe oddzia w Sanoku: Miesiczne sprawozdania opisowe z akcji przesiedle i osadnictwa r. 1947-9, zespoy 21 & 22. railway station. This was the time when the first selection took place and when some villagers were send home. When orders were given the villagers were loaded into freight trains and sent off to unknown destinations. The journey, taking on average two weeks, was stopped only once, at the railway station in Owicim. Although officially a sanitary and food supply stop, this stop was used by officials of the Security Forces (UB) to double check the identity of the passengers and to arrest and detain UPA suspects in Jaworzno, a

The strength of diversity 125 former Nazi auxiliary concentration camp. It was also during this stop that officials of the State Directorate for Repatriation (PUR) determined the final destination of the passengers (Misio 1993: 127). Each single transport was split into nuclear family groups and sent into different directions, this being an effective way of cutting extended family and village ties. Taking the armed conflict at face value, one might get the impression of a struggle between two coherent, inimical groups. Indeed, the dichotomy of the population into two opposed parties—the Ukrainians and the Poles—is considered an uncontested fact by both Polish and Ukrainian informants. “There were times when things were quiet” Mr. S. explained, “but when the two world wars broke out, it went from bad to worse. Suddenly, there was hatred between the nationalities.” The circumstances that had contributed to the unpredicted upsurge of hatred between Poles and Ukrainians during the 1940s, according to Mr. S., were the divide and rule policy of the Germans, the power vacuum following the capitulation of Nazi Germany, and the nationalist agitation of various militant groups. Interestingly, Mr. S. draws a parallel with the armed Polish-Ukrainian conflict that took place a few decades earlier. In November 1918, following the collapse of the Austrian- Hungarian Empire, a Greek Catholic parish priest from the neighboring village Wisok instigated a political movement by announcing political affiliation with the newly erected West Ukrainian National Republic. Some thirty villages joined the movement, of which Komacza became the main organizational centre. The so-called Komacza Republic was short lived—founded in November 1918 it succumbed to Polish forces on 23 January 1919 (cf. Hann 1985; Michna 1995b; Motyka 1999). Both armed conflicts show striking similarities. They started in a period when there was no identifiable central leadership, they involved all village residents, and they placed the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian residents in a pro-Ukrainian camp. While pro- Ukrainian sympathies were not uncommon among local Ukrainians, their political views were hardly decisive for their role in the conflict. During the second decade of the twentieth century, as in the 1940s, it was the political and military leadership of the Polish and Ukrainian warring parties that turned the population into two opposed parties. This ideologically and military-enforced political dichotomy had far reaching social consequences. Firstly, the villagers faced a situation where the demand to choose sides was particularly urgent; any choice made by them was irrevocable and determined their future fate. Secondly, even those who despite political agitation had refrained from choosing sides were pushed into the arms of one party or the other, as their purported political sympathies were simply inferred on them by either party. While the division of the population into two opposed parties was, first of all, an effective strategy to distinguish between allies and enemies, on the long run it became a social reality as well thanks to its powerful self-fulfilling force. What is more, it strengthened the firm ethnic dividing line in the village and engendered a profound sense of victimhood among, especially Ukrainian 126 Struggling for peace village residents, who time and again found themselves trapped in a no-win (and lose-all) situation.

From fraternity to dissension: Ukrainian discord in Komacza

The state re-established its monopoly of violence by particularly violent means: by pacifying Ukrainian insurgents and expelling Ukrainian civilians from their native villages and towns. But whereas the use of state violence eventually put an end to the systematic use of violence by non-state parties, at the short term it exacerbated tensions between Poles and Ukrainians, as the state actions coincided with relentless anti-Ukrainian propaganda. Flares of the wartime ethnic divide can still be observed in Komacza today, albeit in a somewhat watered-down form. The common usage of the terms “Ukrainian” and “Pole” to distinguish between fellow villagers is one example. Expressions like “he is worse than a Pole” (on gorsze jak polak) or “she is a haughty Ukrainian” (ona wielka ukrainka) have their origin in this period. Most significantly, the war trauma still exists in many people. Victims of repression and expulsion still carry their painful memories, which they pass on to the next generations. The informant Mr. S. who witnessed the murder of the Greek Catholic parish priest as a ten year old boy comments on the event: “Little as I was, it really upset me, it made such a tremendous impression. This brutal murder made me realize that we [Ukrainians] are a humiliated and suppressed people.” Each time Mrs. P. relates the story of her father being beaten with rifles while Polish soldiers screamed at him “You can put your Ukraine up your ass!” she gets very agitated. Her father was forced to walk the punitive march to Sanok, was jailed for two years, and came out physically broken. Born in the 1950s Mrs. P. was no eyewitness to the event, but the trauma of her father strengthened her awareness of her own Ukrainian identity. The experience of civil war, repression and expulsion not just widened the gap between Poles and Ukrainians, but also divided the Ukrainian community. The first transports of “volunteers” that left the village to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the spring of 1945 split the village community into two groups: those who left the village “voluntarily” (mostly poor families) and those who did not. What is more, the departure of a number of families to the Ukraine, as well as the subsequent return of some of them trying to escape extreme poverty in the Ukrainian villages of exile, gave rise to a political regrouping at the village level: besides those who professed that the village was already located on Ukrainian territory (and that, therefore, there was no reason to remove its population to the Ukraine), there were those who claimed that the village inhabitants were of mixed Polish and Lemko descent (who, therefore, did not have the slightest aspiration to live on The strength of diversity 127

Ukrainian territory).8 Operation Vistula affected most of the village as it implied the forced deportation of virtually all village residents in April and May 1947. But Operation Vistula gave rise to new dividing lines in the village as well. After April 1947, there were (1) those who were deported to the north-western territories of Poland, (2) those who were exempted from deportation (a small minority), (3) those who in later years returned from exile and are native to the village, (4) those who in later years returned from exile but are not native to the village, and finally, (5) those who never returned from exile but have maintained contact with their family grounds through family ties. All in all, the armed conflict produced a loosely-knit network of relationships between people that only share a common birthground (rodowita ziemia), but otherwise form a heterogeneous group of people. Neither these so-called “natives” (rdzenni, miejscowi), nor the so-called “new arrivals” (przybyszy) who arrived in the village during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, form a homogenous group. The new settlers, filling the empty space left by the deportees, originate from different parts of the country and have different social backgrounds as well. A crucial outcome of the wartime conflict is that in the village today relationships between “natives” and “new arrivals” are considered far less problematic than relationships among “natives”. The extremely difficult and violent conditions during the 1940s, including the daily occurrence of lawlessness and abuses, gave rise to feelings of distrust and fear among the village residents. These feelings intervened in all types of relationships, even affecting friendships and family relations. “No one trusted no one,” explains Mrs. D., “everyone tried to fend for himself through bribery, deception and betrayal.” Looking at the wartime events from a local perspective, the ethnic cleavage becomes much less urgent. One version of the murder of the Greek Catholic parish priest holds that it was not his UPA militancy that had killed him, but the love affair of his wife with a Polish army officer. “People say she betrayed him,” told Mr. S. “In any case, his wife left him a few days before the assault, taking her daughter with her.” Mrs. P. claims that she knows “damn well” who had incriminated her father. Not wanting to give any names, she suggests that one of his (Ukrainian) neighbors gave him up. “Yes ma’m, we had such good neighbors!” (cf. Bringa 1995; Brown 2004; Kalyvas 2006). The fact that former enemies in the conflict included not just “them Poles” but also, and especially, one’s own kin (sami swoi) raised bad blood among many. Listing the families that were exempted from deportation, Mr. B. suggested that he was providing a list of “traitors”. In his view, those who stayed in the village through the war years had been able to stay at the cost of others. Even though not all remaining villagers may have

8 In February 1946 the latter group organized itself politically and filed two petitions (sent to His Highest Authority the Marshall of Poland) protesting against the military pressure put on the villagers to leave for the Ukraine (Misio 1999: 45-49).

128 Struggling for peace engaged in acts of betrayal, the very fact that they had been able to elude the fate that befell most other village residents, according to Mr. B., was proof of their disloyalty. So were their subsequent attempts to obstruct the return of their fellow villagers. Accusations like the ones made by Mr. B. induce people like Mr. W. to emphasize that “there is one thing we should never forget: it was them [Poles] who precipitated local antagonism. They divided and ruled us. And they still do.” Mr. W’s conclusion is true to a degree. While it is doubtful that “them Poles” have ever been able to direct and control every single local intrigue, the armed conflict unmistakably led to a number of new divides that is splitting up the village to this day. Ironically, the decline of antagonism between Poles and Ukrainians coincided with an increase of in-group rivalry among so-called „native” villagers. As a matter of fact, the village disputes that took place after 1947 and that went beyond the level of individual clashes typically involved “native” villagers. An example is the schism of the Ukrainian community in 1961 that divided the Ukrainian community into two opposed groups: Greek Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians (chapter 5). Another example is the building and inauguration of the Greek Catholic parish church in Komacza in the 1980s, which gave rise to a conflict that involved outside (Orthodox) opponents to the new parish church (chapter 5). Examples from the present confirm the persistence of inner cleavages. Efforts to establish a “Lemko museum” by the Greek Catholic parish priest in 1998 were stifled by disputes about the museum collection and issues of housing and access. By 2005 the museum initiative had been abandoned; the extensive collection of artifacts is stored in the cellars of the Greek Catholic parish church ever since. A Lemko folk dance and song group in Komacza was established in 1989 but discontinued in 1992, due to a conflict about leadership. It took the villagers years to form a new folk group. A parent visiting one of the founding meetings in 1997 told the researcher: “Here we go again; another fruitless attempt to make it work out together, holding hands in harmony.” Between 1999 and 2002 the Lemko folk song group “Kapela Zberana” from Komacza made successful performances all over Poland. A little later the Lemko folk dance and song group “Kariczka” appeared on stage. While the “Kapela Zberana” is no longer performing, supposedly due to a lack of new members, the folk group “Kariczka” still performs on a regular basis. The conflicting views on heritage conservation and heritage promotion reflect the cleavages within the Ukrainian community. These contrasting views, in turn, directly relate to and are grounded in the divergent biographies of the villagers, that is, in their divergent wartime experiences, migration and family histories. The strength of diversity 129

From violent to peaceful relations: Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in Komacza

The cases brought to the government initiated and village-based Reconciliation Committee (Spoeczna Komisja Pojednawcza) witness the weakened importance of ethnic identification in village disputes since the 1970s.9 Of the 55 cases brought to Reconciliation Committees in Komacza in the period between November 1976 and June 1984, 13 cases concerned disputes between Poles and Ukrainians. Most of these cases involved ordinary village disputes among neighbors: field damage; contested landownership; contested access to gates, roads or water wells; disturbance of peace through drunkenness. The ethnic identity of the opponents was at stake in exactly three of these cases. Mrs. and Mr. C. from Szczawne, for example, filed a complaint against their Polish neighbors, whom they accused of having physically attacked them and having insulted them by calling them ethnic names (“bugger off, you Ukrainian whore”) (SKP 1977). Mrs. M. from Dugopole charged her neighbor for having willfully killed a chicken from her flock and for having called her a “Ukrainian whore”, “Ukrainian bitch”, and “old Ukrainian fogy” (SKP 1979). Mrs. P. from Wisok Górne accused her neighbor of threatening her daughter while she was pasturing the cows on a field that her neighbor claimed to be his by telling her daughter to “clear out, just like your Ukrainian father, who belongs at the other side of the Bug [river]” (SKP 1983b). The Reconciliation Committee was successful in reconciling the parties in just one case—the Dugopole case. The fact that the committee was unsuccessful in its attempt to arbitrate in the other two cases cannot be attributed to its lack of concern or will power. In theory, the parties to a dispute would bring their case to the board of the reconciliation committee, whose members would act as “arbitrators” and by whose decision they would eventually agree to be bound. In practice, however, the de facto power of such a decision, being not a judicial verdict (wyrok) but a formalized mutual agreement (ugoda), was only limited. Of the 55 reported cases brought to Reconciliation Committees in Komacza between November 1976 and June 1984, arbitration had been successful in slightly more than half of the cases (29); in seven cases the charges were dropped as one party did not show up at the reconciliation meetings; in one case the charges were dropped by the accuser; in seven cases the parties would not give in and thus did not reach an agreement; five cases were eventually redirected to other state institutions; and six cases had no outcome.

9 The Reconciliation Committees began to function in the early 1970s and were abolished in 1989. Their main purpose was to make the service of arbitration more easily available to all Polish citizens, even to those citizens in the remote villages, and to circumvent the relative expensive court administration in small civil cases.

130 Struggling for peace

With a board consisting of two or three Ukrainian members out of a total of three, the Reconciliation Committee did not tolerate public scolding, let alone ethnic insults. Time and again the Committee stood up to defend the “principles of social coexistence” (zasady wspóycia spoecznego) and “good neighborly relations” (stosunki dobrossiedzkie). The members of the Committee, whose assignment was to condemn bad and reward good civil behavior, based their position on two key issues: first, the level to which the conflict harmed public interests, and second, the social status—in terms of work discipline, moral standards, and rank among neighbors—of the parties involved. Next to social status, a similar weight was attributed to the characters of the individuals involved in the conflict. Typologies of (mostly female) individuals described in the reports range from querulants (kwerulant), to brawler or quarrelsome persons (osoba konfliktowa), to provocative or aggressive persons (osoba zaczepna) (SKP 1983a). As is clear from the cases dealt with by the Reconciliation Committee during the 1970s and 1980s conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians in the Komacza district were rare. Also, the few recorded incidents of Polish- Ukrainian conflict did not escalate into a communal conflict, that is, into a conflict between the two ethnic communities. Two conflicts witnessed by the researcher in 1997 and 1998 confirm the above pattern. Neither of these conflicts transcended the village level or produced a single ethnic following. Both conflicts involved individuals who were related to each other as neighbors. Not less important, the conflicts were initiated by individuals with a quarrelsome reputation. One informant recounted an incident where she was in a car with three former colleagues, all of whom had recently lost their job because the agency where they had worked had been closed down. One of them, a Polish lady, Mrs. B. had set her mind on a job that was already taken by a fellow villager: Mrs. S., a young Ukrainian lady. It was when they passed Mrs. S. that Mrs. B. exclaimed: “Look at her, this Ukrainian whore. She has her connections, but I’ll show her who the stronger party is.” The informant recalled: “She used these ugly words just out of the blue. We sat there, three Ukrainian women, left with our mouths wide open. And we didn’t know what to say. I bet she didn’t even realize that she was speaking to us, three of her Ukrainian colleagues!” Rumor had it that it was not just Mrs. B. who had it in for Mrs. S., but that their former boss, Mrs. T. had involved Mrs. B. in her plot against all (mostly female) Ukrainian workers. The plot, however, did not bring Mrs. B. the intended results. As evidenced by comments of other villagers in the presence of the researcher, her actions, instead of getting her a job, antagonized her former colleagues and made her much disliked by them and their families and friends. The dispute between the Polish Mrs. M., and the district had developed into an impasse that by spring 1998 already lasted for two years. The district had wanted to pave the road passing Mrs. M.’s house with asphalt. However, Mrs. M. refused to give free passage,

The strength of diversity 131 claiming that the road was hers. The dispute gave rise to a road blockade, a hand-to-hand fight between Mrs. M.’s son and a (Polish) community official, a series of accusations from the side of Mrs. M. about “Ukrainian attempts” to chase her off her ground, and, finally, to an intervention of police and court in the conflict. While at first sight the conflict seemed to be between Mrs. M. and, quoting Mrs. M., the “white-collar Ukrainian conspiracy”, the conflict really was between Mrs. M. and Mrs. Z., her Polish neighbor next door and elected mayor (wójt) of Komacza. Years before, Mrs. M., her small group of friends, and Mrs. Z. had been involved in a conflict. In this conflict an overwhelming majority of village residents had shown their support for Mrs. Z., resulting in her victory when she ran for the position of village mayor during the elections of 1994. Since then, Mrs. M. and her friends keep on thwarting Mrs. Z. in every possible way. Judging from the comments of the informants, their actions are loathed by a majority of villagers. This and the above case show that in the village today ethnic provocation may still be used as a means to mobilize political support, but that it is done so by socially “marginal” individuals, and that it is met with contempt rather than approval from the side of most village residents. One domain that lends itself for in-depth research into the impact of increased interaction between members of both ethnic communities, as well as into the firmness and persistence of the ethnic cleavage is the domain of marriage and love. “Back then [in the 1960s] Poles were not allowed to settle in the village, unless they had an acquaintance,” explains Mrs. K. “And there were plenty of poor Ukrainian girls around. Their Polish lovers did not demand any properties, because they were poor themselves. They just wanted a place to stay.” She was in her late teens when Mrs. K., born in a Ukrainian family in Komacza, dated a Polish army conscript who was stationed in her village. Her parents did not approve of her Polish boyfriend and were glad to see the young soldier leave for his home. A little later Mrs. K. met a nice Ukrainian man from a neighboring village. Her parents insisted that she marry him, which she did. Mrs. K. was fine with her decision until her former Polish boyfriend came to visit her. It turned out that he had been writing letters to her, which her mother had hidden from her. Mrs. K. felt betrayed and was furious with her parents. Despite her anger back then, she herself insists that her two teenage daughters marry Ukrainian men. She has seen many mixed couples end up in life- long struggles. “My father’s sister married a Pole and they get on very well. But at what cost? She broke entirely with her background—her religion, her family.” A second aunt married a Pole too, but she kept to her own traditions. “She is scolded by her husband for that. If there is something not to his liking he calls her ugly names, like ‘Ukrainian bitch’. She came to visit us just recently and she warned my daughters: ‘Don’t you ever get involved with them [Poles]. They pretend to be tender and then they show their real faces. You better stay spinsters your whole life!’” 132 Struggling for peace

Stories like her aunt’s leads Mrs. K. to conclude that “there is no taste of honey in mixed marriages. And there is no respect. I would not want my daughters to live through such misery and pain.” Mrs. S., born in a Ukrainian family in Komacza, has had her deal of agony in her marriage with Byszek S., a Pole from a neighboring village. But it was not her husband who rejected her, but her family in-law, even though she was prepared to give up her religion. “They told all this nonsense like I was some kind of different species, like I wasn’t a human being just like them!” When Byszek S. nevertheless decided to marry his Ukrainian girl, he was threatened by his brothers and shown the door by his parents. “My mother begged his parents to be present during the wedding, but they wouldn’t. And the Roman Catholic priest and the convent’s oldest sister tried their best to make a beautiful wedding for us, young bride and groom, as to compensate for our embarrassment.” After years some sort of rapprochement took place, but the past still intrudes on family relations. Her experience has strengthened Mrs. S. in her belief that she should raise her own children in freedom. “I couldn’t care less with whom they relate or become friends with. Even if they bring home a negro (murzyn), it’s fine with me. I prefer to trust my children; I prefer to think that they will make a sensible choice. My only wish is that they be happy.” In any marriage, partners will have to find a balance regarding their loyalty towards each other, towards their own family, and towards their in-laws. The fact that partners in a mixed marriage not only bid for access to a new family but also to a new social group, makes the loyalty issue even more urgent. It involves choices—regarding the wedding ceremony, religious affiliation, the upbringing of children, the burial ceremony and place—that otherwise would not have to be made. Generations have dealt with this loyalty problem, as intermarriage among Poles and Ukrainians was common also in the prewar era. A strict but simple protocol helped prewar generations to solve this loyalty problem: partners to a marriage would continue to go to the church where they had been baptized; girls born in the family would follow their mother’s religion, boys would follow the religion of their father. Postwar generations no longer hold on to such protocol: they live as they choose. Today most partners in a mixed marriage choose to convert to Roman Catholicism. This points at the weak political position of the Ukrainian minority in the region. But even the strategy of conversion does not solve the loyalty problem entirely; it presents itself in each new stage of life, as it did in the life of Mrs. L. This elderly Ukrainian lady confessed in the presence of the researcher and her Polish husband: “I don’t care what people think of me. I even don’t mind the opinion of my husband. But I shall be buried in the cemetery where my parents lie buried. That is the place where I belong.” If worse comes to worst, blood relations and bonds of common ancestry are stronger than other relationships and bonds. The primacy of common ancestry leads to inevitable conflicts where individuals leave their family and group when they intermarry. The strength of diversity 133

As evidenced by the stories of the informants, fear of ‘disloyalty’ does give rise to pre- emptive intolerant behavior in mixed marriages. While this intolerance most certainly affects relationships between the partners in a marriage, it hardly affects relationships between Poles and Ukrainians in the larger society. It does signify, however, that despite increased rapprochement, a degree of caution remains between the two ethnic communities.

Pacification at work: the strength of diversity

Peaceful coexistence is never self-evident; certainly not in an area that has suffered from war and excessive violence. The trauma of the Second World War and the ensuing civil war is still tangible in the Komacza district today—through the stereotypes that are still applied to members of both Polish and Ukrainian communities, and through the pejorative language which members of both ethnic groups sometimes use to address one another. Signs of a firm ethnic boundary are also tangible through the pivotal role of blood relationships and territory of birth for group membership. During the second half of the 1990s the Greek Catholic clergy facilitated the re-inauguration of numerous cemeteries, chapels and churches in the old, destroyed and formerly Ukrainian villages. This trend coincided with the wish of local village residents to establish a permanent link—both spiritually and physically—with their territory of birth. Not just village residents, but also former residents of the villages from around the world attended the ceremonies, placed crosses, and had their bodies buried in the newly re-inaugurated cemeteries. Finally, signs of a firm ethnic cleavage are palpable through the resentments that still infest the lives of the older generations. “If we had guns available,” said Mr. W., “this place would be hell on earth”. The remark by Mr. W. suggests that the grass in the village is dry to the degree that any violent action could theoretically spark fire and spell disaster for its residents. However, in practice such fire has not occurred in the village since the summer of 1947. Given the scenario Mr. W. presents, the question remains, why? Why did violent confrontations not occur, despite tensions and conflicts? An answer to this question, as suggested at the outset of this chapter, involves an inquiry into the transformation of local social relations, which includes both processes at the macro and micro level. The re-establishment of the state monopoly of violence in the immediate post-war years did pacify local relationships. The military destruction of the UPA, the deportation and expulsion of the Ukrainian civilian population from the area, and the subsequent repopulation of the area with ethnic Poles during the 1950s and 1960s, not only contributed to a complete disarmament of the local civilian population, they also produced a significant shift in the distribution of population groups (chapters 3 and 6). Ukrainians no longer formed a majority population regionally. What is more, the state interventions had 134 Struggling for peace

A fresh grave in the cemetery of a destroyed and abandoned village. Jawornik, May 2005

resulted in the irreversible destruction of local systems of social cohesion. Social networks at the village level had been destroyed down to the bottom: families had been broken and village communities dispersed. New settlers that eventually came to live in the villages did not mix, as they had neither been selected for their economic skills nor for their social background (chapter 4). The new society that evolved from the turbulence of the 1940s was characterized by the prevalence of inner cleavages and tensions. The divergent social backgrounds, migration histories, and memories of war and persecution divided this society to such a degree, that members of each social group (village community, village section, ethnic community, religious community, or family) were no longer willing or able to merge into one single whole. This increased heterogeneity, in turn, significantly contributed to an increased potential of conflicts between individuals. At the same time, it has contributed to a decreased potential of conflicts between groups. State efforts to seek the integration of all citizens, including members of ethnic minorities, into a thriving socialist economy had a long term de-escalating effect as well. The growth of the socialist sector in the area coincided with an increase of employment and educational opportunities. Next to small-scale subsistence farmers there were peasant- workers employed by the State Farms, the State Forestry, the state owned wood factories, The strength of diversity 135 and the State Cooperatives. Secondary and vocational schools (especially technical and engineering studies) spread rapidly across the country, while literacy and agricultural training courses were organized even in the remotest villages (Biernacka 1974; Hann 1985). In the process, the closed, rural communities in the Komacza district developed into communities of rural citizens for whom upward social mobility and participation in the national economy gained increased significance. One major consequence of the integration of the village communities into modern socialist ways of life was that it prompted the extension of weak ties and the weakening of strong ties in village networks. The expansion of individual networks spurred processes of individualization within the village communities, fostered the establishment of new identities and relationships (weak ties) beyond the traditional bonds of family, ethnic group, and village community (strong ties), and significantly broadened access to non-local sources of information, opinions and ideas. Local cross-cutting social networks have similarly contributed to peaceful modes of interaction between Poles and Ukrainians. Today, village residents are split by a multitude of cleavages, while, at the same time, they are linked by a multitude of social ties that cut across these clefts. These cross-cutting cleavages and ties generate mutual dependencies and conflicting loyalties between village residents, which in turn, impede their mobilization along ethnic or religious lines. In such a setting, conflict-seeking persons find themselves confronted with a recalcitrant practice. Take, for example, the informant who spit his venom over the “traitors”, that is, the Ukrainian village residents, who were exempted from deportation in 1947, and who had hindered his return to his native village. Despite his anger, he kindly greets his neighbor Mrs. S., daughter of a “traitor” couple, every time he meets her in the street. The comment of Mrs. S. on this: “Of course he is greeting me, but this is not because of kindness! I was supervising the unit in the State Farm where he was working with the machinery. And I watched him dismantle a piece of equipment with which he later worked his own fields. Oh yes, he is still afraid that I will denounce him as a thief!” This example points out the restraining effect of cross-cutting. First, resentment is felt not just between members of both ethnic communities, but also and especially, between members within the ethnic communities. Second, even in the case where resentment is felt, mutual dependencies oblige individuals to respect common rules and behave decently toward one another. In Komacza today ethnic antagonism is no longer at the root of the conflicts in which it is invoked. What is more, ethnic conflict does not currently go beyond discourse. Let us take the earlier mentioned Mr. W. who stated that the village site would turn into hell if guns were available. A fellow Ukrainian villager, who had witnessed the conversation, later explained. “He is pitiful. He forgot to tell that he is married to a Polish woman and that he has failed to stand his ground and raise his children in his own, Ukrainian, tradition. 136 Struggling for peace

He has no right to be mad at others, he should be blaming himself” This example highlights the fact that people are tied, hand and foot, to their multi-ethnic social networks. The state enforced deportations of the late 1940s severed the strong ties that for centuries had kept families and ethnic communities together. During the 1950s and 1960s weak ties developed between the residual population and the newcomers, establishing the first bridges across the ethnic cleft. As the situation normalized, intermarriage such as found in the prewar era, gradually re-emerged, establishing a growing number of strong (family) ties between members of the Polish and Ukrainian communities. The large number of ethnically and religiously mixed couples in Komacza (village proper) is not only indicative of the extent of integration between Poles and Ukrainians, it also provides for an increased bond between the two ethnic communities. Cross-cutting relationships, social differentiation and individualization do not just affect relationships among and between the village residents; they have an impact on the relationships between ordinary village residents and local elites as well. There are reasons for the local elites to proceed very carefully when addressing people through their multiple identities. Firstly, attempts of the elites to mobilize village residents for a parochial purpose will bind some but alienate others. For example, attempts by the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic bishops to politicize their sermons at the occasion of the commemoration of Operation Vistula (April 1997), the Pope’s visit to Poland (June 1997), and the parliamentary elections (September 1997) were firmly criticized by many village residents, as evidenced by their comments in the presence of the researcher. Secondly, local elites now face the situation where, due to a general population decrease in the villages, the political mobilization potential of the village population is lower than ever. Take, for example, the decrease of members of the three religious communities. Between 1997 and 2007 this decrease was 18 percent for the Roman Catholic community, 22 percent for the Greek Catholic community, and 30 percent for the Orthodox community. The decrease of members coincided with a decline in church attendance. To give an example, the Greek Catholic parish priest reported that church attendance today is only 25 percent of what it used to be two decades earlier: while in the mid 1980s over 500 parishioners would attend the mass in church on a high holiday, in 2007 the number of parishioners scarcely exceeds 120. “This is a sad development,” the priest confessed. “Without parishioners I have no power whatsoever.” Local prospects and local interests have developed in such a way that for the majority of village residents in the Komacza district a resort to violent means to settle a conflict is no longer a relevant option. The scope and climate of the setting in which village residents and elites operate today may be illustrated by the events immediately following the burning of the oldest church in Komacza. The fire started in the evening of 13 September 2006 and destroyed the whole church building. The official cause of the fire was a short- The strength of diversity 137 circuit in the outdated electrical wiring system (Murawka and Potaczaa 2006). The church, presently used by the small Orthodox community, was built in 1802 and had been put on the UNESCO list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage in 2003. The news of the fire spread rapidly, reaching the overseas diaspora communities within hours. All villagers—resident and non-resident, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, Polish and Ukrainian—grieved over the loss of the Orthodox parish church. The Orthodox Archbishop responded to the event by announcing that an exact copy of the destroyed church was to be rebuilt on the scene of the catastrophe. The Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic parish priests responded by offering the Orthodox parishioners a new temporary home in their respective churches. The local political establishment reacted by calling for financial support for the immediate rebuilding of the church.

Orthodox parish church under construction after the fire of September 2006. Komacza, December 2007

The event met with nation-wide attention and concern as well. It became an item in the national media and in the regional media it was an item for weeks (Boczak 2006; Gorczyca 2006; Kozimor 2006b; Mkarska 2006d). Support came from all over Poland and from a long list of Orthodox and non-Orthodox citizen groups, organizations and institutions.10 Most interestingly, the parties that offered a helping hand have never once

10 See for example Kozimor (2006a) and Mkarska (2006a; 2006b; 2007).

138 Struggling for peace questioned the imminent return of the church building to the small orthodox community. This is especially surprising considering the fact that the acquisition of the church building by the Orthodox community in 1961 had been illicit (chapter 5). What could have easily evolved into a source of conflict, in fact became a source of cooperation, involving all levels and all strata of society. Krzysztof Potaczaa (in: Murawka and Potaczaa 2006: 11), reporter of the daily local newspaper Nowiny, documented this process at the village level. Weeks after the fire he interviewed a number of village residents from Komacza. He quotes Mr. M.: “It was terrible, the view of the burning church. Over a month has passed since the disaster, but nobody has forgotten about the incident. People still mourn the church, regardless of their religion.” Mr. S.: “The people living here respect religious diversity. Greek Catholics, Orthodox and Roman Catholics—they all live in harmony in one village. This church served the Orthodox community, but for us it wasn’t just a house of prayer. It was the symbol of Komacza, a unique historical monument.” Potaczaa finally quotes the motto that was repeated over and over again by the village residents: “We will set our shoulder to the wheel and get down to work. That is our duty towards history and posterity”. It should be stressed that critical voices were not absent in the village. Some village residents would stick to the rumor of arson long after the cause of fire had been established. Others complained of neglect of duty by the fire fighters, whom they held responsible for the destruction of the church building. Still others were disenchanted by the fact that the Orthodox villagers kept relying on the destroyed church building that for centuries had belonged to the Greek Catholic parish and, thus, “isn’t really theirs”. This opinion is voiced by Mrs. M., who in the presence of the researcher asked the rhetorical question: “Isn’t it obvious? This fire must have been the hand of God!” What matters is that these critical voices have never dominated the public discourse about the event. Once they reached the surface they were toned down by pragmatic arguments that evolved from a need to seek cooperation and support rather than conflict and neglect. The fact that this need was most urgently felt by a majority of village residents is crucial for our understanding of peaceful coexistence in the village. The absence of conflict in the village after the disastrous fire is not just the result of a conscious attempt by local policy makers to prevent an old conflict from escalating; it is much more the result of the inbuilt resilience of the village community toward tensions and turmoil. While this resilience is the outcome of long-term processes at the macro and micro level, it is also the outcome of short-term assessments of social advancement: for the village community to survive economically and socially, it will have to overcome its intragroup tensions and factions and, instead, it will have to cherish and exploit its main treasure—the riches of ethnic and religious diversity.

The strength of diversity 139

Conclusions

“Our diversity is our weakness and our strength,” said Mrs. D., “Generally speaking, we respect each other.” The comment of Mrs. D. touches on the small margins of peaceful coexistence: difference makes society vulnerable for conflict, but it also offers opportunities. Most residents of the villages in the Komacza district tend to operate within these small margins. If asked, any ordinary village resident, parish priest or official would agree that people in the Komacza district respect each other and treat each other right. This attitude is present in popular and institutional representations. It is manifest during collective church processions, religious celebrations, and funerals. It is embedded in the communal projects carried out by the local government. It is part of the regulations and objectives of the numerous local institutions and organizations. And, last but not least, it is the subject of local, regional, and national media attention. The emphasis on interethnic tolerance seems to pervade all domains of village life. The reverse side of this emphasis is the intolerance towards quarrelsome individuals—in many of the studied cases such individuals fell victim to a village campaign of condemnation. Not just laymen and women, also church representatives became subject to such village campaigns. While each new spiritual leader produced a different dynamic in the village community, it generally applied that those leaders who propagated mutual tolerance and respect stayed on longest. The Komacza district is not unique in its tendency to “celebrate diversity”, to quote Buzalka (2007: 156). In his study on the politics of commemoration in the Przemyl area (some 100 km northeast from Komacza, see Map 4.1), Buzalka found that within the realm of politics and religion multicultural tolerance has a prominent place. Buzalka distinguishes between “artificial” and “ordinary” tolerance. While the first is practiced by those who seek to establish a political following by invoking romantic ideas of a multicultural past or Western ideas of individual liberalism and democratization, the latter is practiced by those who enter in peaceful, everyday forms of relationships that are based on trust. According to Buzalka (2007: 157), ordinary tolerance is manifest in the general rejection of extreme nationalist viewpoints and practices, in the survival of agrarian traditions of cooperation in the villages (that in fact predate the socialist era), in the pragmatism of petty trade, and in the cordiality of neighborhood trust. In support of the observations made in this chapter, Buzalka (2007: 157) suggests that ordinary tolerance “seems to exert at least equal influence on local civility” as artificial tolerance. This chapter has sought to explain why the region of which the Komacza district is part—once the scene of war and massive ethnic violence—has developed into a predominantly peaceful society. It is argued that the current emphasis on interethnic tolerance, evident in the presented case material from the Komacza district as well as in Buzalka’s study of the Przemyl area, is the outcome of the overall transformation of Polish society. Several long-term macro and micro processes stand out as fundamental to

140 Struggling for peace this transformation. The integration of the local village communities into Poland’s postwar state structure, following the massive destruction of the prewar multiethnic society during the 1940s, helped consolidate interethnic cooperation in several ways. First, it involved the extension of weak ties and the weakening of strong ties in village networks, which in turn, spurred processes of individualization within the village communities. Second, it produced new social cleavages, drawing dividing lines not just between but also within ethnic groups, and prompted the establishment of social ties linking individuals across ethnic boundaries. While all this allowed for the gradual establishment of new identities and relationships beyond the family, group, and community level, it also contributed to a broadening of views and ideas. Moreover, the mutual dependencies and conflicting loyalties between village residents, induced by the prevalence of cross-cutting ties, hamper those wanting to mobilize along lines of ethnic or religious cleavage. Changes in the local and wider society not only resulted in a decrease of violent modes of behavior; it also resulted in a shift of local attitudes and expectations. Over the decades mutual distrust between Poles and Ukrainians was gradually replaced by mutual trust, which led to a code of conduct based on mutual tolerance. Village residents not only respond with respect to, but also demand respect from, their fellow villagers. It is this tri- pillar structure of local interests, local patterns of behavior, and local attitudes and expectations that has laid the basis for the ingrained resilience to violent escalation of conflict within the village communities. As this ingrained tolerance is further strengthened by the tolerance-focused macro level discourse, ethnic difference no longer constitutes just a potential source of conflict. The village residents themselves have come to appreciate ethnic and religious diversity not as a weakness, but as a major strength of their communities because it attracts tourism and broadens access to governmental and non- governmental funds. In this setting, ethnic diversity besides “an instrument of hostile mobilization”, to quote Schlee (2008: 12), might as well serve as “a vehicle of integration”. The case study presented in this chapter suggests that a dynamic system of alliance, guided by cross-cutting weak and strong ties, can provide negative feedback mechanisms that contribute to resilience to violent ethnic conflict at the community level (cf. Flap 1985; Flap 1997). This is not to say that conflict is absent in such systems, or that violent escalation is no longer possible. It has been shown that while the gap between the Polish and Ukrainian communities in Komacza has increasingly been bridged, it has hardly been filled. Herein lies the system’s structural vulnerability. Bridges narrow the gap between the Polish and Ukrainian communities, but the ethnic cleavage remains all the same. Ethnicity continues to be a strong part of individual identity that can play a positive role, but can also be used as a convenient heading to express negative feelings, as is exemplified by the activities of and provocations by various nationalist groups in the Przemyl area since the

The strength of diversity 141 early 1990s (cf. Hann 1998a, 1998b; Buzalka 2007). Still, with the exception of a few sour notes, it is the discourse of tolerance rather than the discourse of hatred that currently dominates the entire field of political and religious activity in the region (cf. Babiski 1997; Wojakowski 2002; Buzalka 2007). People at all levels of society tend to strengthen this trend—sometimes consciously by promoting a politically correct type of tolerance, but most of the time unconsciously, as their behavior and expectations are grounded in peaceful day-to-day interactions.

8 Conclusions Explaining Polish-Ukrainian coexistence

The question why massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland after 1990 has led us back to the past sixty years of Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in Poland. In exploring the history of the Polish-Ukrainian relationship my focus has been on both micro and macro level processes. These processes include changes in relationships between and attitudes among individuals and groups, as well as changes in the overall Polish society from the mid 1940s—the period in which a socialist Polish People’s Republic was established—to the turn of the 21st century—the time when Poland’s new democratic leadership opened up ways to a free market economy as well as to a political and economic return to Europe. The key to the question why in today’s Poland the diverse viewpoints and demands of majority and minority populations are articulated peacefully can be found in these micro and macro level processes. Relationships at the local and central levels have developed in such a way that a resort to violence is generally considered obsolete and counter- productive. This is not just the norm propagated by Poland’s mainstream political leadership, but also a generally accepted belief by the great majority of Poland’s citizenry. This is not to say that interethnic conflict is absent in Poland. The point that is at issue here is that interethnic tensions and conflicts have not escalated into massive violence. Below I will explore a number of key factors that have contributed to the current situation. The first two sections survey the macro conditions that formed the basis of the two contrasting outcomes: protracted conflict (1944) and consolidated peace (1990). The third section investigates how peace became consolidated and articulated in relationships between Poles and Ukrainians at the local level. Sections one to three reveal how the development of a strong state, the establishment of a near homogenous nation, and the successful assimilation and integration of individuals and groups in Polish society, provide complementary answers to the question why massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland after 1990. The final section will combine these findings to offer an analysis of the conditions for and the dynamics of peaceful coexistence. 144 Struggling for peace

Macro level contrasts: from a weak to a strong Polish state

Invaded, robbed and destroyed by Nazi-Germany and the Soviet-Union little was left of Poland’s infrastructure, let alone of Poland’s state machinery by 1944. Cities and towns, trade and transport networks, industrial, financial and agricultural centers, state and public institutions—all had to be rebuilt practically from the ground up. The fact that two invading forces had crushed Poland during World War II set the conditions for Poland’s immediate postwar future, which can be summed up in the following key-points:

• A weak geopolitical position: With its entry into Poland the Soviet Army brought a ready-made pro-Communist and pro-Soviet administration. The Soviet-sponsored Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), later called the Provisional Government of the Polish Republic (RTRP), was unelected and unconnected with the exiled Polish Government in London. As a Soviet satellite state, which eventually became endorsed by the Western Allied Powers, Poland had no voice in determining its own future.

• Insecure state boundaries: Prospects of a restoration of Poland’s prewar state boundaries were almost nil, as the Soviet Union had no intentions to give up Poland’s eastern territories that it had annexed in 1939. Instead, Stalin negotiated with Churchill and Roosevelt that Poland would be compensated for this loss by extending its Western borders at the expense of Germany. The newly acquired territories in the West, euphemistically referred to as “recovered territories” (ziemie odzyskane), besides making up for the loss of territory in the East, were particularly instrumental in securing domestic support for Poland’s new communist leadership.

• The absence of a state monopoly on violence: the weak internal power basis of Poland’s new communist regime was epitomized by widespread armed resistance. The ready availability of arms from regrouping partisan armies that earlier on had fought Nazi and Soviet occupation posed a direct physical threat to the new communist establishment. The fight against armed anti-communist resistance was so much prioritized by Poland’s political leadership that military and security organizations and institutions for decades dominated the Polish state apparatus.

• The presence of large ethnic minorities: With the border change Poland lost millions of its Ukrainian, White Russian and Lithuanian minority group members without the need of having to relocate them. But it gained a new German minority of several millions in the western “recovered territories”. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Poles lived outside the borders of the new Polish People's Republic, that is, in the eastern territories annexed by the Soviet Union. Last but not least,

Conclusions 145

ethnic minorities were numerical majorities in most of Poland’s eastern and southeastern border regions.

Polish society in 1944 had disintegrated to a Hobbesian rule: the absence of a strong central authority resulted in lawlessness, discord and civil war (Hobbes 1654). The assumption of political disintegration also underlies the theories that seek to explain ethnic violence in contemporary Europe, as in, for example, Barry Posen’s (1993) theory on the so-called “security dilemma”. His argument runs as follows. When the central state power collapses, as happened in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the members of society no longer have someone to protect them, which increases their dependence on those groups with which they identify and which they believe will act in good faith: their coethnics. Whenever ethnic groups surmise potential threats to their security under conditions of a weak or absent state, they take into account a number of structural elements. These, among others, include: the history of their relationship with the alleged enemy group or groups; their demographic, economic and military strength; settlement patterns; responses of the international environment. In the event that an intergroup relationship has a history of hostility and violence, the members of the groups are likely to fear more violence in the future. In the event that a group’s predominance in the overall power balance with the other group is judged to be on the wane, it may attempt a preemptive attack before the ‘political momentum’ has gone. In a similar vein, James Fearon (1998) argues that a so-called “commitment problem” arises whenever an imperial power disintegrates, leaving behind a society in which majority and minority groups confront each other. Even though these groups, according to Fearon, should have strong incentives to settle political differences and disagreements without a war —as fighting is an extremely costly business—they sometimes do engage in warfare. One important reason for this is that an ethnicized state leadership, even with the best intentions, is unable to “credibly commit” itself to protect the lives and property of subordinate ethnic groups. No matter what a political leadership agrees to in the present, there is never a guarantee that it will not repudiate its promises in the future. Since this problem is insoluble, only secession may give the minority the security it desires. Fearon suggests that the commitment problem may operate more or less strongly depending upon certain conditions. First, the problem intensifies when the minority anticipates that its prospects for secession will diminish once it enters the new state. Second, it is stronger for rural people than for urbanites, since urbanites can more easily chose emigration than peasants, who would have to leave their land and farms behind. Third, ethnic warfare becomes more likely in a setting where settlement patterns are intermixed; in order to control a certain territory the minority must eject members of the majority group, which inherently implies the use of violence. 146 Struggling for peace

Posen’s “security dilemma” and Fearon’s “commitment problem” clearly played havoc with the Polish-Ukrainian relationship in the 1944. Even with the prospect of internationally approved state boundaries, the presence abroad of a considerable number of Poles, as well as the presence in Poland of large minority populations, weakened the political legitimacy of Polish rule within the territories of a very vulnerable Polish People’s Republic. Neither Poland’s political leadership nor the political leaders of the neighboring Soviet Republics were able or willing to deliver a credible commitment regarding the legal status of ethnic minorities in their new states. While Poland’s political leadership translated its ambivalent attitude towards ethnic minorities into a violent policy of expulsion, leaders of the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army opted for violent resistance in the hope of winning secession from a very weak and barely formed state. The fresh memory of hostility and violence between Poles and Ukrainians during World War II; the military weakness of the Polish state; the intermixed settlement pattern in the Polish- Ukrainian border region; the peasant background of the Ukrainian secessionist movement; the positive sanctioning of ethnic cleansing policies first by Nazi Germany and later by the Allied powers—all these factors contributed to a strengthening of the security and commitment dilemma, and thereby, to a polarization of relations between the Polish majority and the Ukrainian minority in Poland in 1944 (chapters 2 and 3). If we explain interethnic rivalries as the outcome of the breakdown of state control, as the above theories do, than the absence of interethnic rivalries in Poland in the 1990s can be explained in terms of the absence of such state collapse. Indeed, by the time the communist administration was replaced by a democratic ‘Solidarity’ administration the conditions had been reversed. The key-conditions listed below substantiate the conclusion that by the 1990s Poland was in ‘full control’:

• A strong geopolitical position: Of all countries in the former East Bloc, Poland was the first to free itself from communist political domination. What is more, Poland actively advanced the independence of the neighboring Belarus, Ukrainian and Lithuanian Soviet republics by following a ‘two track’ policy: through its maintenance of parallel contacts with Soviet leaders in Moscow and with the political leaders of the independence seeking Soviet republics it stressed the strength of the latter. Moreover, by adopting a policy of ‘European standards’, Poland introduced its eastern neighbors to international legal and ethical norms as well as to the attractive perspective of European integration.

• Secure boundaries: A Polish-German border treaty was signed in November 1990. In October 1990 Poland and Ukraine signed a state-to-state declaration, including a pledge of non-aggression, acceptance of existing borders, and cultural rights for minorities on both sides. A similar declaration was signed with Belarus in 1992 and

Conclusions 147

with Lithuania in 1994. The quick resolution of territorial issues during the 1990s points at the fact that Poland’s new political leadership was less concerned with redeeming lost national territories and more with preserving a Polish state within its present frontiers.

• The presence of a state monopoly on violence: Even though opponents of Poland’s communist regime continued to challenge the legitimacy of communist rule in Poland, they never risked to take resort to violent opposition. The implementation of martial law in the 1980s, as well as the peaceful transfer of power in the 1990s, demonstrate that the monopoly on violence was firmly in the hands of the Polish state.

• The absence of large ethnic minorities: The 2002 census—the first in postwar Poland that included the variables “nationality” (narodowo ) and “language spoken at home” (j zyk u ywany w domu)—reveals the extent to which Poland, in statistical terms, was mono-ethnic: 96,74 percent of the respondents declared themselves as of the Polish nationality; 1,23 percent declared that they belonged to a nationality other than Polish; the nationality of the remainder was not specified. According to the same census, members of ethnic minorities formed less than one percent of Poland’s total population (Nijakowski and odziski 2003: 279).

The security and commitment dilemmas that had plagued Poland in the 1940s had lost their significance in the 1990s. The new democratic Polish state, whose political representatives commanded full political legitimacy in and outside of Poland, proved very capable of avoiding and resolving any intrastate or interstate security problem by non- violent and democratic political means. The absence of belligerent challenger elites, as well as the availability, recruitment and placement of highly qualified personnel in the post-communist Polish governments, helped consolidate the security and stability of Poland on the state and interstate levels. Moreover, Poland’s minorities had been reduced to such insignificant numbers that a mutual commitment between the majority and minority populations did no longer entail a risk. On the contrary, in the light of its much- desired integration into the , Poland could gain if it would make commitments regarding the political and judicial status of its ethnic minorities. Indeed, Poland’s post-communist political leadership made extensive commitments to grant ethnic minority members the full package of civil and human rights (Nijakowski and odziski 2003). These commitments were strengthened by the acceptance of international conventions regarding minority rights that became closely monitored by Western observers (cf. ECRI 2000). In this political setting, Poland’s ethnic minorities felt secure

148 Struggling for peace enough to make extensive use of the new democratic state infrastructure to further their group aims. While the absence of a strong central authority in 1944 resulted in lawlessness, discord and civil war, the presence of a strong central authority in 1990 resulted in order, reconciliation and peace. Without security from foreign attack or internal violence there is no foundation on which to build economic and social institutions or to successfully advance domestic and foreign policy goals. Poland’s postwar communist governments had established just that: firm state control in all domains of Polish society, most crucially, including a secure monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Ultimately, Poland’s transition from a weak to a strong political state significantly improved minority-majority relations. In the absence of a power vacuum, the transfer of power from a communist to a democratic regime did not undermine the state’s role in enforcing law and order, and thus, in repelling internal and external threats such as interethnic violence.

Macro level transitions: the strength of a homogenous nation-state

The formation of a Polish ‘nation’ formed an essential part of the process that produced a strong Polish state. The ‘success’ of Poland’s nation building project may therefore in part explain the peaceful outcome of the 1990s. The argument hinges on the assumption implicit in some conflict theories, namely that it is the weakness of national revival projects rather than their strength that motivates violence within and between ethnic groups. Sidney Tarrow (1994), for example, argues that major outbreaks of violence especially occur when leaders of political movements are on the verge of losing their mass power base. According to David Laitin (1998), leaders of political movements often introduce violent means when they fear that the momentum of their efforts to trigger a general national revival is diminishing; violence may then be instrumental to give the nationalist struggle new impetus. The heyday of national revival in Poland, as in many former East Bloc countries, was in the 1980s. And it was carried by two mass movements: the independent trade union ‘Solidarity’ and the Roman Catholic church. In the late 1980s, when the power of the communist administration was on the wane, these movements gained instead of lost the support of the masses. In August 1989 the mass based Solidarity Citizens’ Committee finally succeeded to sweep Poland’s communist stronghold by legitimate political means. In other words, the strength of Poland’s nationalist movement had rendered a resort to violent means to reach their goal—the rise of a sovereign Poland—entirely superfluous. The overwhelming success of Poland’s national revival in the 1980s had its origin in the preceding decades, when Poland’s communist governments did everything in their power to build a homogenous one nation-state. As matters stand, by the 1980s Poland was

Conclusions 149 more ‘Polish’ in terms of its people, its culture, and its administrative landscape than ever in its thousand years of history. Let us briefly consider how homogeneity permeated Polish society as a result of communist nation-state building. The people. The communist leadership that took control of Poland in 1944 linked the establishment of a new Polish state with a nationalist ideology. In accordance with this ideology, the establishment of the Polish People’s Republic coincided with the formation of an ethnic frontier and the transfer of millions of people to and from Poland. Under the pretext of “repatriation” virtually all members of minority groups (Ukrainians, Russians, White-Russians, Lithuanians, Germans) living within Poland’s new state borders became subject to expulsion and/or deportation. At the same time, millions of Poles from the Soviet Republics, from the central and southern provinces of Poland, and from Germany (former POW’s and captive laborers) were resettled to take the place of those who had left. The consequences of state demographic engineering were considerable. Firstly, from a multi-ethnic state in which one-third of the population had been of non-Polish descent in the 1930s, Poland had turned into a mono-ethnic state in which non-Poles were virtually absent, estimated at 1,5 percent in 1962 (Kwilecki 1963: 87). Secondly, an overwhelming part of Poland’s postwar population had been subject to one or another form of relocation (chapter 3). Polish scholars unanimously stress the sheer dimension of the population movements during and following World War II. Consider, for example, the fact that the newly acquired western territories, an area amounting to a third of the Polish state, had to be refilled with new people. The 4,7 million individuals (nearly one-fifth of the total Polish population) who had been resettled to this area lived alongside the 1,1 million indigenous inhabitants, and these were by no means the only persons who had been expelled from the environments in which they had grown up and lived (Mach 1993; Kersten 2001). Henryk Sabek (1974: 254), a scholar of rural transformation processes, estimated that in the first years following World War II as many as 60-65 percent of peasant families found themselves in a “totally new” or in a “somewhat altered” situation as a result of expulsion, migration, land reform, or destruction of property. Fact is that in the course of the 1940s and 1950s Poland’s ruined cities as well as hundreds of thousands of resettled villages and towns became gradually filled with new residents who formed new local communities that bore little resemblance to the prewar communities. The culture. The massive population transfers provided a leveled social terrain on which the subsequent Polish communist regimes could build a new socialist and national culture. The massive transfer of people weakened social cohesion in the local communities to such a degree that it mitigated opposition to the state-enforced assimilation of minority and majority populations into a new socialist way of life (cf. Kersten 2001; Ther 2001). In addition, the resettlement of millions of people into areas that were alien to them

150 Struggling for peace diminished their allegiance to a local and regional identity and strengthened their allegiance to a national identity. “It can be said”, writes Kersten (2001: 84), “that the once- familiar local points of reference were not recreated, and that the locus of identity shifted toward a Polish national identity.” Snyder (2003) argues in a similar vein that in new surroundings ‘national’ characteristics such as religion and language come to the fore: “A Lemkini who finds herself in L’viv after the Second World War will know little of urban life, but she will know how to pray in some of the local churches and how to speak the Ukrainian language.” In just the same way, a Volhynian Pole “resettled from L’utsk to Gdask will have never seen the sea, but he will be a Roman Catholic and speak a Polish comprehensible to most people around him” (2003: 209). Since religion and language were the sole features that linked these new migrants to their new surroundings, it is to these features that they and the people surrounding them appealed in day-to-day life. By its socio-demographic consequences, expulsion and deportation thus creates what Snyder (2003: 210) has termed “lowest-common-denominator nationalism” (2003: 209- 10). Kersten (2001: 84) points at similar consequences: “[The] further weakening of the social fabric was combined with the narrowing of national communities and the rise of xenophobia. Mistrust toward foreigners became a permanent fixture on the Polish stage, as did the conviction that everything foreign represented a lethal threat.” Hann (1998a: 842) too argues that under socialism nationalism continued to grow, as “rigid control of education and culture helped to ensure that the nation, rather than any sub-or supra- national entity, became the dominant focus of loyalty and identity.” The exclusivist claims of Polish nationalism resulted in an ambivalent attitude of the Polish majority towards Poland’s residual minorities. While on the one hand minorities were regarded as “foreign” (obcy), as is clear from the abundance of negative stereotypes and pejorative idioms in Polish popular culture, on the other hand they were regarded as “one of us” (swój), that is, as an intrinsic part of the Polish nation-state. Thus, while minorities were recognized as Polish citizens of a different “nationality”, they were so on the condition that they be loyal to the Polish nation-state. This principle is made very explicit by the Polish sociologist Andrzej Kwilecki (1963: 87), who spoke of “strong, multiple ties” linking Poland’s “national minorities” with their “one and only fatherland—Poland” in which they were born and raised and in which they were building a future “in harmony with the entire Polish society”. The administrative landscape. In addition to building a uniform state bureaucracy, Poland’s communist leadership also committed itself to building a socialist bureaucracy, which emphasized the principle of centrally coordinated planning for all sectors of society. The omnipresence of the state in almost every aspect of life had important homogenizing implications. Firstly, it gave rise to a socialist way of life. Having to deal with uniform state legislation, state planning, and state institutions Polish citizens encountered similar

Conclusions 151 constraints and developed similar techniques to cope with these constraints, irrespective of their places of living or their social and cultural backgrounds (Dzigiel 1998). Secondly, standardization and central planning gave way to a typically socialist landscape, which to a significant degree diminished the variance between neighborhoods, cities, towns and villages, even between urban and rural areas. State shops, state cooperatives, railway stations, industrial buildings, apartment buildings, even private houses that were built in the socialist era all looked identical. Thirdly, state policy ensured that traces of former non-Polish residence in certain areas—in particular in the territories formerly inhabited by Germans, Ukrainians, and white Russians—were obliterated by means of destruction or neglect in the case of physical traces such as buildings or cemeteries, or by means of polonization in the case of geographical names (cf. Monitor Polski 1977; Urbaczyk 1981; Nacz 1988; Majewicz and Wicherkiewicz 1998). The attempts of Poland’s communist governments to construct a “productive, disciplined, mono-ethnic society”, to quote István Deák (2003: 205), have contributed to the situation where the Polish state had a firm grip on its minority and majority populations. Through its institutions and legislation the Polish state secured the commitment of all citizens to Polish society in general and to Party goals in particular; their incorporation and assimilation into Poland’s socialist society was a sure path. This firm grip is what united members of Poland’s minority and majority populations during, and most clearly also after socialism. As naturalized citizens of Poland they had similarly been subjected to assimilatory and disciplinary state policies. And as victims of an oppressive regime they had similar aspirations to resist that system. They found common grounds on many issues that were discussed and debated in the trade union Solidarity during the 1980s. The regime change in 1990 did not significantly weaken the bond between the minority-majority populations. On the contrary, the search for new identities and the critical scrutiny of the past by members of Poland’s ethnic minorities and ethnic majority ran surprisingly parallel. Most importantly, neither Poland’s ethnic minorities nor ethnic majority felt the need to challenge Poland’s unity: prospects were for a democratic society allowing for diversity, which could but include all citizens within Poland’s current state border. Postwar nation-state building in Poland involved both the violent exclusion of ethnic minorities from Polish society as well as their subsequent repressive inclusion into Polish society. Policies of exclusion resulted in the violent expulsion of most of Poland’s Ukrainians, White Russians, Lithuanians and Germans during the late 1940s and of Poland’s Jews during the late 1960s. Paradoxically, it is the strength of the idea of a modern Polish nation-state that has contributed to a situation where both residual ‘Polish’ and ‘non-Polish’ Poles consider Poland as their uncontested fatherland (ojczyzna).

152 Struggling for peace

Micro level transitions: the strength of diversity

The rapid shifts in political governance between 1939 and 1944, the absence of a sovereign and elected political leadership, the excessively violent policies of the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers—all these conditions culminated in a deterioration of the Polish- Ukrainian relationship that slipped further and further into a downward spiral of violence and counter-violence (chapter 2). Four subsequent decades of nation-state building, as described in the previous sections, transformed local relationships away from violent interaction and in the direction of stable and peaceful relations. This section will explore the process of gradual stabilization with reference to four key features at the micro level: local autonomy; ethnic identification; local alliances and interdependencies; and mental outlook. This account of on-the-ground-dynamics is largely based on fieldwork, which the author carried out in intervals between 1997 and 2007 in the rural district Komacza. Having been the locus of violent Polish-Ukrainians confrontations during and in the aftermath of the Second World War and of non-violent Polish-Ukrainian coexistence afterwards, this area presents an exemplary case to investigate and explain the transformation of micro level Polish-Ukrainian relations. Local autonomy. Five years of foreign occupation, intervals of power vacuum, as well as the Nazi and Soviet persecutions during the war years had spurred the development of self-governance and self-defense in the local communities. Massive ethnic and political violence was rampant between 1943 and 1947. In Poland’s southeastern territories branches of a variety of Polish armed resistance groups, as well as divisions of the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army (UPA), controlled many, if not most, local communities in the region (chapter 2). In order to impose its rule in southeast Poland the new, and particularly vulnerable, Polish state resorted to drastic measures. It used its military force not just to inflict defeat on enemy soldiers, but also to expel and deport the local civilian population. The military pacification of the area coincided with the installation of an abundance of security and militia posts and the establishment of new (Polish) settler colonies. By 1947, after the final massive deportation that had cleansed the area of virtually all its Ukrainian residents, mass violence was replaced by incidental occurrences of disorder and lawlessness. The pacification and colonizing policies, however, were successful to a degree. They did eliminate collectively organized ethnic and political violence in the area. But they did not stabilize local relationships, at least not instantly (chapter 3). Once military forces had retreated from the area and new people came to inhabit the houses and work the land of the expellees, a severe struggle for power between different social groups with similar claims to scarce resources started. This struggle for power was especially fierce due to the lack of state investments in the area. The lack of state support, next to impeding the integration of the local communities, also resulted in the defacto Conclusions 153 powerlessness of the state vis-à-vis the local residents (chapter 4). Blunt attempts to consolidate state power in the local communities, such as the state-initiated installation of Orthodox clergymen in the research area, had an ambiguous impact; while on the one hand it committed some local residents to the state, it alienated many more others from the state (chapter 5). It was not before the mid 1970s that a basic infrastructure was in place, including roads, electricity, housing, public institutions (such as schools and healthcare centers), state cooperatives, state shops and state-sponsored village organizations (such as rural youth and housewife clubs, houses of culture, and village Party cells). It was around that same time that the integrating and disciplining effect of state building became palpable. Local autonomy decreased and state power increased with the participation of adult village residents in the socialist economy, the entrance of young generations into the—by then fully developed—socialist educational system, and the participation of young and old in the state-sponsored cultural, social and political institutions (chapter 4). Ethnic identification. During the war years and immediate postwar years local residents were being mobilized, persecuted, expelled, deported, or left uninjured on the basis of their ethnic identity. These experiences increased the ethnic awareness of both Ukrainians and Poles and strengthened the importance of their religions. Even today the ethnic cleavage divides between Poles and Ukrainians in the research area; it is by means of these ethnic categories that village residents identify themselves and others (chapters 3 and 7). The ethnic cleavage largely overlaps with the religious cleavage, in that most Poles in the research area adhere to the Roman Catholic church and that most Ukrainians are affiliated to the Greek Catholic church (a small minority of Ukrainians adheres to the Polish Autocephalic Orthodox church). The ethnic boundary is discernible in many areas of village life. Firstly, even though mixed marriages are common, endogamous marriages are preferred above exogamous marriages by many local families. Secondly, cultural life in the villages, which for an important part is set by the calendars and initiatives of the respective religious communities, basically follows a segregated pattern. Thirdly, the appropriation of places of worship and cultural signs by the village residents and local clergy are motivated by narratives of ethnic belonging and/or suffering. Finally, ethnic expressions, including the pejorative use of ethnic terms, are part of the vernacular language of day-to-day interaction (chapter 7). Despite the past, the gradual integration of the village population into the Polish state produced a shift in the role of ethnic identity in interethnic encounters. First, both Polish and Ukrainian village residents have learned to appreciate the importance of their citizenship identity, namely the fact that they are all citizens of the Polish state. In their identity cards and passports, and during their travels abroad, it is this citizenship identity, and not their cultural, religious or ethnic identity that carries weight. Second, considering the increasing differentiation of the village communities in terms of class, occupation, 154 Struggling for peace migration history, social background, religious and political affiliation and so on, a person’s ethnic identity is one among many. Third, as most current dividing lines cut across the ethnic cleavage, ethnic identity is no longer a decisive factor in relationships; it is the amalgam of multiple identities, rather than one single identity that forms the basis for relationships in the village today. Fourth, ethnic identification is much more situational and personal than that it is directive and group-oriented. This being the case, ethnic identity does differentiate between people, but it no longer provides a blueprint or dominant incentive for social, economic and political (inter-)action (chapter 7). Local alliances and interdependencies: War, expulsion and deportation put a radical end to prewar social cohesion within the village communities and among members of ethnic groups. First, the civil war had jeopardized local relationships, thereby leading to new divisions within the local Polish and Ukrainian communities. Second, expulsion and deportation, next to drastically altering relative population sizes in the area, cut through social hierarchies within the village communities. This being the case, expulsion and deportation not just destroyed local social networks; they also significantly altered power relations within and between the Polish and Ukrainian communities (chapter 7). Third, the intense movement of people in the postwar era gave rise to a hierarchy of settlement. This hierarchy divides between village residents who are indigenous to the village and those who are not; between those who were forced to leave the village and those who were not; between those who remained in exile and those who returned; between those who arrived first and those who arrived later. Finally, the very diverse histories of individual Poles and Ukrainians in wartime and postwar Poland resulted in deep ideological splits and divisions. These revolve around discrepant ideas on what exactly a group identity should entail and whether or not, and if so, which ethnic members should team up as a group (chapters 4, 6 and 7). An overwhelming majority of the local population has settled in the area relatively recently (most notably in the 1960s and 1970s). These new arrivals entered into relationships with other new arrivals and with the tiny minority of indigenous inhabitants that had been able to stay. Naturally, the social networks that developed from these relationships did not in the least resemble the social networks from the prewar era (chapters 4 and 7). Other developments, such as the increasing differentiation, individualization and liberalization of many aspects of village life, further transformed social networks away from the traditional bonds of family, ethnic group, and village community. Among others, they spurred the expansion of individual networks, and thus, the establishment of weak ties. Thus, while local relationships became split by a multitude of (new) cleavages, they also became increasingly linked by a multitude of social ties that almost by definition cut across the ethnic and religious clefts. Both the weak ties and cross-cutting cleavages in local social networks gave rise to negative feedback

Conclusions 155 mechanisms: the mutual dependencies and conflicting loyalties between Polish and Ukrainian village residents impede their mobilization along ethnic or religious lines (chapter 7). Mental outlook: In the 1940s a resort to massive ethnic violence was considered mandatory, even beneficial, by a considerable number of village residents. In the 1990s a resort to ethnic violence was not just an irrelevant option; it was also strongly disapproved of by most village residents. This points at a significant shift in the mental outlook of the village residents: the macro and micro conditions in which they are embedded today clearly motivate them to respond less violently and have brighter expectations of the future. From this the paradoxical situation emerges, whereby the ethnic cleavage is still deep and ethnic ideologies are still strong, but violent political mobilization along ethnic lines encounters strong resistance. Extreme opinions or behavior are not tolerated, on the contrary; those who voice excessive opinions or expose excessive behavior can count on little respect and cooperation. Peaceful coexistence dominates the political discourse at all levels of the village community. In this discourse ethnic diversity is defined not as an impediment but as a recommendation for future progress. Since the regime change in 1990 the discourse of harmony has taken on increased significance, as it contributes in many ways to the survival of the peripheral village communities; it brings in subsidies, sponsorships, and tourists (chapter 7, Buzalka 2007). In summary, the above-sketched developments suggest a significant relationship between macro and micro level transitions: the overall transformation of Polish society gave way to certain sets of relationships at the micro level that generated specific patterns of behavior, thinking and feeling, which formed the basis of a distinctive kind of mental outlook. Rather than being forced upon the people, peaceful coexistence developed from inside the local communities where peaceful modes of interaction were established following a period of overt tension and violent conflict. These peaceful modes became strengthened and consolidated with each new step in the state and nation building process and with each new generation.

Conclusions: the dynamics of peaceful coexistence

The previous sections explored the conditions that gave rise to violent conflict between Poles and Ukrainians in the 1940s, as well as the conditions that have prevented ethnic friction from escalating after Poland’s regime change in 1990. This section will address two questions that have been left unanswered so far. The first question concerns the consequences of one particular aspect of nation-state building, namely the expulsion of ethnic minorities from Poland: has ethnic cleansing worked? The second question tackles the issue of sustainability: how stable or volatile is peaceful coexistence in Poland today? 156 Struggling for peace

Both questions attest to the fact that peaceful coexistence, rather than being static and an inevitable and natural outcome of things, results from conflicting and contradictory processes and always remains vulnerable. If not for the ethnic cleansing policies of the 1940s, minority-majority relations in Poland would surely have looked entirely different today at both the state and interstate level. Stable borders and homogenous nation-states created the indispensable conditions on which the Polish, German and Ukrainian governments were able to establish friendly neighborly relations after the collapse of communism. Moreover, ethnic cleansing had reduced Poland’s minority populations to such negligible numbers that they were rendered a rather harmless factor in post-communist Polish politics. The imbalance of power has long played its part to prevent the minority populations from competing for political control and to facilitate their political subjugation to the majority of ethnic Poles. Under socialism ethnic minorities were defined as cultural groups that could claim representation only, quoting Koloski (2004: 138), to “the border of folklore”. While ethnic identity became depoliticized, ethnic diversity was displayed only on strictly controlled stages: within circles of the minority organizations, in open-air museums, during folk festivals, in the works of ethnographers, poets and writers (Lovell 1970; Kwilecki 1974; Koloski 2004). In other words, Poland’s ethnic minorities came to play the role of domesticated objects—as cultural exotics in a rather dull and monotonous landscape of the Polish one- nation state (cf. Mihalasky 1997; Koloski 2004). This situation hardly changed after the regime change in 1990. Even though ethnic minorities attempted to mobilize themselves politically, their political power was still negligible and the societal pressure was still towards a cultural appreciation of diversity. The fact that minority identities have survived despite ethnic cleansing and that tension and conflict still pervade minority-majority relations have led some scholars to conclude that ethnic cleansing has not worked (cf. Hann 1996; Motyka 1999). Ther (2001), in addition, presents a moral argument against the practice: even if ethnic cleansing does, in some cases, eliminate pretexts for violent conflict, the human costs are too high and the benefits too low for ethnic cleansing to be an effective solution. “Ethnic homogeneity,” Ther (2001: 63) concludes, “turned out to be a myth, and the attempt to achieve it had terrible consequences.” Fact is that ethnic cleansing in Poland has destroyed the lives of many, has contributed to irrevocable divisions within the minority and majority populations, and has played an important part in the strengthening of minority and majority nationalisms. But whereas the ethnic cleansing policies had not been entirely successful in homogenizing Poland, they proved quite successful in enforcing state control on Poland’s minority and majority populations. In other words, ethnic cleansing has worked not because it homogenized Poland (it did so to a degree), but because it weakened social cohesion and divided social relationships within both minority and majority groups Conclusions 157

(chapters 3, 6 and 7). It is precisely this social consequence of ethnic cleansing that has contributed to the rise and consolidation of power by Poland’s communist political establishment, and ultimately, to the elimination of violent ethnic conflict. “Can the demands of modern national ideas, so brutally expressed by ethnic cleansing, find a peaceful articulation?” Snyder (2003: 2) asks this rhetorical question that he himself answers with a startling juxtaposition of success and failure in the new Europe: “As NATO admitted Poland, it bombed Yugoslavia. As the world followed conflicts among the Serbs and their neighbors, a joint Polish-Ukrainians peacekeeping battalion was dispatched to Kosovo” (2003: 3). Snyder convincingly shows how during the 1990s Poland’s eastern policy fashioned a stable geopolitical order that paved the way for Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation at the state and interstate levels. “During the first half of the decade,” writes Snyder (2003: 288), “Poles and Ukrainians had agreed to ‘leave history to the historians’ in the mutual interest of securing the state. In the second half of the decade, after issues of recognition, border and minorities were resolved, discussions of history could demonstrate the depth of Polish-Ukrainian rapprochement.” In May 1997, the two presidents signed a reconciliation declaration, which listed the wrongs done by each nation to the other, including Operation Vistula and the terror in Volhynia, and expressed the need of mutual forgiveness (Snyder 2003). The declaration was as much a political statement as it was a diplomatic answer to pleas for rapprochement made by various pressure groups and scholarly specialists over the years. The emphasis on rapprochement is what characterizes the Polish-Ukrainian relationship to this day: despite the very dissimilar political demands and agendas of the participants to the dialogue, they do not call for revenge or war. On the contrary, they make a case for tolerance, justice and reason (Orodek KARTA 2001; ur 2001; Gil 2004; Buzalka 2007; ur 2007). The Polish-Ukrainian rapprochement at the state and interstate levels should not conceal the fact that the challenges at the local level are real. The ethnic cleavage has diminished, but it is still there, and tensions between the Polish and Ukrainian communities at times do lead to open conflicts. An example of a location where during the 1990s clashes between Poles and Ukrainians have regularly hit the mainstream news is Przemyl, a town bordering the Ukraine. When in 1991 plans were raised by Pope John Paul II to return a local church to the Ukrainian, Greek Catholic community a small group of Poles occupied the church. The group persisted and the church remained in the hands of the Roman Catholic Carmelite order that had been using the church since 1946. In 1996 the Carmelite monks proceeded to destroy the church’s dome in order to neutralize its ‘eastern’ (read: non-Polish) shape, thereby infuriating the local Ukrainian community (Hann 1996, 1998a; Buzalka 2007). The church controversy was followed by a series of other incidents, which all point at the persistent refusal of a local group of Polish nationalist activists to follow the course taken by Poland’s central leadership to seek closer 158 Struggling for peace cultural and economic links with the neighboring states. For example, when in 1995 Warsaw decided to move the biennial Ukrainian Cultural Festival from its customary location at on the Baltic coast to Przemyl, local Polish activists mobilized to prevent its organization. Hann (1998b: 855): “After a campaign that included the defacing of public posters advertising the festival and an arson attack on the Ukrainian Socio- cultural Society, the festival eventually went ahead in an atmosphere of considerable tension, with a high security presence.” Local activists mobilized once more to prevent the festival’s organization in 1997, but they were again overruled by Warsaw (Hann 1998b). The above incidents demonstrate that Poland’s religious as well as secular centers failed to reckon with the strength of Polish nationalist opinion in Poland’s periphery (Hann 1998a, 1998b). That being the case, Hann is right to conclude that policies proclaimed by the new liberal elites in Warsaw cannot in themselves bring about greater tolerance between minority and majority groups in the ethnically mixed peripheral areas (1998a: 861). Still, the refusal of the political center in Warsaw as well as the Roman Catholic hierarchy to conform to local forms of extremism, even if indirectly, supported the great majority of citizens who chose not to play an active part in fomenting ethnic hatred. Fact is that the aggressive and persistent actions by a handful of nationalist offenders have not escalated into massive violent conflict. “Nationalist groups have been successful in mobilizing some people around symbols such as the Carmelites’ church in Przemyl and the graves of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the national cause,” writes Hann. “However, so far there is little evidence in this region that they are capable of mobilizing larger numbers of citizens” (1996: 403). Hann’s studies from the 1990s suggest that the great majority of the town’s population remained insensitive to provocations to ethnic violence; they rather disapproved of it (Hann 1996, 1998a, 1998b). Buzalka’s (2007: 134) recent study of Polish-Ukrainian relations in Przemyl, in addition, demonstrates that “narratives of multiculturalism” have increasingly become part of both religious and secular reconciliation events. Such events, meant to foster reconciliation between Poles and Ukrainians, are supervised by the churches and supported by the state, nongovernmental organizations, and intellectuals. These examples point to local resilience to violent ethnic conflict. Institutional resilience is also what James Fearon and David Laitin (1996) have advanced as a possible explanation for the paradox that interethnic relations tend to be simultaneously tense and peaceful most of the time. The argument of Fearon and Laitin runs as follows: due to the costs of persistent violence and the various benefits of peaceful interethnic relations, decentralized institutional arrangements are likely to arise to moderate problems of interethnic opportunism (i.e., group-interested behavior that has socially harmful consequences). Using a social matching game model, Fearon and Laitin show that local-level interethnic cooperation can be supported in essentially two ways. In

Conclusions 159 spiral equilibria, disputes between individuals are expected to spiral rapidly beyond the two parties, and fear of this induces interethnic cooperation “on the equilibrium path” (1996: 715). In in-group policing equilibria, individuals turn a blind eye on violations by members of the other group, since they expect that the offenders will be identified and sanctioned by the members of their own ethnic group. The in-group policing equilibrium will have relatively greater cauterizing capacities compared to the spiral equilibrium once interethnic relations move “off the equilibrium path”: under a regime of in-group policing the mistake or misinterpretation of a group member is blamed only on the defector, whereas under a spiral regime the whole group is punished for the transgression of just one member (1996: 731). A crucial concept in the analysis of Fearon and Laitin (1996) is trust—it is trust (in the case of an in-group policing equilibrium) and the lack of trust (in the case of a spiral equilibrium) that induces individuals to cooperate in interethnic encounters. If we apply the equilibrium argument to the Polish-Ukrainian relationship in postwar Poland we may distinguish three phases in interethnic cooperation. The first phase covers the immediate postwar years, when fresh memories of interethnic hostility and violence had instilled fear on both Poles and Ukrainians for a collective punishment in the event of interethnic transgression. Indeed, Polish-Ukrainians encounters were characterized by extreme apprehensiveness and cautiousness, while missteps tended to spiral into indiscriminate violence (chapter 3). Once the state monopoly on violence had been established and Poles and Ukrainians increasingly engaged with each other on a daily basis, Polish-Ukrainian encounters became less driven by distrust. This signaled the second phase, in which the state, even though its control did not extend to the local communities in the border region, set an upper limit on ethnic violence at a level that prevented spirals and encouraged in- group policing to avoid state intervention (chapter 4). A third phase started when state- policing, following the full integration of the local communities into a Polish state structure, complemented in-group policing mechanisms: the reassuring presence of the police, the court, the local bureaucracy, and mediating institutions (such as schools, churches, clubs and reconciliation committees) helped Poles and Ukrainians to establish relationships that were increasingly build on mutual trust (chapters 4 and 7). In the above example trust had been restored by the interference of the state. This seems to contradict Gellner’s position, who, following the 14th century scholar Ibn Khaldun, argues that it is “effective government which destroys trust” and anarchy that engenders it (1988: 143). Gellner is right to claim that the advance of modern states significantly weakened local systems of social cohesion. “The security of men no longer lies in their cousins: the collective oath is abolished, the feud is no longer practicable. It is now easily suppressed by the gendarmerie” (1988: 153). However, one may argue that with the erosion of local systems of social cohesion and the establishment of central 160 Struggling for peace authority, trust, instead of weakened, was relocated to other systems of authority and rule. First, while a person’s trust in the strength of his or her kin group may have weakened, his or her trust in a friend at the nearest district office most certainly gained strength. In other words, the introduction of a monolithic state structure produced distinctive types of relationship and formed the basis of new social networks in which trust was a basic ingredient as well. Second, the fact that non-state forms of policing became substituted by state-policing eventually gave rise to expectations of an efficient enforcement of law and order by a central authority. Similarly, Fearon and Laitin (1996) found that some systems of non-state policing (such as the Ottoman millets, the Russian kahals, or the Hausa sobos under British rule) were certainly related to—or even made possible by—indirect and direct state rule. In their analysis of decentralized modes of cooperation between ethnic groups, Fearon and Laitin (1996) address another issue that also bears relevance to the case of Polish- Ukrainian coexistence in Poland. While trust leads to certain expectations regarding the costs and benefits of certain forms of behavior, the expectations themselves are often self- fulfilling: interethnic cooperation is sustained by the expectations people have about what will happen if they deceive, attack or otherwise injure a member from another group. The case material presented in this study supports this assumption. The expectations of the people that live in Poland today are grounded in Poland’s societal infrastructure: a strong central authority; numerically small ethnic minorities; strong ethnic boundaries and, simultaneously, strong intragroup divisions; and finally, multiple interdependencies at the local and central levels. These conditions produce expectations among Poles and Ukrainians that foster their mutual cooperation at both the local and central levels. What is more, the expectations form a buffer against any random ‘noise’ in interethnic relations: mistakes, misinterpretations and miscalculations at the central level will not necessarily lead to a breakdown of cooperative patterns of interaction at the local level, and vice versa. In other words, under certain conditions peace is robust enough to reinforce peace. It is by means of this reinforcement that reconciliation and rapprochement could gain momentum in Poland in the 1990s. Just as ethnic turmoil can be explained as “symptoms of social disorientation, of the fraying, and sometimes the snapping of the threads, of what used to be the network that bound people together in society” (Hobsbawm 1992: 7), ethnic peace can be explained as symptoms of social security, of trust that is enhanced instead of curtailed and that helps consolidate the network that binds people together in society. The fact that in Poland in the 1990s such security and trust prevailed in many domains of society suggests that the regime change in Poland had not resulted in a social, economic and political ‘break-down’. One important foundation for the great majority of Polish citizens was the continued strength of their ethnic and religious identities. Even though in some areas, particularly in

Conclusions 161 the ethnically mixed border areas, ethnic and religious boundaries became more intensely defended, most members of the minority and majority populations felt quite secure in their identities; they did not find it necessary to stand up against an alleged or real aggressive enemy-other. “In south-east Poland”, writes Buzalka, “tolerance has developed into a celebration of diversity, but with the boundaries between the two religious-national groups strictly drawn” (2007: 208). These firm ethnic and religious boundaries not just divide between individuals and groups, they have an important integrative function as well: they allow people to reach beyond the group boundaries and establish complementary relationships with non-group members (chapter 7). This supports the theory that cultural differences can result in the avoidance of competition and the emergence of cooperative relationships, especially if they cut across other social dividing lines (cf. Granovetter 1973; Flap 1985, 1997; Lehmann 2001; Schlee 2008). In Poland today the expectations of a great majority of citizens are such that they enhance and sustain a dominant political discourse that emphasizes harmony. It is unlikely that a small amount of ‘noise’ in interethnic interactions will change these expectations. A large amount of persistent ‘noise’, however, may result in a shift of expectations. This shift, in turn, may cause a gradual erosion of mutual cooperation, and may, ultimately, undermine the present conditions. After all, neither the peacefulness nor the belligerency of Poles and Ukrainians are set in stone. If the ball of distrust and fear begins rolling, a cycle with an entirely different dynamic will set in (compare chapters 2 and 7). This, obviously, had been the case in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when prophecies for a better future coincided with a strong discourse of hatred. These prophecies resulted in expectations that had a lethal effect: inhabitants of the former Yugoslav Republic collectively discarded reconciliation and embraced war as the preferred strategy to resolve all problems once and for all (van de Port 1995; Cohen 1998; Lake and Rothchild 1998; Peterson 2000). In a convincing article Mattijs van de Port (1995) chronicles how in the town Novi Sad people consciously went the sure path to destruction; war seemed unavoidable to them even though, as yet, not a single shot had been fired. The urgency of the war as felt by the townspeople is captured by the following words of a female informant: “For God’s sake, let this war begin, so that we can start again with a clean sheet” (van de Port 1995: 91). From the foregoing it may be concluded that neither ethnic cleavage nor a history of ethnic hostility are a recipe for violent ethnic conflict. Similarly, we have seen that occurrences of ethnic tension and conflict are not necessarily a precursor to violent escalation. The case material has shown that conflicts play a role in establishing group boundaries, which define groups and relations between them. Conflicts may thus have an integrative function in society. The shift from nonviolent to violent modes of conflict, as Brubaker and Laitin (1998: 426) argue, is a phase shift: “Violence is not a quantitative

162 Struggling for peace degree of conflict, but a qualitative form of conflict, with its own dynamics”. This study has directed particular theoretical attention to the ‘peace’ phase, in which nonviolent modes of conflict predominate. It has been argued that macro level conditions interact with micro level conditions to form a foundation for trust and security that gives rise to the expectations that determine behavior. While there may be similarities in the macro and micro level conditions between a society in the ‘peace’ phase and a society in the ‘violence’ phase, there will be significant differences in the degree of trust and security experienced by the population. Therefore, interethnic ‘noise’ will be interpreted differently and responded to differently. This explains why, despite the existence of tensions, massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland after the regime change in 1990. In contrast to the situation in some other former communist countries, Polish society had developed a high degree of stability, which engendered a basic degree of confidence in the central authorities and provided the basis for interethnic relations based on trust. Bibliography

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Summary

The outbursts of massive ethnic violence in the Yugoslav successor states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 surprised and worried many contemporary observers, as did other upsurges of ethnic nationalism and conflict in a number of post-communist countries. What were the causes of these sudden and intense outbursts of ethnic hatred and where would the next ethnic war begin? There were plenty potential causes of ethnic conflict between the newly established democratic Poland and Ukraine as well: frontiers without historical legitimacy; new and fragile democratic rule; apprehensive political elites; memories of civil war and ethnic cleansing from the first half of the 20th century. But whereas wartime conflicts and ancient rivalries took centre stage in Yugoslav politics in the 1990s, in Poland the painful and controversial events in Polish-Ukrainian history were tackled in an open public debate. This study starts from the question how and why in Poland in the 1990s revitalized ideas of a modern ‘nation-state’ found a peaceful articulation. It asks the negative question: Why did Poles and Ukrainians in Poland not behave like Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in former Yugoslavia? Why is it that after the regime change in 1990 massive violence between Poles and Ukrainians remained absent, despite a history of Polish-Ukrainian hostility and violence? The above questions are tackled through multiple approaches, which include macro and micro level investigations, as well as anthropological and historical research methods. Chapter 1 outlines the methodological and theoretical foundations of this study and establishes its main focus. Particular attention is given as well to the overall transformation of Polish society over the past six decades as to the interface between macro and micro level processes. The assumption that underlies this study is that peace is not a natural, self- explanatory outcome of things, but the result of complex and often contradictory processes, which deserve both theoretical attention and systematic empirical study. As the title suggests, peace is worked on at every step in the process; it is the product of a continuous struggle involving especially those who are part of the contested domains of modern statehood. The chapters all focus on rural southeast Poland where I conducted fieldwork starting in 1997, with periodic visits to the research area until 2008. Most of the fieldwork was done in the rural district Komacza (Gmina Komacza), now part of the southern Podkarpackie province. Having been the locus of violent Polish-Ukrainians confrontations during and in the aftermath of the Second World War and of non-violent Polish-Ukrainian coexistence afterwards, this area presents an exemplary case to investigate the transformation of micro level Polish-Ukrainian relations. Fieldwork in the 176 Struggling for peace

Komacza rural district was complemented with archival research and a study of literature covering the wider region and country. The chapters were originally written as articles, some of which have already been published while others have been submitted for publication. My exploration of the Polish-Ukrainian relationship begins with the Polish-Ukrainian wartime conflict. In spring 1943 the independence-seeking Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia) commenced a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and Galicia that cost the lives of tens of thousands of Polish civilians. This ethnic cleansing campaign, which aimed at securing Ukrainian control in Poland’s formerly eastern territories, provoked a Polish-Ukrainian civil war, in which rival nationalist Ukrainian and Polish partisans engaged in a life and death struggle, claiming the deaths of several other thousands of people. Chapter 2 addresses the question why the wartime Polish-Ukrainian conflict spiraled into such large-scale lethal violence. Two complementary explanations are offered. The first one deals with the larger political context in which the conflict took place. A second explanation addresses the consequences of the conflict for local relationships. On the basis of these complementary accounts it is demonstrated how three factors can lead to an escalation of conflict into destructive violence and war: the emergence of a political power vacuum and the concomitant disappearance of the state monopoly of violence; the intensification of the struggle for survival on the part of groups and individuals; and the presence of evil as an everyday phenomenon. Bearing in mind that the term ethnic cleansing has become commonplace in descriptions of specific genocidal practices as in, for example, former Yugoslavia, chapter 3 addresses another side of ethnic cleansing: the implementation of an unparalleled process of demographic engineering in the former Polish People’s Republic during the immediate postwar years. In the mid 1940s Poland’s new communist leadership willfully built the future of the new People’s Republic on the massive expulsion and deportation of almost all of its ethnic and national minorities. A decade later the communist government adopted a policy towards the residual minority populations that today would be termed ‘affirmative action’. This policy was characterized by an effort to redress discrimination as well as the effects of such discrimination in earlier periods. To that purpose active measures were taken to ensure equal social and economic opportunities for minorities. Chapter 3 explores the background of the Polish government’s wavering policies towards its ethnic and national minorities by focusing on Poland’s Ukrainians. It is demonstrated how these seemingly contradictory policies were prompted by the same underlying political motivations. Ethnic cleansing and affirmative action are interpreted as two divergent political answers to a single political question: how can a state obtain control over and acquire legitimacy among its majority and minority populations?

Summary 177

Chapter 4 explores the background of social engineering in the mountainous Bieszczady region in the 1950s and 1960s, when Poland’s political leadership ventured to impose a new socialist order in an area ravaged by war and ethnic cleansing. State social(ist) engineering had been effective in two important respects. Firstly, it had largely polonized a formerly Ukrainian area, and secondly, it had laid the foundation of a socialist infrastructure in the villages. Meanwhile it had evidently failed to meet a number of its prime objectives. This chapter explores how and why the state engineering project failed in the Bieszczady and addresses two questions: first, what were the conditions that gave rise to the failure of social(ist) engineering, and second, what were the consequences of this failure for relationships at the local level? The chapter suggests that the relative weakness of the Polish state vis-à-vis the local setting was crucial for later developments in the region. Despite the state’s ability to use coercive power to bring its ideal designs into being, in practice it left plenty of room for local residents to proceed independently from the state-imposed structure. This relatively high degree of autonomy facilitated the formation of a society with a dynamic of its own, that is, one in which power was contested by diverse social groups, and subsequently, one in which the resulting balance of power was self-attained rather than enforced from the outside. A parallel phenomenon occurred in the field of religious policies towards minorities. Chapter 5 points out how the liquidation of the Greek Catholic church by the Polish socialist state in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the cultural oppression of Poland’s Greek Catholic Ukrainians. Archival documents and interviews provide detailed insight into how the Greek Catholic community in the village of Komacza coped with the intense political persecution by the socialist state, and how it managed to survive as a community, while maintaining its cultural identity. The state-enforced closure of the Greek Catholic parish church left the villagers deprived of the main symbol of their cultural identity. This temporary ‘culture void’, resulting from the attempted elimination of shared practices and traditions, gave rise to a sectarian conflict in the village. The battle over the true cultural values eventually led to a schism within the Greek Catholic community and the foundation of an Orthodox parish by some of the Greek Catholic families. The case study shows that even under extremely repressive circumstances people may find ways to develop their own defense strategies and, by this means, manipulate the outcome of state policies. Local initiatives forced the state authorities to seek compromise solutions. In the long run, local opposition and accommodation and state-church compromise effectively undermined the success of repressive state policy. After the 1990 election of Poland’s first postwar non-communist government, Poland’s Lemkos, who during the socialist era had been classified as Ukrainians, began to voice their specific concerns and participate in Poland’s public and political life more intensely than ever before. Chapter 6 discusses the impact of the socialist past on processes of 178 Struggling for peace identity formation and political mobilization among Poland’s Lemko minority as they occurred in the 1990s. Drawing from the example of the Lemko emancipation movement in Poland, the thesis that Eastern Europe’s once-socialist societies are strongly predisposed to ethno-nationalist conflict is put to the test. The chapter demonstrates that two features from the socialist past have contributed to a strong disposition of Poland’s Lemko minority to ethno-nationalist appeals and rhetoric: the dominance of an exclusivist Polish nationalism and the socialist ‘economy of shortage’. But even though Lemko leaders do rely on nationalist rhetoric in their efforts to achieve political mobilization, such nationalist appeals do not fundamentally threaten the current peaceful relationship between Lemkos and Poles in Poland. One explanation for the relative harmlessness of this type of minority nationalism lies in Poland’s history of forced expulsion, deportation and assimilation, due to which the Lemko minority no longer constitutes a significant power in local and semi- local politics. Their numbers are too low and their internal political divisions too strong for Poland’s Lemkos to effectively mobilize for collective action. Ironically, the strong internal divisions within the Lemko minority in fact help ease potential tensions between Lemkos and Poles in Poland. Chapter 7 seeks to explain why the region of which the Komacza rural district is part— once the scene of war and massive ethnic violence—has developed into a predominantly peaceful society. The current emphasis on interethnic tolerance in the Komacza district is explained in terms of the overall transformation of Polish society. Several long-term macro and micro processes stand out as fundamental to this transformation. The integration of the local village communities into Poland’s postwar state structure, following the massive destruction of the prewar multiethnic society during the 1940s, helped consolidate interethnic cooperation in several ways. Firstly, it involved the extension of weak ties and the weakening of strong ties in village networks, which in turn, spurred processes of individualization within the village communities. Secondly, it produced new social cleavages, drawing dividing lines not just between, but also within ethnic groups, and prompted the establishment of social ties linking individuals across ethnic boundaries. While all this allowed for the gradual establishment of new identities and relationships beyond the family, group, and community level, it also contributed to a broadening of views and ideas. Moreover, the mutual dependencies and conflicting loyalties between village residents, induced by the prevalence of cross-cutting ties, hamper those wanting to mobilize along lines of ethnic or religious cleavage. The concluding chapter seeks to formulate a comprehensive answer to the question why massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland after 1990. Three factors stand out as crucial to Poland’s current peaceful conditions: the development of a strong state, the establishment of a near homogenous nation, and the successful assimilation and integration of individuals and groups in Polish society. The recovery of the monopoly of violence by

Summary 179 the Polish state during the late 1940s helped pacify and stabilize relationships between individuals and groups, including those between Poles and Ukrainians. The ethnic cleansing policies of the late 1940s and early 1950s reduced Poland’s minority populations, including Poland’s Ukrainians, to such negligible numbers that they were rendered a harmless factor in Polish politics. Finally, the successful assimilation and integration of individuals and groups in Polish society transformed relationships at all levels of society away from violent interaction and in the direction of stable and peaceful relations. Four decades of persistent nation-state building laid the basis for Poland’s political direction after 1990: the nonviolent transformation from a communist to a democratic state administration; the promotion and protection of minority group rights by Poland’s central authorities; the political rapprochement between Poland and the neighboring German, Lithuanian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian states. Today, a resort to violence is generally considered obsolete and counter-productive. This is not just the norm propagated by Poland’s mainstream political leadership; it is a generally accepted belief by the great majority of Poland’s citizenry. The case material suggests that under certain conditions peace is robust enough to reinforce peace. It is by means of this reinforcement that during the 1990s Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation could gain momentum. In other words, neither ethnic cleavage nor ethnic conflict will necessarily result in violent escalation. The shift from nonviolent to violent modes of conflict is a phase shift, and so is the reverse process. This study has directed particular theoretical attention to the ‘peace’ phase, in which nonviolent modes of conflict predominate. It is argued that macro level conditions interact with micro level conditions to form a foundation for trust and security that gives rise to the expectations that determine behavior. While there may be similarities in these conditions between a society in the ‘peace’ phase and a society in the ‘violence’ phase, there will be significant differences in the degree of trust and security experienced by the population in their day-to-day interactions. Therefore, interethnic ‘noise’ will be interpreted differently and responded to differently. This explains why, despite the existence of tensions, massive ethnic violence remained absent in Poland after the regime change in 1990. In contrast to the situation in some other former communist countries, Polish society had developed a high degree of stability, which engendered a basic degree of confidence in the government and provided the basis for interethnic relations based on trust.

Samenvatting

De uitbarstingen van massaal etnisch geweld in het voormalige Joegoslavië en in andere voormalige communistisch staten na het uiteenvallen van het Sovjet imperium in 1991 hebben velen verbijsterd. Waar kwam het felle nationalisme zo plotseling vandaan, waarom was het zo moorddadig, en welke brandhaarden zouden er nog meer volgen? Na de democratische transities in Polen en de Oekraïne lagen ook daar potentiële bronnen van etnisch en nationaal conflict: staatsgrenzen zonder veel historische legitimiteit; nieuwe en kwetsbare democratieën; onzekere politieke elites; oorlogstrauma’s en herinneringen aan etnische zuiveringen daterend uit de eerste helft van de twintigste eeuw. Maar terwijl de oorlogstrauma’s en oude rivaliteiten in het voormalige Joegoslavië door de centrale autoriteiten naar de politieke voorgrond werden geschoven, lieten de Poolse autoriteiten de discussies over de pijnlijke en controversiële gebeurtenissen uit het Pools-Oekraïense verleden over aan wetenschappers, journalisten en belangengroepen. Hun expertise en vaak moreel geladen standpunten voedden een breed maatschappelijk debat en droegen bij aan een pluriform verwerkingsproces. Deze studie houdt zich bezig met de vraag waarom in het Polen van de jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw hernieuwde ideeën over de moderne ‘natiestaat’ een vreedzame uitwerking kregen. Gezien de gebeurtenissen in andere voormalige communistisch staten stelt het een negatieve vraag: Waarom gedroegen Polen en Oekraïners in Polen zich niet zoals Serven, Kroaten en Bosniërs in het voormalige Joegoslavië? Hoe komt het dat na de politieke omwenteling in 1990 massaal etnisch geweld in Polen uitbleef, ondanks een gewelddadig Pools-Oekraïens verleden? Deze historisch-antropologische studie benadert bovenstaande vragen vanuit uiteenlopende perspectieven en methodieken die in het eerste hoofdstuk uiteen worden gezet. Centraal staan de veranderingsprocessen die in de eerste vijf decennia na afloop van de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Polen hebben plaatsgevonden en die uiteindelijk hebben geleid tot een vreedzaam naast elkaar bestaan van Polen en Oekraïners na de politieke omwenteling in 1990. De aandacht gaat eveneens uit naar de wijze waarop de lotgevallen van individuele mensen en groepen, hun micro-geschiedenissen, verbonden zijn met macro-sociale en macro-historische ontwikkelingen. De veronderstelling die aan deze dissertatie ten grondslag ligt is dat vrede, net als geweld, niet een vanzelfsprekend verschijnsel is maar een dynamisch en vaak van tegenstrijdigheden vervuld proces dat eveneens beschrijving en verklaring verdient. De nadruk van de analyse ligt op het zuidoosten van Polen waar ik gedurende twee lange en vier kortere verblijven in de periode tussen 1997 en 2008 onderzoek deed. Naast antropologisch veldwerk verrichtte ik 182 Struggling for peace ook aanvullend archief- en literatuuronderzoek. Veldwerk vond grotendeels plaats in de gemeente Komacza, tegenwoordig onderdeel van de Podkarpackie provincie. De keuze voor de gemeente Komacza als onderzoekslocatie werd ingegeven door de onafgebroken aanwezigheid van Polen en Oekraïners in het gebied zowel vóór, tijdens als na afloop van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De hoofdstukken die deel uitmaken van deze dissertatie werden eerder als afzonderlijke artikelen gepubliceerd of zijn ingediend voor publicatie. De studie stapt in 1943 de geschiedenis binnen. In de lente van dat jaar begon het voor een onafhankelijk Oekraïne strijdende Oekraïense Opstandelingen Leger (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia) een campagne van etnische zuivering die aan tienduizenden, voor het merendeel Poolse burgers, het leven kostte. Deze vormde de aanleiding tot een Pools- Oekraïense burgeroorlog, waarin rivaliserende nationalistische Oekraïense en Poolse partizanen elkaar op leven en dood bestreden. Tijdens deze burgeroorlog werden nog eens duizenden Poolse en Oekraïense strijders en burgers gedood. Hoofdstuk 2 gaat in op de vraag waarom het Pools-Oekraïense conflict in de jaren veertig van de vorige eeuw zulke gewelddadige proporties kon aannemen. Het conflict wordt vanuit twee invalshoeken bekeken: vanuit de grotere politieke context waarin het conflict zich afspeelde en vanuit de individuele ervaring van de direct betrokkenen. De twee perspectieven op het gewelddadige Pools-Oekraïense conflict in de periode tussen 1943 en 1944 vullen elkaar op een aantal belangrijke punten aan. Het eerste legt de vinger op het moment waarop een politiek conflict tussen twee bevolkingsgroepen in een gewelddadige stroomversnelling raakte; het tweede biedt inzicht in de sociale en psychologische gevolgen van de gewelddadige confrontaties voor de direct betrokkenen. Beide perspectieven wijzen op de universele elementen die bij de escalatie van geweld een rol spelen: het ontstaan van een politiek machtsvacuüm en, daarmee samenhangend, het ontbreken van het geweldsmonopolie van de staat; de intensivering van de overlevingsstrijd van groepen en individuen; en tenslotte het alledaags worden van het kwaad. Terwijl het begrip ‘etnische zuivering’ in algemeen gebruik is geraakt bij beschrijvingen van genocidale praktijken, zoals bijvoorbeeld in het voormalige Joegoslavië, houdt hoofdstuk 3 zich bezig met een andere kant van etnisch zuiveren: de politiek van demografische manipulatie die midden jaren veertig van de vorige eeuw in de voormalige Poolse Socialistische Republiek werd toegepast. Het nieuwe communistische regime streefde naar een in alle opzichten—economisch, sociaal, politiek en etnisch— homogeen Polen. Eén van de radicale politieke maatregelen die de nieuwe machthebbers namen om deze homogenisering te bewerkstelligen was de massale verdrijving en deportatie van vrijwel alle etnische minderheden uit Polen tussen 1944 en 1947. Een decennium later, eind jaren vijftig, paste het Poolse communistische regime een omgekeerde politiek op de zwaar gedecimeerde minderheidsgroepen toe. Deze politiek, die in huidige termen zou kunnen worden omschreven als een krachtig doorgevoerde Samenvatting 183 politiek van ‘positieve discriminatie’, was erop gericht de achtergestelde positie van de leden van minderheidsgroepen ongedaan te maken en hun integratie in het socialistische Polen af te dwingen. Hoofdstuk 3 onderzoekt de achtergrond van deze radicale ommekeer in het minderhedenbeleid aan de hand van het voorbeeld van de Oekraïense minderheid in Polen. Het hoofdstuk laat zien dat achter deze schijnbaar tegengestelde, en op het eerste gezicht onverzoenbare beleidsvormen dezelfde politieke motivaties schuilgingen. De politiek van enerzijds etnisch zuiveren en anderzijds positieve discriminatie kunnen worden uitgelegd als twee verschillende antwoorden op eenzelfde politieke vraag: hoe krijgt een staat de volledige politieke controle op haar bevolking—minderheden en meerderheid incluis. De jaren vijftig en zestig van de vorige eeuw waren de jaren van wederopbouw en van de invoering van een nieuw sociaal-economisch systeem in de dorpen en steden van het jonge socialistische Polen. Ook de geïsoleerde, gedeeltelijke ontvolkte en zwaar door de (burger)oorlog getroffen Bieszczady regio (zuidoost Polen) ontkwam niet aan de invloed van een gecentraliseerd en socialistisch staatsbestuur. De gecentraliseerde staatsplanning realiseerde een aantal belangrijke doelstellingen in het gebied, waaronder de aanleg van een op socialistische ontwikkeling gerichte infrastructuur en de herbevolking van het gebied door etnische Polen. In andere opzichten was het bepaald minder succesvol. Hoofdstuk 4 onderzoekt op welke gebieden de staatsplanning in gebreke bleef en waarom. Het stelt de vraag welke gevolgen de falende staatsplanning had voor de sociale relaties op lokaal niveau. Eén van de hypothesen die het hoofdstuk naar voren brengt is dat de relatieve onmacht van de Poolse staat ten aanzien van de lokale gemeenschappen van grote invloed is geweest op de ontwikkeling van de onderlinge relaties tussen individuen en groepen in de dorpsgemeenschappen. Ondanks de machtsmiddelen die de staat ter beschikking stonden om haar idealen in de praktijk te brengen, was de werkelijke speelruimte van de lokale bevolking om buiten de staatsstructuren om te opereren relatief groot. Deze ontwikkeling bracht een samenleving voort met een geheel eigen dynamiek: één waarin macht werd aangevochten door uiteenlopende sociale groepen, en daarmee samenhangend, één waarin de machtsbalans niet van buiten was opgelegd maar zelf was bevochten. Een soortgelijke ontwikkeling deed zich voor op het gebied van de relaties tussen kerk en staat. Hoofdstuk 5 laat zien hoe de ontmanteling van de Grieks-katholieke kerk door de Poolse socialistische autoriteiten in de jaren vijftig en zestig van de vorige eeuw samenging met de culturele en religieuze onderdrukking van de Grieks-katholieke, grotendeels Oekraïense, geloofsgemeenschap in Polen. Op grond van archiefdonderzoek en interviews is het mogelijk in het hoofdstuk een gedetailleerd beeld te geven van de Grieks-katholieke geloofsgemeenschap in het dorp Komacza. We zien hoe deze het hoofd wist te bieden aan de vervolgingspolitiek en hoe zij er in slaagde de eigen religieuze en

184 Struggling for peace culturele identiteit te behouden. De door de staat afgedwongen sluiting van de Grieks- katholieke parochiekerk vormde een serieuze bedreiging voor het behoud van de religieuze en culturele identiteit van de Grieks-katholieke dorpelingen. De sluiting liep uit op een hoogoplopend conflict over de toekomst van de Grieks-katholieke geloofsgemeenschap in het dorp. Enkele Grieks-katholieke families bekeerden zich tot de Orthodoxie waarna zij de parochiekerk weer in gebruik mochten nemen, dit tot grote onvrede van de overige Grieks-katholieke dorpelingen. Het verzet van deze laatste groep bestond eruit dat zij zich niet neerlegden bij het verbod op uitoefening van hun geloof, maar hun kerkdiensten bleven voortzetten in de Rooms-katholieke parochiekerk. Nog tijdens het communisme werd in het dorp Komacza een nieuwe Grieks-katholieke parochiekerk gebouwd en ingezegend. Het onderzoeksmateriaal toont aan dat ook onder extreem repressieve omstandigheden mensen een weg kunnen vinden om repressief staatsbeleid naar hun eigen hand te zetten. Lokale vormen van verzet en accommodatie, en de daaruit voortvloeiende staat-kerk compromissen, ondermijnden op de lange termijn de effectiviteit van repressieve staatscontrole. Hoofdstuk 6 onderzoekt de invloed van het socialistische verleden op processen van identiteitsvorming in het democratische Polen. Centraal staat de theorie dat voormalige communistische samenlevingen in aanleg gevoelig zijn voor etnisch conflict. Deze theorie wordt getoetst aan de hand van het voorbeeld van de Lemko emancipatiebeweging die na 1990 een grote opleving kende, maar waarvan de leden ten tijde van het communistische bestuur als Oekraïners waren bestempeld. Het materiaal wijst uit dat twee elementen uit het Poolse socialistische verleden hebben bijgedragen aan een relatief grote gevoeligheid van de Poolse bevolking (meerderheid en minderheden incluis) voor nationalistische argumenten en retoriek: de dominantie van een exclusivistisch Pools nationalisme en de socialistische schaarste-economie. Hoofdstuk 6 laat zien hoe deze elementen van invloed zijn op de wijze waarop de politieke leiders en vertegenwoordigers van de Lemko minderheid in het huidige Polen opereren. Eén van de paradoxen is dat, hoewel de leiders en vertegenwoordigers van de Lemko minderheid een sterk beroep doen op de nationalistische gevoelens van hun politieke achterban, van deze nationalistische retoriek geen fundamentele bedreiging voor de Poolse meerderheid uitgaat. Dit is te verklaren uit het feit dat de Lemko minderheid in Polen geen politieke macht van betekenis heeft. De geschiedenis van verdrijving, deportatie en assimilatie heeft het aantal leden zodanig teruggedrongen en de gemeenschap zo sterk intern verdeeld dat de Lemko minderheid in Polen anno 1990 niet meer in staat is om effectief ten behoeve van het eigen groepsbelang te mobiliseren. Sterker, intolerantie binnen de groep is aanzienlijk groter dan intolerantie jegens leden van buiten de groep, hetgeen de onderlinge relaties tussen de Polen en de Lemkos juist ten goede komt. Samenvatting 185

Hoofdstuk 7 stelt de vraag hoe het komt het dat de regio waar de gemeente Komacza deel van uitmaakt—eens het strijdtoneel van massaal etnisch geweld—zich heeft ontwikkeld tot een in hoofdzaak vreedzame samenleving. Die vreedzaamheid wordt bevestigd door de lokale praktijk, waarin respect en vertrouwen in onderlinge relaties de boventoon voeren, evenals in de lokale discours, waarin multiculturele vreedzaamheid en tolerantie sterk worden benadrukt. Hoofdstuk 7 zoekt de verklaring voor deze vreedzame ‘toestand’ in de transformatie die de Poolse samenleving als geheel tijdens de tweede helft van de vorige eeuw heeft doorgemaakt. Van doorslaggevend belang is de verandering van de sociale netwerken in de dorpsgemeenschappen. Hier liggen twee ontwikkelingen aan ten grondslag: de naoorlogse deportaties en de geleidelijke integratie van de lokale dorpsgemeenschappen in de Poolse socialistische, en meer recent, de Poolse democratische staatsstructuur. Deze ontwikkelingen droegen bij tot (1) een toename van de economische, politieke, en sociale differentiatie onder de dorpsbevolking en (2) een uitbreiding van de contactmomenten en sociale relaties buiten het nauwe verband van de familie, de etnische groep en de dorpsgemeenschap. Wat ontstond was een samenleving waarvan de individuele leden met elkaar verbonden zijn door een veelheid aan relaties en contacten over de etnische-, religieuze-, familie- en dorpsgrenzen heen. Etnische en religieuze identiteit vormen niet langer een blauwdruk voor gedrag (sociale interactie) en overwegingen (oriëntatie, gevoelens van lotsverbondenheid) van het individu. De wederzijdse afhankelijkheden, belangenverstrengelingen en conflicterende loyaliteiten tussen de dorpelingen hebben de kans op effectieve en succesvolle mobilisatie op grond van etnisch en/of religieus verschil aanzienlijk verkleind. Het concluderende hoofdstuk, tenslotte, grijpt terug op de centrale onderzoeksvraag: Hoe komt het dat na de politieke omwenteling in 1990 massaal etnisch geweld in Polen uitbleef? Hoofdstuk 8 onderscheidt drie factoren die van cruciaal belang waren voor het ontstaan en de voortzetting van vreedzame relaties vóór en na 1990: 1) de opbouw van een sterke Poolse staat; 2) de etnische homogenisering van de Poolse natie; 3) de socialisatie en integratie van individuen en groepen in de Poolse samenleving. Het herstel van het geweldsmonopolie van de staat en de toenemende greep van de staat op nagenoeg alle terreinen van de Poolse samenleving beoogde en bevorderde de geleidelijke pacificatie en stabilisatie van relaties tussen individuen en groepen, waaronder die tussen de Poolse en Oekraïense bevolkingsgroepen. De politiek van etnische zuivering in de jaren veertig en vijftig van de vorige eeuw maakten van Polen een nagenoeg etnisch homogeen land, waarin etnische minderheden nauwelijks een politieke rol van betekenis speelden. De politieke realiteit van een sterke en etnisch homogene Poolse natiestaat legde de basis voor de ontwikkelingen na de politieke omwenteling in 1990: de geweldloze overgang van een communistisch naar een democratisch bestuur; de politieke garantie tot waarborging van de rechten van minderheden in Polen; het herstel van vriendschappelijke relaties met de 186 Struggling for peace

Poolse buurstaten waaronder de Oekraïne. De socialisatie en assimilatie van individuen en groepen in de Poolse samenleving, tenslotte, heeft er toe geleid dat er zowel op het lokale als op het centrale niveau geen belang is bij het gewelddadig oplossen van conflicten. Dit is niet alleen de norm die wordt gepropageerd door Poolse politici; zij wordt breed gedragen door de overgrote meerderheid van Poolse burgers. Deze vreedzame grondhouding legde de basis voor een Pools-Oekraïense toenadering en zelfs verzoening tijdens de jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw. Etnisch conflict of een verleden van etnisch geweld hoeven niet noodzakelijkerwijs uit te monden in gewelddadige confrontaties tussen etnische groepen. Het onderzoeksmateriaal laat zien dat conflict juist een belangrijke rol kan spelen bij het handhaven en bewaken van groepsgrenzen; het vervult daarmee een waardevolle integrerende functie. Ook laat het materiaal zien dat de overgang van vreedzame vormen van conflict naar gewelddadige vormen van conflict, en andersom, een fase-overgang betreft. De aandacht van deze studie gaat nadrukkelijk uit naar de ‘vredesfase’, namelijk de fase waarin conflicten op een niet-gewelddadige manier worden beslecht. Een belangrijke conclusie is dat tijdens de ‘vredesfase’ een zichzelf versterkende dynamiek in werking treedt: ontwikkelingen op het macro- en microniveau treden met elkaar in wisselwerking op een manier die de basis voor vertrouwen en zekerheid legt; deze basis heeft invloed op het denken en voelen en zet aan tot vreedzame gedragingen van mensen; dit geheel vormt het verwachtingspatroon van mensen in een bepaalde tijd en op een bepaalde plaats. Een samenleving in de ‘vredesfase’ legt een geheel andere basis van vertrouwen en bevordert een geheel ander verwachtingspatroon dan een samenleving die in de ‘geweldsfase’ verkeert. Eén en ander betekent dat in een samenleving in de ‘vredesfase’ anders op etnische spanningen en conflictsituaties wordt gereageerd dan in een samenleving in de ‘geweldsfase’. Dit verklaart waarom na de politieke omwenteling in Polen in 1990 massaal etnisch geweld tussen de Polen en de Oekraïners uitbleef, ondanks het bestaan van spanningen en conflicten tussen deze bevolkingsgroepen. Anders dan in veel andere voormalige communistische staten was er in Polen in de jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw sprake van een hoge mate van stabiliteit, welke niet alleen de basis legde voor een vrij algemene acceptatie van de centrale overheid, maar ook voor een algemeen vertrouwen in een vreedzame toekomst voor Polen en Oekraïners in Polen. Streszczenie

Wybuch masowej, etnicznej przemocy w by ej Jugos awii oraz innych by ych komunistycznych pastwach, po obaleniu Imperium Sowieckiego w 1991 roku, wstrz sn niezwykle silnie opini publiczn . Sk d wzi si tak nagle ten zaciek y nacionalizm, dlaczego okaza si tak bardzo krwawy i jakie jeszcze inne ogniska zapalne zdo a roznieci w przysz oci? Równie w Polsce i na Ukrainie, po demokratycznych przemianach, lea y potencjalne ogniska etnicznego i narodowociowego konfliktu: ustalowe po drugiej wojnie wiatowej granice bez historycznego uzasadnienia, nowe i s abe jeszcze demokratyczne pastwa, niepewne elity rz dz ce, powojenne traumy i wspomnienia po etnicznych czystkach, maj cych miejsce w pierwszej po owie dwudziestego wieku. Ale podczas gdy w by ej Jugos awii, powojenne rozpami tywania i dawne rywalizacje zosta y wysuni te przez centralne w adze na pierwszy polityczny plan, w Polsce, dyskusje o bolesnych i kontrowersyjnych wydarzeniach z polsko-ukraiskiej przesz oci, pozostawi y w adze polityczne badaczom, dziennikarzom i innym zainteresowanym grupom. Ich ekspertyzy i opinie, podyktowane cz sto normami moralnymi, oywi y szerok , spo eczn dyskusj i z oy y si na wielostronnie rozwaany temat. Przedmiotem niniejszych bada jest kwestia, dlaczego w Polsce, w latach dziewi dziesi tych ubieg ego wieku, nowo uformu owane pogl dy o wspó czesnych „jednonarodowociowych pastwach” zostaj rozwi zane pokojowo. Rozpatruj c wydarzenia w innych by ych komunistycznych pastwach, mona równie zada pytanie negatywne: dlaczego Polacy i Ukraicy w Polsce nie zachowali si tak jak Serbowie, Chorwacy i Boniacy w by ej Jugos awii? Jak to si sta o, e po politycznych rotacjach w 1990 roku, masowa etniczna przemoc nie wybucha, pomimo polsko-ukraiskiej krwawej przecie przesz oci? Ta historyczno-antropologiczna praca podchodzi do powyej zadanych pyta z punktu widzenia rónorodnych perspektyw i metodologii, które omawiam oddzielnie w rozdziale pierwszym. G ównym punktem s tam procesy zmian, które nast pi y w Polsce w pierwszym pi dziesi cioleciu po drugiej wojnie wiatowej i które to, w rezultacie, doprowadzi y do pokojowej koegzystencji Polaków i Ukraiców po politycznych przemianach w roku 1990. Uwaga zwrócona zostanie równie na sposób, w jaki to przypadki indywidualne i grupowe, oraz ich mikrohistoria, zwi zane s z makrospo ecznym i makrohistorycznym rozwojem. U podstaw badania ley przypuszczenie, e zarówno pokój jak i przemoc nie pojawiaj si w sposób samoistny, ale s dynamicznym i cz sto sprzecznie spe niaj cym si procesem, który naley zarówno opisa jak i wyjani . Centralnym punktem mojej analizy jest obszar po udniowo- 188 Struggling for peace wschodniej Polski, gdzie przebywa am kilkakrotnie w celach badawczych w latach 1997- 2008. Oprócz antropologicznej analizy tematu, korzystam w badaniu równie z wielu rónorodnych róde pisemnych, zaczerpni tych z archiwów i bibliotek. Badania w terenie koncentruj si g ównie w gminie Komacza, wchodz cej dzi w sk ad województwa podkarpackiego. Wybór gminy Komaczy, jako miejsca bada, by uzasadniony ci g obecnoci Polaków i Ukraiców w tym regionie, zarówno przed, w czasie, jak i po drugiej wojnie wiatowej. Rozdzia y, z których sk ada si niniejsza dysertacja, istniej jako samodzielne artyku y, z których wi kszo zosta a ju opublikowana. Opis wspó ycia polsko-ukraiskiej spo ecznoci rozpoczynam w roku 1943, w którym to wiosn Ukraiska Armia Powstacza (UPA), pragn ca utworzy niezalen Ukrain , rozpocz a etniczne czystki, w wyniku których dziesi tki tysi cy osób, g ównie obywateli polskich, ponios o mier . To wydarzenie sta o si przyczyn polsko-ukraiskiej wojny cywilnej, w której rywalizuj cy ze sob ukraiscy i polscy nacjonalici prowadzili ze sob zaci t walk . W konflikcie tym utraci o ycie kolejne tysi ce polskich i ukraiskich walcz cych oraz osób cywilnych. Drugi rozdzia jest prób odpowiedzi na zagadnienie, dlaczego konflikt polsko-ukraiski, w latach czterdziestych ubieg ego wieku, nabra tak drastycznych proporcji. Konflikt ten nawietlam z dwóch punktów widzenia: z punktu szeroko rozpatrywanego kontekstu politycznego, w którym to konflikt si rozegra , oraz z punktu widzenia indywidualnego dowiadczenia jednostek, które w nim by y zmuszone uczestniczy . Te dwie perspektywy dope niaj si nawzajem w kilku wanych punktach. Pierwsza z nich zaznacza moment, w którym polityczny konflikt pomi dzy dwoma grupami narodowociowymi zamienia si w krwaw konfrontacj , druga perspektywa proponuje zrozumienie spo ecznych i psychologicznych konsekwencji brutalnej konfrontacji, na bezporednio w nim uczestnicz cych. Obydwie perspektywy wskazuj na uniwersalne elementy, które odgrywaj istotn rol w procesie eskalacji przemocy: wytworzenie si „próni politycznej” i zw zany z tym brak monopolu przemocy kontrolowanej przez pastwo, wzmocniona walka o przetrwanie grup i jednostek indywidualnych, oraz z o, które staje si powszechne. Podczas gdy poj cie „czystki etniczne” odnosi si , w ogólnym uyciu, do praktyk ludobójczych, jakie na przyk ad mia y miejsce w by ej Jugos awii, w trzecim rozdziale badania zostaje nawietlony inny aspekt czystek etnicznych, mianowicie polityka demograficznej manipulacji, która zosta a zastosowana w po owie lat czterdziestych dwudziestego wieku w Polsce Rzeczpospolitej Ludowej. Nowy, komunistyczny rz d d y do jednolitej pod kadym wzgl dem Polski, zarówno pod wzgl dem ekonomicznym jak i spo ecznym, politycznym, etnicznym oraz narodowociowym. Aby ow jednolito zrealizowa , jedn z radykalnych politycznych rozporz dze nowo rz dz cych by y masowe przesiedlania ludnoci niemieckiej, ukraiskiej, ruskiej, bia oruskiej i litewskiej z Polski, oraz ludnoci polskiej do Polski w latach 1944-1947. Dziesi lat póniej, w kocu

Streszczenie 189 lat pie dziesi tych, polski komunistyczny rz d stosowa , na silnie zdyskryminowanych mniejszociach narodowych, polityk „odwrotn ”. Niniejsza polityka, która w dzisiejszej terminologii mog aby zosta opisana jako silnie zaaplikowana polityka „pozytywnej dyskryminacji”, polega a na likwidowaniu drugoplanowych pozycji zajmowanych przez cz onków mniejszoci narodowych i ich zmuszaniu do integracji z Polsk socjalistyczn . W rozdziale trzecim zostanie nawietlone t o historyczne tej radykalnej zmiany w zarz dzaniu mniejszociami narodowymi, na przyk adzie ukraiskiej mniejszoci w Polsce. Badanie dowodzi, e pod pow ok tej pozornie, na pierwszy rzut oka, odwrotnej, nieprzejednanej formie uprzejmoci, kryj si te same polityczne motywacje. Polityka z jednej strony—czystek etnicznych, z drugiej—pozytywnej dyskryminacji, moe zosta wyjaniona jako dwie róne odpowiedzi na to samo polityczne pytanie: w jaki sposób rz d pastwa moe pe ni ca kowit polityczn kontrol nad ludnoci , zarówno mniejszoci jak i wi kszoci narodowej. Lata pi dziesi te i sze dziesi te ubieg ego wieku, by y, dla nowej socjalistycznej Polski, latami rekonstrukcji i uruchomienia nowego socjalno-ekonomicznego systemu w miastach i na wsiach. Równie odizolowany, cz ciowo wyludniony i silnie przez wojn cywiln dotkni ty region Bieszczad nie unikn wp ywu centralnego, socjalistycznego rz du. Centralne planowanie gospodarcze postanowi o zrealizowa w tym regionie kilka wanych celów, mi dzy innymi, budow infrastruktury zaprogramowanej przez rozwój socjalistyczny oraz ponowne zaludnienie regionu przez ludno narodowoci polskiej. W rozdziale czwartym zostanie ukazane, w jakich dziedzinach i dlaczego planowanie gospodarcze rz du si nie uda o. Pojawi si kolejne zagadnienie, jak wp yn o owe chybione planowanie na stosunki spo eczne na lokalnej p aszczynie. Jedn z hipotez, która zostanie przedstawiona, proponuje wersj , wed ug której polski rz d, stosunkowo bezsilny wobec rozwoju miejscowych spo ecznoci, mia due znaczenie na rozwój wzajemnych stosunków pomi dzy jednostkami indywidualnymi, a grupami na wsiach. Zauway mona, i pomimo wielu rónorodnych sposobów, którymi dysponowa rz d, aby wprowadzi swe idea y do praktyki, autonomia ludnoci lokalnej, pozwalaj ca jej dzia a na zewn trz struktur narzuconych przez w adz , by a stosunkowo dua. Ten rozwój wytworzy spo eczestwo z zupe nie w asn dynamik : spo eczestwo, w którym to w adza zosta a zakwestionowana przez oddzielnie funkcjonuj ce grupy i zwi zany z tym fakt, ze równowaga w adzy w spo eczestwie nie z zewn trz by a ustalana, a musia a sama zosta wywalczona. Podobny rozwój ustanowi si w relacjach pomi dzy kocio em, a pastwem. Rozdzia pi ty koncentruje si na omówieniu, w jaki sposób rozbiór greckokatolickiego kocio a, dokonany przez polskie socjalistyczne w adze w latach pi dziesi tych i sze dziesi tych ubieg ego wieku, by zwi zany z kulturowym i religijnym uciskaniem wspólnoty greckokatolickiej, sk ad jacej si w wi kszoci z ukraiskich wyznawców. Dzi ki

190 Struggling for peace badaniom danych archiwalnych oraz przeprowadzonym wywiadom, w rozdziale tym moliwe jest szczegó owe przedstawienie religijnej wspólnoty greckokatolickiej we wsi Komacza. Zobaczymy, w jaki sposób wspólnota ta stawia a czo a politycznym przeladowaniom i jak uda o jej si zachowa w asn religijn i kulturow tosamo . Badania dowodz , e wymuszone przez pastwo rozwi zanie parafii greckokatolickiej sta o si powanym zagroeniem w moliwoci utrzymania greckokatolickiej tosamoci ludnoci wiejskiej. Rozwi zanie to doprowadzi o do szybko rosn cego konfliktu, dotycz cego przysz oci tej wspólnoty we wsi. W konsekwencji, niektóre greckokatolickie rodziny nawróci y si na prawos awie, aby móc na nowo korzysta z parafialnej cerkwi, ku wielkiemu niezadowoleniu pozosta ych cz onków tej wspólnoty. Pozostali wyznawcy kontynuowali liturgie w rzymskokatoliskim kociele parafialnym, pomimo i praktykowanie religii zosta o zabronione. Jeszcze w czasie komunizmu, we wsi Komacza, zbudowano i pob ogos awiono now cerkiew greckokatolick . Dokumenty bada wskazuj , e nawet w sytuacjach silnej represji, ludzie potrafili znale wyjcie, aby owej represyjnej polityce pastwa nie ulec. Miejscowe formy oporu i przystosowa oraz wynikaj ce z tego pastwowo-kocielne kompromisy naderwa y, w rezultacie, efektywno represyjnej kontroli pastwowej. W rozdziale szóstym badam wp yw socjalistycznej przesz oci na proces formowania tosamoci w demokratycznej Polsce. Ogólnie przyjte przypuszczenie, i by e komunistyczne spo eczestwa w budowie s wraliwe na etniczny konflikt, zostaje sprawdzone na przyk adzie emancypacji mniejszoci emków w Polsce, ruchu oywionego bardzo po 1990, którego to cz onkowie, przez komunistyczne jeszcze w tym czasie rz dy, zostali natychmiastowo nazwani Ukraicami. Materia y bada dowodz , e dwa elementy, z polskiej socjalistycznej przesz oci, sta y si przyczyn stosunkowo duej wraliwoci ludnoci polskiej, zarówno wikszoci jak i mniejszoci narodowych, na nacjonalistyczne argumenty i retoryk: absolutna dominacja polskiego nacjonalizmu i socjalistyczny system niedostatku. W rozdziale szóstym zobaczymy jak wyej wymienione elementy wp ywaj na sposób, w jaki dzia aj liderzy oraz reprezentanci emków w dzisiejszej Polsce. Jednym z paradoksów jest fakt, i pomimo olbrzymiego nacisku ich podstpnej polityki na manipulacje uczuciami nacjonalistycznymi, z owej nacjonalistycznej retoryki nie wychodzi nic, co mog oby zosta odebrane jako zagroenie przez polsk wikszo narodow . Mona to wyjani faktem, e emkowie jako grupa nie posiadaj w Polsce adnej politycznej si y, która mog aby co znaczy . Historia przepdze, przymusowych przesiedle i asymilacji zredukowa a liczb jej cz onków tak znacznie, a spo eczno tak silnie wewntrznie podzieli a, e mniejszo emków w Polsce w latach dziewi dziesi tych nie jest w stanie efektywnie zmobilizowa si , aby broni interesów w asnej grupy. Ponadto, nietolerancja wewn trz grupy okazuje si by znacznie wiksza, ni nietolerancja manifestowana na jej zewn trz, co powoduje, e we

Streszczenie 191 wzajemnych stosunkach mi dzy Polakami, a spo ecznoci emkowsk napi cie praktycznie nie istnieje. Rozdzia siódmy b dzie prób wyjanienia kwestii, w jaki sposób region, w którego sk ad wchodzi gmina Komacza, czyli teren, na którym wczeniej odby y si walki masowej, etnicznej przemocy, rozwija si przede wszystkim w pokojowe wspó ycie spo eczestwa. Owa pokojowo jest potwierdzana w miejscowej praktyce, w której to we wzajemnych stosunkach góruj szacunek i zaufanie oraz w miejscowym dyskursie, w którym wielokulturowa pokojowo i tolerancja silnie zostaj podkrelone. W rozdziale siódmym szukam wyjanienia tego pokojowego „stanu” podczas transformacji, które polskie spo eczestwo, jako ca o , przesz o w drugiej po owie ubieg ego wieku. Decyduj ce znaczenie w wyjanieniu ma zmiana uk adu spo ecznego w gminach wiejskich, spowodowana powojennymi deportacjami oraz post puj c integracj miejscowych spo ecznoci wiejskich z socjalistyczn i bardziej niedawn , demokratyczn struktur pastwa polskiego. Te rozwini cia przyczyni y si , po pierwsze, do zwi kszenia zrónicowania ludnoci wiejskiej pod wzgl dem ekonomicznym, politycznym i spo ecznym oraz, po drugie, do rozszerzenia kontaktów i spo ecznych stosunków na zewn trz w skich wi zów rodzinnych, etnicznych i wiejskich. Fakt, i obecnym spo eczestwie indywidualni cz onkowie powi zani s ze sob du iloci stosunków i kontaktów przechodz cych poza granice etniczne, religijne, rodzinne i wiejskie, powoduje e, etniczna i religijna tosamo nie formuj d uej modelu w sposobie zachowania oraz mylenia jednostki. Wzajemne zalenosci i konfliktowe lojalnoci, istniej ce pomi dzy ludnoci wiejsk , maj obecnie zmniejszon szans na skuteczn i pe n sukcesu mobilizacj , opart na gruncie etnicznej i/albo religijnej rónicy. W cz ci podsumowuj cej si gam z powrotem do kluczowego pytania badania: jak to si sta o, e po politycznych rotacjach w 1990 masowa, etniczna przemoc nie wybucha? W rozdziale ósmym zostaj wyrónione trzy czynniki, maj ce niezwykle wane znaczenie w istnieniu i kontynuacji pokojowych stosunków przed i po roku 1990: (1) budowa silnego polskiego pastwa, (2) etniczna jednolito polskiej narodowoci, (3) socjalizacja i asymilacja indywidualnych jednostek i grup z polsk spo ecznoci . Przywrócenie pastwu monopolu przemocy oraz zmniejszenie kontroli pastwa, praktycznie na wszystkich p aszczyznach polskiego spo eczestwa, faworyzowa o stopniow pacyfikacj i stabilizacj stosunków mi dzy jednostkami a grupami, wsród których, mi dzy innymi, znajdowa a si równie polska i ukraiska ludno . Ponadto, polityka czystek etnicznych, w latach czterdziestych i pi dziesi tych ubieg ego wieku, zrobi a z Polski prawie ca kowicie jednonarodowociowe pastwo, w którym etniczne mniejszoci nie gra y adnej politycznie wanej roli. W konsekwencji, polityczna rzeczywisto silnego i etnicznie jednonarodowociowego pastwa, po politycznych rotacjach w 1990 roku, by a podstaw nast puj cych rozwi za: przejcia rz dów z komunistycznych na

192 Struggling for peace demokratyczne bez uycia przemocy, polityczna gwarancja r cz ca za bezpieczestwo praw mniejszoci etnicznych w Polsce oraz przywrócenie przyjacielskich relacji z s siadami Polski, mi dzy innymi z Ukrain . Socjalizacja i asymilacja jednostek indywidualnych i grup w polskiej spo ecznoci doprowadzi a do zrozumienia, e rozwi zywanie konfliktów drog przemocy, zarówno na lokalnej jak i centralnej p aszczynie, nie przynosi adnych korzyci. Norma ta, nie tylko jest propagowana przez polskich polityków, jest ona równie szerzej popierana przez wi kszo obywateli polskich. To pokojowe nastawienie sta o si podstaw polsko-ukraiskiego zblienia, a nawet pojednania w latach dziewi dziesi tych ubieg ego wieku. Etniczny konflikt albo te przesz o etnicznej przemocy nie musz koniecznie koczy si gwa town konfrontacj pomi dzy etnicznymi grupami. Dokumenty bada dowodz , e w anie konflikt moe gra kluczow rol w utrzymaniu i czuwaniu nad granicami grup; moe spe nia funkcj integracyjn pe n wartoci. Dokumenty przemawiaj równie za faktem, ze przejcie pokojowych form konfliktu w g awtowne jego formy i odwrotnie, dotycz fazy przejciowej. Uwaga bada skoncentrowana jest silnie na „fazie pokojowej”, mianowicie na fazie, w której konflikty rozwi zywane s w sposób, nie uciekaj cy si do przemocy. Wanym wnioskiem jest fakt, e podczas „fazy pokojowej” uruchamia si sama sob podsilana dynamika, polegaj ca na tym, e rozwoje na makro i mikrop aszczyznie wkraczaj ze soba we wzajemne oddzia ywanie w sposób, który staje si podstaw dla budowy pewnoci i zaufania. Podstawa ta wp ywa na sposób mylenia i wyraania uczu , a to staje si przyczyn pokojowego nastawienia ludnoci; ta ca o tworzy pole oczekiwa ludnoci w danym miejscu i o danym czasie. Wspó ycie spo eczestwa w fazie pokoju proponuje ca kowicie inne podstawy i popiera rozwój ca kowicie innych oczekiwa, ni wspó ycie spo eczestwa, które obróci o si w stron przemocy. Jedno i drugie oznacza, e spo eczestwo w pokojowej fazie inaczej reaguje na napi cia i sytuacje konfliktowe, ni to jest moliwe w fazie przemocy. Ten fakt wyjania w anie, dlaczego po politycznych przemianach w Polsce w 1990 roku masowy i etniczny gwa t pomi dzy Polakami i Ukraicami nie wybuch , pomimo istnienia licznych napi i konfliktów. W Polsce w latach dziewi dziesi tych, inaczej ni w niektórych innych, by ych komunistycznych pastwach, by o mona mówi o duej stabilnoci, która nie tylko by a podstaw do do ogólnej akceptacji centralnej w adzy, ale równie do ogólnego zaufania w pokojow przysz o dla Polaków i Ukraiców yj cych w Polsce.

The outbursts of massive ethnic violence in the Yugoslav successor states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 surprised and worried many contemporary observers, as did other upsurges of ethnic nationalism and conflict in a number of post-communist countries. Whereas wartime conflicts and ancient rivalries took centre stage in Yugoslav politics in the 1990s, in Poland the painful and controversial events in Polish-Ukrainian history were tackled in an open public debate.

This study starts from the question how and why in Poland in the 1990s revitalized ideas of a modern ‘nation-state’ found a peaceful articulation. It asks the negative question: Why did Poles and Ukrainians in Poland not behave like Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in former Yugoslavia? Why is it that after the regime change in 1990 massive violence between Poles and Ukrainians remained absent, despite a history of Polish-Ukrainian hostility and violence?