July 2016: President Petro Poroshenko kneels before the monument to the victims of Volyn tragedy. Source: President of Ukraine
.Volhynia, a border region in the northwest of present-day Ukraine, is almost completely absent on Europe’s landscape of memory. Here, in 1943, a section of Ukraine’s nationalist underground massacred the region’s Polish population. These events, despite being one of the largest mass killings of the Second World War, are barely known in Ukraine today. Across the border, though, “Wołyn 1943”, as the events are known, is gradually moving to the very centre of Poland’s memorial culture, and is playing a significant role in Polish attitudes towards Ukraine.
I have been active in discussions of Volhynia in both Poland and Ukraine since the mid-2000s. While expressing my views I have often had an uncomfortable feeling of being presented (and perceived) as “a Ukrainian voice”, though I am not at all interested in defending or denouncing any national tradition. Instead, I believe it is crucial to consider how researchers can move beyond the predictable logic of two “national truths” and negotiating the best diplomatic formula to define what happened in Volhynia.
