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History

The Trubeckoj Massacre in Mscislau – Centuries Later

25 May 2021 Henadź Sahanovič

The article is devoted to an episode in the 1654–1667 war between Muscovy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: the capture of Mscislaŭ by the Tsarist army, accompanied by the mass murder of its defenders and inhabitants. On the basis of published sources and literature on the subject, the author has tried to trace the functioning of the tragic events in the memory of the local population, as well as show how the Trubeckoj Massacre is represented in the historiography of Belarus and Russia. The author disagrees with the thesis of some Russian historians regarding the complete conformity of the massacre with the “laws of war” that were generally accepted in early modern Europe and believes that in Russian interpretations of the events one can see the desire to justify the Tsar’s policy and the unwillingness to admit inconvenient facts.

History

A Recognition Question of a Genocide: Russian Atrocities in the North Caucasus

25 May 2021 Cem Kumuk

Throughout history, violence has been an indispensable part of the Russian state tradition. Not only non-Russian subjects but also ethnic Russians have experienced their share of this tradition. In many cases, this tradition has turned into genocidal practices against non-Russian subjects. Due to the current political bottlenecks of the international community, this article focuses on the difficulties experienced in the recognition of these crimes against humanity and examines the genocidal practices of the Russian state in the North Caucasus, especially the Circassian Genocide in the 19th century. For more than two centuries, Russian state politics has been trying to erase the term “the Caucasus” as a geographical term in international public opinion and to make this region part of Southern Russia by cleansing or assimilating the indigenous North Caucasian nations. While the article focuses on the ‘velikorus’ (Great Russian) practices in the Tsarist and Soviet periods, it draws attention to the fact that there have been similar examples in the first thirty years of the so-called Russian federal state.

History

The Kishenev Pogrom of 1903 in the Russian Socio-Political Narrative

25 May 2021 Еkaterina Norkina

The article is devoted to the study of the Russian socio-political narrative regarding the tragedy in Kishinev in 1903. By “narrative” in this study, the author means, first of all, what was expressed in the press by the authorities, public figures, and correspondents whose publications were addressed to the Russian-speaking readership. Among the most frequently discussed topics are the search for the main culprit, the reasons for the pogroms, and the actions of the authorities. The main sources used are periodicals expressing the views of different political forces of the Russian Empire. The author concludes that the boundaries of ideological orientation were blurred in statements about the Kishinev tragedy. The conviction that the pogroms were organized and prepared in advance matured more and more among those who spoke publicly, but not all those who spoke out pointed to the authorities as the main organizer. The Russian socio-political narrative regarding the Kishinev tragedy was supplemented by a “Western” narrative: as a result, confidence in the government’s involvement in Russian society grew stronger.

History

The Bolshevik Expansion and Occupation of Ukraine (December 1917 – February 1918)

25 May 2021 Vladyslav Verstiuk

The article presents an overview of the background and course of the first of four Russian–Ukrainian wars during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921: the war unleashed by the Russian Bolsheviks in late 1917. The author shares the story of the Bolsheviks’ political manipulations which preceded the military invasion; he talks of the Bolsheviks’ public hypocrisy, which combined recognition of the right of nations to self-determination with unacceptable demands of Ukrainians. The Bolshevik strategy was to portray the attack on the Ukrainian People’s Republic as an internal Ukrainian conflict – the struggle of the “proletariat” against the “bourgeois Central Rada”. We examine the process of creating a puppet Soviet government of Ukraine, under the cover of which troops from Russia led the occupation of the republic. In addition, we emphasize the theme of “red terror” that was widely used by the Bolsheviks during the war. We draw attention to the similarity of approaches to warfare in contemporary Russia of today and a century ago.

History

“I Only Do It to Stay Alive”: Development of the Narrative of “Unification of the Western Lands of Ukraine and Belarus With the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Republics” in Soviet Historical Propaganda

25 May 2021 Jan Szumski

The article analyses selected aspects of the formation of the historical propaganda narrative of the unification of the lands of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR and of Western Belarus with the Belarusian SSR as well as the participation of individual historians deliberately involved or for various reasons forced to take part in developing the academic justification for the change in borders. The knowledge and authority of scholars often originating from the pre-revolutionary school were necessary for creating a historical narrative legitimizing the change in policy and reinforcing the propaganda message.

History

“Impudent Provocation by Finnish Warmongers” – The Shelling of Mainila (1939) in the Context of Soviet / Russian Propaganda and Information Warfare

25 May 2021 Kati Parppei

The shelling of Mainila in November 1939 was used as a pretext by the Soviet Union to start a war against Finland and is often presented in military history as a classic case of a false-flag operation. This article examines this incident in the context of Soviet propaganda, post-Soviet history politics, and contemporary Russian war propaganda and rhetoric. It argues that the same strategies – blaming others for provocation, “accusation in a mirror”, and systematically emphasizing one’s innocence –applied by Soviet newspapers to their reportage of this “provocation” are applied by Russian propagandists in the contemporary domestic and international media environment.

History

Who are the Basilians?

25 May 2021 Ihor Skochylias

The main topic of the article is the history of the Basilian Order in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th–18th centuries, including the foundation and daily life of the order, its most important personalities, its internal laws, and relations between the clergy and laity. Particular attention is paid to the cultural role of the Basilians in social life, their struggle to survive under the Russian authorities, as well as the Basilian movement’s crucial role in the development of Ukrainian and Belarusian culture of the Modern era. The article also describes the Basilian Order’s most revered shrines, the activities of its main donors from the Polish–Lithuanian nobility, and the masterpieces of church architecture of that era that were created in Basilian monasteries.

History

Book Review: Leonid Tymošenko, Rusʹka relihijna kulʹtura Vilʹna. Kontekst doby. Oseredky. Literatura ta Knyžnistʹ. (XVІ – peša tretyna XVІІ st.): mononhrafija. Drohobyč: Kolo, 2020, 796 s.

25 May 2021 Henryk Litwin

History

From Editor. Overcoming Sovietness

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

History

Farewell to Imagined Post-Societness. Is It Still Justified to Use the Term ‘Post-Soviet’?

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

Extract from a discussion held on 27 October 2022 at the University of Helsinki as part of the 21st Annual Aleksanteri Conference, “The New Era of Insecurity: How Russia’s War in Ukraine Changes the World”.

History

The Traditions of Ukrainian Democracy May Be Problematic, But Their Existence Is Undeniable: Interview with Prof. Serhii Plokhii

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

Serhii Plokhii, a leading expert on the history of Central and Eastern Europe, is a Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. He is also a member of PEN Ukraine. Prof. Plokhii has won numerous awards, including the Early Slavic Studies Association Distinguished Scholarship Award (2009), the Lionel Gelber Prize (2015), the Antonovych Foundation Prize (2015), the Shevchenko National Prize (2018), and the Book Forum Best Book Award (2020).

History

Pax-Sovietica? The Final End of Post-Sovietness

25 May 2021 Wojciech Konończuk

This article argues that use of the terms “post-Soviet states” or “post-Soviet region” does more to obscure than to explain anything. Although these terms have become anachronistic and misleading as they suggest a group of countries that still have much in common, they are still used because the area is traditionally and erroneously perceived as a certain whole with shared rules. The disintegration of this territory that has been visible since 1991 is no surprise but indicates a return to the situation before the Russian Empire’s expansion and colonization efforts. A process of restoration of historically great macroregions is taking place in the area: Eastern Europe, the Southern Caucasus, and Central Asia, each of which has a different cultural and civilizational identity, resulting in profound differences in their political and economic systems along with the pluralization of the influences of international actors. Despite Russian attempts to curb the territory’s political, economic, and social disintegration, it has proved unstoppable and is being accelerated by Russian policy. Moscow’s once hegemonic position in the region is becoming a thing of the past. Russia is no longer an attractive partner as it has become not a source of modernization, ideas, and technologies, but of problems and a threat to security and stability.

History

Politics of Memory

The Ricochet of Leninopad and the Second Wave of Desovietization of Lithuanian Public Space

25 May 2021 Rasa Čepaitienė

The article analyses the influence of the desovietization of Ukrainian public space (known as Leninopad), which started in 2014 as part of the “second wave” of the dismantling of Soviet monuments in Lithuania. Two well-known cases that have sparked the most debate among experts and the public are discussed in detail: the removal of the socialist-realist sculptures from the Green Bridge in Vilnius in 2015, and the removal of a monument to the writer Petras Cvirka in 2021. The conclusion is that in the post-Soviet and post-socialist region, in response to Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, shifts in the politics of history have become a pretext not only for attempts to cleanse public spaces of the remnants of the Soviet symbolic landscape, but also for solving local political problems, or for the need for decommunization as a pretext for the economic development of vacant urban areas.

Politics of Memory

History

From State Terror to International Conflict. A place of memory: Katyn as a foreign policy tool of Putin’s Russia

25 May 2021 Tomas Sniegon

This text discusses the transformations of the Katyn memorial site near Smolensk in western Russia, where, in 1940, the mass murder of more than 4,000 Polish military officers who were prisoners of war occurred. After the Soviet Union’s admission of guilt in 1990, it seemed for two decades that Katyn could also serve as a place for mutual reconciliation between post-communist Poland and post-Soviet Russia. However, in the period of increasing tension between Russia and Poland after 2010, the monument in Katyn became an object of Russian–Polish confrontation. The author concludes that the Katyn memorial complex today illustrates the tendency to patriotize and detraumatize Soviet crimes, whereby the positive events of the Soviet era – especially the victory over Germany in World War II – are “Russified” and newly politically traumatized in parallel with the trivialization and marginalization of murder and crimes against human rights. The new form of memory in Katyn reflects an increasingly firmly dictated line from above that combines Russian nationalism, Orthodox faith, and a sentimental view of the period of Communist rule.

History

Politics of Memory

‘Eternal Russian-Ukrainian Friendship’ – A Case Study of How a Political Concept Was Memorialized and is Dememorialized

25 May 2021 Oleksandra Gaidai

The article touches on a concept that was in the very essence of imagining relations between Ukraine and Russia: “The Friendship of People.” The historical imagination had a tangible impact on Russian politics, and no political concept has ever been so damaging for Ukraine as this one. This concept undermined Ukraine’s subjectivity and led to the “rewriting” of Ukrainian history. Monuments dedicated to the “friendship” of these two peoples reveal the centrality of this notion in Soviet politics toward Ukraine. Notably, these monuments appeared only in Ukraine – there are none in Russia. The article analyses the erection of these monuments and how they have been dealt with since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine in 2014. It also shows how monumental art is used to foster specific interpretations of the past to define the present and future, and how this particular story of monuments and narratives has always been problematic in Ukraine. The article questions the homogeneity of Soviet political monumental heritage, presenting the complexity of monuments that depict national and Soviet narratives. These monuments and their interpretations should be discussed in the framework of a political campaign aimed at tying Ukraine to Russia. Therefore, the Ukrainian perspective on the notion of “friendship” and its memorialization is fundamental.

Politics of Memory

History

The Twentieth Century Colonialism within Ukrainian Academic and Public Discourse in the Era of Independence

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

The article analyses the notion post-, anti- colonialism in Ukrainian political and public discourse since 1991. The author focuses on the debate about coloniality and its reflections on Ukrainian political thought in ХХ century. The first part of the article devotes to the problems of applying postcolonial theories to the Ukrainian context and the specifics of the relationship between the Soviet Union’s center and the national republics that represented the periphery. The second part analyses the influence of the legacy of Ukrainian national communists on the notion of colonialism in contemporary Ukrainian historiography, while the third part focus on the processes of decolonization represented in public discourse. Finally, the author analyses how Euromaidan launched the politics of decommunization and how it affected the post-Soviet space.

History

International affairs

How the Russian-Ukrainian War Broke Out – On the Backstage of International Politics From Jacub Kumoch Perspective. Source material edited by Łukasz Adamski.

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

This conversation between Igor Janke and Jakub Kumoch is an important source for research into the beginning of the Russian–Ukrainian war and the role of Polish diplomacy in the winter and spring of 2022. After all, it is not often that direct participants in high-level international talks share their memories of key historical moments, along with many important details and observations, less than a year after the events themselves. This is what Jakub Kumoch does – and he does it in a colourful way. A Polish political scientist and diplomat who has served as Poland's ambassador to Switzerland, Turkey and other countries, Kumoch was State Secretary for International Affairs in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland from 2021 to 2023. During this time, he was in close contact with many governments, including those of Ukraine, the United States, France and Germany. In the form of a long chat between two friends, he shared his memories of this period with Igor Janke, a well-known Polish journalist. This conversation is also extremely interesting because it vividly illustrates the thinking in Polish government circles about the challenges to regional and global security associated with Russia's war against Ukraine and the future of Polish–Ukrainian relations, including the historical dialogue.

International affairs

Moldova is a Multifaceted State in Terms of National Identity: Interview with Alexandru Burian

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

Alexandru Burian is a doctor of law, professor in the Department of International Law and External Economic Relations Law of Moldova State University, and pro-rector of the University of European Studies of Moldova. He is the author of more than 250 pieces of scholarly writing, including 6 monographs and 12 university textbooks in the fields of public international law, diplomatic and consular law, geopolitics, diplomatic protocol, and etiquette. In 1988–1990, he was a Senior Scientific Assistant in the International Department of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and Senior Researcher in the International Relations Department, Institute of Marxism–Leninism of the CPSU CC (Moscow). In 1990–1994, he was a Member of Parliament of the Republic of Moldova. In 1993–1994, he was the Chairman of the Commission for International Relations, and the head of the Moldovan parliamentary delegation to PACE. In 1994–1995, he was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Moldova. Burian was the head of Moldovan government delegations in negotiations with Iran, Cuba, China, Romania, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Malta. In 1995–1997, he was the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Moldova to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Denmark. In 2002–2003, Burian was the Head of the Protocol Sector of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova. In 2005–2009, he was the Director of the Institute of History, State and Law at the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.

International affairs

We Are Aspiring Republicans: Interview with Sergey Tsyplyaev

25 May 2021 Igor Gretskiy

SERGEY TSYPLYAEV PhD in Physics and Mathematics; member of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (1989–92); Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in St Petersburg (1992–2000); President of the Respublika Foundation (since 2000)

International affairs

History

History of Ukrainian Nationalism Through the Eyes of a Czeсh Historian

25 May 2021 Oleksandr Zaitsev

Book review: David Svoboda, Jablko z oceli: Zrod, vývoj a činnost ukrajinského radikálního nacionalismu v letech 1920–1939 (Praha: Academia; Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2021), 1014 p.

History

An Incomplete Synthesis

25 May 2021 Andrzej Grajewski

Book Review: Marek Šmíd’s Vatikán a sovětský komunismus, 1917–1945, Praha: Tryton, 2020

History

Anti-Polish World War II Narratives in the Russian Internet Media Space: a Case Study of the period December 2019 to April 2020

25 May 2021 Veranika Laputska

The article touches upon the anti-Polish narratives in the Russian Internet media space that appeared during the period between December 2019 and April 2020. An anti-Polish media campaign initiated by the speech of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in December 2019 gradually unfolded into a large-scale information war that included multiple actors disseminating the relevant narratives. For the purpose of the study publication of the following segments of the Russian Internet were analyzed: Russia’s state and official sources, Russian main TV programs, Russian leading historical societies, Russian independent historians and their social media channels where applicable. Keywords: politics of memory, Poland, Russia, World War II, Vladimir Putin, Russian media, Internet discourse

History

History

How to avoid the genocide trap Genocide as a concept in historiography and social sciences

25 May 2021 Klaus Bachmann

This article argues that instead of using inconsistent and often tautological ad hoc definitions from social sciences and the humanities, the legal notion of genocide as it emerges from the Genocide Convention and the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals should also be applied to historical atrocities. This helps to prevent the inflationary use of the term ‘genocide’, whose inevitable consequence is that this term is voided of any meaning. Using instead the legal concept makes it possible to disentangle genocidal from non-genocidal violence and to prevent this notion from becoming obsolete. Three examples from German colonial history in Africa illustrate the need for such an approach. Key words: genocide, war crimes, German, Africa, Schutztruppen, colonial, international criminal tribunals

History

‘It is terrible that we have such a low level of historical knowledge’: Interview with Sergey Mironenko

25 May 2021 admin a

Biographical note Sergey Mironenko, Head of Research of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). Historian, PhD in Historical Sciences, Professor, Associate Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Director of GARF since May 1992. Head of Research at GARF since March 2016. A Panel Member of the Federal Archival Agency of Russia. Head of the 19th to early 20th century Russian History Department at the Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Member of the editorial boards of the journals ‘Istoricheskiy Arkhiv’ (History Archive), ‘Rodina’ (Motherland), and ‘Voyenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal’ (Military Historical Journal).[1] [1] Quoted from the GARF website: Mironenko Sergej Vladimirovič Naučnyj rukovoditelʹ Gosudarstvennogo archiva Rossijskoj Federacii < https://statearchive.ru/446> [accessed September 28, 2021]

History

Why AREI

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

Veritas est adequatio rei et intellectus – this is how St Thomas formulated the definition of truth in his treatise ‘De Veritate’. Truth is the correspondence between a thing and a judgment, or, to explain it in another way, the correspondence between our judgment and the actual state of affairs. This so-called correspondence definition, which goes back to Aristotle, has formed the basis of Europeans’ thinking about the world for centuries, from ancient times onwards, and has inspired them to discover ways of approaching the truth. What is more, it is still shared by a considerable number of philosophers as well as by the overwhelming part of humanity, which usually intuitively takes for granted the existence of the truth as well as untruth or lies. This is the foundation on which European civilisation has grown. St. Thomas’s definition has, of course, important epistemological implications: it assumes that truth as such objectively exists; it is not merely a product of human minds or our senses; it is not dependent on subjective factors such as cultural conditions or the existence of a social consensus as to what that truth is. Aquinas’ adequatio ret et intellectus is a denial of Pilate’s doubt: quod est veritas.

History

Marek Kornat, Mariusz Wołos. Józef Beck. Biografia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020.

25 May 2021 Dušan Segeš

It is difficult to imagine narratives on the period preceding the Second World War that do not include Józef Beck. As minister for foreign affairs, he was not just a key figure in Polish diplomacy; because of the important role that he played at a critical moment in global history, historiography pays much greater attention to him than it does to other representatives of the political elite of the Second Polish Republic.

History

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From Editor in Chief

Interview with Hieronim Grala: Russian State Ideology Has Been Referring to a Selectively Treated Past Since Early Modernity

History Between the Drops. Book Review: Yaroslav Hrytsak, Podolaty mynule. Hlobalʹna istorija Ukrajiny, Kyjiv: Portal, 2021, 432 s.

Current Issues

Articles

The Trubeckoj Massacre in Mscislau – Centuries Later

A Recognition Question of a Genocide: Russian Atrocities in the North Caucasus

The Kishenev Pogrom of 1903 in the Russian Socio-Political Narrative

The Bolshevik Expansion and Occupation of Ukraine (December 1917 – February 1918)

“I Only Do It to Stay Alive”: Development of the Narrative of “Unification of the Western Lands of Ukraine and Belarus With the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Republics” in Soviet Historical Propaganda

“Impudent Provocation by Finnish Warmongers” – The Shelling of Mainila (1939) in the Context of Soviet / Russian Propaganda and Information Warfare

Who are the Basilians?

Book Review: Leonid Tymošenko, Rusʹka relihijna kulʹtura Vilʹna. Kontekst doby. Oseredky. Literatura ta Knyžnistʹ. (XVІ – peša tretyna XVІІ st.): mononhrafija. Drohobyč: Kolo, 2020, 796 s.

From Editor. Overcoming Sovietness

Farewell to Imagined Post-Societness. Is It Still Justified to Use the Term ‘Post-Soviet’?

The Traditions of Ukrainian Democracy May Be Problematic, But Their Existence Is Undeniable: Interview with Prof. Serhii Plokhii

Pax-Sovietica? The Final End of Post-Sovietness

The Ricochet of Leninopad and the Second Wave of Desovietization of Lithuanian Public Space

From State Terror to International Conflict. A place of memory: Katyn as a foreign policy tool of Putin’s Russia

‘Eternal Russian-Ukrainian Friendship’ – A Case Study of How a Political Concept Was Memorialized and is Dememorialized

The Twentieth Century Colonialism within Ukrainian Academic and Public Discourse in the Era of Independence

How the Russian-Ukrainian War Broke Out – On the Backstage of International Politics From Jacub Kumoch Perspective. Source material edited by Łukasz Adamski.

Moldova is a Multifaceted State in Terms of National Identity: Interview with Alexandru Burian

We Are Aspiring Republicans: Interview with Sergey Tsyplyaev

History of Ukrainian Nationalism Through the Eyes of a Czeсh Historian

An Incomplete Synthesis

Anti-Polish World War II Narratives in the Russian Internet Media Space: a Case Study of the period December 2019 to April 2020

The Clash of the Soviet-Russian and Nationalist Narrations of the Past

National master narrative: vicissitudes of method

Histories of Nations and Borders: Critical Reflections Timothy Baycroft

Russia and the US in the Mirrors of Academic Research

The irresistible appeal of playing on a global chessboard

How to avoid the genocide trap Genocide as a concept in historiography and social sciences

‘It is terrible that we have such a low level of historical knowledge’: Interview with Sergey Mironenko

Why AREI

Marek Kornat, Mariusz Wołos. Józef Beck. Biografia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020.