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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...

‘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’ (M...

National master narrative: vicissitudes of method

25 May 2021 Georgiy Kasianov

This article focuses on the historiographical, cultural and political phenomenon known as the national master narrative. Its cognitive, interpretative and explicatory potential is analysed together with its advantages and shortcomings. Drawing on Ukrainian historiography, the place of the national master narrative on the historiographical, cultural and political map is discussed. Its influence on the writing of history in modern Ukraine is also addressed. Keywords: national master narrative, essentialism, nation, Ukrainian historiography, analytical history ...

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

25 May 2021 Šarūnas Liekis

Formerly occupied states or modern national movements have to develop narratives of resisting invaders or occupiers in order to teach the young never to be defeated in the future. Narratives of resistance explain temporary or permanent failures by employing resistance storytelling, which puts forward compensatory and defensive mechanisms for repressed peoples. This article is a case study of the narratives of resistance in Lithuania. The article explores the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance, the pro-Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups, the Polish Home Army, or the Jewish partisans in Soviet partisan formations in the framework of nar...

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 me...

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...

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. ...

An Incomplete Synthesis

25 May 2021 Andrzej Grajewski

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

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. ...

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 tenden...

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 takin...

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). ...

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”. ...

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...

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

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

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

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From Editor. Overcoming Sovietness

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

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“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 domesti...

“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. ...

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” a...

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 ideolo...

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 p...

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 w...

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

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

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From Editor in Chief

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

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