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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. ...

Vitaliy Churkin, Trudnosti perevoda, Moskva: Abris, 2020.

25 May 2021 Igor Gretskiy

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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...

National as Postcolonial: the Narrative of the History of Ukraine as a Country Standing at the Gates of the European Union

25 May 2021 Tomasz Stryjek

Book Review: Serhy Yekelchyk, Writing the Nation: The Ukrainian Historical Profession in Independent Ukraine and the Diaspora (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2022) ...

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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From the editors. The NKVD’s “Polish Operation” of 1937–1938: the Story of One Family.

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

The AREI editorial board decided to publish documents that describe the fate of a Polish-Ukrainian family that became a victim of the NKVD’s “national operations”. More family stories you can read in the collection of documents W cieniu “operacji polskiej”. Represje na sowieckiej Ukrainie 1937–1938 w dokumentach, that will be published at the end of 2024. The collection of documents is the outcome of project number 2015/19/B/HS3/01823, for implementation of the research project “The NKVD’s Polish Operation 1937–1938. Victims, Documents”. Project leader: Sławomir Dębski. ...

Document: Secret letter on fascist-rebel, espionage, sabotage, subversive, defeatist, and terrorist activities of Polish intelligence in the USSR. August 11 1937

25 May 2021 Maciej Wyrwa

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Document: Operational Order No. 00485 of the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Nikolai Yezhov, regarding initiation of the “Polish Operation" August 11 1937, Moscow

25 May 2021 Maciej Wyrwa

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Introduction. The NKVD’s “Polish Operation” of 1937–1938. Documents of a Stalinist Crime

25 May 2021 Maciej Wyrwa

Editorial note The materials used in the publication of the documents were collected during work on the publication of volumes of the The NKVD’s “Polish Operation” in Documents series, funded by the Polish National Science Centre, project number 2015/19/B/HS3/01823, for implementation of the research project “The NKVD’s Polish Operation 1937–1938. Victims, Documents”. Project leader: Sławomir Dębski. The authors would like to thank Sergei Prudovsky from the Russian Memorial Society for his role in acquiring and compiling the documents used in the text. We are publishing the documents, originally written in Russian, in an...

The Impact of the Soviet Factor on the Development of British-Czechoslovak Relations during the Second World War

25 May 2021 Radosław Żurawski vel Grajewski

The article is an attempt to observe the evolution of the role of the Soviet factor in British-Czechoslovak relations during the Second World War. In the months preceding and at the beginning of the war, its influence was barely noticeable. The USSR then acted as an ally of Germany. Only in August 1940 did the FO note attempts to establish cooperation between the Soviet government and the Czechoslovak Provisional Government. From the fall of 1940, contacts were developed between the Soviet and Czechoslovak intelligence services. The role of the Soviet factor in Czechoslovak policy began to grow rapidly from the summer of 1941 – the en...

An Ally for Show. Soviet Diplomats and the Visit of General Władysław Sikorski to the Soviet Union in 1941

25 May 2021 Mariusz Wołos

Władysław Sikorski’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1941 was one of the most important events in relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the Kremlin. Soviet diplomats prepared for the arrival of this Polish guest with great care. This was demonstrated by a special memorandum prepared on General Sikorski by the Fourth European Department of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs for their superiors, tracking his whole life and emphasising his anti-Piłsudski and anti-German stance. The deputy head of the Soviet diplomatic apparatus, Andrey Vyshinsky, shouldered the burden of contacts with Poles on behalf of the foreign ...

Subjugated Nations or Separatists? Polish and Russian Emigrés and the National Question in the Soviet Union in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s

25 May 2021 Łukasz Dryblak

The national question in the Soviet Union was one of the main topics of discussion between Polish and Russian émigrés in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Polish and Russian émigré circles’ attitudes towards Promethean peoples, described by the Russians as separatist, were key to the political concepts promoted by these circles. Both émigré groups sought to win each other over to their point of view and vied with each other for influence with the political elite in the US. After the Second World War, the Russian side presented a number of collaboration proposals to Polish political circles, seeking to draw the Poles away from both the p...

The Lost Borderlands and the Trap of the Periphery An Accident of History or Historical Regularity?

25 May 2021 Jan Kieniewicz

In memory of Hayden White (1928–2018) ...

From the Editor-in-Chief

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

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On the Circumstances of the Origin of the Figure of 3.5 Million Deaths from the Famine of 1921–1923 in the Ukrainian SSR: A Source Analysis

25 May 2021 Hennadii Yefimenko

Book Review: The Genocide of Ukrainians in 1932–1933 Based on Pre-Trial Investigation Materials, ed. Oleksandr Petryšyn, Mykola Herasymenko, and Olesja Stasjuk (Kyiv–Kharkiv: Pravo, 2022) ...

**Jews in the Czech Lands in Year One*: In the Jewish Community, in the State and Among Neighbours. A Return to the First Republic of Czechoslovakia?**

25 May 2021 Blanka Soukupova

After the Second World War, the fraction of the Jewish population in the Czech lands that survived the Shoah coped with this tragedy in various ways. This text addresses the main minority strategies: emigration (primarily to Palestine/State of Israel), engagement with the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, unconditional assimilation into the Czech nation (intentional departure from Judaism), the reconstruction of Jewish religious communities and Jewish life in general, and seeking solace in faith (especially typical of those repatriating from Carpathian Ruthenia/Transcarpathian Ukraine). It also analyses the perspectives of these life strateg...

“The Germans Equated the Karaites and the Jews”: the Shoah and the Karaite Policy in Melitopol’ District (1941–1943)

25 May 2021 Yuri Radchenko

This article explores the Holocaust, German Karaite Policy, and Jewish–Karaite relations in Melitopol’ region during the Nazi occupation. The author uses unpublished sources from Ukrainian, Israeli, German, and Lithuanians archives, as well as oral history testimonies from his private collection to demonstrate that Jews in Melitopol’ were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators throughout the entire period of occupation, with the culmination of this policy occurring in the first days of the Wehrmacht’s arrival in Melitopol’. The property of the murdered Jews was confiscated by the local administration and handed over to the ...

Russian Academic Imperialism: How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go?

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

Book Review: Sergei I. Zhuk, The KGB, Russian Academic Imperialism, Ukraine, and Western Academia, 1946–2024 (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2024) ...

Interview with Zianon Pazniak The Idea of Being a Prophet Never Crossed My Mind. I Simply Knew the Russians

25 May 2021 Zianon Pazniak

ZIANON PAZNIAK (born 24 April 1944) is a prominent Belarusian politician, archaeologist, one of the founders of the Belarusian National Front (BNF), and from 1990 to 1996 a member of the parliament of the Belarusian SSR and later the Republic of Belarus. He is best known for exposing the mass graves of Stalin’s victims in Kurapaty in 1988, which was a key event in sparking the Belarusian national revival movement. Pazniak has been a tireless advocate of Belarusian independence and the preservation of Belarusian culture and language. In 1996, following Alexander Lukashenko’s tightening of authoritarian control over the country, Pa...

Minsk Jews after the Holocaust in the Last Decade of Stalin’s Rule (1944–1953)

25 May 2021 Iryna Kashtalian

This article discusses the challenges faced by Jews in the capital of Belarus after the end of the Nazi occupation. On one hand, Jews struggled to adapt to peaceful life in places marked by their personal tragedies during the Holocaust. On the other hand, they suffered antisemitism in the late Stalinist period, facing restrictions from both the state and discrimination from ordinary city residents who believed the Soviet propaganda. Jews sought different survival strategies to become “their own” in society. Some chose to “wear a mask”, while others remained committed to their Jewish identity. ...

“We Really Did Not Expect to See You Again”: A Case Study on Jewish–Non-Jewish Relations in Post-War Szeged*

25 May 2021 Dora Pataricza Mercedesz Czimbalmos

The Jewish Community of Szeged, Hungary, has a rich cultural and historical heritage dating back two centuries. Like most Jewish cities in Europe, much of Szeged’s Jewish population was destroyed in the Holocaust. It was the main deportation centre for Csongrád County (southern Hungarian settlements) and parts of current northern Serbia (Bačka region). It was also the main deportation centre for southern Hungary. At the end of June 1944, three trains departed from Szeged, deporting the Jewish population from this city and the surrounding villages, totalling 8,617 people in only three days. Approximately half of the deportees were taken to...

A Sign of the Past: The Untold Story of Hungary’s Synagogues and the Memory of Disappeared Communities, 1945–2024

25 May 2021 Lorant Bodi Hanna Mezei

After the Second World War, the situation of synagogues in Hungary was unique compared to other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. While in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Germany a large number of synagogues were demolished, in Hungary – with the exception of a few cases – such destruction did not take place. Nevertheless, as a result of the demographic catastrophe caused by the Holocaust and the ensuing internal migration and emigration, most of the synagogues in the countryside were gradually abandoned and fell into disrepair. After the 1956 revolution, the National Association of Hungarian Israelites, for various reasons (such as econ...

Resistance Through Pop Culture and the Ideology of the “Russian World”: on Deconstruction in Times of War

25 May 2021 Nadia Kiss Luidmyla Pidkuimukha Yuliia Kolisnyk

The article analyses the main trends in pop culture since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. In particular, the paper investigates which tools and elements of ethnic culture have been used to construct the image of Ukraine and new Ukrainian heroes. Moreover, the image of Ukrainians in the global arena and in modern Western pop culture is presented. In contrast, the article demonstrates how the imperialist ideology of the “Russian world” has been deconstructed in contemporary Ukrainian pop culture. The data for the research consists of memes, caricatures, songs, cartoons, merch, and graffiti that have mainly been created since 24 ...

The Polish National Project. In the Process of the Revival of the Lithuanian Nation in the Context of Lithuanian Research

25 May 2021 Rimantas Miknys

The article shows that three phases can be identified in the process of the emergence of the modern Polish nation: 1) the post-partition phase, i.e., Romanticism, which was based on the tradition of noble identity (1795–1863); 2) the phase of redefinition of the Polish political nation towards a “triune” nature (1864–1869); 3) the phase of flourishing nationalism (1890–1918). Based on this thesis, the article uses analysis of Lithuanian historiography to show what influence the Polish national project had in each phase in the process of formation of a modern Lithuanian nation. The article concludes that the positive influence of the...

The Russian View of Polish Influences in Lithuania and Belarus in the Early Twentieth Century

25 May 2021 Darius Staliunas

This article analyses the attitude of officials in the Russian Empire towards the role of Poles in Lithuania and Belarus at the beginning of the twentieth century, focusing mainly on the period after the 1905 revolution. In this article I argue that the tsarist authorities were unable to compete with the Polish influences in the Northwestern Region, specifically in Belarus, and their actions show that they were aware of this reality. This was why no higher education institution was established in the Northwestern Region, the ‘Lithuanian’ governorates had no zemstvos, and the Polish-speaking residents of the western districts of the Grodno...

A Word from the Editors

25 May 2021 Yana Prymachenko

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