“A number of historians in their statement emphasize the need to avoid politicizing issues of historical heritage in common with Poland”, – WRITE: www.radiosvoboda.org
The signers of the statement emphasize the need to avoid politicizing issues of historical heritage common with Poland, including those tragic joint pages of history that have led to mass casualties on both sides.
“Currently, historians are making efforts to create an objective study of all circumstances not only to commit crimes against the Ukrainian and Polish population in Volyn and Galicia, but also the reasons that have led to such a severe confrontation. There are also no final studies and conclusions about the influence of special units of the occupation regimes of the USSR and Nazi Germany on these events, ”the statement published by the Ukrainian Institute of the National Memory reads.
Therefore, according to Ukrainian historians, attempts to equate anti-imperial, national liberation, the activities of the UPA and the OUN (b) to “genocidal practices, neo-imperial totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and Communists, against whom the Ukrainian insurgents, are quite questionable.
The Ukrainian side suggested that the Polish colleagues restore the format of professional discussions within the framework of the Forum of Historians of Ukraine and Poland, whose activities could contribute to an impartial establishment of an objective picture of the events of the past.
In the context of Russian armed aggression, Ukrainian historians consider it unacceptable to “weaken Ukraine, and therefore Poland, which is the strategic goal of the Russian aggressor.”
The authors of the statement note that the approval of the said bill by the Polish side will obviously cause a negative reaction in Ukraine, according to existing practice, Kyiv will also be forced to take mirror measures and approve the legislation on evaluation of the actions of individual units of the Army of the Regional and Battalions of Boy.
Ukrainian historians believe that the most optimal way to solve the issues of common tragic history should be the continuation of search and exhumation works in the territories of both countries, as well as the joint work of the Ukrainian-Polish Forum of Historians.
“We are convinced that together with our Polish colleagues we have to show wisdom and responsibility and find understanding about the most complex pages of our past for the sake of a common European future and joint efforts to overcome our eternal Russian enemy,” the statement added.
On September 29, Polish President Karol Navrotsky made a bill on criminal liability for the “propaganda of the ideology of Banderism” and the denial of the Volyn tragedy. According to the Presidential Office, the purpose of these legislative changes is to counteract the spread of false statements in Poland by “crimes committed by members and collaborators of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists of the Bandera faction and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as well as by other Ukrainian formations that cooperated with the German.