"World War II or the Great Patriotic War? Versions of Historical Memory" Conference held in Lviv
Memory is at war in Ukraine as two opposing camps believe only in the veracity of their thoughts and ignore everything the opponent has to say. The dissemination of such a “truth” is only true for a certain community. Its value lies not in its accordance to the facts but in its ability to maintain the existence of this community and mobilize it for certain actions. This leads to the creation of historical myths that replace historical facts, and each of the camps makes itself the victim of its opponent’s aggression.
This view was expressed by associate professor of Modern and Contemporary History of Ukraine at UCU Oleksandr Zaiets during the national conference “World War II or the Great Patriotic War? Versions of Historical Memory,” which took place at the Ukrainian Catholic University on April 26-27. The participants were historians from different regions of Ukraine.
As noted by Oleksandr Zaiets, participants did not intend to create a single version of the history of World War II: “For in a free, democratic, and pluralistic society, creating one true history is irrelevant. But we believe that historians must help society achieve a minimum consensus on the meaning of key events of World War II.” At the conference, according to Zaiets, was presented a new generation of scholars who are capable of changing the research paradigm of history, and therefore the state of historical memory.
UCU Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak in his speech emphasized the concept of the 30-year war of the twentieth century, which is when World War II is interpreted as an extension of Word War I. “This is rarely spoken about in Ukraine, but British and German historians include in the concept of the 30-year war the First and Second World Wars and all the wars that took place between them – the Spanish, Soviet-Ukrainian, Polish-Soviet, Ukrainian-Polish, and the separate Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine,” he said.
Yaroslav Hrytsak also stressed that since Ukraine is a frontier area with slightly different rules, "the idea of victory" in the war does not apply to it, as it is typically done for Russia. Moreover, in Ukraine there were various genocides of different peoples, so first of all we need to reconcile the memory between all participants in history – we should forgive and ask for forgiveness.
During the conference Professor of the Rivne State Humanitarian Institute Maksym Hon spoke about the historical memory of one of the worst pages of the history of World War II – the Holocaust: “While the countries of Eastern Europe, freed from the Socialist and Communist authorities, try to honor the Jewish communities that lived on their territories and were destroyed during World War II, in Ukraine the issue is marginalized. Only in a few cities are there memorial plaques marking the locations of the Jewish ghettos.”
As a result, the participants of the conference agreed that today it is necessary to desacralize, demythologize, and depoliticize historical memory in order for historians to be able to work with facts and not deal with historical myths.
