Review by Prof. Frank Sysyn of “Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland’s Ukrainians after World War II” (published in the Nov. 10th edition of The Ukrainian Weekly newspaper): Intimate Histories of a Lost World In the first half of the twentieth century, Europe was the site of massive carnage from wars and genocides as well as of the voluntary and involuntary migration of peoples. When the post-World War II settlement brought about the liberation of much of Western Europe from Nazi Germany and the Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe, the final acts of expulsions and flights occurred. Among these was the exchange of Ukrainians and Poles between the post-War Polish Communist state and the Ukrainian SSR and the resettlement of population to reflect the boundary drawn between the two entities, first in 1944 and then adjusted in 1951. In the case of the Polish state, the refusal of a considerable part of the Ukrainian population to move to the Soviet Union and the end of the immediate post-war population exchanges was followed in 1947 by the Vistula Action (Akcja Wisła), the forcible resettlement of the Ukrainian population to the lands annexed by Poland from the pre-war German state. The resettled Ukrainians were settled only a few families in any one village, scattered to prevent their life as a group and to hasten their assimilation. For the territories exchanged between Poland and Ukraine in 1951, the populations were removed from the territories before the land was exchanged. The facts of these events are generally known as well as their consequences. They resulted in the early 1950s in a Ukrainian republic with a relatively small Polish minority, part of which lived on the territories of what had been in Poland before World War II, and a Polish state in which a small Ukrainian minority lived almost exclusively in the northern and western territories of that state. While the Polish and Ukrainian resettlements and conflicts might not occupy a prominent place in the narratives of the cataclysms that were World War II and its aftermath, they did weigh more heavily in the memories of the respective peoples and among the individuals who were affected by these events. Yet as time has passed and the individuals who bore memories have passed away, the human and personal dimensions of what happened are slowly being erased. Two recent volumes, one published in English in the US and one in English, Ukrainian, and Polish in Ukraine have ensured that these dimensions are recorded. Diana Howansky Reilly has succeeded brilliantly in the very difficult genre of writing history on the basis of family reminiscences. Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland’s Ukrainians after World War II takes the extensive interviews that she conducted primarily with her maternal Pyrtej relatives as the basis for her account. Through these “thick” interviews with them and with their relatives and neighbors, she has turned the history of one family and the village of Smerekovets (Smerekowiec in Polish) into the fulcrum for understanding not only the Lemko region and the fate of the Ukrainians of Poland. She also brings in the wider world and decisions that stretch from Yalta to London to the New World as to how they affected her family. Her work has the ring of authenticity. Even without having the proof of Howansky Reilly’s tapes and the notes, one believes that one has an account in which no event or sentiment has been created and that one is experiencing the past as remembered by the Pyrtej family. These memories may be influenced by subsequent experiences but sifted through the intelligent and sensitive commentary of Diana Howansky Reilly we come as close as we can to the world of the villagers of Smerekovets. Howansky Reilly’s story is especially complex and her need for veracity all the greater because of where her ancestral village was. She tells us she grew up in a patriotic Ukrainian family in Connecticut. Had her ancestral village been nearer to the Ukrainian center of Peremyshl (Polish Przemyśl) or even in the eastern zones of the Lemko region where the Ukrainian movement was quite strong by the interwar period, her story line would have been simpler. But Smerekovets was in the western Lemko region where until the war Ukrainian national identity was not widespread, and local feelings and Russophilism (as well as somewhat derivative pro-Soviet feeling) intertwined. Howansky Reilly has let her family history reflect all the ideologies and political sentiments that swirled around them, providing the reader their voices while at the same time giving needed background information. Through her grandmother Melania and Melania’s sister Hania and brother Petro, who relocated to Ukraine, one can see how the individuals made choices and balanced various identities. Howansky Reilly’s accounts of UPA (the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and the Polish internment camp (Central Labor Camp) of Jaworzno emerge all the more vividly because they are seen from an individual’s experience. Others may have viewed them differently. Howansky Reilly has profound respect and love for her protagonists, but does not idealize them. Still any reader will be routing that long after the resettlement, Hania will get a chance to rectify historical wrongs by winning a court case for the return of a few hectares of the Lemko forest. Howansky Reilly has provided photos and documents that help to bring to life her family and their scattered odyssey. Natalia Klyashtorna has given us the pictorial evidence for an entire lost world in an album with hundreds of photographs and trilingual English, Ukrainian, and Polish texts entitled Scattered over the Steppes. These inhabitants of the Carpathians were strewn not in a “foreign” land, but in a country they in some sense viewed as their own, southern Ukraine. In 1951 for economic and security reasons, the Soviet Union received the territory around Sokal from Poland and Ustryki Dolishni (Polish Ustrzyki Dolne) raion was given to Poland. The inhabitants of region belonged to the Boiko ethnographic group, but unlike the western Lemkos they almost all viewed themselves as Ukrainians and did not have strong group ;identity. Many Boikos further west had been resettled to Ukraine in 1944-46 or deported to the western areas of Poland in 1947. Now suddenly the 30,000 inhabitants of the raion were packed up and sent East. Natalia Klyashtorna has already published two volumes of memoirs of these resettled Boikos (Aktsiia-51 in 2006 and 2009). She now has assembled a priceless gallery of the photos of these Boikos as they were from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Churches, civic organizations, community events, and individuals of the lost world are included. Then we have the groups as they exist in their new homes on the steppes. In a certain way they were more fortunate than the resettled in Poland in that they were resettled in larger groups and could retain more of their identity. They were less fortunate in that the Soviet authorities forced them into collectives and state farms for over thirty years and attacked traditional and religious culture and traditions. Yet one must be impressed with their resilience. Just as impressive is Natalya Klyashtorna’s dedication in saving their lost world and documenting their contemporary existence. A hardcover copy of Diana Howansky Reillys Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland’s Ukrainians after World War II (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013) can be purchased through the following websites, as well as at Barnes & Noble bookstores: Amazon: amazon/Scattered-Forced-Relocation-Polands-Ukrainians/dp/0299293408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358946557&sr=8-1&keywords=diana+howansky+reilly University of Wisconsin Press: uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4891.htm Barnes & Noble: barnesandnoble/w/scattered-diana-howansky-reilly/1113367794 Rozsiiani v stepakh-Scattered over the Steppes-Rozrzuceni po stepach, comp. by Natalia Klyashtorna (Ivano-Frankivsk: Lileia-NB, 2013) can be purchased on: ebay/itm/Scattered-Over-The-Steppes-A-Book-by-Natalya-Klashtorna-/321182762261 Also see the website: bojkosvit Frank E. Sysyn is Director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and editor of the works of the historian and ethnographer of the Boiko region Mykhailo Zubrytsky : Mykhailo Zubryts’kyi, Zibrani tvory I materialy v tr’okh tomakh vol.1 Naukovi pratsi (Lviv: Litopys, 2013) available from CIUS Press (utoronto.ca/cius or [email protected])
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 03:26:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015