Bohdan Vitvitsky examines the renewed dispute between Poland and Ukraine over the legacy of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, questioning Warsaw’s claims to moral authority over Ukraine’s historical memory and whether such interventions are consistent with European principles of sovereign equality.

The strange historical dispute between Poland and Ukraine, in which Polish officials keep making demands upon Ukraine, seems unwilling to die down.  Most recently, on October 20 the L’viv oblast (regional) council announced plans to honor the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its military leader, Roman Shukhevych.  The council declared 2027 as the Year of the UPA, the Year of Shukhevych and the Year of Oleh Olzhych, a Ukrainian poet and political activist.  In response, the Polish charge d’affaires in Kyiv, Piotr Lukasiewicz, responded by stating that “glorifying the UPA and criminal figures runs counter to European values and the strategic and neighborly relations between Ukraine and Poland.”  Similar statements were then echoed by other Polish officials, including ministers.  Are the Poles right about it being the Ukrainians who are running afoul of European values?  And are Poles right to think that they have the right and the authority to police whom in history Ukraine chooses to memorialize?  I would suggest that the answer to both questions is no.

Sovereign equality is a fundamental principle in international law that asserts that all states are equal, regardless of their size or power.  The equality of states is a fundamental constitutional principle that governs how the European Union functions.  As a general proposition, it is, thus, contrary to European values for Poland or Polish officials to assume that Poland has some sort a special right to dictate to Ukraine whom it may or may not memorialize, as one can presume that Poland would vigorously reject Ukraine’s or anyone else’s attempt to tell Poland which historical figures it may or may not memorialize based on that outside country’s views of the demerits of Poland’s various heroes.

But given the spirit behind the set of values that developed after the horrors of World War II and after the Western European countries finally lost all of their colonies by the 1960s, there are certain actions by Ukraine or any European country that could merit criticism or even condemnation.  For example, it is incontestable that in the summer of 1943 the UPA, which was newly formed in Volyn, attacked Polish villages and there killed civilian men, women and children in the tens of thousands.  It is also incontestable that according to most definitions, that massacre was a war crime.  With respect to these events, what actions by contemporary Ukrainians could merit condemnation?  There are two.  First, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to deny that this massacre took place, he/she/they/it would clearly merit condemnation.  Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied the occurrence of the Volyn massacre?  The answer is no.

Second, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to admit that the Volyn massacre took place but nevertheless deny that it was a war crime or actually condone it on the basis of some one or another historical Ukrainian grievance against the Poles, that would, in accord with contemporary European values, merit condemnation.  Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied that the massacres of Poles were a war crime or maintain that for some reason these massacres were to be viewed approvingly?  The answer, once again, is no.

So why do Polish officials still complain?  They complain because in effect they want to assert that they have the right more generally to be the ones to define Ukraine’s historical past.  As the great British historian of Poland Norman Davies has pointed out, this is absurd.  About 4% or 5% of the soldiers in UPA participated in the Volyn killings, and in fact most of the members of UPA joined after 1943.  UPA is memorialized in Ukraine because of the extraordinary heroism of many, but certainly not all, of its members in the Ukrainian anti-colonial struggle against the Poles, the Germans and the Soviets that extended into the 1950s against the Soviets.  The Poles seem to think that, ignoring what UPA did against the Germans and for much longer against the Soviets, and regardless how large or how small was the percentage of the UPA that was involved in the 1943 massacre, it is what happened to the Poles who were massacred that is more important than all else and it must be that which defines who and what UPA was.  The Poles are of course entitled to view the UPA however they choose, but they insist on more.  They insist on having the right to dictate to Ukrainians how to view the UPA.

There is another major problem with Polish complaints about Ukrainian memorialization.  It is the problem of moral standing.  The Polish minority in Volyn, about at most 16% in the interwar period, represented the nation that had militarily conquered and then occupied Volyn and other parts of western Ukraine.  Ukrainians constituted between 65% and 70% of Volyn’s population.  Some among the Polish minority were the descendants of the Polish lords and their administrators who had colonized Ukraine in the 15^th – 17^th centuries when Ukrainians were enserfed, a form of slavery that continued into the 19^th century.  In the interwar period between World War I and II, the Polish minority maintained its political, economic, educational and cultural domination of the Ukrainian majority.  And, during World War II, the Polish government in exile in London continued to insist that Poland had the right to include Volyn in Poland and thus to continue to maintain dominion over the Ukrainian majority living there.  None of this obscures what was a war crime, but given the Polish history of domination and exploitation of Ukrainians, it does call into serious question whether today’s Poles as putative representatives of the historical Polish nation should today have moral standing to make complaints against Ukrainians.

Lastly, killing civilians is killing civilians.  It is a war crime.  As has been well documented, during World War II various Polish units, including units of the Polish Home Army, which army is widely venerated and memorialized in Poland, attacked Ukrainian villages and killed civilian men, women and children.  Those killings are often waived off as supposedly “retaliatory” attacks, but that is nonsense. The villages that were attacked were not even in Volyn but were simply Ukrainian.  So if today’s Poles think that they have a right to make grievance claims on historical memory relating to events multiple generations ago, then they must also accept the burdens of accepting grievance claims against them.  To put it in legal terminology, as regards history, it’s not as if Poles had clean hands.

In light of all of the above considerations, and with the exceptions discussed above, contemporary Polish officials do not have the right to routinely keep injecting themselves into Ukrainian decisions to memorialize historical figures that, for Ukrainians, were predecessors of Ukraine’s current efforts to fight off yet another attempt to subjugate it.

Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky is a retired federal prosecutor and a former U.S. diplomat who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy.