Contemporary Ukrainian Historiography of the OUN Anti-Polish Uprising (August-September 1939)
Abstract
In modern Ukrainian historiography, there are no separate historiographical publications, which would systematically take up the range of issues devoted to the preparation and conducting of Ukrainian Nationalists anti-Polish uprising in Western Ukraine in the period of August-September 1939.
The goal of the paper is to make a historiographical analysis of the modern historians’ findings on certain aspects of preparation and conducting of the anti-Polish uprising by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Based on the goal, the objective of the paper is a comprehensive approach to modern historians’ analysis of the preconditions, features of training, the description of the partyzan detachments operations, achievements, results, and consequences of anti-Polish actions for the OUN underground in the described period.
The standpoints of modern Ukrainian historians on the issues of development of the anti-Polish uprising concept and plan; the scale of the conflict; misunderstanding of terminology, and quantitative composition of the OUN detachments are analyzed.
It is concluded that a large-scale uprising did not take place. The major impediments for that were insufficient organizational and military training, unfavorable external factors, and an overestimation by the OUN underground leadership of the willingness of Western Ukraine population to support the anti-Polish uprising.
It is promising for researchers to further study the impact of the armed Ukrainian-Polish confrontation at the beginning of World War II concerning the repressive actions against the civilian Ukrainian and Polish population. The search for recent information and verification of existing facts regarding both sides’ losses during the anti-Polish uprising is of great importance as well.
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