In a recent interview, Timothy Snyder misses the mark. The leading American expert on the complex history of Eastern Europe fails to establish cause and effect between the oppressive Polish regime in western Ukraine and the resistance that followed in the years leading up to World War II.
Equally important, Snyder is inconsistent in supporting Ukraine’s right to resist foreign occupation of its territories. He clearly understands resistance to Russian aggression today but not to Ukraine’s resistance to Poland’s oppression of the past.
In the interview,”Strach przed prawdą,” Fear of the Truth, Polityka, on Feb. 7 with Sławomir Sierakowski, Snyder takes a pro-Polish position. He favors the perpetrator rather than the victim. Ukraine, meanwhile, views resistance as a requirement to the defense of its population and to its national survival.
A brief history of the issue may be helpful.
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ceded western Ukraine—for centuries part of the Hapsburg Empire—for 25 years to Poland at which time Ukraine’s appeal for independence would be reviewed. Poland, however, was determined to keep Malo-Polska, little Poland, as it liked to call it, for itself. It subjected the five million Ukrainians to institutionalize discrimination, oppression and hate.
Led by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and, later, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, they resisted. Today’s uproar between the two states is rooted in this period.
Snyder fails to acknowledge that Ukraine had a right to protect itself against Poland’s institutionalized grab just like later—during World War II—both countries resisted Germany’s aggression and today, Ukraine wages the same resistance against Russia’s occupation of its sovereign territories.
In his important book, “Bloodlands,” the author illuminates the central position of Ukraine leading up to and during World War II. However, he shies away from giving Ukraine’s resistance its due: the right to fight back the oppressor.
He does so again in the interview. He denies Ukraine the right to resist aggression perpetrated in Ukraine by Poland especially when it is at the point of a gun. However, this is a right accorded other nations. Israel, fighting British rule in Palestine, for example, comes to mind. Snyder, however, chooses to see Ukraine’s efforts to establish self-determination as aggression: the victim is the criminal.
This is an outdated view. It’s encouraging, therefore, that in dealing with today’s fight with against Russia, Snyder supports Ukraine and condemns the aggressor.
The double standard begs the question: Why is Ukraine’s fight for freedom against Russia acceptable to him but that against Poland was not?
Snyder’s views matter because there is treachery in raking up old Poland-Ukraine animosities today. The greatest beneficiary is no other than Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Pro-Russian Polish politicians have gone as far as to propose undemocratic legislation denying Polish citizenship to those who do not condemn Ukraine’s resistance to the Polish oppression. Furthermore, Poland now says it may withhold Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.
Not only does the fracas create a rift between two allies who, in the post-Soviet period, stand together against Russia’s determination to reconstruct the concentration camp—including satellites like Poland– that was formerly the Soviet Union. It weakens Ukraine, the only country to wage military resistance against Russia’s territorial incursions. Most dangerously to world order, the rift puts a NATO member in conflict with a pro-Ukraine NATO position.
This serves Putin’s overall strategy very nicely. He detests NATO and would like nothing better than to undermine its resolve against his aggression. He wants to shake confidence among democratic allies; and, to weaken democratic institutions world-wide.
He must be pleased with Poland and Snyder’s position. Casting Ukraine as the aggressor – -on its own turf — has been a long-standing Russo-Soviet play. In recent years, such propaganda was a key tool in annexing Crimea and waging Russia’s war of terror in Donbas: Ukraine is a Nazi state denying Russians their rights! It’s fake but serves the purpose of vilifying the victim while deflecting from Russia’s own treachery.
Regrettably, Poland has risen to Russia’s bait and opened up old wounds. It is most unfortunate, therefore, that on this historic matter a scholar of Snyder’s stature reinforces Russia’s position and exacerbates the global tensions it’s creating.
To be fair, Snyder sees the intellectual landmines. Towards the end of the interview he advises that the interpretation of historic events be left to historians rather than politicians. Good.
He also admits that his views are not conclusive; new historians and the emergence of new sources will lead to new understanding of events. “Neither I, nor anyone else determines once and for all how things were” he says.
Amen. However, the current situation is wrought with danger and needs wise heads to calm the storms.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, formerly director with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and president of the consulting firm U*CAN Ukraine Canada Relations Inc., is a survivor of the Polish-Ukraine tensions of World War II. She supports strong Polish-Ukraine relations.
