New Book on Stalin, Molotov Files on UPA  

(CIUS Press) - Published by the Lviv branch of the Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and the Lviv Institute of National Memory, The “Personal Files” of Stalin and Molotov on the National-Liberation Struggle in Western Ukraine (1944–1948) is a collection of 131 Soviet documents preserved in the State Archives of the Russian Federation in Moscow. These formerly unpublished secret documents, collected and prepared for Joseph Stalin by the Soviet commissar of internal affairs, Lavrentii Beria, were meant to provide the Soviet dictator with systematically organized information concerning the struggle of the armed Ukrainian anti-Soviet resistance, especially the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the repressive measures of the Soviet government, army, and secret police (NKVD) against the Ukrainian insurgents and population.

In essence, this collection of documents is a summary of the ferocious and insufficiently studied conflict between Soviet forces and anti-Soviet insurgents that took place on Ukrainian territory in the last stages and after the conclusion of World War II. These documents also contain extensive statistical data that reveal the staggering proportions and scope of this war. They illuminate both the major operations and tactics used by the insurgents in their military and sabotage activities and the scope and methods of the Soviet campaign of terror against the fighters of UPA and the Ukrainian civilian population.

The data on the Ukrainian underground campaign against Soviet rule presented in “Osobye papki” show the dynamics of this struggle, which was particularly fierce in the period from 1944 to mid-1945, as the well-known historian Vladyslav Hrynevych notes in his introduction. Hrynevych asserts that the thesis advanced by some Ukrainian historians concerning a “civil war” in Western Ukraine in this period has no basis in fact. He argues that the documents in “Osobye papki” show that the Stalinist empire took control of Western Ukraine by force of arms against the will of its inhabitants. In one year alone, the NKVD conducted as many as ten thousand military operations against the UPA with the use of artillery and aviation. They led to huge casualties among the civil population, deportations, and forced conscription into the Red Army.

This book is an invaluable resource for historians and readers interested in World War II and the Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule. The documents are published in the original Russian, with introduction and commentary in Ukrainian. Every document is supplied with a title specifying its ordinal number, type, addressee, author, content, date, and registration number. The exhaustive personal and geographical indexes (almost one hundred pages) help guide the reader through the many names and locations related to these historical events.

“Osobye papki” Stalina i Molotova pro natsional’no-vyzvol’nu borot’bu v Zakhidnii Ukraїni u 1944–1948 rr., Yaroslav Dashkevych and Vasyl Kuk, comps., introduction by Vladyslav Hrynevych. Lviv: Literaturna agentsiia “Piramida,” 2010. 594 pp.  Available for $54.95 (plus taxes and shipping; US$ outside Canada): on-line at www.utoronto.ca/cius or by contacting CIUS Press, 430 Pembina Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2H8; tel.: (780) 492-2973; fax: (780) 492-4967; e-mail: cius@ualberta.ca.