Life Sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Political Prisoner (The Canadian library in Ukrainian studies) Review

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Life Sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Political Prisoner (The Canadian library in Ukrainian studies) ReviewA prewar Ukrainian Communist, Shumuk spent time in Polish jails (which were relatively comfortable compared with later Soviet jails: p. x, 27). Disillusioned with Communism following revelation of the Soviet famine-genocide, Shumuk joined the OUN-UPA as an idealist for Ukrainian freedom.
Shumuk objected to the pagan "eternal natural force" in the OUN Introduction (p. 60), the amorality of the Eighth OUN Clause, and the expansionism advocated by the Tenth Clause. (p. 61). (In other words, the latter partook of imperialistic nationalism, not the emancipatory nationalism that the OUN professed to be.) He described the OUN as anti-democratic, totalitarian, and dictatorial. (p. 64, 101, 123). He concluded: "And the OUN itself was created `in the form and image' of the fascist parties, with an ideology based on the philosophies of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Machiavelli." (p. 69). Eyewitnesses described the Melnyk/Bandera split as an extremely bitter one (pp. 279-280). It led to factional killings. (p. 145, 280).
The Germans stopped training new collaborationist Ukrainian police in the fall of 1942. (p. 68, 378). (Was it because, with the Jews largely exterminated, no additional police were needed?) The police, most of whom were OUN members (p. 57), were subordinated to the OUN. In fact, they didn't desert their posts until spring 1943 because there was no prior OUN command for them to do so. (p. 57). This arms-laden 4,000-strong police-deserter force became the nucleus of the UPA. (p. 68).
Germans were variously attacked, bypassed as irrelevant (p. 112), and the source of preventative warnings to the UPA. (p. 118). Kolky (Kolki), near Lutsk, became a major UPA center. (p. 74, 86).
The creative cruelties of the UPA, discussed in many Polish works, are corroborated by an unidentified Ukrainian Baptist: "But what you're doing to the Poles is inexcusable. For example, not long ago in Lizhyn a Polish teacher was murdered and thrown into a well by some of her former pupils." (pp. 72-73).
UPA members justified it (as apologists do to this day) by misrepresenting the Polish-guerilla destruction of several villages (and the contained several-hundred German-settled Ukrainian collaborators), in the Chelm (Kholm) area, as a Polish genocide of Ukrainians--this time embellished to a farcical 34,000 Ukrainian victims. (p. 73, 83). (This is reminiscent of Goebbels' "60,000 German victims" at Bydgoszcz/Bromberg).
Even allowing for the 100-fold exaggerated Kholm events, the quoted Ukrainian Baptist rejected this justification: "You haven't been killing the [guilty] Poles...in the Kholm area. The people you're killing are peaceful and completely defenseless." (p. 73). Later, UPA-member Voron ("the Crow") proudly told Shumuk of a young Ukrainian who had personally drowned 27 Poles, and the massacre of Dominopol's Poles, to which Shumuk replied: "But no one should boast about killing defenseless people in their sleep. This is a black stain on our liberation movement..." (p. 83). Shumuk added that the same Nietzschean teachings that had been the root of fascism and of the Nazi Holocaust were also behind Dominopol. (p. 91). (However, Shumuk doesn't mention the hundreds of other Dominopols in Volhynia and eastern Galicia).
The OUN-UPA security forces (SB) took the lead in the killings of Poles (p. 83), and terrorized the Ukrainian population to the point of being seen as worse than the Cheka and Gestapo. (p. 92, 123). SB summary justice against "unreliables" was a major factor in Ukrainians eventually turning cool to the OUN-UPA. (p. 119).
Shumuk's unit fled from the Soviet-formed UPA-destroying battalions ("Strybki"/"Strebki"). These included conscripted villagers, local Communists, UPA deserters, and decommissioned Red Army personnel. (pp. 384-385).Life Sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Political Prisoner (The Canadian library in Ukrainian studies) Overview

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