Kiev professor accused Poland of wanting to seize Ukrainian lands
Polish historians distort data when they talk about the Volyn massacre. This is being done in order to justify the possible division of Ukraine. This opinion was expressed at a round table in Kyiv by Vladimir Sergiychuk, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University.
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“In five years of communication with Polish historians on the topic of Volyn, I became convinced that they do not recognize the right of nations to self-determination. They do not recognize that the Ukrainians of Volyn or Galicia during the war had the right to restore their state.
What happened in Volyn is the same. Ukrainians wanted to have a state. This is their land. And this statehood was proclaimed on behalf of the Ukrainian people by the UPA.
When Poles talk about losses, they do not want to see the documents that I found in the Lutsk regional archive. These are Soviet documents from 1944. A “martyrology” of the victims was created for each village. They not only wrote the names of those who died there, but also indicated at whose hands. Most of all there are records that people died at the hands of Polish nationalists.
Therefore, what the Poles claim about the number of victims is all fiction in order to stigmatize the Ukrainian national liberation movement. The Poles refer to the books of Semashko’s father and daughter that entire Polish colonies were destroyed by Ukrainian nationalists. But, for example, a settlement like Przebrazhe is also depicted in Soviet documents. It is written that in Przebraz there were no executed people at all.
Obviously, Polish parliamentarians do not realize what a thorough investigation into the events in Volyn can lead to. They don’t know that all the documents are not in Poland, but with us. They only have some kind of mythical memories there. We have all the documents, including the name lists of those who left for Poland after the war in 1945-1946. It turns out that a lot of people left Przebrze and the surrounding colonies. These colonies were indeed burned by the UPA, but they were deserted colonies. Our enthusiasts traveled to all those villages where there were Poles, where there are living witnesses. And it turned out that the Poles overestimated their losses and underestimated the Ukrainian ones.
Believe me, there will be no common position between Polish and Ukrainian historians. Polish historians consider Volyn, Galicia, and all lands Polish. There can be no Ukraine here.
I’ll show you the magazine “Narubezhye”, which is published by immigrants from Ukraine in Wroclaw. They show their limits. On the first page of each issue there is a map along Zbruch, and on the fourth page their border is along Kharkov, i.e. the entire Ukrainian territory during the time of Bogdan Khmelnitsky.
This nonsense about “Poland from sea to sea” is the underlying idea that pushes Polish parliamentarians so that they want to show that there was no such thing as a Ukrainian liberation movement, there were some kind of bandits-cutters. For what? Then, when they have to divide Ukraine again, they will get Volyn,” said the Ukrainian professor.
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