"To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and for All": The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947

Abstract

The end of the cold war has brought a new approach to the historical study of the early postwar period. So long as the cold war lasted, the actors of its histories were states: the superpowers in the first instance, and allies and satellites on the margins. Earlier debates concerning the immediate postwar years have thus concerned the responsibility of the major powers for the origins of the cold war. The revolutions of 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the Yugoslav conflicts since have returned attention to national questions. From this perspective, the years immediately following the Second World War are important not only as the time when Europe's states were divided into two blocs, but also as the moment when several of Europe's nations were subjected to deportations. The mass forced deportations, as a result of the way in which they were carried out, and as a result of their place in state propaganda since, did much to consolidate Polish and West Ukrainian nationalism. The approach in this report thus concerns not only the choices of states, but the fate of social groups as they became nations.