Chapter 1: Theoretical Part

In this chapter I have made a review of so to say the history of historiography, both Ukrainian and Jewish, so that it could be helpful in dealing with the case-studies.

a)  Ukrainian historiography

As I have mentioned previously, the former Central European University student Sofiya Grachova carried out a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and Jewish historiography in her MA thesis. She focused primarily upon the sources produced after Ukrainian independence. Her research questions were the following: what place is allotted to the Jews within the Ukrainian national narrative? In which ways are the Jewish narratives adjusted to the latter, and/or in what ways do they subvert it?  How flexible is the Ukrainian national narrative when it comes to including the past of ethnic minorities? Are non-national histories more inclusive than national ones, or otherwise; and what role do ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, play in non-national history narratives?

Grachova chose to focus on two Ukrainian cities, Odessa and Lviv, as two local case studies. In her research work, Grachova managed to carry out a comprehensive survey of major works in Ukrainian history and several books on the history of Ukrainian Jewry published in Ukraine after the proclamation of its independence which are relevant for this research as well. In search for the Jewish past within comprehensive Ukrainian history, Grachova turned to such works as the History of Ukraine by Mykhailo Hrushevskyi. This book is a classic example of the nationalist history, where the roots of the Ukraine are traced back to the Slavs populating the present-day Ukrainian lands, and the glory of Kievan Rus. After the decline of the latter, the country's entire history is seen as a striving and hoping for a sovereign state. The Cossack uprising is depicted as a struggle for Ukrainian independence, and the proclamation of Ukrainian People's Republic is seen as a logical result of all the hardships and struggles for the Ukrainian nation-state. As Grachova rightly noticed, there is barely any information regarding Jewish presence in Ukraine in the work of Hrushevskyi. In instances where the Jews are mentioned they are represented as an alien element in the picture.[vi] It is quite remarkable taking into consideration the fact that the Ukrainian lands were the home to hundreds of thousands Jews for centuries. Grachova proceeded to the bestseller of the Ukrainian Diaspora historian Orest Subtelny Ukraine: a History, pointing out that the Jews are mentioned quite often through anti-Jewish arguments, like that of the “Jewish factor” in the Khmelnytsky uprising, the “Judeo-Bolshevism” factor in the pogroms in which the army of the Directory took part during the Ukrainian Civil War. The above mentioned stereotypes are quite frequent in the Ukrainian discourse of Jews. I will return to them later. Ukrainians meanwhile are portrayed mostly as the protectors of the Jews, but never as perpetrators. Yaroslav Hrytsak, an eminent Ukrainian historian who resides and teaches in Lviv, and who also taught in Central European University for some time, tries to produce an alternative representation of Ukrainian history. In his Surveys of the History of Ukraine: the Formation of the Modern Ukrainian Nation in XIX-XX Centuries (1996) Hrytsak tried to produce a “history without bromine”, meaning precisely the effort to get rid of the “lachrymosity” in Ukrainian history.[vii] According to Grachova, Hrytsak still does not succeed in getting rid of some of the stereotypes typical for portraying Jews in Ukrainian historiography; and when touching upon the subject of Jewish-Ukrainian relations, Hrytsak writes more about the Ukrainians rescuing the Jews during the Holocaust (which is undoubtedly a very important fact to be mentioned) and much less about those who sided with the persecutors.[viii] In my opinion, Hrytsak managed to introduce a new perspective on Ukrainian history. In relation to Jews, he mentions the same arguments as often the Jewish historians do, but for some reason does not provide the justification for those arguments. As for instance he writes thatthe Jews were more likely to assimilate into Russian rather than into the Ukrainian culture. Henry Abramson, for example, developed the same argument in his book A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary times, 1917-1920. There he stated that the Jews were most likely to assimilate to Russian culture, or in case of Galicia to German and/or Polish cultures, than to the Ukrainian one, because the majority of the Ukrainians lived in the countryside, whilst the cities with the majority of Polish, Russian or Jewish population were traditionally the places where Jewish business and culture could develop. The Ukrainians, Abramson writes, themselves often assimilated into Russian/Polish/German cultures for different economic, social and political reasons. The Jews, he writes, could not be assimilated into Ukrainian culture, because it was simply impossible.[ix]

Since Hrytsak’s Surveys of the History of Ukraine he has published numerous books and articles, in some of which he touched upon the topic of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, and issues related to nationalism and nationalist history in particular; indeed he provides an alternative version of history writing in Ukraine.[x] Among other “alternative” Ukrainian historians Grachova mentions Nataliya Yakovenko, who is a professor of Ukrainian history who argues that the state text books on Ukrainian history, which celebrate the nationalist paradigm is an anachronism which has to be replaced by a narrative focused more on the history of the society, not the state. Grachova also mentions Paul Robert Magocsi, an American historian of partial Rusyn origin, who wrote several books on Ukrainian history, among which there is A History of Ukraine. This book might be considered a revolution in Ukrainian historiography, as it does not resemble the “Orthodox” Ukrainian historical narrative at all, instead it depicts the history of numerous ethnic (including Ukrainians) and religious groups, which have populated the Ukrainian lands for centuries. Special attention is paid to the Jews, depicting the history of Jewish communities in the Ukraine, describing the Jewish way of life in Shtetlakh, and so on.

I share the general opinion of Grachova about the ukrainocentrism in most of the popular Ukrainian historiography, and what is important in the textbooks used in schools and higher education institutions, and that the Jews together with other ethnic and religious minorities are underrepresented in this popular history discourse. Yet, as we will see, alternative Ukrainian historical narratives exist, though they are still less popular amongst the wider public.

I would like to add some personalities and scholarly works to Grachova's survey which I consider to be of importance in the research of Ukrainian historiography. Among them there is the immigrant historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytski, whose personality is interesting for this research for the reason that he was probably the first among the Ukrainian émigré historians in North America to criticize the nationalist historians' approach to Ukrainian historiography. His work is an effort to reexamine major aspects of Ukrainian history, including Kyivan Rus'; the Ukrainian nobility and elites; Cossack Ukraine and the Turco-Islamic World; the growth, development and competition between Ukrainian cities; the evolution of the Ukrainian literary language; the origins and the role of the city in Ukrainian history; and, and urbanization since the Second World War.

In 2007 and 2008 respectively, two important works on Ukrainian history were published by CEU press: David Marples' Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine and A Laboratory of Transnational History: Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian Historiography edited by Georgiy Kasianov and Philip Ther. The latter book is a joint work of established and outstanding historians; namely Georgiy Kasianov, Mark von Hagen, Andreas Kappeler, Philip Ther, Natalia Yakovenko, Oleksiy Tolochko, Alexey Miller, John-Paul Himka, Roman Szporluk and the abovementioned Yaroslav Hrytsak. The work aimed at creating a new “transnational” history of the Ukraine. This fresh work is an asset to the critical analysis of Ukrainian historiography. In his contribution to the volume “Nationalized” History: Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Future..., Kasianov deals with a phenomenon which he calls “nationalized history”, referring to the mainstream in Ukrainian historiography. He argues that there were two stages in creating the Ukrainian national narrative. First of all, the works of the middle of the nineteenth century produced by Hrushevsky, interrupted in the Ukraine by the Soviet period, but at the same time becoming a “true credo” in the Diaspora.[xi] The second stage started during the 1980s and continues until the present day. Kasianov ascribes certain typical features to the Ukrainian “nationalized” history: ethnocentricity (and as a consequence egocentricity and ethnic exclusivity), linearity, and absolutization of historical continuity. A necessary element of the “nationalized” history narrative is the historical myth, which is especially needed for ahistorical nations which see themselves as historical (like that of the Cossack myth in the East and the OUN-UPA myth in the West).

Mark von Hagen, who in the mid-1990s made an attempt to denationalize the Ukrainian narrative in his provocative Does Ukraine have a history, reinterpreted his work in a new article for the joint volume on the “transnational history”. The history of Ukraine, he argues, as a history of a borderland, which the Ukrainian territory had been for centuries, with a multiethnic composition of its population, cannot have such an ethnocentric character and has to be revised.[xii] For this purpose Philipp Ther suggests recently discussed approaches that seek to overcome “the methodological nationalism”, namely the comparative history and “transfer history”, which is based on studies of cultural “transfers”.[xiii]

Georgiy Kasianov and John-Paul Himka speak about the concept of victimhood in the Ukrainian national history narrative.[xiv] Himka reflects on the movie Between Hitler and Stalin: Ukraine in World War II – the Untold Story produced in Diaspora, in which, according to the author, Ukrainians are depicted as the main victims of the WWII, whereas the fact of Ukrainians being perpetrators remains untold.

In Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine, David Marples copies the chronology of “Ukrainian enslavement” by the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, suggested by Petro Vol'vach in his article dedicated to Ukrainian-Russian relations, published in 1993. It begins in 1720 with the Decree of Peter I prohibiting the printing of books in Ukrainian, continues with the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich followed by liquidation of the Hetmanate in the late eighteenth century, the collectivization and deportations in 1928-1932, and ends in 1986 with the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl. In his book Marples challenges theories of nationalism, nation-building and the meaning of the national heroes for the nation-building process in Ukraine. Using a wide selection of newspapers, journals, monographs, and school textbooks from different regions of the country, the book examines the sensitive issue of the changing perspectives on “heroes” and “villains” of and for the Ukrainian nation.

b) Russian and Polish historiography

An important work is the book by Timothy Snyder The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. In his book, Snyder attempts to address one of the big questions in modern historiography: how do terms such as nations change their meaning over time? He focuses on several case-studies, among which the most interesting in the framework of my research are the parts about Polish-Ukrainian relations and nation-building in the Ukraine.

Dealing with Ukrainian history is in fact barely possible without taking into consideration Russian and Polish accounts. As Andreas Kapeller fairly noticed, Ukrainian culture cannot be understood without considering Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish and Russian cultures;[xv] neither can Ukrainian history be presented without taking account of the history of Ukrainian Poles, Jews and Russians. Stephen Velychenko's books National History as cultural process: a Survey of the Interpretations of Ukraine's past in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian Historical Writing from the Earliest Times to 1914 and Shaping Identity in Eastern Europe and Russia: Soviet-Russian and Polish Accounts of Ukrainian History, 1914-1991, present an overview of the representation of Ukraine's history in Polish and Russian historiography up until 1991. Kappeller in his turn provides an overview of the present-day trends in Polish and Russian accounts of Ukrainian history.[xvi] Polish and Soviet Russian interpretations differ dramatically for understandable reasons, as historically these two powers were competing for the Ukrainian territories. In this competition Russia was the winner, particularly when it comes to historiography. Georgiy Kasianov argues that the personalities of  Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka and Bohdan Khmelnytsky were accepted as national heroes by the majority of the population for the reason that they were represented as such in Soviet Russian historiography.[xvii] The opposite cases are the personalities of Symon Petlyura and Stepan Bandera. The Polish accounts on Bandera are similar to the Soviet Russian negative ones; however Khmelnytsky and Petlyura would be seen differently.[xviii] Among the reasons for the minor Polish influence on Ukrainian historiography could be a low number of ethnic Poles living in the Ukraine in comparison with millions of Russians, who constitute the second most numerous ethnic group in the Ukraine; let alone the legacies of Russian Empire and the Soviet Union which the Ukraine, especially the eastern and southern parts, inherited.

It is quite hard to resist the temptation to introduce the Polish and Russian discourses in this work, though taking into consideration the limited scope of this Master thesis I will focus mainly upon Ukrainian and Jewish historiography. Nevertheless, as the influences of the Poles and especially the Soviet Russians are crucial, they will appear in the case studies.

e) Jewish Historiography

Jewish history is over four thousand years old, but Jewish historiography is much younger, it is a product of modernity. Wissenschaft des Judenthums (Science of Judaism) was a historical-critical school which developed in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century and aimed to research the religion, culture and philosophy of the Jews influenced by different civilizations. The most prominent names traditionally connected with the school are Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger and Zachariah Frankel in Germany; Samuel David Luzzatto in Italy; and, Nahman Krochmal and Solomon Judah Rapoport in Galicia.

Among the first historians to write a comprehensive history of Jewish people was Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891). His History of the Jews covers the ancient times until the nineteenth century. This work was unique of its kind when it appeared, though the first publications of it were not successful. Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) is believed to be Graetz's predecessor. Despite some criticism, especially on it avoiding the Kabbalah and other forms of mysticism in his history writing, Graetz's History of the Jews is recognized as a classic pioneering work in Jewish history and a beginning of Jewish historiography.

When dealing with the Jewish historiography related to Ukrainian Jewry one has to turn to the Jewish history writing in Poland, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and finally in independent Ukraine.

M. J. Rosman in his article entitled Reflections on the State of Polish-Jewish Historical Study describes a picture which might seem familiar: the trends in interwar Polish-Jewish historiography encounters were to some extent similar to the present-day Ukrainian-Jewish ones. The difference was actually that Polish and Jewish narratives were mutually exclusive, unlike in current Ukrainian-Jewish case, when one side, namely the Jewish, tries to find its place in Ukrainian ethnocentric history: The Jews were considered by the Poles to be a separate national group that happened to live on the same territory.If the Jewish historians often failed to place Polish-Jewish history in its Polish context, Polish historians, also nationalists, saw the Jews as marginal in relation to Polish history. These historians may have admitted that Poland in the period under consideration was a Paradisum Iudaeorum, but they paid little attention to the actual nature of Jewish life. For them, the history of the Jews, like the history of other national minority groups in the commonwealth, was tangential to Polish history. The Jews were krajowi cudzoziemcy (resident aliens); thus, in 1918, the distinguished historian Franciszek Bujak wrote in his programmatic statement on the study of Polish economic history: “Studies on the social and economic history of Polish Jewry are carried out so faithfully by them that it seems to me there is not much to add; what is worthy of publication will surely be published by them. Polish-Jewish history, then, was a Jewish concern; Poles did not have to research the subject or even integrate the results of Jewish research into works of their own”.[xix]

Polish Jewish historiography developed at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, and was pioneered by Meir Balaban, Yitzhak Shipper, Moses Shorr and Simon Dubnow. These four masters of Polish-Jewish history perished during the Holocaust, thus sharing the faith of Polish Jewry and the two major centers of Jewish historical activity in Warsaw and Vilna (Vilnius). Yet some of their contemporaries like Arthur Eisenbach and Salo Witmayer Baron (though the latter covered not exclusively the history of Polish Jewry) continued working in the field[xx].

 Moses Schorr, after having worked in the field of Jewish History, turned to Assyriology.[xxi]Yitzhak Schipper contributed to Jewish social, economic and cultural history. Meir Balaban not only produced a series of standard works of Jewish history and trained a whole generation of young Jewish historians, but also carried out a titanic research on the history of Galician Jewry. These works are an asset to the present-day researchers of Ukrainian Jewish history, since that is Galician Jewry eventually became annexed to it. Finally, Simon Dubnow was to become one of the most outstanding personalities in East European Jewish history.

Simon Dubnow was at the same time a Polish, Russian and partially even a Soviet Jewish historian.[xxii]Some of his major works, such as the History of the Jews in Russia and Poland: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day and World History of the Jewish People,belong to the classics of Jewish historiography. Dubnow was also a politician; he was the father of autonomism and the founder of the Folkspartay,the party which represented the ideas of Jewish Diaspora nationalism. His political activities and obsession with the ideas of Jewish autonomism could not but influence the way in which he presented history. When reading his History of the Jews one might have the assumption that this is a nationalist history, which would be a fair judgment. Dubnow writes about Abraham as a first Jewish national and about the Exodus as a formation of the Jewish nation, basically treating the religious text of Pentateuch as a Jewish historiography.[xxiii][xxiv]

Writing Jewish history in the Russian language made Dubnow the “Russian Graetz, and even more” as Avraham Greenbaum suggested.

Jewish historiography in the Russian language is a different world altogether. Its centers were the half-assimilated Odessa and Petersburg. There was no need, of course, to write general history books for Russian-speaking Jewish readers. On the other hand, Jewish history in Russian filled the need for popular historical essays; provided historical analyses, to fuel the never-ending journalistic discussions in Russian-Jewish newspapers on the "Jewish question" was a source of information for the steadily growing number of readers of Russian who, since they did not attend religious schools but graduated rather from the gymnasium or university, were not literate in Hebrew.[xxv]

Dubnow and his followers who wrote on Jewish history in Russian made possible the founding of Voskhod (Sunrise),a monthly periodical on Jewish history published in the Russian language.

After the revolution and establishment of the USSR the Soviet government followed the policy of korenizatsiya (indigenization), thus in 1918 historians made efforts to revive Jewish scholarship after the break caused by WWI and the Civil War.

As Alfred A. Greenbaum suggested in his article on Soviet Russian historiography, it is possible todivide Soviet Jewish historiography into society-sponsored, and government sponsored. The society-sponsored scholarship was based in Petrograd (later Leningrad), and was represented by  two scholarly societies, namely the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society and the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia. The former was founded in 1908, among the members of which were Simon Dubnow and Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, better known as Simon Ansky, who in 1909 initiated the Jewish ethnographic expedition in the pale of settlement which was successfully organized in 1912. These societies functioned until 1929-30. As for the government sponsored institutions, two research departments were opened at the newly-established Belorussian and Ukrainian academies of science in Minsk and Kyiv. The purpose of creating such institutions was a part of a Soviet integration policy, as the Soviet government wanted to strengthen loyalty to the regime among Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Jews. Jews were an official minority, and the official language of Soviet Jewry was Yiddish, which consequently became the language of the scholarship produced by these departments. As Greenbaum notes, eventually the Jewish Division of the Institute for Belorussian Culture was more fruitful in producing historiographical materials, while its counterpart in Kyiv put a general emphasis on Yiddish philology. In 1928 a Jewish scholarly society named the All-Russian Society for Studying the Jewish Language, Literature, and History was founded in Moscow, most probably for political reasons to let the Communist party's Jewish sections (Evsektsiia) control Jewish scholarship through an academic platform. After the Jewish scholarly institutions in Minsk and Kyiv were closed down in 1936, Jewish historiography was produced rarely, had a complementary character and was strongly controlled by the government.[xxvi]

After the fall of the Communist regime, a revival (though quite a slow one) in Jewish scholarship took place in the Ukraine. Sofiya Grachova carried out a comprehensive survey of three major works on Ukrainian Jewish History published in the Ukraine during the last two decades: Yevrei Ukrainy: Kratkiy Ocherk Istorii [The Jews of Ukraine: Brief Outline of History] (two volumes) authored by Y. Khonigsman and A. Nayman, co-authored by S. Yelisavetskiy and edited by F. Gorovskiy(second volume); Yevrei v Ukraine. Uchebno-Metodicheskie materialy (prilozheniya k kursam “Istoriya Ukrainy” I “Vsemirnaya Istoria”) [Jews in Ukraine: a textbook]” by Ilya Kabanchik andNarysy z Istorii ta Kultury Evreiv UkraÑ—ny [Survey of the History and Culture of Ukrainian Jews] edited by Leonid Finberg and Volodymyr Lyubchenko. Grachova managed to point out the major differences and similarities between these three. The authors have different approaches to Jewish history: Alexander Nayman's manner of reinterpreting historical events is considerably influenced by the “Enlightenment Paradigm (often through Soviet-Marxist mediation)”; Ilya Kabanchik, on the contrary, shares anti-assimilationist and Zionist views, and Narysy, the joint work of various historians, suggests a moderate or even apologetic version of Ukrainian-Jewish relations.[xxvii]These differences could not but influence the interpretation of certain events. One significant common feature of the above-mentioned works is their general acceptance of the main-stream Ukrainian national history narrative. Yosif Zisels, The chair of Vaad of Ukraine and the executive vice-president of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, who is also connected to the Jewish Studies Institute in Kyiv, told me during an interview[xxviii]the following:

Such personalities as Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Symon Petliura and Stepan Bandera can never be considered heroes by Jews [...] But as long as the Jews are going to live in Ukraine, they have to try to understand their Ukrainian counterparts if they want to be understood themselves.

Probably this could be a good explanation for the latest trends in Ukrainian Jewish history-writing. I will return to these sources further when dealing with the chosen case-studies.

f) Defining the Main Contradictions

As I have mentioned previously, probably the most significant effort to reconcile the contradictory historical narratives undertaken by Ukrainian and Jewish scholars was the conference organized in 1983 in Canada which resulted in a publication of the book named Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective edited by Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichny. The conferencewas carried out not without tensions. Nevertheless the outcome was quite successful, the contributors to the volume were the prominent scholars both in Ukrainian and in Jewish history, such as O. Pritsak, F. Sysyn, J.P. Himka, I. Bartal, I. Kleiner, Z. Gitelman and others. The book elaborates on the entire history of Jews in the Ukraine, and contains both Jewish and Ukrainian perspectives on the most problematic periods in Ukrainian-Jewish relations.[xxix]

Turning back to the Laboratory of Transitional Justice I would like to draw attention to the article From an Ethnonational to a Multiethnic to a Transnational Ukrainian History by Andreas Kappeler as it is relevant to this research. The author starts the article with three quotes which are related to the Khmelnytsky Uprising, in two of which Khmelnycky is portrayed as “Moses” who liberated his people from servitude,[xxx]and in the last one Chmel' is depicted as the “arch-enemy”.[xxxi]In this way Kappeler introduces the reader to a complex nature of Ukrainian-Jewish relations; continuing with the ceases of UNR, Symon Petliura and the pogroms, and then proceeding to OUN-UPA and the personalities of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Kappeler wrote, how the history of the multiethnic lands became ethnonational, thus the personalities for the role of national heroes suggested by the national historians are sometimes absolutely inappropriate for the representatives of other ethnic groups (he also mentions Poles, Russians and the split within ethnic Ukrainians). As an alternative, Kappeler suggests Paul Robert Magocsi's History of Ukraine or his own work Russia as a Multiethnic Empire as a model for multiethnic history writing. Yet as ethnonational and multiethnic approaches tend to overestimate the significance of one's ethnicity, the next step should be the turn to transethnic and transnational historiography, which Kappeler sees appropriate to the era of globalization and European Unification.[xxxii]

Kappeler's suggestion sounds quite attractive, but coming back to the realities of Ukrainian historiography I would like to turn to the article of Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytski's UkraÑ—nski vidpovidi na ievreiski pytannya [Ukrainian Answers to Jewish Questions] where he tries to response to Jewish dissatisfaction with Ukrainian nationalist history.

He notes that the biggest problem in Ukrainian-Jewish relations is the history. Keeping in mind the assumption of Ukrainian antisemitism, popular among some Jewish scholars and caused primarily by such historic events as the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Ukrainian Civil War, Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaboration with Nazis and their consequences for the Jewish population, Lysiak-Rudnytski suggests reconsidering the probable factors which could cause the emergence of negative anti-Jewish stereotypes among Ukrainians and consequently lead to Jewish violence. Jews, as Lysiak-Rudnytski argues, were seen by Ukrainians as oppressors' agents who did not produce anything, but earned money as tavern-keepers and landowners during Polish rule. Later, the Jews started to assimilate into either Russian, Polish or German cultures, but never to the Ukrainian one (although, he explains the reasons for that). He does not mention “Judeo-Bolshevism” as a factor, though quite a number of Ukrainian scholars ascribe it to the Jews as well as the Russian/Soviet agency in general. Therefore the negative assumptions exist on both sides.

Lysiak-Rudnytski sees the solution in the reconsideration of the common history from the Jewish side. Though he understands that for Jews, Bohdan Khmelnytsky will always the infamous butcher, he argues that the hetman as a historical personality with his achievements has to be respected. As for OUN, Lysiak-Rudnytski condemns this organization for its totalitarian nature and regrets that it did not follow the Vyzvolnyy Rukh [The Movement for Release], but he does not write about the atrocities committed by OUN-UPA members against the Jews: probably the historian was not aware of them, as he did not live until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of archives. Lysiak-Rudnytski suggests not to stress the history of conflicts, but of cooperation between Ukrainians and Jews, meaning the joint creation of UNR, or mutual support during the elections to the local administration in Galicia during the interwar period. He expresses his regrets about the fact that the Jews do not show interest in Ukrainian studies, though there are so many of them engaged in the studies of Russian history and culture.

 Lysiak-Rudnytsky concludes: “normalization of Ukrainian-Jewish relations depends also on whether Ukrainian Jewry will be able to give less Balabans and more Goldelmans[xxxiii]in the future”.[xxxiv]

Chapter 2: The Khmelnystky Uprising

a) Ukrainian Perspectives

In this chapter I will analyze the representation of the events of 1648-1649 in Ukrainian and Jewish historiography, specifically the representation of the Cossack Uprising and the way the personality of Bohdan Khmenytsky is portrayed in different sources.

A very important and helpful source for this chapter is the special volume of Jewish History, dedicated to the events of 1648-1649, to which several Ukrainian and Jewish scholars contributed articles.[xxxv]Frank E. Sysyn tried to characterize the Ukrainian revolt in the most neutral way, and to demonstrate how those events were described by subsequent historians of different backgrounds. Zenon E. Kohut and Gershon Bacon wrote comprehensive surveys of Ukrainian and Jewish historiography respectively, which were an asset to the work on this chapter. Natalia Yakovenko elaborated vastly on the problems of verification of seventeenth century events. Shaul Stampfer suggested the latest demographic analysis of the number of Jewish victims of the revolt. Judith Kalik presented the results of her research on the relations between the Orthodox Church and the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Finally, Moshe Rosman introduced his case study of the city of Dubno during the time of the Uprising.

 Describing the Khmelnytsky Uprising, as with most historical conflicts which had completely different outcomes for conflicting sides, it subsequently became represented in numerous national narratives diversely, and as such it poses a sort of a challenge. What can be said for sure, is that Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the leader of the Cossack Uprising in alliance with Crimean Tatars against the Polish lords in the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth known as UkraÑ—na (Ukraine), which existed from 1648 till 1657 and resulted in the incorporation of these lands into the Tsardom of Muscovy by the signing of the Pereyaslav Agreement. Additional information most probably will be already an interpretation. As Natalia Yakovenko noticed, all of the contemporary and the majority of the subsequent historians of Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish or Russian background, writing on the events of 1648-1649 were biased. Precisely all of those four nations built their narratives using models, like that of struggle for independence, defense, martyrdom and reunification. “The case far two often has been the paradigm of “national histories”.”[xxxvi]Frank Sysyn in his turn managed to illustrate how these models naturalized in historiography. In 1989, the Shevchenko Scientific Society published a volume dedicated to the 250^th anniversary of Khmelnytsky Uprising, among the authors of which were Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Hrushevsky. The events were represented as a remarkable page in Ukrainian history; Bohdan Khmelnytsky was represented as the national hero. The purpose for publishing such a volume was an effort to strengthen the Ukrainian national movement, oppressed by Polish elites, through scholarship. Sysyn argues that this was the very moment when the “Ukrainian National Idea” (the idea of great Ukraine) was born in Eastern Galicia. After several years, in 1905 which was also an important date – 250 years since besiege of Lviv – a Polish scholar Franciszek Rawita-Gawronki published the biography of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, entitled The Bloody Guest in Lviv, which according to the same author was so racist towards Ruthenians, that “one could study Polish nationalism with its help”.[xxxvii]The purpose of this publication was to demonstrate the Polish domination over Ukrainians. Finally, on the January 12 1954, in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, there appeared an article dedicated to the 300^th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Agreement, which celebrated the “reunion of the Ukraine with Russia”.[xxxviii]Afterwards two Ukrainian cities received new names: Proskuriv turned to Khmelnytsky and Pereyaslav became Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky.

The outcomes of the seventeenth century Cossack Uprising were undoubtedly the main factors which determined the character of the event's representation in different historical narratives. As this thesis deals with Ukrainian and Jewish historiography I will focus on the representation of the Kmelnytsky Uprising in the relevant sources.

As the Ukrainians and Jews were two opposing sides during this conflict, there is no wonder    why both of them from the very beginning had different perspectives on the Khmelnytsky uprising, its significance, consequences and of course the reflections of each other in history writing.

 Ukrainian Diaspora historian Zenon E. Kohut in his analysis of Ukrainian historiography depicting the Cossack Uprising starts with the clerical sources, as in his opinion the Orthodox clergy maintained a virtual monopoly on historical writing up until the Uprising.[xxxix]However the most influential clerical history source, written after the uprising, Synopsis,attributed to Innokentii Gizel, which first appeared in Kyiv around 1670s, gave little attention to Cossacks and the events of the seventeenth century and focused mainly on Kyivan Rus' and the Riurykid dynasty. The other clerical source, A Chronicle based on Ancient Chronicles by Feodosiy Safonovych, appeared approximately at the same time and mentioned the Khmelnytsky Uprising and anti-Jewish massacres; according to Kohut, without any Jewish prejudices or evaluations of the events.

As the Cossack officers and administration became the new political elite, they demanded new historiography which would focus primarily on “Cossack Ukraine under Poland, the Great Liberator Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and Ukrainian and Cossack rights and liberties under both Polish Kings and Russian Tsars”. The main difference of the Cossack approach from the clerical one was the focus on Ukrainian distinctiveness rather than on a common origin with Muscovy.[xl]

 One of the most well-known Cossack Eyewitness Chronicles is Letopisi Samovidtsa (Chronocles of the Eyewitness)which belongs most likely tothe Roman Rakushka-Romanovky   (appeared between 1672 and 1702). In the testimony the author describes Polish misdeeds extensively. Later in his narrative the author turns to the Jews, whom he accuses of the monopoly on alcohol (according to him Cossacks could not keep any drinks at home), the oppression of peasants blaming in it both landlords and Jewish leaseholders. He presumes that the great Polish landlords possibly were not aware of the peasants' oppression in Ukraine, as they were “blinded by their Jews”.[xli]Rakushka-Romanovsky also mentions such nuances as the betrayal of the Jews by Poles in Tul'chyn, Jews who converted, the fact that Cossacks and their allies, the Tatars in Volhynia, killed “not only Jews and nobles, but the common people of that land suffered the same fate”; and finally, “No Jews remained in Ukraine,” while “the greatest number of Jews perished in Nemyriv and Tul'chyn – an uncountable number”.[xlii]This is a very important note, as I will touch upon the issue of numbers of victims further.

Kohut mentions two other Cossack chroniclers: Samiilo Velychko and Hryhorii Hrabianka. Both of them relied heavily in their description of the Cossack Uprising on Polish sources and on contemporary Ukrainian diaries or documents and hearsay. The Hrabianka's work: The Events of the Most Bitter and Most Bloody War since the Origin of the Poles between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Zaporizhian Hetman, and the Poles... (1710)is interesting because here the Jewish are being accused of leasing Orthodox churches for the first time, sixty years after the uprising.[xliii]In Historical Collection (1770) by Stefan Lukomsky, the author further develops the “Church-leasing” argument:

Finally, [the Poles] leased divine churches to the Jews, to the great grief of the Orthodox, so that the Jews kept the keys to the churches, and should there be a need to celebrate the Christian rite, baptism, wedding or anything else, [the Jews] charged a special tax, and would also curse, insult and beat the priests, tearing out their hair and beards [...][xliv]

Istoria Rusov (The History of the Rus' People),which belongs already to the end of the eighteenth/beginning of the nineteenth century, signifies a change in representation of the Jews in Ukrainian historiography; they are mentioned much more frequently (sometimes even as a cause for the upheaval). Both economic oppression and the “keys to the church” are mentioned as accusations against the Jews.[xlv]

As we may see, Zenon Kohut tries to point out three, so to say, phases of representation of the Jews in Cossack chronicles: firstly the Jews appear only as minor cause of the Uprising when most attention is concentrated on Poles and economic oppression of the Orthodox; then the religious factor is introduced into the discourse; and finally the “Keys from the Church” argument becomes an ordinary feature of such chronicles. Kohut suggests that these arguments could come from the Polish sources. After the Uprising, Poles tried to find the cause of this catastrophe. As the Catholic Church was affirming its positions, meanwhile becoming more and more conservative, the fact that the Poles had provided the Jews with the power over Christians the Orthodox became quite uncomfortable for the former.[xlvi]

Kohut suggests that nineteenth century Ukrainian historiography “inherited” anti-Jewish sentiments from the Cossack chronicles, sometimes with the help of folklore.[xlvii]Among the examples there is Istoriia Malorossii (History of Little Russia, 1842-1843)by Mykola Markevych, considerably influenced byIstoriia Rusov, andBohdan Khmelnytsky (1857) authored by Mykola Kostomarov, who also relied on Velychko and Istoria Rusov, but the latter source was removed from the second edition, instead Kostomarov incorporated Nathan Hanover's Abyss of Dispair.[xlviii]

Mykhailo Hrushevsky also refered to Hanover's work in his History of Ukraine-Rusy and noted that “Volhynian Jew” managed to depict Hanover's contemporary situation plausibly.[xlix]Hrushevsky dedicates a considerable part to the Jewish factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In fact he cites all above-mentioned sources, in particular Hrabianka's chronicle and Istoria Rusov as well as some folk poems and songs, which tell stories about a Jew-oppressor. In fact the whole picture combines all the existing anti-Jewish stereotypes mentioned in the Cossack chronicles, which as a result appears quite confusing as Hrushevsky's position is not clear. However, as a conclusion, the historian notes that it is unknown whether any of the anti-Jewish stereotypes coming from the Cossack sources and folklore resemble reality.

b) Revisionism in Ukrainian Historiography

References of Nathan Hanover's chronicle in the classic works of Ukrainian historians of the late nineteenth century may be considered as a slight attempt to introduce a Jewish discourse into Ukrainian historiography instead of keeping the anti-Jewish stereotypes borrowed from Cossack eyewitness chronicles. However the real efforts to revise the traditional representation of the Jewish factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukrainian historiography started much later.

The presence of explicit anti-Jewish attitudes in the Cossack historiography was more of a leftist liberal populist concern, like Mykola Hrushevsky. His political opponents, such as the conservative Vyacheslav Lypynski, were more concerned with the significance of the Khmelnytsky Uprising for the nation-building process.[l]

During the Soviet regime, as it was mentioned above, the Khmelnytsky Uprising and its leader were seen positively, because of the “reunification” of the Rus' people as a result of the Pereyaslav Agreement in 1654. The cult of the Cossack Uprising and Bohdan Khmelnytsky was celebrated during the Soviet regime as a courtesy to Ukrainians, while there was hardly any place for the Jews in the whole story.[li]

We may find the efforts to reconcile Jewish and Ukrainian historical narratives in the 1980s in the sources written primarily by Ukrainian émigré historians. Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytski, whom I mentioned in the first chapter, was among those historians. Also such joint works of Ukrainian and Jewish historians as the conference on Ukrainian-Jewish relations, held in 1983, which resulted in a publication of the book Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective (1990) and the specialJewish History volume dedicated to the Jews, Cossacks, Poles and peasants of 1648 in the Ukraine may symbolize a new stage in the interpretation of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in historical writing.

Frank E. Sysyn stated that the Jewish factor received too little attention in non-Jewish historiography and for centuries remained primarily a Jewish concern: “The Jewish suffering went on largely without commentary by non-Jews in the midst of the Polish-Ukrainian struggle.  It was an issue about which the Polish side was extremely sensitive since the raising up of Jews over a Christian people was hard to justify according to the contemporary Christian world-view”.[lii]One might add that the Jewish suffering was also not given enough attention in the historiography dedicated to Russian-Ukrainian friendship.

Sysyn pointed out very important features of Polish Jewry of the seventeenth century and the way they perceived and were perceived by their neighbors: in the new society of estates being established in the Ukraine, Jews functioned as a corporate order, therefore they were perceived as the supporters of the (Polish) regime. Jews were a conservative group in two aspects: religion and loyalty to power (king and szlachta). Having analyzed Jewish sources, Sysyn concluded that typical elements of Jewish historiography are positive images of the Polish king, szlachta and Wiśniowecki, and negative depictions of Cossacks, peasants and Khmelnytsky. The conservatism of Jews, he argued, could influence their perception of the events, their reaction and subsequently their historiography. “One can not understand the Khmelnytsky Uprising without examining the Jewish massacres, just as one can not understand the massacres outside of the context of the uprising” Sysyn concluded.[liii]

Jaroslaw Pelenski in his turn suggested that “The Jews suffered because they had been an integral part, that is, the lower strata representatives of that system and because of the traditional Christian, in this particular case Orthodox Christian, hostility toward what has been perceived as an alien religion”[liv]As for Ukrainian and Jewish mutual perceptions in historiography he concluded:

Modern scholarship cannot be satisfied with simplistic traditional explanations or modern nationalistic justifications of the complex causes of the motivations and behavior of early modern society. It cannot accept a projection of modern or contemporary concerns, including those of antisemitism and genocide, into earlier periods of history, in particular when such concerns simply did not exist, just as it cannot tolerate simplistic monocausal explanations offered by various Ukrainian learned and popular authors regarding the placement of the blame for the anti-Jewish excesses and massacres that took place in the course of Ukrainian insurrections and revolutions [...][lv]

c) Jewish Perspectives

It would be logical to expect that the representation of the events of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Jewish sources also started as chronicles of eyewitnesses. The crucial difference between  the two cases is the fact that in the Jewish historical writing on the subject, unlike in that of the Ukrainian, writing one chronicle enjoyed such great popularity.

In an article, named The House of Hanover..., Gershon Bacon analyzes the depiction of the events of 1648-1649 in Jewish historiographyin such way as to refer to a “school” of Jewish historians who relied (often heavily) on Yeven Metzulah, in their works. In fact it is barely possible to find any Jewish (and not only) historical source describing the Khmelnytsky Uprising in which Abyss of Despair is not incorporated. As I have mentioned in the previous sub-chapter, beginning from the nineteenth century, Ukrainian historians also start to consult this source. But before starting to analyze how the famous Hanover's chronicle influenced Jewish and general history writing and what consequences it had, I will try to clarify the reasons why it became a cornerstone of Jewish history writing.

Why this source? It is known that there are at list five available chronicles composed by Hanover's contemporaries, however they are less complete and less comprehensive than that of Hanover’s.[lvi]Yeven Metzulah, despite its shortcomings, is well-structured, has a clear language, and even an effort of critical analysis. Indeed, the author, though sharing his subjective attitudes (which is quite typical for a testimony), tries to suggest the possible causes for the Uprising, and explains them not in religious but in socio-economic terms.[lvii]

In general, Nathan Hanover's chronicle shares quite progressive views for a seventeenth century source. Nevertheless, the fact that subsequent historians up until recent times treated this source as if it was a document which did not demand any criticism is quite surprising; especially in regard to the numbers of victims. Sometimes Hanover provides exact numbers like two or five hundred; otherwise numbers are just “hundreds” and “thousands”. Despite the fact that Hanover was a well-educated (in contemporary understanding of Jewish education) person, it is unlikely that he possessed some specific statistical data or knowledge of a demographer in order to provide his reader with exact data concerning the Jewish losses during the upheaval; even nowadays counting human losses is a very problematic issue. Modern scholars criticize the reckless applications of Hanover's figures (not the largest among the suggested though) without any critical estimate the number of Jewish losses around 10,000-20,000 people.[lviii]

Why do numbers matter? The difference between 100,000-150,000 and 10,000-20,000 is                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  life of a human being is precious. However, as Jaroslaw Pelenski argued, the figure of 10,000 Jewish victims compared with numbers of human losses during the wars common for that times would not accede and probably would be even less.[lix]“The Jewish chronicles, - writes Pelenski, - in question have received little attention in antiquarian scholarship and practically none in modern tautological-contextual analysis”.[lx]

One of the paradoxes of the traditional representation of the events of 1648-1649 in “Orthodox” Jewish historiography as a catastrophe in which tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews perished after what Polish Jewry could never recover, is the fact that the same historians write about the Jewish persecutions in the very same places: the Haidamaka Uprising (Koliivshina) in 1768, the pogroms in 1880s and in the twentieth century, and finally, the Holocaust. If the Jewish communities in the Ukraine continued being persecuted it means that they existed.

Jaroslaw Pelenski argued that the Second World War was a watershed in Jewish historiography on the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Before WWII the events of 1648-1649 were seen as medieval persecutions of Jews such as the Crusades; such modern concepts as “antisemitism” were not applied in this case.

After the Second World War […] However, an ominous and ideologically loaded concept of “holocaust,” as applied to the Cossack insurrections and, in particular, to the Khmelnytsky revolution, entered Jewish scholarly terminology. Contemporary Jewish historians and social scientists not only freely apply the term holocaust to the Khmelnytsky era, but also make the hetman personally responsible for the holocaust of the Polish (or the Ukrainian) Jewry in that period.[lxi]

I would argue here with Pelenski, as in my opinion the reinterpretation of the seventeenth century massacres took place before the Second World War, when for instance Simon Dubnow compared them to the pogroms in 1905.[lxii]However, in order to illustrate what he means and to demonstrate how the analyzed events were often interpreted in the period after the Holocaust, I would like to cite Lucy Dawidowicz:

In Ukrainian history, Bogdan Chmielnicki, who led an uprising against the Poles in 1648, is a national hero, but in Jewish history he is remembered for inspiring the bloodbath of pogroms that decimated the Jews in 1648-1649. Two centuries later the fury of antisemitism recurred in the Pogroms of 1881 and than again in those of 1905.

In 1913, the Western world was riveted by the trial in Kiev of one Mendel Beilis, an obscure Jewish clerk who was accused of killing a Christian child to use his blood for a Passover ceremony. Thus, in the twilight of Tsarist rule, the reactionary regime tried to divert the superstitious people. After an international uproar, Kiev jury acquitted Beilis of murder, but the blood accusation against the Jewish people was left standing.

The memory of Beilis trial was eclipsed on 1914 by the Great War and and then by the February and October revolutions of 1917. In the Civil War that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power, the Whites and the Reds fought mostly on Ukrainian terrain. The Jews were the def casualties. The late Simon Dubnow, the premier historian of Russian Jewry, calculated that, between 1918 and 1921, some 530 Jewish communities in the Ukraine endured more than 1200 pogroms, about 60000 Jews were murdered, many more were injured and crippled. Some Jewish communities were completely obliterated, leaving no living survivors or standing houses.

The Soviet Government first tried to restrain Ukrainian antisemitism, though not out of love for the Jews. The government sought to discredit counterrevolutionary opponents by labeling them antisemitic. But after the German occupation in 1941, ancient prejudices were unloosed. Thus, as soon as the Jews of Kiev had left their homes for the assembly place on September 29, some Ukrainians began plunder the abandoned houses. Others were quick to betray Jews who were hiding – even children – and to hand them over to the Germans.[lxiii]

The introduction to the 1983 edition of Abyss of Despair by William B. Helmreich is also worth quoting:

In the era when so much is written on the Nazi holocaust, it is important to recognize that this last tragedy dwarfs all previous holocausts only in magnitude but  not in kind, and the brutality of Chmielnicki made the work of the Nazis that much easier. It is no accident that Eastern Europe was the location for most of the major concentration camps. The Ukrainians in particular tended to cooperate with the Nazis in their efforts to exterminate the Jews. Thus Babi Yar became synonymous with the desire to forget and to cover up […] As we read Hanover's description of the atrocities committed by Chmielnicki and his hordes, it becomes clear that Hitler's torture chambers were only technological refinement – the precedent had already been set […]

The most recent oppressor of the Jews is the Soviet Union, and its policies become more understandable when viewed from a historical perspective. Antisemitism has always been a part of Russian life and culture, and nowhere has its presence been more noticeable than in the Ukraine, where Chmielnicki is still regarded as a national hero.[lxiv]

What may be the reasons for this everlasting continuity of Jewish sufferings in Ukraine so often suggested by Jewish historians?

The concept of Jewish suffering developed in Jewish historiography probably since its very beginnings. Heinrich Graetz's interpretation of Jewish history as the history of “study and suffering” (Lernen und Leinen) influenced greatly the work of his followers. The “lachrymosity” in Jewish history was criticized only in 1920 by Salo W. Baron in his book “Ghetto and Emancipation”. Before that the concept of victimhood dominated: the Jews were represented as victims, while their neighbors were seen oppressors.

“Between hammer and  anvil”, the famous concept proposed by Simon Dubnow, according to which Jews were the victims of circumstances as they were an estate incorporated into the Polish system (hammer) which exploited Ukrainians (read Orthodox peasants and Cossacks) (anvil). Not surprisingly, following this approach, the Gentiles were often seen as perpetrators.

 Gershon Bacon also noticed that the interpretations often allow us to see the background of the author, as well as either his ideological orientation or apologetic bent. Among the examples he quotes Solomon Grayzel, where he managed to reinterpret Yeven Metzulah as a proof of Jewish empathy for peasants, when in fact in his chronicle Hanover showed complete alliance with the Poles.[lxv]Raphael Mahler suggested that the Jewish persecutions were determined by socio-economic factors, and the greatest Jewish enemies were not the peasants, but their (Jewish) economic competitors in towns.[lxvi]Graetz and Jost argued that the Khmelnytsky Uprising was a watershed in the history of Eastern European Jewry, where on the one hand the rabbinical centers in that region declined, and subsequently Hasidism, Kabalah and Messianism could develop; on the other hand, according to Salo Baron, the center of Jewish migration shifted from Eastern to Central and Western Europe.[lxvii]

Raphael Mahler's socio-economic approach represents a new stage in the historiography[lxviii]; he suggests, those events were not an immediate catastrophe but a stage, after which the Eastern European Jewry stated to decline.[lxix]But the image of the events of 1648-1649 as a catastrophe from which Polish Jewry never recovered remained the mainstream in Jewish historiography until quite recent times.

d) Revisionism in Jewish Historiography

 The first effort to revise the traditional representation of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Jewish historiography was carried out by Polish Jewish historian Bernard D. Weinryb. Weinryb was the first to apply criticism to Yeven Metzulah, primarily to the numbers of victims suggested. More over, Weinryb strongly criticized the efforts of his contemporary historians to compare the seventeenth century anti-Jewish violence to the Holocaust, as seventeenth century Cossacks, unlike Nazis, had absolutely different agenda, and had neither aim for annihilating the world Jewry, nor means for that.

Among other subsequent scholars dealing with Polish Jewry, Jonathan Israel and Edward Fram tried to continue what Weinryb had started.[lxx]  Israel was the first to reject the common belief in the decline of the Polish Jewry after the seventeenth century tragedy, arguing that it recovered dramatically and continued to play an important role as a community.[lxxi]Edward Fram focused his attention on the reasons of the Uprising and the way it was perceived.[lxxii]

Probably the most renowned revisionist work on the Jewish factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising   of the Soviet period was the article by Saul Borovoi entitled The National Liberation War of the Ukrainian Nation and the Jewish Population, published in the Soviet historical journal. This article had a strong political agenda, which was a reappraisal of  the Khmelnytsky Uprising and Ukrainian-Russian (Soviet) friendship; unsurprisingly it had a Marxist approach. However, it is a significant work in Jewish historiography, as it criticizes Dubnow's “between hammer and anvil”  concept. Borovoi took a “middle ground between anti-Jewish Ukrainian historiography and apologetic Jewish historiography. The Jews were not between the hammer and the anvil but themselves divided into exploiters and exploited.”[lxxiii]

Following the trend of deconstructing the image of eternal Jewish victimhood, Judith Kalik, after researching the relations between the Jews and the Orthodox in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, argued that in fact Jews were in a better economic and social position than the Orthodox before the Khmelnytsky Uprising, as they were empowered by Polish landlords to represent the latter in the Ukraine. In seventeenth century Poland, Kalik argues, the antagonism was on the sides of different religious group, but the relations between the Jews and the Orthodox, unlike with Catholics and Uniates (the privileged confessions), had a violent character, where the Jews were not only victims, but often the oppressors.[lxxiv]Mentioning  the “keys to the church” legend,  hitherto provoked protests from Jewish historians, Kalik writes that there are some references to Jews leasing payments for some church services (though mostly with reference to the Catholic Church ) which could serve as a basis for such legends.[lxxv]

 As we have seen, the interpretations of the events of 1648-1649 changed in time in both Ukrainian and Jewish historiography. Though in the popular Ukrainian national historical narrative, regarding the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Jews still do not receive proper attention, there is room for debates and dialogue in academia.

Chapter 3: The Civil War in the Ukraine and the Role of Symon Petliura in Anti-Jewish Pogroms

In this chapter I will try to provide a survey of Ukrainian and Jewish historiography which deals with the anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in the Ukraine during the Civil War.

a) Historical Background

First of all I would like to mention some facts for the clarification of the matter, as in my opinion one can not start analyzing the anti-Jewish pogroms without placing them in a broader historical framework. As a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Tsarist regime fell; which was followed by the Civil War which lasted from 1917 till 1923 and concluded with the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922.

Meanwhile, dramatic political and social changes took place within the Ukraine. With the fall of Tsarist Russia the Pale of Settlement was abolished and the Russian Jewry were finally emancipated after more than a hundred years. The government of the newly proclaimed Ukrainian People's Republic with the Central Rada as its main legislative body, and Mykhailo Hrushevsky as its president had different attitudes towards the national minorities in the country, the Jews in particular. On the November 20, 1917 the Central Rada proclaimed its Third Universal, by which it provided all the national minorities in Ukraine with national-personal autonomy.

It seemed as if under the new Ukrainian government the Ukrainian Jewry would have an autonomy similar to the one it used to have long before, like when the lands in question belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; so much praised by the founder of the Autonomism and Folkspartay Simon Dubnow. But the reality brought new challenges: Jewish politics were represented by a number of parties, all of which had their own agenda, which naturally resulted in tensions in the Jewish council. Besides the latter, the Bolsheviks were approaching from the eastern boarder; this moment is characterized by Abramson as a watershed in Ukrainian-Jewish relations.[lxxvi] As the Bolsheviks invaded the Ukraine, some of the Jewish political parties, mainly the leftist and partially the autonomists, changed their views. By December 1918 the controversy in Jewish politics resulted in a schism in the Jewish Council, two opposing organs were formed: the socialist Ministry of Jewish Affairs and the Zionist-clerical Nationality Secretariat. Thus, as Abramson writes, the split between the Socialists and the Zionists was complete, and resulted in effectively preventing the Jewish political community from acting decisively against the devastating pogrom wave of 1919.

The year of 1919 was a year of chaos, destruction and violence in the Ukraine, when a series of bloody anti-Jewish pogroms took place mostly in the Right-bank Ukraine. It was a huge tragedy which took lives of tens or even hundreds of thousands victims[lxxvii] and let alone caused an enormous loss of property. The perpetrators were of all of the colors of political spectrum, plus volunteers, scholars mostly agree, that mainly the crimes were committed by the Denikin's Army and the army of Directory, the commander-in-chief of which was Symon Petliura. The Bolsheviks and the Anarchists also caused violence, although only at the beginning of the Civil War and to a smaller scale.[lxxviii]

Symon Petliura is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Throughout the long years of Soviet propaganda he was considered to be a criminal, slaughterer, ultra-rightist nationalist. For the Jews “Petliura had become in the popular mind, only one in a long line of Ukrainian national leaders and rabid antisemites stretching beck do Bohdan Khmelnytsky”. But after the fall of the Soviet regime things changed considerably: the interpretation of Petliura's personality and his role in the pogroms vary from the most negative depictions to the complete reappraisal of his personality.

 Petliura's assassination on May 25, 1926 in Paris by Jewish anarchist Sholom (Samuel) Schwartzbard became one among the most controversial episodes in the history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, after which the real debate between Ukrainian and Jewish historians began.

Unlike in the previous chapter, here I will analyze the sources in the chronological order of their publications, as opposed to dividing them into two groups, namely Ukrainian and Jewish. The reason why I have made this decision is the fact that this page in Ukrainian-Jewish relations started with perspectives for cooperation and ended with violent conflict and mutual offenses. Meanwhile, the two historical narratives, though existing parallel to one another, were always competing.

b) After the Pogroms 1919-1926

The year 1919 in the Ukraine was a year of misery and massacres for the whole population of the country, especially for the Jews. According to the available data, limited statistics indicate that while in 1918 the number of attacks on the Jewish population numbered roughly 60 in 1917 and 80 in 1918, in 1919 there were 934 instances (897 according to the other source). The violence took place in the majority of cases in Podolia, Vohlynia and the right-bank provinces of Kiev, where approximately 80% of the Jewish population resided. In most of the cases, roughly 40%, the pogroms were perpetrated by the Directory, 28.4% by miscellaneous bands, 17.2% by the White Army; and the remainder by the Red Army, the Hryhoryev's bands, the Polish army and others.[lxxix]

On August 26, 1919, after the major wave of pogroms had swept the right-bank Ukraine, Symon Petliura issued an army order where he condemned the anti-Jewish violence, stating that the Jewish citizens showed their loyalty to the idea of Ukrainian independence, and ensured his soldiers of severe punishment in the event of disobedience.[lxxx] On the very next day, the Commander-in-Chief issued an appeal to the Ukrainian army with encouragement to fight against the Bolshevists and protect the Jewish masses.[lxxxi]

As a reaction to the outbreak of violence, some of the Jewish parties, such as Bund, Faraynigte and Poale-Zion split from the Jewish Council and followed the Communist path, as the Bolsheviks issued some decrees condemning anti-Semitism.[lxxxii] Zionists were since then mainly preoccupied with Palestine until the beginnings of the anti-Zionist persecutions by the Soviet regime. Meanwhile such Jewish politicians as Salomon Goldelman and Arnold Margolin remained supporters of Ukrainian nationalism.

The pogroms were not a main concern of either Ukrainian or Jewish historians and politicians during the first several years after they occurred in the Ukraine. The political situation in the Ukraine was unstable, the Ukrainian People's Republic, with Petliura as its head of government resided in emigration; the Jews then were mainly concerned with the political schism between the Jewish parties, as we may judge from their writings.

Solomon Goldelman in his Letters of Jewish Social-Democrat (1921)encouraged Ukrainian Jewry to support their Ukrainian brethren in their struggle for independence and to abandon their sympathies for Russian culture:

If, however, that revolutionary act which may finally break with the traditional Russian residues within the Jewish intellectuals, does not come about, and if the Jewish people do not deliver themselves from their psychological burden of Russian tradition and from the disastrous ill-breading in language and culture of this country, then the Ukrainian democrats will also in the future gain an impression which has been already produced in the events of the first year of revolution in the Ukraine to the effect that they can rely only on their own forces which are not too numerous, and that on the other hand, all other nationalities in the Ukraine maintain, if not hostile, then nevertheless at least indifferent attitudes toward the national rebirth of the Ukrainian people.[lxxxiii]

Goldelman’s preference of Ukrainian to Russian culture was not a common phenomenon among his Ukrainian Jewish contemporaries. In fact the majority of assimilated Jews were culturally Russian, and a Ukrainian Jewish identity did not develop.

 Arnold Margolin in his book The Ukraine and the Policy of the Entente (Memorandum by a Jew and a citizen) (1921), published in emigration, touches upon the topic of the pogroms, and tries to provide the evidence of punishments for the Directorate army soldiers, who had been accused of committing pogroms.[lxxxiv] Margolin also tried to prove that Denikin’s army was responsible for the pogroms, and that they were encouraged by their commander, unlike in case of Directorate.[lxxxv]

In the year 1921 an important document concerning Ukrainian-Jewish relations was signed. During September 1921 Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and Maxim Slavinsky, the representative of Ukrainian People's Republic, signed an agreement, undertaking to do their best in fulfilling the plan of creating the Jewish gendarmerie which would be attached to the Ukrainian army and the main aim of which would be to maintain the security of the Jewish population in the Ukraine. This document later became renowned as “The Pact with the Devil”. What reasons made the Zionist activist sign the agreement with the government, which in the opinion of Jewish majority was responsible for pogroms? According to Joseph Schechtman, a close friend and biographer of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the reasons which determined Jabotinsky's decision were the following: first of all he had always been a supporter of Ukrainian nationalism; secondly, Jabotinsky was truly devoted to the idea of an organized Jewish self-defense. By the time the pact was signed the Western Powers were still expected to support Petliura’s regime in the fight against the Bolsheviks, and the army of the Directory was still well-equipped and located not far from the Russian border. This meant the danger of new pogroms. Some of Jabotinsky’s friends who even did not mind the idea of creating a Jewish legion within the Ukrainian Army, tried to convince him, that Directory did not have enough political power, and this pact could only do harm to him. Apparently they were right. By the spring of 1922, when according to Slavinsky’s plan Petliura's army was to overcome the Bolsheviks, the Western Powers simply gave up financing it, and the army was disbanded. Since then Jabotinsky was being constantly attacked by his political opponents for his union with Ukrainian nationalists. He was nearly made to resign from his post in the Zionist organization, although that did not happen.

Despite all the misfortunes “The Pact with the Devil” brought to Vladimir Jabotinsky, he never expressed any regrets for what he had done: “Even though ultimately nothing came out of it – when I die you can write as my epitaph ‘This was the man who made the pact with Petliura.’”,[lxxxvi]

The most important publications on pogroms published in the early twentieth century were authored by Elias Tcherikower. While his Jewish Ukrainian contemporaries were preoccupied with other matters, Tcherikower established the “Eastern Jewish Historical Archive” and collected eyewitness reports and other documents related to the pogroms. His Antisemitism and Pogroms in Ukraine in the years 1917-1918 (1923),published in Yiddish, contains very important information on the pogroms carried out by various military groups, and is cited in all of the important works related to the pogroms.

c) Petliura's Assassination and the Schwartzbard Trial

On May 25, 1926 Symon Petliura was shot in Paris. His assassin was Shalom Schwartzbard, a Ukrainian Jew, an anarchist who, in his young age, had flirted with Communism, and in general, as noted by Abramson, had a “colorful past”.[lxxxvii] A person who assassinated a head of a state (even a non-existing one) in the center of Paris during day-time could be hardly imagined to be acquitted by the French court. However, the case of Schwartzbard was exceptional; he lost all his family during the pogroms in Ukraine. What followed in the court was a real drama: the trial of Petliura’s assassin turned to the trial of Petliura himself. Henry Torres, a talented attorney of Schwartzbard invited the survivors of pogroms and also several established Jewish activists and scholars, among them Pinkhas Krasniy and Elias Tcherikower. Neither Salomon Goldelman nor Arnold Margolin were witnesses in the court.

It was a time when both Ukrainian and Jewish scholars had to mobilize in order to provide evidence for the court, and the main focus of their research was now pogroms and the role of the Commander-in-Chief of the Directorate in them.

As a result Schwartzbard was acquitted. The Ukrainian community was shocked by the death of their leader and the fact of his assassin being acquitted; meanwhile the world Jewish community (except for a minor part of it) rejoiced: it was recognized as revenge for the pogroms by the Jewish world community. Shalom Schwartzbard became the nokem, the avenger of Ukrainian Jewry. His cult went so far that two streets in Israel, one in Jerusalem and one in Beersheba were named after him: haNokem.

The Schwartzbard trial was a watershed both in Ukrainian-Jewish relations and in history writing. As the Ukraine by then was already incorporated into the Soviet Union, according to the regime ideology Symon Petliura was an extremely negative figure. For Ukrainian émigré Petliura became a martyr, who symbolized the unfulfilled hopes for Ukrainian independence, Sholom Schwartzbard together with his protector Henry Torres were unequivocally believed to be Soviet agents (which might have been truth, although no evidence for it has been found that would validate this contention); for the Jews “Petliura had become in the popular mind, only one in a long line of Ukrainian national leaders and rabid antisemites stretching beck to Bohdan Khmelnytsky.”[lxxxviii]  Historiography produced on both sides was based on the above-mentioned assumptions.

There was basically no dialogue between Ukrainian and Jewish scholars up until 1969, when

Ukrainian historian Taras Hunczak published his article ‘A Reappraisal of Symon Petliura and Ukrainian-Jewish Relations, 1917-1921’ in Jewish Social Studies. Hunczak assumed that the reasons for Jewish sufferings could be their exposure to Russian culture and them being associated with Communism, basically sharing the ideas of Salomon Goldelman. He started with the reference to the joint efforts of Ukrainians and Jews to build a new country together which did not work out and expressed deep regret in regard to the pogroms and Jewish victims. In his article, Hunczak relied considerably on Arnold Margolin’s writings, from which he borrowed the accusations of the Denikin’s army,  and some other documents issued by Jewish activists and communities (he might have consulted Material Concerning Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Years of the Revolution (1917-1921) edited by F. Pigido and published in 1956). Hunczak tried to be apologetic to Petliura as he referred to the documents proving the Commander-in-Chief’s positive attitudes towards his Jewish colleagues and the Jewish population in general; he also argued that Petliura did not have enough power to stop the pogroms, though he punished the perpetrators several times. Hunczak even provided the list of dates when Symon Petliura tried to undertake measures for the preventing the Jewish population from suffering pogroms.[lxxxix]

As a response to Taras Hunczak, Zosa Szajkowski, a Jewish historian, with a biography similar to that of Sholom Schwartzbard[xc], wrote ‘A Rebuttal’ which was subsequently published in Jewish Social Studies in the same year. Though in an offensive manner, Szajkowski managed to point out some considerable drawbacks of Hunczak’s article, such as mistreatment of the work of Elias Tcherikower and oversimplification of the Jewish polity by ascribing Communism and exposure to Russian culture to it. The rest of his arguments, such as for instance referring to Arnold Margolin and other Jewish political activists as to personalities interested primarily in fulfillment of their political goals at the expenses of Jewish population, sounded like desperate efforts to acquit Schwartzbard and condemn Petliura regardless of means.

The discussion between the two authors which followed afterward and was published in the same periodical no longer seemed to be in academic manner, though the arguments of Hunczak were much more moderate, the Hunczak-Szajkowski debate served as a starting point for a dialogue between Ukrainians and Jews regarding the pogroms and the image of Symon Petliura.

d) Revisionism and Reconciliation of the Two Narratives

 The fall of the Communist regime signified a new stage in Ukrainian history writing. There were no longer “heroes” and “villains”; heroism and villainy could not be questioned. The images of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Directory and its leader Symon Petliura were rehabilitated (at least partially) in the Ukraine. Among the works dedicated to Petliura’s relation to Jews and pogroms are, to name but a few, Symon Petliura i evreistvo (Symon Petliura and Jewry) by Volodymyr Serhiichuk, Symon Petliura by Viktor Savchenko, Etot (ne)nuzhnii Petliura (This (not)needed Petliura)by Yurii Shapoval and Ievrei UkraÑ—ny v gody revolucii i grazhdanskoi voiny (The Jews of Ukraine in the Years of the Revolution and the Civil War)by Vladyslav and Lyudmyla Hrynevych.

 A curious work is From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question (2000)by Israel Kleiner, which is a reappraisal of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Simon Petliura at the same time.

Professor Jonathan Frankel, historian of modern Jewry, contributed his article ‘The Dilemmas of Jewish National autonomism: the case of Ukraine 1917-1920’to the above-mentioned joint volume on Ukrainian-Jewish relations, where he wrote about the Jewish national personal autonomy in the Ukraine, a subject understudied, or even neglected because of the main focus on pogroms and Symon Petliura’s role in them.[xci]

Probably the most revolutionary study of the Ukrainian-Jewish relations in 1917-1920 and their aftermath was carried out by Henry Abramson firstly in his publication in the Slavic Review in 1991 and later in his monograph A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in the Revolutionary times, 1917-1920 published in 1999 jointly by the Ukrainian Research Institute and Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.

First of all Henry Abramson elaborated vastly on the Jewish representation in Ukrainian political government in 1917-1920, thus shedding the light on a historical period important both for Ukrainians and national minorities in the Ukraine (such as Russians, Poles and Jews), as the former gained independence and the latter received national-personal autonomy; maybe not a unique, but quite an exceptional case in the modern history of Jewry. Under the Law of National-Personal Autonomy the members of the Jewish community would be eligible to constitute a nationality union, which would be in charge of their self-governing institutions. With the national council as executive organ of the constituent assembly and the representatives of the Jewish community on the municipal level in the form of kehilot could be a fulfillment of Simon Dubnow’s dream of autonomy.

What is more, Abramson illustrated the pluralism of Jewish political thought in the early twentieth century in the Ukraine. According to him, all of the Jewish political parties represented in Ukraine supported the initiative of Central Rada to provide the Jews with national-personal autonomy mainly for two reasons: the establishment of a Rechtsstaat (a desideratum for the minority) and the preservation of a political order that united the Jews of the former Pale of Settlements.[xcii] Abramson described the attitudes of the representatives of the Jewish parties as follows: the Diaspora nationalists (the Folkspartey and the moderately socialist Faraynigte) were the most enthusiastic about this plan as it corresponded with its main inclination, to maintain the national cultural autonomy of the Jews in the country they live in. The Jewish socialist party Bund, and the left-wing Zionist party Poale-Zion also supported the Jewish program of the Central Rada, largely for the reason that the Ukrainian parties were mainly socialistic, or left-oriented. The Zionists and the religious parties were also favorably disposed towards autonomism, although they had another concern, which was of course Palestine in the case of the former, and Judaism and its religious practice in case of the latter.. The period of Ukrainian-Jewish cooperation, probably unknown ever before in history, according to Abramson lasted for a very short time: from 20 November 1917 to 25 January 1918, between the proclamations of the Third and the Fourth Universals.

The schism in the Ukrainian Jewish Community, or precisely in its representation at a political level, in the opinion of Henry Abramson, was the reason  for its (community’s) not being able to prevent the  pogrom wave of 1919. This was because of the polarized views of Jewish parties on whether Ukrainian Jewry needed a Jewish legion (supported by Petliura), in the end they did not have one.

As for the assumptions of Jewish affiliation with Russian culture and Communism, Abramson wrote that the first was true in case of assimilated Jews, who were assimilated into Russian culture, which was predominantly urban, when Ukrainian culture was that of a countryside, where Jews did not reside; besides Russian culture was more developed, while the Ukrainian one still had to be defined. Therefore, the Ukrainian Jewish identity did not develop.[xciii] Though Communism enjoyed popularity among some Jews, but the composition of the Jewish Council illustrates how colorful the political vectors of Jewish parties were in the Ukraine. Somehow Jewish nationalists (Zionists and autonomists) are not paid attention to, probably because of the particularity of those parties. As Abramson noticed, “Evsektsiia”(Jewish Section in the Communist Party) was not popular among the Jews initially. Bolshevism was supported by the proletariat in cities, where mostly Russians and Jews lived, for these reasons it was not popular among Ukrainians, who mostly resided in villages. Probably such contrasts could influence the perception of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. But, as Abramson mentioned, the thesis supported by a number of Jewish scholars is that many Communists were Jewish but not many Jews were Communists.[xciv] A very important observation was that during the elections to the Jewish council the majority of the Ukrainian Jews did not take part; which showed that majority of Ukrainian Jews who lived in the former Pale of Settlement, and who later suffered the most during the pogroms, were politically indifferent.[xcv]

The work of Henry Abramson may be considered partly apologetic of Symon Petliura, however, his argument is very clear and coherent. He provides the evidence of Petliura’s philosemitic views, and in regard to the question of Petliura’s responsibility for pogroms. Abramson suggests a version which is worth paying attention to: Symon Petliura was not personally responsible for the pogroms, but as a Commander-in-Chief of Directorate he was accountable for the army’s deeds under his leadership.[xcvi]

The conclusions of Henry Abramson were the following: the great experiment which was the national-personal autonomy of minorities in Ukraine failed together with the hopes for Ukrainian independence after the dissolution of the Russian Empire. The reasons why the Bolsheviks could win might be the fact that the strata of intelligentsia was too thin, while the majority of an agrarian country, which was Ukraine, could not understand sophisticated ideas such as national autonomy, therefore the Bolshevik regime could find a suitable ground in the Ukraine. Regarding the role of the Jews in the revolutionary activity in Russia, most probably their problem was in pluralism of their political thoughts, which resulted into the absence of a consistent Jewish policy and failure of the great project which was “national-personal autonomy” and the creation of the Jewish Council. In a nutshell, it was a bad time for a good idea.

I would conclude that the Civil War in the Ukraine is not researched thoroughly enough. Subsequently there is a shortage of literature concerning the ideas of personal-national autonomy in the Ukraine, the personality of Symon Petliura and his role in the pogroms. While researching this topic I was severely searching for a complex study on the years after the Revolution and before the Bolshevik takeover in the Ukraine, where the anti-Jewish pogroms could be put in the broader context of the Civil War. Nevertheless I can point out that after the fall of the Communist regime one may notice positive dynamics in research in this field. Hopefully such works as that of Abramson will pave the way to new researches of Ukrainian-Jewish relations during the revolutionary times and the Civil War in the Ukraine.

Conclusions

 The aim of this Master thesis was to undertake a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and Jewish historiography focusing on two case studies, namely the Khmelnytsky Uprising (the Cossack Uprising) of 1648-1649 and the Civil War in Ukraine and Anti-Jewish Pogroms of 1917-1921. The aim of the research was to explore the interrelation of different historical narratives, and as a result point out the differences, clashes and similarities between them with the focus on the case studies.

The choice of the above-mentioned cases is determined by the ambiguous nature of these historical events. By this I mean precisely the polarized interpretations, as they appear in different sources. In the Ukrainian national narrative these events often appear as crucial stages of the formation of the Ukrainian nation and the struggle for its independence; meanwhile, these are undoubtedly the saddest pages in the history of Ukrainian Jewry. In this thesis I tried to pay particular attention to the role of historical personalities, namely Bohdan Khmelnycky and Symon Petliura, and how these personalities are portrayed in Ukrainian and Jewish sources.

The research questions were the following: What are the differences between Ukrainian and Jewish historical narratives? Which reasons account for the contradictions between them? How did these narratives emerge and change over time, if they did?

In the first chapter I tried to provide a comprehensive survey of Ukrainian and Jewish historiography and to determine their specific features. The first sub-chapter was dedicated to the Ukrainian sources. After having examined classic works on the history of the Ukraine, among which there wereIstoriia UkraÑ—ny-Rusy (History of Ukraine-Rus)by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Ukraine: a History by Orest Subtelny and others, I came to a conclusion, which had been shared by other researchers of the subject, that the mainstream Ukrainian narrative of history is deeply influenced by the nationalist paradigm, as a result it has an ethnocentric character. Alternative interpretations of Ukrainian history are suggested by Yaroslav Hrytsak, Natalia Yakovenko and Paul Robert Magocsi’s.  Natalia Yakovenko argued that celebrating the nationalist paradigm is an anachronism which has to be replaced by a narrative focused more on the history of the society, not the state. However the mainstream in Ukrainian historiography remains ukrainocentric.

Published in 2008, the book entitled A Laboratory of Transnational History: Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian Historiography edited by Georgiy Kasianov and Philip Ther, to which a number of established scholars contributed, aimed to create a new “transnational” history of the Ukraine. Philipp Ther suggested recently discussed approaches that seek to overcome “the methodological nationalism”, namely through comparative history and “transfer history”, which is based on studies of cultural “transfers”. An example of Ukrainian transnational history could be found in A History of Ukraine: the Land and its People (1996) by Paul Robert Magocsi which goes beyond the nationalist historical perspectives and pays much attention to different ethnic groups and minorities of the Ukraine. Dealing with Ukrainian history is in fact barely possible without taking into consideration Russian and Polish accounts, as the influences of Polish and especially Soviet Russian discourses  is still very significant in the way the Ukrainian common past is represented. The latter was mentioned in the second sub-chapter.

The Jews as well as the other ethnic minorities, remain underrepresented in Ukrainian popular historical discourse. The topic of Ukrainian-Jewish relations remainsunderstudied, whereas in Jewish Studies the works on Jewish-Gentiles relations arequite common.  The third sub-chapter is dedicated to Jewish historiography. It covers the beginnings of Jewish historical writing beginning withHeinrich Graetz and Isaak Markus Jost. Then I refer to the Polish, Russian and Soviet Jewish historiography the legacies of which were inherited by the Ukrainian Jewry. I cannot but mention Jewish historians who published their works in independent Ukraine: Y. Khonigsman, A. Nayman, Ilya Kabanchik and Leonid Finberg.

In the fourth sub-chapter I tried to definine the main contradictions between the Ukrainian and Jewish narratives. As Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytski noted, the biggest problem in Ukrainian-Jewish relations is the history. The times of glory for Ukrainians were often times of sorrow for the Jews, and sometimes vice versa; example of such instances are represented by the chosen case studies.

In the second chapter I analyze the representation of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukrainian and Jewish historiography.The events of 1648-1649 were first depicted in clerical chronicles, and contained only seldom references to the Cossack Uprising. In the late seventeenth century appeared Cossack eyewitness chronicles which elaborated on the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In the Cossack chronicles appeared the anti-Jewish accusations, both of a socio-economic and religious character. Among them there was “a key to the church argument”, which according to Zenon Kohut could have been borrowed from Polish sources. From the Cossack chronicles anti-Jewish motives migrated to the works written by eighteenth and nineteenth century historians. The Ukrainian historians of the late nineteenth century, particularly Mykhailo Hrushevsky, found the anti-Jewish prejudices in the historical sources quite disturbing. Hrushevsky took slight efforts to reconstruct the traditional negative image of Jews in Ukrainian historiography; he even incorporated the chronicles of Nathan Hanover in his Istoriia UkraÑ—ny-Rusy. But his followers had a different agenda, thus the representation of Jews in the history of the Khmelnytsky Uprising was a minor concern for them, if at all.

Attempts to examine the Jewish factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising were undertaken by Ukrainian scholars, most probably beginning from the 1980s. In respect of Jewish perspectives, the events of 1648-1649 for centuries were concentrated almost exclusively on the massacres of Jews. Almost all the Jewish sources relied heavily on Yeven Metzulah the chronicle of Nathan Honover as if it contained the ultimate truth about the events. For many years the concept “between hammer and anvil” suggested by Symon Dubnow prevailed in Jewish historical memory. Recent scholarship criticized the traditional approaches to the Khmelnytsky Uprising, in particular the authority of Yeven Metzulah and the plausibility of “between hammer and anvil” argument.

Among the first critics of Jewish historians were Bernard Weinryb, Jonathan Israel and Edward Fram. Judith Kalik researched the relations between the Jews and Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and provided important information in an understudied area. Nevertheless, in the popular Ukrainian historical narrative, concerning the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Jews still do not receive sufficient attention, and subsequently there is a place for debates and dialogue in academia.

In the third chapter I researched the representations of the Civil War in the Ukraine, the personality of Symon Petliura and his role in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukrainian and Jewish sources.

The government of the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic provided Ukrainian Jewry with hopes for national-personal autonomy and cooperation with the titular nation. But alas, these plans never came into being. The Ukraine was swept by a wave of pogroms in which tens if not hundreds of thousands of Jews perished. The pogroms were carried out by the representatives of almost all collective sides, but the majority of crimes were committed by the army of Directorate, the leader of which was Symon Petliura. Right after the pogroms, they were not the main concern even of Jewish historians and social activists, who were more concerned with a split in Jewish public opinion. Only Elia Tcherikower was the one who encouraged the research of pogroms and organized it himself.

The assassination of Symon Petliura by Sholom Schwartbard in 1926 was a watershed both in Ukrainian-Jewish relations and in the collective memories of Ukrainians and Jews. Ukrainians lost their hero, and the Jews acquired one. Since then the image of Symon Petliura in Ukrainian and Jewish historiography was polarized, up until the publication of Taras Hunczak in Jewish Social Studies in 1969 which served a virtual first step for reconciliation of the contradictory narratives.

 The fall of the Communist regime signified a new stage in Ukrainian history writing. The images of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Directory and its leader Symone Petliura were rehabilitated (at least partially) in the Ukraine. Several Ukrainians scholars contributed to the debate about Symon Petliura and the pogroms. Some scholars in Israel, Western Europe and North America also research this topic.

In the third chapter I dedicated a significant place to the arguments of Henry Abramson, as I consider his work the best synthesis of all information produced on the matter at present.

The results of the research show that though Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the context of the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the Civil War in the Ukraine remain understudied, the recent scholarship, both Ukrainian and Jewish, has made enormous progress. Joint conferences and publications organized by Ukrainian and Jewish historians provide hope for further reconciliation of the currently contradicting narratives, and subsequently Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Revision of nationalist histories may also signify the possibility for the development of new approaches in history writing.

As a suggestion for further research, I would draw attention to the case of OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and its collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In my opinion it would fit into this research. Russian and Polish perspectives could also be incorporated into this study.

In any case, the history of the Ukraine, as with the history of Eastern Europe in general, is a very complicated phenomenon, and the historians still have a lot of work to do in order to produce a “transnational” historical narrative acceptable for all sides.

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