Autumn Echo of the Carpathians 1944: Military-Political Events in Ukraine and Historical Memory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2019.06.099Keywords:
World War II, Wehrmacht, Red Army, "liberation", "expulsion" of Hitler’s troops from Ukraine, memory policy.Abstract
Abstract. The reader is offered a new version of the German-Soviet armed confrontation in Western Ukraine and a reflection of current events in Soviet and contemporary memory politics. The purpose of the study is to analyze in depth thesources and literature on the outlined topics, to critique outdated concepts of hostilities in the autumn of 1944 in Ukraine and to form a new perspective on them; outline of a scientifically correct terminological apparatus in this thematic niche; to find out the peculiarities of the approaches of the leadership of the UkrSSR and the modern domestic political party to the memorialization of these events. The methodological basis is an interdisciplinary toolkit for the analysis ofcomplex socio-political and military phenomena, a combination of methods of "memory studies", comparative techniques, methods of military, political science, and historical studies. The scientific novelty is provided by the presentation of an updatedversion of the final battles of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht in Western Ukraine, aswell as the first attempt in the national historiography to compare commemorative practices of the Soviet era and modern Ukraine. Conclusions based on archival andhistoriographical sources summarize the study of the multidimensional problem. It is established that in modern philological discourse the concepts of "liberation", "liberation" and "exile" are semantically related and can be used in the semantic context of "expulsion of German troops and their allies from Ukraine". It was proved that the seizure of the Soviet troops by the Carpathian Mountains and Transcarpathia in September – October 1944 was accomplished as a result of several operations by front groups – the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Ukrainian. Overcoming the Eastern Carpathians gave the Red Army the prospect of expelling German troops from Czechoslovakia and entering Germany. It is revealed that Soviet official historical policy favored glorification ceremonies – military meetings, ceremonial gatherings, holiday salutes. Instead, in modern Ukraine, new mnemonic practices related to honoring war victims, educational measures and actions devoid of excessive ideologization are being approved.
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