Autor sleduje ukrajinské motivy v polské komunistické propagandě, jimž dosud podle něj nebyla v Polsku ani na Ukrajině věnována větší pozornost, přestože poválečný boj proti „ukrajinským nacionalistům“ tvořil trvalou součást propagandistického repertoáru Polské lidové republiky. Zaznamenává, jak se tyto motivy rozvíjely a tradovaly v polském tisku, literatuře, filmu a historických pracích, a hledá přitom odpověď na otázku, jaké stopy zanechalo její působení v polském veřejném diskurzu po pádu komunismu až do současnosti. Základní látku zmíněná propaganda čerpala z bojů polských ozbrojených sil proti partyzánským oddílům Ukrajinské povstalecké armády (Ukrainska povstanska armija – UPA), které operovaly na jihovýchodě Polska po roce 1945, a před nastolením komunistického režimu se s ní většinou identifikovaly i nekomunistické politické strany a protikomunistické ozbrojené podzemí. Po období druhé poloviny čtyřicátých let k jejímu oživení došlo po roce 1956 v souvislosti se snahou zvýšit prestiž armády, ve druhé polovině šedesátých ji podporovala šovinistická a antisemitská část vedení polských komunistů a naposled se vystupňovala po vyhlášení výjimečného stavu v roce 1981. Obsah, argumenty ani vyznění protiukrajinské propagandy se podle autora od konce války až do roku 1989 v podstatě nezměnily. Bojovníci UPA a vůbec stoupenci samostatnosti Ukrajiny byli ztotožňováni s fašisty a nepřáteli Polska, a tento obraz si zafixovala velká část polské společnosti, která jej víceméně vztahovala na Ukrajince jako takové. Tyto nacionální stereotypy začala překonávat až demokratická opozice v osmdesátých letech. Výjimečné místo ve zmíněných historických obrazech připadlo legendě o generálovi Karolu „Walterovi“ Świerczewském, který se stal v březnu 1947 při inspekční cestě obětí atentátu, spáchaného zřejmě ukrajinskými ancionalisty. O měsíc později zahájená Akce „Visla“, jejímž cílem bylo vysídlení Ukrajinců z jihovýchodního Polska, byla pak prezentována jako odplata za tuto vraždu. Kolem padlého generála byl pěstován heroický mýtus, jehož součástí byly oslavné životopisy, označování ulic, náměstí, škol a dalších institucí jeho jménem a vztyčování pomníků na jeho počest. Zásadní roli v zobrazování polsko-ukrajinského konfliktu pak podle autora sehrála beletristická kniha Jana Gerharda (vlastním jménem Wiktor Lew Bardach) Záře v Beskydech (Łuny w Bieszczadach), která měla obrovský úspěch, dočkala se mnoha vydání a odstartovala boom publikací s touto tematikou. Zatímco beletristická fabulace v nich šla ruku v ruce s nacionálním zkreslováním faktů, historiografická, produkce věnovaná této problematice si dle autora mohla dovolit luxus faktografické objektivity, pokud nepolemizovala s oficiální propagandou. V poslední části studie Luboš Veselý nabízí vlastní typologii současných interpretací polsko-ukrajinského konfliktu, která nehodnotí texty podle národnosti autorů nebo žánru, ale podle obsahu a přístupu. Do prvního okruhu řadí díla „nacionalisticko-komunistická“, která jsou v podstatě pokračováním komunistické propagandy. Jako interpretace „národní“ označuje takové, pro něž je základní matricí vlastní národ, aniž účelově konstruují negativní obraz druhého národa. Nejméně početní jsou zatím podle něj představitelé interpretace „revizionistické“, která vědomě usiluje o přehodnocení dosavadních názorů na polsko-ukrajinský konflikt, zakořeněných působením komunistické propagandy. Nakonec autor eviduje hlavní otázky, které jsou v dané souvislosti předmětem současných sporů a debat v Polsku a na Ukrajině: nutnost, oprávněnost či zbytečnost Akce „Visla“, odpovědnost za její provedení, její skutečný důvod a záměr, metody boje za ukrajinskou samostatnost a postava vůdce ukrajinských nacionalistů Stepana Bandery., The author discusses Ukrainian topics in Polish Communist propaganda, which have till now been largely ignored in both Poland and the Ukraine, even though the post-war struggle against ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ constituted a lasting element of the propaganda repertoire of the Polish People’s Republic. He also discusses how these topics were developed and passed on in Polish periodicals, belles-lettres, film, and historiography and he seeks to explain the impact this has had on Polish public discourse since the collapse of Communism. This propaganda drew its basic material from the struggle of the Polish armed forces against the partisans divisions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya – UPA), which operated in southeast Poland beginning in 1945. Before the establishment of the Communist régime, it was mainly the non-Communist political parties and the armed anti-Communist underground who identified with it. After the second half of the 1940s, this propaganda grew quiet, and was not revived until 1956, in connection with endeavours to increase the prestige of the army; in the second half of the 1960s, it was supported by chauvinist and antisemitic members of the Polish Communist leadership. It last intensified when martial law was imposed in Poland in 1981. According to the author, the content, arguments, and gist of the anti-Ukrainian propaganda did not essentially change from the end of the Second World War in mid-1945 to the collapse of Communism in late 1989. The soldiers of the UPA and the proponents of an independent Ukraine were identified with Fascists and enemies of Poland and this picture became fixed in the minds of a large part of Polish society, which more or less identified this image with Ukrainians as a whole. These national stereotypes did not begin to be surmounted till the appearance of the democratic opposition in the 1980s. A special place in these historical images is held by the legend of General Karol Świerczewski, codenamed Walter, who was assassinated, apparently, by Ukrainian nationalists while on a tour of inspection in March 1947. A month later, Operation ‘Vistula’ (Akcja Wisła) was launched. The operation, whose aim was the forced resettlement of Ukrainians out of southeast Poland, was then publicly presented as revenge for Świerczewski’s murder. He was turned into a hero, and his legend was cultivated by naming streets, squares, schools and other institutions after him, publishing biographies singing his praises, and erecting monuments to him. A fundamental role in the depiction of the, and Polish-Ukrainian conflict was, according to the author, played by the novel Łuny w Bieszczadach (A Blaze in the Beskids, 1959) by Jan Gerhard (born Wiktor Lew Bardach, 1921–1971) which was hugely popular, went into several editions, and triggered a boom of publications on the topic. Whereas fiction went hand in hand with the nationalist distortion of the truth, works of historiography on the topic could, according to the author, allow themselves the luxury of sticking closer to the facts, providing they did not run counter to official propaganda. n the last part of this article, the author offers his own typology of contemporary interpretations of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, assessing each of them by genre, content, and approach, rather than by the nationality of the author. His first category includes ‚‘nationalist-Communist’ works, which are essentially a continuation of Communist propaganda. He calls an interpretation ‘national’ if its basic matrix is the nation of the interpreter, without intentionally constructing a negative picture of the other nation. The smallest group, he claims, are the representatives of the ‘revisionist’ interpretation that consciously seeks to reassess the existing views of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict which have become established as a result of Communist propaganda. At the end of the article, the author lists the main questions that in this context are a subject of contemporary dispute and debate in Poland and the Ukraine. They relate to the necessity, rightness, or uselessness of Operation ‘Vistula’, the responsibility for carrying it out, its professed and true aims, the methods used in fighting for Ukrainian independence, and the character of Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists.
Petro Shelest (1908–1997), the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was one of the strongest advocates of an armed invasion of Czechoslovakia among Soviet leaders in 1968. The Soviet leadership tasked him to maintain contacts with the so-called healthy forces in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia; in the beginning of August, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Vasil Biľak (1917–2014) secretly handed over to him the notorious “letter of invitation” in public lavatories in Bratislava. The author asks a fundamental question whether it is possible to identify a specific Ukrainian factor which stepped into the Prague Spring process and contributed to its tragic end. He attempts to capture Shelest’s position in the decision-making process and describe information that Shelest was working with., To this end, he has made use of reports of the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti – KGB) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on developments in Czechoslovakia and reactions thereto among Ukrainian citizens produced in the spring and summer of 1968, which were being sent to Shelest and other Ukrainian leaders. These documents have lately been made available in Ukrainian archives and partly published on the website of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Their analysis brings the author to a conclusion that they were offering a considerably distorted picture of the situation. Instead of relevant information and analyses, they only present various clichés, ideological rhetoric, inaccuracies, or downright nonsenses. Their source were often members of the Czechoslovak State Security who were often motivated by worries about their own careers and existence and were acting on their own., and The uncritical acceptance of the documents contributed to a situation in which in the leader of the Ukrainian Communists and other Soviet representatives were creating unrealistic pictures of the events taking place in Czechoslovakia, believing that anti-socialist forces were winning, anti-Soviet propaganda was prevailing, and Western intelligence agencies were strengthening their position in Czechoslovakia, and that there was a threat that the events that had taken place in Hungary in 1956 would repeat themselves again. As indicated by his published diary entries and other documents, Petro Shelest was using these allegations both in discussions inside his own party and during negotiations with Czechoslovak politicians. Just like in the case of the leaders of Polish and East German Communists, Władysław Gomułka and Walter Ulbricht, respectively, the principal reason why Shelest was promoting a solution of the Czechoslovak crisis by force was, in the author’s opinion, his fear of “contagion” of his own society by events taking place in Czechoslovakia which the Ukraine shared a border with.