Ukrainian Nationalism 1939-1945 by John A. ArmstrongReview by: Hugh Seton-WatsonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 35, No. 84 (Dec., 1956), pp. 313-314Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204825 .

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REVIEWS 313

hand.' Particularly interesting is the story of the construction of a hydro? electric plant in the kolkhoz. Though the project had official blessing, it was impossible to get the necessary equipment through legal channels.

They were obtained in the end by illegal barter deals with a Dnieper salvage crew and an army engineering unit and by bribes to the rayon MVD chief. Even so the official electrification authorities failed to. fulfil their contract. The situation was saved by another barter deal: a generator was purchased with a consignment of water-melons. The kolkhoz's most

precious asset, on this occasion and in the general struggle for plan-fulfil? ment, was a truck which the author used to send into Kiev loaded with farm produce, which was sold at good prices in cash or goods.

Policies have changed in Soviet agriculture since 1949. But it seems

likely that the 'unofficial' economy continues to coexist with the official in agriculture as well as in industry.

London Hugh Seton-Watson

Ukrainian Nationalism 1939-1945- By John A. Armstrong. Columbia

University Press, New York, 1955. 322 pages.

Ukrainian nationalism is a subject more than usually obscured by rhe? toric and prejudice. Many students of Russian history have expressed, and some even still express, doubt as to whether the Ukrainians are a nation or not. Anyone who has gone into the matter a little more carefully has dis? covered that beyond doubt the people of Eastern Galicia had a precise and powerful national consciousness, comparable at least with that of the Irish under English rule. But the degree of national consciousness of the

people of the Greater Ukraine (Russian partly since the 17th and partly since the 18th century) has always been harder to determine.

In 1941 Hitler's armies conquered the whole of the Ukraine, first Eastern Galicia, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union in j 939, and then both banks of the Dnieper and even the Donets basin. In 1944 the Soviet armies reconquered the whole of the Ukraine, and once more established their frontier with Poland to the west of L'vov.

In this book, one of a series of studies published by the Russian Institute of Columbia University, Mr Armstrong examines, with remarkable

industry and objectivity, a mass of contradictory evidence of varying reliability on events in the Ukraine under German occupation. He dis? cusses in detail the German treatment of Ukrainian nationalist politicians and of the Ukrainian population, and the growth and scale of Ukrainian resistance.

Mr Armstrong briefly summarises the growth of the OUN, with its definite sympathies and tendencies towards fascism, and its split into the factions of Melnyk and Bandera. Injune 1941 they hoped that the German invasion would give them their chance, and on 30 June Bandera's lieu? tenant Stets'ko assembled a few followers in the premises of the Prosvita society in L'vov to 'proclaim the renewal of the Ukrainian state' and to assert that ' in the western lands of the Ukraine a government is created'

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314 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

which would rule until Kiev itself was liberated and a ' Ukrainian national administration' could be created. The Germans however refused to

recognise this action, and within a few days Bandera, Stets'ko and their friends were arrested.

Hitler was never prepared to recognise any Ukrainian authority, and

Rosenberg's mild sympathy for Ukrainian nationalism was ineffective. Local personnel were recruited for the lower levels of administration in

occupied territory, and ad hoc co-operation with German military com? manders was sometimes fairly good, though some preferred the Russian to the Ukrainian element. The appointment of the Nazi Gauleiter of East

Prussia, Erich Koch, as head of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in the autumn of 1941 introduced a policy of brutal exploitation. Prisoners of war died by the thousand of disease and starvation, civilians were con?

scripted for labour in Germany with an inhuman disregard for the needs of their families, and no serious attempt was made to enlist peasant sup? port by dissolution of the kolkhozes.

Mr Armstrong does his best to disentangle the truth about the national? ist UPA guerrillas and the Soviet-organised partisans, including the long march of the Kovpak band from November 1942 to September 1943. He also has valuable chapters on the activities of the Church; on the means

by which the Ukrainian nationalists tried to extend their influence on the

population despite German hostility; and on the attitudes of different social strata to nationalism. He also discusses at some length such evidence as he could find on the extent of nationalism in different regions of the

Ukraine, including Khar'kov and the Don basin. In his opinion, national? ism ' attracted a large proportion of the intellectuals and technicians who

comprised the only group capable of reorganising life after the Soviet

occupation, but it was unable to penetrate the mass of the population to

any great extent. The galvanizing force was present; the cadres which

might have transmitted it were half-formed; but the essential mass remained uncommitted.'

London Hugh Seton-Watson

The Communist International 1919-1943. Documents. Volume I, 1919-22. Selected and edited by Jane Degras. Oxford University Press, London, Cumberlege, 1956. xvi + 463 pages. Index.

In this first volume of documents on the Communist International Mrs

Degras has not merely maintained but has improved on the standard of her three earlier volumes on Soviet foreign policy. The great convenience of having collected together in one volume in the English language papers dealing with the aims, policies, and organisation of the Comintern, to?

gether with statements on current issues and communications with com? munist parties outside the Soviet Union, has been immeasurably enhanced by the editorial notes with which each document is introduced. In many cases these notes, describing for instance the debate in the Comintern con?

gress from which the cited paper emerged, are of a value equal to or

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