Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the law “absolutely biased and categorically unacceptable.”
KYIV – A controversial law in Poland that criminalizes the implication of Poles’ participation in Nazi war crimes and bans the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism has unnerved Kyiv, Washington and Jerusalem.
Polish President Andrzej Duda signed the law on February 7 and it came into force on March 1, according to Polish daily newspaper Wprost.
The bill – known as the amendment to the act on the Institute of National Remembrance (known by its Polish-based acronym as IPN) – makes it illegal to deny the acts of Ukrainian nationalists in 1925-1950 towards Poles and specifically refers to the atrocities in Volyn during World War II as “genocide.”
An overall proportion of two Polish to one Ukrainian were killed in Volyn, stated political scientist Taras Kuzio. Various estimates by Polish, American and Ukrainian historians state that in total 30,000 to 60,000 people were killed.
For example, “Ivan Patryliak, whose work on Ukrainian nationalist groups is regarded as the best in Ukraine, calculates that 39,000-40,000 Poles and 17,000-21,000 Ukrainians were killed,” wrote Mr. Kuzio on December 1, 2017, in New Eastern Europe.
Using one-sided language, the bill in particular bans the promotion of ideology attributed to nationalist leader Stepan Bandera who resisted Poland’s brutal “pacification” polices during the inter-war period as a leading member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland for most of World War II.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the law “absolutely biased and categorically unacceptable” on his Facebook page on February 1. He called on the Polish side “for objectivity and dialogue.” He also sent Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko with a delegation to Poland on February 16 in a failed to attempt to change the bill’s wording.
If enforced, the bill could “infringe on the rights and freedoms of our compatriots who work and live in Poland, [they could be] persecuted for saying certain words or for their political beliefs,” Mr. Rozenko said in a statement ahead of the trip to Poland.
Ukrainian lawmakers also passed a resolution on February 6, the day before Mr. Duda signed the bill, that stated they were “deeply concerned” that the law could “strengthen anti-Ukrainian tendencies.”
The work of a semi-annual forum of Ukrainian and Polish historians is now under question, said Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the government-run Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
The editor of a two-volume, 1,400-page collection of 478 documents on Ukrainian-Polish relations, he also expressed fears in a February 14 statement that the bill could be used to target the more than 1 million Ukrainians who reside and work in Poland.
However, Lukasz Jasina, an expert at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, emphasized in a phone interview with The Ukrainian Weekly that the law doesn’t apply to “researchers, discussions on history and artistic activity.”
Poland’s Justice Ministry has indicated in the Polish press that it won’t enforce the bill until the Constitutional Tribunal – which is stacked with supporters of the pro-presidential nationalist Law and Justice party – takes a position on the law.
IPN spokesperson Adam Przegalinski in Warsaw would not comment on the bill when reached on the phone. Polish Justice Ministry spokesperson Jan Kanthak was not reachable via numerous phone calls and the ministry didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the bill, which criminalizes accusing Poland or the Polish people of complicity in the Holocaust. “One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied” he said in a statement on January 27 after legislators approved the bill.
The U.S. State Department voiced criticism as well. “We all must be careful not to inhibit discussion and commentary on the Holocaust,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on January 31. “We are also concerned about the repercussions this draft legislation, if enacted, could have on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships,” she added.
Fears also abound that the bill puts issues of historical accuracy into the hands of prosecutors and judges.
“This is a political, not a legal bill,” Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta Center for Political Research, said over the phone. “It provokes xenophobia towards Ukrainians… it is a classical challenge towards democracy regarding freedom of speech, and it morally and ethically denigrates Ukrainians.”
A pervading attitude of victimization and rising nationalism in Poland inspired the bill’s creation, said Dr. Kuzio, a non-resident fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
“Nationalism in Russia and Poland is a growing part of the mainstream as seen in the unanimous vote by the Polish parliament to declare the 1943 killings of Polish civilians as ‘genocide,’” he said. “Second, Polish historians have sought to find Ukrainian nationalist documents planning or calling for genocide against Poles in Volyn, but they have failed.”
Poland’s inability to accept its past as an imperial power, Dr. Kuzio said, is why it views itself as a “victim of attacks by its neighbor or treachery by its citizens (as in the case of Ukrainians in 1939).”
The Volyn massacres partially occurred as a result of retaliation for brutal polices that Poland enacted over its eastern inter-war territories that included the limitation of Ukrainian-language teaching, the burning down of Ukrainian churches, the banning of Ukrainian-language literature, and discrimination in career advancement and for holding high-level public administration positions.
Warsaw’s unwillingness to accept the killings in Volyn as part of a “bitter war that germinated in the late 1930s and ended in 1947 with Akcja Wisla [that forcibly deported ethnic Ukrainians from their native lands en masse]” is another underlying factor, Dr. Kuzio said.
Mr. Jasina of the Polish Institute of International Affairs said that Kyiv should do a better job of teaching the atrocities of Volyn and of the less savory acts of Ukrainian nationalists towards Poles.
For example, Bandera was convicted of being a co-organizer of the assassination of Polish Internal Affairs Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934 that was justified as retaliation for Poland’s oppressive “pacification” campaign towards Ukrainians.
“Ukrainian textbooks only teach the Holodomor Soviet man-made famine… There’s no discussion of Ukrainians killing Poles,” he said.
When asked whether Poland’s “pacification” policies or its imperial past as a colonizer are discussed in Poland, Mr. Jasina replied that there has been “strong debate” on the topics and that Poland is a “pluralistic society.”
He said the Ukrainian clause of the law was included because separate bills are in force that ban Nazi and Communist ideology, “as in Ukraine.”
While calling the bill a “mistake because it won’t make Ukrainian-Polish relations better anyway,” Mr. Jasina added that it doesn’t define what “Bandera ideology is and who are the perpetrators.”
But the bill also doesn’t say that “we accept Ukrainian memory and should ignore Polish sensitivity,” he said.
He compared the bill to one the Verkhovna Rada passed in April 2015 that recognizes the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as a unit that fought for Ukraine’s independence. That bill also prohibited Communist and Nazi propaganda, including symbols, monuments and street names.
“Once you [Ukraine] do that on a state level, then Poland should expect an apology for what the UPA did,” Mr. Jasina said. “Polish leaders over the last 25 years have apologized, but we haven’t heard an apology from high-ranking Ukrainian officials… We cannot tolerate criticism of Polish acts when the commanders of OUN and UPA gave orders to kill Poles.”
Still, the bill is counterproductive and harms Poland’s international image, said award-winning historian Anne Applebaum whose husband was the country’s foreign affairs minister in 2014-2015.
“I don’t understand this law… there is nothing to fight for. It’s not like everyone is saying ‘Polish death camps’ [one of the terms banned in the legislation],” she told Poland’s TVN24 channel. “It’s like suicide for Poland. Why have more enemies than you need?”
She added that Poles and Jews survived the same fear and terror during the war: “It’s not a matter of who had it worse.”
Otherwise, Polish-Ukrainian relations are thriving, said Polish expert Mr. Jasina.
“Our relations are almost perfect,” he said. “Poland is a strong supporter of Ukraine in the international arena. We provide technical support, provide rehabilitation for Ukrainian war veterans, are home to more than 1 million Ukrainian labor migrants, we fight for Ukraine’s economy by opposing Russia’s Nord Stream II [gas pipeline] project … in my opinion we should focus more on reforms and work on improving border crossings,” he said.
Moscow’s hand was seen in the bill’s drafting, according to respected Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.
The part that concerns the definition of crimes of Ukrainian nationalists was allegedly written by Kukiz’15, a right-wing political party that has 42 seats in the Polish Sejm, the newspaper reported on February 23. Pro-Moscow historians who are anti-Ukrainian had consulted the party, the Polish daily said.
They include Wojciech Muszynski, known for nationalistic, anti-Ukrainian statements, and “Vladimir Osadchiy, who had worked as a host for a pro-Putin news agency, Sputnik,” Rzeczpospolita reported. “In his statements, Osadchiy complains about the ‘great impudence of the Bandera community’ in Ukraine and criticizes Poland’s eastern policies.”
A crowd of nationalists had gathered outside Poland’s presidential palace before Mr. Duda signed the bill with a huge banner reading, “Take off your yarmulke and sign the bill.”
Others downplayed the bill’s significance.
“This law is a product of internal politics,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the Kyiv-based International Institute of Democracy. “We should think about strategic things and talk about the future, not the past, about mutual values because any war, whether informational or historical in nature, falls in the hands of Russia.”
Warsaw’s IPN issued a milder statement on February 27 regarding the new law: “Memory, history and common heritage cannot hurt or overshadow the mutual relations between our closely tied nations [Poland and Ukraine]. Understanding the complexity of the fate of our nations, we believe that the pursuit of historical truth is a necessity.”
Still, the main point of the law is that it “has nothing to do with truth in history, and everything to do with repression of free speech,” Ms. Applebaum tweeted on February 7.