The pogromshchina and the directory: A new historiographical synthesis?1

Abstract

National Ukrainian historiography's attempts to place the most extensive mass killings of Jews in modern history prior to the Shoah beyond the national movement's responsibility have traditionally combined the suggestion of an undue involvement of Jewry with Bolshevism and the notion that the autonomy rights granted to Ukrainian Jewry by the Rada (and reinstated by the Directory) would vouchsafe for the movement's ingrained hostility toward antisemitism. An examination of both traditional anglophone National Ukrainian historiography and of Henry Abramson's claim to have achieved a synthesis of ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘Jewish’ historiography reveals not only that these exonerative strategies are hardly tenable but also the extent to which Abramson's line of argument continues (albeit, perhaps, unintentionally) to echo numerous aspects fundamental to the conventional ‘Ukrainian’ approach.