THE UKRAINIAN MEMORY COMMUNITY IN POLAND (the second half of the XX – beginning of the XXI centuries)

Abstract

Summary. The purpose of the article is to analyze the conflicting potential of the historical policy of the Polish People’s Republic concerning the Ukrainian national minority; to reveal the features of social and cultural life of Ukrainians after the deportations of 1944 – 1947; to show the impact of traumatic experience and intergenerational retelling on the activities of the Ukrainian memory community in democratic Poland. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, scientificity, verification, an authoritative objectivity, a moderate narrative constructivism, an anthropological approach, as well as special historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic) methods. The scientific novelty. The article describes the features of Ukrainian-Polish inter-ethnic relations after World War II, in particular, by the Ukrainian national minority activity in Poland. Conclusions. The interdependence of history and politics has been proved, especially in the era of the Polish People’s Republic, where Ukrainians have gone from object to subject of social and political life. Several formation periods of the Ukrainian minority as a memory community were highlighted through cultural, educational, religious, and ethno-political activity. In 1944 – 1956, Ukrainians were assimilated through mass deportations and the prohibition of national church life; in 1956 – 1989 they were in the conditions of institutional revival of socio-cultural and church-religious life; since 1989, under the systematic state-political transformation conditions, the Ukrainian national minority was given the opportunity to participate in democratic transformations through the activities of representative authorities.