Thousands of Roads: A Memoir of a Young Woman's Life in the Ukrainian Underground during and after World War II by Maria Savchyn Pyskir Ania Savage (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 369 Pyskir,Maria Savchyn. Thousands ofRoads.A Memoir ofa Young Woman's Lifein theUkrainian Underground During andAfterWorld WarII. Translatedby Ania Savage. McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC, and London, 200I. 235 pp. Index. $29.95 (paperback). THIS dramaticand fascinatingmemoir introducesthe reader to a little-known aspect of the historyof Ukrainian nationalism women's experiences in the guerillamovement duringthe I940s and early 'sos. Beginningwith the classic works of John A. Armstrong, who wrote a helpful introduction to this book, the scholarlyliteratureon the Ukrainian nationalist movement now boasts a considerablelist of monographs, articles,and documentarypublications.The existingscholarship,however,provideshardlyany discussionofthe nationalist resistance's gender dimension. (Jeffrey Burds of Northeastern University is currently working on a study which discusses, among other aspects of the conflictbetween the nationalistsand the NKVD troops,women's role in both the Ukrainianundergroundand Soviet counter-nationalistoperations.) Any scholarly study of gender roles in the Ukrainian nationalist underground will inevitably prompt questions of whether or not present-day historians are simply reading back their own concerns, rather than reconstructing their protagonists' visions and practices. Pyskir's memoir gives modern historians a formidable evidence of the gender-awareness of the women Ukrainianguerrillasby showing that they themselvescould conceptualize the tension resulting from power invariablybeing in the hands of their male comrades, as well as question the gender roles in the underground.But the memoir deliversmuch more. Expertly translated by Ania Savage, the book takes the reader into the world of interwarEasternGalicia, an ethnic Ukrainianland within the newlycreated Polish state where a mass Ukrainian nationalistmovement had been developing since the nineteenth century,when the region had been partof the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Faced with the Polish assimilationist drive, Ukrainians developed a doctrine of integral nationalism, with its cult of the nation, easy recourse to violence, and an ideal of a strong-willedpersonality. In this atmosphere,Pyskir,then aged fourteen,joined a youth auxiliaryof the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), but the dreamed-of collapse of Poland in 1939 did not fulfil the aspirationsof young nationalists.As first theSovietregimein 1939-4I and,then,theGermanoccupation in 194I-44 made abundantlyclear, the expansionistprojectsof the two greatpowers had no place in them for the Ukrainiannational cause. The Ukrainiananswerwas armed resistanceto both the Germans and the Soviets, primarilyin the form of the UkrainianInsurgentArmy (UPA),which the Banderawing of the OUN establishedin 1942. An OUN member since I942, Pyskirinitiallyworkedas a courierdelivering correspondenceand propagandaliteratureandjoined the UPA only inAugust I944. Firsta nurse and intelligence agent with the UPA unit stationed on the Polish side of the new Soviet-Polish border, she soon became head of the Ukrainian (underground)Red Crossin the region. In May 1945, she married a prominent nationalist leader, Vasyl Halasa, whose nom de guerre was Orlan. Pyskirbore him a son, but the Polishauthoritiessoon capturedher and 370 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 her child, and she chose to escape by abandoning her baby, whom she never saw again and whom a high Polishofficialadopted. By the time Pyskirjoined her husband in the woods in the summerof I947 on the Soviet side of the border, the NKVD troops had driven the Ukrainian resistance literally underground, into bunkers and hideouts. During several years in hiding, the observant young woman identified several prominent gender issuesinfluencingthepartisanlife. First,thewomen were usuallybetter educated than the male guerrillas, and the men 'often could not bear the thought that a woman could be regardedas superiorto them, even in the area of formal education' (p. 89). Accordingly, the male majority de-emphasized the value of 'feminine' education and stressed the 'masculine' combat experience instead. A woman who proved herself as a partisan could win acceptance and 'could and would be consulted [on important issues], but the men did the deciding' (p. 89). Initially, Pyskir'ssmall guerrilla unit, in which she was the only woman, expected her to do all the cooking, but eventually, all the partisans in her group came to sharethis responsibility.Also, she began giving them lessons in history, literature, geography, and mathematics in addition to typing propaganda literature and intelligence reports. When in October I948 she gave birth to her second son, the guerrillasplaced the child with a family of sympathizers,and Pyskirreturnedto thewoods. With armedresistancelargely abandoned by then, the partisans concentrated on propaganda and intelligence -gathering, but...