John-Paul Himka Research Articles

Rescue for Political Use: The Populist Consensus on the Fate of Bulgarian Jews During the Second World War

Abstract In recent years, the fate of the Jews in Bulgaria during the Second World War has aroused the research interest of humanities scholars from various disciplines, with a number of studies published (see e.g., and many of the following cited (Avramov 2012. “Спасение” и падение. Микроикономика на държавния антисемитизъм в България, 1940–1944 [“Rescue” and fall. Microeconomics of State Anti-semitism in Bulgaria, 1940–1944]. Sofia: Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski; Daneva 2013; Krsteva 2015; Koleva 2017)). Many rely on research on the construction of memory. At the same time, fewer research efforts seem to have focused on how the topic has become politicized in the years since 1989 (see e.g. Benatov 2013. “Debating the Fate of Bulgarian Jews during World War II.” In Bringing the Dark Past to Light the Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, edited by John-Paul Himka, and Joanna Beata Michlic, 108–31. University of Nebraska Press; Ragaru 2020. Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvе… Une histoire des savoirs sur la Shoah en Bulgarie. Paris: Science Po). The aim of this paper is to offer precisely this perspective on the topic of non/rescue, and in the last ten years. Politicization has traditionally been understood as the process of attributing salience to an issue of public interest through various channels such as political discourse and media, and in the presence of the multiple and diverse opinions associated with it (de Wilde, Pieter. 2011. “No polity for old politics? A framework for analyzing the politicization of European integration.” Journal of European Integration 33 (5): 559–75; de Wilde, Pieter, Anna Leupold, and Henning Schmidtke. 2016. “Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance.” West European Politics 39 (1): 3–22). In some texts on the politicization of the migration crisis in Bulgaria in the years since 2012, the author shows how a topic can be politicized in the absence of political debate and in the context of a dominant populist understanding, multiplied by various power actors – politicians, institutions, media and intellectuals (see e.g. Otova, Ildiko, and Evelina Staykova. 2022. Migration and Populism in Bulgaria. London: Routledge). For the purposes of this paper, by politicization the author will understand the blurring of ideological differences of interpretations of who the savior is in a populist consensus around the construction of the rescue narrative for foreign policy use, but mostly as a nation-building narrative. The focus of this article is on the last ten years, in which the political interpretations and actions surrounding the commemoration of the 70th in 2013 and 75th in 2018 and the 80th anniversary in 2023 of the events surrounding the so-called rescue of Bulgarian Jews are particularly interesting. It is during these last years that populism has become the norm for the political scene in Bulgaria. Populism is not the obvious entrance to the topic, but it is the political framework within which the politicization of the topic of the rescue is developing, and a possible theoretical entrance. Populism became a persistent part of Bulgarian political life more than a decade after the beginning of the democratic changes of 1989. There are several key factors involved in this process-exhaustion of the cleavages of the transition period, but especially the transformation of party politics into symbolic ones (Otova, Ildiko, and Evelina Staykova. 2022. Migration and Populism in Bulgaria. London: Routledge). Symbolic politics deal more with emotions and less with ratio and facts; they build narratives that are often nationally affirming. The article does not claim to be exhaustive, especially in its presentation of historical facts. The limits of this rather political science approach are many. On the other hand, however, it adds to the research effort with a missing glimpse into the interpretations of the no/rescue theme and could open the field for further in-depth research.

A roundtable on John-Paul Himka’s Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944

A roundtable on John-Paul Himka’s Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944

UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS AND THE HOLOCAUST: OUN AND UPA'S PARTICIPATION IN THE DESTRUCTION OF UKRAINIAN JEWRY, 1941–1944. By John‐PaulHimka. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2021. . Pp. 505. Cloth, $55.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 83-83 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Judaism (Modern) UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS AND THE HOLOCAUST: OUN AND UPA'S PARTICIPATION IN THE DESTRUCTION OF UKRAINIAN JEWRY, 1941–1944. By John-Paul Himka. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2021. . Pp. 505. Cloth, $55.00. First published: 24 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16362Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1Special Issue: Unique Approaches to Christianity in Africa and BeyondMarch 2023Pages 83-83 RelatedInformation

Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPS's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944. By John-Paul Himka. Ukrainian Voices, vol. 12. Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2021. 505 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $55.00, paper.

Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPS's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944. By John-Paul Himka. Ukrainian Voices, vol. 12. Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2021. 505 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $55.00, paper.

Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala dir. by Iryna Shatokhina (review)

Reviewed by: Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala dir. by Iryna Shatokhina Ernest Gyidel (bio) Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala, Directed by Iryna Shatokhina, written by Iryna Shatokhina and Yuri Shapoval (2019). https://youtu.be/vMbJIwubm58. Ivan L. Rudnytsky (1919–1984) was one of the most prominent Ukrainian émigré historians and public intellectuals in the West during the Cold War. He was a product of several outstanding circles and institutions – his mother, Milena Rudnytska, and her brothers, the Ukrainian Academic Gymnasium in Lviv, from which he graduated in 1937, Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv, where he studied law in 1937–1939, Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where he obtained a masters degree in 1942, German Charles University in Prague, from which he received a doctorate in 1945, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he pursued a degree until 1951, and Columbia University in New York, where he was a graduate student until 1953. As a university student, Rudnytsky studied law, political [End Page 297] science, international relations, sociology, philosophy, and history. Very few from his generation could boast of a better education. After his arrival as a married man in the United States in 1951, Rudnytsky decided to make a living by becoming a professional historian. Following unfinished PhD studies at Columbia and two and a half years of work as a bus inspector, he went on to teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1953–1954), La Salle College (1956–1967), Bryn Mawr College (1964–1965), the American University in Washington, DC (1967–1971), and the University of Alberta (1971–1984). He was closely involved with two Ukrainian émigré academic institutions: Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York until the mid-1960s. In 1976, together with Manoly Lupul and George Luckyj, he became a founding director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, serving as an associate director for three years. Rudnytsky prided himself on not being an ivory tower academic, often participating in Ukrainian community events in both the United States and Canada and making radio and TV appearances. The role of a public intellectual appealed to him. Arguably, he made the greatest impact not with teaching, administrative work, or public involvement, but with his scholarship. As a historian, he was primarily interested in political and intellectual history. The defining features of Rudnytsky's historical writing were wide erudition (especially in European history), sophisticated presentation, and broad contextualization. Collections of his essays have appeared in Ukrainian (1973, 1994, 2019), English (1987), Russian (2007), and Polish (2012).1 Several of Rudnytsky's articles remain required reading in modern Ukrainian history.2 In 2019 the centenary of his birth was marked by many events: academic panels and conferences in Europe and North America, republication [End Page 298] of his historical essays and publication of his diaries in Ukraine, and last but not least a documentary about his life made by the creative team consisting of the Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Shatokhina and the historian Yuri Shapoval. The film, which is a part of their documentary series Rozsiani (Scattered) about twentieth-century Ukrainian émigrés, was originally premiered at several venues in Ukraine in fall 2019, shown on the Ukrainian television channel Espreso.TV in October 2019, and then released on YouTube in February 2020, cut down from two hours to ninety-nine minutes. The film appears to be based on three types of sources. First, Rudnytsky's own writings are quoted throughout the documentary. Second, the filmmakers conducted personal interviews with Rudnytsky's son, Peter L. Rudnytsky, with people who were Rudnytsky's colleagues, students or had simply met him in person – Jars Balan, Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Marco Carynnyk, John-Paul Himka, Raisa Ivanchenko, Zenon Kohut, Manoly Lupul, Myron Pyzyk, Roman Solchanyk, Frank Sysyn. The filmmakers also talked to researchers who worked either on Rudnytsky (Ernest Gyidel, Yaroslav Hrytsak) or his mother Milena (Myroslava Diadiuk). Third, they relied on audio, textual, and visual records from institutional and private archives. Most of these documents had never before been shown to the general public. The film covers Rudnytsky's family and educational background, the major milestones of his personal life and academic...

John-Paul HIMKA, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust. OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944

John-Paul HIMKA, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust. OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944

Review of John-Paul Himka and Franz A. J. Szabo, editors. Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy.

Review of John-Paul Himka and Franz A. J. Szabo, editors. Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy.

Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 by John-Paul Himka

Reviewed by: Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 by John-Paul Himka Ilya Gerasimov (bio) John-Paul Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2021). 505 pp. Bibliography. Place and Name Index. ISBN: 978-3-8382-1548-8. This book review was to have been written by a different reviewer a year ago. The reviewer eventually decided not to write a review, but never explained the reasons for this. Besides issues of professional ethics, there might be a political reason for such sabotage, at least after February 24, 2022. With the Russian Federation unleashing a genocidal war against Ukraine under the absurd pretext of its denazification, some may see a discussion of the dark pages in Ukraine's past as facilitating Russian propaganda and undermining the Ukrainian cause in general. If so, it is flawed logic. If anything set post-Soviet Ukraine apart from Russia over the past two decades, it was not the rule of law or the level of corruption but a discussion of Ukrainian society's complicity in World War II–era genocides – the Holocaust and the so-called Volhynian massacre of Poles. Even if inconsistent and halfhearted, public debates of these traumatic events in Ukraine were matched in Putin's Russian Federation by a total denial of its own rich genocidal past at the expense of Soviet history's hysterical glorification. Russia's denialism went as far as to repudiate responsibility for episodes that were officially recognized as criminal by Soviet officialdom back in 1990, such as the Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners in 1940. Russia's Memorial Society, the main custodian of historical memory of Soviet terror and its perpetrators, was legally and illegally harassed for years until it was required by the Supreme Court to shut down in 2021 and was officially outlawed in 2022. Systematic retrospective populism – the glorification of the righteous Soviet nation in the past – has evolved into full-scale domestic Nazism, as the Soviet has increasingly become identified with ethnically Russian, and a revival of the Russian-Soviet idealized community has become the ultimate political priority. By contrast, a critical or at least skeptical attitude to Ukrainian nationalism of the 1940s has prevented modern Ukrainian society from embracing organicist nationalism, even in the face of Russia's creeping aggression since 2014.1 When Russia unleashed open war against Ukraine in February [End Page 339] 2022, the diverse politics of history in the two countries became a major factor in drawing a clear-cut distinction between the Ukrainian and Russian sides as moral and immoral, humane and inhumane. Therefore, the publication of Himka's book discussing the painful topic of participation in the Holocaust by Ukrainian champions of national independence – the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – is the best testimony to the Ukrainian culture's antifascist potential. The fact that the book by a prominent Canadian scholar was published not by a Canadian university press and especially not by a Ukrainian Canadian academic one, but by the German ibidem-Verlag – regardless of the author's own intentions – is a troubling sign. Likewise, potential reviewers' obvious inclination to shy away from discussing the book tells volumes about the state of the field of Ukrainian history. Namely, it is decades ahead of the history of the Soviet-German war as it is written in the Russian Federation or in America, where almost equally uncritical eulogies of the Soviet war effort are produced. Yet it is decades behind the German history of World War II or the way America's controversial past is treated by historians in the United States. Fully aware of the politically charged potential of his topic, John-Paul Himka, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Alberta, went out of his way to produce an impartial and factually bulletproof narrative. The book's style and composition are reminiscent of early twentieth-century positivist historiography. It is demonstratively empiricist and opens with the chapters "Historiography" and "Sources," which is almost unheard of in modern historical monographs. Given...

The World to Come: Ukrainian Images of the Last Judgment, written by Liliya Berezhnaya and John-Paul Himka

The World to Come: Ukrainian Images of the Last Judgment, written by Liliya Berezhnaya and John-Paul Himka

Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe

August 7, 2015 Harold Marcuse, Review for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of: Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, edited by John-Paul Himka and Joanna Michlic (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 778 pp., cloth $50. review: 2375 words This anthology collects twenty essays about the reception of the Holocaust in eastern Europe since 1989-90, arranged alphabetically from Albania to Ukraine. The editors of the volume contributed essays on two of the countries in this group, which they see as bracketing the range of post-communist engagement with the Holocaust (9). Michlic, who co-authored the essay on Poland, was then at Brandeis and is now a professor at the University of Bristol. She is perhaps best-known as co-editor of a documentation of the debates triggered by Jan Gross's 2001 book about the July10, 1941 massacre of Jewish Poles in Jedwabne. 1 In fact, she sees that debate as having made Poland the country where the second phase of restored memory has reached the most sophisticated level (9). Himka, now a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, is a specialist in Ukrainian history. His assessment is that in Ukraine the first phase of restored memory still has the upper hand, with the second civic phase trying to establish itself in public discourse only with great difficulty. This two-phase model of Holocaust recollection is implicit throughout the collection, and is discussed in greater detail below. Assembling so many excellent essays is an astonishing achievement. The contributors were asked to follow a similar chapter structure: After an introduction describing the wartime situation with an emphasis on relations between Jews and the majority nation, and a brief overview of memories of the Holocaust under communism, seven post-1989 topics were to be covered: high politics and public debates, education and scholarship, culture (literature, cinema, music, theater), grassroots projects and sites, diaspora narratives, indigenous Jewish communities, and antisemitism and Holocaust negationism (meaning both denial and relativization). As one might expect given the broad range of events during the Holocaust, the various countries display a wide range of Holocaust retrospection (or lack thereof), and various authors draw from a similar diversity of sources to attempt to gauge that activity. These include sites, museums and research institutions, memorials and their inscriptions, conferences, scholarly publications, textbooks and curricular materials, speeches, polls, films, fiction, internet forums, newspaper comments, and more--basically anything that sheds light on public dealings with the past. Common to all essays, however, is the extensive use of primary sources and secondary literature in the native languages, Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Tales of Affect, ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’: On Distantiation in Holocaust Historiography

The problem of emotional and spatiotemporal distantiation in Holocaust historiography is approached through an elaboration on ‘affect’ broadly defined as differing intensities of intra- and intersubjective reactivity to an ideational or external source. Within this schema, ‘thick’ or ‘visceral’ affect designates a charged identification with past violences as though they were still actively present, in contrast to ‘thin’ or ‘rarefied’ affect, which refers to an apparent absence of this charge. This distinction is theorised with reference to Sigmund Freud’s ‘Introductory Lecture’ from 1916–17 on ‘Anxiety’ and his ‘New Introductory Lecture’ from 1932–36 on ‘Anxiety and Instinctual Life’. Reading between these lectures highlights the intimate relationship between anxiety and affect in Freudian psychoanalysis. By extension, the distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ affect is determined by the relative presence or absence of lifepreservative stress, which endows an affect with its intensity. The key claim is that while anxiety alone suffices to give an affect its intensity, traumatic episodes trigger a heightened sense of vulnerability and potentially leave behind a toxic confluence of humiliation, shame, paranoia, and ressentiment. Flagrant betrayals of a naively presumed survival consensus plant the social-psychological seeds of ‘visceral’ affect, which magnetises contemporary slights that fuel cycles of retaliatory brutality among subsequent generations during periods of instability. Conversely, ‘thin’ or ‘rarefied’ affect (affect under erasure) refers to variably motivated distantiating reactions: on the one hand, in situations punctuated by widespread atrocities, the perpetrator’s disavowal of the crimes he or she ordered or committed transpires as a defensive tendency to deflect critical judgements of his or her own actions and belittle or blame the victim; on the other hand, in ordinary circumstances, absorption in day-to-day survival might impel bystanders at various removes to disregard suffering, even in their immediate midst. In both cases, thin affect manifests itself as an apparent evacuation of compassionate identification with those in dire circumstances; it signals an economy in which people who might otherwise feel guilty or ashamed, manage, through a variety of psychic mechanisms, to disassociate, forget or even justify persecution or profound inequity. Illustrations of thick affect in bystander testimony draw upon John-Paul Himka’s review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost and Jan Gross’s Neighbors, two discussions that showcase instances of shocking brutality in atrocities committed against Ukrainian and Polish Jews, respectively. To elucidate thin affect, the analysis returns to Martin Broszat’s 1988 exchange of letters with the Jewish historian Saul Friedländer, where the German Second-World-War-generation historian repeatedly demeaned an ‘adamant’, ‘mythical’, ‘accusatory’, ‘insistent’, and ‘contrary’ Jewish memory for ‘coarsening’ historical understanding. Consulting Nicolas Berg’s Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker sheds light on Broszat’s background with the Institute for Contemporary History, which was involved in suppressing the Jewish survivor Joseph Wulf’s evidence against Dr Wilhelm Hagen. The essay concludes with a reflection on the biopolitical implications of a ‘dialectics’ between thick and thin affect, which suggests that a contemporaryhistoriographic construction of ‘normalcy’ as an appearance or perception of continuity privileges the standpoint of a subject who disavows his or her implication in the violence and crises that sentence others to destruction.

Victoria Hinderks wins John-Paul Himka Award

Victoria Hinderks wins John-Paul Himka Award

Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Edited by John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2013) 792 pp. $50.00

<i>Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe.</i> Edited by John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2013) 792 pp. $50.00

John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe.

John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Get access John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2013. Pp. x, 778. $50.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1648–1649, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1648d Published: 25 November 2013

Shatterzone of empires: coexistence and violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman borderlands

Acknowledgements Introduction: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz Part 1. Imagining the Borderlands 1. The Traveler's View of Central Europe: Gradual Transitions and Degrees of Difference in European Borderlands Larry Wolff 2. Megalomania and Angst: The Nineteenth-Century Mythicization of Germany's Eastern Borderlands Gregor Thum 3. Between Empire and Nation State: An Outline for a European Contemporary History of the Jews, 1750-1950 Dan Diner 4. Jews and Others in Vilna-Wino-Vilnius: Invisible Neighbors, 1831-1948 Theodore R. Weeks Part 2. Imperial Borderlands 5. Our Laws, Our Taxes, and Our Administration: Citizenship in Imperial Austria Gary B. Cohen 6. Marking National Space on the Habsburg Austrian Borderlands, 1880-1918 Pieter M. Judson 7. Travel, Railroads, and Identity Formation in the Russian Empire Frithjof Benjamin Schenk 8. Germany and the Ottoman Borderlands: The Entwining of Imperial Aspirations, Revolution, and Ethnic Violence Eric D. Weitz 9. The Central State in the Borderlands: Ottoman Eastern Anatolia in the Late Nineteenth Century Elke Hartmann Part 3. Nationalizing the Borderlands 10. Borderland Encounters in the Carpathian Mountains and Their Impact on Identity Formation Patrice M. Dabrowski 11. Mapping the Hungarian Borderlands Robert Nemes 12. A Strange Case of Antisemitism: Ivan Franko and the Jewish Issue Yaroslav Hrytsak 13. Nation State, Ethnic Conflict, and Refugees in Lithuania, 1939-1940 Tomas Balkelis 14. The Young Turks and the Plans for the Ethnic Homogenization of Anatolia Taner Akcam Part 4. Violence on the Borderlands 15. Paving the Way for Ethnic Cleansing: Eastern Thrace during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and Their Aftermath Eyal Ginio 16. Wiping out the Bulgar Race: Hatred, Duty, and National Self-Fashioning in the Second Balkan War Keith Brown 17. Failed Identity and the Assyrian Genocide David Gaunt 18. Forms of Violence during the Russian Occupation of Ottoman Territory and in Northern Persia (Urmia and Astrabad), October 1914-December 1917 Peter Holquist 19. A Zone of Violence: The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Eastern Galicia in 1914-1915 and 1941 Alexander V. Prusin 20. Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass Murder: Krakivs'ki visti, the NKVD Murders of 1941, and the Vinnytsia Exhumation John-Paul Himka 21. Communal Genocide: Personal Accounts of the Destruction of Buczacz, Eastern Galicia, 1941-1944 Omer Bartov Part 5. Ritual, Symbolism, and Identity 22. Liquid Borderland, Inelastic Sea? Mapping the Eastern Adriatic Pamela Ballinger 23. National Modernism in Post-Revolutionary Society: The Ukrainian Renaissance and Jewish Revival, 1917-1930 Myroslav Shkandrij 24. Carpathian Rus': Interethnic Coexistence without Violence Paul Robert Magocsi 25. Tremors in the Shatterzone of Empires: Eastern Galicia in Summer 1941 Kai Struve 26. Caught in Between: Border Regions in Modern Europe Philipp Ther List of Contributors Index

‘The Honor They So Clearly Deserve:’ Legitimizing the Waffen-SS Galizien

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Tarik Cyril Amar, John-Paul Himka, Dovid Katz, Jared McBride, Andreas Umland, as well as two annoymous reviewers for reading and commenting on drafts of this article and generously sharing their materials, ideas, and time.

Mountain Last Judgment and Rural Apocalypse: Patterns of Imagery

John-Paul Himka, Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians. 368 pp., illus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0802098092. $75.00. Gleb Markelov and Arina Bil'diug, eds., Litsevye apokalipsisy Russkogo Severa: Rukopisi XVII-XIX vv. iz fondov Drevlekhranilishcha Pushkinskogo doma (Illuminated Apocalypses of the Russian North: 17th- to 19th-Century Manuscripts from the Pushkin House Archives). 172 pp., illus. St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Pushkinskogo doma, 2008. ISBN-13 978-5877810051. Both books reviewed here deal with regions that may be described as peripheries of the Orthodox world. In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, the Carpathian Mountains and the nearby foothills sheltered small monastic communities that were never important cultural centers, and their libraries were at most modest. Wooden churches in highland Rusyn villages did not boast of frescoes similar to those painted in the stone churches of Muscovy, Moldavia, and the Balkans. In peasant, mainly Old Believer, communities in the Russian North, the medieval traditions and religious imagery remained preserved for two centuries after the painful ruptures of the religious schism and reforms of Peter the Great. Both in the Russian North and the Carpathians, everyday religious experience, hopes, and, even more so, fears were imbued with eschatological imagery that is not always easy to decipher. The Last Judgment icons and the illuminated Apocalypses shaped and at the same time reflected the beliefs and the changing worldview of these communities and serve as one of the keys to a better understanding of medieval religious culture, including both political theology and popular demonology. Yet Eastern Orthodox eschatological imagery remains for historians largely unexplored territory, if not a terra incagnita. The principal Byzantine and Old Russian apocrypha, treaties, and homilies about the end of the world or the struggle between angels and demons were published as late as the 19th century. Still, the historical and cultural importance of the visual material contained in these complex sources is generally underestimated by scholars. In the last two years the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) in St. Petersburg and the University of Toronto Press have brought us two books that throw light on the eschatological imagery of the Carpathian region in the 15th-16th centuries and the Russian North from the 18th to the end of the 19th centuries. Although these books have almost nothing in common in terms of their analytical objectives and ambitions, both nonetheless provide valuable insights for analyzing the relations between ecclesiastical teaching and popular religion. Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians, by John-Paul Himka of the University of Alberta, is more than a highly specialized iconographic study. The author not only explores the Last Judgment imagery in the Carpathian region, tracing the paths and mechanisms of its development, but tries to answer a broader question: is it possible to speak about a specifically Ukrainian sacred art in the early modern period? Illuminated Apocalypses of the Russian North, by the Russian scholars Gleb Markelov and Arina Bil'diug, is not a scholarly study in the proper sense of the term but rather an album, accompanied by an essay that presents the modern reader with the tradition of manuscript Apocalypses written, painted, mediated, and transmitted from generation to generation by the Old Believers. The Carpathian tradition of Last Judgment iconography originated in the 15th century in the large region that includes present-day western Ukraine, southeastern Poland, and eastern Slovakia. The area was inhabited by Rusyns/Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians. What is special about the Carpathians is that it has always been a border region, open to multiple cultural and religious influences from Moldavia, the Balkans, Poland, remote Rus' principalities, and eventually Muscovy. …

О Значении Ситуационного Элемента в Восточно-Центральноевропейском Фашизме

SUMMARY: This is a Russian version of John-Paul Himka’s contribution to the roundtable “Fascism in East Central and Southeastern Europe: Mainstream Fascism or ‘Mutant’ Phenomenon?” organized by the journal East Central Europe . Drawing on his studies of OUN-UPA, the author elaborates on his understanding of fascism in general and the importance of the situational element in East Central European fascism in particular. Although there are many common features of the East Central European fascist parties, explains Himka, each of them had unique and salient characteristics, and he proceeds to analyze them. One reason for the popularity of fascism in East Central Europe was the widespread dissatisfaction with the results of the Paris Peace Conference. The importance of this situational element in East European fascism is illustrated by the case of the OUN, but Himka does not suggest that dissatisfaction with the results of World War I was an exclusive impetus of regional fascism. The conjunctural attraction of fascism was not limited to East Central Europe, as the case of Walloon nationalists in Belgium shows. Versailles may have motivated Germany’s national socialists, but it did not have any meaning at all for Spain’s Falanga, and so on. He treats in detail another situational element, anti-Semitism, however, he equally refuses to consider it as specific to East Central European fascism. Anticommunism was a factor of tremendous importance in Hungarian, Romanian, and Ukrainian fascism, a reflection of brief experiences with Bolshevism in the aftermath of World War I and their proximity to the Soviet Union. But it was not particularly germane to the Croatian Ustaše, and so on. Stylistically there are no grounds for selecting regional fascism as a specific phenomenon. Himka concludes that he does not see enough coherence among East Central European fascisms to warrant constituting them as a separate category.

Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past (review)

Reviewed by: Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past John-Paul Himka Plokhy, Serhii — Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. 391. This is a readable, stimulating collection of articles on issues relating to the intersection of Ukrainian and Russian historiography. Of the 16 chapters, 13 had been previously published, but they have been modified for the present volume, and they fit together well. Themes on which Serhii Plokhy has previously published monographs figure prominently in this collection, especially Cossacks (chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15), but also the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (chapters 5 and 6) and iconography (chapter 4). The chapters are insightful essays based on published sources rather than monographic articles based on archival research. The last essay in the book, written especially for this volume, is entitled "Beyond Nationality." It analyses the pluses and minuses of writing in the national paradigm, particularly with reference to Ukrainian history. Not only does it sort out what national history captures and misses, but it explains how it positions practitioners in contemporary Ukraine. "Writing traditional national history today means contributing to the isolationism and provincialism of East European historiography," while "younger historians want to be part of the larger European and world community of historians" (p. 284). Plokhy also feels that the multi-ethnic, territorial approach is little better, since it too "is liable to lapse into primordialism, a teleological approach, and the marginalization of non-ethnic groups and institutions" (p. 293). He himself leans towards "transnational history," which operates with larger zones and larger polities. Most importantly, he sees Ukraine as a borderland "not only between Eastern and Central Europe but also between Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Mediterranean world, and the Eurasian steppelands" (p. 301). I understand this last essay to be a reckoning with or conceptualization of directions his work had been taking earlier, but perhaps more intuitively. Indeed, there is much in the previous 15 essays that is transnational. The penultimate chapter is in fact entitled "Crossing National Boundaries." This essay argues the utility of studying Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks also within the framework of Cossackdom and not just within the frameworks of Russian or Ukrainian history. Chapter 12 on "Remembering Yalta" is also particularly transnational. It concentrates on the commemoration and lack of commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Yalta Conference in 1945, but it examines the [End Page 509] local contexts that produce the varying attitudes toward the anniversary on the part of Russia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. Russia, which has "refused to separate its heroes from its tyrants and condemn the atrocities committed in the name of communism," was the most enthusiastic about Yalta, the Big Three including Stalin, and VE Day, which, after all, "initiated the era of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" (pp. 219, 214). This was a perspective none of the other countries could share. The Latvian president considered the Soviet period to be one of occupation and did not want to attend celebrations in Moscow at all. Only under pressure from George Bush did she attend. The stances of Poland and Ukraine were more ambivalent: Poland because, although Yalta brought Soviet domination, it also confirmed the borders of Poland's Western expansion; Ukraine because it is a divided country where some think like Russians and others like Balts and also because of complications with Tatars and the Crimea. The stance of the United States was bedeviled by the conflict between Republicans and Democrats over the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As for President Bush, he had a clear agenda. He used the occasion "to support the countries of the new Europe that showed loyalty to the United States and embarrass President Putin" as well as "to legitimize his war in Iraq and his policy in the Middle East" (p. 237). Plokhy demonstrates that, at least sometimes, "historical debates are parochial or determined by local (national) agendas, traditions, fears, and complexes" (p. 234). The debates themselves, however, are transnational. Also, throughout this book are strewn little landmines for historians of the unreconstructed national persuasion. Chapter 14, for example, celebrates the brilliant Kyivan early modernist Natalia Yakovenko...

Galicia: A Multicultural Land by Christopher Hann , Paul Robert Magocsi (review)

REVIEWS 365 Hann, Christopher and Magocsi, Paul Robert(eds). Galicia: A Multicultural Land. University of Toronto Press,Toronto, ON, Buffalo,NY and London, 2006. ix + 259 pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $35.00:£20.00 (paperback). The articles collected inthisvolumewereoriginally presented at a conference on Galicia, held in May 1998 at the University of Ârhus,Denmark.The elevenspecialists fromvariousacademic disciplines and different countries represented herehavemadeimportant contributions tothehistory ofGalicia overthelastfifteen years.In thisrespect thevolumesummarizes largely recent historical and cultural researchon Galicia,together withCzaplicka'srecent collection ofarticles on thehistory ofLwów/Lviv (John Czaplicka[ed.],Lviv: A City inthe Crosscurrents ofCulture, HarvardUkrainian Studies, 24,Cambridge, MA, 2002).As suchthepublication is verywelcome. Paul RobertMagocsi,co-editor of thevolumeand an authorof a wellknowngeneralhistory ofUkraine,outlines in hisintroduction threeaspects whichcharacterize the regionand whichhe considersas veryhelpfulfor itsunderstanding: first, tradeand commerceand mostimportantly Galicia's economicdeclinein thenineteenth century; secondly, itsethnicdiversity (he namesparticularly the Jews, Ukrainians, Poles,GermansandArmenians) and, thirdly, the Habsburgheritage, above all 'mutualconflicting claimsto the sameterritory' (p. 15)and Ukrainian patriotism. Magocsiidentifies Galiciaas historic Galicia,whichmeanspre-1772 and EasternGalicia. Takingtheintroductory remarks as a guideline forthevolumeone has to makesomereservations. Firstly, ifwe identify Galicia as historic Galicia and excludefromit thehistory ofWesternGalicia (in thisvolumeKai Struve's articleon 'Peasantsand Patriotic Celebrations in HabsburgGalicia' is the onlyexceptionin thisrespect) thenone mighthave expectedto see several contributions on Galicia's pre-1772 history in the volume.Yet onlyJerzy Motylewicz's discussion ofthevariousethnic communities inthetownsofthe Polish-Ukrainian borderland hasa clearfocuson thepre-nineteenth centuries. Secondly, ifethnicdiversity is a specific marker oftheregion, and bearingin mindthetitleofthevolume('a multicultural land'),thenone is disappointed by thefactthatthevolumecontainsonlyarticleson Ukrainian-Polish and Orthodox-Catholic relations. Jews,who constituted an important part of Galicia's populationover manycenturies and whose history/ histories has receivedconsiderable attention in the 1990s,are hardlyrepresented (JohnPaul Himka'scompetent overview ofGalicia'sreligious diversity treats them at leastto someextent). Mostarticles focuson variousaspectsofGalicia'shistory inthenineteenth and thefirst halfofthetwentieth century as one might have expected.The Polishhistorian Stanislaw Stçpienreminds us abouttheimportant rolewhich Przemysl - and particularly itsGreekCatholicChurch- hasplayedin the earlynineteenth century forthe'Rutheniannationalawakening' (p. 55).The Ukrainianhistorian Volodymyr Potul'nyts'kyi approachesthe questionof Galicianidentity at theturnofthetwentieth century withintheUkrainian context bycomparing twoimagesfrom Ukrainians from outsideGalicia and twoimagesfrom within Galicia.Although hisconclusion is notveryoriginal, thatallfour'regarded Galiciaas partofa single Ukrainian patrimony' (p.97), 366 SEER, 87, 2, APRIL 200g the approachmakesquite interesting reading.The articleby the German historian Kai Struveon thepatriotic celebrations of Polishand Ukrainian peasantsis one of thefinest in thevolume.He comparesUkrainiancommemorations of the abolitionof peasantserfdom and theirtransformation intonational festivals sincetheendofthenineteenth century and Polishpeasant pilgrimages whichfulfilled a rathersimilar- national- aim. Anna VeronikaWendland analysesthe nationalization of the public spherein interwar Lviv.The nationalization ofwar memories dividedand segregated theurbanpublicspherealong nationallinesand she stresses thatrumours playeda keyrolein their making. The volumeconcludes withthreearticles on Galicia'smorerecent history, thetimeperiodafterthecollapseof Communism in EasternEurope.The British geographer Luiza Bialasiewiczfocuseson the questionof how discourse on the Habsburg legacy has shaped discourseon the region's Europeanbelonging.She is particularly interested in the Polish-Ukrainian 'geographical imaginary' oftheregionaimedatpresenting thisborderland 'as a historical spaceofcoexistence and contentment' (p. 163).The Lvivhistorian Yaroslav Hrytsak analysesthe phenomenonof regionalism in Galicia. He tracesUkrainian nationalization oftheregion's history backtothe1860s,and pointsto selective forgetting withrespect to otherethno-confessional groups and to thedevelopment ofa rather exclusive Ukrainiannationalidentity in theregionin thetwentieth century, itself mostprobablya result oftherival Polishnationalnarrative. Contemporary Galicia is peripheral in Ukrainein manywaysand youngintellectuals from theregionhaveresponded recently to thisprocessby claiming somekindofautonomy forGalicia. The British anthropologist ChrisHann examines theentanglement oftheGreekCatholic ChurchwithUkrainian nationalism inthenineteenth and twentieth centuries in Przemys'l - whichaccording to hisanalysis alienatedsomeofthefaithful fromthechurch- and thestruggle fora new multiculturalism in thecity after 1991, whichhas stilltobe established. The volume,whichcontainsa map of Galicia and an index,convinces onlypartially: whilemostofthearticles arewellresearched, argueclearly and thusdeserve attention, thegeneralstructure ofthepublication does notmeet theexpectations whichone mighthave had on openingthebook. Paul R. Magocsi is certainly right withhis advice thattheeconomichistory of the regionshouldbe takenmoreseriously intoconsideration. Historisches Seminar G. Hausmann AlbertLudwigs Universität Freiburg Bitis,Alexander.RussiaandtheEastern Question: Army, Government, andSociety 1815-1833. A British AcademyPostdoctoral Fellowship Monograph.The British Academyand OxfordUniversity Press,Oxford, 2006.xxiii+ 542 pp. Maps. Notes.Bibliography. Index.£75.00. The EasternQuestioninRussianstudies has curiously slippedoff theagenda ofmuchmodernscholarship oflate,thelastmajorstudies in thisarea being byM. E. Yapp andM. S. Anderson inthe1960sand 1970s. Itperhaps became ...