Social Anthropology of filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II, Interview

Social Anthropology of filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II

The central concept of the research project is «social void», a phenomenon that was characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe during and immediately after World War II as a result of mass ethnic cleansing, political revolutions, forced displacement and migration. The project focuses both on the material dimension of post-war social change (e.g. acquisition of property) and the subjective sphere of social practices and relationships. His goal was to examine the processes of replacing the missing elements of social life with local communities of Poland and Ukraine. The interviews conducted as part of the project show how the void was filled after the social groups (e.g. landowners, wealthy peasants), representatives of ethnic communities (Jews, Poles, Ukrainians) and professional groups (e.g. shoemakers, pharmacists, doctors, or more broadly – craftsmen, intelligence) were evicted by the war and post-war changes. The analysis concerns changes in the ownership structure, economic dysfunction, transformations of social and cultural practices, as well as changes in relations and social norms. The conversations archived at the Center were recorded in a dozen of locations in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions by an interdisciplinary team of Polish-Ukrainian researchers. The research was carried out in small towns and villages, combining the methodology of microhistory and biographic interview as part of oral history. In total, almost 150 interviews were collected in Ukraine, of which 40 are currently available in UStories collection. The conversations recorded in Poland as part of this bilateral study are preserved in Warsaw at Archiwum Historii Mówionej. The project coordinator is Anna Wylegała, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Project is financed by the National Humanities Development Program, registration number 12H 13 0584 82. Galyna Bodnar worked with the materials before their publication.

Male, born 1925

An interview with a native resident of the village Rydvanivka, Rohatyn district, who comes from a Polish-Ukrainian family. The conversation is full of details about the war; the man gives examples from life that illustrate very well the aggravation of the interpersonal relationships after the war, the moments of personal choice, the unfairness of death, and violence.

Female, born 1923

An interview with a native resident of the village Stratyn, Rohatyn district. The interviewee and her parents were repressed by the Soviet government in 1944; she remembers very well the events of World War II, the Holocaust, the activity of the nationalist underground. A separate conversation thread is an exile in Vorkuta.

Female, born 1933

An interview with a native resident of the town Zbarazh and, starting 1950, the resident of the town Tovste. The conversation contains the memories of the pre-war life of Ukrainians in Zbarazh. Towards the end of the interview, the woman recalls her student years in Lviv: education, teachers, a dormitory, and free time.

Female, born 1930

An interview with a native resident of the village Vorvulyntsi, Zalishchyky district, contains a detailed description of the Soviet government restoration and post-war years. The narrator went through an arrest and interrogation when her family was accused of hiding participants of the Ukrainian nationalist underground.

Female, born 1930

An interview with a native resident of the village Tovste, Zalishchyky district, coming from a wealthy family: her father came back from the United States and had a large household in the city centre. The interviewee’s daughter was present during the interview and often joined the conversation, expanding on what her mother was saying and adding comments of her own.

Male, born 1927

An interview with a native resident of the village Lytyachi (Letyache), now Zalishchyky district, starts with the history of the interviewee’s father, who took part in the First World War. The man recalls in detail the Soviet government from 1939 till 1941, the German occupation, a ghetto, shootings of the Jews in Buchach, and the return of the Soviet administration in 1944.

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