Volodymyr Viatrovych
Volodymyr Mykhailovych Viatrovych (; born 7 July 1977) is a Ukrainian historian, civic activist and politician. He was Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance since 25 March 2014 until September 2019. He is a Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D) in historical sciences. He was the Director of the Center for Research of Liberation Movement in 2002–2010. Viatrovych is a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum-Memorial of Victims of the Occupation Regimes "Loncky street Prison"" Museum. From 2008 to 2010, he was director of the Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine. In  2010-2011 he was senior visiting scholar at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, working in particular with the archival documents of Mykola Lebed. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Viatrovych was number 25 on the election list of European Solidarity. Since 3 December 2019, he is a member of the Ukrainian parliament. Viatrovych is seen as a controversial figure in both Ukraine and abroad. He has been accused of whitewashing the history of Ukraine, marginalizing or suppressing the facts about involvement of Ukrainian nationalists in ethnic cleansing of Poles, involvement in the Holocaust, and collaboration with German Nazis . Viatrovych has also advocated for laws restricting free speech and academic freedom, leading him to be described as a "memory commissar". Biography and academic career (1994–present). From 1994 to 1999 Viatrovych was a student at the history faculty of Lviv University (West Ukraine) where he specialised in Ukrainian history. In 2004 he defended his doctoral thesis: “UPA raids beyond Ukrainian borders as part of the creation of an anti-totalitarian national-democratic revolution among the nations of East-Central Europe”. (He had already issued a book on the subject in 2001.) From November 2002 to March 2008 Viatrovych was  director of the Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement, based in Lviv. In 2005 and 2006 he lectured at the Ukrainian Catholic University. During that time he drew up the first course in Ukrainian higher education on “The Ukrainian Liberation Movement from the 1920s to 1950s” for students of the historical faculties of the Catholic University and the Ivan Franko Lviv University. From August 2005 to December 2007 Viatrovych was a research associate at the I. Kripyakevich Institute for Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. In 2010-2011 he worked in the US at  the Ukraine Research Institute at Harvard University. Viatrovych subsequently became director of the Center for the History of State-Building in Ukraine at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. National Remembrance (2007–2019). Between May 2007 and January 2008, Viatrovych was a representative of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance for Lviv Oblast. In 2008 he served as research consultant to the international project, “Ukraine Remembers, the World Acknowledges” which aimed to popularise the subject of the Holodomor, the 1932-3 famine in Ukraine, and, through international lobbying, to gain world recognition that this was an act of genocide. From  January to October 2008 Viatrovych was head of the archives department at Ukraine's Institute of National Remembrance. From October 2008 to March 2010 Viatrovych was adviser on research to Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the head of the SBU or Security Service of Ukraine (2006-2010). Viatrovych was a moving force behind the idea of putting Stalin and other Soviet leaders of the time on trial for genocide for their part in the Holodomor. They were found guilty in January 2010 by the Court of Appeal in Kyiv. Viatrovych has been a trustee of the Lontsky Prison National Museum-Memorial to the  Victims of Occupation Regimes (Nazi and Soviet) in Lviv, since it was set up and opened to the public in 2009. From March 2008 onwards he has chaired the research council of the Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement (Lviv). On 25 March 2014 Viatrovych was appointed Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. In September 2019 the Cabinet of Ministers dismissed Viatrovych from the position of the Director. Political activism (2004, 2013–2015). When the Orange Revolution took place in 2004 Viatrovych took an active part, supposedly as a leader of the PORA ("It's Time!") youth  movement. During the Euromaidan protests in 2013 Viatrovych called for active measures against the authorities. He coordinated mass demonstrations and led a column of activists to block the government buildings and the parliament (Verkhovna Rada). Speaking of the rotation of Euromaidan activists he recalled the activities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA: “In the 1940s and 1950s conditions in the underground were worse: people did not leave temporarily to go back to work, but because a comrade had gone forever. That is why we shall succeed!” He also commented: “We do not intend to halt after the regime has  changed in Ukraine, when we have got rid of the rule of Yanukovych.” In May 2015 President Petro Poroshenko approved four laws concerning Decommunization in Ukraine. Volodymyr Viatrovych was involved in the drafting of two of these laws. The criminal sentences imposed by these acts and their phrasing came in for criticism within the country and abroad. The law "On access to the archives of repressive bodies of the communist totalitarian regime from 1917-1991" placed the state archives concerning repression during the Soviet period under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, then headed by Volodymyr Viatrovych . 2019 election to parliament. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Viatrovych was number 25 on the election list of European Solidarity. Only the first 23 candidates were elected. But after Iryna Lutsenko gave up her mandate Viatrovych did replace her and he was sworn in as People's Deputy of Ukraine on 3 December 2019. Number 24 of the election list European Solidarity, Nataliya Boyko, waived her right to enter parliament in favour of Viatrovych. In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections, Viatrovych ran for the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Council as the first number on the list of European Solidarity. He  did not take up his won seat. Viatrovych as historian (2002–2012). The first Volodymyr Viatrovych's book about the rallies of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Czechoslovakia was written based on his PhD thesis. It was devoted to a little explored area, and that this work has been appreciated and probably resulted in Viatrovich's appointment a director of TsDVR (Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement). Section::::"Army of the Immortals" (2002). His third book "Army of the Immortals" (2002) was discussed some years later on the Polit.ru website by Professor Alexei I. Miller of the Central European University  in Budapest and Ukrainian historian Georgy Kasyanov from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In Miller's view the book was essentially glorification of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Many historical sources were disregarded in the book's writing, says Miller, and falsified stories were cited. Viatrovych preferred to ignore all criticism of the "Army of the Immortals" that originated within the academic community, says Miller. In 2013 similar concerns about discussion of the past, the role and influence of Volodymyr Viatrovych, and the impact of divergent views on the present were  raised in a discussion following a Columbia University workshop on “Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism: Entangled Histories” Section::::"OUN Attitudes Towards the Jews" (2006). This book provides a one-sided view on the OUN's attitude towards Jews. The book portrays the Ukrainian nationalists and UPA as a ""national liberation"" movement and deny any accusations in their collaboration with Nazi Germany and involvement in the Holocaust. In his book Viatrovich presents only one critical article on OUN's anti-semitism, with the only purpose to immediately dismiss it. John-Paul Himka and Taras Kurylo describe Viatrovich's methodology as follows: Other authors  agree that this book is an attempt to deny the crimes of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) on Jews and to dismiss the allegations of its anti-Semitism. In the opinion of Kurylo and Himka, this work does less to understanding history, but does much to distort it, however it contains an interesting material and forms the basis for further discussions on the relationship of the OUN and UPA to Jews. As an example of alleged collaboration of Jews with UPA and as an evidence of the Ukrainian nationalist forces' lack of anti-semitism, Viatrovych mentions Leiba Dubrovskii, an alleged  Jewish member of UPA and genuine Ukrainian nationalist. However, in reality Dubrovskii was a Soviet POW who "concealed" his ethnicity when was captured by Germans. He never disclosed his real ethnicity to UPA members and was no enthusiastic supporter of Ukrainian nationalism. Section::::"The Second Polish-Ukrainian War" (2011). In this book, Viatrovych portrays the Volhynia massacres as mutual bloodletting as a result of civil war rather than a coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles. In attempts to exonerate Ukrainian nationalists, Viatrovich presents the UPA's massacre of Polish civilians as a part of a military conflict , i.e. as a war between Poles and Ukrainians, which he calls "The Second Polish-Ukrainian War", thereby implying that the events he describes were a continuation of the Polish-Ukrainian war (1918–19). Viatrovych tries to prove that there was no order of OUN's leadership for the extermination of the Polish minority, and the Volynia massacre was just a spontaneous rebellion of Ukrainian peasants provoked by the Poles. ""The Second Polish-Ukrainian war"" was met in West Ukraine with uncritical enthusiasm. Most scholarly reviews of the book were highly critical, criticizing Viatrovych for whitewashing well-known Ukrainian nationalist crimes. The  only exception to this pattern was Alexander J. Motyl. Ivan Katchanovski (University of Ottawa) states that the aim of Viatrovych in disseminating his narrative was to "restore Bandera's good name" mostly in the mass media and in non-academic or unscholarly publications. In the opinion of Hryciuk, the version of events presented in the book was factually untrue. Other reviews published in scholarly media by Per Anders Rudling, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Andrzej Leon Sowa Ihor Ilyushyn, Andrij Portnov, Grzegorz Motyka, Andrzej Zięba, were also negative. According to Motyka, although the book's sections devoted to the SS-Galizien Division  and the fate of the Ukrainian population in Poland in the years 1945-1947 are of some value, the book as a whole is an unsuccessful work. This view is shared by Anjrzej Sowa. Andrzej Leon Sowa In his review, Jared McBride noted the sharp contrast between good quality publications about Ukrainian nationalism published by Western scholars and Viatrovich's "The Second Polish-Ukrainian War", which he characterised as "a myopic, poorly researched apology for Ukrainian nationalist violence." Per Rudling states that the monograph lacks any scholarly value, and would recommend "The Second Polish-Ukrainian war" only as a primary  source for studying far-right historical negationism. He also stated that the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, which supported Viatrovich's work with Lebed's archives, "have good reason to ponder the implication of associating Harvard University with this sort of activism". Viatrovych as a public figure. In May 2016 in "Foreign Policy" Josh Cohen claimed that Viatrovych was "whitewashing Ukraine's past". In a reply published some weeks later Viatrovych assured Cohen and readers of "Foreign Policy" that Ukraine's history "was in good hands". Viatrovych is responsible for an exhumation ban in Ukraine. Publications. According to Andreas Umland, "Viatrovych  did not have then and apparently still does not have any relevant peer-reviewed academic publications"