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Commemoration of the Tatarbunary Uprising: Resolution of the Izmail City Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) in 1949
The Tatarbunary Uprising—a peasant uprising organized by the Bolsheviks from September 15 to 18, 1924, in several villages in the Budzhak region, centered in Tatarbunary and aimed at destabilizing Romania’s domestic political situation—became one of the key themes in the Stalinist regime’s construction of official memory in the region. Commemoration of the event began in the early days of Soviet power. The 25th anniversary celebration became one of the most significant local political and ideological campaigns of 1949, marked by large-scale memorial, cultural, educational, and propaganda events. The proposed document is a local regulatory act that sets out measures to commemorate the Tatarbunary Uprising on its 25th anniversary. The joint resolution of the...
Volhynia in 1943 in Mykola Androshchuk’s “Notes of an Insurgent”
These memoirs, written by one of the organizers of the UPA in the Mizoch district, were first published in 2011 as part of the Chronicle of the UPA series. Rivne-based researcher Ihor Marchuk, who edited the series, discovered the typescript in the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, where it was titled Notes of an Insurgent [1]. The author of the memoirs was born on December 8, 1913, in the village of Derman 1, Dubno powiat, Volhynia governorate. In the 1920s, after the village became part of Poland, it belonged to the Mizotch gmina in Zdolbuniv powiat, Volhynia voivodeship. In the 1930s, the Androshchuk family moved to the Ozery khutir...
Memoirs of UPA Fighter Maksym Skorupskyi (“Maks”) on Volhynia in 1943
The source text presented here is an excerpt from the much larger memoirs of Maksym Skorupskyi, an active figure in the Ukrainian nationalist underground, born in Antonivtsi (now Kremenets district, Ternopil oblast). In these memoirs, he recounts his experiences in the underground, first with the OUN(m) and later with the UPA. The narrative begins in 1939 and ends in May 1944, when Skorupskyi, fearing he might fall victim to the OUN’s Security Service purges, decided to escape the UPA and head farther west. According to Skorupskyi, these memoirs were originally written in 1944, but he edited and published them in Chicago in 1961. By then, he likely had some temporal distance from the...
“The Tatarbunary Uprising” in the Context of Soviet Memory Politics: From the Minutes of the Izmail Oblast Architectural Commission Meeting of December 28, 1949
The minutes of the Izmail Oblast Architectural Commission meeting on December 28, 1949, record the discussion of the initial design for a monument to the “heroes of the Tatarbunary Uprising” in the village of Tatarbunary. A joint resolution of the Izmail Oblast Executive Committee and the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) mandated its construction to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the event. The monument was placed in the village center during a solemn rally on September 18, 1949, at a grave prepared by Soviet authorities for the reburial of the fallen insurgents. This document exemplifies the practical application of Soviet monumental propaganda principles in the postwar era. The criticism...
Yona Oliker’s Testimony on the Holocaust in Volhynia
Another essential perspective for triangulating sources about World War II events in the village of Zelenyi Dub comes from the Jewish populations of Mizoch and Shumsk—the two largest shtetls situated equidistant from the village. In fact, no Jews lived in Zelenyi Dub itself. To understand how they came to be in the area during the German occupation, it's helpful to draw on Tim Cole’s interpretive approach. In his study of the Holocaust, Cole proposed examining it through the lens of landscapes: both the real and mental maps that Jews carried during the violence [1]. As German occupation policy evolved, these mental maps shifted in the perceptions of Jewish community members—some areas were seen...
A Soviet-Style Commemoration: Celebrations Marking the 150th Anniversary of Alexander Suvorov’s Death in the Izmail Oblast, 1950
The source presented here is an internal party report on preparing and executing celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Alexander Suvorov’s death—a large-scale commemorative event held across the Soviet Union on May 18, 1950. In addition to all-Union and republic-level festivities, local ceremonies honoring the Russian commander’s victories against the Ottoman Empire also played an important role in commemorating him. In this context, the Izmail Oblast occupied a special place in the celebrations, particularly the city of Izmail, which Soviet discourse of the time described as the “city of glory of Russian arms.” The commemoration practices in the Suvorov District deserve special attention; the district’s association with the general led local party and...
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