History of an everyday life of the Western Ukrainian peasantry

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History of an everyday life of the Western Ukrainian peasantry

(review of the monograph: Starka V.V. Everyday Life of the Western Ukrainian Peasantry under the Conditions of Social Transformations in 1939-1953)

Vasyl Ilnytskyi

PhD hab. (History), Professor, Head of the Department of History of Ukraine, Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University; Associate Professor, Department of Mobilization, Personnel and Human Resources Management and Defense Planning, Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Ground Forces Academy

Kateryna Holovko

PhD hab. (Law), Head of the Department of Economic and Legal Research of the Black Sea Research Institute of Economy and Innovations, Odesa, Ukraine

Історія повсякденного життя західноукраїнського селянства

(рецензія на монографію: Старка В.В. Повсякденне життя західноукраїнського селянства в умовах суспільних трансформацій 1939-1953 рр.)

everyday life peasantry

Василь Ільницькии

доктор історичних наук, професор, завідувач кафедри історії України, Дрогобицький державний педагогічний університет імені Івана Франт; доцент кафедри мобілізаційної, організаційно-штатної, кадрової роботи та оборонного планування, Національна академія сухопутних військ імені гетьмана Петра Сагайдачного, м. Львів, Україна

Катерина Головко

доктор юридичних наук, завідувач відділу економіко-правових досліджень Причорноморського науково-дослідного інституту економіки та інновацій, м. Одеса, Україна

Social transformations in modern Ukraine, which began after gaining the state independence, the rejection of totalitarian ideas of the political system, led to a qualitatively new situation in an everyday life. The events of the Ukrainian revolutions: “The Revolution on Granite”, “The Orange Revolution” and “The Dignity Revolution” created a fundamentally new atmosphere, which helped increase the interest of a wide range of scholars and the public in the historical past.

An important role in preserving the nationalstate traditions belongs to the Ukrainian peasantry. As, V Cook noted in his work “Collective Farm Slavery”: “To write about the fate of the Ukrainian peasantry throughout our history would mean writing the history of the Ukrainian people,because the Ukrainian peasantry, quite different from the peasants of many other nations, was the main core of the Ukrainian nation. The Ukrainian peasantry was the creator of the Ukrainian history”.

The history analysis of an everyday life, allowed the author not only to describe life, but also to reveal its structure and essence, to analyze an everyday life as an active component of the historical past.

The topicality of the reviewed monograph by V. Starka consists in the fact that despite the significant role of the peasantry in the socio-political life of Western Ukraine, researchers underestimated its role in the socio-historical processes.

The expediency of studying various aspects of the issue under analysis is dictated as the social significance of the research problem, which consists in making it possible to generalize the experience of the past, to deepen theoretical ideas, to offer practical recommendations that need to be implemented in the practice of the present, and the enrichment of scientific knowledge with significant factual material, the possibility of unbiased coverage of events, the reconstruction of processes and a clearer reflection of the objective laws of the research topic.

Despite the variability of historical destiny, the Western Ukrainian peasantry became a kind of indicator of the socio-political, socio-economic, cultural and religious situation in Ukraine, influencing the political events and processes directly or indirectly. In this regard, the peer-reviewed monograph is a topical scientific study, which is especially needed by modern Ukrainian historiography.

The structure of the peer-reviewed monograph is detailed, logical, consistent, balanced and concise, scientifically substantiated, as well as the presentation of the material in the chapters. In our opinion, it is quite successful and holistic, as it allows to reveal complex and contradictory processes in the western Ukrainian village.

The monograph consists of five chapters, namely: Chapter I dealswith the characteristics of the source complex and historiography of the studied issues, a separate section is devoted to the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of an everyday history; Chapter II focuses on the peculiarities of anorganizational and legal support of the administrative leadership of the western Ukrainian village in 1939 - 1953; Chapter III dealswitha thorough study of the socio-economic development of the western Ukrainian village in 1939 - 1953; Chapter IV focuses on the analysis of the socio-political life of the western Ukrainian peasantry in 1939 - 1953; Chapter V deals with coverage of the cultural and educational life of the western Ukrainian village.

There should be noted the fact of thorough and meticulous work of the researcher on the search and generalization of rich in content and capacious documentary material, which allowed him to introduce the novelty in the elaboration of this rather complex topic.

It should be emphasized that the peer-reviewed monograph is marked by the thoroughness of the source base, which gave the author the opportunity to express his own competent opinion on the most controversial aspects of the problem. V Starka introduces into the scientific circulation not only new documents and materials, but he also generalizes the historical facts, socio-political life and phenomena, reconstructs the events,connected with the daily life of peasants under the conditions of the social transformations of 1939 - 1953.

The majority of the sources on the outlined issues isstored in the Central State Archive of the highest authorities and administration of Ukraine, Kyiv, the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine, Kyiv, the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Lviv, the State Archives of Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil regions. A significant amount of materials was analyzed in V. Vernadsky National Scientific Library of Ukraine, the departments of Ukrainian studies and rare books of V. Stefanyk National Scientific Libraryof Lviv.

The author classified the analyzed sources into several groups, inaccordancewith the origin, place of storage, content and significance of information: the official documents of the authorities of the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany, the archival documents and materials, the statistical collections, the published collections of documents and materials,the publication of periodicals of magazine and newspaper type, thematerials of arural folklore, the documents of apersonal origin - memories of direct participants and witnesses of the events under research. Additional sources were material and pictorial documents of that time: the photographs, posters, postcards, home clothes, household items.

An important factor that significantly affects the daily life of the population of the region is the public authorities activities. The well-being of the people, and thus the support of the government, depend on the organic interaction of citizens with the authorities. Taking into considerationthe strategic importance of the western Ukrainian lands for the interests of the leadership of the Soviet Union, the region underwent an administrative reform during a relatively short period of time. The author tries to understand the difficulty in these relationships, the boundaries of which range from a full support to a rather rapid disappointment and resistance. It should be noted that V. Starka, in addition to public authorities, studied the management model created in the western Ukrainian village by the structures of the Ukrainian national liberation movement. He describes a kind of competition between the structures of the Ukrainian national liberation movement and the official authorities of the Soviet and the Nazi totalitarian regimes for the commitment of the local population.

The events analyzed in the Chaptersand the conclusions made by the author can serve as a guide for modern administrators during the implementation of administrative territorial reforms.

For the effective management of the western Ukrainian lands, the Soviet and the Nazi regimes retained a significant number of military forces and civil administration in these areas. The Lion's share of amaterial support fell on the shoulders of the peasants, through the introduced system of taxes and duties, which are covered in Chapter III “Socio-Economic Development of the Western Ukrainian Village in 1939 - 1953”. In the chapter, the author emphasizes two main aspects: government institutions tried to implement their economic plansat all costs, completely ignoring the interests of the peasants; instead the peasantry,in various ways adapted to new socio-economic realities, and following the orders of management, had its own interest. It was at that time that the Ukrainian peasantry developed the skills to survive under the most extreme conditions.

In Chapter IV “Socio-Political Life of the Western Ukrainian Peasantry in 1939 - 1953”, the impact of migration processes on the established way of life, as well as the mentality and ancestral traditions are described. Under the pressure of external factors, not only the state-peasant relations were transformed, but also the established way of life, which could not cause the Resistance Movement. The participation of peasants in the struggle against the occupiers changed not only their daily lives, but also shook the faith of some traditional Christian laws and morals. Obviously, when the peasants found themselves in the situation “between the hammer and the anvil”, when it is impossible to determine where “one's own” and where “strange” were, according to the author, to assess the events of that time from the point of view of today is quite difficult, as well as to make a universal formula for covering the realities of that time. During that period of time everyone had his own truth, which had the right to exist.

At the same time, the author notes that “living under the rule of foreign governments, Galician peasants developed a unique way of an everyday lifereality reception. Sustainability of asocial behaviour created an original model of anactive or passive socio-political behaviour. Galician peasants were very careful about something new, thatiswhy, they did not particularly wantto join the governing structures or to celebrate thestate holidays unknown to them” (p. 343).

“Cultural and educational life of the western Ukrainian village” is analyzed in Chapter V The author emphasizes that under the conditions of absence of television and radio, the main rural entertainment was religious festivities (carols, Christmas carols, hayivky, etc.), young people had fun during parties (vechornyts). There always functioned a choir and an amateur drama group in the village, which gave a concert at the local club from time to time.The exotic of the rural leisure of that time was cinema, which was brought from the “district” or “city” from time to time.

The spiritual life of peasants is coveredin Chapter 5 separately. The researcher emphasizes the high piety of the Galician peasantry, which fought steadily for the preservation of their religious traditions. Special attention is paid to the role of the clergy, and especially Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky, in preserving a traditional rural spiritual life.

The conclusions made by the researcher are comprehensive and deeply reasoned, fully derived from interesting and scientifically important factual material. The main scientific provisions are formulated carefully and professionally, with knowledge of the researched problems. The conclusions are thoroughly substantiatedand have indisputable value. The author is anexpertonthe material, the problems raised indicate a high scientific level of preparation of a monographic study.

The monographic study has a well-structured list of sources used. In addition, the monograph is supplemented by appendices. V Starka showed a wide knowledge of the special literature on the problem under study and was able to analyze itprofessionally.

At the same time, it should be noted that the peer-reviewed monograph has some drawbacks. In this case, there attracts attention, first of all, the fact that the formulations of some chapters titles (or subsections) goes somewhat beyond the subject field of everyday history. For instance, the title of Chapter III “Socio-Economic Development of the Western Ukrainian Village in 1939 - 1953” may lead the reader to the conclusion that it is more about economic and social history in its classical sense. Also from the title of Chapter IV “SocioPolitical Life of the Western Ukrainian Peasantry in 1939 - 1953” we can assume that it is about a typical political history. At the same time, the analysis of the content of these chapters of the monograph shows that the realities of an everyday life are properly represented in the author's text. Hence, we believe that the nomenclature of the structural parts of the peer- reviewed monograph should be specified, focusing on the “everyday” aspects.

As an argumentative discussion, we would like to advise the author to enrich the peerreviewed monographwith the methodological tools of imagology. It is the analysis of the subjective reception of certain social phenomena through the evaluation formula “their own - strange”. As we know, the Galician peasantry managed to visit several socio-political and socio-economic systems during the period under study. From thispoint, the answer to the question of what elements of each of these political and social systems of the Galician peasantry were recepted as “their own” and which as “strange” or “hostile” would be of great value. The answer to this question will have not only purely theoretical significance; it will become a strong argument in topical socio-political discussions, in particular, on the question of whether the arrival of each of these systems was for the Galician peasantry “liberation” or “conquest”? Its hould be noted that the above mentioned drawback sand suggestions do not undermine the scientific value of the peer-reviewed monograph.

V. Starka's monograph fills a gap in the system of studies of an everyday life of the Western Ukrainian peasantry of the outlined period. The systematized and objectively presented material has not only worldview significance, but it will become an important and, most importantly, effective means of the national historiography.

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