Every state has some dates which signify remarkable events. May 9, the Victory Day, is such a date for Ukraine.
Every year, as May begins, the activity of governmental and non-governmental institutions increases: at different levels of public administration more attention is drawn to the participants in the Great Patriotic War, battle-front veterans and children of war. The reasons why the war was unleashed, nations' and states' participation and contribution to the Victory, its effects on the further development of the society are still being discussed by journalists, politicians and scholars specializing on the war. Films and series about the war are shown on TV.
Older films emphasize the extraordinary significance of the wise command and the leader that was in power at that time. The clumsiness (up to idiocy) and cowardice of the enemy that got to the walls of Moscow in several months are vividly demonstrated. The idea imposed on the viewers of modern Russian films is that the main driving forces of the victory were the “SMERSH” counterintelligence service and the criminals-turning-soldiers who atoned for their sins against the Motherland with their blood.
In the diversity of these indoctrinations, the view on the war as a tragedy and disaster which took the lives and warped the fates of millions of people is dissolved. The number of casualties was concealed in the post-war years, the archives and documentation classified, general publication of research forbidden.
At the beginning of 1946 people were informed that the overall casualties (among the military and the populace) amount to some 7 mln people. In 15 years, i.e. in 1961, a number of over 20 mln was named, in the perestroika years – that of over 27 mln. Moreover, material losses were analysed and revealed. In 1945, it was already estimated that 175 000 workbenches, 34 000 hammers and presses, 3 mln spinning spindles had been destroyed and looted. In agriculture, 7 mln horses, 17 mln cows, 20 mln swine and 27 mln goats and sheep were lost. In all multi- and single-volume works on the history of the Great Patriotic War material losses were always enumerated, while it would be modestly said of the casualties that over 20 mln people had fallen or that “our people paid dearly for the victory.”
In the Soviet times a common memory of the war was deliberately formed (or deformed) by certain ideologists with the stereotypes necessary to implement this or that ideological goal being imposed, a tendency which is currently being revived. A vivid example of this is an attempt to reconsider the contribution of the USSR peoples, including that of Ukraine, to the Victory.
In December 2010, the Prime Minister of Russia at that time Vladimir Putin, while communicating live with the citizens, expressed the idea that Russia would have won the Great Patriotic War even if Ukraine had not been a part of the Soviet Union, since Russia was, in his opinion, a nation of winners. V. Putin also said that RSFSR suffered the most losses – over 70%.
These utterances, unjust towards our country, are disconfirmed by the official data, according to which the population of the Ukrainian SSR amouned to 41.3 mln people in 1940. As for January 1 1945, 27 mln 383 ths people were registered in Ukraine. The difference amounts to 13 mln 917 ths people. Thus, during the World War II Ukraine lost over 13 mln people.
As the war began, the whole territory of Ukraine happened to be conquered within several months of warfare. Millions of people found themselves under occupation accepting the burden of the troubled years along with the stigma of “traitors”, while the country calling up strength.
The reasons behind the immense, irretrievable losses can be found in memoirs of the participants of the events.
In his book “From Soldier to Academician. Memories of the Last Soldier of the Great Patriotic War”, Volodymyr Vasyliovych Khil’chevs’kyi (a participant in the Great Patriotic War, “trench soldier”, order bearer, seriously wounded in action, in the post-war years – a well-known educator, scientist and distinguished professor of NTUU “KPI”) writes: “In the territories of the newly liberated Sumy and Chernihiv regions a military draft began immediately, and soon files of recruits followed in the wake of the attacking military units. Some of these had already served in the army…, but most of them were eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boys. Shabby, bedraggled – wore out their clothes during the war years, with sacks on their backs, they were going and going in an endless flow, never stopping. I was marching in one of such files, too – a farm boy from somewhere between Konotop and Hadyach, eighteen and a half years old. …In the afternoon we were marshalled to take our oaths, and then there was a meeting… Most of us were young recruits, still without uniforms, dressed in our home clothes, not having taken even minimal military training. I, for one, had only a greatcoat (a brand new one, I was its first owner), a rifle and cartridge box. However, unarmed soldiers were more numerous.” Such recruits were called “black jacket boys” or “black coats”.
Special field military commissariats were preoccupied with the equipment of “black jacket boys”. The draft applied to all men capable of holding weapons. Under the martial law the men under occupation were automatically stigmatized as traitors; thus, they had to prove their loyalty to the Motherland with their blood. No military training was given to the recruits; they were often marched into combat without even being given military uniform and weapons.
B. Sokolov, a Russian scholar, writes: “It was thought that “the black infantry” would only wear the Germans out and force them to spend their ammunition stock, enabling the new units to make the adversary retreat from the positions occupied.” (B.V. Sokolov. The Unknown Zhukov: an Unretouched Portrait in the Mirror of the Epoch. – Minsk: Rodiola-plus, 2000) .
Such an attitude towards compatriots, especially new recruits, was astonishing even to the Germans, who called soldiers like those “Beutesoldaten” (“trophy soldiers”).
From “The Diary” by O. Dovzhenko, entry for November 28, 1943: “Today V. Shklovs’kyi told me that a lot of liberated citizens conscripted in Ukraine were dying in combat. They are called black coats or something. They go to war in their home clothes, without any training, just like the soldiers from penal units. They are thought to be guilty. “A general was looking at them in battle and crying,” Victor told me.”
A similar story is told by Anatoliy Dimarov, an author: “When the village was liberated, all men aged between 16 and 60 – everyone with arms and legs, no matter if they were blind or deaf – got drafted. We were “armed”, that is, given half a brick each, and told to “go atone for your faults with your blood,” as we had been in the occupied territory. They must’ve meant we should’ve been throwing bricks, so that the Germans might think those were shells! 500 of us got sent on the ice of the impoundment… only 15 came out! And ten thousand of such unarmed guys got killed outside Izjum!”
Events like these took place throughout Ukraine. Documentary evidence of this can be found in the multi-volume historic and memorial work “The Ukrainian Book of Memory”, on the pages of which the names of millions of the fallen are immortalised. In its 250 volumes the names of the dead are given by regions, for every community. The dates of the warriors’ conscriptions and deaths are indicative of a very short operational record, and large families can be seen behind the surnames.
In the war-torn villages, cities and towns there were mothers and wives with young children left; most of those would shortly become widows, while the children were orphaned. The hard challenges of the post-war years expected them.
Such is the Ukrainian dimension of the Victory, and pompous parades disturb the memory of the fallen again and again.