Razyhrayev O.

Orthodox metrical books as a source for the study of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict during the Second World War (based on the materials of the Lutsk district of the Volyn Region)

Section: Historiographical and sources of research

Abstract: Purpose is to study the Orthodox metrical books of the Lutsk district of the Volyn region during the Second World War and to show their source research potential for the study of "Ukrainian" victims of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of 1939–1945. The research methodology is based on the use of general scientific and specific historical research methods. Among the interdisciplinary ones, the structural-functional method was used. Preference was given to specific historical methods: problem-chronological, synchronous, diachronic, comparative-historical and others. Conclusions. In 1943 an international armed conflict between Ukrainians and Poles broke out in Volyn, that became one of the most tragic events in the history of relations between the two peoples. Despite the coverage of many sides of the Polish-Ukrainian confrontation, the number of victims on both sides remains practically unclear, although certain attempts to count them were made both in Poland and in Ukraine. The absence of at least approximate estimates of human losses allows to manipulate and speculate on this issue, moreover, to transfer it to the political plane. Today, in order to count the victims of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict during the Second World War, we can use various types of sources, both written and oral. A practically unstudied, but no less informative written source, which can also serve as an aid in the identification of victims of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, are metric books – a paper register of civil status acts – birth, marriage and death. The analysis of the Orthodox metric books of the Lutsk district of the Volyn region during the Second World War, which are kept in the Lutsk District Department of the State Executive Service of the Main Territorial Department of Justice in Volyn, allows us to state that, despite their informativeness, they can be only one of the types of sources that can be used by historians for the study of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict during the Second World War. In the analyzed materials, we have found a little more than twenty records of violent death in which the priests identified the killers as "Poles", "Lakhs", "Polish gangs", etc. In addition, we found records of the murders of individuals without presenting the perpetrators of the crime. At the same time, the verification of both the first and the second type of records with other types of sources, local history literature, documents of the Ukrainian nationalist underground and Soviet institutions, and ultimately with the results of field expeditions conducted by the author of this article, allow a more detailed analysis of each individual case. At the same time, these materials should be treated with caution, if possible, compared with other types of sources, because metrics cannot act as an independent source. The question of the preservation or storage location of the remaining metrics needs further investigation.

Keywords: Volyn, World War II, Polish-Ukrainian conflict, victims, metric books.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/vuchk2022.02.203     Citation

• Razyhrayev O. (Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University, Lutsk, razygraev@ukr.net) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0480-6936

Cite:
Razyhrayev O. (2022). Orthodox metrical books as a source for the study of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict during the Second World War (based on the materials of the Lutsk district of the Volyn Region). From archives of VUChK–GPU–NKVD–KGB, ( 2 (58)) 203. (In Ukrainian). doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/vuchk2022.02.203

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