"The Roller of Historical Politics": How Volyn Split and United Poles and Ukrainians

Archaeologist and now soldier Oleksiy Zlatohorskyi returns from his vacation, part of which he spent on excavations, to the frontlines to his Volhynia Victory. This is how his comrades nicknamed his combat vehicle. Previously, they used to joke about it as the Volhynia Massacre.

They know almost nothing about the events in Volhynia in 1943, but they do know that Zlatohorsky, a Volhynia resident, participated in the exhumation of the dead.

They also know that the vehicles, one of the most valuable and exhaustible resources at the front, were purchased by volunteers, in particular from Poland. Among them were employees of the Polish governmental Institute of National Memory.

Today, on August 6, the head of the Institute Karol Navrotsky officially takes office as the new president of Poland. After his election, he reiterated that he supports Ukraine in its defense against Russia, but not its membership in NATO or even the EU, and that he expects to resolve long-standing Polish-Ukrainian "historical issues."

The "historical issues" Navrotsky referred to are primarily the exhumation of Poles from mass graves on the territory of Ukraine and their proper reburial. Ever since Ukraine banned exhumations in 2017, disputes and quarrels between the two countries have focused primarily on this topic. "Historical issues" have become very political.

However, the ban on exhumations is the culmination of them rather than the beginning.

The main problem is precisely the fact that the participants in the dispute cannot agree on what to consider the starting point of their common "historical issues." We searched for the answer in the dead village of Pluzhnyky and in numerous conversations with families of murdered Poles, diplomats, and Ukrainian and Polish historians.