Wiktor Poliszczuk

Wiktor Poliszczuk (10 October 1925 – 17 November 2008) and Ukrainian historians,

Biography Poliszczuk was born in Dubno (then in the Second Polish Republic), into a family of Ukrainian father and Polish mother. He was raised as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. When he was a child Wiktor, his mother and two sisters were deported to Kazakh SSR by the Soviet authorities (in April 1940). His father (an ethnic Ukrainian who had served as government official in interwar Poland) was executed by the Soviets. After World War II his family resettled in Dnipropetrovsk and in 1946 moved to Poland following Polish-Soviet repatriation agreement, to re-unite with the family of his aunt. In Poland Poliszczuk graduated from the Pedagogical Liceum and worked as a teacher. Later he studied law at the Wrocław University, and political science at the University of Silesia in Katowice, where he obtained a PhD (his doctoral thesis was about the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism). He worked as an attorney in the People's Republic of Poland.

Wiktor Poliszczuk was the author of over 200 papers, books and scientific publications, scientific articles, polemics, reviews, and press releases written in English, Ukrainian and Polish, including five large volumes bearing the title Integral Ukrainian nationalism as a variant of fascism (Toronto, 2003). His two books were translated into English-language. In his writing, Poliszczuk clearly separates the issues of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian nation, stating that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was based on terror. He explores the sources of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists' actions as based on the theories of Dmytro Dontsov.

Criticism

Wiktor Poliszczuk was criticised as biased against OUN-UPA and nonscientific by several historians. Polish historian Rafał Wnuk of the Institute of National Remembrance in Lublin categorized Poliszczuk's work as belonging to the "para-scientific" tradition. In an interview published in translation by the Warsaw-based Ukrainian newspaper Our Word (Нашe Слово), Polish historian Ryszard Torzecki dismissed Poliszczuk as an "NKVD prosecutor" and one of the named writers unworthy of discussion.

Ukrainian nationalist historians also condemned Poliszczuk's works. Poliszczuk was a "left-wing democrat" who fully supported Operation Vistula, wrote Rafal Wnuk (referring to the forced deportation of the Ukrainian community from eastern Poland after the assassination of Communist minister Karol Świerczewski there); however, any attempts at his work's classification "using a national key" (suggested by Motyka) Publications Viktor Polishchuk, Legal and political assessment of the OUN and UPA, Toronto, 1997, 173 pages, Viktor Polishchuk, Bitter truth: The criminality of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the testimony of a Ukrainian, 403 pages, Dowody zbrodni OUN i UPA (Proofs of OUN and UPA's crimes) Gorzka prawda (Bitter truth) Ideologia nacjonalizmu ukraińskiego (Ideology of Ukrainian nationalism) Apokalipsa według Wiktora Ukrainca (Apocalipse according to a greater Ukrainian) Fałszowanie historii najnowszej Ukrainy (Falsifying of the modern history of Ukraine) Ocena polityczna i prawna OUN i UPA (Political and legal judgement of OUN and UPA) Akcja Wisła - próba oceny (Action Vistula - an attempt to evaluate) Zginęli z rąk ukraińskich (They died from Ukrainian hands) Pojęcie integralnego nacjonalizmu ukraińskiego (Notion of the integral Ukrainian nationalism) Ukraińskie ofiary OUN-UPA (Ukrainian victims of OUN-UPA) Excerpts available in English at Lemko.org Integralny nacjonalizm ukraiński jako odmiana faszyzmu (Integral Ukrainian nationalism as a variety of fascism) Działalność ukraińskich struktur nacjonalistycznych w latach 1920-1999