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Lateral roads are the conduits parallel to the forward edge of the battlefront. They may be railroads, highways or dirt roads. What matters is not their properties but the opportunities they offer.

Lateral roads are about providing space for maneuver and a basis for lateral communication between the units, about preparing for an offensive, supplying weapons, evacuating the wounded, about reinforcement potential, about communications. And, along with all this, they are about war as such.

It was historian Tamara Vronska who introduced me to the term “lateral road.” And she, in turn, was introduced to it by Mykhailo Koval, a World War II historian who undertook the burial of the “Great Patriotic War” myth, under which, as part of the concept of the “Great Russian People,” Ukrainians were interred. Koval was among the first to reveal the struggle and tragedy of Ukrainians, to give voice to the prisoners of war, Ostarbeiters, the displaced, to those who endured occupation, to those who did or did not survive the war. In some sense, these potent attempts of the 1990s were lateral roads—forgotten/banned, but utterly important trends that enabled the unbiased study of the course of World War II and its consequences for Ukraine.

My book is about lateral roads as well. It is about the possibility and necessity of Ukrainian “maneuver” and intensification of communications between historians, philosophers, social anthropologists. It is about the “visibility mode” that is being developed and opened for Ukraine with the change of methodological framework, with the incorporation of Ukraine into the European context, with reassessment and “reclassification” of spatial and temporal categories, with restoration of agency for the communities and groups that were “appropriated” by “outsider” historical narratives and “dissolved” in broad generalizations.

The idea of the book and its realization are linked to the important project of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The overall idea of the project is to produce the “Outlines of the History of Ukraine,” based on anticolonialism/postcolonialism principles, from the standpoint of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a political nation.

The themes offered to me under the project turned out to involve both a challenge and a risk. A challenge—because World War II was not part of the core of my research endeavors. Even my book Stigma of Occupation: Soviet Women in Their Self-Imagination of the 1940s (2019) was aimed not so much at describing war events as the scenarios of surviving it, of “blending in” with the state concepts; it was important for me to set the problem of the nonlinearity of different experiences, of burden and total fear that marked the choice of the “Soviet” side made by the women who survived or did not survive occupation. Certainly, as often happens, after it was finished and published, some concern grew about whether the book could have been better, as not all the plots/ideas were totally clear and polished.

Thus, there were some “reserves” that could be used for the project. The risk lay in the question: are these reserves sufficient? Would the social and temporal distance between the subjects I usually focus on and the ones I happened to be immersed in due to analysis of the enormous scope of historiographical material by Ukrainian and foreign historians be a drawback or an advantage? Would personal experience of war (one launched against Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2014)—my own experience of witnessing aggression and occupation—help?

All these questions are still open. Yet these questions allowed me to realize that the texts on the project were nothing else than lateral roads—a space for maneuver out of letters and paper, for communication, connection between historians working on World War II, between the histories of European states, between the general trends that defined and accompanied the global catastrophe and its features in Ukrainian lands.

While working on the project the text turned out to be lengthier than planned and its style appeared to be slightly different from the usual classical academic writing. Therefore, while my work in the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine goes on, the work conducted conducted so far, probably, already needs a reader. Such, at least, is the opinion of the Dukh i Litera publishing house and of Leonid Finberg, one of its leaders and inspirers. He came up with the idea of publication. Yet the responsibility for all possible faults, is the author’s—mine—alone.

The four presented outlines are not linked by the logic of systematically presenting all the events of World War II. The first is about the methodological framework applicable to the analysis of World War II Ukrainian history. I shall reason the need to continue discussion about the chronology of World War II, about temporal cracks engulfing both certain events and the memory of them. I propose to rethink the concepts of “betrayal” and “collaboration,” especially in the context of people’s accounts about who was and who was not an occupying force in Ukrainian lands. Also worth reconsidering are the complex categories of Good and Evil that could be useful not only for a philosophical understanding of the events, but also for their historical analysis; ideas of “historical wounds” and responsibility; perceptions of the “heated time,” not ending in 1945, etc.

The aim of the second outline is to analyze pre-war mobilization and to rethink this established, politically loaded, and “conceptually stressed” plot in Soviet mythology. It should be noted that, aside from providing the factual outline, determining the chronological and political sequence of events, this “mobilization story” played a significant role in forming the myth of the “Great Patriotic War.” It painted a historical picture that emphasized the unexpectedness, abruptness, suddenness of war, which, although “ripening in the militarist circles of Western imperialism,” nevertheless caught the “peaceful Soviet state” by surprise. Arguments in favor of this picture were the facts of the clear unpreparedness for war of the military and productive facilities. The concept of “Germany attacking without a declaration of war” backed up the idea of abruptness and explained the gaps in defense preparedness. In the second outline, analyzing the social and political processes orchestrated by the Bolshevik authorities during the 1920s and 1930s, I contend that mobilization and militarization were integral parts of the policy of the Soviet state; also, most of the constituent components of the state of emergency and martial law that were set out in legislation (namely, obligatory labor, rationing, regulation of working hours, requisitions, restrictions of entry and exit, courts-martial, administrative exile, expulsion, etc.) were a constant of everyday life and formed a specific, undeclared state of perpetual war well before the start of World War II and the official declaration of “martial law” on June 22, 1941.

The idea of the third outline was to form a consistent picture of establishment/ruin/restoration of the occupation regimes; also, it was an attempt to answer the question: how similar and different were the occupation regimes in Ukrainian lands? What were the differences rooted in? What were the expectations, fears and hopes of people amid the fall of one regime and the establishment of the other state and quasi-state structures? How did the occupation (occupations) influence personal relationships and relations between communities? How did the strategies of life under occupation develop? How did these strategies change during occupation, or did they remain the same? How did violence and the response to violence create the notion of boundaries, interests and aspirations, specific to the Ukrainian community alone? It is not so much the factual material (previously thoroughly studied by Ukrainian and foreign researchers) that is new in this outline as the rejection of the logic of occupational regimes. This logic implied differentiation, the “thematic” separation of the regimes from one another, one-sided determination of the scope of their influence, as well as their polarization. Consequently, the Nazi occupation always served as a “useful” contrast (something that was, to a certain extent, true, considering its inhuman acts) not only for understanding the Soviet occupation, but also for the occupation regimes of the German allies—Romania and Hungary.

The fourth outline presents an analysis of the processes that took place after the Nazis and their allies were expelled. This part of the research focuses on reconfiguring relations between the Soviet state and communities. Such a reconfiguration was, on the one hand, a result of war and occupation, but, on the other hand, it was a dangerous challenge to Bolshevik power. My basic position is that restoration of the pre-war status quo for the Soviet regime meant not only or not so much rebuilding the economy, as the repression and suppression of various tendencies in people’s thinking. With people’s different experiences of surviving war, they developed a different understanding of their personal fate, their strength and their capabilities. They gained this understanding in various ways, on different levels and based on different—pragmatic and symbolic—foundations. The outline investigates how the Kremlin, regaining control over the territories of Ukraine, scattered in two world wars, rediscovered the formula of its existence: not as a potentially classless society, but as a renewed version of the Russian Empire. The mechanisms and means of suppression of all the tiny bits of civic interaction and the disabling of any kind of social and national solidarity are the focus of attention in this study. An attempt was made to find out how the new “social contract” emerged and what kind of people and communities became the social basis for the renewed empire model, and who developed into consistent fighters against it. The outline presents arguments substantiating the concept of the “Great Patriotic War” as the ground zero not only for the emergence of the USSR and a Soviet empire, but also as the start of the countdown to its fall, a fall caused by the unexpected consequences of World War II.

Attentive readers will notice some repetitions that survived the editing. There are not many and consist mostly of methodological remarks transferred from the first outline to all the others. This is a conscious move, as a claim to change methodological framework, when not implemented in your own research, is worthless. One repetition—at the end of both the methodological outline and the whole book—is intentional and principled. It is an important remark made by Kersti Kaljulaid, Estonia's president, in August 2019. For Estonia, as the President noted, World War II ended only 25 years ago, in 1994, “when the last wagons left our soil, with the equipment of the occupation forces.”1 This is its third repetition. No matter how compulsive and politically loaded it may appear in a historical study, the cited words are crucial, as they define the chronology of the “heated time,” the symbolic and pragmatic duration of World War II, which is very different for some states. This statement allows us to raise the question: has World War II ended for Ukraine?

Without the company of like-minded people, their institutional and personal support, this book would not exist. Thus, I express my gratitude to the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, an institution that made me feel at home again and granted me the possibility of professional realization; to the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine and to all its staff who have made every effort to ensure that historians “meet” the sources they need for their studies; to the Dukh i Litera publishing house that tirelessly continues to shape the space of the humanities in Ukraine.

Also, I express deep gratitude to my dear colleagues. First of all, to Tamara Vronska who helped me along the way with documents, advice, who provided honest criticism, editing, and who truly cared for the manuscript; to Larysa Yakubova whose reading and questions on the margins prompted me to clarify and specify some important arguments and conclusions; to Iryna Gridina whose support was always so timely and her advice essential.

I express my gratitude yet again to Leonid Finberg, without whose determination and ardor for working with books (including mine) many of my writings would languish in the zone of doubts and would remain unpublished. I admire and am thankful to the Dukh i Litera editors Anastasia Nehrutska and Oksana Zhmyr, to layout designer Svitlana Nevdaschenko, and to designer Galina Lichtenshteyn. I admire and am deeply thankful to the artist Olena Turyanska whose work from the Abandoned Windows series became the semantic focal point of the book’s cover.

Friends provided me moral support, invisible approval and gave me useful feedback. The company and help of Inna Hiurenina and Yevhenia Kovaliova (the latter being not only my friend but also my daughter) were a great comfort and joy in the moments when I tried to “escape” finishing work or sank into despair because of the seemingly overwhelming nature of the subject.

In addition, I express my greatest gratitude to all fellow historians working on the subject, whose works inspired me and became pieces of my internal historiography, who provided the opportunity for discussion, and introduced new facts into scientific circulation.

There may be some mistakes and typos in the book, even after proofreading by me and a few other people—the responsibility for this nuisance is mine. Some statements may be questionable and certain subjects consciously or unconsciously omitted—yet again, responsibility for that lies with me. My only excuse is that I have not intended to create a thorough and comprehensive picture of World War II in its Ukrainian dimension. I am sure that historians already working in the field and those who will come afterwards will deal with this ambitious challenge better.

Olena Stiazhkina,Kyiv, April 2020

1 President of the Republic of Estonia. “President Kaljulaid will attend the World War II commemorative event in Poland,” August 31, 2019, https://www.president.ee/en/meedia/press-releases/15400-president-kaljulaid-will-attend-the-world-war-ii-commemorative-event-in-poland/index.html.