ON THE ISSUE OF CREATION OF MEMORIALS TO SOVIET MILITARY SERVANTS (1944 – 1948): ON THE EXAMPLE OF IVANO-FRANKIVSK AND DROHOBYCH

Abstract

Based on unknown and little-known documents, the article reveals the measures taken by the Soviet administration to shape the policy of memory, in particular, the creation of memorials to fallen soldiers. The issue of creating and accounting (through the Books of Memory of Ukraine) memorials (military cemeteries, mass graves and lonely graves) was raised during the Second World War. It is proved that the implementation of this direction encountered a number of obstacles – lack of material resources, lack of time or banal negligence on the ground and so on. At the same time, in some regions this process was faster, in others – slower. The human factor played a significant role in this. The progress and scale of the campaigns on the installation of tombstones, pedestals, wooden obelisks, embossing the names of the dead, painting, updating the inscriptions and landscaping were traced. Selected aspects of the problem that need to be further addressed are the establishment of the actual number of victims and the place of their burial or whether real exhumations and reburials were carried out, the number of reburied, the distortion of dates and places of death. There is still a serious problem of establishing the real number of dead and burial places not only of Ukrainian nationalists, but also, to an even greater extent, of servicemen of various formations who carried out the so-called Sovietization of the region in the postwar period. The Soviet repressive and punitive authorities carefully concealed their own losses. This explains the lack of special cemeteries where the dead were buried (1940–1950). The available memorials (with the names on the table) listed only a small part of the losses during this period (and even then with significant errors). Instead, there is an interesting tendency to “scatter” the bodies of the dead, and at one time in different cemeteries. That is why it is important today to find out and identify the burial places of CHA-RA soldiers, employees of NKVD-MVD and NKDB-MDB-KGB district police departments, police, party-Soviet activists who died in battles with the OUN and UPA. It is important to establish their true functional responsibilities, as well as belonging to a particular structural unit.