SZCZEŚNIAK; SZOTA- ROAD TO NOWHERE [UPA Bieszczady] to exhibit

Antoni B. Szczesniak, Wieslaw Z. Szota

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

Activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its liquidation in Poland

Wyd.1

Publishing House of the Ministry of National Defense, Warsaw 1973, pp. 588, format 17x23.5 cm

"This book is the most extensive study of Ukrainian armed resistance and the activities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the People's Republic of Poland. In fact, it is a summary of previous studies. It also appears to be their crowning achievement, since no more serious work on the subject has been published after it....

I first learned the following about this book: a comprehensive monograph on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was published in Warsaw, but was confiscated on the orders of the Soviet embassy. The book was downloaded from bookstores and even from buyers known to booksellers. However, part of the print run had already been bought up or gone abroad and could no longer be withdrawn....

The cited reactions to this book and its assessments are justified. It is indeed the most comprehensive work on the UPA in the People's Republic of Poland. At the same time, the book is a demagogic attack not only on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but also on all Ukrainian independenceists and social and church activists persecuted by Bolshevik Russia. That is why the Polish librarian was right to call it "hideous anti-Ukrainian agitation"....

The culmination of the research on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1960-70 became a joint monograph by A.W. Szczesniak and V.Z. Szota "Road to Nowhere". They begin the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with the history of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) against the broader background of Polish-Ukrainian relations from pre-war times until 1947. The monograph was planned as a comprehensive and exhaustive history of the Ukrainian independence movement in the area. It provides a great deal of information about Ukrainian economic, social, church and political life under pre-war Polish rule and during the German occupation. The book consists of two quite different parts. More than one-third of the book - the first three chapters - deal with the whole of the West-Ukrainian lands. Their subject matter is indicated by the titles of the chapters: 1) The interwar period, 2) OUN activities in the early stages of the war, 3) Ukrainian nationalist armed underground in 1943-1944. The rest of the book deals with the Ukrainian population and UPA activities west of the Curzon line. The first three chapters, introductory as it were, are rather general and are based on the research of other authors or even on Soviet lampoons from the "school" of Yaroslav Halan.11 The second part - the UPA's actions in Poland - is already a specialty of the authors. It is developed better. In both parts, the authors provide a lot of information based on extensive source material. They quote abundantly not only communist publications, but also books published in the West, including Ukrainian émigré authors. However, the selection of information and, above all, their interpretation and comments are biased. The authors also do not hesitate to distort and falsify facts. I don't intend to analyze the entire book or straighten out its shortcomings, as this would mean writing a book about a book. I just want to characterize the book in general and dwell on some of the problems in researching the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In doing so, I will concentrate on the known inaccuracies." Ewhen Shtendera

Infrequent first edition!

HARDCOVER CLOTH BINDING WITH WRAPPER

BDB-/ condition of the wrapper with minor pre-coloring and defects, NICE pieces