In his text published on New Eastern Europe titled “The Ukrainian government’s Memory Institute against the West”, Andreas Umland brings up some important questions in his analysis of the Ukrainian government-funded Institute of National Remembrance. Nevertheless, he falls into pitfalls of his own choosing and three points need to be clarified.

Historical remembrance and national reconciliation are touchy issues – especially when they concern large wars, mass murder and suffering of millions in the recent rather than far-away past. Ukraine’s memory of the nation’s Soviet history is primarily concerned with the enormous number of victims of Bolshevik and Nazi rule and wars in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians – along with millions of other victims – living in the “bloodlands” (Timothy Snyder) were killed and terrorised by Europe’s two most murderous totalitarian regimes. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians collaborated to one degree or another with both of the killing machines – a considerable challenge for Ukrainian memory policies.