Book by Viatrovych and Luciuk – ‘best historical material’ of recent years

The American Library Association recognized the English-language book “Enemy Archives: Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement” as one of the “best historical materials published in 2022 and 2023.”

“Enemy Archives.Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement – Selections from the Secret Police Archives” is a collection of translated archival documents about little-known pages of Ukrainian-Russian relations, published in Canada by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

The authors of the book are the Ukrainian historian, ex-head of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr. Volodymyr Viatrovych, a researcher of the history of the Second World War and the Ukrainian liberation movement, and the Canadian historian, geographer Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, who studies the Ukrainian issue in the foreign policy of the United States and Great Britain, as well as the problems of Ukrainian migrants after the Second World War. The book was translated by journalist, editor and researcher Marta Daria Oliynyk.

The American Library Association recommends this book for academic libraries because most of the letters have been translated into English for the first time; this publication is a valuable source for researchers studying the history of relations between the Soviet Union and Ukraine.

The awards to the authors were announced by the Committee on Outstanding Historical Materials of the Reference and User Services Association, an affiliate of the American Library Association.

Lubomyr Luciuk posted on Facebook greetings from Steven A. Knowlton, Librarian for (U.S.) History and African American Studies, Princeton University, Co-chair of Best Historical Materials Committee.

Dr. Volodymyr Viatrovych explains: “This is the largest collection that provides an opportunity to understand the history of the insurgent movement of the 1940s and 50s. When I worked in the United States of America, at Harvard, I saw how few primary sources on the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists are available to Western scholars, how little they are used. These are the most important documents of the underground structures, and on the other hand, the most important documents of the Soviet penal system on the fight against the insurgent movement.”

This book “contains invaluable information about the Ukrainian nationalist movement from World War II to 1955”.

Since most of the material has been translated into English for the first time, this volume is a valuable resource for researchers studying the history of relations between the Soviet Union and Ukraine. The introduction at the beginning of the volume provides information about the archives of the Soviet special services and the development of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Footnotes are throughout the book to provide context for the documents. This resource is recommended for academic libraries,” Jennifer Brannock, professor and curator of the rare books department at the University of Southern Mississippi, describes the book.

The book contains 161 documents from the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine: documents of the UPA and OUN, confiscated by the Soviet special services, and documents of the NKVD-KGB itself, which deal with the fight against Ukrainian insurgents. The photos in the book also come from the archives of the SBU and the Liberation Movement Research Center. Some of them are already available online on the website of the Electronic Archive of the Ukrainian Liberation Movement.

Publisher: Available for sale at McGill-Queen’s University Press and on Amazon.