Author's Response to Per Rudling's Review of In the Maelstrom in Ab Imperio 2/2023

Author's Response to Per Rudling's Review of In the Maelstrom in Ab Imperio 2/2023 Myroslav Shkandrij In the Maelstrom deals at length with two questions that are most frequently asked about the Waffen-SS "Galicia" Division (in this response, the Division). First: Why did Ukrainians in Galicia join the force in 1943? And second: Did the unit engage in any war crimes? It explains that most men enlisted because they saw the opportunity to be part of a trained and equipped Ukrainian military unit that would fight against the Red Army and Stalin. The answer to the second question is that repeated allegations of war crimes have been rejected by several government inquiries and that for evidence of criminality one needs to look elsewhere. Rudling does not challenge these findings, nor does he provide evidence that leads to different conclusions. He concentrates on ad hominem arguments to undermine my credibility as a researcher. I mention in my preface that my father was a volunteer in the Division, and that while growing up in the United Kingdom I learned something about what veterans of the unit had experienced. This prompted my initial interest in the Division's history, which sixty years later led to a study that, I believe, presents a more accurate and realistic picture than the one generally available, particularly in Western media. This disclaimer, known in some disciplines as self-positioning, is construed by Rudling to be evidence of bias. [End Page 265] He insists that the family connection is of primary importance. On his first page he writes: "For Shkandrij, working on the Galizian [sic] SS also means to a considerable degree writing family history. His father was a volunteer in the Waffen-SS … [and] his father-in-law was the editor of Krakivs'ki visti."1 Then he repeats that "motivations for writing the book are personal" and that I was "the son of a Waffen-SS volunteer."2 This leads to the claim of bias: "Apparently, Shkandrij's family history was at the same time suited and ill-suited to pursuing the topic of his book."3 Why? Because "his obvious social, political, and emotional investment in the legacy of his father, his father's comrades in arms, and the community in which he was socialized restricts and limits his analysis."4 And again: "Shkandrij is anything but a dispassionate observer; to a significant degree he is writing family history." And once more: Russia's current war of aggression against Ukraine "does not make Shkandrij's task any easier; it all but precludes a balanced assessment."5 Family, community connections, and the war, in the reviewer's opinion, preclude the possibility of a balanced assessment. In conclusion, he offers: "For some time already, Shkandrij has been moving toward a more nationalist position; the war has only intensified this."6 There is no explanation of how family background affected answers to the two key questions, or what is meant by a "nationalist" position, a charge routinely leveled against non-Russians who have criticized Moscow's policies. A critical stance is applied to all the topics researched in my previous books, which include Modernists, Marxists and the Nation: The Ukrainian Literary Discussion in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s (Edmonton, 1992); Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times? (Montreal, 2001); Jews in Ukrainian Literature: Representation and Identity (New Haven, 2009); Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology, and Literature, 1929–1956 (New Haven, 2015); Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine 1910–1930: Contested Memory (Boston, 2019); Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917–2017: History's Flashpoints and Today's [End Page 266] Memory Wars (New York, 2020). Rudling mentions no evidence of bias in these. Also overlooked is the note in my preface that my mother was from Eastern Ukraine and during the war had to work as an Ostarbeiter (slave laborer) in Germany for two years. Impartial research into a past with which one is connected is, of course, possible. Germans write about Nazi Germany, Jews about the Holocaust, communists about Stalin and the Soviet Union. The focus of a review should be on the research. Rudling, however, resorts to a trope: the linking...

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