Conference on Soviet-German Collaboration During Interwar Period and WWII

On November 5-6, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy hosted the International conference, “Collaboration Between the Soviet Union and Germany in the Interwar Period and During WWII”. The conference was organized by the Vasyl Stus Memorial Society, the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, thePublic Institute of Historical Memory, and the Ukraine 3000 Fund.

The conference focused on critically needed research and assessment of the issues related to the collaboration and similarities of the two most destructive totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the horrific aftermath of their aggression and ambitions.

This controversial topic of pre-war Soviet policy toward Nazi Germany was not researched thoroughly until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Politburo archives became available to historians and opened yet another window to the past. The conference presented at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy together with the Memorial Society is a significant step toward further research and analysis of a painfully lingering topic in the history of Ukraine and the nations trampled by these two regimes. It is perhaps the first such academic conference on this topic in Ukraine.

The following research papers were presented: Ideological and political platform of German National Socialism and Soviet Communism; Economic, political and military cooperation between Germany and the USSR in the interwar period; Problems of the Baltic and Black Sea states as well as stateless nations of Eastern Europe in the context of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; Russian fascism in Europe in the interwar period: ideas, images and organizational structure; Collaborative movements and military units in Germany and the Soviet Union before and during WorldWar II; Search for a separate peace between Germany and the USSR; Comparative analysis of political repressions, genocide and war crimes in Germany and the USSR; The national liberation movements of the peoples ofCentral and Eastern Europe: reassessments ofhistorians and politicians; Collective memories of Nazism and Stalinism; The legacies of the totalitarian past and the resurrection and establishment of authoritarian practices andmovements on the territory of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland and others.

Participants in the conference included President Victor Yushchenko, former minister of foreign affairs Volodymyr Ohryzko, historians Volodymyr Serhijchuk, Stanislav Kulchyckyj, Volodymyr Valysenko, Ivan Patrylyak, Anatoliy Rusnachenko, Mykhailo Kirsenko, political scientists and intellectuals Yevhen Sverstiuk, Roman Krutsyk, and numerous researchers from the Russian Federation, Finland, Georgia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Britain. Conference materials will be published.