UKRAINE: Youngsters in Ukraine's Lviv reenact the 1939 invasion of the Soviet Army in their city

Record ID: 784778

  • Title: UKRAINE: Youngsters in Ukraine's Lviv reenact the 1939 invasion of the Soviet Army in their city
  • Date: 24th September 2009
  • Summary: LVIV, UKRAINE (SEPTEMBER 17, 2009) (REUTERS) CENTRE OF LVIV YOUNGSTERS DRESSED AS SOVIET SOLDIERS CARRYING RED FLAGS AND RIFLES WALKING THROUGH STREET, FOLLOWED BY OPEN TRUCK FULL WITH SOLDIERS AND WOMEN IN WHITE NIGHT GOWNS SOLDIERS IN CAR PEOPLE WATCHING VARIOUS OF TRUCK WITH PEOPLE ACTING AS SOVIET SOLDIERS DRIVING THROUGH TOWN CENTRE MAN DRESSED AS SOVIET SOLDIER SITTING NEXT TO WEAPONRY WOMEN STANDING IN WHITE NIGHT GOWNS, IMITATING THE WIVES OF SOVIET COMMANDERS WHO TOOK CONFISCATED NIGHT GOWNS FOR EVENING DRESSES MEN DRESSED AS SOVIET SOLDIERS CHEERING
  • Embargoed: 9th October 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVA616A8ML23VJ5CGWG3CUXBDM9I
  • Story Text: Young people, artists and actors in Lviv commemorate the Soviet invasion of Poland which returned west Ukraine from Poland to Ukraine proper and question if the arrival of the Red Army in their city was indeed a liberation.
    As Poland commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion into eastern Poland this week, a group of youngsters of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Thursday (September 17) staged a re-enactment of the arrival of the Red Army in their city and questioned if the military operation was indeed a liberation or not.
    Dressed up as Soviet soldiers, the youngsters drove around the historical centre of Lviv, a historic town close to the Polish border, waving red flags and carrying mock rifles.
    Among the soldiers were women dressed in white night-gowns who were imitating the wives of the invading Soviet commanders.
    According to Ukrainians who lived through the invasion, the wives of the commanders mistakenly took confiscated night-gowns from the people for evening dresses and wore them as they went around town.
    With the re-enactment the youngsters tried to review the role the Soviet Union played during the second World War.
    The Soviet's invasion into Lviv, then part of eastern Poland, was a result of the the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which saw Poland split up between Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.
    As a result of the pact, the Germans invaded Poland from the west while the Red Army invaded Poland from the east.
    Initially the Red Army's invasion was welcomed by the people of Lviv, many of them Ukrainians, because the Soviet government pretended it was acting to protect them from a Nazi attack.
    Many people in Lviv were also happy to be liberated from the Poles and be finally re-united with the rest of Ukraine.
    But the jubilee soon turned into terror when the true nature of the 'liberators' became clear.
    The Soviets ruled the annexed territory according to communist principles and quelled any opposition to its rule.
    Private enterprises were closed down and independent farmers were reorganised into state-run collectives.
    Decades of poverty and repression followed.
    Olga Polikovskaya who lived through the invasion remembers the days of terror that followed the invasion.
    "When they came to us, it became very scary, they killed and shot people. My mother had two brothers, they were two young Ukrainian fellows, and they carved a trident on their body and then buried them alive in our court yard. It was very frightening. Everybody was screaming and crying," she said.
    The youngsters of Lviv are not the only ones reviewing the Soviet Union's role.
    Many former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries say the long years of Soviet domination was similar in nature to the Nazi occupation.
    For them, liberation arrived only when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
    "1939 is the year when Lviv was liberated, when the people came who liberated us. History gives us many examples, but what we were liberated into, that is the question and we still don't really understand it. It is very important that the whole of Europe and the rest of the world understand that in Lviv and in Ukraine a new generation was born who are sober and thoughtful and who are capable of directing the future Ukraine," said Roman Dzadzik organiser of the event.
    Russia has been in a bitter dispute with its neighbours over the war and its aftermath.
    Last week President Dmitry Medvedev defended Moscow's role in World War II, saying that anyone who lays equal blame on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is telling a "cynical lie and has launched a campaign for universal acceptance of its portrayal of the Soviet Union as Europe's liberator.
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