THE SECOND WINTER CAMPAIGN OF UNR ARMY IN UKRAINIAN FOREIGN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF POST-WAR PERIOD

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of Ukrainian foreign historiography of the post-war period concerning the history of the Second Winter Army of the UNR in 1921. The methodology, historiography, sources of research are considered. Founded, systematized and analyzed historiographic sources on the problem for the years 1921–2018, their classification was carried out. Comprehensive study of the sources allowed to comprehensively analyze historiographic achievements of Ukrainian foreign historians of the post-war period concerning the course of the November raid of 1921, its consequences for the further struggle of the Ukrainian people for the revival of Ukrainian statehood.
It was found out that in the first post-fifteenth anniversary there was a further accumulation of factual material on the subject under study, its systematization and analysis, rethinking of conceptual schemes. Beginning in the 1960’s, a new generation of Ukrainian foreign researchers – N. Polonskaya-Vasilenko,
I. Nagaevsky, I. Lysiak-Rudnitsky, M. Stakhov and others – is connected with the study of the main pillars of the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people.
It is proved that in fact, as in the pre-war days, in the 60’s and 80’s of the twentieth century the history of the Second Winter Campaign was studied mainly by the forces of the UPR Army veterans. A characteristic feature of a number of works of Ukrainian foreign authors of the post-war period on the subject under study is the rather high level of its analytical comprehension. They demonstrate a more balanced approach to the selection and verification of facts about the November raid, has become the highest proportion of publications in which the authors deviate from the simple presentation of the facts about the course of the raid, they resort to the analysis and generalization of the reasons for its failure.
At the same time, in the writings of foreign historians of the 1960’s and 80’s of the 20th century, as well as the scientific publications of V. Verigy and Yu. Kulchytsky, who investigated the history of the November raid in 1921, during the time of independent Ukraine, due to lack of sources, resistance mostly on their own memoirs or impressions of the direct participants of the campaign, many controversial questions concerning the course of the Second Winter Army of the UNR of 1921 remained unresolved, conclusions about the causes of his defeat were controversial, sometimes radically different.