New Wave of Forced Resettling of Ukrainians-Ostarbeiters in the Post-War Period

Author

Tsapko Oleh

a Ph.D. in History, an associate professor, a chief research fellow at the State Institution NAS of Ukraine Institute of World History Department of History of New Independent States

New Wave of Forced Resettling of Ukrainians-Ostarbeiters in the Post-War Period

Abstract

Remembrances on World War II have been controlled constantly by the power during the whole time of the Soviet totalitarian system existence as an important means of the USSR communist regime legitimation. That’s why many problem moments contradicting the myth about the Great Patriotic War, created by the Soviet official ideology, have been either smothered or estimated tendentiously and often preconceivedly. This appraisal has been based on frank falsification of historical facts. Studies of Ukrainian ostarbeiters history belong to such problem moments.

The ostarbeiters problem concerning the Soviet citizens hasn’t been researched almost in the Soviet historiography.  A considerable number of ostarbeiters has been formed by the under age youth, send to the Third Reich to forced work by the German fascist occupation power. According to the that time Stalin ideology these people have been considered as the traitorsof motherland and their experience of work for the enemy hasn’t harmonised with the official heroic-patriotic version of war.

Research of further fate of former ostarbeiters after their liberation from German captivity has been also the subject of peculiar ignoring. A considerable percent of them has become the captives of the Gulag. The majority of them has been with the stain of unreliableperson for the whole life. Besides, attention should be paid to the fact, that most documents concerning ostarbeiters has been preserved in the archives of KGB inaccessible for scientific research by ideological considerations.

The author of the proposed article tries to investigate the mechanism of punitively-repressive policy of Stalin period leaders as to Ukrainian ostarbeiters, to reveal the main forms and methods of its implementation. In particular the creation of the system of checking-filtrating camps or points; labour armies, resembling concentration camps according to the regime of maintenance; the whole chain of informers by the Soviet authority are referred to such forms.

Keywords

ostarbeiters, punitively-repressive policy, checking-filtrating camps, informers, labour army, occupation power.

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