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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 2016 WWW.UNWLA.ORG 15 big movement. They were real. Labunka, as a teen- age girl in Ukrainian schools in Pechenizhyn, Ko- lomyia, and later in Peremyshl, struggled to under- stand the major OUN texts but some of them stumped her. Frankly, there was little time to pour over all the texts, and even less time to discuss them. There were practical things to learn and physical training to undergo, such as it was. La- bunka admits that she did not even bother much with the principles and recommendations of the OUN corpus. In fact, she disregarded much of the ideology that seemed irrelevant. There was work to be done and few opportunities for reflection. She simply worked for the country whose land her par- ents still tilled, and that was enough ideology for her. She took for granted that for those who live in Ukraine, Ukraine is home. For this nationalist, all ethnicities who lived in Ukraine were Ukrainian, even if they worshipped in different churches and spoke different languages. As a grown woman in peaceful, even placid, Philadelphia, Labunka recognized the im- portance of eyewitness testimony of the events she had lived through. She began writing her memoirs between work and errands, the myriad of tasks that both propel and hinder us. She tried, on and off through the years, to record her experiences. But writing did not come easy. Labunka struggled while writing her mem- oirs, not for lack of information or for having any- thing even remotely compromising to hide, but be- cause she could not easily articulate the crises of her life, the need to adjust the basics of her worldview. Her book, which appeared almost two decades after her death, will be filed under the neat labels of nationalism, guerrilla warfare, or women in war, thus obscuring its true gist: the struggle to balance humanism and ideology. Labunka did not write specifically about this precarious tension, even though she very much lived it. Labunka’s memoirs, although late to be published, are authentic. They reflect the teenage character during the first stages of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, the hesitant and tenuous support it was given by the war-terrorized popula- tion that was not as keen to offer help as later ac- counts would have us believe, and the day-to-day te- dium of war and foreign occupation. The most com- plete parts of the memoirs cover Labunka’s child- hood, happy albeit task-laden. Her education and her introduction to middle-class urban society are given less space and attention. Her long years in the Ukrainian underground between 1943 and 1948 are straightforward and quickly covered. The support- ing material, photographs, and copies of primary documents are excellent. The book is frustratingly unfinished, very lightly edited, at times awkwardly unpolished, and utterly fascinating. It is fascinating primarily be- cause Labunka focuses on daily activities, on her feelings, on describing who else underwent the pit- iful gatherings that were characterized as OUN trainings: the hours spent memorizing ideological texts, the forced marches through difficult ter- rains, standing at attention at midday near water in the blazing sun while forbidden to drink. She frankly admits she did not quite get the ideology beyond the “fight for an independent Ukraine” rhetoric. Although technically an extremist nation- alist, she did not, as a teenager, fully comprehend the creed. She was not even aware of the bloody rift in 1942 between the Melnyk and Bandera OUN factions. In light of this, can we consider her ac- tions ideological? To answer this question, we must delve into the milieu that shaped her. A highly original segment of the work deals with her experience in one of the few successes Ukrainians achieved under German occupation between 1941 and 1944. The Nazis maintained that high school education is unnecessary for such ag- ricultural under-humans as Ukrainians, and thus most middle schools were closed. The fact that Ukrainians in Peremyshl managed to organize an academic live-in high school program for girls can be viewed as victory rather than some kind of col- laboration. A diploma would serve to open doors for work or further study. Yet Labunka, upon com- pleting the live-in program, passing the requisite exams, and acquiring a diploma certifying this, publicly rejected the document because one of her fellow students was denied it on the basis of not having a proper identity card. It made little difference in the short run. Labunka went underground and eventually did document in detail the difficulties of daily life in the underground. Ukrainians have very few such documents, and Labunka’s deserve to be mined by scholars and the recently minted public intellectu- als who pontificate on ideology, history, and choices made under circumstances that provide no opportunity for choice. Why did Labunka fail to complete her memoirs? For one thing, the author led a private life. Moreover, she was always aware of the diffi- cult fate of many of her surviving loved ones and friends who ended up in the USSR at the end of war. She was loathe to do anything that might be used by the Soviets against them. She also knew many who had died for the cause for which she fought. For all these reasons, she refrained from public statements and postponed publicizing her
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