Ukraine Urban Recovery (part 7): Looking Deeper into the Issue of Collaboration in Ukraine

A continuation of discussions drawing on Brutal Catalyst: What Ukrainian Cities Tell Us about Recovery from War to be released by KeyPoint Press in autumn 2024; sign up for release notification at www.ukrainecities.com

A perhaps less obvious benefit for an occupier who receives local assistance is that of relieving the outsider of having to commit resources to governing tasks assumed by local personnel. Historian Tony Judt concluded that German occupiers in WWII Norway were able to rule with only 806 administrative personnel, France with 1,500 supported by 6,000 military or civil police, while in the Netherlands “not 10 percent of the German occupation tasks would have been fulfilled” were it not for the cooperation of Dutch police. In Yugoslavia, on the other hand, defiance was of such magnitude the Germans had to commit multiple divisions and still failed to suppress resistance. This would imply even seemingly justified cooperation is unacceptable. After all, it de facto releases occupier resources for use elsewhere. And yet, further deepening the morass, collaboration can benefit post-occupation recovery. Mayors, police, and other officials who remain in place stand ready to continue their duties during the tumultuous months and years once an occupier departs. Recovery was stunted when an occupier had fewer in-place officials to aid in governing after WWII. Demanding that residents refuse to cooperate under an occupier also assumes the outsiders will effectively maintain vital services, by no means always the case.

It is clear that dealing with collaboration poses, and will continue to pose, a tangled web of thorns for Ukrainian officials. Context plays a role, but what seems relevant context is also open to misinterpretation—or manipulation—regarding what constitutes legitimate accusations of collaboration. What of the case of an individual who took a position under the Russians to assist in recovering community members’ corpses in a community outside Kherson? Certainly necessary to preclude disease and odor. Desirable as it provided for honoring the dead in a manner the occupiers might not. His behavior met Kyiv’s definition of collaboration provided in the previous post, which seemingly cast doubt on the wisdom of so broad a net. But the individual was also seen in a photo with individuals whose actions more clearly constituted collaboration. This made the justice of his being accused more difficult to assess. Does appearance in such a photograph, voluntary or otherwise, constitute guilt were other factors considered benign? (It is unclear whether participation was coerced or otherwise in this instance.) In another case, a village eighty-three kilometers (fifty-two miles) southeast of Kharkiv was torn asunder once Ukrainian forces returned. Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov relates the resulting tensions and difficulty of justly defining what amounts to collaboration rather than legitimate public service:

What I found on Shevchenkove’s main square was a gaggle of schoolteachers who had refused to collaborate with the Russians and who were outraged that their colleagues who did collaborate hadn’t been fired, let alone detained. “Why are our boys dying out there? Why has my grandson not seen his father for seven months? So that we forgive all these people as if nothing had happened?,” wondered Olha Usyk, whose son-in-law was fighting in the military. While Shevchenkove’s mayor had fled to Kharkiv in April, unwilling to submit to the Russians, his second-in-command, the municipality’s executive secretary, Nadiya Shelub, had stayed on. She had urged teachers to reopen schools under the Russian curriculum. Shelub had been interrogated by Ukraine’s security services but let go…. She had gotten the Russians to demine the local garbage dump, which had become a health hazard, and had arranged for a gravel road to be built…. I ran into an SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] investigator…. He said [he] had no choice but to be lenient to everyone except the most egregious collaborators…. Rounding up everyone tainted by collaboration, he said, would be impossible. “There are just too many. We can’t behave like Stalin, pack trains with everyone who worked with the enemy, and send them away.” [from Yaroslav Trofimov, Our Enemies will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence (NY: Penguin, 2024), 286-87].

Many are the historical examples in which inflated or fabricated accusations of collaboration were used to settle longstanding antipathies, secure coveted but otherwise unattainable property, gain economic advantage, or simply curry favor with the now-returned authorities. On the other hand, history is also replete with instances in which individuals or groups collaborated to obtain favors thought essential to survival. Sleeping with the enemy might be the epitomic example. Is later condemnation and punishment justified when the only alternative would have been allowing oneself or family to starve? The answer to Julian Jackson’s question in France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain—“Are there times when the immediate wellbeing of the people of a nation can conflict with that nation’s higher interests?”—seems clear once conditions on the ground are taken into account. [Julian Jackson, France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2023), xxix.]

It is a central government’s responsibility to provide unambiguous and fair guidance regarding what represents collaboration and what punishments are appropriate. Local officials must have such criteria to ensure at least a semblance of uniform judgments and as a shield to ward off popular local efforts to take matters into one’s own hands. Punishments for collaboration meeting or exceeding a specified threshold should require mandatory review by unbiased reviewers (convictions mandating a set number of years imprisonment or death, for example). To do otherwise is to ensure inconsistency and expose local leader judgments to community pressure. Europe’s post-WWII record is not commendable in this regard. Treatment for equivalent behaviors varied broadly. Too many were unjustly punished while others deserving escaped unscathed. Reasons included the influence of location, an accused’s connections, and corruption. Passage of time also played a role. Punishments meted out in the immediate aftermath of an occupation tended to be considerably harsher than those handed down later. Initial collaboration trials are apt to address more straightforward cases requiring less investigation. These frequently involve individuals at lower echelons of government or segments of society where nuance is less important and relationships are straightforward. Senior officials’ involvement with an occupier can be more complicated. As pressures to deal with collaborators tend to exhaust themselves over time, punishments are disproportionately felt by those whose crimes were less heinous and thus judged earlier. Such was certainly the case in France where those tried early were disproportionately journalists “whose commitment to collaboration was easy to prove because it had been so public. The only evidence needed was newspaper clippings.” [from Julian Jackson, France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2023), 31-32 and 35-36.]

Those in Kyiv might be wise to reconsider their initial collaboration guidance. It merits more detached judgment than is apparent in Volodymyr Zelensky’s March 2022 statement that “if any of you are tempted by their offer, you are signing your own sentence.” [from Joshua Yaffa, “The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine,” The New Yorker (January 30, 2023), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/the-hunt-for-russian-collaborators-in-ukraine] Such vagueness in statements and current collaboration policy—and the physical abuse reportedly suffered by some merely suspected of collaboration at the hands of Ukrainian security force representatives—requires immediate attention. Abuses smack far more of behaviors expected of Russian occupiers than a country seeking entrance into the European Union. Historian Franziska Exeler described how “Stalin regarded [WWII] as a ‘test that revealed people’s true loyalties’ [and] showed no understanding for the moral gray zones of occupation.” [from Sam Harshbarger, “Challenges after Russian Withdrawals in Ukraine,” New Lines Institute, (August 10, 2023), https://newlinesinstitute.org/state-resilience-fragility/challenges-after-russian-withdrawals-in-ukraine/] Mishandling collaboration risks exacerbating ethnic divisions and inhibiting national recovery. One need not be an apologist for collaborators. One does need to address difficult questions such as where the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior lies when the choice is acting in the presumed best interests of those to whom you are sworn to serve or adhering to national dictates demonstrating ignorance regarding local conditions.

Next time: Ukrainian leaders’ collaboration conundrum

Previous post’s trivia question: What does the term “Funnies” refer to in conjunction with D-Day?

Answer: “Funnies” denoted a series of vehicles, generally on a tank chassis (always? I don’t know of an exception. Please educate me if you know otherwise.) Each had an unusual capability beyond that of the standard, unmodified base vehicle. The British landed a broad array of these on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Americans chose not to other than employing the amphibious Duplex-Drive Sherman tank that could swim with the aid of propellers and a waterproof skirt that was raised before the vehicle entered the water. [See images below. DD Shermans faced problems on D-Day due to high seas. Few made it ashore after being launched six kilometers (3.6 miles) offshore.] Other funnies included a mine flail tank, another that carried fascines (bundles of material to drop into gaps such as trenches so vehicles could cross), one that laid a carpet of matting for crossing soft surfaces, the Crocodile (flame throwing tank), and the ARK (armored ramp carrier) that drove into gaps and deployed ramps mounted on its top, thereby providing a bridge. Most were British inventions and the brainchildren of British Major-General Percy Hobart. For a bit more, see https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-funny-tanks-of-d-day, https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/material/tank/hobarts-funnies, and Ian C. Hammerton, Achtung! Minen!: The Making of a Flail Tank Troop Commander. The Book Guild, 1991.

Above: Duplex Drive Sherman tank with waterproof skirt before deployment. Below Rear view of Duplex Drive Sherman with screen deployed (both images from “DD Tank,” Wikipedia, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/DD-Tank.jpg. Images are in the public domain.)

Next question: Why do three of the gravestones at the Normandy American Cemetery have gold-embossed lettering while no others do?