Ukraine Urban Recovery (part 6): Policies for Collaboration with the Enemy

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

Russia’s early 2022 occupation of Kyiv’s immediate outskirts was short enough that residents were spared the worst of occupier impositions. The same was not true Izyum 125 kilometers (just under 80 miles) northwest of Kharkiv. (Izyum is at times spelled Izium) Many of Izyum’s government personnel left for the oblast capital Kharkiv before their city fell. Others collaborated and later departed with the Russians as Ukrainian forces approached before reclaiming the regional capital. Others who had continued to serve during Izyum’s occupation or took jobs under the occupier government stayed in those positions once Izyum was again free.

The choice to leave or stay as the enemy approached in those final February 2022 days was not an easy one. Nor were decisions to remain in a position once the Russians assumed control, refuse to serve, or take a job under the occupiers. Some teachers had left. Others refused to continue teaching. Then there were those who stayed and continued to teach despite having to use curriculums dictated by the occupiers and teaching only in Russian. Reasons for remaining, continuing as a teacher, staying on in other government positions, or assuming a new job included sympathy for Russia, need to secure an income, protect property, maintain access to pension payments, coercion by occupier authorities, desire to get back at neighbors against whom one had a grudge, and wanting to serve the community when vital needs might otherwise go unmet. Regardless, serving under the occupiers risked condemnation by neighbors and formal charges of collaboration once Ukrainian authorities regained control regardless of reason.

Which of these qualifies as a collaborator? Perhaps the more appropriate question is who should be considered a collaborator. History—and initial policies from Kyiv—tell us the answer is no easier than the decisions faced by those in Izyum. Perspective matters. Those who flee before an occupier’s arrival because they can afford to do so or have connections ensuring support elsewhere tend to harshly judge others less able to flee. The wealthier and better connected frequently include officials who later reassume positions giving them authority to deal with stay-behinds now open to accusations of collaboration. Some do so with a sense of moral superiority. Others who remain and continue to work in their positions often have fewer options to support themselves or their families should they depart. And then there are those who view the ebb and flow of possession from a distance and can little grasp the local factors in play. That doesn’t mean they don’t feel qualified to judge or, in the case of officials in Kyiv, have the responsibility to provide guidance for identifying and dealing with collaborators.

Collaboration policies formed by the returning and distant can have life or death implications. Universally damning any who had an affiliation with now-departed occupiers denies the play of justice and undermines reinstalled and distant governments’ legitimacy. On the other hand, failing to act against turncoats who actively sought to abet occupier objectives or betrayed neighbors sows similar seeds, albeit of a different variety. Ever present is the danger of enflaming ethnic tensions if residents perceive collaboration policies align with social divides. Such pitfalls unfortunately characterized select early Ukrainian government collaboration approaches on retaking once occupied areas. Laws adopted in Kyiv in March 2022 (the month after Russia’s forces renewed their invasion begun in 2014) defined collaboration as

such activities performed by a Ukrainian citizen as public denial of the existence of armed aggression against Ukraine and of the temporary occupation of part of its territory; public calls for support of decisions and actions of the aggressor state; cooperation with the aggressor state, its armed formations, or its occupation administration; and the refusal to recognize Ukraine’s state sovereignty over the temporarily occupied territories.[1]

Some of these stipulations identify what few would argue are acts condemnable as collaboration in virtually any context. So too, one would think, would be the case for those actively assisting occupiers by helping to keep neighbors in line (though post-WWII France included apologists who believed this was acceptable if it kept neighbors from suffering worse occupier deprivations). The waters grow murkier yet when they universally include “cooperation with the aggressor state…or its occupation administration,” collaboration’s scope becoming so broad as to include activities that would reasonably fall into acceptable for reasons of survival or maintaining basic community services. Should teachers refuse to instruct even when doing so deprives students of education in virtually unaltered topics (as is reportedly the case with engineering, science, mathematics, and related subjects in Ukraine)? Should city administrators walk away from responsibilities to provide power, fuel, or otherwise support their charges as winter’s cold threatens? Is refusal to police communities preferable to rampant crime?

This war is not Ukraine’s first struggle with the collaboration paradox. World War II’s German occupation began in 1941. Defining what constituted collaboration was made all the more difficult in that what constituted the enemy was open to multiple interpretations. The Devil himself could not have better designed the conundrum: join the fight against the invader or support the Germans in hopes of throwing off the Soviet yoke? (There was, of course, the third option, that inevitably wished for by the majority of virtually any population finding itself victimized by armed conflict: remaining neutral. It is not always an option an occupier or circumstances allow.) History tends to denigrate any collaboration with Nazis during WWII. The simplistic perspective fails to acknowledge one side’s evil does not bestow the halo of goodness on an adversary. Ukraine had suffered the Holodomor (Great Famine) less than a decade before Germany’s battlefield arrival. Studies estimate Stalin’s engineered starvation killed 3.9 million between 1932 and 1933. Other estimates opt for seven million dead. This was less than a decade before the German’s arrival. Given that context, collaboration with the newcomer—at least before the worst of its policies became evident—becomes considerably easier to understand. Though much time has passed and the situation today is not comparable, Moscow’s equating Ukraine’s government with fascism and Nazis has forebears in the choice of some WWII Ukrainians to side with Germany. Propaganda has little respect for the truth, but any grain thereof lends it a degree of substance.

Next time: Looking deeper into the issue of collaboration in Ukraine

Previous post’s trivia question: What actor in the classic film The Longest Day played Private John Steele, the 82nd Airborne Division soldier whose chute caught on the tower of the church in Sainte-Mère-Église, France? (Steele, BTW, was taken prisoner on D-Day but escaped soon thereafter. He would live until May 16, 1969.)

Answer: Who hasn’t seen The Longest Day? One of the great cinema war classics (and it follows Cornelius Ryan’s homonymous book quite closely). The actor was Red Buttons.

Next question: What does the term “Funnies” refer to in conjunction with D-Day?

[1] “Ukraine: New Laws Criminalize Collaboration with an Aggressor State,” Library of Congress, April 4, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2022-04-04/ukraine-new-laws-criminalize-collaboration-with-an-aggressor-state/#:~:text=The%20new%20article%20111(1,any%20economic%20activities%20in%20cooperation. The source identifies the two laws as “Law No. 2108-IX on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts regarding the Establishment of Criminal Liability for Collaboration Activities (Criminal Liability for Collaboration Law), and Law No. 2107-IX on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts on Ensuring the Responsibility of Individuals Who Carry Out Collaboration Activities (Individual Responsibility for Collaboration Law).”