Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide or Ukrainian-Polish War in Volhynia?

This paper analyzes the mass murder of Poles in Volhynia in Western Ukraine during World War II. The mass murder of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during the Nazi occupation of Volhynia in 1943 became an important political issue in Poland and Ukraine. Previous studies by Polish, Ukrainian, and Western researchers and Ukrainian and Polish governments policies offered different and often divergent theories and narratives of this case of political violence. A research question is whether this was a Ukrainian-Polish war, ethnic cleansing or genocide. This study analyzes a variety of archival documents, historical studies, and eyewitness accounts. It concludes that the mass murder of the Polish minority in Volhynia by the OUN-B, the UPA, and their security service (SB) represented not a Ukrainian-Polish war or genocide of Poles but that it was a part of ethnic cleansing.