National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’s Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s

Abstract

Abstract:In the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of Ukrainian women joined the underground nationalist movement on west Ukrainian lands as members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). However, their experiences and contributions to this movement remain understudied, marginalized and trivialized in historical research. A study of personal testimonies of former female insurgents allows one to question the established perception that women served only in auxiliary and secondary roles in the nationalist organizations. This paper examines whether the concept of normative femininity-as constructed by the nationalist ideology-actually corresponded to the women's real life experiences in the underground. It explores the variety of ways in which a traditional notion of femininity was maintained, broadened, negotiated, contested and transgressed through women's active involvement in guerrilla war.

Gender, feminism, and nation: Contributions of the socialist and post‐socialist worlds

“…These nationalist organizations, namely the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), mobilized in Western Ukraine against the encroaching Soviet armies, which would eventually incorporate the westernmost territories of Ukraine into the Soviet Union in 1945. Oksana Kis (2015) has spearheaded the development of women's history in Ukraine, in part based on her research about women's participation in these organizations and the role of femininity in the nationalism of this time period. Aside from Kis's foundational work, Marta Havryshko (2018) has taken on the topic of sexuality and violence among women participants in these nationalist movements.…”