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Why Kyiv's parliament marked a 1944 deportation
Summary
A look back at a Verkhovna Rada resolution adopted on 8 November 2018, days after a cooperation agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarch.
What did Ukraine's parliament decide to commemorate on 8 November 2018? The Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution on marking, at state level, the 75th anniversary of the start of the deportation of Ukrainians from Poland. The deportations covered the years 1944 to 1951.
The resolution turned a historical episode into an occasion for official observance. As adopted, it provided for the anniversary to be marked by the state, not only by communities or researchers.
The days before
The vote came shortly after another development. On 3 November 2018, President Petro Poroshenko signed an agreement on cooperation with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
The two items were separate, and the reports from the period do not link them. Together, they show the range of matters in Kyiv's political agenda in the first days of that November: the handling of memory on one side, and the president's dealings with the Ecumenical Patriarch on the other.
