Absence Justified? On Several Themes Absent from the Exhibition Ukraine. A Different Angle on Neighbourhood

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the content of the exhibition Ukraine. A different angle on neighbourhood, presented in Cracow from September 2021 to January 2022, aimed at identifying exemplary themes that would have significantly enriched the educational and informational dimension of this exhibition, but for various reasons did not make it into it. Exemplary absences included the regional differentiation of Ukraine, the historical-independence status of Galicia, the demographic decline of Poland’s neighbours from across the river Bug, the importance of the Cossacks in the context of the 17th-century problems of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the place of the “Vistula” action in the consciousness of Poles. A separate point is devoted to the absence of the motif of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Volhynian massacre from the exhibition, indicating – also through references to the declarations of people involved in the creation of the exhibition – why this motif was to be expected, and proposing a way in which this motif could have been creatively presented. Although the essence of the considerations is to indicate points which would enrich the school knowledge of the primarily Polish audience of the exhibition in relation to the framework of Ukrainian identity (identities) and the Polish-Ukrainian neighbourhood, in its essence the article does not prejudge the necessity to take up the aforementioned motifs, nor does it constitute a closed list of topoi which would be crucial in determining such a framework.