On July 11, people in Poland commemorate the victims of the Volyn Massacre, the National Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Genocide of the Citizens of the Polish Republic committed by Ukrainian Nationalists.

How to resolve the historical disputes between Ukraine and Poland, read in the column by Lukasz Adamski, deputy director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Dialogue Center (Poland) How to not let rapprochement of Ukraine and Poland fail due to historical burden.

Problems based on history have been playing a much smaller role in Polish-Ukrainian relations under Zelensky's presidency, writes Lukasz Adamski.

The author claims the climate of trust and the desire to solve these problems are gradually returning.

The Lublin Declaration, signed in 2021 by the foreign ministers of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine, underlines the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a source of European values ​​and political culture for all the countries. It was positively perceived in all three countries.

The war brought the three countries and their peoples incredibly close together, notes the doctor of history. Even nationalists, for whom the Volyn massacre is still extremely important, openly sympathize with the Ukrainian struggle against Russia. The authorities are doing everything to mobilize public opinion in support of Ukraine.

That is why the former Ukrainian historical demagogues no longer attack Poland, either because they have changed their opinion or because they do not see domestic political expediency in anti-Polish attacks. The bond of Ukrainians with the Poles and Poland, which has always been high, is now simply enormous.

Ukraine also made a positive historical gesture towards Poland - it opened lions important for Polish historical memory at the Polish military cemetery in Lviv. They had been there for several years in cardboard boxes. Ukraine also announced its intention to lift the ban on exhumations.

However, periods of internal political national consensus, warns Lukasz Adamski, rarely last long.

History still has the potential to strain Polish-Ukrainian relations in the future, making it difficult for politicians, especially those who appeal to the right-wing electorate, to pursue policies of rapprochement between the two countries.

Undoubtedly, the biggest challenge will be solving the Volyn massacre issue, which is called just a "tragedy" in Ukraine.

It is not about what happened nearly eighty years ago, writes the author, but how it is presented today.

In Poland, they often do not understand the UPA in Ukrainian memory is not so much an anti-Polish force but rather a living tradition of resistance against Russia.

After all, many families in Western Ukraine had someone in the UPA. So it is hard to imagine Ukrainian politicians collectively condemning the UPA as a crime-tainted formation.

However, one can at least imagine the condemnation of those UPA commanders who were the initiators and main executors of ethnic cleansing.

This will clearly be perceived as a signal of Kyiv's readiness to appease Poles' concerns.

To practically resolve the dispute regarding the interpretation of Volyn, we need to resume a professional historical dialogue with both countries. This can be done, for example, with the Juliusz Mieroszewski Dialogue Center's assistance. The institution operates in Warsaw, aimed at establishing mutual understanding between Poles and the peoples of Eastern Europe – in particular, Ukrainians.

First of all, it is necessary to discuss the criteria for evaluating the events of the past and the values based on which we should judge them. The joint recommendations produced in this way can be used for resolving the most controversial issues, such as the haidamakas, the Polish-Ukrainian conflict over Eastern Galicia in 1918-19, the position of Ukrainians in interwar Poland, the Volyn massacre, or the anti-Ukrainian activities of the Polish underground in the eastern part of modern Poland and the post-war deportation of Ukrainians.