The Soviet Occupation of Poland, 1939–41, and the Stereotype of the Anti-Polish and Pro-Soviet Jew
The article analyzes two opposing trends that have emerged in Polish postcommunist historiography with regard to the cliché of the procommunist and pro-Soviet and anti-Polish Jew. It traces the origins of this cliché and its development in Polish political thought during the interwar period and its persistence during and after World War II. At the center of the analysis is the application of this cliché in the debate about the Jedwabne massacre on July 10, 1941, by four (ethno)nationalist historians: Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Bogdan Musiał, Tomasz Strzembosz, and Marek Wierzbicki. The article also focuses on the attempts at challenging the cliché in contemporary historiography by Jan T. Gross, Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Dariusz Libionka, and Andrzej Żbikowski.
Pogroms, mob violence and genocide in western Ukraine, summer 1941: varied histories, explanations and comparisons
In this essay, the author presents new research, as well as surveys existing interpretations, of the history of pogroms in Ukraine during the Holocaust. Focusing on western Ukraine during summer 1941, the author determines that across the region Jews were the primary targets of attacks, but the politics and dynamic of the mob violence and among the occupation forces varied from place to place. Besides the powerful, antisemitic charge of Judeo-Bolshevism, the author explores other political, social, psychological and ideological causes of the violence. She stresses the cross section of society represented among the pogromists, and the role of nationalist insurgents and German occupation officials. The author traces the relationship between the German-led mass shootings and the pogroms, and argues that distinctions made between mob violence and genocide usually fail to account for the changing interaction of the two phenomena. The overlapping, escalating history of the two is especially evident in western Volhynia where, unlike in neighbouring Galicia, the number of Jews killed in mass shootings exceeded those killed in pogroms. Thus by the end of September 1941, in the eastern capital of Kiev, there was no large pogrom comparable to the ‘Petliura Days’, in L'viv, instead there was Babi Yar.
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of