PORTRAIT OF A SPECIFIC PLACE AND TIME: FROM THE 1939 DIARY ENTRIES OF OLGA DOLGUN

Abstract

A part of the diary of Olga Dolhun (Hryniuk) (1914–1997), who lived almost her entire adult life in the city of Sokal, located in the north of Lviv region on the border with Volhynia, has been submitted for publication. She was educated at the Sokal Teachers' Seminary. Her diary is a kind of reportage of private and public life in Sokal in 1939 against the backdrop of a great world upheaval - the beginning of World War II. The first entry was made on March 17, 1939, and the last on October 17. This six-month period included the proclamation of Carpathian Ukraine, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the attack of Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union on Poland, and the annexation of Galicia to the USSR. The author showed an extraordinary ability to correctly assess events, to determine the place of her people and her own in them. A part of the diary from August 24 (information about the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) to the beginning of October 1939 (the author's first impressions of the new Soviet regime) has been submitted for publication, with some excerpts. In addition to global issues, the author draws attention to everyday life, socio-political life, pre-war moods of the population, and the national-patriotic orientation of Ukrainian youth. The diary is densely "populated" with dozens of names and surnames of Sokal residents. Olga Dolhun's notes, along with other examples of documents of this genre, make history come alive and contribute to a deeper acquaintance of modern Ukrainians with the socio-cultural type of a Galician on the eve and during the outbreak of World War II.