Eastern Workers In the Mirror of Domestic and Foreign Historiography

Abstract

The reflection of the problem of forced labor of Eastern workers in the economy of the Third Reich is analyzed within the framework of foreign and domestic historical science. This article is a comparison of specifics of the understanding of the ostarbaiter phenomenon, which developed in different sociocultural conditions, mainly in Western Europe, independent Ukraine and post-Soviet Russia and Belarus.

The scientific understanding of the ostarbaiter phenomenon has more than 65 years of history. However, the existing historiographic array is relatively insignificant. This circumstance can be explained by the fact that actualization of this problem started recently. Only after the collapse of the «Cold War» in Europe, there was a surge of interest in rethinking the events of the Second World War, as a result of which favorable conditions were created for a comprehensive coverage of the history of Eastern workers in the Third Reich, which, together with the activities of the «Reciprocity and Reconciliation» foundation, brought this problem to a qualitative level a new level of analytical processing. The change in the historical situation in the USSR at the end of the 1980s laid the foundations for the further study of the history of ostarbaiters in Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian historiographies of the 1990s and 2000s. It is worth noting that in the 1990s, Ukrainian historical science still maintained a relative inertness regarding the study of mass deportations of the population of the USSR for forced labor in fascist Germany. While this problem was more actively investigated by Belarusian and Russian specialists. However, in 2000-2009, the situation takes on a diametrically opposite character. Now the problem of ostarbaiters is being actively developed in Ukrainian and foreign historical sciences.