The Silence of People and Archives: Researching Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Poland

• In Event: Cold War Archives and Religion: Methodologies in Hidden, Secret, and Silenced Archives

Abstract

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic community in Poland has been traversing the thorny path from an underground and silenced minority during the communist era to form a distinctive vocal community. One of the most striking characteristics of vocality, however, is silence, revealed in people’s strategies of avoidance when talking about the past. Interlocutors decline to be recorded, others hesitate to share family stories, or, when sharing would request deletion of a recording. Some show family photo albums but insist that photos of these photos are not permitted. Similar strategies of dissimulation present themselves in archives, as has occurred to me during my work in a small local archive. Access to some documents was provided, I could take photos of some, but never publish them, never make them vocal. The archive was keeping its silence too. Alain Corbin emphasises that “Silence is not simply the absence of noise” (Corbin 2018). On the contrary, silence is a vibrant and vocal part of everyday community life, perennially implying knowledge and therefore, implicating power. I perceive silence as a form of communication that remains active in an ambiguous metalinguistic register. I reflect on silence as a tool of discourse management and as a communicative strategy, on the duty to speak or remain silent, on what is meant to be remembered, and on what is meant to be forgotten as ethical choices facing people, communities and archives.

Author

• Iuliia Julia Buyskykh, U College Cork (Ireland) / German Historical Institute (Poland) / Institute of History, PAS (Poland)