POLISH-UKRAINE DISCUSSION ON EVENTS IN THE FOLK IN THE YEARS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: GIFTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

Abstract: The interethnic relations between Ukrainians and Poles in the period of the Second World War, known to the general public as "Volyn tragedy", is one of the most problematic pages of the joint Polish-Ukrainian history. In recent years there has been a lot of controversy between Ukraine and the Republic of Poland over the assessment of the causes and development of the inter-ethnic conflict in Volyn in 1943-1944, calculation of the number of victims of the conflict and the issues of interpretating the events of common history. The problem in question has become the subject of political speculations and negatively affects modern interethnic relations. The search for the ways to transform the historical memory of Ukrainians and Poles and to eliminate interethnic contradictions implies the multifaceted, unbiased elucidation of all aspects of the problem and surmounting the negative socio-historical stereotypes that occur in both societies