Paper title:
 Collaborationists and Forms of Cooperation with the Occupation Authority in Odesa (1941-1944)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4316/CC.2024.02.07
Published in:
Issue 2 (Vol. 30) / 2024
Publishing date:
2024-12-31
Pages:
393 - 414
Author(s):
Oleksandr Babich, Hanna Skoreiko, Oleksandr Rusnak
Abstract:
The relevance of the topic increased sharply after the start of the RussianUkrainian war, the occupation of Crimea and part of Donbas – when collaborationism returned from a historical term to the practical and legal plane of today. An even greater demand for understanding the nature of collaborationism was formed in 2022, when certain territories of Ukraine were temporarily under Russian occupation and then were liberated by Armed Forces of Ukraine. This article is an attempt to analyse the forms of cooperation of Odesa population with the Romanian occupation authorities in the economic and cultural spheres in the period 1941-1944. Considering the historical context, different levels and motives of collaboration of different social groups are highlighted. The emphasis of the research is on life strategies; this allowed moving away from a simplified one-dimensional view of collaborationism. At the same time, remains the definitive understanding that the physical survival of a person became the main motive for cooperation with the occupiers.
Keywords:
World War II, Odessa, Transnistria, population, cooperation, collaborationism, Romanian occupation.