Soviet and Nazi museum propaganda using the examples of occupied Lviv and Kyiv (1939-1942)

The purpose of the research is to analyze, based on archival sources and historiography, the specific features of how the occupying totalitarian regimes used museum activities as a form of propaganda during World War II in 1939-1942. The research methodology relies on the principles of the concrete-historical approach, or historicism, objectivity, comprehensiveness and integrity, systematicity, as well as on the use of methods such as analysis and synthesis, historical-comparative, historical-typological, and problem-chronological methods. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that, for the first time in historiography, key characteristics of propaganda in the context of the "museum policies" of the Bilshovyk and Nazi totalitarian regimes are identified, using the examples of Lviv and Kyiv during the 1939-1942 period, based on archival sources. Conclusions. Ukrainian lands were drawn into the events of World War II as early as September 1939, when, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the totalitarian Soviet Union occupied Western Ukraine. The Ukrainian national museum network (despite certain restrictions from official Warsaw), which had collected, preserved, and promoted Ukrainian cultural heritage in interwar Poland, was effectively dismantled. In 1939-1940, the Soviet authorities established their own museum structures in Lviv by dissolving and arbitrarily dispersing the collections of existing museums. The primary goal and objective of these new institutions were to conduct propaganda of communist ideology among the population, simultaneously erasing the achievements of national and state life in the region. The newly established historical, natural history, ethnographic, arts and crafts, and other museums propagated typical Leninist-Marxist narratives through exhibitions, displays, lectures, and other forms of museum educational activities. These narratives included themes of “class struggle” of the working people, “reunification” with the fraternal Russian peoples, and liberation from the “oppression of aristocratic Poland,” among others. In 1941, Lviv was occupied by Nazi Germany. During the occupation of Halychyna by the Third Reich, some pre-war Ukrainian museum institutions managed to resume their activities through the Ukrainian Cultural Center, led by Volodymyr Kubiyovych. At the same time, their activities were subjected to strict Nazi censorship and control. With the full occupation of Ukraine by the Nazis, the Museum-Archive of the Transitional Period was established in Kyiv in April 1942. This museum served an exclusively propagandistic purpose — to promote the so-called "civilizing" influence of Greater Germany on Nazi-occupied Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv. During its brief existence, the Museum-Archive of the Transitional Period organized an exhibition dedicated to the destruction of Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage in Kyiv by the Bilshovyk authorities.