THE BATTLE OF THE DNIEPER: CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE RED ARMY AND THE WEHRMACHT IN THE SUMMER OF 1943 – SPRING OF 1944

Abstract

The battle of the Dnieper during World War II became one of the longest campaigns in the confrontation between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front and the least studied in Soviet and modern Ukrainian historical science, which still defines it as an actual and debatable problem. Taking into account Soviet and post-Soviet ideas about the battle of the Dnieper, the offered publication shows its most controversial moments and stereotypical judgments regarding the overcoming of the Dnieper front by the Red Army, which are recorded in scientific, educational and journalistic literature. The author of this publication emphasized that the chronology and geography of the battle in the Soviet historiography of the war were significantly shortened for ideological and propaganda reasons to hide its results and consequences into the shadow of the victories at Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge. This affected the character of research reconstructions of events on the Dnieper also in the era of the USSR, and to a large extent influenced the historiographical process within the framework of the outlined problem in Ukrainian historical science after 1991. Considering the most stereotypical judgments about the battle of the Dnieper, first of all – assessments of the dramatic and tragic events at the Bukryn bridgehead in September–October 1943, judgments regarding the “celebratory” battles for Kyiv in November 1943, ideas about Soviet losses on the Dnieper, the researcher explained the nature of their appearance in the historiography of the problem, found out how they correspond to the objective study of the battle of the Dnieper and the determination of its place and significance within the framework of World War II.