History Alumni Spotlight: Joanna Dobrowolska

Joanna Dobrowolska completed both her Undergraduate and Graduate degrees in History at USU. She is currently pursuing her PhD at University of Illinois, Chicago, examining local and rural relations in the Volhyniaregion of Ukraine from 1918-1943. Her particular interest lies in how inter-ethnic relations between Poles and Ukrainians shifted from peaceful to genocidal with the approach of WWII.

Where did your interest in eastern European history start?

It actually stemmed from an interest in conflict and war more generally. I started out very interested in conflicts in post colonial countries; postcolonial African conflicts really interested me. But as I finished my BA, and started my MA, I realized that I didn't have the languages to study Africa, but what I did know was Polish. So from that base, I studied Polish-Jewish relations and ethnic relations leading up to the Holocaust. And then, when I started my PhD, I thought the Polish-Ukrainian case was even more interesting, just because the populations are so much closer.

What has been the most memorable part of your studies?

My time in Eastern Europe had quite an impact and was definitely memorable. During the 2021-2022 academic year, I got funding to go to Ukraine and Poland. I started out for four months in Lviv and Rivne, in Ukraine. It was strange, because this was just before Russia invaded in February 2022. It was fascinating to be in a country that was on the precipice of war, while at the same time studying a population that's at the brink of war. That had a huge impact on me just being able to empathize even more with my historical actors.

Tell me about your time in eastern Europe. How did your time there impact your studies and you personally?

Mostly what stood out was just how normal it was [before the war]. People had plans and they just kind of went on with them. There were rumblings and rumors of war, there was news of tanks gathering on the Belarusian border, Putin beefing up his military, and yet when I turned on the radio, they’re talking about different kinds of dumplings. So that struck me a little bit. Something that strikes me as a historian, too, is that once the gears of history start grinding, there's nothing to do but try to understand it, which I guess is one of my motivations--to at least try to understand what is happening, because the world is a bewildering, chaotic place.

What’s most important to you about what you’re studying?

Everything that is the world right now is the result of a historical process. Studying violence, and ethnic cleansing, and conflict, is really important for me because it's such a foreign thing for me and I desperately want to understand it. I've never been in a war, I've never wanted to murder my neighbor for nationalistic reasons. And on some level, I have this naive hope that people aren’t monsters, and that it is possible to explain this action with something other than that they're greedy, stupid and violent. Of course, they can be, and often human beings act this way, but I don't think people are natural sadists. At the same time, these horrible things keep happening, and they’re done by regular people, not by monsters, for a variety of reasons. And I think it's really important to understand those reasons to get a better sense of humanity.

If you could share one message with the world about what you’ve learned, what would it be?

It's really important to understand that there's nuance in all issues, and to know that you do not know. It's always important to continue pursuing knowledge and questioning your own knowledge and self-examining what you think and why you think something. Because every truth has a history, and knowing that history doesn't invalidate that truth, but it empowers us to more intelligently and mindfully navigate that truth.

Something that I picked up in grad school is trying to create truth through my research, and then having it torn down, questioned, and picked apart. Everything you ever do is questioned all the time, which is not always fun, but it's a very important process because as I said, it's empowering. And it's something I think people don't do enough. People act on emotions, very often people take up ideas that sound the best, or they follow the person who speaks the prettiest, rather than reflecting on whether the truths that they take up square with how the world actually is. I think it's so important for people to be very mindful about why one believes what they do and why one acts upon that.