History and Historians in Ukraine
The historical profession encountered numerous problems in postSoviet Ukraine. On the positive side of the change, one could list the end of Soviet-imposed restrictions on the use of the works of Ukrainian prerevolutionary, western Ukrainian, and emigre historians; open access to formerly closed archival materials; and the fact that state support for national historiography, so desperately needed in the past, has finally been granted.
The end of communism also meant the end of the Iron Curtain and the appearance of new opportunities to become acquainted with Western colleagues and Western methodological approaches. These were positive changes, but their effect was diminished by negative factors influencing the state of historical scholarship in post-Soviet Ukraine. One of these factors, pointed out by Von Hagen, was the impact of the recent past, including the dogmatism, provincialism, and methodological backwardness of Soviet Ukrainian historiography. One should also note the severe economic crisis that was driving the younger generation of historians, especially those with a knowledge of foreign languages, out of the field. Since the average salary of a history professor in the early 1990s did not exceed $50 U.S. per month, even a trip to the libraries of Kyiv or Lviv (not to speak of those of Moscow, Warsaw, or St Petersburg) was a major financial problem. To the continuing lack of access to Western books was added lack of access to the scholarly publications of Russia and other former Soviet republics, owing to the complete collapse of the book-trade network. That network collapsed in Ukraine as well. In order to obtain a book published in Lviv, one had to go to Lviv; to obtain one published in Dnipropetrovsk, one had to go to Dnipropetrovsk, etc.Another piece of bad news for Ukrainian historians was the ongoing decline of the social status of their profession.
For generations, historians were viewed in Ukraine as important cultural and political figures, no matter what side they took, communist or nationalist. For the nationally oriented intelligentsia, historians were considered bearers of genuine national values and possessors of the truth about the history of a nation that had been deprived of its political state and natural rights. With the establishment of an independent Ukraine and the emergence of opportunities for any citizen to demonstrate his patriotism if he felt so inclined, the previous political significance and social status of historians were drastically reduced.Major changes in the status of the profession have been caused by the collapse of the Communist Party and the subsequent movement towards a democratic society and market-oriented economy. The huge complement of historians of the Soviet Communist Party has become in many ways the principal victim of that change. They served as interpreters of 'ever living' Marxist-Leninist teachings and were charged with the task of legitimizing the otherwise illegitimate rule of the Communist Party. Historical education was considered political in the USSR; the historian was expected to be a member of the Communist Party and, if a schoolteacher, he or she was a prime candidate for the post of school principal. Once the ideological society was gone and the bankrupt state found itself without money to support schools and universities, the prestige of the profession drastically decreased.
If in the 1970s and 1980s there were five to seven people competing in the entrance exams for every position, by the 1990s the number had decreased to one or two per position. The low salaries of schoolteachers and university professors have made the profession more and more one for women, while men compete for better-paying jobs. In many ways, these problems of the historical profession resembled the general problems of science and scholarship in Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Eventually the historical profession found its place in new societies' 'Tables of Ranks,' but this took time and a great deal of pain. The peculiarities of that process in the post-Soviet republics had a profound impact on historians and the kind of history they write today.