Introduction

This volume contains presentations to the Ukrainian Historical Conference at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, on 29-31 May 1978. The conference, which took place within the framework of the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Slavists, was organized jointly by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Ukrainian Historical Association.

The programme of the conference comprised six topical sessions: “Historiography,” “Ukraine and the Muslim World,” “The Historical legacy of Kievan Rus’,” “Ukrainian Elites,” “Ukraine and the Russian Revolution,” “The Role of the City in Ukrainian History” and a Round Table discussion on “Problems of Terminology and Periodication in the Teaching of Ukrainian History.” The guest speaker at the conference banquet, held jointly with the Canadian Association of Slavists, was Professor George Y. Shevelov who presented the “Reflections of a Linguist on Ukrainian History.”

This collection does not contain the entire conference proceedings, since limitations of space necessitated the exclusion of papers on historiography and Ukraine and the Russian Revolution. Moreover, there already exist several excellent English-language studies of the revolutionary period (1917-21) in Ukraine, and the highly specialized nature and complexity of the subject of historiography warrants more extensive treatment in a separate publication. Of the sessions, only “The Role of the City in Ukrainian History” is fully represented in this volume, as some papers of the other sessions were not made available to the editor.

On the panel of the Round Table discussion were six professors, all teachers of Ukrainian history courses in North American universities. The panel was chaired by Professor Omeljan Pritsak, the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The discussion was transcribed from the tapes and then edited. Despite minor changes, it is hoped that the printed record retains the original flavour of a spontaneous and lively scholarly debate.

Professor Shevelov’s after-dinner address has appeared in the Journal of Ukrainian Graduate Studies 6 (Spring 1979): 62-9. At Professor Shevelov’s request, it was superseded in this volume by his earlier article “L’ukrainien Iitteraire,” published originally in Revue des etudes slaves 33 (1956): 68-83 and reprinted in G. Y. Shevelov, Teasers and Appeasers: Essays and Studies on Themes of Slavic Philology (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971), 245-60. An English translation was prepared for The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development, edited by Alexander M. Schenker and Edward Stankiewicz, a forthcoming volume in the Yale and East European Publications series. It is reproduced here with permission and with minor stylistic changes. By focusing on questions of continuity and discontinuity in the development of the Ukrainian literary language, the paper suggests illuminating parallels for scholars engaged in rethinking Ukrainian history.

While responsibility for the factual statements and interpretations advanced in the papers of this collection rests, as usual, with the individual contributors, the planning of the Ukrainian Historical Conference was based on certain general guidelines which are reflected in the present publication. The organizers were faced with a choice between a “conference of Ukrainian historians” or a “Ukrainian historical conference.” In opting for the latter, the organizers wished to ensure the highest professional and academic standards for the conference, and to avoid any suggestion that it was just a gathering of emigre notables.

The lamentable condition of historical studies in the Ukrainian SSR is of great concern to scholars in the West. The low level of Soviet historiography results mostly from the imposition of a stifling official ideology, in which an ossified Marxism-Leninism is amalgamated with a rigidly Russocentric vision of Ukrainian and general East Slavic history, which tolerates no topics, methods and interpretations that cannot be pressed into its straitjacket.

How should Western students of Ukrainian history respond to this distressing situation? Many in the Ukrainian diaspora community believe that Soviet ideological orthodoxy ought to be met with an equally rigid and militant “patriotic” orthodoxy. In the conference organizers’ view, such an approach would be self-defeating. What is needed is the application of free, critical thought, untrammelled by dogmas of any kind, whether Marxist or nationalist. The test of critical thought is the readiness to face unpleasant facts and painful issues and to scrutinize the preconceptions, biases and favourite myths even of one’s own community.

Among the ills which afflict Soviet Ukrainian historiography none perhaps is more debilitating than its enforced isolation from the outside world. Soviet Ukrainian historians do not publish in foreign journals, hardly ever travel abroad for reasons of research and rarely attend international scholarly conferences and symposia.

Western scholars can help to remedy these deformations, provided they themselves study Ukrainian history in a universal context. This does not mean that the existing links between the Ukrainian and Russian historical processes should be played down; they should merely be reduced to their proper dimension, with due attention to reciprocal relations between Ukraine and such other countries and civilizations as the Mediterranean world, Central Europe and the Eurasian sphere. Focusing on this complex network of relationships and influences will bring to light Ukraine’s unique historical identity; it will also contribute to a better understanding of the history of Eastern Europe as a whole. One can always hope that the labours of Western scholars might induce positive changes in Soviet Ukrainian historiography and ease the strictures which handicap it at present. However, the prerequisite is that Western specialists in Ukrainian history learn how to approach their subject in a consistently non-parochial spirit. Thomas G. Masaryk used to admonish his fellow Czech intellectuals to study the Czech problem as a world problem. This advice is equally valuable in the Ukrainian case.

Such were the basic guidelines for the 1978 Ukrainian Historical Conference. Readers may judge for themselves how well they have been realized.

The assistance of the following persons and institutions is gratefully acknowledged: the executive of the Canadian Association of Slavists and its former president, Professor Peter J. Potichnyj, McMaster University, for accommodating the Ukrainian Historical Conference within the programme of the association’s 1978 annual meeting; the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada for its financial assistance; Professor Eva S. Balogh, Russian and East European Studies, Yale University, for making available the English translation of Professor Shevelov’s paper; Mr. Brent Kostyniuk for undertaking the difficult task of transcribing the taped text of the Round Table discussion; and the editorial staff of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

I would like to express special thanks to my colleague, Professor John-Paul Himka, whose help in preparing the conference and in editing the papers was invaluable.

Ivan L. Rudnytsky University of Alberta May 1981