Rethinking Perspectives in Ukraine

There are several general indications of changing perspectives in Ukraine after independence, a period when the government was preoccupied with elaborating its new relationship with Russia, with its autonomous region of Crimea, and with overcoming a serious economic crisis.

Stanislav Kul'chyts'kyi, an historian who will enter these pages frequently, is deputy director of the Institute of History with the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. In the spring of 1992 he wrote an insightful article about the state of the historical discipline in Ukraine, noting that in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, historians found themselves in a state of confusion. Because the writing of history in Soviet times was directed toward service to the regime, it frequently led to the falsification of the events of the 20th century.

Kul’chyts’kyi also urges caution when dealing with archival documents, as they are not completely reliable. As an example, he cites party documents— pronouncements of party leaders at official ceremonies. These statements, he notes, did not necessarily reflect the sentiments of the speaker, and it is better for the historian to use the testimony of simple people or official reports that reflect the real state of affairs, such as police reports on the mood of the popu­lation. He appears to ignore or be ignorant of the fact that unofficial sources can be equally as slanted as official ones, reflecting the values and outlook of their originators. He thus cites as a reliable example the memoirs of simple peasants, praising the work of the US Commission on the Ukrainian Famine, led by James E. Mace, precisely for collecting such valuable testimonies, and declaring that “The subjective element disappears when hundreds of people have to answer the same question.”³ The statement reflects a rather naive view of the historical discipline, as such surveys might also be depicted as hundreds of subjective narratives rooted in past and present discourses. Kul’chyts’kyi also bemoans the fact that Ukrainian historians lacked methodology because they were completely oblivious to the ways in which Western historians car­ried out their discipline.⁴ That comment is also revealing because it demon­strates an almost obsequious attitude to Western historians and the implicit need to emulate them, and that for several years at least, those working in the discipline would be over-reliant on works published in the West (see below) whose authors had much less access to archival sources than the admittedly slanted Soviet publications.

What might be considered an extreme example of how the national element could be inserted into the conception of the past was provided in a 1993 arti­cle by Petro Vol’vach. His article sets out to explain economic and social problems in contemporary Ukraine through references to the pernicious in­fluence of the legacies of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. He writes that the wretched state of the Ukrainian economy and spiritual life should be sought in Ukraine’s “lengthy colonial enslavement.” This “enslavement,” he maintains, is responsible for the low level of national consciousness and lack of national pride, opportunism, and patronage that is especially common in the southern and eastern regions of the country. He portrays expansionism as something that is inherent to the development of the Russian state, and draws a direct line from the 16th-century wars of Ivan the Terrible to the post­Second World War subjugation of Eastern Europe. Thus in 1492, “Muscovia” covered 24,000 square kilometers, but by 1914 the Russian Empire encom­passed 23.8 million square kilometers. Thus Russia increased its total area by 80 square kilometers per day. Vol'vach offers the following chronology of “Ukrainian enslavement” in the modern period, which is worth citing in full as representative of an anti-Russian or Russophobic version of the Ukrainian past:⁵

1720—decree of Peter I prohibiting the printing of books in Ukrainian;

1729—decree of the Holy Synod concerning the confiscation from the population of elementary textbooks and church writings in Ukrainian;

1768—the conspiracy of Catherine II with Polish aristocrats about the subjugation of the Koliivshchyna rebellion;⁶

1768-1775—the destruction of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the Russo- Turkish war;

1775—the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich; 1771-1783—the liquidation of the Hetmanate; 1811—closure of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy;

1816-1821—military occupation of Ukraine in the form of 500,000- strong military settlements;

1847—destruction of the Cyrillo-Methodius Brotherhood;

1854-55—the Crimean War, in which Ukraine was the major supplier of “cannon fodder”;

1876— the Ukaz of Ems banning Ukrainian publications and resulting in the exile of several prominent Ukrainian cultural figures;

1877- 78—Russo-Turkish war that brought huge economic and human losses to Ukraine;

1904-05—Russo-Japanese war that claimed the lives of tens of thou­sands of Ukrainians;

1907-08—post-revolutionary reaction in Ukraine and the closing of Ukrainian-language journals and newspapers;

1914-1917—the First World War, with heavy Ukrainian casualties;

1917-1920—the Bolshevik-White Guard assault on Ukraine and civil war;

1921-22 [sic!]—War Communism;

1928-32—collectivization and the destruction of prosperous peasants; deportations;

1932- 33—the man-made famine to destroy the rebellious Ukrainian peasants;

1933— halting the process of “Ukrainization;”

1933-38—the total genocide of the Ukrainian people and the destruc­tion of Ukrainian culture;⁷

1938— Stalin's decree about the obligatory study of the Russian lan­guage;

1939— Winter war [in Finland] with human and economic losses for

Ukraine;

1919-40—Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine;

1941-1945—the Second World War;

1944-45—the preparation of the Stalin-Beria plan for the deportation

of all Ukrainians (22 June 1944);

1946- 47—famine in Ukraine;

1947— the Soviet-Polish Operation Vistula;

1944-49—the destruction of the UPA; deportations;

1954-59—the Virgin Lands program—3 million young Ukrainians moved to Kazakhstan;

1964-83—the Communist Party reaction in Ukraine; the struggle against the Ukrainian renaissance;

1983—the decree of the CC CSU about the obligatory study of the Rus­sian language;

1986—the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl.

Vol'vach notes with regret that the ratio of Ukrainians in the total popula­tion of Ukraine has been declining, partly as a result of the influx of people of other nationalities which, he believes, leads to the destruction of the moral foundations of society and the loss of awareness of a common historical fate and culture.

In another contribution on this same theme, Vol'vach documents the ex­perience of “genocide” suffered by the Ukrainian-speaking population of the Kuban in 1933-39. In 1932, he writes, there existed some 240 Ukrainian schools in this region, and 20 Ukrainian-language newspapers were in circula­tion, along with five journals. The radio also broadcasted in Ukrainian. Early in 1933, the process of Ukrainization in the Kuban was halted, because it did not correspond to the cultural needs of the population, in the Soviet view, and provided the “class enemy” with the legal tools to organize resistance to the Soviet authorities. Within three days, Vol'vach writes, Ukrainian-language broadcasts were terminated and the entire Ukrainian-language press reverted to Russian. Many Ukrainian writers and teachers in the Kuban were arrested. Collectivization in this region in 1933 led to a peasant rebellion that was sub­dued by the NKVD. Famine claimed the lives of many Cossacks. For many centuries, concludes the article, with reference to all Ukrainian territories, governments have given priority to the development of Russian culture in the national land of Ukraine. Independent Ukraine, as a member of the commu­nity of nations, is therefore entitled to demand from Russia and the interna­tional community adequate protection of the interests of Ukrainians on their own territory. Should such protection not be forthcoming (and it is unclear how it would be manifested, but presumably by preventing “foreigners” from taking up residence in Ukraine), millions of Ukrainians, who survived by a miracle throughout many centuries of genocide and warped assimilatory poli­cies, will disappear and be dissolved into a “Russian sea” as had happened to millions in the past.

These articles can perhaps be dismissed as representing a polarized view of Ukraine's past and a contribution to what has been termed “the cult of com­petitive suffering.” However, other observers have noted first that there are some “blind spots” in the approach to the past, and second, that there are problems in “harmonizing” the national histories of Ukraine and Russia as reflected in history textbooks. Kul'chyts'kyi remarks that some Second World War veterans remain convinced that there was no famine in Ukraine in 1932­33, that the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact never existed, and that the Katyn massacre was a fabrication of the German occupants of the Soviet Union.⁹ Another writer, Yaroslava Muzychenko, cites the chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of St. Petersburg, Tet'yana Lebedyns'ka, who decried the lack of dialogue between Ukrainian and Russian historians on the dramatic episodes of modern history. Lebedyns'ka recalled two confer­ences dedicated to the 1709 Battle of Poltava, one in Moscow and another in Ukraine. The Russian one cursed Ukrainians; the Ukrainian gathering cursed Russians; and there was no common ground. She suggested a Western ap­proach through which authors present comments on historical events from a variety of political perspectives. The same article quotes a Ukrainian teacher, Viktor Rudii, who is convinced that history textbooks have to tell the truth, however unpleasant it might be. He is frustrated that students seem incapable of viewing historical events objectively: people from Western Ukraine are still referred to as “Banderites” in the eastern parts of the country, while easterners in the west are called Communists.

Another factor behind such disparate perceptions is reportedly the “propa­ganda of intolerance” emanating from Russia, which together with the lack of a state policy from Kyiv and increasing poverty in Ukraine contribute to the spread of ethnic intolerance in the contemporary state. Muzychenko has little time for “gung-ho patriots” who are afraid that Ukrainians will disappear from Ukraine. This attitude, she writes, is imperialistic, as Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state. However, the greatest challenge to the Ukrainian-Russian Commission, created to examine the interpretations of history, is “ethno-centralism.” Rus­sian historians have adopted the Great Imperial conception of history, whereas simple Russians enjoy the memoirs of people like Pavel Sudoplatov, who by modern standards would be considered an international terrorist. She cites Ukrainian historian Serhii Kot, who maintains that any commission is meaningless unless Russian society is prepared to grant Ukrainians or any other nation the right to a distinct historical development. However, she is fearful that Ukrainian “gung-ho patriots” will also be unwilling to accept the conclusions of a commission. This gives rise to the danger that Ukrainian his­torians will be unable to prepare their own conception of the past for com­mon textbooks.¹¹ The same topic, albeit with reference exclusively to the situa­tion in Ukraine, is the subject of a reflective article by Kul’chyts’kyi on the state of history as a discipline in Ukraine’s schools and universities. He feels that the current state of affairs (he is writing in 2003) has its origins in the year 1988. At that time, with Perestroika reaching its culmination and the lib­eralization in public life, there spread a movement for the reform of the edu­cational system in Ukraine and a desire to make it national in character. This movement, in Kul’chyts’kyi’s view, was a reaction to the all-out Russification of the educational system. One of its manifestations was to be seen in the teaching of the history of the USSR, which was de facto the history of Russia, with the history of Ukraine relegated to a secondary status, with about 30 hours of the academic load.¹²

In Kul’chyts’kyi’s view, during the Perestroika period, the Communists lacked the power to stem the national-democratic wave and therefore opted to hijack the movement and take charge of it. In October 1988, at a Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CC CPU), party leader Volodymyr Shcherbyts’kyi announced that the teaching in the social sciences poorly reflected the needs of society, and the work for filling in gaps in history was not being carried out energetically enough. In February 1989 the CC CPU issued a resolution to formulate a republican program for the development of historical research and the improvement of how history was taught in Ukraine. It contained concrete measures, such as introducing a course on the history of the Ukrainian SSR in schools, colleges, and institutes, the training of teachers and the preparation of textbooks. However, says Kul’chyts’kyi, because of the difficulties of the transitional period in coming to terms with the recent history of the USSR no textbook could appear at that time. Ukrainians relied on the book by Canadian professor Orest Subtelny. Only by 1995-96 did the two-volume History of Ukraine based on archival study appear under the editorship of V. Smolii. By 1989-90, Ukrainian history had become an independent discipline and was taught parallel to the history of the USSR and general history in the upper four grades. At that point the lack of relevant materials to cover various topics was very keenly felt and the Ukrainian Ministry of Education asked the Institute of History (affiliated with the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences) to begin immediately to prepare appro­priate material. Kul’chyts’kyi and Yurii Kurnosov had thus prepared a bro­chure on materials for studying the history of Ukraine for the ninth and tenth grades. These materials were subsequently used to replace some chapters in existing Soviet textbooks.¹³

Kul’chyts’kyi informs readers that in 1990-91, the Institute of History cre­ated a new program for the study of history and published a new textbook entitled Istoriya Ukrainy. At the same time the publishing house “Radyans’ka shkola” (Soviet school) changed its name to “Osvita” (education). When the new history appeared, however, it was hopelessly outdated because Ukraine had become independent. Therefore in the fall of 1991 the Ministry of Educa­tion radically reconfigured the structure of historical education in schools. Two independent courses were taught: world history and the history of Ukraine, with the latter being taught from grades 7 to 11. What place does history occupy in contemporary Ukraine? Kul’chyts’kyi believes that it is a critical discipline, the foundation stone that allows pupils to grasp the funda­mentals of social developments, and which should take priority over other social sciences. Of all the humanities and social science subjects, only history has to be included on the list of comprehensive examinations at the end of high school. It should have two chronologically complete circles, Kul’- chyts’kyi believes, with the first ending after the ninth grade and the second covering the tenth and twelfth grades so that for those students who decide not to go on to Grade 10, the history of Ukraine does not end in the nine­teenth century. Further, Ukrainian history must be studied within the context of world history. Students must learn to develop pluralistic views in making historical assessments and be subjected to different methods of looking at his­tory, rather than being confined to the traditionally predominant political nar­ratives. The author concludes with a discussion of the contested harmoniza­tion of Ukraine's history with that of its neighbors: Poland and Russia. The point is not to place heavy focus on one's national history, but to ensure that the “other side's” textbooks are not fostering the spirit of hatred.¹⁴

Other writers have addressed themes similar to those raised by Kul'- chyts'kyi. Some recent problems were put into perspective by writer Kost' Bondarenko in the spring of 2002. Having noted the recognition of the rights of members of the SS Division “Halychyna” as equal to those of veterans of the Great Patriotic War by the Ivano-Frankivs'k city council, he observes that in a country in which no civil peace or consensus had been reached, local de­cisions such as this one would stir public opinion long after the last veteran of the Second World War rests in peace. He anticipates that the next stage will be a struggle over tombs and monuments. The key fact, he states, is that the overwhelming majority of the population “is absolutely historically illiterate.” Worst of all, people are unwilling to fill in the gaps of their ignorance about the past, or even correct their misconceptions. Some are taking the side of the “exclusively correct” Soviet interpretation, recognizing the Red Army and CPSU as true heroes and condemning all those who stood on the other side of the barricade as traitors, enemies, and criminals. Others study history from textbooks published in the Diaspora and are interpreting everything linked to the Soviet Union as negative, and all that was directed against the Communist regime as positive. He cites a small group of intellectuals that has approved a recent attempt at a new evaluation of the past by L'viv historian Yaroslav Hrytsak. But they are a small minority since most of the population prefers easier reading.¹⁵

In October 2003, the newspaper Den' introduced in its weekly digest a dis­cussion forum entitled “How to make the past your own. History as taught in schools: time to decide” compiled by writers from different parts of Ukraine and featuring several well-known Ukrainian historians. The premise for the debate was that the creation of a civil society in Ukraine that is founded on the basis of democracy and a market economy requires the proper education of community members in the history of their national past. This is partly in order not to repeat the same mistakes but also because members of society must recognize the significance of acquiring a free society and how much it is needed, as demonstrated “by the tragic and controversial history of their own country.” The premise seems somewhat illogical from the perspective of the approach to history, in that if past history has already been pronounced “tragic” and “controversial” then to some extent the task of the historians has already been decided for them. In fairness, however, this does not necessarily denote adherence to what might be termed the Vol'vach school of thought cited above. Several authors from this discussion merit citation, as their com­ments are also relevant to the current volume and the reasons that lie behind it. One of the contributors is Professor Valery Stepankov, Chair of the De­partment of World History at Kamyanets’-Podil’s’kyi State University. He points out that on television and radio, and in newspapers the following rhe­torical question is being posed constantly: “Are our children and grandchil­dren taught the true history of Ukraine? Isn't this history falsified to fit the new ideological dogmas?” Much depends, Stepankov writes, on the quality of textbooks and the competency of the teaching staff. Regarding the former, authors had to write in very restricted conditions, when all facets of instruc­tion were under the sway of the Great Russian conception of Ukrainian his­tory, which brought about gross distortions and the lack of any real Ukrainian version. Thus Ukrainian writers first had to determine the scholarly inheri­tance of Ukraine and then start writing new textbooks. Now it is necessary to go through these new books and select the best ones, while at the same time avoid the writing of any textbooks jointly with scholars from neighboring countries, as this would result in a version of history that conforms only to the views of foreigners.¹⁶

The situation, however, has been exceptionally difficult in Ukrainian schools. A history teacher from an elementary school in Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine points out that the curricula have been extremely inadequate and stu­dents “are under a senseless academic burden.” There are no teaching aids, such as maps or charts featuring the history of Ukraine, and those that do ex­ist are prohibitively expensive. Schools lack a sufficient supply of textbooks, and no one can find information about the Ukrainian hetmans or books about “Ukrainian feats of arms” during the Second World War. The teachers them­selves are part of the problem according to Taras Honcharuk, Chair of Ukrainian History at the Odesa National University. Only some 20% of graduates of his department become teachers, and as a result history is being taught by retired army officers or people well beyond pensionable age. These people have not studied Ukrainian history and know little about it, so their focus is on world history. This situation is occurring during a time when the supply of textbooks on the history of Ukraine is “excellent.” On this topic, Kul'chyts'kyi notes, “we haven't been wasting time.” The recent textbooks are an example of how far Ukraine has come in the teaching of a national history. Today's books are shorter than in the past, and Soviet stereotypes have been removed. All these new books are richly illustrated and have maps. Kul'- chyts'kyi comments that for the past decade he has participated in a Ukrain­ian-Polish commission to upgrade school history and geography textbooks, which has enabled him to compare the situation in Ukraine to that in Poland. Even though the Poles have a reputation for the quality of their books, the Ukrainians today—in his view—have caught up. Notably, in passing, Kul'- chyts'kyi comments that the history of the twentieth century in Ukraine needs to be learned “in greater depth than the recent past.”¹⁷ While the statement may reflect a personal bias, it adds credence to the view that the formation of a national history is based on the criterion of a tragic and “genocidal” past in the twentieth century.

The final comments came from Professor Volodymyr Panchenko, Vice­President of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University. He remarks on the dangers of not knowing one's own history and advances what he calls a paradoxical fact, namely that the Russification of Ukrainian history is being carried out by Ukrainians, as exemplified by the closure of Ukrainian-language schools in Donets'k and Dnipropetrovs'k. He complains about the limited use of the Ukrainian language in literature, films, and television, which he refers to as a “suicidal act.” It is essential, in his view, through the younger genera­tion, to avoid becoming a people without a memory—but in order to reach such a situation, much will depend on teachers of history. They in turn, will be reliant on adequate textbooks and reference materials. He provides a warning about two very different tendencies that have been occurring in the Ukrainian case. The first concerns what he calls “naive myths” with reference to Ukrain­ian history, and figuratively speaking can be illustrated by the efforts “to prove that Jesus Christ was Ukrainian.” On the other hand, there is the more tradi­tional tendency to examine the history of Ukraine from a foreign, i.e., Russian point of view. This may be applied to the history of Kyivan Rus', and the fact that in a textbook about Tsar Aleksandr II, one cannot find a mention of the Ems Ukaz prohibiting the use of the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian values, he says, are not the same as Russian ones, and there is a great demand for new literature, particularly works on popular history which should be promoted, including on the pages of Den' and in other formats.¹⁸

Some comments can be made about new historical writings. First, the writ­ers are to some extent stating the obvious when they reject the old traditional formats in which, essentially, Ukraine in the Soviet period did not have its own history. However, no distinction is made between Soviet and Russian writing, or between, for example, the writing of Soviet history and that of Rus­sian history. Are they the same? Or was the history of Russia submerged too, in which case the role of Russians in Ukraine's story might need revising? Second, Panchenko seems to make a vital point when he remarks that one does not need to prove that Jesus Christ was Ukrainian. In other words, one cannot glorify the past. One might add a third point, which is the modern tendency to regard the past unequivocally as an era of both glory and suffer­ing: with Ukrainians as the perennial victims and Russians, Poles, or Germans as the persecutors. Most often it is the Russians who are placed in this posi­tion. Such a tendency (though not with Ukrainians as victims) is particularly marked in Soviet works and—paradoxically—writings of Ukrainians in the West. It may also take other formats. Thus in the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Detroit an entire room is taken up with an exhibit about the persecution of Ukrainians under Soviet rule, evidently with the assistance of historians from Ukraine. The same exhibit was then transferred to Ukraine and can be found today in Kharkiv and the historical museums of other cities. However, it is hardly an accurate reflection of the past because history cannot be written in this way. Why has this situation occurred, and why must Ukrainian history necessarily be written from the perspective of victims? Is it a result merely of the lack of statehood? It could be argued, and to some extent this monograph is a reflection of this tendency, that with the end of the Soviet period, Ukrain­ian historians lacked guidelines to construct a new history that included the main and tumultuous events of the 20th century. Until very recent times there had been no opportunity to examine many of these events. Even many occur­rences during the Stalin period only came under review during the period of Gorbachev's leadership of the USSR. The result—and it is a very obvious point—was the magnification of the works of those writing Ukrainian history in the West, and particularly those historians, writers, politicians, or polemi­cists who were of Ukrainian background. What did the “Diaspora” think?