International congresses in Scandinavia reveal trends in academia
by Dr. Frank Sysyn
PART I
TORONTO - International acadamic congresses fulfill a major role in the exchange and reinforcement of information even in an age in which advances in transportation and communication have made continuous international scholarly contacts easier. They serve as good measures of the state of the field with the five-year intervals between congresses being sufficient time to register changes of topics and generations.
For diaspora Ukrainians congresses such as those of the historians, Slavicists and Soviet studies specialists long constituted an opportunity and an obligation to remind the world of Ukraine and Ukrainian studies, often in confrontations with Soviet delegations. Thus, controversies such as that between Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky and Soviet scholars at the historical congress in Vienna in 1965 and Oleksandr Bilodid's attacks with the connivance of Roman Jakobson to prevent George Shevelov's participation in the Slavists' congress in Sofia in 1963 took on legendary proportions. If even at the national association meetings, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Ukrainian scholarly organizations such as the Shevchenko Scientific Society and specialists in Ukrainian studies felt obliged to sponsor panels on Ukrainian topics so that Ukraine would not disappear from the horizon, the obligation was the all the greater at the international associations, which also represented an opportunity, however limited, to contact scholars in Ukraine, and to remind the specialists from the Soviet bloc that opinions other than theirs existed on Ukrainian issues.
This summer the Sixth World Congress for Central and East European Studies and the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences met in geographic and chronological proximity, in Tampere, Finland, and Oslo, Norway, affording scholars the opportunity to attend both. They also occurred a decade after the declaration of Ukrainian sovereignty in 1990 and nine years since the renewal of its independence. The Ukrainian national revival of the late 1980s and early 1990s produced an outpouring of scholarship in Ukraine that was undertaken with full access to the scholarly literature and in conditions of freedom of inquiry. The break-up of the Soviet Union and the birth of independent Ukraine resulted in new attention in the West to nationality issues and Ukrainian studies.
Regrettably, the economic crisis in Ukraine and the failure of the Ukrainian state to provide conducive conditions for publishing and scholarship have undermined this revival. At the same time, the weak position of Ukrainian language and culture in Ukraine has compromised the rationale for Ukrainian language and cultural studies in the West. Still, international interest and research on Ukraine are substantially greater than they were 20 years ago, especially on contemporary problems.
International conference in Finland
In 1974 the International Committee for Soviet and East European Studies convened an international congress in Banff, Alberta, an event very much the product of the area studies boom in the West after World War II that was stimulated by the Cold War. If the third congress held in Washington in 1985 had only unofficial representatives from the East, by the fourth congress in Harrowgate, England, in 1990, the political transformation in the region included the participation of scholars from every country in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The fifth congress in Warsaw could even be held in the region studied.
This year's congress, the sixth, held in Tampere, Finland, July 28-August 3, in some way recognized that country's great commitment to Russian and East European studies, which has been accompanied by increased funding of the field. Although this interest primarily relates to Finland's immense neighbor, Russia, it involves having had Ukrainian history taught in Finland and research on Ukraine by Finnish scholars.
In all, 1,664 participants pre-registered for the Tampere congress, including 449 from Russia, 410 from Finland, 221 from the United States, 37 each from Canada and Poland, and 35 from Ukraine. The size of the Ukrainian representation was respectable, but did not compare with the massive Russian delegation. Funds were available for the travel of scholars from those Eastern European countries in economic distress, but some Ukrainian participants complained of the lack of dissemination of information by their institutes in Ukraine.
Sessions on Ukraine
The conference languages were English, French and Russian, but French was rarely used. In many ways there were two conferences based on the English-Russian language divide. The participants from Ukraine also divided on the language issue, with the Russian deliverers more numerous. Except for the plenary session, 31 parallel panels were held during each session.
Among the 19 panels announced on Ukraine or in which Ukraine figured in the title were: "The Idea of Ukraine in the 20th Century," "The Ukrainian Diaspora's Contribution to the Study of Ukraine," "Dealing with National Identity in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Georgian Textbooks for History and Civics," "National History and National Mythology: The Case of Ukraine," "Education in Ukraine: Traditions and Innovation" (title in Russian), "Civil-Military Relations in Ukraine" (all papers in Russian), "Westernization of Ukraine," "Ukraine on the Threshold of the 21st Century," "Russian and Ukrainian Relations: Historical Perspectives," "Kievan Rus'," "Ethnocultural Groups in Ukraine and the Black Sea Region," "Linguistic Rights of Ukrainian Minorities in Neighboring Slavonic Countries" and "Domestic Implications of NATO and EU Expansion in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova."
Papers on Ukraine also were delivered in other sessions and in the individual papers sessions. Although many panels were thematic or problematic, it still must be pointed out that the 19 panels with Ukraine in the title or on a Ukrainian topic were only about 4 percent of the total.
Interest in the Ukrainian sessions was relatively high in contrast to the days before Ukrainian independence, when these sessions were frequently held by and for diaspora Ukrainians. It was heartening to see that a considerable number of papers on Ukrainian topics were delivered by scholars neither from Ukraine nor from the Ukrainian diaspora. The session organized by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) and the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research on "National History and National Mythology" drew a large audience of European academics. The Shevchenko Scientific Society organized two panels and a roundtable and a social gathering for participants from the diaspora and Ukraine.
The presence of the heads of scholarly institutions dealing with Ukraine (the CIUS, the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research, the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, the Ukrainian Free University, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, and the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto) strengthened the Ukrainian presence at the congress, though heads of institutions in Ukraine were not in attendance, with one exception being the rector of the Lviv Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Theological Academy. A considerable number of speakers announced were from the Open International University of Human Development "Ukraine" and the Kharkiv Military University.
World events shape area studies
It was the Soviet and Communist triumphs at the end of World War II that profoundly shaped what was once the field of Soviet and Eastern European studies. Furthermore, the Iron Curtain shaped the very designation of East Europe. As a result the very Russian imperial city of Helsinki, so close to St. Petersburg/Leningrad, belonged to "Western Europe," while the archetypical Central European capital, Prague, belonged to "Eastern Europe." Regional studies of the time stretched to the Soviet borders so that Uzbek and Tajik were supported by the same U.S. federal programs that funded Polish and Slovenian. Political science and economic systems countermanded history and culture in determining how scholarship was organized.
With the fall of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the entire field of Soviet and East European studies has undergone crises in designation and content. The well-known journal Soviet Studies became Europe-Asia Studies and Religions in Communist Lands was renamed Religion, State and Society. In a similar manner, in 1993 the International Committee for Soviet and East European Studies became the International Committee for Central and East European Studies.
Looking at this year's conference program, one could see that scholars from the core of Central Europe seem to have pulled away from regional studies, while topics on Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan still seem to be part of "Central and Eastern Europe."
As the old Soviet sphere fades into history, the regional grouping it created will no longer be a coherent field of study. In the same way, the sources of funding and regional institutes that once united historical linguists, economists and philosophers as area specialists will be under seige. In general, regional studies as a field has been in question everywhere, but the former Soviet-controlled region had less coherence than most.
PART I
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 17, 2000, No. 38, Vol. LXVIII
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