FACES AND PLACES: Ukraine's cultural divide (11/25/01)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Ukraine's cultural divide

One doesn't have to visit Ukraine often before one realizes that "their Ukraine" is different from "our Ukraine."

It's bad enough in western Ukraine where at least some people speak Ukrainian. In eastern Ukraine, it's often difficult to find anyone who will speak the official language, even if they're fluent.

We were brought up with a romanticized version of Ukraine. Ukrainians, we wanted to believe, were God-fearing, hard-working, honest people yearning to be free. We were convinced that once Ukrainians were in command of their national destiny, our people would flourish.

Scum like Ukraine's former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, sitting today in a California jail accused of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and sundry other crimes, were unthinkable.

Those of us who were born or raised in North America were taught to revere our Western traditions and values. We wanted to share our way of life with the world, but especially with Ukraine.

The very idea that a president of an independent Ukraine could be implicated in extortion, contract murders, lies, theft of state property and a melange of other violations of presidential power, was beyond our imagination.

That learning and speaking Ukrainian in "their Ukraine" is not a priority shocks us. So does their cynical indifference to the rule of law, free enterprise, private property, a transparent system of education and respect for rights guaranteed by their constitution.

While all of this hurts, what rankles many of us even more is the attitude that we in "our Ukraine" are philistines, provincial, woefully behind the times. Ukrainians tell us that we read, write and speak a brand of Ukrainian that is obsolete. Our songs and dances are quaint at best, retrograde at worst. We don't understand their mentality, their reticence to become involved, their lack of enthusiasm, because we didn't live under Soviet rule for 40 or more years. Quite simply, we haven't walked in their shoes. "Our way" is not "their way."

Add to this mix the perception Ukrainians have of an America predicated on hubris, moral decadence and materialism, and we can appreciate their reticence to adopt "our way."

While some of our differences can be attributed to the Soviet legacy - as well as to a misreading of what the American way truly offers - the cultural divide that exists between "them" and "us" has deeper historical roots. It is, suggests Prof. Samuel P. Huntington, a conflict that has been evolving for centuries.

In his 1996 book "The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order," Dr. Huntington, a Harvard professor and director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, predicted that: "The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic (Chinese) assertiveness." The outcome of such a conflict is unclear. "Will the global institutions, the distribution of power, and the politics and economies of nations in the 21st century primarily reflect Western values and interests," asks Dr. Huntington, "or will they be shaped primarily by those of Islam and China?"

Given world events since the fall of the USSR - China's disdain for religious rights combined with a bullying attitude towards other countries, the Islamic world's persecution of Christians and Jews, but especially the September 11 attack on our civilization by Islamic terrorists - Dr. Huntington's predictions are almost surreal in their prescience.

The central theme of Dr. Huntington's book is that "culture and cultural identities are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration and conflict in the post-Cold War world." In this world, "The most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question people can face: Who are we?"

Dr. Huntington divides the world into "the West and the rest." For him, Europe's eastern boundary begins along the eastern borders of Finland and the Baltic countries, continues south through Belarus and Ukraine (separating the Uniate west from the Orthodox east) and ends up dividing Catholic Croatia from Orthodox Serbia.

"Ukraine," writes Dr. Huntington, "is a cleft country with two distinct cultures. The civilizational fault line between the west and Orthodoxy runs through its heart and has done so for centuries." This split emerged again during the 1994 elections when Leonid Kravchuk, who presented himself as a Ukrainian patriot, carried the 13 western provinces of Ukraine, while Leonid Kuchma, who took Ukrainian speech lessons during the campaign and preached closer ties to Russia, won the 13 eastern provinces.

Is there a possibility that western Ukraine will declare its independence and secede from eastern Ukraine? Such a republic could be viable if the West provided strong assistance but, as Dr. Huntington points out, such support is "likely to be forthcoming only if relations between the West and Russia deteriorate," an unlikely scenario if President George W. Bush's current barbecue diplomacy with President Vladimir Putin evolves into a meaningful geopolitical relationship.

A more likely scenario "is that Ukraine will remain united, remain cleft, remain independent and generally cooperate with Russia." This, at least, is what Dr. Huntington believes.

In approximately four months Ukrainian voters will go to the polls to elect a new Parliament. Viktor Yuschenko has cobbled together a coalition of nationalist-oriented political parties - appropriately called Our Ukraine - which appears to be developing a coherent national focus.

Come March, will Ukrainian voters vote for the West or the rest? Regardless of the vote, I believe that the cultural fog that separates "our Ukraine" from "their Ukraine" will remain for the foreseeable future. The fog will lift occasionally in western Ukraine, revealing a rainbow on the horizon; in the far reaches of eastern Ukraine, however, where the breath of the Russian Orthodox bear is veritable and persistent, the fog will prevail. It's time we in "our Ukraine" realized that "their Ukraine" is, well, their Ukraine. And there is precious little we can do about it.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com.

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