FACES AND PLACES: Kaplan meets Taras Bulba (04/20/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Kaplan meets Taras Bulba

In 1990 there were calamitous warnings and much hand-wringing by Jewish leaders concerning the "dangers" inherent in Ukrainian independence. Executives of the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish entities sincerely believed that, once Ukraine was independent, Jews would become bloody victims of nationwide pogroms. Didn't happen.

Today in Ukraine, synagogues are everywhere, Jewish universities, Jewish cultural organizations and Jewish millionaires are thriving and contributing in their own way to the building of the Ukrainian nation-state.

Just about the time I believe Ukrainian-Jewish relations are improving, however, I get a wake-up call. My complacency is shattered and I am reminded that somewhere, somehow, some Jewish American will bend over backwards to open old wounds.

Such is the case with the publication of an article titled "Euphorias of Hatred" by Robert Kaplan, which appeared in the May 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Mr. Kaplan takes on "Taras Bulba" by Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol) "to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in the Middle East and Central Asia." Forget about Hollywood and Yul Bryner's and Tony Curtis, romantic depiction of the Zaporozhian Kozaks. Mr. Kaplan believes that Ukrainian Kozaks represent the kind of banal evil that exists in the world today. "For the Dnieper Cossacks in Taras Bulba," he writes, "violence is a way of life, an expression of joy and belief, unlinked to any strategic or tactical necessity."

Wow! Is this what Hohol really wrote in his masterpiece? Not in my copy of his novelette. Taras Bulba was "an indefatigable soul" who counted himself a rightful defender of the Orthodox faith," wrote the Ukrainian-born Hohol. "He laid down the rule that the saber was to be drawn on three occasions - when the Polish tax-collectors did not pay due respect to the Kozak elders and stood with covered heads in their presence; when the Orthodox faith was abused or an ancestral custom violated; and lastly, when the foes were Musulman or Turk, against whom he considered it justifiable under any circumstances to take up arms for the glory of Christendom."

Not exactly examples to be cited in a course on anger management, but certainly rational actions given the circumstances. Poles bled Ukraine of its treasure and disrespected Orthodoxy, while Tatars and Turks ravaged Ukraine, raped its women and enslaved its youth. Mr. Kaplan rejects all of this and writes: "In such a world the notion of a rational 'balance of power' with the Catholic Poles or the Islamic Tatars is not a pragmatic goal, but a corrupting and effeminate conceit." Right. An example of pragmatism, I suppose, is the rational balance of power that currently exists between Israelis and Palestinians.

The rada (council) was invented by the Zaporozhian Host, the only true democracy in that part of the world at the time. "I am but a slave of your will," a "Koshovyi" tells the assembled Kozaks in "Taras Bulba." "Everyone knows and the Holy Writ says so, that the voice of the people is the voice of God." Mr. Kaplan ignores this fact and writes: "Gogol's Cossacks represent the ultimate mob, fueled by primitive belief systems that sustain what national-security analyst Ralph Peters has called 'euphorias of hate.' "

Euphorias of hate? How about the centuries-old Ukrainophobia of those Jews who insist on perpetuating Jewish-Ukrainian antipathy? Prosecutors, in both the Eichmann and the Demjanjuk trials, for example introduced their case with a review of the alleged "crimes" of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Symon Petliura. Ask any 10 college graduates in the United States who Khmelnytsky was and the answer will likely be "huh?" Ask the same question of any 10 Jewish American college graduates and most will answer "Jew-hater," "pogromist." Ditto for Petliura. Where do you suppose Jewish youth learn their history?

"Taras Bulba" is instructive, Mr. Kaplan insists, because Hohol wrote of a "savage age when man's whole life seemed to be steeped in violence and blood and his heart was so hardened that he felt no pity." Was Hohol describing the Kozak Host as Mr. Kaplan suggests? Hardly. He was writing about the Poles who had come to joyfully watch and celebrate the execution of Ostap Bulba, who was broken on the rack and then beheaded.

Did Hohol represent the Zaporozhian Kozaks as mindless, drunken, bloodthirsty barbarians who loved to pillage and burn for the sheer joy of it, as Mr. Kaplan would have us believe? Not in my book. In the last chapter of "Taras Bulba," the entire Ukrainian nation rallies in support of the Kozaks. The people's patience was at an end, Hohol writes. "It had arisen to avenge the violation of its rights; the shameful humiliation of its customs; the profanation of the faith of its fathers and its holy rites, the desecration of its churches, the Papal Union; the outrages of foreign lords; its oppression; the disgraceful dominion of Jewry on Christian soil - all that had so long nourished and embittered the stern hatred of Kozaks."

In this day and age, such sentiments are troubling to be sure. It is unfortunate that the contemporaneous Mohyla Academy had no deans of diversity to counsel the Kozaks to be more accepting and sensitive, and less judgmental of their neighbors so they could channel their aggression more appropriately.

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

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