NEWS AND VIEWS: Why Ukrainian studies? (05/23/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Why Ukrainian studies?

Following is the text of remarks by Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky, chair of the organizing committee for Friends of Columbia University Ukrainian Studies II (FOCUUS II), delivered in Columbia University's Low Library Rotunda at the May 8 gala banquet attended by diplomats, scholars and the public.

by Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky

In 1991 President George Bush traveled to Kyiv to tell Ukrainians in his now infamous "Chicken Kiev" speech that they should avoid "suicidal nationalism" and, thus, be wary of seeking independence. What was stunning about that speech was not so much its moral cynicism - after all, would anyone have been misguided enough to travel to Jerusalem in 1948 to tell the Jews that they should avoid a purportedly suicidal Zionism and, therefore, an independent Jewish state? - but the extraordinary level of historical ignorance that underlay it conclusions.

Did anyone associated with writing or approving the Chicken Kiev speech have any inkling whatsoever about the Holodomor, the Famine of 1932-1933? Of the destruction of all Ukrainian religious, political, scientific and cultural institutions and the persons who made those institutions up? Of the Soviet regime's war against any vestiges of normal Ukrainian life? Or that even Ukrainian folk singers, such as Volodymyr Ivasiuk, and Ukrainian poets, such as Vasyl Stus, were being killed as late as 1979 and 1986, respectively, merely for writing patriotic Ukrainian verse?

To understand how something like the Chicken Kiev speech could have come about, it is helpful to go back to August 1948, when the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department prepared a top secret memorandum titled "US Objectives With Respect to Russia." Part of this memo was titled "Partition vs National Unity," and the memo posed the following question:

"First of all, would it be our desire, [...] that the present territories of the Soviet Union remain united under a single regime or that they be partitioned? And if they are to remain united, at least to a large extent, then what degree of federalism should be observed in a future Russian government? What about the major minority groups, in particular the [sic] Ukraine?"

Let me now read some excerpts of the State Department analysis that followed:

"The Ukrainians are the most advanced of the peoples who have been under Russian rule in modern times. They have generally resented Russian domination; and their nationalistic organizations have been active and vocal abroad. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that they should be freed, at least, from Russian rule and permitted to set themselves up as an independent state.

"We would do well to beware of this conclusion. Its very simplicity condemns it in terms of eastern European realities.

"It is true that the Ukrainians have been unhappy under Russian rule and that something should be done to protect their position in the future. But there are certain basic facts which must not be lost sight of. While the Ukrainians have been an important and specific element in the Russian Empire, they have shown no signs of being a 'nation' capable of bearing successfully the responsibilities of independence in the face of Great Russian opposition. The Ukraine is not a clearly defined ethnical or geographical concept. In general the Ukrainian population, made up originally in large measure out of refugees from Russian or Polish despotism, shades off imperceptibly into the Russian or Polish nationalities. There is no clear dividing line between Russia and the Ukraine, and it would be impossible to establish one. The cities in Ukrainian territory have been predominantly Russian and Jewish. The real basis of 'Ukrainianism' is the feeling of 'difference' produced by a specific peasant dialect and by minor differences of custom and folklore throughout the country districts. The political agitation on the surface is largely the work of a few romantic intellectuals, who have little concept of the responsibilities of government. ...

"Furthermore, the people who speak the Ukrainian dialect have been split, like those who speak the White Russian [Byelorussian] dialect by a division which in eastern Europe has always been the real mark of nationality: namely, religion.

"Finally, we cannot be indifferent to the feelings of the Great Russians themselves. They were the strongest national element in the Russian Empire, as they are now in the Soviet Union. They will continue to be the strongest national element in that general area, under any status. Any long-term policy must be based on their acceptance and cooperation. The Ukrainian territory is as much a part of their national heritage as the Middle West is of ours. . . .

"[The Ukrainians] are too close to the Russians to be able to set themselves up successfully as something wholly different. For better or for worse, they will have to work out their destiny in some sort of special relationship to the Great Russian people.

"It seems clear that this relationship can be at best a federal one, under which the Ukraine would enjoy a considerable measure of political and cultural autonomy but would not be economically or militarily independent. Such a relationship would be entirely just to the Great Russians themselves. It would seem, therefore, to be along these lines that U.S. objectives with respect to the Ukraine should be framed."

It is, of course, touching that our government thought that supporting Russian hegemony was "just," or that Ukrainians should cheerfully ignore what the government in Moscow had done to them in the 1930s and 1940s, or that they should cheerfully accept ongoing cultural genocide. But let's focus on factual matters. The State Department had a lot of very smart people working for it in 1948, as, of course, it does now. How could they have gotten so many factual things so wrong?

A leading British historian writing a half century later suggested something that may serve as one possible explanation for this:

"Ukrainian history is often misunderstood simply because Western readers have never learned the basic 'where and when' of the context. Few people know, for example, that Ukraine first gained its modern independence in 1918, or that, at earlier stages, important parts of it had variously belonged to Poland, to Austria, to Romania, or to Czechoslovakia. Thanks to the preponderance of Russian-sourced information about Eastern Europe, it is often assumed quite inaccurately that Ukraine is basically a province of Russia, that its capital, Kyiv, has always been Russian, and that Ukrainians are just a rather peculiar sort of Russians. The 10 years that have passed since the USSR collapsed and Ukraine recovered its independence have been all too short to counteract the preceding decades, not to say centuries, of propaganda and misinformation." (Prof. Norman Davies, University of London and Oxford University, in his foreword to "Searching for Place" by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, 2000.)

Let's now return to our initial question, Why Ukrainian studies?

There are many answers to this question, let me suggest but three:

First, Ukraine is a country of almost 50 million people; any place that large requires academic attention, study and analysis.
Second, we Americans appear just now to be waking up to the realization, in connection with our war in Iraq, that societies that have endured years of highly repressive, totalitarian regimes that engaged in mass murder afterwards manifest profound atomization and various other social and political distortions. This is also not something that most folks who studied the Soviet Union or now study post-Soviet countries seem adequately to have understood and appreciated, so there now seems little awareness that perhaps something important is reflected by the fact that whereas Russia is happily ruled by a career KGB officer, 60 percent of its population thinks Lenin was a great leader, 45 percent of its population thinks Stalin was a great leader, and 30 percent of the Russian population would vote for Stalin if he were running for office, in Ukraine, by contrast, and despite all of the official and media hanky-panky directed at undermining his candidacy, for the last two years a genuine democrat has continued to lead in Ukraine's presidential polls. Perhaps, for purposes of trying to understand the world better and for purposes of informed policy development, we need to try and understand what is going on here and why.
Third, ignorance is not bliss. The United States is, after all, a superpower: our actions simply cannot afford to be based on misinformation and disinformation about the Ukrainian historical experience and Ukraine's language, culture and so on. Happily, the simple fact of Ukraine's independence has begun to make a difference. Also, luckily, some of the State Department personnel assigned to Ukraine since independence, such as our honored keynote speaker this evening, [former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual] have been unusually thoughtful, perceptive and wise in their grasp of certain Ukrainian realities. But it is not our government in Washington or institutions such as The New York Times that give birth to the people who then run that government or pretend to come to grips with what really happened in Ukraine in 1932-1933 - they are all educated at universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and others. That is why each of you who is here this evening, and all of those who may not be here but who have contributed to Friends of Columbia University Ukrainian Studies, should be so proud. For you are supporting the expansion and development of accurate information and knowledge about Ukraine at one of the premiere institutions of higher learning in the world. And, by doing so, you are performing a very important public service both for the United States and for Ukraine. I therefore commend you, and I congratulate you all on your wisdom and foresight in supporting this campaign to benefit Ukrainian Studies at Columbia.

| Home Page |