“Explosive past”

Anne Applebaum, a well-known public figure, political journalist, member of the editorial board of The Washington Post, and the wife of Poland’s Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, is in Ukraine for the second time. She first visited Ukraine in the early 1990s, when she was working on her first book Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe. The book was the result of her travels through Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus immediately after these countries gained their independence.

This time Ms. Applebaum came to Kyiv to launch her second book, GULAG: a History, published by the Kyiv Mohyla Academy publishing house with support from the US Embassy. In 2004 the author was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the main US prize for excellence in journalism and literature. Translated into more than 20 languages, GULAG became a bestseller in Europe and the US.

Many experts, as well as the researcher herself, note that this work on the history of the enormous system of Soviet prison camps is mostly oriented to the Western reader. The distinguished Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky says that Applebaum’s book is no less valuable for Ukrainian academics because it includes unique, detailed reminiscences of camp inmates as well as rare archival materials. This book will not leave anyone indifferent. Full of genuine and revealing history, it is explosive because it “detonates” awareness. Based on documents and oral reminiscences of victims of Soviet repressions, the book provides information on deportations, camp revolts, and the overall strategy of survival, and explains why the West, hidden behind the Cold War-era Iron Curtain, kept silent about the brutality of Soviet rule.

The Applebaum book launch at Ukraine House was attended by Kateryna Yushchenko and Sandra Saakashvili, the wife of the Georgian leader, who was in Kyiv to attend the closing ceremonies for the Year of Georgia in Ukraine. Despite Ms. Applebaum’s tight schedule, which included two meetings with President Yushchenko in three days, the American writer also met with journalists from The Day.

“PEOPLE WERE TREATED LIKE COGS IN A MACHINE”

“You worked in the GULAG archives. Not all researchers have been able to do this. What were your first impressions when you began handling these documents?”

“Those of you who worked in archives know that the documents themselves at first appearance look like they might be quite a bore. It’s not clear if there is anything interesting in them. The language is very bureaucratic, the paper is quite bad, the print is very small. You have to read quite a lot of documents before you understand that there are certain patterns and forms. For example, there was a certain form by which Moscow wrote to the camps and the camps wrote to Moscow. After a while you learn that the documents — at least these internal documents — are actually very honest. The Center in Moscow had to know how much food was needed in such and such camps, and a camp had to tell Moscow how many, say, pieces of iron bar they were sending back to Moscow. And of course, as in any other sphere of the Soviet economy, both sides had reasons to lie about these numbers. Not always but from time to time. But, nevertheless, you realize that, for example, it was very bad for camp commanders if too many of their prisoners were dying. They needed certain number of people to dig the coal or whatever. So they would write to Moscow complaining, ‘We don’t have enough food; we need more.’ They never treat the prisoners as human beings in their letters; the prisoners are part of the production process. You come across angry letters: too many prisoners here are sick; we need some extra supplies.

Therefore, as you read the archives you find out a lot of information, more than people originally thought there would be. I came to feel that the archival documents were very useful and worth believing, if only because people who wrote them never thought they would be used.”

“How open are the Moscow archives? Did you have the feeling that there were many other materials behind the wall?”

“The personal files of people are not available. Only if you are a relative, you can have access to your relative’s file. The reports of the investigations and interrogation, — that is, what would be in these files, — are also unavailable. If you were interested in the fate of a particular person or a group of people who were imprisoned, you would need access to that which I didn’t have. The other thing I did not have was access to the file on the system of KGB informers in the camps.”

“PRO-SOVIET” SENTIMENTS ARE IN THE PAST

“What was the reaction to your book from Western readers? Can we hope that the West will now have a clearer picture of what went on in the Soviet Union?”

“I believe so. But don’t give me too much credit. There has been a change in Western perceptions of the Soviet history, but it’s not only because of me. There is a generational change among teachers of history and students of history in the United States, mostly because of access to the archives. In the past, there were two kinds of students of history. There were the people who studied official Soviet documents: newspapers, official publications, etc, and the others interviewed people who managed to escape. Among those was, for instance, Robert Conquest (renowned US diplomat, historian, and writer who authored The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow — Ed.). There was an ideological division between these two groups of people: one was Left and the other was Right. This is gone now. I know a lot of younger American and British historians of this period, whom I met in the course of doing this book. All of them agree in that access to the archives enabled you to write about this in a different way. You can be objective, and you can also tell horrible things. You don’t have to rely on one side or another. Generally speaking, whatever kind of sentimentalism there was in the West about Soviet Union, it is now really gone.

One of the things that changed opinions about the Soviet past is people’s observation of changes in Eastern Europe: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and in Ukraine.

My first book was partly about Ukraine. At the time it was so exotic and strange a country that people didn’t even know how to write book reviews on it. I had one television interview in a very provincial part of the United States in which they started to ask me to tell about the war in Ukraine. I realized that they thought my book was about the Balkans, because they didn’t know the difference.

It’s hard to say how much of that has changed, but Ukraine was on our television screens for weeks and weeks. In Washington it became very popular to talk about Ukraine; people wore orange scarves, etc.”

“Even now?”

“Not now, but at that time they did. So there is understanding of where Ukraine is and what it is. And, therefore, the understanding of what it was before has changed a lot. It is what you do here that has a huge impact on how the West perceives you and your history.”

“Do you notice any difference in the way your book is perceived in Europe and Russia, by Russian and Western scholars?”

“The book has not been published yet in Russia. Separate Russian historians associated with the Memorial organization have seen it and they like it. What the Russian historical establishment or the Russian public will say I don’t know. I can say that it was hard to publish in Russia because I couldn’t find a commercial publisher that wanted to do it. It is now published by an extremely good and smart little political institute which is doing it very well. I understand that they are spending a lot of time on the translation; they even go back to the archive so that they could use the original Russian quotations.

In Germany this subject made them very nervous because they are very careful about how they talk about their camps and they don’t want to talk too much about Russian camps for fear of an analogy with fascism.

What surprised me was that one of the countries that received the book very well was Sweden. Swedes have begun to think a lot about their past history. They didn’t ever challenge the Soviet Union. They were very small and very close. They begin to worry that, maybe, their neutrality in the Cold War was wrong. They have finally begun to look at the map. They are very close to Russia and so very concerned about things that happen in Russia, and obviously in Ukraine and the Baltic States. They finally realized that where they are isn’t really a part of Western Europe.

The other country that surprised me, though it probably shouldn’t, was Poland. I thought my book was written for the Western audience and people in Poland would notice this. It turns out that there is a younger generation there that doesn’t really know this story, while the older generation only knows it through Solzhenitsyn, and they also find the archives interesting. The book did well there, selling 80,000 copies, which is a lot.”

“Do you get letters from young people?”

“I often receive letters from students. There are instances when they say they hear for the first time about GULAG and thank me for the book. I know that universities use the book as a manual. I still continue giving lectures at many US universities.”

“UKRAINE HAS AN OPPORTUNITY NOT TO BE A SUCCESSOR OF THE USSR”

“James Mace, the well-known researcher of the Ukrainian Holodomor, diagnosed Ukrainian society as a post-genocidal one. Many experts agree with him, although others object. For example, Russia takes a different view of this problem: not all Russians seem to be aware of the criminal nature of Soviet power. Sweden, which you say has understood that its neutrality was erroneous, is an exception. Is the world community prepared to talk again about its moral responsibility for the fact that millions of people were being wiped out in the Soviet Union before its very eyes?”

“I don’t know what can be done here. When it became clear that Ukraine wanted to join the West, people suddenly became interested in it. If there was a serious movement in Ukraine, for example, to join NATO, people would be interested in it. The same is true in the sphere Ukrainian history. If you create an Institute of National Memory, if you publish good books that were worth translating... The Germans publish books all the time about the Holocaust and some of them have done very well in the West. So I think you have a lot of impact on how you and your history are perceived depending on what you do here.”

“What should we do with the fact that Russia is considered the official successor of the Soviet Union?”

“It means that Ukraine has an opportunity not to be a successor. Being a successor to the Soviet Union is a problem for Russia. It means that the Russians have this complex about needing to be an international superpower. I don’t know why they think it so good to be a superpower. There are a lot of rich and happy countries that are small, like Switzerland. Being involved in politics all over the world — here I am speaking as an American — creates all kinds of problems. For one, it makes people hate you. So you have a chance to avoid this and be a European country instead of an international country.”

“Do you think that Russia, as the successor of the USSR, should apologize to Ukraine for the Soviet regime’s crimes, first of all, the Holodomor? And should our state raise the question of compensation for the victims of Soviet crimes, like Lithuania did?”

“This is a hard question because actually it’s not only to Ukraine that Russia owes an apology as successor to the Soviet Union. In every single statistical list of any camp by far the largest ethnic group was Russians. The post-Soviet structures need to begin by understanding what they did to their own country. When that happens, it will be very easy for them to understand what they did to Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, or other countries. I think there should be compensation, even if symbolic. That is part of what would make the society whole again, what would make victims feel like they belong to this society. That’s true here and in Russia.”

“Do you think Russian society is also post-genocidal?”

“I am not sure I know what a post-genocidal society is. Maybe you can say this about the United States because of the Indians. But Russia is certainly a post-totalitarian society and the Russians need to come to terms with that. Not long ago, when I was at Yale making my speech, I was also invited to a special seminar for people in their thirties and forties who are doing something important in globalization around the world. I didn’t quite understand their interest to my book. I thought, ‘Why do they care about Russian history?’ And then I realized that every single person in that room were people from Chili, Argentina, France, Germany, Zimbabwe, China. All of them had in their country a similar problem about the past and how to deal with it. In Chile they are still dealing with this Pinochet dictatorship, in France they are still talking about Vichy, and in Australia they are talking about what they did to the aborigines. There are many ways to deal with such problem: some countries create truth commissions, where they have public discussions in their Congress or parliament about what happened, others have trials.”

“What do you think Ukrainians should do to make the West know more about the Holodomor of 1932-1933? This is very important because next year at the UN Ukraine will be raising the question of recognizing this tragedy as an act of genocide. Incidentally, this is by no means the first attempt. The last time discussions of this subject were blocked under pressure from Russia. More often than not, politics prevents people from understanding the tragic nature of events, so many countries chose not to support the declaration on recognizing the Holodomor as genocide out of fear of spoiling relations with Russia.”

“You obviously understand now why the UN does not like us (laughs). Unfortunately, the UN is not an ideal international government. It has certain groups of countries, each of which pursues a policy of its own. I don’t think it is the best place for solving this kind of problems. In my view, one should publish more books about the Holodomor and, naturally, organize museums on this subject and open research institutes to study these problems.”

“You have met many different people in the past few days. What is your impression of Ukrainian society?”

“I’ve been here for a few days only, and I find it difficult to speak about a country with a population of almost 50 million. All I can say is that very many changes have occurred since I traveled a little across Ukraine 10 or even 15 years ago. I feel, for example, that people are now more open, they even speak differently. Still, I am aware of some problems, such as all-pervading corruption. Regrettably, I can say nothing about public consciousness of the Ukrainians or their interest in history. But I’d like to note that I liked your president’s wife when I met her. She showed interest in the book GULAG: a History and, as it seemed to me, Viktor Yushchenko also takes interest in history. Incidentally, coming back to the changes that have taken place and the urgent problems you are facing now, I will say that Ukraine’s executive bodies of different levels are poorly fulfilling the tasks set by the president. I think this is the weakest point in your politics. I cannot say, either, that everything is good in the US, but if our president or Congress has made a decision, it will be fulfilled.”