I cannot say that there has been any prejudice toward me as a scholar,
researcher, or instructor. The intellectual atmosphere among social scientists
and political scientists has in general been characterized by tolerance
and a common path in search of understanding.
There have been so many serious projects not carried out. And now it
seems that the deaf do not hear, the blind not see, and stubbornly deny
the facts of repression in Ukraine during the communist period. However,
such denials are mostly grounded not on facts but are the products of manipulation
by certain political forces, by the consciousness and attitudes of people.
During the last eight years everything possible has been done of which
whole generations of researchers could only dream: researchers arrived
at and began to unravel such global questions as who we are, what happened
to us, why did it happen precisely to us, and where do we go from here.
I remember when in January 1990 I was asked to lecture in the Institute
of History before colleagues how the hall was gripped by a frightening
atmosphere. It was clear that the everyday working language was Russian,
and many of my Ukrainian colleagues had more problems with Ukrainian than
I did. I criticized the latest scheme of the history of the Ukrainian SSR
published a couple of months earlier in Komunist Ukrainy, the Central
Committee organ, and talked about issues that were either distorted or
left out - about the fate of national communism in the 1920s and thirties,
the Great Manmade Famine, repressions, and about Party policies toward
Ukrainians. At that time I did not intend to tell them, who were, after
all, witnesses no less than I, anything they did not know, for it was they
who had access to the primary sources but were forbidden to deal with such
topics. I simply analyzed the project worked out by fellows of the institute,
which paid much attention to the liquidation of illiteracy but none to
the repressed national revival of the 1920s or national communism, that
the plan mentioned the Cossacks and Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky along with
historian Dmytro Yavornytsky, but it did mention such figures as Mykola
Skrypnyk, Mykhailo Volobuyev, Oleksandr Shumsky, or Mykola Khvyliovyi.
My Ukrainian colleagues listened, bowed their heads, and said not a word
for or against what I had to say. That institute was so under control and
frightened even to the very end of the USSR, and the official reaction
was only that it had been a "very critical presentation." However, I had
mentioned one Soviet monograph on the Machine Tractor Stations published
in 1961, which in one chapter had provided a wealth of material about the
grain seizures that had in fact caused the Holodomor, as they call the
Famine of 1933. I mentioned the author's name, I. I. Slynko. After my talk
an old shaven-headed gentleman came up to me and said, "I'm Ivan Slynko."
He was happy that somebody remembered his work, about which everyone else
seemed to have forgotten. Of course, he could not write about the Famine
of 1932-1933, because officially there had been none. There was only the
"socialist reconstruction and technological transformation of agriculture."
But he had written everything he could.
In historical terms little time has passed. Ukrainian scholarship was
at first highly uncertain of itself and only later began to assume confidence
and find its voice. My bookshelves are already overburdened from the books
and reprints that have appeared. There is a whole flood daily of Ukrainian
scholarly materials. Students now have perhaps less than perfect but more
or less truthful textbooks. They can freely discuss various formerly banned,
topics of philosophy, historiosophy, religion, linguistics, and political
science. This is a major achievement, and I am proud to have taken part
in it as a former "bourgeois falsifier", "bearer of inhuman psychology",
and "patented lover of Ukraine", as I was once characterized in Soviet
publications, although my own research basically relied on those same publications.
Now I look at my students at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. They are young,
talented, educated, and self-assertive. Will they be able to find a place
in this sea of ignorance, total idiocy, drug addiction, hypocrisy, and
licentiousness? Or will they be strangled by economic problems and those
of everyday life? Or will they be broken by corruption? Will our young
Ukraine need their expertise, education, dreams, and efforts? Without doubt,
Ukrainian scholarship has done and is doing a great deal. But the impression
remains that the indubitable conclusions and material presented by such
serious scholars as Yuri Shapoval, Stanislav Kulchytsky, May Panchuk, Ivan
Bilas, Ihor Vynnychenko, Vasyl Marochko, et. al. interest only those
who already know such things. The Institutes of History, Literature, Philosophy,
the Congress of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia, the Ukraine Society, Union
of Writers, Memorial, Association of Independent Researchers of the Famine
Genocide, and suchlike, all conduct their various demonstrations, conferences,
press conferences, and presentations, but the practically same people always
take part. Few young people take interest, few new controversial ideas
are put forward, and little intellectual cross fertilization takes place
among serious politicians, cultural figures, and scholars. What does fails
to seep down to the people at large. I also often hear, immediately after
I say how I teach without any particular special right, how I am conducting
some policy or another, serving one interest or another, or in general
am asked what I am doing here or why I do not take the next plane to my
beautiful and affluent America that wants to conquer the world. I often
want to ask such "well-wishers" what happened to the hundreds of thousands
of displaced Ukrainians who went to America and still live there. Nobody
disputes their right to live and work there, to fall in love, and have
families.
In Kyiv my greatest impression is that when someone hears me speak Ukrainian
their eyes open wide and they say, "How well you speak Russian!" or "What's
the word for August (serpen)?" and still write "September" on my
ticket. One hears such pearls as "Talk in a human language" or "How long
have you been in Kyiv and still not learned culture," that is, speak Russian.
In the bazaar my wife asks in Ukrainian for something and hears, "How I
hate that swinish language." The Saturday before last, I went to the train
station to pick up an express letter and waited a good hour before hearing
on the intercom, "Speak Russian," and at last it was found. My Russian,
while considerably worse than my Ukrainian, is not all that bad even for
lack of use at home (my wife is from Western Ukraine where they do speak
Ukrainian), but one suspects that starting off in what is, after all, the
official language in this state, was the real reason I had to wait so long.
I have to admit that recently I was in the Ukrainian neighborhood of Toronto
and felt more in Ukraine than I often do on the streets of Kyiv.
All this is the difficult and heavy legacy of the past: being ashamed
of one's language and culture or always bowing and scraping before someone
more powerful or richer, be it Russians or the representatives of some
fund from America, Canada, or Europe. Other peoples also have their complicated
histories, but one must admit that in the twentieth century Ukraine went
through real hell, which can be called genocide. But other peoples try
to understand what really happened to them. In, say, the USA there has
been real injustice committed against Blacks, and it is hard to come to
terms with its legacy. The process is still incomplete, but today any impolite
word or incorrect behavior brings forth an immediate response from the
community and the law comes into play immediately. One of the most shameful
pages in American history relates to the Cherokees, one of the most advanced
tribes of the east coast, who in 1835 were forced to walk from their ancestral
lands in South Carolina and Georgia to what is now Oklahoma. They call
it the Trail of Tears, along which thousands perished of hunger, cold,
and disease. Some of my ancestors also walked that road. Today in Oklahoma
Indians still have many problems, but nobody raises a hand against them,
and their tragedy is the subject of scholarly research and a major sore
spot for politicians. In Ukraine as well many talk of the difficult legacy
of genocide, but real steps to defend the Ukrainian language and culture
are few. There are few Ukrainian-language newspaper, journals, and publishers
are de facto paralyzed. In universities teachers and students often
speak different languages; these are different intellectual worlds and
views of the world, which more and more go their separate ways in time
and space.
The sixty-fifth anniversary of Ukraine's Holodomor is a controversial
date. As early as 1927 Serhiy Yefremov wrote in his diaries about hundreds
of thousands of hungry in Kyiv, about the terrible lines for bread, about
over 200,000 Kyivans who had been denied the right to buy bread at all,
and about peasant unrest provoked by state grain seizures. But in 1932
hunger assumed the character of total destruction of Ukraine as a state
and Ukrainians as a nation. Thus, it is only right to now recall the millions
upon millions of innocent victims. They died with a single thought: will
the outside world know and say something? And will there be anyone to pray
for our souls? In truth, US President Franklin Roosevelt, with full knowledge
of the Holodomor (I myself published the documents and can attest to their
volume), recognized the Soviet government in November 1933 literally on
the heels of the Famine. But now there are candles lit in churches, and
the outside world is saying something. In this context US President Bill
Clinton's proclamation to the Ukrainian people about these long bygone
events is particularly important.
In justice, one has to admit that an American presidential statement
does not mean much: a day in memory of the victims of the Ukrainian Famine
or Holocaust or broccoli growers is usually ignored by one and all. And
President Clinton's proclamation in memoriam of Holodomor victims is not
the first such, but it is perhaps the best occasion to talk about what
happened.
I am by origin a typical American. My father was a railroad switchman.
Neither he nor my mother finished high school. But I went to university
and wanted to stay there. I studied Russian history. I studied Russian
history and went to graduate school. I was interested in Russian history
and culture. When it came time for me to write a doctoral dissertation
at the University of Michigan, my advisor, Prof. Roman Szporluk, began
to loan me Ukrainian books. I bought a dictionary and began to read. I
recall that my first book by Panas Fedenko, The Ukrainian Movement in
the Twentieth Century, took me a whole month to read. Slowly, my reading
picked up speed. I chose for my dissertation the theme of national communism
during the Ukrainization policy of the 1920s. The Vietnam War was still
going on, and the theme of national communism was pretty trendy. Of course,
there was officially no such thing in the USSR. Later my colleagues here
told me that the topic had been a forbidden one in Ukrainian history and
even dictionaries. My road to Ukraine was thus closed, and I sat in the
library reading microfilm. I do not know if in Ukraine somebody except
spies know of that specific pre-computer apparatus, but in American libraries
it is common. I read the journals of the period, one more or less complete
newspaper, Visti VUTsVK, the direct ancestor of Holos Ukrainy,
and began to understand what happened in Ukraine. I made acquaintance with
long-dead figures then absolutely unknown here: Georg Lapchynsky, Vasyl
Shakhrai, Oleksandr Shumsky, and Mykola Khvyliovyi. I began to understand
why precisely Ukraine was targeted for the worst Stalinist repression:
because it had more people than all the other non-Russian Soviet republics
put together and because it had tremendous experience in fighting for its
national liberation. For Ukraine the lessons of the Central Rada and Hetman
state had not been lost without a trace. Up to 1933 Soviet Ukraine had
a developed state organism which, albeit within the police-state framework
of the Soviet Union, fostered significant development of the Ukrainian
culture and spread the Ukrainian language both among the proletariat and
in the state administration. In order to transform the "complex entity,"
as Mykhailo Volobuyev had called the USSR, into the Stalinist empire, Ukraine
had to be broken. Public enemy number one for Stalin and his cohorts was
not the Ukrainian peasant or Ukrainian intellectual; it was Ukraine itself.
That is why in 1932-1933 Stalin made an undeclared war here, using all
the military, police, political, and economic forces he had available.
I defended and published my dissertation to an uneven reaction. I was
blamed for defending fascists and Nazi collaborators. I was told that the
famine had been caused by objective factors and that the terror had been
a result of mass hysteria, not some policy. The road Ukrainians trod from
deadly critical reviews of my work in the Western press to the President's
proclamation was not easy. Truth about the Famine was hard to bring to
the attention of the world community. The Ukrainian Diaspora did everything
possible and impossible to break the wall of silence on this issue and
make it an abject of scholarly research. Professor Omeljan Pritsak of Harvard
came to me in 1981 and said there was a project to study the Famine. I
was familiar with all the then accessible sources of the period and able
to research the theme. When I arrived at Harvard I was told that I would
do the research but the book would be written by Robert Conquest.
1983 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Holodomor, and the Ukrainian
community took action. Public meetings and demonstrations were held. One
organization, Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine headed by the late
Ihor Olshaniwsky, came up with the idea of creating a government commission
to study the Famine. Petitions were sent to Congress, and supporters there
were found. Finally Congress passed a bill to create the Ukraine Famine
Commission. I became Executive Director because it was felt that the view
of a non-Ukrainian was needed. Since the average Sovietologist knew that
Ukraine was more or less like Texas in Russia, if one of them had been
put in charge nothing would have come of it. Those who had experienced
the Famine were dying off. Its history had to be preserved. I had a small
staff: one collected eyewitness accounts, and I read the written sources
and wrote most of the commission's Report to Congress. After the
first two years we obtained an additional two in order to prepare for publication
our three volume Oral History Project containing the life histories
of 200 survivors. We understood that as a government document there would
be two or three copies in every state. If nobody wanted to hear us today,
somebody someday would find the books we left behind. I never dreamed of
visiting Ukraine, but thanks to the political changes in late 1989 I unexpectedly
received an invitation through the Soviet Embassy to Ukraine.
In January 1990 I first set foot on Ukrainian soil. Perhaps I still
spoke Ukrainian rather poorly, but people understood me. Maybe thanks to
my commission more and more people began to study the famine, and the Union
of Writers set up a committee to organize an international symposium. In
the Institute of History Stanislav Kulchytsky had begun to write about
the Famine. Preparation for the symposium was like a civil war between
the Institute of History and Central Committee, on the one hand, and the
Writers' Union and Institute of Literature on the other, for the latter
were breeding ground for the Popular Movement (Rukh) of Ukraine. I recall
a radio journalist asking me then, "Some people think Ukraine should be
independent, and others think it should stay in the Soviet Union? What
do you think?" What could I answer? Of course, that the peoples of Ukraine,
not I would decide the issue. But it was clear that the USSR would soon
fall.
On the morning of January 27 Ivan Drach called me to say there had been
an announcement in the press that the Central Committee had passed a decision
saying that the Famine had happened and that the documents would be published.
The late Volodymyr Maniak, who was compiling a people's book of memory,
said that a meeting to set up a monument near Uman had been banned, but
maybe the local authorities would act differently if an American was present.
No hesitation.
We traveled by rented bus to Uman: survivor Dmytro Kalennyk, sculptor
Yuly Sinkevych, kobzar-writer Mykola Lytvyn, Volodya Maniak, and others.
In the village of Ryzhavka we were met by the two local policemen and ten
sent as reinforcements from Uman. Obviously, there would be no monument.
Kalennyk led us to the mass graves from 1933, marked by a simple iron cross
next to the official cemetery. There lay thousands of victims from one
village. The black soil was covered by bumps, and under the bumps were
people, a land awash in blood. We all said a few words. I cried. From far-off
America I tried to express my sympathy, but finding the words was difficult.
The peasants stayed away except for two gray-haired women in black scarves
who looked on from a distance. Then came a public meeting in the Uman soccer
stadium, where both the old Soviet Ukrainian and the still-banned yellow
and blue national flags waved. People were afraid that the police would
seize the national flags, but everything went on peacefully. Then we went
to the cemetery, where there was a large common grave from 1937-38. Two
memorial services were being conducted, one by a Russian Orthodox priest
and the other by a Ukrainian Autocephalous one, whom most onlookers mistook
for Catholic. There was a heated discussion with the mayor of Uman, and
it became clear that if we set up a monument, it would soon vanish without
a trace. In fact, on my last day in Kyiv I spoke at a meeting at the October
Palace of Culture, the former NKVD headquarters, where we put up a small
bronze plaque in memory of those killed in the basement of that building.
Some months later on my next trip to Kyiv, I was told that it had been
stolen. The times were like that...
And what about our times? Are they any better? Certainly, much has been
done, researched, and published about the Holodomor, Stalinism, and the
nightmare called Communism. But few buy Ukrainian books and almost no one
buys them on the history of Soviet Ukraine. Those who do not want to believe
it simply refuse to. There is no fact or document that can convince them.
One neighbor lady once told me, "So, you're a historian? Well, we had one
history; now we have another history. Who knows what really happened?"
And she had a point. There really was one history then, and there will
inevitable be another tomorrow. I would hope that more fortunate historians
than I in the twenty-first century write about the happy history of an
independent and affluent Ukraine, about its economic progress, and about
how things continue to get better for its people. But the overwhelming
majority of my students see absolutely no prospects that they will ever
be able to change things for the better. Is that not also a harvest of
despair?
Files of The Day:
James MACE was born in 1952 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA, and has a
Ph.D. in history. In 1981-86 he worked at the Harvard Ukrainian Research
Institute and in 1986-1990 as Executive Director of the US Commission on
the Ukraine Famine. Afterwards he was at Columbia and Illinois Universities.
Since 1993 he has lived in Ukraine. He worked in the Academy of Science's
Institute of Ethnic and Political Studies and since 1995 has been professor
of political science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University. He
is author of approximately 160 works on twentieth-century Ukraine. He is
also consultant and a columnist for The Day in English.







