A sea of historical ignorance

Russia has never evinced a stable interest in Ukraine. From time to time, there have been vogues for things Ukrainian — usually folklore. In contrast to such countries as Canada or the United States, Ukrainian studies have never been a distinct branch of scholarship. It is still in its infancy.

The modern societies of Russia and Ukraine are very young. Societies suffer from shortsightedness precisely in childhood. So perhaps there is nothing terrible about the fact that Russian politicians have not developed a steady interest in their neighboring country. This could be true, however, if the issue at hand concerned Gnosticism. Knowledge, like wine, improves over time. But without knowledge about a neighbor, without an impartial or, as scholars say, an adequate view of Ukrainians by Russians and vice versa, there can be no hope for normal interstate relations.

Furthermore, without such relations Russia will not be able to solve the urgent problem of modernization. The same applies to Ukraine. Without this kind of knowledge, both countries will at best be simulating modernization, each in its own way, as we once simulated socialism or as we are now imitating a market economy and a democratic rule-of- law state.

What is better: to sell gas for 200 or 400 dollars? This is a rhetorical question for a businessman. What about for a politician? In recent years Russian-Ukrainian relations have been revolving around this question and similar matters. A perfect illustration of this is the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko, which took place in late June in Moscow. In my opinion, this is an acute symptom of a state’s childhood disease — political shortsightedness. History has shown that this disease is extremely dangerous, and if it is not treated it will lead to horrible disfigurements in maturity.

We are also witnessing other symptoms of this disease, for example, Russian and Ukrainian politicians’ persecution mania. Some of them have almost driven themselves into the grip of paranoia. In Russia, it is fears of an Orange Revolution. In Ukraine, people readily see “the hand of Moscow” where the latter has never appeared. A friend of mine, an avid soccer fan, jokingly commented on the dramatic events of Euro-2008, “Why the hell did the Dutch put on an orange outfit to play against the Russians?”

Joking apart, public opinion surveys show that “thanks” to biased coverage (to put it mildly) of Ukrainian events in the Russian media, especially since the Orange Revolution, there are three times as many Ukrainians who consider Russia a friendly state than Russians who think that way about Ukraine — 58.4 and 21.8 percent, respectively.

On the other hand, this brings into play the psychological mechanisms of self-defense: the higher the “Ukrainophobic pitch” of official propaganda, the more intense the interest in Ukraine is, at least in academic circles. The mole of history is digging well.

Russia is filling in the gaps in its historical knowledge of Ukraine through the efforts of some enthusiastic researchers rather than the state’s efforts. I must mention such notable events in Ukrainian historical studies in Russia as the publication of books by historians, like Dmitry Furman, Aleksei Miller, Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva, Irina Mikhutina, Leonid Gorizontov, Mikhail Dmitriev, Elena Borisionok, and others.

Last year began the implementation of what I consider an extremely important project. With support from the ex-presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Mikhail Gorbachev and Leonid Kuchma, and the Russian businessman Aleksandr Lebedev, a group of Russian and Ukrainian academics, including Ruslan Grinberg, Dmitry Furman, Myroslav Popovych, Yaroslav Hrytsak, and this writer, launched the Library of Ukrainian Thought in the Russian language. Soon to be published is a volume of Symon Petliura’s selected works, speeches, and letters translated by Galina Lesnaia (Halyna Lisna), a Ukrainian language lecturer at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, with a preface by the outstanding Ukrainian scholar Myroslav Popovych.

This will be the second volume in this series of works. The first one to appear was a selection of works by, arguably, the best Ukrainian historian in exile Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky. I personally derived immense pleasure from translating some of his works, which I did together with the Zadorozhny couple, brilliant translators from the Ukrainian, who live and work in Moscow. The foreword was written by the well-known Lviv- based Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak. Scheduled for publication this September and October are two volumes by Mykhailo Drahomanov.

In the planning stages are new translations of the works of Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Viacheslav Lypynsky, the latter being an almost unknown figure in Russia. Yaroslav Pelensky told me at the 7th International Congress of Ukrainian Studies that he had always dreamed that some day Lypynsky’s works would be translated into Russian, and that he had agreed to write the preface.

Ukrainian historical studies are developing in Russia, but very slowly and erratically, in my opinion. While the history of Kyivan Rus’, the Hetmanate (the first Ukrainian republic, according to my periodization), the Ruin, and the Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire is being researched and studied, the history of the “second Ukrainian republic” — the UNR/ZUNR — the Ukrainian diaspora, and modern Ukrainian history is still a terra incognita for Russian academics.

As for the country where I was born and raised for the first half of my life, the Ukrainian SSR lies, to quote Lysiak-Rudnytsky, “between history and politics.” And this is the location of the world’s deepest sea, the sea of historical ignorance.

It is noteworthy that, in spite of all differences, both Russian and Ukrainian modern historiographies treat the Soviet period, the period of the Russian Revolution, as an anomalous phenomenon or a natural disaster. To tell the truth, Ukrainian historians are the last to be blamed for this because, even though they arouse resentment in their conservative Russian counterparts, they are carefully researching the brief period of national state building that took place between March 1917 and May 1920, the period of “indigenization,” the Holodomor, and — for completely understandable reasons but with some national tendentiousness — the events of World War Two.

Meanwhile, the process of forming Ukrainian statehood did not stop in the Soviet era: on the contrary, it was significantly accelerated. The first thing that comes to mind is not even Ukraine’s UN mission on 62nd Street in New York, which I visited in the early 1980s, but the fact that the Ukrainian state acquired its present- day borders at that very time. The strident calls for their revision, which are sounding again in Russia, are not just connected to NATO. They are also an expected, natural result of the attitude to this extremely important period of Ukrainian and Russian history. Oddly enough, Ukraine is not taking any notice of this.

As an historian, I can only be glad that politically-motivated interest in the tragic events of the Holodomor or the no less tragic history of the OUN and the UPA are leading to the discovery and introducing into scholarly circulation of a large number of new facts and names, all of which are stimulating debate.

But one thing worries me. It was incredibly difficult for me, like for many people of my generation with biographies similar to mine, or perhaps even more so than for anybody else, to accept the truth about the crimes that were ostensibly committed in the name of justice, in which we believed and which we have not repudiated even today. But the political attractiveness of, pardon the expression, visceral anti-communism is very deceptive. Scholars are supposed to study, not condemn. The Russian historian Vasily Kliuchevsky was correct in saying that history is not a teacher of life but an overseer who punishes for badly learned lessons.

I sincerely feel sorry for those who think that, with the collapse of what was called “real socialism” but which in reality was the end of the Russian Revolution that was destined to be the last bourgeois-democratic and the first global social revolution (which lasted from 1905 until 1991), the social struggle has ended and it is time to defect to the winners. As an expert observing current Russian or Ukrainian events, I will dare recall the witty dictum of the English journalist G. K. Chesterton, who said that the imperfection of human nature is also attested by the fact that a full pocket screams louder than an empty stomach.

The Chinese say, “May you live in interesting times.” But an ordinary person and a scholar often have a different idea of happiness. True scholars, although they experience hardships like other people, derive some happiness from living in a time when the historical drama that has been unfolding for centuries is turning into a catharsis before their very eyes. And what are we — Ukrainian and Russian historians — doing? We are sending out mating calls like wood grouses on their mating grounds, forever repeating our favorite ideological “mantras” that we learned in the Cold War era. This is why we cannot hear one another.

I am not a naive person and have extensive political experience, so I am well aware of what is going on. It is said that even mathematical axioms would be questioned if they affected human interests. What can one say, then, about our poor discipline which, according to Marc Bloch in Apology for History , is something “very human.” History only begins where this “human” appears, he said.

And if, despite all our expectations, our sincere statements during the romantic times of perestroika, our promises to finally reveal the truth of existence to our historically less educated compatriots, we are unable to do anything, I will venture to make a proposal. Shall we, historians, open up a “Hamburg account,” like circus wrestlers did early in the last century, in order not to lose historical benchmarks in the heat of political debate?

I think that we, academics, can find a common language. We can also be at least a bit more critical of our politicians and not shout “Vox populi!” every time we hear the lamentations of those whom the late Academician Aleksandr Yakovlev used to call the “political gang” during our long conversations.

Before we turn to institutions, I would like to make another small note. Russian Ukrainophiles see a big puzzle in current Ukrainian life. Here in Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian relations are never discussed without well-known Ukrainophobes, the most odious figures of the Russian Ukraine-related discourse. They never leave the TV screens and newspaper pages, while there is very little place for most bona fide researchers, who almost never receive an invitation. I wonder why?

In conclusion, a few words about institutions. From a formal angle, Russia does not lack institutions that proclaim the goal of studying Ukrainian history, culture, economy, and politics. This is the particular preserve of the many institutes at the Russian Academy of Sciences, research and educational institutions with the system of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and non-governmental organizations.

But two things worry me. Firstly, despite the efforts of some enthusiasts at the Institute of General History and the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Russian Humanities, Russia does not train Ukraine experts, with the exception of the University of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MDIMO), which is obliged to do so by virtue of its mandate. I could recount an entire saga about the futile efforts of the Russian scholar Mikhail Dmitriev to introduce at least one optional Ukrainian history course at Moscow State University’s Faculty of History.

Secondly, Ukrainian studies are not coordinated. They are scattered among different institutions that are not in close contact. I think we can pin certain hopes on the joint commission that has been set up as part of the bilateral interstate commission headed by Academician Aleksandr Chubarian (RAN) and Academician Valerii Smolii (NANU).

Last February saw the creation of the Center for Ukrainian Studies at the RAN Institute of Europe, which I now head. It is, of course, too early to talk about any achievements of the new Ukrainian studies center. Still, the international historical conference “Russia and Ukraine: History and the Image of History,” held by the center last spring in conjunction with Moscow State University’s Center for Ukrainian Studies and the Institute of Slavic Studies, was a major event in Russia’s academic life. We hope that in the course of time and under favorable circumstances it will develop into the Institute of Ukraine. You will agree that this work will be taking place in not the worst of places: the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences focuses on research on contemporary Europe, and this in itself provides an opportunity to look at Ukraine with a fresh and impartial eye.

Despite all the differences — conditions, developmental pace, and the essence of the political, economic, and social processes now underway in Russia and Ukraine — these processes, like all changes in the post-Soviet space, have a lot of common and similar features. Most scholars are naturally under the influence of national factors, above all; they operate with facts and phenomena of national life. But even while we remain in the realm of national modernizing discourses and communicate, we have the possibility to make essential progress in understanding global and regional processes and the imperatives of the development of new independent states and the entire post- Soviet space.

I am convinced that this will promote not only the normal development of Russian-Ukrainian relations, which are now in profound crisis, but also the development of historical science in both Russia and Ukraine.

The historian Viktor Ivanovych MYRONENKO is a leading research associate at the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the director of the Center for Ukrainian Studies, and editor-in-chief of the journal Sovremennaia Evropa. The above article contains the ideas and proposals that the author presented at the 7th International Congress of Ukrainists held in Kyiv on June 25-29, 2008.