Ukraine as seen from Moscow through the European eyes

Ukraine has already drawn interest of a considerable number of Russian humanities scholars.

However, the head of Ukrainian Studies Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe and editor of Sovremennaya Evropa Viktor Myronenko is unique in that he analyzes Ukraine and developments in it using the research tools and techniques which are commonly used to analyze undisputedly European countries, without modifying them to take into account post-Soviet peculiarities.

The scholar is convinced that Ukraine’s (and Russia’s) place is undoubtedly only in Europe. By the way, Myronenko held talks on Ukrainian history in Ukrainian in Moscow in 2012 for the third year running.

Myronenko participated in The Day’s roundtable entitled “Russian Influence in Ukraine in 1991-2011” which was held on October 19, 2012. The event’s theme is simultaneously the subject of the doctoral thesis the historian is currently preparing.

The meeting was also attended by director of the Kennan Institute’s Kyiv office Yaroslav Pylynsky and director of Chernihiv Center of Retraining and Continuing Education for Employees of Government, Municipal and State-Owned Entities Volodymyr Boiko. The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna moderated the roundtable.

“The battle for democratic reforms in the Soviet Union was fought between the reactionaries and the conservatives, while now we see false communists fighting straightforward hedonists,” Myronenko said at the meeting. He is convinced that the Soviet Union was in desperate need of the reforms that had been initiated in the mid-1980s.

They had come much too late even. They had to be done by trial and error, because social changes of such depth and magnitude were without historical precedent.