You Can Falsify History, But It Always Takes Its Revenge

Last Friday Den/The Day welcomed Bruno Cadene, Radio France’s permanent correspondent in the CIS. The purpose of his visit was to interview Den/The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna, which will be broadcast on all Radio France affiliates — France Inter, France Info, France Culture, and France Bleu. Their conversation was not confined to the presidential elections in Ukraine. The French radio journalist was interested in finding out why Ms. Ivshyna and the staff of our newspaper have launched a number of history projects (Den/The Day’s Library has already published three books devoted to controversial aspects of Ukrainian history), what is the attitude of Ukrainian society to its own history, and what are the differences in the interpretations of Ukraine’s past in Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv, etc.

As it happens, Mr. Cadene is a longtime reader of The Day’s online version, where he learned about our newspaper’s history projects. He first heard about The Day from Courier International, a French foreign press digest that reprints our newspaper’s articles on history, politics, the economy, and Ukraine’s relations with Europe. When Mr. Cadene was still a university student, one of his professors said that history can be falsified, but it always gets its own back as soon as the veneer comes off. The journalist says he has always thought that there will be peace in Europe only if democracy is established from north to south, i.e., from the Baltic states to Belarus and Ukraine — “vertically,” not “from left to right.” At university he learned that an independent Ukrainian state had appeared in 1917 but soon vanished from the map of Europe. That was when he began taking an interest in our history. In Mr. Cadene’s words, he was always convinced that “if they were once independent, they will surely come to this again.” This, in a nutshell, is what his professor taught him.

Mr. Cadene says Europeans are simply unaware of a great many facts pertaining to Ukrainian history, for example, that Ukraine was independent for some time before becoming a Soviet republic. Nor do Europeans know very much about the events of 1933 and 1937. The French journalist attributes this to the fact that the “Russian version of history” still dominates in Europe. But as soon as the history of Ukraine-at least 20th century Ukrainian history-becomes more or less well known in the world, this will help shape a positive opinion about our country, says Bruno Cadene.