A dead-end

Today’s media sphere is abundant in sharp and conflicting assessments, views and opinions regarding the possibility and expediency of coordinating positions between Ukrainian and Russian historians so as to develop a common history. The idea of a common Ukrainian-Russian history textbook is once again on the table. In this context, the academic Ukrainian-Russian Commission of Historians has been repeatedly mentioned. Were these questions discussed at its sittings?

“First of all, I should mention that the problem of the common textbook is in the past already: historians of both countries clearly realized that with the availability of two national historiographies with their own vision of their history, their own tools, approaches, evaluations, arrays of sources introduced to the academic community, etc. creating a common textbook would mean leveling and crossing out all achievements of the national academic history of the last quarter of a century, or at least ignoring it. By this I mean both Ukrainian and Russian academic science. I guess it is too early to speak about super-national writing of history, which is popular nowadays in the West, because so far neither in Ukraine nor in Russia there is a synthetic comprehensive national history — historians just built a foundation for writing such a work. By the way, soon the Institute of History of Ukraine will offer the professional community its own vision of a comprehensive academic history of Ukraine; its broad approbation, additional elaboration, search for authors, costs, coordinating the scope of some volumes, writing texts and so on. All this is still ahead. In a word, we must pass this stage of the historiography process, it is simply impossible to skip it. One can coordinate positions and views in politics, but in no way in fundamental science, this is a dead-end way.

“Another thing is the initial positive idea laid in coordinating approaches to elucidating sharp and ‘uncomfortable’ problems of common history in history textbooks: avoiding xenophobia, making an enemy out of one’s neighbour. It’s an absolutely normal approach to teaching history in a civilized society. Opposing this initial foundation of any textbook is as senseless as opposing the right of a state to have its own historiography. This approach corresponds to the generally accepted European standards, which are clearly formulated in the Recommendations ‘On Teaching History in Europe in the 21st Century,’ approved in October 2001 by the Committee of the Council of Ministers of Europe (by the way, on the website of our institute one can find the translation of the full text of this document). Among other works, I believe the three-volume edition of essays Ukraina i Rosia v istorychniy retrospektyvi (Ukraine and Russia in the Historical Retrospective) (Kyiv, 2004), prepared in the institute, is a practical embodiment of this approach. This work became the first (and quite difficult) attempt of systematic exposition by Ukrainian historians of the thorny way Ukraine had passed from the Treaty of Pereiaslav of 1654 to the early 21st century through the prism of Ukrainian-Russian relations, the Kremlin’s reaction to Ukrainian political projects, the attitude of Russia’s political elite to Ukrainians, etc. In this three-volume edition you’ll find an attempt to objectively assess different aspects of common history of Ukraine and Russia, to find regularities and assess the consequences of different processes, but in no way an attempt to accuse the neighboring and friendly people of those tragedies which Ukraine and Ukrainians encountered.”

So, we’re not talking about the common textbook. At the same time, the idea of a common textbook for high school has been recently mentioned by the media. What is your opinion on this?

“I can hardly imagine the content of such a textbook, which could be used simultaneously by high school teachers in Moscow and Kamchatka, in the Lviv region and the Crimea. It would be interesting to hear the opinion of specialists — methodologists and teachers.

“Let’s return to our area of specialization and the first question, that is the activity of the Ukrainian-Russian Commission of Historians. The achievements of the Commission, created in 2002 as a result of the creative cooperation of two leading academic institutions — the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Institute of the World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences — have many interesting and useful things for both parties. I believe the parallel publication of two academic works: Narysy istorii Rosii (Outlines of History of Russia) written by Russian colleagues and translated for our readers into Ukrainian, and Narysy istorii Ukrainy (Outlines of History of Ukraine) prepared by the team of authors mostly from our institute is the best and most successful, recently finished (I will add brilliant), project.

“It was really ‘A Contact or an Adherent Point,’ as your newspaper wrote two years ago about the presentation of this project in Moscow. Unfortunately, not many copies were published, so together with the Russian colleagues we discussed the possibility of making both publications available on the websites of our institutes. Technically, it is easy to do, but some formal aspects should be coordinated, since Ukrainian texts were published by Moscow publishers, and Russian ones — by a Kyiv-based publishing house. Personally, I believe that the positive social resonance inspired by both editions will still appear. As well as further discussions in the professional sphere.

“The positive impulse of this project, I guess, will spread to the future work of the historical commission. In particular, during this year’s regular plenary meeting, held in March in Kyiv, the idea of preparing an encyclopedic edition with the title Debatable Questions of Common History of Ukraine and Russia was voiced for the first time among many other topics, ideas and opinions. The essence of the possible project lies, again, in parallel exposition of views by historians from both countries on different historical figures, facts, and events that today provoke debatable evaluations and interpretations, or incite fierce debates. The list of titles would include the heritage of Kyivan Rus’, the Treaty of Pereiaslav, Mazepa, Peter the Great, Stalin, Ukrainian revolution, Civil War, the Great Terror, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and dozens of other historical topics, events, personalities, including mythologems and ideologemes implemented in actual historical knowledge. Some titles should be dedicated to terminological and methodological problems, periodization, and, finally, schemes of Ukrainian and Russian history as a part of the state where our peoples lived. In fact, it would be a sincere and honest ‘inventorying’ of the problems we inherited from the common past, and which actively function today in the form of significant segments of national memory.”

That is you suggest representing two official points of view: by Ukrainian and Russian historians for each title of the encyclopedic reference book?

“Not quite so. It is impossible to speak about some official consolidated position, or single view on the problem, or some unanimous evaluation in academic science. However, exactly in the genre of an encyclopedic article one could state the most conventional, accepted by the majority of the academic community (at this moment of historical knowledge development, of course), point of view or position. Articles for each title would be written by renowned Ukrainian and Russian specialists on concrete problems, and thus would reflect adequately and professionally the current state of Ukrainian and Russian historical science. Thus, the main principle of the publication is one problem — different viewpoints. I am sure such a common encyclopedic reference book would enrich both Ukrainian and Russian historical science. In the future the natural process of transformation of scholarly knowledge into ‘teaching’ knowledge could also revise high school textbooks. In a natural way.

“At the end of November we will hold another sitting of the Ukrainian-Russian Commission of Historians in Moscow (we meet in turns each year in Kyiv and Moscow). I guess we will be able to hold discussions regarding the prospects of the project we have just talked about. By the way, there is also a discussion of one more common academic publication with the participation of Belarusian historians on the agenda: 1941. Kraina v ohni (1941. Country in Fire). The publication will consist of three separate blocs where Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian historians will state their vision of causes and consequences of the horrible tragedy at the initial stage of the war. Any project like this, any regular sitting of the commission become one more step to learning our own — national — histories.”