Canada and the Ukrainian Question 1939–1945: A Study in Statecraft by Bohdan S. Kordan (review)

318 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 National Archives nor his biography by Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn. Furthermore, a book that challenges traditional interpretations of Mackenzie King=s governance during the Second World War, and particularly one which seems surprised by Canada=s >cautious, deliberate, flexible= policy, based on a >fundamental belief in conciliation, voluntarism, and compromise,= should have examined King=s extensive personal papers and, even more important given the subject matter, the prime minister=s own 1918 publication, Industry and Humanity. King=s conciliatory approach to labour negotiations is mentioned by Stevenson in passing, but the author does not provide adequate detail about how the prime minister=s personal beliefs influenced his limited support for some of the more authoritarian NSS initiatives and the development of a national mobilization policy in general. In sum, this book is important for providing the first detailed analysis of the NSS from the perspective of the Department of Labour, but it is probably not a sufficiently comprehensive assessment of the interdepartmental dynamics and the bureaucratic politics of Canada=s wartime civilian mobilization policies. (ADAM CHAPNICK) Bohdan S. Kordan. Canada and the Ukrainian Question 1939B1945: A Study in Statecraft McGill-Queen=s University Press 2001. xiv, 258. $75.00, $27.95 In August 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, a free and democratic Ukrainian state, independent of Moscow, emerged, essentially putting to rest >the Ukrainian Question= that had so bedevilled Western governments in the twentieth century. Bohdan S. Kordan=s monograph is a meticulous study of the issue=s impact on the Canadian state during the Second World War, covering ground familiar from Thomas Prymak=s equally fine Maple Leaf and Trident: The Ukrainian Canadians during the Second World War (1988). Besides North American and British materials, Kordan had the benefit of recent access to the Archives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although himself a strong Ukrainian nationalist, Kordan does recognize the many dilemmas that Soviet foreign policy posed for Canada=s Liberal government under pressure from Ukrainian-Canadian organizations. Support by Canada of an independent Ukrainian nation was difficult enough before Hitler=s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941; once the latter became a Western ally, the idea of separating Ukraine from the Union became impossible, even ludicrous, in the eyes of most in Canada=s Department of External Affairs. While yielding little to the latter, Kordan is judicious in his criticism of a Canadian government obliged to thread a thin humanities 319 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 line between support for and distrust of a beleaguered former enemy, one forced to bear the brunt of the European land war before June 1944. Of the book=s bureaucratic knaves, Norman Robertson, the undersecretary of state for external affairs, heads the list, though Dana Wilgress, Canada=s ambassador to the Soviet Union, and John Grierson, director of Canada=s Wartime Information Board, also consistently frustrated Ukrainian-Canadian nationalist ambitions. Concerned to explain the state=s failure to pursue the >liberal justice= for Ukraine inherent in the Atlantic Charter (1941), Kordan embraces Harvard historian Theda Skocpal=s thesis in States and Social Revolution (1979) that >in responding to international pressures and opportunities= government officials, >as de facto trustees of the state,= follow a realpolitik concerned primarily with securing the state=s interests (and thus their own), rather than the aspirations of any particular group or community. Of Kordan=s political heroes, Tracy Philipps tops the list. A well-born British adventurer/soldier/civil servant/journalist of independent means, Philipps served in eastern Europe (and Ukraine) as a relief officer for the Nansen Commission after the First World War. After a tour of labour ethnic groups in Canada in 1940, he targeted the Ukrainians, important in agriculture and the war industries but deemed a threat to the country=s war effort because of seemingly irreconcilable internal ideological differences. In November 1940 his diplomatic efforts helped to create the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, an umbrella organization for non-communist Ukrainians, and early in 1942 he became the >European adviser= to the new Nationalities...