Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine

Preface

PREFACE Independent Ukraine emerged in August, 1991, and was ratified by a national referendum in December of this same year. However, the roots of the modern state are to be found in the period of Perestroika, under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, when civil society first began to emerge. Ukraine began the process of building a new nation, accepting the existing borders as “inviolable” and eventually agreeing to be a non-nuclear state with its own currency and constitution . The latter suffered a few crises, and at the time of writing, Ukraine appears to have opted for a parliamentary system over a presidential one, though the ramifications of that change—effective in 2006—have yet to be seen. Several scholars have offered analyses of the newly independent Ukraine and the respective presidencies of Leonid Kravchuk (1991–1994) and Leonid Kuchma (1994–2004), leading up to the mass uprising in Kyiv in November– December 2004 known as the Orange Revolution.1 In January 2005, when Viktor Yushchenko became the third president, he announced his intention to have Ukraine join Euro-Atlantic structures such as the European Union and NATO, which implied—to what degree is a moot point—a move away from the Russian orbit. Ukraine’s grassroots population had demonstrated its resistance to what was perceived as corruption, authoritarianism, and the restrictions on the media by the government of the day. But it has also appeared to support a fundamental change of direction from the Soviet period, some fifteen years after acquiring independence. This book examines a question related to the concept of nation building, namely the construction of a national history. Arguably, there are several national histories and several interpretations of the past, and it may not be possible to determine which particular version is in the ascendancy. However, in Ukraine’s case, the version in place—the Soviet narrative—has clearly been superseded and is obsolete. Yet that interpretation has remained influential in certain regions, particularly those of the east and south, and continues to sway the way residents of Ukraine perceive their state. By the mid-1990s, Mykhailo x HEROES AND VILLAINS Hrushevs’kyi’s magisterial History of Ukraine could be found in Kyiv bookstores , offering a sweeping interpretation of some ten centuries of history that refuted the Soviet version of Kyivan Rus’ as the birthplace of modern Russia, to the exclusion of the other East Slavic peoples: Ukrainians and Belarusians. Instead, it provided a Ukrainian conception of Ukrainian history, ostensibly for Ukrainians. The merits of this version need not be debated here, nor even the symbolic importance of such pre-20th century heroes as Bohdan Khmel- ‘nyts’kyi, Ivan Mazepa, or even the “true” founder of the modern Ukrainian state, the bard Taras Shevchenko, whose statue is now almost as common as that of V. I. Lenin used to be in times past. Instead, the focus is limited to the 20th century, and what I consider to be the most formative period, the leadership of Stalin (1928–53) and its impact on what was then termed the Ukrainian SSR and independent Ukraine. This period represents the most tragic era in the history of Ukraine, and one of the most profoundly influential in the formation of contemporary thinking about the modern nation and its relationship to the past. For it is in this period that Ukraine suffered its most dramatic and tragic experiences: the Famine of 1932–33, the Purges, the impact of the Nazi–Soviet Pact that saw its western territories incorporated into the USSR; the German invasion; and the bitter fighting as a result of national insurgency in the western regions that saw conflicts between several players: the retreating Germans, the advancing Red Army, the local Polish population, and the local Ukrainians. How are these events portrayed in contemporary Ukraine? That question forms the backbone to this monograph because the raison d’être of the modern state seems predicated on the way it views its past. This perspective introduces two common elements of Ukraine’s association with the past: glorification and victimization. The former was also a hallmark of Soviet writing and has simply been emulated, but the objects of glorification have changed radically . In the case of the victimization, Ukraine is portrayed as a pawn of the Soviet regime, and more specifically of a Russian government based in Moscow . In turn, victimization implies an element of suffering. The argument in the modern context might run something like: because of our past suffering under a Moscow-based...