It looks as though no one is satisfied with the president’s decree “On the Comprehensive Study and Objective Elucidation of the Activities of the Ukrainian Liberation Movement and Assistance to the Process of National Reconciliation” — not the supporters of the OUN and the UPA, who expected to find in it a clear definition of OUN and UPA warriors, nor their fierce opponents, who are dissatisfied with the president’s consistent stand. In our subjective opinion, now that the Secretariat’s personnel has undergone a purge, the president’s stand on most matters has become more balanced, more substantive, and more democratic in style.
One feels that the president’s new team is called upon to solve not only technical and operational tasks. The appearance of this compromise decree only confirms this, like the substitution in the text of the customary word combination “national-liberation movement” and its clear-cut ideological connotation by the more neutral “Ukrainian liberation movement.” It is wonderful that the radicals do not like the decree. What is bad is that the proposed measures, in our opinion, say little to the rest of the people, who form the non-radical part of the nation, and will do little to aid the process of national unity.
One can only welcome the appearance of fundamental historical studies. But it would be naive to think that with their help the process of national reconciliation and mutual understanding will be accelerated, if this is understood only as a banal continuation of the president’s personal stand. Can budget-financed historians in principle offer an unbiased assessment of the body of historical data? Let’s not forget that the financing of scholarship in general, and history and archaeology in particular, is so meager that those leading scholars who could leave our country did so long ago. State-run historical research organizations are diligently servicing the official version of Ukrainian history, the way they did under the Soviets. Readers know how removed it is from the historical memory of the people and their forefathers.
Naturally, the “ruler’s” historians know about this to the very last detail, but what normal person who wants to keep his job will discuss it? After all, in addition to catering to the state version of history, they can also engage in academic research that does not interest the state. You don’t agree? Then how do you think the conclusions reached by these esteemed research organizations can change if the details of conducting work and, most importantly, its financing, are taken over by distinguished scholarly figures and “proffesors” from the current coalition government, who, incidentally, also have their own position on this question? Structurally, historical studies that are independent of the state budget are just emerging in our country.
However, if we reject the openly commissioned character of the official version of Ukraine’s history, getting scholars involved in establishing historical justice is impossible by definition. History as a field of knowledge cannot evolve linearly and in a programmed direction. Not a single scholar will name even the most verified fact as the irrefutable truth. In our relativistic world only probabilities can be predicted. Accordingly, from a scholarly point of view there can be no historical justice, exactly like there can be no biochemical or astrophysical justice. These are banal, ABC truths.
The most that historians can provide is a matrix of historical data with probable interconnections. Even so the difference of opinion among various historians will reach far outside the permissible margin of error. Often neither a scholar’s reputation nor rank can guarantee greater reliability of conclusions, all the more so in what is left of our scholarship. The government simply has no qualifications to assess a product of scholarship. Instead, it clearly knows the necessary result that is generously filled with scholarly-like formulations and is hallowed by titles and degrees of the state’s leading erudite men.
If there is an order to substantiate the “recognition of the activities of organizations that fought for a free and independent state in the 1920s-1950s by the Ukrainian liberation movement” and “to secure comprehensive and unbiased elucidation in the schooling-educational process,” rest assured that they will do just that! If there is an order to generate a database for exposing the bloody crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and branding them forever as Nazi lackeys, they will also do that with the right financing, don’t you worry! The school and methods of official history studies has changed little since the Soviet period, and replacing signs saying “Yes!” with “Shame!” — or vice versa — is a technical matter. Thus, the scholarly quest aimed at “establishing historical justice,” given the realities of contemporary Ukraine, is a kind of political agitation and propaganda with the application of the scholarly potential of political forces.
Perhaps this conclusion is cynical and harsh. We beg forgiveness from true scholars, who are not bought with any academic degrees, titles, and other handouts from the regime; who are engaged in research by their calling, not by any Edicts. If so, then please explain why the official versions and assessments of the same historical events are so significantly, so cardinally different in various countries, including our western, eastern, and southern neighbors? Should we believe that it is only in our country that history — which is financed by the budget — is developing as a field of knowledge “comprehensively and in an unbiased manner,” independently of the interests of political forces that are in power?
It should be acknowledged, however, that such a specific approach is becoming increasingly less effective.
On the one hand, it does not permit reaching any conclusions from any body of historical information, even one that is the slightest bit corrected by the state. As a wise man once said, “History teaches only that which it cannot really teach in principle.”
On the other hand, the people’s trust in official history is minimal, especially in those cases when official interpretations of events differ from those recounted by relatives, acquaintances, or simply people who are considered authorities. For many decades children in the western oblasts were taught that the nationalists were bandits and traitors. At home they heard the opposite. Whom did they believe? The answer is generally known.
Now schools say for the most part that these were heroes and participants in the liberation movement. In most of Left-Bank Ukraine, children come home and hear about the atrocities committed by the Banderites. Whom will they believe for at least another couple of decades? Since childhood our people have developed such a keen nose for state agitation in any kind of form and such a high immunity level to it that the answer to this question can also be considered obvious. You do not need to search far for examples: while the large-scale PR campaign about NATO activity and the advantages of entering it was unfolding, public trust in NATO was declining, especially in Left-Bank Ukraine. How can we talk about the lessons of history when our leading politicians rarely learn from their own mistakes?
The overall impression from this decree is that our president has once again been placed in an awkward situation, to put it mildly. Perhaps those who were carrying out the task to prepare a compromise edict but were unable to find any other versions simply made it formal and empty of content and results.
Needless to say, the chances that the current composition of the Verkhovna Rada will pass a corresponding law are minimal. Most likely this decree will be forgotten in a week or two — and it will not be the first or last time. They will forget about it for exactly one year, until the next date.
P.S. We request readers to consider this article within the framework of what is formulated in the decree as “appropriate explanatory and enlightening work, particularly in the mass media.”
