A scholarly conference entitled “Ukraine and Russia: History and the Image of History” took place in Moscow on April 3-5 at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The concluding roundtable “The Ukrainian and Russian Intelligentsias Today: Prospects and Difficulties of Dialogue” was held at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Stary Arbat.
The conference attracted the attention of scholars and members of the general public. It was opened by N. Shmeliov, the director of the Institute of Europe. The first session was attended by A. Babakov, deputy speaker of the State Duma, and O. Demin and L. Osavoliuk, high-ranking officials of the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow took part in the conference.
The minutes of the conference were posted on the Web site of the Center for Ukrainian and Belarusian Studies at Moscow State University ( www.hist.msu.ru/Labs/UkrBel ). A number of academics will find interesting generalizations and conclusions there. Two topics are of special interest to the general public. One of them (about the all-Russian people) was not visible, yet it was present in many papers presented during the conference. The organizers included another topic in the agenda of a special session to which they invited cameramen from the First Russian Channel (we were told the program would be aired on Tuesday, April 8). This session was about the famine of 1932-33 in the USSR.
Before I focus on the features of both topics, I must first describe the conference and its participants.
1. ORGANIZERS AND PARTICIPANTS
Over the past two decades national history has been burgeoning in Ukraine. There are increasing numbers of scholars throughout the world who are attracted by the history of the largest country in Europe (with the exception of two Eurasian countries, Russia and Turkey). During all this time Russia is the only country where Ukrainian history has attracted little interest. To put it more precisely, Ukrainian history has practically never been distinguished from Russia’s past.
This situation began to change only in the last few years. Under the guidance of Professor M. Dmitriev, a young and dynamic academic of the Western school, the Center for Ukrainian and Belarusian Studies at the Faculty of History at Moscow State University (MGU) has dramatically stepped up its activities, issuing the first fundamental works on Ukrainian history in the Department of Eastern Slavs of the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN). In February 2008 the Center for Ukrainian Research was founded at RAN’s Institute of Europe.
These institutions were the organizers of the conference “Ukraine and Russia: History and the Image of History.” The conference became a reality thanks to a grant from the Russian World Foundation and the State Duma’s Expert Council on Central and Eastern Europe.
The conference program was posted ahead of time on the Web site of the Center for Ukrainian and Belarusian Studies. It attracted considerable interest, and a number of people gathered at the Institute at the designated time. However, Prof. Dmitriev selected the Ukrainian participants in the conference in accordance with his own criteria. I don’t know how the Russian participants were selected, but none were chosen at random. Proof of this is the list of just some of the main presenters and discussants: Ye. Borisenok, I. Mikhutina, O. Nemensky (Institute of Slavic Studies, RAN), L. Gorizontov (Russian Institute for Strategic Studies), V. Mironenko (Institute of Europe, RAN), A. Okara (independent analyst), and T. Tairova- Yakovleva (University of St. Petersburg).
The Ukrainian side was represented by 13 experts: I. Kolesnyk, S. Kulchytsky, V. Marochko, R. Pyrih, and Ye. Rusyna from the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAN); V. Verstiuk and O. Bily from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory; and L. Zashkilniak from the Institute of Ukrainian Studies, NAN. Among the conference participants were the following lecturers from several Dnipropetrovsk-based schools of higher education: V. Horodianenko, A. Mykhailiuk, and S. Savchenko; Prof. O. Zakharova from the Ukrainian Naval Institute in Sevastopil, and the political scientist P. Zhovnirenko from Kyiv.
The organizers set the scholars the following main task: to analyze how contemporary historiography, journalistic writings on history, and the mass media treat those aspects of Ukraine and Russia’s past in which the interwoven historical destinies of the two countries are reflected. The conference program was obviously geared to drawing attention to controversial questions from the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations and help shape a critical view of stereotypes of the past that have served to foster mutual distrust and even enmity in the public opinion of both countries.
Judging by the way the various topics in each session were formulated (the speakers chose their own topics), not only history as such (the past the way it “really” was) but also contemporary historical memory of both Ukrainian and Russian societies were the focus of attention. These approaches oriented the academics to exposing the factors that give rise to a distorted or more or less adequate image of the history of both countries in the public consciousness.
2. SHADOW OF THE “ALL-RUSSIAN” PEOPLE
I can formulate the impression that springs to mind even from a quick perusal of the topics that were announced before the conference. Professor Dmitriev, who put together the program and kept the conference running on a strict schedule (a necessity because of the packed program), set himself and others a certain super-task. It was aimed at determining the character and dynamics of Ukrainian, Great Russian, and all-Russian self-awareness, which was being constructed (in his opinion) during the Middle Ages and the Modern Era. He was especially interested in the patterns of the formation of Ukrainian, Great Russian, and all-Russian cultures in the 19th century.
In terms of the scope of the subjects and number of participants this conference was an unprecedented event in the last quarter of a century. I was able to determine that the all-Russian people theme was not obtrusive because Prof. Dmitriev resolutely cut short the scandalous presentation of a research associate of the Institute of CIS Countries headed by D. Zatulin. However, this theme was tangibly present. What kind of topic is this?
Judging from everything, the concept of Slavic unity, which was the ideological weapon of diplomats in pre-revolutionary Russia as well as a replacement for the Soviet- era concept of a single ancient Rus’ people (effective as long as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were part of a single state) is being supplanted by the concept of the all-Russian people consisting of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. This is nothing new because this notion was part of a broader concept of a joint Slavic unity, except that the Great Russians are now called Russians and the Little Russians - Ukrainians.
In his opening speech (I am not quoting from memory but directly from the text that every conference participant received), Prof. Dmitriev did not reject the concept of the ancient Rus’ people, but remarked that the dispute around the question of whether the Slavic population of Kyivan-Novgorod Rus’ was of Ukrainian, Russian, or Belarusian origin long ago lost its importance. He believes, however, that the ethnic continuity between Kyivan-Novgorod Rus’ and the subsequent ancient Rus’ principalities is not the continuity of the Slavic population that mixed with non-Slavic groups on all territories but the continuity of historical memory, and partially of the “ethnic” name.
Prof. Dmitriev thus exposes the artificial nature of the Soviet concept of the ancient Rus’ people, which is turned toward the past: neither we nor our successors will have sources to build any more or less solid concepts about the ethnic-national roots of Eastern Europe in the 13th-15th centuries. It follows therefore that there is no sense in searching for something that cannot a priori be found. However, he believes that the ideology of the all-Russian people, which is turned toward the future, deserves being substantiated.
I have a different view. Without a doubt, cooperation among historians and friendly relations between the two nations should be developed and strengthened in every way. The participants of the roundtable were unanimous in their agreement. However, at issue here are the relations between two nations, not within a single “all-Russian people.” There is no force that is capable of transforming the Ukrainian nation with its own statehood into a diluted ethnographic mass. There is no such force, but there is a certain situation that is kindling hopes for the eventual emergence of an all-Russian people in the future because in our country the political nation in the modern sense of the word has not matured.
There was such a force in the recent past. In the final stages of its existence the USSR tried to squeeze the Ukrainian nation into the format of a “new historical community” known as the Soviet people. During the Stalinist period, a whole range of various repressions was applied in order to liquidate the national statehood of the Ukrainian SSR, including terror by famine. The extent to which the Stalinist leadership in the Kremlin achieved success in carrying out this task was the subject of the special session at the scholarly conference.
3. INTERSTATE CONFLICT STEMMING FROM THE PROBLEMS CONNECTED TO THE FAMINE OF 1932-33
The conflict between Ukraine and Russia over the question of the 1932-33 famine is becoming more acute. Neither side understands the other. Neither country can formulate its arguments clearly enough to be understood by the other.
It would seem that the way this problem was formulated at the conference in Moscow should have helped both sides to come closer to understanding the crux of the question. But this never happened, so we will have to continue working in this direction, but first things first.
The conference was held against the background of the mounting intergovernmental conflict over the question of the famine in the USSR. When the Ukrainian side raised the subject of the Holodomor at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in March 2008, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN office in Geneva Valery Loshchinin noted: “The subject of the so-called Holodomor, the mass famine of the 1930s, has been raised. An attempt is being made to present this tragedy as a crime of genocide, in other words as a deliberate annihilation of an ethnic group of the population. However, the historical truth is different. Among the victims of the tragic events of those years were millions of people of various nationalities of the former Soviet Union: Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Tatars, and Bashkirs.”
The press service of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded angrily: “Statements of this nature, which Russia’s representatives issue every so often, are nothing more than a cynical attempt to abase and mock the memory of millions of our innocent brothers and sisters who were starved to death, and to erase any mention of this glaring page from the bloody chronicle of the communist totalitarian regime.”
On the day of our arrival in Moscow to take part in the conference the radio station Ekho Moskvy (Moscow Echo) broadcast an interview (that immediately went on the Internet) with the Russian Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who denounced the Ukrainian interpretation of the Holodomor. That same day the chairman of the State Duma B. Grizlov, in an interview with the Internet periodical Ukrainska Pravda, stated that this tragedy affected not only the Ukrainian nation but also a great many citizens who populated the Soviet Union, regardless of national affiliation.
Several hours later the Duma adopted a statement entitled “In Memory of the Victims of the Famine of the 1930s on the Territory of the USSR,” which was drafted by Zatulin and others. The statement read in part: “Striving to resolve at all costs the problem of food supplies to the rapidly expanding industrial centers, the leadership of the USSR and the Union republics applied repressive measures to secure grain deliveries, which considerably exacerbated the grave consequences of the bad harvest in 1932. However, there is no historical evidence whatsoever of this famine having been organized along ethnic lines.”
Here one finds two misrepresentations. The first is the declared responsibility of the leadership of two Union republics where the famine took place: the Russian Federation (Kazakhstan was then an autonomous republic of the RSFSR) and Ukraine. The Soviet totalitarian regime was not called into question even in Grizlov’s interview with Ukrainska Pravda. Second, the question that was broached was drought, since people remember that the famines of 1921-22 and 1946-47 were caused precisely by drought. In December 1987 First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky referred to drought when, on behalf of the top Soviet leadership, he first acknowledged the famine of 1932-33, which had been kept secret for more than half a century.
Obviously, neither Zatulin nor Shcherbytsky had read Stalin’s speech “On the Work in the Countryside,” which he gave at a joint plenary session of the Central Committee and the Central Auditing Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in January 1934. He said, “This can by no means be explained by a bad harvest because this year it wasn’t worse but better than last year.” The Duma’s statement stresses that “this tragedy does not and cannot have any internationally established characteristics of genocide, and it must not be subject to contemporary political speculations.” In other words, Russia’s legislators believe the subject should be closed.
To be continued in the next issue
