First of all, congratulations to the staff on the anniversary and thank you all for the important effort you are undertaking to popularize historical knowledge and history as a science. I think that this effort and your collection of the most interesting publications in the book Ukraine Incognita are a good lesson for other Ukrainian periodicals carrying scattered materials on historical subjects.
Why? Among other things, because I am well aware of the academic community’s bad traditions. Some people there do not collect or even keep track of their own publications. So this anthology, its scope will come in handy primarily for the authors included therein, and of course for all those interested in history, seeing in it not that which is not there — and never will be — but a live and at times intriguing process; for those striving to understand it rather than digest a certain amount of facts.
Den’s constant interest in history is important for me personally for yet another reason. Intellectuals are known for accusing politicians of pretending that everything is clear about history, that there are no blank spots. Indeed, the Ukrainian Establishment is no exception; its functionaries turn to politicians only when it comes to elections or when a certain date simply cannot be bypassed, even in a nomenklatura Mercedes. Latter-day banal examples: the 70th anniversary of the Holodomor famine of the early 1930s or the decision to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the nonsensical Treaty of Pereyaslav.
Well, politicians have been and will always remember that way. As a rule, they become “wiser” after retirement and when writing memoirs. Then they want to know what was the historical context in which they operated on active duty. However, I would like to know about all those for whom historical studies and seeing history at a different angle are not time-serving or courteous gestures in conjunction with a jubilee, but routine daily procedures in forming a new historical awareness. Where are you people that are not time- servers?
Can’t see or hear any. What I could hear recently was a functionary with a Ph.D. in history saying that we have no history (sic) and that we mostly come up with political assessments. To me it was like a paraphrase of a popular Soviet joke: “There is no sex in our country!” Another esteemed colleague of mine wrote that every (!) jubilee is “cause for pondering the essence of events and presenting it in a characteristic light.”
The sections “History and I” and “Ukraine Incognita” in Den ’ allow me to insist that the opposite is true. We do have history, and jubilees (even less so “all” of them) should not be cause for intensive historical research. Failing to understand this has already produced a superconjuncture. Today, looking at the curricula of certain higher schools specializing in the humanities, the impression is that the Soviet Union had nothing but famine and purges. Meanwhile, in the eleven years of [Ukrainian] independence no one has tried to write a socialist history of the communist period, portraying daily life in the Ukrainian SSR — e.g., chronic shortage of consumer goods and its effect on the “Soviet people’s” mentality.
Now we are proudly told that everybody is writing about the consequences of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, since the Shevchenko Society in the United States has announced a contest for the best paper on the subject. It is not difficult to imagine what most such papers will be like, because their authors are sure to act on the what-can-I-do-for-you principle. Meaning that in most cases the approach will be that of historical simplism — or just primitive. Mind you, this will be done not by former party historians, currently most favored targets of verbal attacks.
One is reminded of Bernard Shaw — one of his character asks what will history say and another one replies that it will lie, as usual.
Den’s historical publications are aimed at preventing this. They are carried on a regular, not time-serving basis, focusing on problems worth being studied in any political weather. This wins the newspaper, the whole staff the reader’s respect and I sincerely wish you all to keep this historical vector unchanged.
Read Den’/The Day, after all, history is made up of days!
