History would have been a very predictable, linear, and easily describable process and would be easy to model with the help of available tools of hard sciences but for ... memory. The memory possessed by humanity, nation, and personality. We are still far from a full understanding of memory, this mysterious thing-in-itself. It has been and obviously will be that hidden motive force behind history that even acknowledged strategists, spin doctors, and intellectuals often fail to account for in their constructs. This approach is both shallow and improvident, because these various “vibrations” of the national feeling in general and national memory in particular “warp” the natural (from the point of view of the dogmatic rationalist) trajectory of the planned way of history’s development. We are talking about memory, historical glory, historical humiliation, and memory about freedom and betrayal in the past decades and centuries. Heinrich Heine once said: “The country’s best people die only for their image to stay in the memory and souls of their descendants — otherwise the very existence of the people loses any meaning and with time becomes impossible.”
This problem was certainly one of the central ones for the participants of the International Ukrainian-Russian-French conference “National histories and historical memory. Cross view from Ukraine, Russia, and France,” held in Kyiv on November 26-27. It was organized by the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic-National Research of Ukraine’s National Academy of Science, the Embassy of France in Ukraine, the French Cultural Center in Ukraine, the journal Ukraina Moderna, and the French-Russian Scientific Center of Social Sciences in Moscow. This may be a subjective impression of the present author, but the major attraction in this reputable scholarly event was that for all its guests and participants (among whom it is worth to mention George Mink, Nicolas Verte, Daniel Beauvois, Galina Zvereva, Arseniy Roginsky, Victor Kondrashyn, and from Ukrainian intellectuals — Myroslav Popovych, Ivan Drach, Yurii Shapoval, Yevhen Holovaha, and Natalia Yakovenko) the topic of historical memory, its immense contradictions, and numerous mysteries, its influence over the socially important events of the past, present, and future was humanly interesting. It was perceived as something vitally important, necessary for the case of nation’s self-discovery. And while this problem has already been the subject of several scholarly forums in the capital of Ukraine (for instance, one of them was held in December 2008 in Kyiv Mohyla Academy), the shared understanding was that this huge intellectual field is still largely unexplored.
The Ambassador of France to Ukraine, Jacques Faure, greeted the conference participants and pointed out that one of the important special features of this meeting of scholars from Ukraine, France, and Russia is that “there emerged an opportunity to have this conversation without taboos, moreover that Ukraine as a state is finalizing its formation — not only institutional and political but also creative and intellectual, which makes the need for this conversation even more burning.” The ambassador expressed the opinion that French scholars could be taking active part in the discussion of (or even the formation of a new approach to) the issues of Ukrainian-Russian relations. And the presence of the third party, in this case France, will place this dialogue into a wider European context.
It should be pointed out that the Ukrainian-Russian discussion itself, as Faure added, is truly engaging and to some extent unpredictable due to the fact that historical personae the general attitude to whom seemed to be long established are suddenly presented in a completely new light. As an example, the ambassador mentioned the glorious Taras Bulba and his creator, the genius of the Ukrainian land Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol), and commented (with truly French tact and elegant indirection): “The recent Russian movie directed by Vladimir Bortko forced me to re-read this novel. I had an impression that both sides strive to tear Gogol in halves instead of sharing him between them.”
The renowned French historian and philosopher George Mink started his speech with a comment on the great number of profound (and not so profound) scholarly works that study the correlation between the notions of “national history” and “national memory.” In his opinion, there are still many questions to discuss in this regard, especially if we take into account a rather vague, mysterious but still very topical and appropriate term “the revenge of memory,” introduced by French historian Pierre Nora. “We can hardly doubt now that history influences memory and vice versa — today this statement is almost banal. The issue, though, lies in the specific forms of this mutual influence, because there exist different “registers” of memory — memory of a person, memory of social and ethnic group, memory of the victorious and of the vanquished,” he said.
When analyzing the dynamics of historical memory, Mink pointed out, we see both the top-down movement and the bottom-up movement (if we put the mass consciousness at the bottom and the ruling elite at the top). Meanwhile, the narrative sources of memory can remain in the personal sphere or be institutionalized through the mass media and mass communication. In addition, one must differentiate between official history and official “memory imposed by the winners and, on the other hand, memories exiled to the underground.”
We must also keep in mind the so called “white pages” of memory — this is where the historical concepts forbidden by the authorities are stored (until they are in demand again). The characteristic feature is that all types of memory are used to maximize the domestic political advantages of some powers. At the same time, Mink says that we cannot limit ourselves to studying interactions of memory and history only within the limits of one specific state (or a narrow group of states), because the globalization and nation-crossing processes require approaches that are qualitatively new. Yet even now, Mink emphasizes, it is noticeable that the institutes of national memory are used not just as archival storage but also as a tool against historical — and, at the same time, political — antagonists.
The representative of Russian scholars, Arseniy Roginsky of the Memorial Society, drew attention to the fact that in different countries, including Ukraine and Russia, the images of the past are different, which, given a lack of desire to find a compromise and mutual understanding, can cause “conflicts of memory” or even “memory wars.” Indeed, while in Russia, for example, 1944 is the year of “liberation of Estonia from the German Fascist invaders,” Estonians answer to this in the following way: “Yes, thank you for liberating us, yet why did you stay after that? You are liberators, yet you are also invaders.” In the same manner, for example, the pictures of the well-known events of Sept. 17, 1939, in Russia, on one hand, and in Poland and Ukraine, on the other hand, are very different.
Roginsky said that with this in view the Russian Memorial Society recently approved a declaration on the problems of historical memory, which clearly states that they need to recognize that the memory of Russia’s neighboring countries is different and need to respect it, because a neighbor has, no doubt, a right to have a different vision of the past.
At the same time, Roginsky said that Russian politicians (and, unfortunately, the Kremlin’s official historians) are intensively shaping the image of Russia’s “glorious past” as a straight line from victory to victory. Among other things, Roginsky mentioned caustically, all this reminds one of the notorious ideological statement made by count Benkendorf, the most influential person in Emperor Nikolas’s narrow circle. In 1833 the count wrote literally the following: “The past of Russia is glorious; its present is splendid; and its future is beyond any stretch of imagination!” Such ideological convergence, a rather odd one, happens sometimes...
However, Roginsky believes that we should not exaggerate the significance of the Commission against Falsification of History created by President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. The reason is that these types of commissions in Russia are completely powerless. (I beg to differ — what if this Commission will suddenly appear to one that is capable of action? Furthermore, its obvious support on the highest state level is not a secret.)
Roginsky dwelled on how Ukraine and Ukrainians are perceived by the mass consciousness of average Russians. A decade ago, he said, Ukraine was not generally perceived to be a separate state by the majority of Russians. “And these days I don’t come across people in Russia who would doubt this. What is the reason? The answer is simple: the Orange Revolution took place!” For the Russian mass consciousness, Ukraine is a very important part of such amalgamating “we,” a part of “our” consciousness.
Another widespread persuasion among Russians is this: “We never deprived anybody of their independence, much less so Ukraine!” This is the most dangerous thing... “What should we do?” Roginsky asked himself and the audience. The answer is as follows: the society should constantly maintain a dialogue. Historians have a double responsibility: as professionals she should not use biased evaluations and methods in their work, while as citizens they should not allow themselves to be used as a tool for the already existing animosity. Nor should they forget that if a historian has produced a text that neither of the conflicting parties fancy, this is an honest text, said Roginsky in conclusion.
Andrii Portnov of Ukraina Moderna pointed out that in the case of the Ukrainian-Russian dialogue (unlike, say, the Ukrainian-Polish dialogue) the important thing is that these two countries are both post-Soviet and both have post-Soviet academic environments. This leads to an illusion of easy mutual understanding and perception of what is happening in the other country. Portnov said that this is exacerbated by the legitimization of Ukrainophobic and Russophobic attitudes and views in our countries, as well as by the generally terrible lack of cultured, considered voices. He also asked the audience: What should historians do in the present conditions to promote understanding between Russia and Ukraine? Many historians are waiting for a “social demand,” what is highly deplorable, Portnov said. What can be a unifying factor is not the compromised history that is comfortable for the neighbor but the analytical history that promotes discussion of various thoughts and intellectual honesty. Thankfully, these days the relationships between society and historians have changed: a historian is no longer deemed to be a “mind master.” But he was and still is a citizen — especially when writing a school textbook.
This “intellectual honesty with oneself” (and most of the conference participants agreed on this) is the main guarantee against the dangerous national-chauvinistic “self-glorification” on pseudo-historical grounds. This is equally true no matter what the discussions center on — be it issues of state and cultural inheritance of the Kyivan Rus’, perception of the 1932–33 Holodomor in the Ukrainian and Russian societies and the responsibility for it, or the burning problems of the Ukrainian-Russian relations. There are no reasons to doubt that an honest, impartial historian (and I do believe these do constitute a large majority) is well aware of how true the words said by Yeshua ha-Notsri, a character in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, were: “To say the truth is easy and pleasant.” What he meant was the ease before one’s conscience rather than the ease of one’s pragmatic calculations.
