Abstract
Analysts of the post-Soviet memory wars in Ukraine have tended to focus overwhelmingly on the ways in which Ukrainian memory is shaped by regional differences. The regional dimension is certainly important here, but approaching Ukrainian memory exclusively through this lens can serve to obscure other aspects of the landscape. In this chapter, I aim to shift the perspective, with a view to emancipating the rich social reality of Ukrainian memory from the pressures of normative and essentializing schemas and one-sided reductive assessments. Focusing on the changing politics of memory during the presidencies of Leonid Kravchuk (1991–94), Leonid Kuchma (1994–2004) and Viktor Yushchenko (2005–10), I will show that this politics, far from having been structured and predetermined by rigid and entrenched regional fault lines, has in fact been deeply contingent and deeply contradictory. The search for a strategy that would legitimize the new independent Ukraine and its post-Soviet elite without provoking national, linguistic, and/or religious conflict, while all the time with an eye to Russia, was all about improvisation.
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Notes
For more details see Catherine Wanner, Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1998); Peter Rodgers, Nation, Region and History in Post-cCommunist Transitions: Identity Politics in Ukraine, 1991–2006 (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2008); Wilfried Jilge, “Nationale Geschichtspolitik während der Zeit der Perestroika in der Ukraine,” in Gegenerinnerung. Geschichte als politisches Argument im Transformationsprozess Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas, ed. by Helmut Altrichter (München: Oldenbourg, 2006), pp. 99–128; and Georgiy Kasianov, Ukraina 1991–2007. Narysy novitnioi istorii (Kyiv: Nash chas, 2008).
Karel Berkhoff, “‘Brothers, We Are All of Cossack Stock’: The Cossack Campaign of Ukrainian Newspapers on the Eve of Independence,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 21.1–2 (1997), 119–40; Serhy Yekelchyk, “Cossack Gold: History, Myth and the Dream of Prosperity in the Age of Post-Soviet Transition,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 40.3–4 (1998), 311–25; see also a bestselling novel about the Polubotok gold: A. K. Shevchenko, Bequest (London: Headline 2012).
For analysis of the public memory of the Second World War in L’viv see: Tarik Cyril Amar, “Different but the Same or the Same but Different? Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet L’viv,” Journal of Modern European History, 9.3 (2011), 373–96.
Yaroslav Hrytsak, “Constructing a National City: The Case of L’viv,” in Composing Urban History and the Construction of Civic Identities, ed. by John Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble (Washington and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 140–64.
For more on Kyiv, see Wilfried Jilge, “Kulturpolitik als Geschichtspolitik. Der ‘Platz der Unabhängigkeit,’” Osteuropa, 1 (2003), 33–57; Maksym Strikha, “Znykomyi Kyiv budynkiv i nazv,” Krytyka, 1–2 (2007), 21–22; and Ihor Hyrych, Kyiv v ukrains’kii istorii (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2011).
On the “domestication” of the Soviet monument in Carpathian Slavs’ke, see Andriy Portnov, “Pluralität der Erinnerung Denkmäler und Geschichtspolitik in der Ukraine,” Osteuropa, 6 (2008), 197–210. The same tactics in post-Soviet Moldova are described in Ludmila Cojocari, “Political Liturgies and Concurrent Memories in the Context of Nation-Building Process in Post-Soviet Moldova: The Case of ‘Victory Day,’” Interstitio. East European Review of Historical Anthropology, 1–2 (2007), 109–110.
On the interpretation of UPA history and the dark sides of Ukrainian-Polish and Ukrainian-Jewish history see Strasti za Banderoiu, ed. by Tarik Cyril Amar and Yaroslav Hrytsak (Kyiv: Grani-T, 2011); Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der polnisch-ukrainische Historikerdiskurs über den polnisch-ukrainischen Konflikt 1943–1947,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 1 (2009), 54–85; John-Paul Himka, “Debates in Ukraine over Nationalist Involvement in the Holocaust, 2004–2008,” Nationalities Papers, 39 (2011), 353–370; and Per Anders Rudling, The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths (Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, Nr. 2107, 2011).
Vladyslav Hrynevych, “‘Raskolotaia pamiat’: Vtoraia mirovaia voina v istoricheskom soznanii ukrainskogo obshchestva,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2–3 (2005), 218–27; Wilfried Jilge, “The Politics of History and the Second World War in Post-communist Ukraine (1986/1991–2004/2005),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 1 (2006), 50–81; and Andriy Portnov, “Post-Soviet Ukraine and Belarus Dealing with ‘The Great Patriotic War,’” in 20 Years after the Collapse of Communism. Expectations, Achievements and Disillusions of 1989, ed. by Nicolas Hayoz, Leszek Jesień, and Daniela Koleva (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 369–81.
A telling example of such logic can be found in Yaroslav Hrytsak, “Tezy do dyskusii pro UPA,” in Yaroslav Hrytsak, Strasti za natsionalizmom (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2004), pp. 90–113 (p. 111).
The work of Volodymyr Viatrovych represents the best example of such efforts: Stavlennia OUN do ievreiv: Formuvannia pozytsii na tli katastrofy (L’viv: Ms, 2006) and Druha pol’sko-ukrains’ka viina 1942–1947 (Kyiv: Kyievo-Mohylians’ka akademiia, 2011, 2012). For a critical assessment of these works see Taras Kurylo and John-Paul Himka, “Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv? Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra Viatrovycha,” Ukraina Moderna, 13.2 (2008), 252–65; Discussion Forum at Ab Imperio, http://net.abimperio.net/node/2575 (accessed December 11, 2012); and Andriy [Andrei] Portnov, “Istorii dla domashnego upotrebleniia,” Ab Imperio, 3 (2012), 309–38.
Analysis of Ukrainian school textbooks can be found in Jan G. Janmaat, “Ethnic and Civic Conceptions of the nation in Ukraine’s History Textbooks,” European Education, 37.3 (2005), 20–37; Shkil’na istoriia ochyma istorykiv-naukovtsiv. Materialy robochoi narady monitorynhu shkil’nykh pidruchnykiv z istorii Ukrainy, ed. by Natalia Yakovenko (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2008). On the regional specifics of history teaching, see Peter W. Rodgers, “Contestation and Negotiation: Regionalism and the Politics of School Textbooks in Ukraine’s Eastern Borderlands,” Nations and Nationalism, 12.4 (2006), 681–97. On the image of Poles see Natalia Yakovenko, “Pol’scha ta poliaky v shkil’nykh pidruchnykakh istorii, abo Vidlunnia davnioho i nedavnioho mynuloho,” in Paralel’nyj svit, Natalia Yakovenko (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2002), pp. 366–79. On the image of Russians, see Andriy Portnov, “Terra hostica: la Russe dans les manuels scolaries d’historie ukrainiens,” Anatoli. Dossier Représentations du monde dans l‘espace postsoviétique, 2 (2011), 39–62.
John-Paul Himka, “The Basic Historical Identity Formations in Ukraine: A Typology,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 28.1–4 (2006), 483–500.
Volodymyr Kulyk, “Politics of Ethnicity in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Beyond Brubaker,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 27.1–2 (2001), 197–221.
Volodymyr Kulyk, “Yazykovye ideologii v ukrainskom politicheskom i intellektual’nom diskursakh.” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1 (2007), 296–315 (pp. 308–9).
Vladimir Kravchenko, “Boi s ten’iu: sovetskoe proshloe v istoricheskoi pamiati sovremennogo ukrainskogo obshchestva,” Ab Imperio, 2 (2004), 329–368 (p. 348).
Wilfried Jilge, “The Politics of History and the Second World War in Post-communist Ukraine,” pp. 73–74.
Andriy Portnov and Tetyana Portnova, “Der Preis des Sieges. Der Krieg und die Konkurenz der Veteranen in der Ukraine,” Osteuropa, 5 (2010), 27–41.
The best historical description of the Volhynian massacre can be found in the monographs by Grzegorz Motyka: Ukrai ń ska partyzantka, 1942–1960 (Warszawa: Rytm, 2006) and Od rzezi woły ń skiej do akcji “Wisła.” Konflikt polsko-ukrai ń ski, 1943–1947 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011).
Viktor Medvedchuk, “Volyn’ — nash spil’nyi bil’,” Den’, April 2, 2003; Volodymyr Lytvyn, “Tysiacha rokiv suspilstva i vzaemodii,” Holos Ukrainy, November 12, 2002.
Вogumiła Berdychowska, “Ukraińcy wobec Wołynia,” Zeszyty Historyczne, 146 (2003), 65–104 (p. 69); Compare: Grzegorz Motyka, “Druha svitova viina v pol’s’ko-ukrains’kykh istorychnykh dyskusiiakh,” Ukraina Moderna 15. 4 (2009), 127–36.
Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, ed. by Zvi Gitelman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). On Soviet propaganda and the topic of the mass murder of the Jews during the Second World War and in the first postwar years, see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Karel C. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
See, for instance, Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007); see also the discussions of Bartov’s book in Ukraina Moderna, 15.4 (2009), 273–348 and Ab Imperio, 1 (2010), 120–53.
“Ukraine Unveils Large Jewish Center, Holocaust Museum,” Radio Free Europe, October 17, 2012, www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-jewish-cultural -center-dnipropetrovsk/24742255.html (accessed December 11, 2012). See also Oleg Iu. Rostovtsev, Ievrei Dnipropetrovshchyny: istoriia ta suchasnist’ (Dnipropetrovsk: Art-Press, 2012).
David Clark, “Creating Jewish Spaces in European Cities: Amnesia and Collective Memory,” in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Proceedings of the 6th EAJS Congress, Toledo, July 1998, Vol. 2. Judaism from Renaissance to Modern Times, ed. by Judit Targarona Borrás and Angel Sáenz-Badillos, pp. 274–82 (p. 280).
Cited Andriy [Andrej] Portnov, Uprazhneniia s istoriei po-ukrainski (Moscow: O.G.I., Memorial, 2010), p. 61.
See Bohdan Harasymiv, “Memoirs of the Second World War in Recent Ukrainian Election Campaigns,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 32.1 (2007), 97–108.
On various aspects of the Orange Revolution see Andrew Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Adrian Karatnycky, “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, 84.2 (2005), 35–52; Taras Kuzio, “From Kuchma to Yushchenko. Ukraine’s 2004 Presidential Elections and the Orange Revolution,” Problems of Post-communism, 52.2 (2005), 29–44; Lucan A. Way, “Kuchma’s Failed Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, 16.2 (2005), 131–45; Serhiy Kudelia, “Revolutionary Bargain: The Unmaking of Ukraine’s Autocracy through Pacting,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 23.1 (2007), 77–100; Alexandra Goujon, Révolutions politiques et identitaires en Ukraine et en Biélorussie (1988–2008) (Paris: Belin, 2011). On the specifics of Donbass political elites see Kerstin Zimmer, Machteliten im ukrainischen Donbass: Bedingungen und Konsequenzen der Transformation einer alten Industrieregion (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006).
Most notable among them being Mykola Rjabtschuk [Mykola Riabchuk], Die reale und die imaginierte Ukraine, trans. by Ju Durkot (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2005).
Compare also Denys Soltys, “Shifting Civilizational Borders in Orange Ukraine. Dilemmas and Opportunities for Western Diplomacy,” International Journal (Winter 2005–6), 161–78.
Viktoria Sereda, “Osoblyvosti reprezentatsii natsional’no-istorychnykh identychnostei v ofitsiinomu dyskursi prezydentiv Ukrainy i Rosii,” Sotsiolohia: teoriia, istoriia, marketynh, 3 (2006), 191–212 (p. 198).
“Yuschenko prizval sovetskikh veteranov pomirit’sia s veteranami UPA,” polit.ru, May 9, 2005 http://polit.ru/news/2005/05/09/dsgbdfbdb/ (accessed January 15, 2013).
Georgiy Kasianov, Danse macabre. Holod 1932–1933 rokiv u politytsi, masovii svidomosti ta istoriohrafii (1980-ti-pochatok 2000-kh) (Kyiv: Nash chas, 2010), pp. 79–108.
By the end of Yushchenko’s presidency there were no less than 400 memorial signs to the victims of the Holodomor across Ukraine. The majority of them are modest crosses in cemeteries or small monuments, and some of these erected before Yushchenko came to power. For an attempt to catalogue these monuments see Erinnerungsorte an den Holodomor 1932/33 in der Ukraine, ed. by Anna Kaminsky (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2008).
On the political, legal, and scholarly usages of the term “genocide” in relation to the Holodomor, see James E. Mace, “The Man-Made Famine of 1933 in the Soviet Ukraine: What Happened and Why?,” in Toward the Understanding and Preventing of Genocide, ed. by Israel W. Charny (London and Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 67–83; Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyj, “Holodomor v Ukraini i ukrains’kyi Holokost,” Holokost i suchasnist’. 3.1 (2008), 88–98; John-Paul Himka, “Review of Making Sense of Suffering: Holocaust and Holodomor in Ukrainian Historical Culture”, by Johan Dietsch, and Holod 1932–1933 rr. v Ukraini iak henotsyd, by Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 8.3 (2007), 683–94; Andrea Graziosi, “Sovetskii golod i ukrainskii golodomor,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1 (2007), 156–77; Michael Ellman, “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited,” Europa-Asia Studies, 59.4 (2007), 663–93; Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered,” Europe-Asia Studies, 60.4 (2008), 663–75; Viktor Kondrashin, Golod 1932–1933 godov: tragedija rossiiskoi derevni (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008); and Nicolas Werth, “The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33,” http://www.massviolence.org/The-1932–1933-Great-Famine-in-Ukraine (accessed December 11, 2012).
“Simonenko otkryl v Simferopole pamiatnik zhertvam OUN-UPA,” Korrespondent.net, September 14, 2007, http://www.korrespondent.net/main/207397 (accessed December 11, 2012).
“V Luganske otkryli pamiatnik zhertvam OUN-UPA,” Lugansk.info, May 9, 2010, http://news.lugansk.info/2010/lugansk/05/001074.shtml (accessed December 11, 2012).
Anthropological research does not always confirm such claims. For instance, Tanya Richardson shows that for many Odessans the “restoration” of Catherine II monument had no proimperial connotations and could be combined with loyalty toward Ukrainian statehood; see Tanya Richardson, Kaleidoscopic Odessa: History and Place in Contemporary Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
“Yaceniuk ne sumuje za imperijeju Franza Josyfa Pershoho,” zik.ua, October 4, 2009, http://zik.ua/ua/news/2009/10/04/198713 (accessed December 11, 2012).
On the formation of the Soviet canon of Ukrainian culture and the participation of local elites in this process, see Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
A balanced analysis of Mazepa can be found in two books by Orest Subtelny: The Mazepists: Ukrainian Separatism in the Early Eighteenth Century (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981) and The Domination of Eastern Europe: Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500–1715 (Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986).
Natalia Mitroshyna, “Istorija baturyns‘koho zapovidnyka ‘Het‘mans‘ka stolytsia,’” RT.korr, April 7, 2010, http://www.rtkorr.com/news/2010/04/07 /122998.new (accessed December 11, 2012).
In Soviet as well as Western popular perception, Petliura was widely seen as responsible for the pogroms of Jews during the Civil War (1917–21) in Ukraine. His murderer explained his motive to kill Petliura as revenge for the pogroms, and was subsequently released by the French court that had put him on trial. A nuanced analysis of Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the 1920s and Petliura’s role in them can be found in Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
“Poltavskii sud postanovil snesti pamiatnyj kamen’ Petliure,” Korrespondent. net, September 19, 2007, http://www.korrespondent.net/main/208104 (accessed December 11, 2012).
Andriy [Andrei] Portnov, “Bandere snova otkazano … v trudovykh dostizheniiakh,” Urok istorii blog, August 12, 2011, http://urokiistorii.ru/blogs /andrei-portnov/2243 (accessed December 11, 2012).
A similar “multihistoricism” characteristic of post-Soviet Russian memory has been described by Alexander Etkind in his “Vremia sravnivat’ kamni,” Ab Imperio, 2 (2004), 33–76.
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© 2013 Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, and Julie Fedor
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Portnov, A. (2013). Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1991–2010). In: Blacker, U., Etkind, A., Fedor, J. (eds) Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137322067_12
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