Kuzio delivers 1997 Palij lecture (01/11/98)

Kuzio delivers 1997 Palij lecture

LAWRENCE, Kansas - The Palij Memorial Fund at the University of Kansas on November 17, 1997, held its annual lecture given by Taras Kuzio, research fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, at the University of Birmingham, England.

Renowned historian Dr. Michael Palij established the fund with monies collected from the local Ukrainian community. A librarian at the University of Kansas before he retired, Dr. Palij singlehandedly established a Ukrainian presence at the University of Kansas through library acquisitions.

Mr. Kuzio's lecture addressed the topic "State- and Nation-Building in Ukraine: Achievements, Problems and the Way Ahead." The talk was divided into six sections and in the first section, Mr. Kuzio discussed contemporary theories of nationalism and pointed out that scholars have difficulty in defining a nation or pinpointing when a nation comes about.

Austrian rule proved rather benevolent and allowed the Rusyn (Ruthenian) ethnos to evolve into a nation by 1914. In contrast, in eastern Ukraine the tsarist authorities prevented the spread of the national idea from elites to masses. This was followed by policies of Russification and Little Russianization under the Soviets.

Mr. Kuzio noted that the collapse of empires always leads to national identity crises with many people falling back upon regional identities. Little Russianism, like the Anglo-Irish in Eire (Ireland), were a product of colonial policies that created peoples with mixed and divided loyalties.

The second section of the presentation dealt with elites. Mr. Kuzio pointed out that it was not unusual for old and new elites to co-exist during the early transition phase. The defection of the national communists to the independence cause, and the pacts created with them, were commonplace in transitions (as seen in Latin America and South Africa).

The political and cultural elites are joined by economic entrepreneurs who also have a stake in the new regime. These economic entrepreneurs are threatened by Russian capital and feel the need to culturally legitimize their rule by cementing alliances with the cultural-political elites. The best example of this is Pavlo Lazarenko, whose Hromada political party has drawn up a shadow Cabinet that includes former President Leonid Kravchuk's minister of education, Petro Talanchuk, and Rukh radical Larysa Skoryk as minister of culture.

The third theme of the presentation dealt with forging a new political community or civic nation. Mr. Kuzio pointed out that transition in the former Soviet republic's was fourfold, involving the economic, political, state- and nation-building spheres, which makes the transition process more complicated and drawn out.

The next area the speaker discussed was the myth of separatism and the struggle to have borders legally recognized. Mr. Kuzio argued that separatism was a threat in the Crimea only during 1992-1995, but has since collapsed and is unlikely to recover. Separatism in eastern Ukraine never existed because communists and interfront-type groups backed the union of all of Ukraine into a revived USSR or pan-Slavic group, not just separate regions of Ukraine. It was therefore wrong to extrapolate the Donbas as representative of all of Ukraine, just as it was wrong to assume that Halychyna was typical for all of western Ukraine.

Borders, like citizenship, define the community or nation and separate the "we" from foreign "others". Borders are as important to states as other national symbols. Their recognition by Ukraine's neighbors, which was completed only in June of this year, was always a central strategic goal of Ukrainian foreign policy. Support for these inherited borders was always high; Donetsk and Lviv differed little over this, Mr. Kuzio emphasized.

Language is undoubtedly important to national identity for without a unified language, it is more difficult to create national unity. Nevertheless, Mr. Kuzio cautioned that language should not be regarded as a sign of a person's patriotism. Quoting the historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, he argued that Little Russianization was far more damaging than Russification. Language is important as one of the few markers identifying Ukrainians as being different from Russians.

The speaker criticized Western scholars, such as Dominique Arel and Andrew Wilson, who championed the idea of two state languages, a view backed by only one democratic party in Ukraine (the Inter-Regional Bloc for Reforms). Two state languages would be an artificial equality as Ukrainian could not hope to compete. Mr. Kuzio argued that attempting to remove legacies of colonial discrimination against Ukrainian language and culture is perfectly compatible with Western liberal policies of affirmative action. Those who support two state languages also tend to link language to ethnicity, arguing that Ukraine is in effect a "binational" state with two titular groups (Russians and Ukrainians), resembling a kind of Belgium or Canada.

Finally, the speaker discussed the issue of historiography and its role in creating new myths for nation-state building. Myths help to diversify new communities and legitimize their statehood, countering old prejudices, such as those in which Ukrainians were depicted as being unable to establish their own state.

Here the speaker pointed to the central importance of the historian and statesman Mykhailo Hrushevsky, whose views now are central to Ukraine's emerging new historiography. In President Kuchma's view, Hrushevsky was "devoted to national revival," "revived its (Ukraine's) genetic memory" and "developed a concept of the historical development of the Ukrainian people, proved that our people has its own core origins."

In conclusion, the speaker pointed to the positive developments in state- and nation-building that had occurred in the 1990s - the creation of a legal-political community, common institutions, the decline of Crimean separatism and definition of a historic and bordered territory. Problems remain, however, such as overcoming Little Russianism and creating a new civic culture and ideology.