Association for the Study of Nationalities puts Ukraine in the spotlight (05/19/02)

Association for the Study of Nationalities puts Ukraine in the spotlight

by Yuri Shevchuk

NEW YORK - Ukraine was the principal focus of the seventh annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities that took place in New York on April 11-13, with 18 panels, roundtables and video presentations discussing a wide array of Ukraine-related political, social, historical, cultural and language issues.

This time around the ASN World Convention, held at the International Affairs Building of Columbia University and sponsored by the Harriman Institute, offered a Ukrainian selection of topics that by sheer number of papers - about 60 - left all other post-Soviet countries well behind, Russia among them with only 12 panels.

An additional sign of Ukraine's importance in today's field of post-Soviet studies was a strong international flavor to the Ukrainian thematic "menu": in its Index of Panels by Regions, the official ASN Convention Program listed under "Ukraine" such panels as "Building the Crimean Tatar Nation," "Belarus After the Presidential Elections," "Ukraine: Historical Issues and Policies of Slavic Identities," "Developing Foreign Policy," "Jewish Identity in Ukrainian Culture," and "The Impact of Western Assistance on Ukraine's Transition to Democracy."

Ukraine-related papers were also presented at other regional panels, for example, the panel on "Dealing with Diasporas" alongside others, discussed the paper by Wsewolod Isajiw (University of Toronto), titled "Ukraine's Loss of Human Resources: Immigrants from Ukraine to Canada, 1999-2001." Similarly, the "Contemporary Poland" panel included the presentation by Alexandra Jawornicka (University of Zielona Gora, Poland) on "Lemko Separatism and Ethnic Politics of the Polish Government in the 21st Century."

Reflecting the realities of contemporary Ukraine and following established tradition, the convention primarily focused on issues of Ukrainian politics (panels: "Nationalism and Nation-Building in Ukraine," "Domestic Politics in Ukraine"); culture and identity (panels: "The New Ukrainian Literary Canon and National Identity," "Civic Values and Religious Education in Ukraine Today") and foreign policy ("Ukraine: Developing a Foreign Policy").

What made this year's ASN World Convention unique was its unprecedented emphasis on language issues in Ukraine, which were discussed within three panels: "Nationality and Language in the 2001 Ukrainian Census", "Language Policies and Politics in Ukraine and Belarus", and "Political, Social and Linguistic Implications of Surzhyk in Ukraine Today". The "surzhyk" roundtable, organized by the Shevchenko Scientific Society of New York with the active participation of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), was particularly well-attended.

One could get a fairly accurate picture of the present geographical distribution of Ukrainian studies in the West by looking at the university affiliations of the convention participants. As befits its status of the leading Ukrainian center in North America, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) commanded by far the most impressive presence at the convention. This became possible largely thanks to the new research fellowship created at Harvard under the aegis of the HURI by Eugene and Daymel Shklar.

Alongside HURI faculty members, Michael Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, and George Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian Literature, four of this year's eight Shklar fellows presented their papers: Laada Bilaniuk (University of Washington), Tamara Hundorova (Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), Stephen Shulman (Southern Illinois University) and Volodymyr Kulyk (Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).

Besides the United States, Canada and Ukraine, which provided the greatest number of participants, among the convention's Ukraine experts were scholars from Poland, Australia, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey and Israel.

The program also included four Ukraine-related video presentations with subsequent discussions. "Time to Gather Stones," by director Sergey Tcaci (Moldova), looked at the causes and consequences of the war in Transdniestria in 1992. "My Mother's Village," John Paskievich, director (Canada), delved into the experience of his own family who half a century ago left Ukraine for Canada. The author attempted to "reconcile his lifelong feeling of being caught in between two cultures" (a quote from the convention program), so well-known among Ukrainians of the diaspora.

Two other screenings proved to be a small sensation at the convention not least due to their controversial subjects deeply steeped in present-day politics SS in Britain Julian Hendy, director (United Kingdom) caused quite a mobilization among those whose memories of the infamous 60 Minutes segment called "The Ugly Face of Freedom" were still all too fresh. The documentary about the Waffen-SS Division Halychyna asserts that the Division committed war crimes against civilians in Ukraine and Slovakia, and that many of its soldiers obtained British citizenship after the war. The heated discussion following the screening was a case of unanimity quite rare among scholars, who basically shared the view that the documentary was biased, one-sided and politically motivated.

The fourth presentation consisted of two sets of footage, each, in its own way, dealing with the abduction and murder - allegedly on President Leonid Kuchma's orders - of the muckraking journalist Heorhii Gongadze, that resulted in the deepest political crisis Ukraine has seen since independence and sharply divided society into defenders and detractors of the present regime.

The first documentary "Bring Me the Head of Georgy Gongadze," by the director Susie Davis (U.S.) was followed by "Pi Ar" [PR] Peter Powel, producer, Charles Clover co-producer (U.S.). The former presented the Gongadze case as a testimony to the sorry state of the independent press and freedom of speech in Ukraine. The latter suggested that the Gongadze case was a sinister plot orchestrated in order to replace President Kuchma with Viktor Yushchenko, destabilize Ukraine and smear its image in the world. The participation in the discussion of Myroslava Gongadze, the late journalist's wife who has been granted political asylum in the United States, gave an added sense of drama and poignancy to the occasion.

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