COMMENTARY: The Pereiaslav anniversary and CIUS (01/18/04)

COMMENTARY

The Pereiaslav anniversary and CIUS

by Dr. Frank Sysyn

While the Ukrainian community in the diaspora has been occupied with the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the genocidal Famine of 1933, it has paid little attention to another anniversary looming - the 350th of the Pereiaslav Agreement and Council of January 1654. This is in marked contrast to the 300th anniversary, when the community mobilized against the Soviet celebration of the Pereiaslav Council as an act of the "reunion of Ukraine with Russia" and effectively lobbied the press and media to ensure that the Soviet interpretation would not be affirmed.

Even before Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma, issued a decree on the commemoration of the Famine, he issued one on the commemorations of the Pereiaslav Council, which - reminiscent of Soviet celebrations - called for school competitions and artistic endeavors. Framed as part of the presidential tilt towards Russia, the decree was met with protests from the Ukrainian intelligentsia and criticism from the International Congress of Ukrainian Studies, which met in Chernivtsi in August 2002.

On June 14, 2002, three historians from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), Zenon Kohut, Serhii Plokhii and Frank Sysyn, wrote an open letter to their colleagues in Ukraine affirming their support for freedom of intellectual inquiry in Ukrainian historical research and calling on their colleagues not to be seduced by blandishments of the authorities to take part in this obvious political gambit. Realizing the importance of providing reliable historical information on the Pereiaslav events, CIUS has undertaken a number of steps to provide such scholarly information for the academic and Ukrainian communities.

CIUS Press made John Basarab's book "Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study" its featured book of the month in December 2003. The volume is a thorough study of the documents of the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, including translations of the most important texts. The volume examines the views of the most important scholars who wrote on the Pereiaslav treaty from the 17th century to the 1970s. More information about this volume, as well as other publications and order forms, can be found on the CIUS Press website at www.utoronto.ca/cius.

At the same time, the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research has completed the editing of the English translation of Volume 9, book 1, of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's "History of Ukraine-Rus'," which takes the reader up to the eve of the Pereiaslav events. The volume, which will be published in 2004, together with the already published Volume 8, which covers the period 1625-1650, will provide readers with the views, in English, of Ukraine's greatest historian on the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the background of the Pereiaslav Treaty. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine project has made a general entry on the Pereiaslav Treaty accessible to Internet users around the world on the its website at www.encyclopediaofukraine.com.

CIUS has also taken an active role in funding and producing a major volume on the Pereiaslav Council and Treaty that has just been published in Kyiv by Smoloskyp Press for the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies, the Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA), and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Pavlo Sokhan served as the main editor, and Iaroslav Dashkevych as the associate editor. Titled "Pereiaslavska Rada 1654 Roku (Istoriohrafiia Ta Doslidzhennia)" (The Pereiaslav Council of 1654 [Historiography and Research]), the 888-page volume printed in 5,000 copies includes 21 articles.

Part 1 contains five reprints of classical works of Ukrainian historiography by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Viacheslav Lypynsky, Rostyslav Lashchenko, Andrii Iakovliv and Oleksander Ohloblyn, as well as five reprints of scholarly-publicistic essays by Mykhailo Drahomanov, Dmytro Dontsov, Roman Bzhesky, Zynovii Knysh and Mykhailo Braichevsky.

Braichevsky's piece is accompanied by the notes of the criticisms (in fact attacks) in the 1970s of his lengthy essay "Annexation or Reunion?" by members of the Institute of History of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as well as his replies to the critics, edited and commented on by Ihor Hyrych.

The second part of the volume has six articles on Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and English-language historiography by Frank Sysyn, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Oleksii Ias, Viktor Brekhunenko, and Miroslaw Nagielski, as well as five new studies on the problem by Viktor Brekhunenko, Viktor Horobets, Taras Chukhlib, Serhii Plokhii and Iaroslav Fedoruk. The monumental volume is being launched in many cities throughout Ukraine in order to permit the Ukrainian public to gain a deeper understanding of the historical events of 1654 and how they have been interpreted since.

"Pereiaslavska Rada 1654 Roku" is available from CIUS Press for $64.95 and can be ordered by e-mail ([email protected]), mail (CIUS Press, University of Alberta, 450 Athabasca Hall, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E8), phone (780-492-2973), or fax (780-492-4967).

CIUS is also co-sponsoring an international conference on the Pereiaslav events that will be held in Kyiv in this month precisely 350 years after the meeting of the council. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for scholarly discussion of the Pereiaslav Agreement and its consequences and to counter the anticipated official celebrations.

As well, the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research and the Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine of CIUS are sponsoring a conference in cooperation with colleagues at St. Petersburg University in May. The goal of the conference is to gather an international group of scholars in a Russian setting to discuss various interpretations of Russian-Ukrainian relations, including the Pereiaslav events.

CIUS has striven to ensure that academic circles and media worldwide, the Ukrainian diaspora and the Ukrainian public will have authoritative material on the Pereiaslav Treaty and Council. At a time when these historical topics are the subject of political and ideological struggles, these information sources are of exceptional importance.

Dr. Frank E. Sysyn is director of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research at CIUS, University of Alberta and the editor in chief of the Hrushevsky Translation Project. During the spring semester, 2004, he is affiliated with the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, where he is teaching two courses in Ukrainian and East European history.

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