2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Much ado in the world of Ukrainian scholarship

Development in the realm of Ukrainian scholarship both in the U.S. and abroad. From the new business school and school of public health at Kyiv Mohyla Academy in Ukraine, to a new visiting professor and a reached endowment goal at Columbia University in New York, young Ukrainians have more and more academic opportunities. Conferences such as "Ukraine in Europe and the World," the 24th annual Shevchenko conference, the 23rd Conference on Ukrainian Subjects and the Ottawa conference on Ukrainian transformation, provide a forum for scholars who study various issues related to Ukraine, to gather and exchange knowledge.

On February 18 Kyiv Mohyla Business School (KMBS) announced its partnership with Pryvat Bank, one of Ukraine's largest banks, to develop a corporate university. This cooperative effort demonstrates the corporate awareness that now permeates the Ukrainian business world - the knowledge that well-educated managers are necessary in the ever more competitive environment. Pryvat Bank and KMBS will develop programs in management training and executive development for Pryvat Bank's 19,000 employees and more than 3,000 managers.

KMBS students are required to have at least three years' managerial experience, a college degree and fluency in English and Ukrainian. The school, also offers undergraduate level business classes to National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy students.

In December 2002, in an effort to make KMBS an international leader, program director Pavlo Sheremeta had developed a partnership with Northwestern University's Center for Technology Innovation Management (CTIM), which provided KMBS access to huge academic, informational and technological resources. CTIM is closely associated with Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, considered the best business school in the world. In order to help KMBS attain world-class stature Mr. Sheremeta plans to expand the faculty to allow individual professors to spend more time on research and publishing. Two KMBS professors, however, have already published in the Ivey Business School Journal, considered the second best in the world after the Harvard Business Journal.

This past January the first visiting professor to teach Ukrainian history was appointed at Columbia University. Dr. Frank Sysyn, director of the Petro Jacyk Center for the Ukrainian Historical Research at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, accepted the Columbia appointment for the spring 2004 semester. Prof. Sysyn received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard and is author of highly regarded publications on Ukrainian history. He taught two courses in the history department: a graduate colloquium, "The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukraine and Muscovy-Russia in the Early Modern Period" and an undergraduate lecture course, co-taught with Prof. Mark von Hagen, on the subject "Ukraine and Russia: Encounters and Controversies in History."

The new endowed fund supporting courses in Ukrainian history is to be the first of several at Columbia for teaching, research, library acquisitions and outreach - activities that would be conducted in a center dedicated to Ukrainian studies. The Ukrainian Studies Fund recently raised thousands of dollars for this purpose, with over 300 donors nationwide contributing to the campaign.

On February 20-21, 17 European experts in politics, economics and social issues and three Americans - former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Miller and current U.S. Ambassador John Herbst - convened in Kyiv to assess Ukraine's future relationship with its European neighbors and the larger democratic world.

Titled "Ukraine in Europe and the World," the conference provided the government with its most recent report card, delivered openly and unvarnished by diplomatic ambiguities. Speakers voiced their concerns about corruption in the elections. Many conference participants also noted Ukraine's recent crackdown on the press. Most of the conference's discussion, however, focused on which positive and affirmative steps Ukraine must take for full acceptance into and integration within the community of democratic nations.

This was to be the first time that Ukraine's opposition forces gathered at the same forum to discuss their differences through dialogue rather than confrontation, an approach that has long been missing in the political culture of the country.

The Ukrainian government was reluctant to participate in the conference, and organizers were not notified until hours before its convening that government officials would participate.

Stanford University embarked in 2004 on a serious fund-raising effort to support the expansion of Ukrainian studies. Nancy Shields Kollmann, a professor in the department of history at Stanford University and a fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, was interviewed in May by The Weekly about new developments at the university regarding Ukrainian studies.

Since the lecture series that kicked off the Ukrainian studies program-building effort, a third lecture series on contemporary Ukraine was initiated, with a monthly lecture through May. Stanford sponsored a public symposium on the Ukrainian Famine in the autumn of 2003, and in 2004 Stanford's outreach program for high school teachers - a daylong symposium on Stalinism - included significant attention to the Famine in Ukraine. Stanford also continues to offer courses that include Ukrainian materials. Stamford's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) sponsors the current public lectures and symposia in Ukrainian studies that the university offers.

The initiative to work toward establishing Ukrainian studies at Stanford came from members of the community, and at Stanford, by Prof. Kollmann and Prof. Amir Weiner, whose research focuses on Ukraine in the 20th century.

Prof. Kollmann's hopes for the program include the training of several successful Ph.D. and M.A. students; sufficient funds to support a CREEES staff member dedicated to Ukrainian studies, who would organize an active calendar of events; and to have hosted visiting professors in several departments for courses in Ukrainian studies.

On March 6, the 24th annual scholarly conference dedicated to Taras Shevchenko was held at the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) headquarters. In accordance with established practice, the conference was co-hosted by the NTSh, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. (UVAN), the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University (HICU).

Dr. Olexa Bilaniuk, the president of UVAN, delivered the opening speech, in which he described Shevchenko as an indestructible symbol of the Ukrainian people, their language and culture, as well as their aspirations for an independent state with a Ukrainian face. Dr. Bilaniuk concluded that appropriate Shevchenko conferences need to be staged throughout the Russified cities of Ukraine in order to raise the Ukrainian national consciousness there.

Dr. John Fizer (NTSh), a professor of literature at Rutgers University, was the first of the featured speakers, whose topic was "Shevchenko Studies in the 1990s." Giovanna Siedina, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University, where her mentor is Prof. George Grabowicz of HURI, followed Dr. Fizer. She described in great detail the complexities and pitfalls facing a translator who is trying to retain the spirit of the original. "Foreigners on Shevchenko" was the topic tackled next by Dr. Eugene Fedorenko of UVAN. He quoted German, Austrian, Danish and Swedish critics from the 19th century who extolled Shevchenko's poetry in superlatives, calling him a genius, an artist of boundless talent, unique in the world of literature, a poet reflecting the soul of the Ukrainian people, but also a luminary of universal significance to humanity. The last speaker was Rory Finnin (HICU), a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature at Columbia University. His talk was titled "Shevchenko's Poem 'Kavkaz' and Jacob De Balmen." De Balmen was himself a general in the Russian army, but was 'Ukrainized' and a friend of Shevchenko.

The National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy established a School of Management of Public Health to advance the management of public health in Ukraine - this is in response to the alarming increase in health problems and mortality throughout the Ukrainian population, within the last decade. The school's academic program began on September 1 by offering a two-year master's degree program in management of public health.

The NUKMA School of Public Health's mission is to undertake an intensive study of Ukraine's health care and service delivery system with the purpose of identifying solutions to the problems of institutional reform and professional training of health care providers. The School of Public Health faculty will carry the burden of providing high-quality teaching, research and advisory activities.

With the assistance of Dr. Daniel Hryhorchuk, the School of Public Health of the University of Illinois in Chicago also became a partner of the program. Dr. Hryhorchuk received a grant from the Association Liaison Office for the University Cooperation and Development (through the U.S. Agency for International Development) to carry out joint programs in public health with Ukraine. Dr. Hryhorchuk is a member of the board of directors of the Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America.

Mykola Ryabchuk delivered this year's Taras Shevchenko lecture, "From 'Dysfunctional' to 'Blackmail' State: Paradoxes of the Post-Soviet Transition," on March 12 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The Ukrainian Professional and Business Club of Edmonton sponsors the annual Shevchenko Lecture, while the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) organizes it.

Mr. Ryabchuk concluded that following the Soviet Union's collapse, to maintain power the post-Soviet nomenklatura created what can be characterized as a 'blackmail state,' where the law and organs of the state, such as the tax police and prosecutors, are used selectively and arbitrarily to repress political opponents of the regime and maintain loyalty. The corrupt relationship that exists between business and government is one of the pillars of support and means of control within the country. This is why the regime cannot be counted on to effectively fight corruption or other white-collar crimes, like money laundering. Furthermore, the regime's interests, as well as those of its supporters, he pointed out, lie in stemming or arresting the development of civil society and democracy, the entrenchment of which threatens the existence of the 'blackmail state' and the power of those who benefit from and are tied to its existence.

Mr. Ryabchuk is a prominent political commentator, editor and journalist who lives in Kyiv. He is the author of numerous articles on contemporary Ukrainian politics and culture, and Ukrainian language books.

On May 8, in somewhat of a surprise announcement made toward the end of the gala fund-raising banquet at Columbia University, Dr. Bohdan Kekish, president and CEO of the Self Reliance (New York) Federal Credit Union, said that his organization had agreed to donate $140,000. This donation, coupled with an earlier gift of $250,000, put the credit union's total contribution to the endowment fund at $390,000, and the endowment at its $1 million goal.

Dr. Mark von Hagen, a professor of history at Columbia, also announced the launching of a campaign for the George Y. Shevelov endowed instructorship in the Ukrainian language. Prof. Shevelov (1908-2002) was emininent linguist whose monumental work "A Historical Phonology of the Ukrainian Language" was first published in 1979. He was also a professor of Slavic philology at Harvard, and at Columbia University from 1958 to 1977.

"Culture, Nation and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, 1600-1945," a volume co-edited by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn and Dr. von Hagen, was presented on May 1 at the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh). The book comprises 16 essays by an international cast of historians, with the subject matter subdivided into three major categories: the early modern period, the imperial period and the 20th century. It was published on April 1 by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS).

While the book is heavily annotated to be of value to a specialist, it also elaborates on a number of general topics, such as: the development of Ukrainian and Russian national identities; the cultural influence of Ukrainians on Russia; the question of the colonial status of Ukraine; the role of Russian-Ukrainian relations in Soviet policies; the Soviet secret police as an anti-Ukrainian instrument; and the effect of the German occupation policy during World War II.

The latest addition to the Ukrainian Research Institute's multi-volume series The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature was a monumental edition of the Rus' Primary Chronicle ("Povest Vremennykh Let"), the oldest of the historical chronicles from Ukraine. The Harvard edition is the first to offer the chronicle in the original language with all variant readings from an edition prepared by a Ukrainian research institution. Dr. Donald Ostrowski, research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute, research advisor in the social sciences and lecturer in extension studies at Harvard, prepared the current edition. He transcribed the texts, word for word, from each microfilm into computer files and later checked the veracity of the transcription by inspecting the original manuscripts.

This process took over 20 years to complete. Dr. Ostrowski meticulously compared thousands of lines of text from both northern and southern chronicle copies. He noted the various duplications, omissions and spellings, and reworked passages of these manuscripts that later copyists of the Middle Ages made in their copies of the text. In observing these discrepancies, Dr. Ostrowski concluded that the southern Rus' (Ukrainian) manuscripts cannot be ignored and that they have independent authority in determining substantive readings of the "Povest." This is seen from the line-by-line comparisons and forms a sound basis for doubting at least some of the 200 years of Russian scholarship on the "Povest."

On the initiative of the Library and Archives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S., a dozen specialists from several cities in the Northeast gathered recently at the society's headquarters in New York City for a first roundtable meeting to discuss the state of Ukrainian archives in the United States. Librarians, archivists and researchers shared information about archival holdings in their respective institutions and discussed such topics as preservation techniques for fragile materials, cataloguing of the contents of archives and the use of new technologies such as CDs to increase longevity of materials, and online catalogues and websites to enhance information-sharing and accessibility to researchers.

The participants at the roundtable came to the conclusion that the major challenges facing Ukrainian archival institutions in the U.S. today are the need for more funding, the urgent need for more young archivists with a requisite background in Ukrainian matters to carry on this work, and the fragility of some archived materials that should be transferred to CDs or other stable media soon in order to be preserved for the future. The group decided to focus on a feasible project that could be initiated immediately: the creation of an inventory of Ukrainian archival holdings in the U.S. that would include both the institutions represented at the meeting, as well as all other archives in the U.S., without which such an inventory would be incomplete. When completed, the inventory will be made available online as well as in catalog form, and will provide researchers with a starting point for inquiries about archival sources in the U.S. A standardized form will be developed at the Shevchenko Scientific Society and mailed to all repositories of Ukrainian materials for their input and response.

On April 27 Prof. Mark von Hagen, president of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies, presented a lecture titled "I Love Russia but Want Ukraine: or How a Russian General Became Hetman Skoropadsky of the Ukrainian State." The lecture also celebrated the 25th anniversary of such presentations supported by the Maria Palij Memorial fund that was established by Dr. Michael Palij, a longtime Slavic librarian and professor of Ukrainian history at the University of Kansas. The event was hosted by the university's department of history and the Center for Russian and East European Studies.

The 23rd annual Conference on Ukrainian Subjects took place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on July 16-19, attracting scholars whose professional interests are related to Ukrainian subjects from various countries, including Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Poland, Australia and Yugoslavia. The general topic of the 2004 conference was "Contemporary Ukraine and Its Diaspora as Seen by Scholars in Ukraine and Abroad," and was dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the 110th anniversary of the birth of Dmytro Chyzhevskyi.

The most important topics discussed during the conference were: the contemporary economic and political situation in Ukraine, the upcoming presidential election, cultural developments in Ukraine and problems of the Fourth Wave of Ukrainian immigrants. One of the major events of the conference was the presentation of the book "Ukraine: The Challenges of World War II" edited by Dr. Taras Hunczak and Prof. Shtohryn and published with the financial support of Walter and Raisa Bratkiv. The book is the first volume of conference papers of the Ukrainian Research Program at the University of Illinois. The book's 20 chapters - which deal with a variety of topics, including religion, literature, theater and Ukraine's relationship with neighboring countries during World War II are predominantly a compilation of papers that were prepared for and read at scholarly conferences organized by the Ukrainian Research Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Several chapters were written specifically for the book, while two chapters, as well as five valuable documents included as part of the appendix to the book, are reprints from publications of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.

On May 21, a document was signed in Munich in which Ukraine accredited the Ukrainian Free University (UFU). Dr. Leonid Rudnytzky, acting rector of the UFU, and Dr. Volodymyr Machulin, president of the High Accreditation Commission (VAK-Vyscha Atestasiyna Komisia), the official agency that accredits institutions of higher learning in Ukraine, signed an agreement that de facto and de jure fully validates all academic degrees of the UFU. Dr. Anatolii Pohribny, dean of the Faculty of Ukrainian Studies at the UFU and head of the Ukrainian Writers Union, brokered the agreement - the culmination of a five-year process of negotiations between the two institutions. Although the UFU was officially recognized by Ukraine's Ministry of Education as early as November 12, 1992, the VAK had refused to confirm the validity of the University's degrees until now. This accreditation now allows qualified graduate students to obtain academic degrees from UFU that they can fully benefit from in the future.

Dr. William Kirby, dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, on July 1, named Prof. Michael Flier as director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. Dr. Flier is the Oleksander Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology at Harvard University. His areas of specialization include the history of the Ukrainian language, as well as comparative morphology (the study of word forms) and phonology (the study of distinctive speech sounds) of Slavic languages. Prof. Flier is the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's fourth director.

Since becoming the Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology in 1991, Dr. Flier has taken an active role in the various areas of academic life at Harvard. From 1994 to 1999 he chaired the department of linguistics, and from 1999 to the present, he has headed the department of Slavic languages and literatures. He is also a member of the editorial board of the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies (25 volumes of which have already been published), and oversaw a special edition of the journal on linguistics, philology, dialectology and historical linguistics. He is now preparing the next thematic issue on studies of the Ukrainian language, which is scheduled to come out this year. Prof. Flier outlined important priorities for the institute in publications, support for research in Ukrainian studies, development of Harvard's Ucrainica (one of the best Ukrainian library collections in the world), and advocating Ukrainian culture and art in the Cambridge and Boston area.

A portion of Ivan Mazepa's archive, which was thought to have been lost during the destruction of Baturyn by the armies of Peter I in 1708, has been found in St. Petersburg. Dr. Tatiana Yakovleva of St. Petersburg University reported the fascinating discovery at an international conference held in St. Petersburg. The conference, "Ukraine and its Neighbors in the 17th Century" was held on May 27-29.

Dr. Yakovleva discovered papers from Mazepa's archive early in 2004, during her research on Kozak-era documents in the archive of Aleksandr Menshikov - Peter I's right-hand man and the commander of the Russian troops that captured and burned Hetman Mazepa's capital, Baturyn. The discovery of unknown letters by and to the Ukrainian hetman led Dr. Yakovleva to conclude that Mazepa's archive was not burned in Baturyn, but was appropriated by Menshikov. She also believes that Menshikov, a notoriously greedy man, took not only Mazepa's papers, but also his valuable library. The Kowalsky program, one of the conference's sponsors, will co-sponsor further efforts by Dr. Yakovleva and her colleagues to search for and reconstruct Mazepa's archive and library.

"The impacts [of Chornobyl] on the historical and cultural heritage of the region have almost never been discussed," according to Myron Stachiw, director of the project to preserve Polissia's unique cultural heritage. An area of northwestern Ukraine roughly the size of the state of Maine, Polissia is known for its old-growth forests rich with mushrooms, berries and medicinal herbs. An associate professor of historic preservation at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., Prof. Stachiw believes the region has been overlooked by ethnographers. And while data was collected there in the years following the accident, he said little has been done to study it or examine the methods used to collect it. Additionally, he fears other factors have worked against preservation. Looters have reportedly been active in the region, and their bounty stripped Polissia of the artifacts ethnographers often use to document a region's cultural heritage. Buildings, left unoccupied for nearly 20 years, are deteriorating and falling apart, Prof.. Stachiw added.

Prof. Stachiw was most recently awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to begin the first phase of his work in Ukraine. The fellowship sent him to Kyiv and Lviv from November 2004 to June 2005.

A collaborative duplication project between the Rylskyi Institute of Art, Folklore and Ethnography (Kyiv) and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has provided folk music enthusiasts the opportunity to listen to rare field recordings at the Ukrainian cylinder collection which features original archival materials loaned by the Rylskyi Institute to the Folklife Center for restoration and duplication. The recordings from the cylinder collection are culturally and historically significant and indicative of the pre-eminent status Ukrainian folk music scholarship already enjoyed in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, which included the early adoption of the Edison phonograph in fieldwork practice, transcription and musical analysis. The collaborative project was funded in part by several private foundations including the Maria Yasinsky Murowany Foundation, the REX Foundation, the Soros Foundation and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

Dr. Andrii Krawchuk was appointed to succeed Dr. Kenneth-Roy Bonin, who left his position on July 31 after five years, as president of the University of Sudbury. Born in Montreal, Dr. Krawchuk obtained degrees in linguistics and theology from McGill University. He continued his studies at the Academia Alfonsania (Lateran University in Rome), the University of Ottawa and St. Paul University. Dr. Krawchuk also studied at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal and the Seminary of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Dr. Krawchuk has a doctorate in theology, and his specialization is in religious ethics.

On October 15-16, 2004, historians, economists, political scientists, anthropologists and sociologists from Europe and North America gathered in Ottawa for the conference "Understanding the Transformation of Ukraine" organized by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa. Discussions centered on the evaluation of civil society in Ukraine, addressed by Dr. Wsewolod Isajiw and Dr. Catherine Wanner, among others.

Dr. Isajiw, the long-time professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, stated that the development of a new civil society in Ukraine is incumbent on the development of free media, a fair legal system, uniform law enforcement and the proliferation of community organizations - "NGB's, non-governmental bodies" as Prof. Isajiw put it - which in the case of Ukraine would include private businesses, private schools and hospitals. Dr. Isajiw suggested that the building of civil society does not necessarily have to be associated with NGOs, as it is in Western democracies, but rather with private small business and community projects because they are producing new civil consciousness.

Dr. Wanner, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, suggested that the re-building of civil society could start at the level of the family. Ukrainian families, though skeletal in form from the days of the Soviet Union, form cohesive groups which could enable their members to become pro-active on many issues, thus building a new civil order. According to Dr. Wanner, who researches the Evangelical movement in Ukraine, religious tolerance and respect for human rights in the religious domain results in civil society being born and functioning.

"I remain convinced that if the American public were better educated about Ukrainian history, the Pulitzer Committee might have decided differently [about not revoking Walter Duranty's Pulitzer]," said Dr. von Hagen, a professor of Soviet history at Columbia University. In November 2003, after an international postcard and letter-writing campaign asked the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke Duranty's award, a statement by the board announced that it had decided against revocation. The statement said: "In its review of the 13 articles, the board determined that Mr. Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the board's view is similar to that of The New York Times itself and of some scholars who have examined his 1931 reports. However, the board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case."

The Ukrainian experience in Canada continues to be the focus of research by the Ukrainian Canadian Program (UCP) of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The writing of the second volume of the history of Ukrainians in Canada - dealing with the turbulent years from the 1920s to the onset of the Cold War - is under way and progressing steadily. The book is being authored by Orest Martynowych, who has already produced a manuscript that is currently in the process of being edited, on the father of Ukrainian Canadian dance and cinema, Vasile Avramenko.

Gene Fishel, a senior analyst for the U.S. State Department, on Thursday, December 2, discussed the current crisis revolving around Ukraine's presidential election at an event sponsored by the Ukraine Study Group (USG) of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI). The lecture attracted some 80 people from the Harvard community, including the Harvard Law School, the Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Slavic Department; from the Ukrainian diaspora in the greater Boston area; and from news outlets, including reporters from the Providence Journal and Ukrainska Pravda.

Whatever the outcome, Mr. Fishel emphasized that through the non-violent protests in Kyiv and elsewhere "the Ukrainians have shown that there is a civil society in Ukraine."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 16, 2005, No. 2, Vol. LXXIII

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