LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (01/23/05)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Ukrainian-Jewish relations: observations

Dear Editor:

Discussions in the press of Ukrainian-Jewish relations have suffered from some imprecision. While I expect that Prof. John-Paul Himka will reply to Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky's response (December 19, 2004) to his letter (December 12, 2004) prompted by Dr. Myron Kuropas' column, I would like to offer a few observations of my own that might help clarify the discussion.

It is appropriate that of the three individuals mentioned above one is a historian, one is a lawyer, and all have written on ethical or religious matters. For, in order to deal adequately with this complex and delicate topic, one must consider the historical, legal, and moral perspectives.

"How can the truth be anti-anything, much less anti-Semitic?" asks Dr. Vitvitsky. Quite so. But as every historian knows, the selection of facts is prone to bias. One must, therefore, question the relevance of the facts selected to the matter at issue. Why, as Dr. Vitvitsky rightly asks, is the ethnic identity of John Demjanjuk relevant to the issue of his guilt while that of Leon Trotsky or Lazar Kaganovich is irrelevant to theirs? One reason might be that since Mr. Demjanjuk identifies himself as a Ukrainian, his ethnic identity could have influenced his actions, while in the case of Trotsky and Kaganovich, who apparently had little regard for their Jewishness, this would have been less likely. But in what way does ethnic identity influence behavior? Discounting racial and genetic theories, does one's cultural and historical background predispose one towards certain attitudes and consequent behavior - perhaps regardless of whether one consciously identifies with that background or not? Does Ukrainian Christian culture, for example, predispose one to be anti-Semitic, and does Ukrainian Jewish culture predispose one to be pro-Bolshevik, pro-Russian or Ukrainophobic?

True, the term "anti-Semitism" is so vague and overbroad as to be almost meaningless, spanning everything from folk humor to genocide. If some fixed attitude towards Jews is inscribed in Ukrainian ethnic culture, it is surely closer to folk humor than to genocide. It even includes an element of admiration. Similar attitudes can be found among virtually all populations with a sizeable Jewish minority. Historical experience with the well-known Jewish role in the socio-economic structures of Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary, and with the disproportionate percentage of Jews in the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet secret police, has conditioned Ukrainian attitudes. Jewish culture, too, has its predispositions. It is understandable that folk memory of massacres from the Khmelnytsky uprising to the Nazi occupation still makes Jews a bit nervous about Ukrainians.

But while we may note how historical experiences have formed mutual stereotypes and prejudices, we need not ratify that process. We are free to interpret those events in a more objective manner. Need we believe that Jews deliberately served Polish landlords in order to exploit Ukraininan peasants? Jewish participation in Soviet institutions was more likely due to concrete historical circumstances than to some innate proclivity to evil. And if, as the Jerusalem Post has asserted, Ukraine has seen more anti-Semitism than other lands, it is chiefly because it harbored a larger Jewish population, not because Ukrainians are congenitally nastier than other peoples. In fact, as historian Yuri Slezkine has suggested, relations between Slavic peasants and East European Jews may be part of a broader pattern of conflict between settled "Apollonian" peoples and nomadic, mercantile "Mercurian" ones, the latter including Gypsies, Indians in East Africa, and Chinese in Southeast Asia, as well as European Jews. In other words, Jewish-Ukrainian relations are neither inexplicable nor exceptional. Furthermore, historians tend to highlight moments of violent conflict; they often ignore the centuries of interethnic peace and harmony. Both Jews and Ukrainians need a clearer and better proportioned vision of their common history.

If history can explain mutual attitudes, it cannot justify mutual recriminations. Whatever his cultural predispositions, the individual remains responsible for his words and actions. In the moral perspective, guilt is personal, not collective. Of course, the members of a criminal organization acting in concert can all be found guilty. But the law of conspiracy still focuses on the individual's conscious acts. To hold members of an entire nation or ethnic group collectively responsible for "historical wrongs" is untenable, because nations and ethnic groups do not act in concert. To be sure, attempts have been made to concoct international conspiracies by "the Jews," most notably the bogus "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Such attempts only reveal a desire to invent a collective enemy where one does not exist. By the same token, Jews cannot justly blame "the Ukrainians" for their tragedies. One cannot hold "the Ukrainians" collectively responsible for the pogroms any more than one can blame "the Jews" for the Crucifixion.

I hope that these elementary points can help move the discussion into more fruitful areas.

Andrew Sorokowski
Rockville, Md.

Kuropas deserves commendations

Dear Editor:

The recent spate of attacks on Dr. Myron Kuropas for daring to point out the problematic role of Jews in the destruction of the Ukrainian nation appears to be motivated by a desire for political correctness. After all, Dr. Kuropas simply pointed out some inconvenient historical facts. The issue boils down to this: when an influential minority group tends to historically side with a nation's oppressors, then there is hell to pay when that nation throws off the yoke of the oppressors.

Undoubtedly, much has changed since Ukraine's independence, and Ukrainian-Jewish relations have experienced many positive developments. The events in Ukraine the last two months are just as momentous as the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. Significantly, some Jewish groups have sided with the popular Orange Revolution that amazed the whole world. Just as significantly, other Jewish groups, as well as segments of Ukrainian society, are having difficulties in shedding the pro-Russian complex in which they were raised and brainwashed.

This is clearly illustrated in a special article by Vladimir Matveyev in the January 1 issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times. On one hand, the article notes Jewish support in Ukraine for Viktor Yushchenko. On the other hand, the same article twice mentions alleged anti-Semitism in Ukraine, even claiming to find it among Yushchenko supporters, without any attempt to explain the causes of this alleged phenomenon. The article clearly states that "many Ukrainian Jews - perhaps the majority - backed [Viktor] Yanukovich, who campaigned under anti-liberal, populist and pro-Russian slogans." Furthermore, Vitaliy Nachmanovich, a journalist and head of the Babi Yar Memorial Committee in Kyiv, is quoted as saying: "Most Jews backed Yanukovych because he represented the Soviet regime."

It is precisely this type of historical support for regimes that oppressed and destroyed Ukrainians that has caused serious problems in Jewish-Ukrainian relations. Dr. Kuropas should be commended, not condemned, for his articles that focus on various aspects of this topic.

Leo Iwaskiw
Philadelphia

About those Virsky program notes

Dear Editor:

I read with much curiosity Nestor Wolansky's review of the Virsky Dancers because I recently saw them perform at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts in the Detroit metropolitan area. My family and I greatly admired the dance performance; however, we were quite distressed by the program notes and it really put a damper on the occasion.

As Mr. Wolansky states, the program brochure, in several places, uses the word "Russian" instead of Ukrainian to describe the dances that they performed. Mr. Wolansky blames this on "Cal Performances," the organization responsible for booking cultural events at the University of California at Berkeley. Since the same errors appeared in the program brochure in Michigan, I don't think this was the fault of Cal Performances.

If it has not been done already, I think that Ukrainian organizations in the United States need to contact the Virsky-Ukrainian National Dance Company and tell them that the Ukrainian community will no longer attend their performances unless they correct their program brochure. Then, I think Ukrainian organizations need to make sure this information is shared throughout the community.

In looking around at the audience at the Macomb Center, I think the majority of the attendees were Ukrainian, so if Ukrainians had not attended, the audience would have been very small. The Virsky Dancers officially bill themselves, in their program brochure, as the "Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company" and state they are on the "Official Tour of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Ukraine." As the national dance company on an official tour representing the country of Ukraine, the mistakes in their program brochure are unacceptable.

Kathy Babak
Dearborn, Mich.

Time for Ukraine to exit from the CIS

Dear Editor:

The Orange Revolution and Viktor Yushchenko's electoral victory are epochal events. But the hefty showing of Viktor Yanukovych (44 percent of the vote) is troublesome evidence of a gaping split along familiar geographic lines. Ironically, and contrary to some overly confident diaspora predictions, the actual pro-Yanukovych constituency did not diminish during the four weeks of mostly balanced media coverage before the re-run election on December 26. This adds weight to the significance of electoral safeguards obtained in the deal between Mr. Yushchenko and President Leonid Kuchma.

Most importantly, for the first time since the declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine's government is on the way to become Ukrainian in content and substance. The ingenuously durable kleptocratic, Soviet-incubated elite is on the way out. Paradoxically, but not surprisingly, this change is precisely what is blatantly defined as "unacceptable" within the "Little Russian" syndrome of Mr. Yanukovych and in much of Ukraine's south and east with its sizable ethnic Russian base. But there is no question that many ethnic Russians, fed up with Mr. Kuchma's autocracy, voted for the Orange Revolution.

In the south and east, it can be said without exaggeration that the disdain toward the Ukrainian quintessence is deeply ingrained in the psychology, the folksy grass-roots Russian ethnic awareness, and the history of that large region. It would be a mistake to expect that this antipathy will quickly, if ever, melt away as a result of probable economic improvements and reforms or lavish pandering. Time and again in various countries, large population segments voted against their own economic interests because of cultural, emotional and language issues - although not in the extremely debilitating circumstances.

Living alongside this Gordian knot will be a huge obstacle to the new leadership in Kyiv and Ukraine as a whole. It is immensely more politically and socially disruptive to democratic norms than a relatively minuscule "Jews for Yanukovych" that sent some folks into a tizzy.

And then there is Russia itself. Normalization of relations between Ukraine and Russia is an oxymoron as long as the Kremlin's think-tanks are figuring new ways of destabilizing Ukraine. More Ukrainians are beginning, reluctantly, to recognize that NATO membership may be a necessity for Ukraine, although polls show only 30 percent in favor. Given a blanket nay-saying in the south and east, the support level may not rise above 50.

The challenge for President Yushchenko will be to generate and sustain the forward motion towards NATO and not be distracted by Moscow's overtures or by George W. Bush's confused notions about Europe and Vladimir Putin's Russia. This is a historic opportunity to blunt the perennial menace in the East. Never before in 1,000 years has such a constellation existed.

One debate on which no time should be wasted is when to exit from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Post-Soviet wisdom says that such a move would alienate Russia and cause economic disruptions. Quite the opposite may actually occur as a result: Moscow could become perceptibly serious about normalizing the relations. It is manifestly not normal for Ukraine to stay in a commonwealth of autocratic regimes, and is glaringly inconsistent (although seldom said so) with its announced Westward aspirations. It is also ultimately self-destructive.

There is at least one more urgent order of business. Ukraine's security requires rapid reshaping of its post-Soviet military establishment, the disbanding of the Internal Affairs Ministry's ex-KGB pretorian battalions, and establishing the Ukrainian language in the army. Yes, language. These steps would not only be consistent with NATO membership, but are essential to Ukraine's existence as a nation.

Boris Danik
North Caldwell, N.J.

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