Of assassins, back-stabbers and philistines: the latest issue of the Ukrainian Historian (11/13/05)

Of assassins, back-stabbers and philistines: the latest issue of the Ukrainian Historian

by Andrew Sorokowski

Every scholarly journal has its own history and personality, shaped by the individuals and institutions that established it and reflecting their goals and interests. In North America, scholarly journals dedicated to Ukraine such as Harvard Ukrainian Studies (appearing from 1977) and the Journal of Ukrainian Studies (from 1976) have represented the research pursued, respectively, by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The Ukrainian Quarterly, published since 1944 by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, has mirrored the political concerns of that organization. All these journals are published in the English language, in order to reach a wider audience, particularly U.S. and Western scholars.

In a number of respects the Ukrainian Historian, published since 1963, differs from all three. First and most obvious, its subject matter is confined to history. It is the organ of the Ukrainian Historical Association, founded in 1965. Second, aside from the occasional English-language piece, the Ukrainian Historian is published in Ukrainian. On the one hand, this has narrowed its readership. On the other hand, since the liberalization of the late Soviet period and especially the independence of Ukraine in 1991, this has facilitated contact with the Ukrainian academic world. Indeed, a number of the editors and members of the editorial board are based in Ukraine.

Third, the Ukrainian Historian has been essentially the achievement of one individual, Editor-in-Chief Lubomyr Wynar, professor emeritus at Kent State University in Ohio. To a considerable degree, the journal has reflected his interests as a bibliographer and as a historian of modern Ukraine, particularly the legacy of the scholar and political leader Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934).

The latest issue of the Ukrainian Historian (Vols. 41-42, Nos. 163-164 and 165, 2004-2005) illustrates these emphases. Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the death of Hrushevsky, it dedicates several articles to the great historian and his portrayals by Ukrainian and foreign scholars.

Though hailed today as the father of modern Ukrainian historiography, during his stay in Lviv as professor of Ukrainian history and head of the Shevchenko Scholarly Society from 1894, Hrushevsky alienated a good part of the Galician Ukrainian intelligentsia. Oleh Romaniv's review essay in Volume 7 of Hrushevskiana (2003) discusses the most notorious conflict between Hrushevsky and the Galicians.

In 1911, the feisty "Easterner" published a stinging indictment of Galician Ukrainian politics, which led to a crisis within the Shevchenko Scholarly Society that raged for two years. Hrushevsky characterized the Galicians as petit-bourgeois philistines unable to look beyond their immediate material interests and incapable of a broad national vision. The thrust of his attack was against what he considered to be their overly conciliatory behavior toward the Poles, who maintained their dominant position throughout Austrian rule.

Yet, only a few years later, Hrushevsky himself, as president of the fledgling Ukrainian Republic, would come in for criticism for his concessions to the Russians. Meanwhile, a number of his less successful colleagues condemned his management of the Shevchenko Scholarly Society and particularly of its funds. In a thoughtful and balanced commentary, Dr. Romaniv, who headed the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv until his death on November 3, finds the denunciations of Hrushevsky largely unfounded. Conversely, he considers the historian's critique of Galician politics somewhat unfair, but his characterization of the Galicians themselves not far from the mark. This characterization, he suggests, is relevant even today, when the "Piedmont of Ukraine" has been marginalized - or, some would say, put in its place.

After his tenure at the head of the Central Rada in 1917, Hrushevsky returned to the sniping and back-stabbing of academic life. Prof. Wynar outlines the rocky relationship between Hrushevsky and the younger historian Oleksander Ohloblyn (1899-1992), and presents documents offering a glimpse of academic politics in Kyiv during the Directory (1918-1921). After the collapse of the Ukrainian Republic, Hrushevsky emigrated, but in 1924 he returned to now-Soviet Ukraine, evidently finding the Bolsheviks easier to deal with than the Galicians.

Taking us back to Lviv some 25 years after the Hrushevsky affair, Oleksander Dombrovsky provides a moving first-hand account of the life of the brilliant but short-lived medievalist Teofil Kostruba (1907-1943). This portrait of Leopolitan scholarly life in the late 1930s and early 1940s celebrates friendship and shared intellectual and spiritual values. Making cameo appearances are editor and journalist Osyp Nazaruk, and the young Omeljan Pritsak.

Last year also marked the 60th anniversary of the death of Oleh Kandyba-Olzhych (1897-1944), the poet and archaeologist in charge of cultural affairs for the Ukrainian nationalist leadership under Col. Andrii Melnyk. In one of the articles dedicated to this multi-faceted individual, Prof. Wynar traces his activity during World War II. His article introduces two letters from nationalist intellectual Lev Shankovsky (1903-1995) discussing Olzhych's attempts to heal the rift between the Bandera and Melnyk factions that had split the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1940.

Writing in 1975, Shankovsky laments the fact that, after more than 30 years, the two camps had not been able to cooperate in uncovering the truth about the August 1941 assassinations of OUN-M activists Omelian Senyk and Mykola Stsiborsky in Zhytomyr. Now, another 30 years later, we read Prof. Wynar's footnote to this passage pointing out that such cooperation still has not come about, so that despite the availability of documents from various German and former Soviet archives, a whole series of wartime political killings among the OUN remains unsolved (p. 161).

The nationalist underground was active also in the cities of Western Europe. In a memoir written in Rome in April 1940, Yevhen Onatsky (1894-1979) recounts the mysterious circumstances of the assassination of Col. Yevhen Konovalets. The OUN leader was killed in Rotterdam in May 1938 by means of a package bomb handed to him by a Soviet agent posing as a Ukrainian sailor sympathetic to the nationalist cause.

The book reviews section evaluates the first volume of a new encyclopedia of Ukrainian history, published in Kyiv in 2003 under the general editorship of V.A. Smolii. Also reviewed is Dmytro Zlepko's valuable compilation of documents from the German foreign office pertaining to the Great Famine in Ukraine. The German consular reports from Ukrainian cities complement those found in the Italian archives, and help us to form an objective understanding of this tragedy.

In keeping with its traditional profile, this issue of the Ukrainian Historian contains bibliographies of and about Oleh Kandyba, as well as of the late historians Father Oleksander Baran and Marko Antonovych. Thomas Prymak provides a useful survey in English of recent bibliographies of English-language materials on Ukraine, focusing on two recent guides by Bohdan S. Wynar.

These are only some of the offerings of this 356-page volume, where amateurs as well as professional historians are sure to find much to intrigue and entertain.

The Ukrainian Historian is available in the United States at P.O. Box 312, Kent, Ohio 44240, and in Canada at P.O. Box 95, Etobicoke, Ontario M9C 4V2. The fax number in the U.S. is (330) 297-1327. Annual subscriptions for individuals in the U.S. and Canada cost $60 (U.S.). Normally, two issues are published per year. It is also possible for individuals or institutions to order subscriptions for readers in Ukraine.

Andrew Sorokowski is a member of the editorial board of the Ukrainian Historian.

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