2005: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Academia: educating the public worldwide

In the world of scholarship, Ukrainian intellectuals and their organizations held conferences, panel discussions and worked throughout the year on a wide range of topics. The unifying theme in these events was a desire to share what scholars had culled from their extensive work and to further educate the public about Ukrainian academia.

It is no surprise that in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution numerous organizations hosted events that critically examined those momentous days. The work examined not only the Orange Revolution itself, but also Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his administration 100 days into his first term. In some instances, the work of academic institutions played a significant role in the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine.

In the beginning of 2005 the staff of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) became increasingly focused on the presidential election. During this period, CIUS managed the Ukraine Transparency and Election Monitoring Project (UTEMP).

The Canadian government's decision not to recognize the officially announced results of the November 21 vote was in part due to the reports of Canadian parliamentarians, who participated in UTEMP-sponsored observer missions.

The CIUS staff in Edmonton and Toronto were often called upon by local and national media to comment on the elections and their aftermath. In Edmonton, Drs. Zenon Kohut, Serhii Plokhii, Bohdan Klid and David Marples gave interviews that were broadcast on CBC TV and Radio, and used by print journalists for articles that appeared in the Edmonton Journal and other newspapers.

In Toronto, Frank Sysyn, Marko Stech and Roman Senkus of the CIUS office there gave numerous interviews for CBC TV, radio and Voice of America.

CIUS was also involved in a joint venture through the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa and the Kennan Institute in Washington, to produce a regular bulletin on events in Ukraine related to the elections.

Following the election, a panel of Ukrainian specialists convened in late April to analyze President Yushchenko's first 100 days in office. The panel called the president's first three months mostly successful, but they cautioned people against being overly optimistic about the future of the reform-minded president's tenure.

"The First 100 Days of Yushchenko's Presidency: An Analysis" was hosted by Columbia University's Ukrainian Studies Program, which is affiliated with the school's Harriman Institute. The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Mark von Hagen of Columbia University and included Stephen Nix, the director of the Eurasia division at the International Republican Institute; Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in the district of New Jersey; and Eugene Fishel, a senior analyst at the U.S. State Department.

On February 16 the Harriman Institute and the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University honored Gen. Petro Grigorenko's memory by hosting the fourth annual Grigorenko Reading. The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. von Hagen, director of the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University. Panelists included Nadia Svitlychna, president, Human Rights in the 20th Century; Andrew Grigorenko, president, Gen. Grigorenko Foundation; Adrian Hewryk, president, East-West Management Institute; and Dr. Pavel Litvinov, physicist and human rights activist. This year's reading was titled "From the Ukrainian Human Rights Movement of the 1970s to the Orange Revolution."

Best known among Ukrainians as an ambassador for a democratic Ukraine in Moscow, and later in the West, Gen. Grigorenko was a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and its representative to the Moscow Helsinki Group. "Petro Grigorenko didn't live to see the Orange Revolution or the collapse of the Soviet Union," Ms. Svitlychna said, "for February 21 marks the 18th anniversary of his death. Yet his ideals and values of human rights shaped the Orange youth in Ukraine."

Dr. Taras Kuzio, visiting professor at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs, discussed "Ukraine's Orange Revolution: Causes and Consequences, Implications for the Future" on April 28 at the University of Kansas. As a multi-disciplinary scholar of Ukraine, Dr. Kuzio followed closely the events surrounding Ukraine's presidential election. Prior to his lecture, he showed video clips of Mr. Yushchenko. In addition, he interspersed his lecture with serious and humorous anecdotes from the presidential campaigns.

Meanwhile, a call for sweeping reform in Ukrainian higher education marked the sixth congress of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies (IAUS) in Donetsk. Dr. von Hagen stirred the typically placid congress in his opening remarks on June 29 by stating the nation's educational and cultural governing bodies need an Orange Revolution of their own.

"Despite years of post-independence reform programs and proposals, the organizations that are most critical to IAUS have failed to construct a meaningful agenda for Ukrainian nation-building and the development of civic consciousness through the support of basic scholarship and culture," Dr. von Hagen said in his speech addressed to more than 600 scholars gathered at Donetsk National University during the last week of June.

Such organizations, which Dr. von Hagen identified as impediments to IAUS's progress, are the National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Ukrainianists, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Culture and the deputy minister for humanitarian affairs. Dr. von Hagen's speech not only called into question the health and relevancy of IAUS, but also exposed a rift that exists in the Ukrainian academic community between the conservative National Academy of Sciences stalwarts on one side and reform-minded scholars on the other, namely Westerners and younger Ukrainians.

Dr. von Hagen thanked the Ministry of Education for providing the necessary funding for the congress, but then criticized its recent attempt to recentralize control of Ukraine's higher education system, thereby "rolling back important gains in university autonomy and academic freedom won since the end of Communist rule." Dr. von Hagen also singled out then Deputy Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Mykola Tomenko and Culture Minister Oksana Bilozir for allowing Kyiv's Monastery of the Caves (Pecherska Lavra) to deteriorate, the archival system to collapse and the nation's film industry to decline.

Mr. Tomenko delivered a speech at the conference's opening session, but left just before Dr. von Hagen spoke. He told Radio Svoboda afterwards that Dr. von Hagen does not have an adequate view of Ukrainian culture and even criticized IAUS.

At the final session of the congress on July 2, Dr. von Hagen announced that astronomer Dr. Yaroslav Yatskiv of Ukraine was elected as his successor to the IAUS presidency. IAUS national association representatives also selected Dr. Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, a professor of Slavistics at the University of Milan in Italy, as the new IAUS vice-president.

On July 18 the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute featured a roundtable discussion titled "This Year in Ukraine: Personal Observations and Perspectives." The event significantly deviated from other debates on the topic since the presenters were not professional economists, political analysts, or state officials, but current Harvard Ukrainian Summer School students, many of whom had never made public speeches in English before. The eight presenters included students and young scholars from Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Canada and the United States.

Alexander Dillon, director of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer School, called the roundtable discussion "one of the most important events held at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute this year."

Meanwhile, at the invitation of Dr. Larissa Zaleska Onyshkevych, president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh), representatives of leading Ukrainian scholarly institutions in North America convened at the society's headquarters in New York City on October 1. The objective of the conference was to share information on the current status and future plans of each of these organizations with respect to Ukrainian studies and publications, and to examine the possibilities of coordination and joint projects in these endeavors.

The meeting expressed the need to put in order Ukrainian libraries and archives, including their computerization. The electronic Encyclopedia of Ukraine and other information published by CIUS were cited as examples to be emulated.

The Shevchenko Scientific Society, 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) on March 5 co-hosted the 25th annual scholarly conference honoring Taras Shevchenko.

Welcoming remarks were delivered by Dr. Onyshkevych, president of NTSh, which hosted the conference at its building. In her lecture, "Shevchenko in the Evaluation of the Great Polish Emigration," Dr. Anna Procyk (UVAN) offered interesting and little-known aspects of the poet's relations with Polish intellectuals.

On October 18 a roundtable discussion was held at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) in Kyiv titled "Problems of the Protection of Museums and the Archival Heritage in Contemporary Ukraine in the Context of the Losses from the Lviv Archives." The purpose of the roundtable was to start a dialogue and unite the efforts of various government organs, organizations, establishments and concerned individuals for the protection of Ukraine's documentary and museum treasures. The chairman of the State Committee on Archives, Hennadii Boriak, did not respond to an invitation to take part.

The roundtable stemmed from earlier news reports that important historical documents had been stolen from the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv. It was reported that on July 16, 2004, then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych made a pre-election gift "to the Ukrainian nation" donating to the Ukrainian Historical Museum in Kyiv 42 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's letters, written in 1904-1911. As it turned out, those letters were stolen from the Lviv archives. Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk explained that Mr. Yanukovych had bought the letters from private collectors during his visits to the United States and France.

In addition, on October 17, the director of the Lviv Archives, Diana Pelz, fired one of the first persons to demand an investigation into the thefts, Halyna Svarnyk. Then, on December 1, the newspaper Postup reported that another whistle-blower at the archives, Ivan Svarnyk, had been fired by Ms. Pelz. (The Svarnyks are siblings.)

The Yanukovych "gift" brought to light the fact that massive thefts were taking place in the Lviv Archives. An appeal was made for a debate in the Verkhovna Rada on the archival losses and a demand to the procurator general to take charge and bring the investigation of the thefts to Kyiv. As 2005 came to a close, the investigation came to a dead end, while the director of the Lviv Archives continued to deny that anything important had happened.

A Committee for the Defense of the Archives of Ukraine was formed. The committee pressed for accountability and action and published an open letter to the international community.

While Lviv struggled to maintain its archives, news came out from eastern Ukraine that the Panas Myrnyi Children's Library in Poltava fell victim to an apparent act of arson in the early morning hours of October 11. Vandals threw explosive materials into the building, and as a result, nearly 10,000 books were burned. The library director, Leonid Chobitko, issued an appeal on behalf of Poltava residents to fellow Ukrainians around the world to help save the children's library.

The Harriman Institute of Columbia University hosted the 10th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) on April 14-16. More than 300 people attended the conference, whose theme was "Understanding Nationalism: Identity, Empire, Conflict."

Meanwhile, the Shevchenko Scientific Society dedicated a program held at the society's headquarters to reminiscences about the lives of Dr. Ivan Rakovsky (1874-1949) and Dr. Oleh Romaniv (1928-2005) on December 10. Both men were NTSh presidents.

The commemoration of Dr. Rakovsky was prompted by the publication of a book about his life by Ivan Holovatsky, while Dr. Romaniv was remembered and mourned because of his death in Lviv on November 3.

NTSh also organized and conducted two roundtables at the 2005 convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), which took place November 3-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The first roundtable, titled "Inter-Slavic Post-Soviet Cultural Influences: The Case of Ukraine," was chaired by Prof. Taras Hunczak (Rutgers University and NTSh). The second roundtable, titled "Facing Globalization? Cultural/Linguistic Influences of Neighboring Countries on the Ukrainian Language in the Post-Soviet Period," was chaired by Dr. Onyshkevych.

Earlier in the year, NTSh held a unique scholarly archeological conference at their headquarters in New York titled "Ancient Ukraine: New Perspectives in Archeology" on April 9. The conference consisted of six presentations by Ukrainian archeologists from Ukraine and from the United States supplemented by commentaries. The conference was opened by Dr. Onyshkevych; she thanked Titus Hewryk, director of the society's Arts Section, for his input in organizing the program, and especially Dr. Renata Holod for bringing to New York the archeologists.

A scholarly conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Ukrainian Historical Association (UHA) was held on April 3 at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in New York. The conference focused on the extensive legacy created by UHA during its 40-year existence and also on the substantial contribution to historical knowledge made by three of its members; Prof. Olexander Ohloblyn, past president of both UHA and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.; Dr. Marko Antonovych, past president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., vice-president of the UHA and co-editor of its journal, Ukrainian Historian; and Dr. Roman Klimkevich, initiating member of UHA and founder and secretary of the Ukrainian Genealogical and Heraldic Society.

The World Scholarly Council of the Ukrainian World Congress then sent a greeting to the UHA on behalf of its 40th anniversary. "Within a few years from its initial establishment, the UHA succeeded in uniting many prominent Ukrainian historians, as well as scholars from other auxiliary disciplines in the diaspora," the statement read. "The World Scholarly Council congratulates the UHA on its 40th anniversary and wishes it continued success in is future programs. We call upon the Ukrainian community to support the UHA as it continues its important work both within Ukraine and in the diaspora," the statement, signed by the presidium of the World Scholarly Council, read.

Then, on September 27, the National University of Ostroh Academy sponsored the first in a series of scholarly conferences held in Ukraine marking the UHA's 40th anniversary. The conference focused on examining the historiographic legacy established by the UHA during its 40 years of activity. It was opened by Prof. Ihor Pasichnyk, rector of Ostroh Academy, who welcomed Prof. Wynar, president of the UHA, to the academy.

Meanwhile, in December 2005 members of the Ukrainian American Association of University Professors (UAAUP), voting by mail, elected a new board of directors, headed by Lubomyr Wynar of Kent State University, president. Also elected were: Assya Humesky (University of Michigan), first vice president; Vsevolod Isajiw (University of Toronto), second vice president; Z. Lew Melnyk (University of Cincinnati), third vice president; Myron Melnyk (Kent State University), secretary-treasurer and director of research endowment; plus additional board members at large and auditing board members. The UAAUP brings together Ukrainian university professors of the United States and Canada and cooperates with various universities in Ukraine.

Back in Ukraine, the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv was inaugurated with an international ecumenical conference on June 13-14. Titled "Friendship as an Ecumenical Value," the conference drew approximately 300 participants: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, including more than 40 guests from the United States, Canada, France, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Italy and Ukraine. The UCU now has nine research institutes.

Among the presenters at the conference were Dr. Antoine Arjakovsky, director of the new institute, and Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. "Ukraine can become 'a laboratory of unity,'" Cardinal Husar said during his greeting to the conference on June 13. "But in order for this to happen, it needs to get rid of political, economic and other factors that put obstacles on the road to mutual understanding."

Meanwhile, the president of the University of Alberta, Dr. Rod Fraser, and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies hosted an intimate dinner in Edmonton on April 11 in which the memory and philanthropy of Peter Jacyk in support of Ukrainian studies were honored. The evening also marked the 16th anniversary of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research, which was established at CIUS at the University of Alberta in 1989.

To mark the special relationship between the university and Mr. Jacyk, Dr. Fraser presented his daughter Nadia Jacyk with a portrait of her father.

Dr. Kohut, director of CIUS, spoke highly of how important Mr. Jacyk's contributions were in sustaining Ukrainian scholarship at the university level. Dr. Sysyn, director of the Jacyk Center, outlined the work of the center and, in particular, gave an update on the progress of the monumental translation project of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's 10-volume "History of Ukraine-Rus'."

The Jacyk Center announced on November 20 that the new volume of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's "History of Ukraine-Rus'" was published by CIUS Press. The new publication is Volume 9, Book 1, of the 10-volume series. Titled "The Cossack Age, 1650-1653," it is the fourth volume produced by the Hrushevsky Translation Project of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research at CIUS.

Volume 9, Book 1, is simultaneously the third volume in the history's subseries devoted to the Kozak era, titled the "History of the Ukrainian Cossacks." It is also the first portion of the longest and most extensively documented volume of Hrushevsky's history.

A series of book launches was organized to present the new volume to the scholarly community and the wider public. On June 29 Dr. Sysyn presented a copy to then Ukrainian Vice-Premier Tomenko at the International Congress of Ukrainian Studies in Donetsk.

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, supported by the University of Alberta, invited Prof. Viktor Krevs, director of the Preparatory School for International Students at Lviv University, to visit the University of Alberta in January and February. The move was part of a larger agreement that dates back to 1988, when CIUS initiated the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the University of Alberta and the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. The agreement encouraged both sides to facilitate research visits by faculty and graduate students at the partner institution.

During his stay at the university, Dr. Krevs gave a lecture on "The Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and its Role in the Orange Revolution" and held an informational meeting on "Opportunities for Study and Research in Lviv."

In September, Mr. Tonge visited Lviv University to meet with its officials and to determine the feasibility of initiating the exchange in the 2006-2007 academic year. During his visit he met with students and announced that the University of Alberta International would fund two scholarships in the amount of $1,500 each to help Lviv University students defray travel costs to Edmonton.

As a result of Prof. Krevs's visit, his collaboration with Mr. Tonge, and the latter's visit to Lviv University, a draft student exchange and study abroad agreement was prepared, and other areas of future collaboration were identified.

On January 17 the Ukrainian Free University (UFU) held its 84th annual Founders Day festivities, commemorating the 84th anniversary of its establishment in 1921. Dr. Reinhard Heydenreuter, chief archivist at the Bavarian Main Archives, opened the ceremony in his capacity as UFU honorary professor and director of the UFU Research Institute for German-Ukrainian Relations.

The highlight of the 2005 Founders Day was the presentation of the prestigious gold medal "Pro Universitate Libera Ucrainensis." This year's recipient was a former UFU rector and professor, Dr. Leonid Rudnytzky.

2005 was also an occasion to mark the 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, the 1945 summit widely seen as partitioning Eastern Europe in terms favorable to the Soviet Union. Four prominent historians came together at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City to mark the occasion on March 1.

The historians addressed the evening's theme - a meeting between then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union that was held in the Ukrainian resort city in the Crimea. The four scholars generally agreed that the Yalta Conference no longer has a practical application and is now only a remnant of history.

The four historians were John Micgiel, adjunct associate professor of international affairs and the director of the East Central European Center at Columbia University in New York; Charles Gati, senior adjunct professor of European studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Dr. David Woolner, a professor of history at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Dr. Vojtech Mastny, a senior research fellow at the National Security Archives at George Washington University in Washington.

Later in the year, an international conference on "The Legacy of Pope John Paul II and Ukraine" was hosted at La Salle University in Philadelphia on June 5. Held to mark the 30th anniversary of the St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics (USA), and to commemorate the late pontiff, the one-day conference was organized by a committee headed by Dr. Leonid Rudnytzky, president of St. Sophia.

Moving from the conference in Philadelphia to Ukraine, more than 80 scholars and community leaders gathered at Hohol Pedagogical University in Nizhen for three days beginning on June 23 to share their scholarly pursuits and experiences in the global Ukrainian diaspora. Scholars from eight different nations discussed their studies on diverse topics ranging from Ukrainian communities in Paraguay to the status of Ukrainian language studies in Moscow.

Moving from Ukraine to Germany, the seventh congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES) was held on July 25-30, in Berlin, the very city where Eastern Europe was actually delineated on one side of the infamous Wall during decades of Communist hegemony. The congress venues were at Humboldt University, several city blocks from the Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

The Berlin congress was attended by over 1,600 scholars and researchers. The largest group was from Germany, with about 466 scholars registered, followed by 239 from the United States, 169 from Russia, 119 from the United Kingdom, 115 from Finland, and a smaller number from other countries all over the world, including 51 from Poland, 38 from Sweden, 36 from Ukraine, and 30 from Japan. A total of 48 countries participated. From North America, there were about 20 scholars specializing in Ukraine.

On November 9 Prof. Lynne Viola, professor of history at the University of Toronto, delivered the 2005 Ukrainian Famine Lecture. The lecture was sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress - Toronto Branch and the Toronto Ukrainian Charitable Fund.

Prof. Viola's presentation was titled "Before the Famine: Peasant Deportations to the North," but she called it the "story of the other archipelago." While the labor camps of the gulag archipelago - the Soviet penal network - have been studied extensively by scholars, less is known about the settlement archipelago, the system set up during the dekulakization period of collectivization. Prof. Viola argued that the mass deportations were the first phase in the repression of the village. They were a precursor of the Great Famine and part of the attempt by the Soviet authorities to decapitate the village of its leadership and thus stamp out any opposition to Bolshevik rule.

Among the most enduring Ukrainian scholarly traditions in the United States is the annual Conference on Ukrainian Subjects organized and sponsored each summer by the Ukrainian Research Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. To date, 24 such weeklong conferences have been held with the participations of scholars from around the globe. The 2005 conference was held from June 29 to July 2; its topic was "Ukraine and Europe."

The program of the conference comprised 10 sessions, which included two keynote addresses: Raisa Ivanchenko, International University of Kyiv, read a paper titled "Ukraine - The Eastern Shield of Europe," and John Fizer, Rutgers University of New Brunswick, spoke on "The Encounter of Ukrainian Philology with Western Methodological Strategies."

On July 1 Ukrainian studies joined Europe - at least at the University of Toronto. The former Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES), which housed the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine and the Wolodymyr George Danyliw Foundation, was merged with the Institute of European Studies, the European Studies Program and the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies to create the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES). According to the newly appointed director of CERES, Prof. Jeffrey Kopstein, the scholarly community at the university working on Europe, Russia and Eurasia, decided it was time to break down the intellectual walls set up during the Cold War.

The CERES inaugural event on September 27 was a panel discussion, titled "What's Ahead for Europe," featuring the ambassador of Canada to the European Union, Jeremy Kinsman, and other panelists. A few days before the event, the Petro Jacyk Program sponsored Prof. Timothy Snyder of Yale who spoke on Polish-Ukrainian Relations in the wake of Poland's accession to the EU and the Orange Revolution.

The 2004-2005 school year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign marked another successful step toward establishment of a chair of Ukrainian studies. Besides conducting the 24th annual Conference on Ukrainian Subjects, there were three Ukrainian courses during both semesters conducted by Prof. Dmytro Shtohryn and graduate teaching assistant Volodymyr Chumachenko. Over 40 students (about 10 of them of Ukrainian origin) attended courses on Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian literature and the Open Seminar on the History of Ukraine that year.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 15, 2006, No. 3, Vol. LXXIV

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