A conversation with Prof. Roman Serbyn, historian

by Fran Ponomarenko
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

Roman Serbyn was born in 1939 in Vyktoriv, Western Ukraine. In 1948 he and his family settled in Montreal. In 1960 he obtained a B.A. in political science from McGill University. He went to France, where he first studied French and then history at the Sorbonne. In 1967 he obtained a licence en lettres in history from the Université de Montréal. In 1975 he completed his Ph.D. in history at McGill University. He began teaching at the Université de Québec - Montréal (UQAM) in 1969; he retired from this institution in 2002. Prof. Serbyn is the author of many scholarly publications.

I had the opportunity to speak with Prof. Serbyn on June 2. The interview is published in two parts.

PART II

Q: When did you start work on the way in which World War II was and is being presented in Ukraine? In commemorative events this war is always called the "Great Fatherland War" in Ukraine and in Russia.

A: I began my regular travels to Ukraine as of 1990 and in 1994 I noted in that year Ukraine was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the "liberation" of Ukraine. Also the 9th of May is a statutory holiday commemorating the end of the war and is always portrayed as a great victory of the Soviet and Ukrainian people. And, of course, the war was referred to as the "Great Patriotic War."

I found it outrageous that Ukraine should be celebrating the exchange of a Nazi tyrant (Hitler) for a Communist tyrant (Stalin), especially as the second destroyed more innocent Ukrainians than the first. I became interested in how the whole mythology got started and what it meant for the Soviet Union and why it was taken over by independent Ukraine.

I asked historians in Ukraine when this expression the "Great Fatherland War" first appeared. No one knew or cared. So I started doing some research. The term was, in fact, invented on the first actual day of the war, that is on June 22, 1941. The next day it appeared in Pravda in an article by Emilian Yaroslavsky titled "The Great Fatherland War of the Soviet People." In this article you can see the coalescing of various aspects that were used for propaganda purposes and for forging the myth that this was a "war for the fatherland."

The three components of the myth are: a) the patriotism and élan of the Soviet people, b) the liberation of Ukraine, and c) of victory of the Soviet people. My research and reflection on the German-Soviet war have led me to conclude that for the vast majority of Ukrainians it had little to do with patriotism, it did not liberate Ukraine and the Soviet soldiers can hardly be considered as the real victors.

Q: In Europe the commemoration of the end of the war takes place on May 8. In Russia and Ukraine the date is May 9. Why is there this discrepancy?

A: I examined this question also. On the 8th of May 1945 Stalin decreed that there would be a holiday on the 9th of May, and so Victory Day was celebrated in 1945, 1946 and 1947. But by 1947 (on December 27 to be precise) a decree was issued that the 9th of May 1948 was going to be a regular workday.

At the same time in 1947 all the invalids on the streets in the big cities started to disappear. They ended up on Valam Island, north of St. Petersburg and in other places of deportation. They were removed in order not to remind the people of the war. Why? In order to start changing the collective memory, to issue a new memory. The Revolution was the foundation myth and the way the war was remembered would become the consolidating myth.

In this regard there were two very revealing toasts proposed by Stalin at victory banquets. In the first one, at the end of May 1945, Stalin singled out the Russian nation as the guiding nation of the USSR. Nations would now bow to the Russian nation. In the second toast, Stalin raised his glass to the "cogs" of the great state mechanism without whom the people in command could accomplish nothing. How true, but cogs are not liberators or victors, they are just cogs, and that's the way Stalin liked it. After Stalin's death the "party" replaced him as the main authority focus.

In 1965 Brezhnev brought back the May 9 holiday and monuments started going up. In Kyiv we have the deservedly maligned metal monstrosity of a woman warrior, spoiling the graceful silhouette of Kyiv's right bank. May 9 replaced Revolution Day as the Soviet Union's main holiday. Independent Ukraine took the holiday and the myth that went with it.

Q: The struggle for the historical memory of the Ukrainian nation is clearly still urgent. The UPA does not have recognition. Divizia Halychyna is not even on the horizon, whereas the myth of the Great Fatherland War is alive. Who is promoting this at this moment?

A: The Communist Party, the Red Army Veterans, the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, ethnic Russians and non-Russian Russian speakers who may feel threatened are continuously bolstering this. The myth of the Great Fatherland War is preventing reconciliation between Ukrainians who fought in the three different military formations (even though there were transfers between them): the Red Army, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and those who fought in the Axis armies, especially the Division Halychyna.

It is a disgrace to Ukraine and especially a shame on the Ukrainian political elite that 60 years after the war Ukrainians are still divided on this issue and a shame that must be shared by the president, the government and the Parliament of Ukraine, that the only armed force that was specifically formed to struggle for the independence of Ukraine is not recognized by this independent state today.

There was no liberty for Ukraine after the war. There was liberty in Europe when the Nazis were defeated, but not in Ukraine. Furthermore, victors get spoils and wouldn't all the peasants who were in the army get the spoils? The commanders did - these spoils were shipped back to the USSR by the trainloads. But not the cogs! Mostly of farmer stock, they would simply have wanted their land back. They got nothing.

Q: They got another famine in 1947. When you first started raising this issue and writing about it, how was your work received in Ukraine? As far as I know, you are the only historian who is looking at this aspect of the construction of historical myth in Ukraine.

A: Part of the answer would be in the fact that at first only one paper in Ukraine agreed to take my articles on this topic. Now publications on this subject abound and they are getting pretty close to my perspective on the war. These interpretations are also spreading to academic conferences and publications

Q: Perhaps we could touch on the Famine of 1932-1933 for a moment. You have been over the years very outspoken on this tragedy. You have published widely on this subject as well, including a recent entry in the MacMillan Encyclopedia. Is there still resistance to the idea of the Famine as genocide?

A: Yes! No serious scholar would deny that the Famine took place; most agree that it was man-made, and that the Soviet authorities were responsible. Many Russian scholars accept this. They are primarily interested in the famine in the RSFSR. Some in fact are suggesting that Russians are also victims of genocide. The question that is debated amongst scholars is: Can it be called genocide? If so, was it a national genocide, or was it against the peasantry.

I maintain that Ukrainians were targeted as a group. The fact that Famine also occurred in Kazakhstan does not negate the Ukrainian genocide. All it means is that there were two different groups victimized in a genocidal attack by the Soviet regime.

A weakness in the Russian claim to national genocide is the fact that the famine areas in Russia were inhabited by ethnically mixed populations, in some of which the Russian population was in the minority. In the Caucasus one-third were Ukrainians. In Kuban two-thirds were Ukrainians. Russian sources call these people Russians. What has not been done but needs to be done is to look at the census for each region and break it down into a set of small units and see if in fact there is a difference between the rates of death in Ukrainian and Russian villages, as well as to look at the different policies or different ways of implementing the same policies, and so on.

Russian historians don't seem to be interested in this type of research, but Ukrainian historians are not doing this either. This would give a more exact picture of the ethnic composition of the famine victims who died. One problem with the Ukrainian presentation is that it often restricts itself to Ukrainian state territories, but even there it does not give national breakdown in the ethnically mixed area.

Q: What were the conditions for Germans and Jews in the Famine of 1932-1933?

A: Apparently the Soviets allowed some German aid to get through to the German settlements, so as not to antagonize Germany. As for the Jewish agriculturalists, who were not very numerous, they also received aid from Western Jewish organizations that continued to help Jewish agricultural settlements after the 1921-1923 famine. But this topic needs further exploration. For some reason, historians seem to be avoiding this question.

But to get back to the issue of resistance to the recognition of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide. No Western government except the Balts has, to my knowledge, declared the Holodomor to be genocide. That it's man-made is a given. However, we have enough solid evidence that it was carried out in a way that fits the requirements of the Genocide Convention to be qualified as genocide. New evidence is provided by the correspondence between Stalin and Kaganovich.

We also have an official document dated January 22, 1933, signed by Stalin and Molotov which was sent to Ukraine and Byelorussia and to regional Russian centers around Ukraine decreeing the closing of Ukraine's borders. The document says that for the second year in a row peasants are fleeing and they must be stopped at the borders and punished or sent back to their villages. There was to be no escape from hunger; within six months over 200,000 people were apprehended, shot, sent to the gulag or back to the starving villages. Death becomes inevitable. The Genocidal intent on the part of Stalin is clear.

Q: If we couple this closing of the borders with the decrees (naturalni shtrafy) issued in the fall of 1932 whereby foodstuffs were removed from the houses of the villagers, ostensibly as a penalty for not giving over the grain which they did not have, large scale death had to be certain. But now I'd like to ask you, to what extent is Holodomor becoming an important aspect of the educational process in Ukraine? Has it become part of the common consciousness?

A: Not yet. The Italian historian Andrea Grasiozi made an interesting comment. He said that great calamities are internalized by a society as they happen and become part of the collective memory. But it is hard to resuscitate the memory of the Famine since it was so strongly denied for several generations. Most Ukrainians grew up without any personal experience of this atrocity and with no outside information about it.

It is interesting to compare in this respect what is done by the Jewish community to preserve and honor the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine and what the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian nation is doing with regard to the Holodomor. There are already several Holocaust museums and research and study centers devoted to that topic.

The Ukrainian authorities so far have been spending all their energy on discussion of various half-baked projects. At the same time they continue to treat German occupation as the greatest evil and push the Famine-Genocide into the background. Nazi crimes are presented as being larger than Communist ones and the myth of the Great Fatherland War is dominant. In my opinion, this is bad for Ukrainians on all scores. Not enough intellectual work is being done to bring the Famine into the consciousness of the citizenry.

Q: A resolution has been made to build and organize a Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. What do you think of this project and what do you think ought to be their priority task?

A: First of all, the combining under one roof of all the atrocities committed against Ukrainians by various regimes, as it is presented in the present project - Polish, Communist, Nazi - will have the effect of diluting the central significance of the Holodomor, which was the central assault on the Ukrainian nation. Yad Vashem deals only with the Holocaust. The Washington museum also deals with the Holocaust. Remember that originally there was some discussion of building a Holodomor complex that would house a museum and a research center. This project seems to have gone by the wayside. This is a serious mistake.

There should be two separate institutions: a Famine-Genocide Institute and an Institute of National Memory, say dedicated to the 20th century, which would include material on all the repressions, in the various decades, that were initiated by Soviets and Nazis. The Famine [of 1932-1933] was the central assault, however, and it must have its own research center.

Q: Should this Famine-Genocide center also include the "Rozstrilane Vidrodzhennia," the execution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia? The terror?

A: The starvation of Ukrainian farmers was the part of the genocide which was the most costly in human life, but it cannot be treated in isolation from the rest of the genocide. The assault on the Ukrainian nation included the decimation of the Ukrainian cultural and political elites (Rozstrilane Vidrodzhennia) and this must also be included. The Russification of Ukraine and Kuban is part of the genocide. Ukrainians in the RSFSR must be included. Some mention should be made of the precursor famine (1921-1923) and the aftermath in the Great Terror.

Q: Do you feel that there are currently good historians addressing Ukrainian issues?

A: The problem is that there is not enough solid work being done by Ukrainian historians. The best work on the Armenian genocide has been done by Armenians. The best work on the Jewish Holocaust has been done by Jews. We are, of course, pleased if non-Ukrainians take up work on Ukrainian history but there are not enough Ukrainians in this field doing the fundamental work. That work urgently needs to be done.

Q: You are one of the few diaspora intellectuals taken seriously in Ukraine. One often gets the impression that there is some negativity to the diaspora. What can be done to accelerate a more positive attitude?

A: Serious scholars in Ukraine take serious scholars in the West seriously. Hunczak, Szporluk, Subtelny, Kohut, just to name a few, are well respected by historians in Ukraine.

Q: Please comment on your view of the contemporary state of the Ukrainian language. What in your view is a fair resolution of the linguistic situation in Ukraine?

A: To begin with I think that the diaspora capitulated too quickly in the face of the onslaught of Sovietism. The diaspora preserved some of the basic elements of the Ukrainian language. There was no reason to accept the Soviet "pravopys."

In Ukraine, the Russian language is the language of the former colonial power, which has managed to maintain its status of a dominant imperialist language. The problem is that the Soviet propaganda machine made the Ukrainian people accustomed to accept their subordinate colonial status as a normal state of affairs, and they have difficulty in shaking this mentality. It is not normal that a member of Parliament not know and publicly use the country's state language, to say nothing of the arrogance of ministers who are too arrogant or linguistically challenged to learn and use Ukrainian in fulfilling their functions in Ukrainian.

Ukrainians no longer need to accept this domination of the language of the colonizer. The recognition of Russian as Ukraine's second official (state) language would be the beginning of the end of Ukrainian as Ukraine's national language. But until Ukrainians have pride and respect for their own language things will not advance.

Q: Is it necessary to reform the National Academy of Sciences? How likely is this to happen?

A: The very name suggests a lack of self-respect. In France it's the Académie Française. In Russia it's Rossijiskajya Akademia Nauk. In Poland it's Polska Akademia Nauk! Why not simply call it the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences? It definitely needs reforms, but it is hard to expect this devalued institution to reform itself. It would first have to purge its own ranks - hardly something we can expect these people to do.

What has always puzzled me is why good scholars from the diaspora have accepted to be nominated to this institution? If they expected to bring about changes, I think they have been mistaken.

Q: I'd like to ask you a few political questions, if I may. What are your views about the ongoing political reform?

A: I would hardly call it "reform" if by reform we mean change for improvement. Two months after parliamentary elections and there is still no government. This is as primitive as a political system can get. I am opposed to proportional representation in such a situation as we have in Ukraine. In my view it reduces citizen participation in the political life of the country, makes deputies dependent on the party bosses and completely independent of the electorate. You cannot buy a high place on party list in a system that does not elect its members of Parliament by proportional representation.

Secondly, the source of the political illness in my opinion is the country's system of Parliamentary immunity, which should rather be called parliamentary impunity. Instead of being a guarantee for the elected representatives to fulfill their responsibilities as representatives of their electorate, the system has become a protection for dishonest elements against legal prosecution for crimes committed before or during their tenure.

Political parties are not interested in promoting a genuine political culture. The spirit of otamanschyna dominates Ukrainian political life. This means politicians want privilege.

Q: There are still two major cases outstanding: the poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko and the Gongadze murder. Will there ever be a just resolution to these?

A: I seriously doubt it. It seems to me that everyone at the official level is tired of "solving problems," including Yushchenko. Yushchenko has become a Hamlet. The atmosphere in Ukraine is not one where people feel support from the authorities in the resolution of such matters.

Q: How would it be possible to interest Ukrainian financial magnates and oligarchs to become cultural philanthropists?

A: This will only happen when they develop a sense of personal dignity and a national consciousness. I suppose you need financial incentives set up, too, like tax deductions for pro-Ukrainian philanthropy. But eventually, some Ukrainian robber barons will become Ukrainian philanthropists.

Q: I wonder if you wouldn't mind commenting on the Fourth Wave of Ukrainians coming to the West.

A: I would say that the Third Wave (which was strongly patriotic) did not integrate well with the previous waves of immigration. Because of this lack of fusion with the first and second waves, many talented people were lost to the community organizations. The same error is taking place again. It is important to integrate this Fourth Wave.

This immigration has a much higher level of education, but a much lower level of national consciousness. In the Soviet Union, the state controlled everything but it also paid for all the activities that it sponsored or approved of. This Fourth Wave had a lot of trouble accepting the fact that the Ukrainian diaspora life was organized on voluntary basis and non-paid community participation. We don't have enough psychological studies addressing these problems of assimilation and integration and adherence to ethnic origins.

Q: What are you presently working on?

A: I am just finishing up an article using U.N. criteria to show that the Famine of 1932-1933 was indeed genocide. As you know, the U.N. Convention recognizes only four groups as victims of genocide: these are national, ethnic, religious and racial. Genocide exists where there is action with intent to destroy one of these groups, in whole or in part. I'll be presenting this paper at the Urbana conference at the end of June.

I continue to write on the myth of the Great Fatherland War. I would like to publish a French anthology of Podolynsky's works, which is almost complete but for which I have no sponsor for publication. I am revising my article on the Sion-Osnova controversy for a publication in Ukrainian, and I also want to get back to the Famine of the '20s.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 16, 2006, No. 29, Vol. LXXIV

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