The year 2015 was marked by a very significant commemoration, namely the 400th anniversary of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. One highlight of the celebrations was the June 28 attendance of President Petro Poroshenko at the convocation at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA). In view of the fact that Pylyp Orlyk – the author of the first Constitution of Ukraine – graduated from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the president dedicated most of his speech to the necessity of constitutional amendments, among them provisions for decentralization.
President Petro Poroshenko at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy convocation on June 28.
The anniversary celebrations continued throughout the year with a series of programs. A benefit reception and banquet took place on October 1 at the Kyiv International Art and Conference Center, known as the Ukrainian Home. Then, on October 12-14 approximately 50 researchers and academics from six countries gathered at NaUKMA for a scientific conference. Finally, the celebrations culminated with an outdoor concert on October 15 with thousands in attendance, where Dr. Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, the university’s honorary president, and President Poroshenko were the featured speakers.
To honor and commemorate Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s 400th anniversary and its role in Ukraine’s history, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a valuable limited edition of silver commemorative coins in 5 hrv and 2 hrv denominations and Ukraine’s Postal Service issued new stamps and envelopes. In addition, the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (1819-1924) was published.
Graduates, faculty and friends form the letters KMA and the number 400 to mark the 400th anniversary of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
Euro-Maidan and the current war
As part of International Week on campus at the University of Alberta, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) on January 27 participated in two sessions devoted to the current war in Ukraine and the Euro-Maidan revolution preceding it. The first session recounted the course of events from the beginning of the Euro-Maidan demonstrations in November 2013 to the present day, followed by an emphasis on the cultural differences between Russia and Ukraine, and an examination of the collaboration among Christian clergy of all denominations during the Euro-Maidan. The second session featured the film “Heaven’s Hundred,” produced by the Babylon ’13 Studio.
On March 9-11 the Center for Political and Regional Studies (CPRS) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, held a symposium on the first anniversary of the Euro-Maidan revolution. At the symposium, scholars and experts from Canada and Ukraine spoke about the significance and consequences of this historic event and its influence on current international developments.
On June 13, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York, in cooperation with the Wounded Warrior Ukraine project, held a forum on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. With the war in full swing for months, the spotlight of public debates in Ukraine and in the West has been on the military conflict and its direct casualties – the dead and the wounded. This forum shifted attention from the immediate physical damage of the war to the long-standing psychological trauma that will shape Ukrainian society for years to come. The forum was the first of this kind held at the Shevchenko Scientific Society, weaving discussion of a rehabilitation project into academic debates on Ukraine, and showcasing the society’s new direction toward wider cooperation with other organizations. The event brought together leading experts in Ukrainian affairs including the journalist and author Andrea Chalupa, political analyst Anders Corr, Democratic staff member at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Philip Bednarczyk, as well as the head and CEO of Wounded Warrior Ukraine, Roman Torgovitsky.
Dr. José Casanova, professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University and head of the university’s Program on Religion, Globalization and the Secular, delivered a lecture on “The Religious Communities of Ukraine and Their Role at the Maidan Mobilization” at a session of the Montreal chapter of the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada held on October 15 at the Patriarch Josyf Slipyi Museum. In Ukraine, he said, the religious leaders who belong to the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO) are committed to the development and legal protection of a strong democratic civil society. All religious groups in Ukraine took part in the Maidan mobilization. Their participation in the Revolution of Dignity shows that pluralism is not a cause for fear, but rather a basis for a strong democracy, Dr. Casanova observed.
Holodomor
On February 4, at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), some 500 people interested in learning more about the Holodomor attended an evening organized by the CMHR and the Holodomor Awareness and Education Committee of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), Manitoba Council. Titled “Covering or Uncovering the Truth: Media Reporting on the Holodomor,” the event examined how a free press could both alert the world and document human rights abuses, while at the same time contributing to their cover-up.
A poster for the international symposium on “Starvation as a Political Tool from the 19th to the 21st Century.”
An international symposium on “Starvation as a Political Tool from the 19th to the 21st Century,” held at the University of Toronto, brought together leading scholars to discuss how starvation has been used, or became a way to discriminate against, punish or eliminate national, ethnic, racial or religious groups. The October 22 symposium was the second major academic event examining the Holodomor in comparative perspective organized by the Holodomor Research and Educational Consortium.
Historian Timothy Snyder delivered the Toronto Annual Ukrainian Famine Lecture to a crowded auditorium at the University of Toronto on November 4. Speaking on the topic “The Ukrainian Famine as World History,” the speaker’s major theme was that a proper understanding of the Holodomor, aside from its centrality to the Ukrainian experience and Soviet politics, provides an opening to a more complete history of Europe.
International visitors
The noted Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov was invited by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) to deliver the 49th annual Shevchenko Lecture, which served as the keynote event of a three-day symposium held on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Euro-Maidan revolution. Mr. Kurkov’s talk, delivered on March 9 before an audience of almost 200 at the University of Alberta, was titled “How Many Maidans Does Ukraine Need to Become Different?” Before coming to Edmonton, Mr. Kurkov also gave lectures in Winnipeg and Toronto. In Winnipeg he gave two talks – one at the University of Manitoba and the other at the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Center (Oseredok). In Toronto, Mr. Kurkov gave a lecture at the University of Toronto’s Munk Center, which was co-sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Center for the Study of Ukraine, the Center for East European Russian and Eurasian Studies and CIUS. Mr. Kurkov is a world-renowned Ukrainian novelist, movie scriptwriter and essayist, who has published 18 novels, seven books for children and more than 30 filmscripts. His works have been translated into 36 languages. He is Ukraine’s best-selling author abroad.
Father Bohdan Prach, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv since 2013, on April 30 took part in the CIUS-cosponsored book launch at the St. Josaphat Cathedral Hall of his two-volume study on the clergy of Peremyshl Eparchy between 1939 and 1989. He then visited the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the dean of arts at the University of Alberta on the following day. The objective of this meeting was the signing of a new memorandum of understanding between CIUS and UCU to facilitate the work of the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Modern Ukrainian History and Society.
In late April, Yale University announced that Svyatoslav (Slava) Vakarchuk, who holds an advanced degree in physics, has served in the Verkhovna Rada and leads the most popular rock band in Ukraine, Okean Elzy, had been selected to the prestigious Yale World Fellows Program Class of 2015. Throughout his Yale World Fellowship program, lasting from Mid-August to mid-December, Mr. Vakarchuk was active in contributing as a lecturer at various American universities, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley, displaying a far-ranging knowledge of history and deep understanding of events in Ukraine.
At Fordham University on November 20, Mr. Vakarchuk delivered a lecture titled “Ordinary Citizens in Extraordinary Times: Civil Society in Ukraine,” primarily focusing on the role that civil society plays in the development of a country. He proposed that Ukraine can be transformed when young talented Ukrainians can get a Western education so that they can come back with new ideas and bring about change in their home country.
Scholarly events
On May 29 Dr. Kateryna Goncharova delivered a lecture on “Ukrainian Cultural Heritage as a Force for Social Change,” at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington. Her talk was co-sponsored by the Washington chapter of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Dr. Goncharova heads the Scientific Research Section of the Ukrainian State Research and Project Institute for Historic Preservation. She has worked in research, management and scientific support in the development of projects for the preservation of several UNESCO World Heritage sites. Dr. Goncharova studied the U.S. experience in historic preservation based on public-private partnership, community engagement and neighborhood revitalization. Her goal is to modify these approaches and implement them in Ukraine.
Sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society’s D.C. chapter and the Embassy of Ukraine, the June 12 tribute to Prof. Larissa M.L. Zaleska Onyshkevych was held at the Embassy in Georgetown. During the tribute Dr. Bohdana Urbanovych, president of the Washington chapter of the Shevchenko Society, congratulated Prof. Onyshkevych on her 80th birthday and read excerpts from the many greetings received from the U.S. and abroad. Next, a short film was shown depicting high points in Prof. Onyshkevych’s academic and civic life, and poet and Shevchenko Society administrator Vasyl Makhno outlined her scholarly achievements. Not to be outdone by the other presenters, Prof. Onyshkevych herself delivered an eye-opening lecture about the contemporary Ukrainian poet and playwright from Poland Tadei Karabovych (Tadeusz Karabowicz).
A conference inspired by the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II stimulated discussions by academics and policy analysts at a gathering held at the University of Alberta on October 23-24. “Contested Ground: The Legacy of the Second World War for Eastern Europe,” was a successful joint undertaking of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian Relations. It brought together an impressive array of experts from 12 countries. Presenters took as their starting point the impact of the second world war on Eastern Europe.
A gala banquet at the conclusion featured a keynote address by James Sherr of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), who received a standing ovation for his incisive, albeit sobering, analysis of the civilizational problems that continue to motivate the Russian actions that are fomenting both regional and global instability.
New publications
The book “Tell Them We Are Starving: The 1933 Diaries of Gareth Jones” was recently released as part of The Holodomor Occasional Papers Series.
Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk, editor of The Holodomor Occasional Papers Series, on May 9 announced publication of “Tell Them We Are Starving: The 1933 Soviet Diaries of Gareth Jones,” (No. 2 in the series). The new book provides facsimiles from the three pocket notebooks, as well as a transcription of their contents, that Welsh journalist Gareth Jones wrote during a three-week stay in the USSR during March 1933, when famine was devastating Ukraine. According to Dr. Ray Gamache, a media historian and the book’s transcriber, the diaries constitute one of the most important independent, verifiable records of a horrific event, now known as the Holodomor, recorded as it was unfolding in Ukraine.
Harvard University’s Serhii Plokhy, Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, released a book that traces Ukraine’s history from the time of the ancient Greek settlements to the Maidan. “The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine,” is based on the premise that we need to take a look at Ukraine’s past in order to understand its present and foresee its future. This work examines Ukraine as a gateway between East and West, situated as it is between Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Dr. Plokhy was honored on November 14 with the Omelan and Tatiana Antonovych Foundation award for his work as a historian and author of history books that insightfully analyze Ukraine’s past and present and shed light on what may be in store for its future.
New archival fellowship
During International Week in January, CIUS at the University of Alberta announced the establishment of a new archival fellowship in Ukrainian, including Ukrainian Canadian, studies. CIUS invited applications for one or more archival fellowships in this field. The fellowship is open to applications from students, graduate students or scholars wishing to collect archives or assist existing archival institutions to catalogue and digitize their Ukrainian archival collections. The fellowship is made possible through the support of the Stephania Bukachevska-Pastushenko Endowment Fund.