In early April 2015 the Ukrainian government approved several laws that should have been implemented several (roughly 25) years ago. Poland and the Baltic States already have similar legislative laws in place and yet the sole criticising voice to those laws was Russia – the West, and in particular, Western academics, remained silent to these countries’ decisions on how to frame their national history. Yet, in Ukraine, the reaction was very different.
Basically, the four laws are: renaming the Great Patriotic War to the Second World War (and in so doing, acknowledging that the war began in 1939 and not 1941), opening the archives of the former KGB files, giving legal status to those who fought for the Ukrainian liberation movement in the 20th century, and lastly outlawing communist and national-socialist (Nazi) symbols. Of course, there are some issues with some of these laws, as is described by Alexander Motyl’s latest blog, however, they should also not be condemned by academics, as was the case with David Marple’s open letter to President Poroshenko from April 2015.
The two most controversial laws are those associated with the widening of the status of those who fought for Ukrainian liberation to include those from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the outlawing of communist symbols. The most outrageous of these accusations comes from Josh Cohen’s opinion piece for foreignpolicy.com – a man whose speciality is economic reform policy and the media. In his piece he refers to many of those who were included in this new status as “neo-fascists” and involved with the Holocaust. He must be speaking about the controversy of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UPA, since the other organizations and political parties included in this status are either from the First World War, the Ukrainian National Republic, or the post-Second World War period which includes the Helsinki Group, groups which were far from being “neo-fascist.”
At no point in the history of the OUN or the UPA did they ever refer to themselves as “neo-fascists” or even “fascists.” Yes, they were nationalists and there is still major debate in academia over what kind of statehood they wanted to create in Ukraine. There has also been no definitive proof that Ukrainian nationalists were actively involved in the Holocaust – the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police were involved, as were individuals associated with the liberation movement. However, the active cooperation of the nationalists with the Germans during the war is still hotly debated and the outcome of these debates is inconclusive at best.
The level of cooperation between the UPA and the Nazis is also not as simple as Cohen and others would like to believe. Other nations very actively cooperated with the Nazis (Vichy France is the most obvious example) and other insurgencies also worked with Nazi Germany (the Baltic States’ insurgencies, for instance). And yet, how those countries decide to shape their national memory is not as sharply criticized by academics and scholars. Furthermore, most academics have concluded that the most flourishing collaborationist relationship that the Germans had during the Second World War was actually with the Soviet Union – without which Nazi Germany would have never began their war in Western Europe. Ukraine, along with other nations affected by the Second World War, was subjected to these larger-power decisions. However, discussion and debate on this issue has also remained relatively silent.
The outcry is somewhat based on the belief of academics that minority rights are being violated by these new Ukrainian laws. But Poland – the country that has the most complicated history with the UPA – refused to condemn the latest laws insisting that Ukraine’s attitude to its history should be decided by Ukrainians themselves. This is something that academics should also support, especially since the Euromaidan has proven that the idea of a Ukrainian identity is far more complex and not as simplistic as many would like to believe – Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Muslims, and Jews all associate themselves with being Ukrainian.
Why is it that European scholars are not writing open letters to the American President to decry Thomas Jefferson as an American icon, since he was a slave abolitionist in name only (owning slaves and only freeing a small number of them)? In Ukraine, a country where national icons have historically been largely suppressed, and where only now, arguably, the formation of a national identity and a national collective memory has begun, academics patronize this process rather than help with it.
The academics involved in the outcry over this issue of incorporating the UPA into the category of Ukrainian veterans are mainly arguing that historical memory is being suppressed in Ukraine. However, is not the opposite occurring? How many years was Ukrainian national memory unable to flourish and evolve on its own – mainly as a result of suppression from the Communist Party? For the last 50-odd years, the history of the UPA and the history of the Ukrainian national liberation movement (in its complicated forms) has largely been ignored in Ukraine itself – should not this not be the “suppressed” historical memory that needs to be brought into public discourse? Ukrainians need to know their history and this new law will allow them to do so: they can now judge for themselves what they think of the UPA, the OUN, the Ukrainians who fought in the Red Army, and so on and so forth. That is the most important aspect of this law.
The outlawing of communist symbols has also been over-blown. This law does not mean that discussing the communist party is illegal. Rather, the glorification of the communist era has been banned; in other words, the law will protect Ukraine from going down the path of modern Russia. Why is this important for Ukraine today? Because students and academics will now be able to actively and accurately analyse their own history, without the influence of communist ideology.
It is also important to note what is currently happening in the occupied regions of eastern Ukraine. History is being taught as it was in the Soviet Union: the self-proclaimed minister of education of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor V. Kostenok, has admitted that “students will not be taught a Ukrainian identity.” It goes without saying that this is detrimental to Ukrainian society, as we now see what such forced repression of historical memory and identity has done to Ukraine in the past. This repression of history is clearly demonstrated in this YouTube video from the Ukrainian-Canadian Center in Luhansk, where an apparent associate professor at the Luhansk University who does not recognize Petro Mirchuk as one of the first Western historians on the UPA, claims that the literature found in the Center is “neo-fascist,” “Nazi,” and is used to “brainwash” the current generation of Ukrainians into taking its statehood seriously.
What Ukraine needs today is to allow itself and its people to come to an understanding of their own history. The opening of the archives and allowing academia to do its job is essential to this process. Overall, even the disagreement between academics over the UPA and its role in Ukrainian history is good for Ukraine – academic debates are vital to a modern democratic country and Ukrainians will hopefully be able to continue the discussion about their history in a healthy form for decades to come.
