Volodymyr Kravchenko. Harvard Ukrainian Studies. Volume 34, Annual 2015.
Introduction
From the point of view of a historian, the post-Soviet era may be considered a prolongation of the death throes of the Soviet system, which is still extant in a large number of institutions as well as pervasive norms and values. In the more than twenty years since Ukrainian independence was proclaimed, many observers have noted the endurance of foundational Soviet structures, norms, and mythologies that, as throughout their existence, continue to assure the regeneration of the Soviet Unions cultural milieu and its corresponding social and political culture. The current push to disengage Ukraine from its Soviet past, the most radical of such attempts, is under way, but it is too early to say that Ukraine has truly embarked on a new stage in its history that is fundamentally different from its Soviet past. After the disintegration of the USSR and independence of Ukraine in 1991, the events of 2014 can indeed become a new milestone in Ukrainian history, although the final judgment on the importance of these events is still ahead of us.
I subscribe to the notion that historical legacies play a “crucial role in shaping different patterns of post-communist economic, political, and cultural developments in Eastern Europe.” The effect of history on the countries of the former USSR and the “socialist camp” is well known. History is the key to the theory and practice of national (re) identification and state-building undertaken in all former Soviet republics. All of them turned to history “in order to confirm that they possess “golden eras” and a workable past that can be used to legitimize their newly independent states.” However, Ukrainian sensitivity to history is particularly specific in nature, given that its existence as a sovereign state was only ever episodic, and limited to short periods of time. Ukraine is still seeking its “golden era” and “usable past” that would provide it suitable symbolic capital for its current nation- and state-building process.
In this instance, geography is no less important than history. When it did emerge on the worlds political landscape, Ukraine’s statehood resulted from the geopolitical cataclysms that have plagued these “bloodlands” seemingly forever, but especially during the twentieth century. The specificity of the Ukrainian historical and cultural landscape is that it has always been found on the periphery of this or that Eurasian empire, which gives the historical phenomenon of Ukrainian regionalism a clear geopolitical dimension.
For the past several centuries, Russia has been—and still remains-an indisputable factor in Ukrainian history and geography. Paradoxically, neither of these countries has long experience as nation-states, albeit for different reasons: in Russia’s case, empire has constantly suppressed nation, while in the case of Ukraine, nation and state have never coincided.
Today, one of the many factors characterizing the postcommunist transformations on Europe’s eastern frontiers—and particularly in Ukraine—is the enduring influence of mythologies on society. For nations that lacked the experience of the Reformation and Enlightenment, the social utopias of the totalitarian era were deeply rooted in archaic institutions and values. In this situation, these societies constructed a mythologized map of the world, in which certain myths were merely replaced by others. The massive crisis suffered by Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR promoted the spread of a mythological awareness, which aided in the psychological adaptation of society to the disquieting circumstances, and also in the conservation of a Soviet mythological component in the collective identity.
This article shall focus on post-Soviet Ukraine’s policy on history, in light of its importance to national state-building and as a hotly debated subject. I approach the issue in the context of historical mythology, legacy, and the “usable past” with their respective symbolic space. (What new historical mythologies are being used to counterweight the main Soviet founding mythologies of the “Great October Socialist Revolution” and the “Great Fatherland War”? How is the process of de-Sovietizing Ukraine’s public space evolving? What role is being played by Russia’s identity policy in this regard? Work on this article commenced in late 2013; since that time, events and developments in Ukraine have necessitated adjustments to the text. Some of my earlier publications on this topic have been used, supplemented with recent facts. Nevertheless, I understand that nowadays, publications on current events tend to rapidly become out of date, while predictions regarding the future have always been risky.
Ukraine’s Soviet Legacy
Among the myriad Ukrainian historical legacies, some are genuine, while others belong to a reinvented tradition, having been reinvested with different meanings. Most often, the (re)construction of Ukrainian historical legacies is based on the logic—or, more accurately, the teleology—of textbooks, starting from Kyivan Rus’ and ending with the Soviet Union. Notably, it appears that the Soviet legacy is the only one shared by all Ukrainian citizens, whichever region they inhabit and whatever language they speak. From this perspective, Ukraine is no different from other postcommunist countries where “the most important legacy that still shapes today’s political culture is the recent communist past.”
It is important to keep in mind, however, that the Soviet legacy is a complex phenomenon, saturated with “undigested” remnants of previous eras that are manifested as values, artifacts, landscapes, mythologies, memories, and traditions from the past. As is well known, the historical legitimacy of the USSR was, from the beginning of its existence, underpinned by the mythology of the “Great October Socialist Revolution.” Lenin’s communist utopia was soon augmented by Stalin’s more pragmatic blend of modern “Sovietness” with early modern (Orthodox-imperial) “Russianness.” Later, Stalin’s legacy formed the basis for a new historical mythology of the “Great Fatherland War,” which in turn granted legitimacy to the post-World War II generation of Soviet elites. These two mythologies acquired the character of a secular religion, complete with symbols, a pantheon of heroes, institutions, and sacralized texts. Subsequently, the Brezhnev era aspired to synthesize both the Leninist and Stalinist myths, but in fact was more inclined to favor the latter one. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Brezhnevite historical legacy came to be perceived as a Golden Age of stability and prosperity for ordinary people. Thus the foundations were laid for a third, “consumerist” Soviet myth, one which is still alive (or, to make a joke at the expense of the Polish and Ukrainian national anthems, “not dead yet”).
Historically, Ukraine played a very important role in the process of building the Soviet nation-state. In various ways, certain building blocks of the “Ukrai’na” national-state project were used to advantage in constructing the USSR. Leninist policy was prepared for political compromise in reconciling Communist doctrine with modern Ukraine. Nevertheless, this compromise was only a side effect of the Sovietization of the former Russian Empire. Namely, Stalin’s policy of compromising with imperial Russia was accompanied by the destruction of the Ukrainian national-communist identity and parallel reanimation of the Little Russian ethnocultural element; the latter was, in turn, easily incorporated into the imperial Russian legacy. The coincident annexation by Stalin of the lands of Western Ukraine again added Ukrainian nationalist “leavening” to the Little Russian “dough.” The Brezhnev era served to cement the Soviet Ukrainian (formally speaking), but in reality Soviet-Little Russian, status of the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union.
Soviet Ukraine did have the external attributes of statehood, but it was not an authentic nation-state within the USSR. In fact, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a multiethnic, multicultural administrative-political construction more similar to a miniature
Soviet Union than to a Ukrainian nation-state. Soviet Ukraine became one of the most Sovietized and Russified among other Soviet republics. On the other hand, the Ukrainian SSR was among the most Sovietized and Russified of the Soviet republics, while remaining to a certain extent heterogeneous, as the Soviet Union was also. In Ukraine, Soviet-Russian dualism was at play alongside Little Russian-Ukrainian dualism. Ukrainian national identity was tightly intertwined with its Soviet and Little Russian identities; this was exploited in various ways by Soviet nationality policies.
For most Russians, Ukraine continued to remain de facto as Little Russia—that is, a part of the triune Orthodox Russian nation, alongside “Great Russia” and “White Russia” (Belorussia or Belarus). That is why ethnic Ukrainians were considered to be “second among equals” next to ethnic Russians in the unofficial hierarchy of the Soviet peoples. By the same token, Ukrainians used to occupy the highest level of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy in the USSR as it was before the 1917 revolution. Colonial paradigms only partially explain Ukraine’s unique status within the USSR, but they fail to take its specificity into account.
All three of the hybrid identities in the USSR population discussed above—Soviet Russian, Little Russian, and Ukrainian—had their corresponding spatial-symbolic dimensions. The external homogeneity of Soviet Ukraine’s cultural landscape was supplied by the symbology of the “Great October Socialist Revolution” and the “Great Fatherland War.” The ubiquitous monuments to Lenin and “Soldiers Who Fought for Soviet Rule” were interlarded with monuments and memorial complexes to the heroes of the “Great Fatherland War.” Being of a sacred nature, they were all mandatory for each populated place, and were regularly featured in ritual practices, endowing Soviet Ukraine with a superficial uniformity that was unalterably tied to the common Soviet cultural space. Moreover, within the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, numerous regions, whole cities, and divisions of the military-industrial complex constituted Soviet-Russian enclaves with “All-Union” (not “republican”) status. Crimea was an “all-Union resort,” Donbas was “the Union’s stokehold,” Western Ukraine was a “victimized and liberated land,” and Sevastopol, Kyiv, and Odesa were “Hero-Cities” by an all-Union designation, and so on.
Similarly, the above-mentioned Ukrainian and other Soviet cities were also simultaneously assigned roles in the imperial Russian discourse: Kyiv was the religious heartland of the Orthodox world and the “mother of Russian cities,” Sevastopol and Poltava were lasting symbols of imperial Russia’s military might, Odesa and Kharkiv flanked St. Petersburg as manifestations of Russia’s “European modernity,” and so on. The imperial Russian cultural landscape—represented in Ukraine by Orthodox churches and monasteries as well as memorial complexes, monuments, and other symbols—was compatible with the symbols of the Little Russian myth, which also included elements of the Cossack historical mythology, especially in Kyiv and the cities of Pereiaslav and Khmelnytskyi. Meanwhile, Poltava and Left-Bank Ukraine were not only symbols of Russia’s imperial glory in the time of Peter the Great, but also of the iconic Little Russia, as depicted by Mykola Hohol (Nikolai Gogol) in his folkloric paean Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka. Reinforcing this mythology, the annual Sorochyntsi Fair always included a parade of Hohol’s literary characters.
In this unrelenting landscape of Sovietized Little Russian sentimentality, modern “Ukrainianness” was only to be found as one approached the USSR’s western border, with maximum detectable manifestations in Lviv. Soviet counter-propaganda did its utmost to tarnish the city’s patriotic reputation by promoting its association in the minds of Homo sovieticus with “Banderite thuggery.” The Soviet authorities unceasingly fought against perceived hostile ideologies and historical memory in all three identity discourses—Soviet-Russian, Little Russian, and Ukrainian—including official bans and “repression” of events and persons, which also prompted countless taboos and self-censorship. Sometimes, the easiest way to find out about the existence of alternative views to Soviet ideology was to read between the lines of official counter-propaganda output. Then, with the collapse of the USSR and erosion of Soviet ideology, the formerly repressed identity discourses began to surface in political and cultural life.
The Quest for Historical Alternatives After 1991
The only realistic alternative to Soviet communism appeared to be nationalism (in the broad academic sense of the word). Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the common Soviet/Russian legacy has been “nationalized” by local Soviet elites in different ways. Similarly to the other Soviet republics, the Ukrainian SSR also embarked on the construction of a full-fledged national state. The Ukrainian authorities faced the task of reforming the institutions, borders, and symbolic space of the Ukrainian SSR into national equivalents—still using, however, Soviet institutions and symbolic capital. Meanwhile, they rejected the Soviet historical legacy, which had also functioned as a glue holding Soviet Ukraine together. In practice, this looked like attempting to pull oneself out of the mud by one’s own hair.
Thus, the identity policy of the new Ukrainian elites appeared to be reactive, multivectored, and dependent on Soviet traditions as well as on external circumstances. In the brief history of this period, only one trend is discernible that has been aimed at decommunization of the public space. However, two different strategies were used in the implementation process: (1) based on the idea of Ukrainian “national renaissance”—which meant a “Ukrainianization” policy based on language and the historical mythology of national statehood; and (2) an intent to balance between the Soviet-Russian, Little Russian, and Ukrainian discourses inherited from Soviet times, in order to preserve the political status quo. A noticeable gap that developed in Ukraine’s political and intellectual milieu had once been occupied by representatives of its national-communist trend. The former niche of Ukrainian national-communists was filled by Soviet-Russian communists, who defended Russian Orthodox-imperial nationalism.
The doctrine of national revival is associated with Presidents Leonid Kravchuk (1991-94), Viktor Yushchenko (2005-10), and Petro Poroshenko (2014-present), who have aimed to replace the Soviet legacy with a Ukrainian one at the levels of legislation, institutions, and identity. It’s worthwhile to recall that the historical touchstone for this doctrine goes back to the events of 1917-18, with the emergence of modern Ukrainian statehood. According to the national paradigm, the whole of Soviet history is considered to have been a foreign occupation. Ukraine within the USSR is portrayed as a victim of Soviet Russian imperialism, an internal colony whose resources were used to supply the needs of the political center, and an object of political Russification. Along with other nations in the “socialist camp,” Ukrainians were considered to be a captive nation that dreamed of restoring its state independence and returning to the “family of Europe.” Communism was an artificial system imposed on Ukraine from the outside, with no roots in its national history. The uncompromising nature of such a policy, based as it was on the “minority faith,” as Andrew Wilson put it, provoked opposition on the part of regional elites and a substantial part of the population.
An eclectic type of identity policy was implemented by Leonid Kuchma (1994-2004) and Viktor Yanukovych (2010-14). It may be asserted that a policy of compromise in Ukraine was the most effective during Kuchma’s term—when the historical jumping-off point for Ukraine’s political elite was not the mythological “thousand-year state,” nor even 1917, but the Brezhnev-era Ukrainian SSR. On the other hand, based on some of his pronouncements, Yanukovych was leaning towards considering the jumping-off for Ukrainian statehood to be back in the times of the Second World War—that is, a period that had already been monopolized and mythologized by the Russian neighbor. After that, Yanukovych’s room to politically maneuver between the various identity discourses was much narrower than Kuchma’s—mainly because of Russia’s aggression and polarization of Ukrainian society. The eclectic identity policies of Kuchma and Yanukovych had no mythological components of their own: they were not simply Soviet heritage reconceptualized but actually Soviet heritage perpetuated—against the background, moreover, of increasing corruption and stagnation, just like in the political culture under Brezhnev.
Among the regional elites, there was a broader spectrum of political, ideological, and national orientations than in central Ukraine. Naturally, the Ukrainian national discourse on identity policy was supported most vigorously in the west, where de-Sovietization of the public space, and its repopulation with symbols from Ukraine’s history, had already begun in Soviet times. Most of the rest of Ukrainian territory, on the other hand, was dominated by the Little Russian and Soviet-Russian identity discourses, with the center being a kind of “undefined middle” that struggled merely to survive. Meanwhile, the pre-Soviet imperial Russian heritage was being actively revived in the east and south, coming increasingly under the influence of policies emanating from neighboring Russia. What was common to both these regions was the inertia governing local elites, a holdover from the perestroika era that prolonged the life of the Soviet symbolic milieu, albeit in a somewhat modified form.
Ukraine’s largest cities maintained a policy of addressing the “blank spots” of Soviet history—mainly with countless monuments to Chornobyl victims, fallen or veteran soldiers in the Afghan-Soviet war, perished cosmonauts, firefighters, policemen, and actors (especially Vladimir Vysotskii), literary characters (especially from the works of Mikhail Bulgakov and II ‘f and Petrov), and personalities from Soviet mass culture (especially film). Without a doubt, in this respect the Soviet heritage is still alive and well in independent Ukraine to this very day.
In eastern and southern Ukraine, the continuing policy of “searching for roots” opened a Pandora’s box of numerous myths that were incompatible with the national Ukrainian project. Most significant among them was the imperial Russian mythology, which—contrary to the Soviet mythology—had no room for Ukraine. Behind the Soviet Dnipropetrovsk was looming imperial Russian Ekaterinoslav; Zaporizhia’s original name was Aleksandrovsk; Kirovohrad was founded as Elisavetgrad; Krasnohrad was named after prince Konstantin, etc. Some Ukrainian cities that had kept their old names during the Soviet era took steps to exchange their Soviet emblems for imperial ones—including Odesa, Kyiv, and Kharkiv—and erected monuments to Russian monarchs, nobles, and military leaders. In this process, an active role was played by the Russian Orthodox Church (operating legally in Ukraine as the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate”), mindful of keeping Ukraine under its influence and therefore not stinting on the installation of crosses, churches, suitable monuments, and the like. This policy left Ukraine no choice but to integrate most closely with Russia—analogously to the Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654.
The “Ukrainian National Revolution” Versus the “Great October Socialist Revolution in Ukraine”
Almost immediately after the dissolution of the USSR, the mythology of the Great October Socialist Revolution began to be replaced by the mythology of Ukrainian modern national statehood. Ukrainian historians have recreated the concept of the Ukrainian national revolution as an innate and unique phenomenon, different from the Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917.
Ukrainian national statehood (the Ukrainian National Republic of 1917) was presented as the direct product of the mass national movement. The short-lived state was accompanied by corresponding mythologies, such as the “founding fathers” of the Ukrainian national state (Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Pavlo Skoropads’kyi, and Symon Petliura); Ukrainian territorial and national unity, when the two parts of Ukraine—the Western Ukrainian National Republic and the Ukrainian National Republic—were proclaimed in 1919 as a single and “indivisible” nation-state; and heroic episodes of martial glory, such as the Battle of Kruty (the “Ukrainian Thermopylae”), which were interpreted in terms of Ukrainian-Russian national struggle.
The concepts of a Ukrainian national revolution and its historical mythology were applied in order to legitimize Ukrainian independence. Newly independent Ukraine proclaimed itself the legitimate heir to the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) declared in 1917. The national symbols of the UNR—the trident and the blue and yellow flag—were officially adopted again for Ukraine, over seventy years later. In 2000, during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, the holiday of the Great October Revolution (celebrated on 7 November), once the greatest of the Soviet state holidays, was officially abolished in Ukraine and replaced by an obscure “Day of Social Workers.” The first monument to Petliura, one of the leaders of the postimperial Ukrainian national revolution, was erected in Rivne city in 2001.
The second elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, issued several decrees hallowing the memory of Ukrainian revolutionary leaders throughout the country, inaugurated a Museum of the Ukrainian National Republic, and also built a memorial to the mythologically significant Battle of Kruty. Subsequently, during the tenure of President Yanukovych, a monument in Kharkiv city center commemorating the declaration of Soviet rule in Ukraine was taken down, and in Kirovohrad the first monument in Ukraine was erected to Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a political ally (but also rival) of Petliura.
The policy of dismantling the symbolic space created by “Great October Socialist Revolution” mythology has been continued by the current President, Petro Poroshenko, on an even greater scale. As of August 2016, over 1,200 Lenin monuments have been taken down. Also, during this time 26 districts and 987 populated places changed their Communist names, pursuant to the Law of Ukraine “On condemning the Communist and National-Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and prohibiting the propagation of their symbols,” which was adopted on 9 April 2015. With Lenin monuments being dismantled throughout Ukraine after the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014 (termed the Leninopad), and cities and other populated places in general being renamed, the last vestiges of the Great October Socialist Revolution mythology began to disappear from the public space and collective memory.
It is worth noting, however, that Soviet toponyms have rarely been replaced with names borrowed from the arsenal of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” mythology. Of the more than three hundred districts and populated places in Ukraine that had changed their names as of May 2016, only one took its new name from symbols of the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” The situation with changing names within certain Ukrainian cities is similar. For example, of the 115 recently renamed streets in Poltava city, only eight were given new names that were connected to the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” In Kharkiv city, of 168 new toponyms as of 2015, only one is connected to the events between 1917 and the 1920s—and even so, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi may have been selected as a historian rather than as a political leader. It appears that in renaming municipal streets, only Kyiv has paid active attention to the symbols of the national revolution: of 25 streets renamed in the city, eight were given new names in honor of leaders of the Struggle for Independence and participants in the National Revolution. It is possible that this trend will change starting in 2017, which has been officially declared to be the Year of the 1917-1921 Ukrainian Revolution.
It should be noted that the mythological potential of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” concept is rather limited. In fact, it generates more questions than it answers. Overall, the political chaos into which Ukrainian lands on both sides of the Dnipro were thrown upon the collapse of the Romanov and Habsburg empires cannot be encompassed in a single, integral process. Destructive tendencies seemed to consistently take precedence over constructive ones, until the Bolsheviks ultimately triumphed in 1920. On the other hand, the varying interplay between national, ethnic, and social factors in Ukraine enables even diametrically opposing interpretations of events.
The Ukrainian national revolutionary process developed in the context of political and armed conflict between different projects of Ukrainian statehood, with differing political orientations and perceptions of nation. That is why the new generation of Ukrainian historians is more likely to successfully deconstruct the national paradigm of the “Ukrainian National Revolution,” focusing on its social and regional aspects and refuting claims as to the integrity and creative potential of the Ukrainian national movement during that period.
The pantheon of distinguished Ukrainians, chief ideologists, and founding fathers of national statehood is comprised of deeply controversial politicians: both Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi and Volodymyr Vynnychenko were leftist socialists who were too moderate in their attitude toward Leninist Russia; Pavlo Skoropads’kyi has been considered by many to be a German puppet and a basically pro-Russian politician; Symon Petliura, who replaced Mazepa in his role as symbol of Ukrainian nationalism and separatism, was accused of anti-Semitic pogroms and betraying western Ukrainians for the sake of a Polish alliance; and Western Ukrainian leaders were accused of betraying the “Great Ukraine” project for the sake of their political autonomy, and so on.
During the time of the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Civil War, the territory of what is currently Ukraine was only partially involved in the events of the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” In Kyiv and Lviv, where the main events took place, current initiatives to hallow the memory of those participating in the struggle for independence (1917-20) could take advantage of still-extant local historical materials. This was much harder to do in Kharkiv, which was under Ukrainian rule for only a very short time, and practically impossible in places such as Donetsk, Odesa, or Sevastopol, where the Ukrainian revolution was supplanted by competing Russian and Soviet political projects. These regions, which have remained largely in a culturally Russian, postimperial milieu, have yet to be incorporated into the Ukrainian national narrative. To this end, the paradigm of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” cannot be applied successfully.
As regards society as a whole, mass awareness of the “Great October” mythology has continuously and inexorably eroded, even as far back as the Brezhnev era. In 2009, only about 10 percent of Ukrainians considered 7 November, which marked the Russian Communist revolution, to be a major holiday, while approximately half of them viewed it as just an ordinary day off; today it would be fair to assume that this small number has shrunk even more. Nevertheless, the real reasons for this phenomenon have yet to be identified. Relevant indicators point sooner to the indifference of Ukrainian society regarding the mythology of the “Great October” than to the triumph of mythology of the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” Given the Ukrainian regional factor and the influence of Russia—where Lenin’s legacy seems to have irrevocably taken a back seat to that of Stalin—we may surmise that the mythology of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” will hardly be capable of becoming the same kind of consolidating force in Ukrainian as the “Great October Socialist Revolution” was in the USSR.
The Holodomor and OUN/UPA versus the “Great Fatherland War”
The historical mythology of the “Great Fatherland War” began to displace the “Great October” from the collective consciousness long before the demise of the Soviet Union. After Brezhnev came to power, the rehabilitation of Stalin within the Soviet political and cultural establishment crept in and kept accelerating. This process was suspended for a brief time under Gorbachev during perestroika, but once the Soviet Union collapsed, the symbolic resurrection of Stalin received a powerful boost, both in Russia and former Soviet republics. It has appeared that Stalin and the “Great Patriotic War” mythology occupy a central role in the history of the USSR. Subsequently, the idea developed that in the process of de-Sovietizing historical writings, interpretation of World War II would sooner or later become either the point of departure for national historiographies from the Soviet past or, as in the cases of Russia or Belarus, the most essential part of their rediscovered identities.
The problem of assessing the historical role of Stalin and the system he built is a fault line dividing Ukrainian society. Since perestroika, the Soviet-Russian mythology of the “Great Fatherland War” has been countered by the discourse around the mass repressions of the Stalinist era. According to the official Soviet-Russian interpretation, the “Great Victory” was possible thanks to Stalin’s five-year plans; regardless of the numbers of human lives that were sacrificed, they enabled the creation of a large industrialized state that was capable of opposing Hitler’s Germany. Another interpretation asserts that the lives lost before and during the war were the result of the criminal incompetence of Stalin’s government and that the victory itself was achieved in spite of, not thanks to, Stalin. Clearly, in the first case, the crimes of Stalin’s regime were dominated by his achievements, and in the second, it was quite on the contrary.
The Holodomor of 1932-33 occupies the most important position in the Ukrainian national martyrology; in official memorial policy, its importance was elevated under presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko in Ukrainian historiography not only of the Stalinist period but of the entire Soviet era. The Holodomor, which is officially recognized as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people, turned the whole of Ukrainian Soviet-era history into a national disaster or even martyrdom. No wonder that the Holodomor has been compared to the Holocaust; such comparison was apparently influenced by Ukrainian emigre literature. In this interpretation the Holodomor attained significant religious meaning, embodied, for example, in the national Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv. However, according to the Orthodox tradition, the Holodomor turned out to be perceived by the ordinary people as a human tragedy, rather than a guilty act against the Soviet regime. Monuments that commemoralized this event were “accepted by people as the remembrance of those who died from famine…. Basically, they are plain wooden crosses with simple labelling: ‘In memory of our neighbours—victims of the famine of 1932-1933.'”
Political and scholarly discussions are still swirling around the interpretation of this horrific catastrophe that was hidden from people for decades by the communist regime. Was the famine in Ukraine an artificial one, that is, organized deliberately, or was it brought about by “objective” factors? Did it have a territorial, social, or Ukrainian ethnic dimension? Can it be classified as genocide? Who should be held responsible for the deaths of millions of peasants—communism as an ideology and system, specific Stalinist leaders, or the nations they represented? Finally, what lends of criteria are to be used to determine today’s understanding of this historical event: legal, ethical, national, or political? Research aimed at offering answers to these questions has garnered a widespread international response.
Official recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people only added fuel to the fire. In Ukraine, Russia, and in the West, many historians came out against this interpretation. Some of them were also in the habit of diminishing the responsibility of Stalin’s leadership for the mass starvation by citing “objective” factors, such as the hostile capitalist environment, the need to impose modernization forcibly, and so on (“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”). Ukrainian academic historiography focuses on the territorial and political rather than ethnocultural aspect of the concept “Ukrainian nation,” encompassing all “national, ethnic, and religious groups” that were present in Soviet Ukraine and suffered as a result of the famine. In contrast, nationalist Ukrainian historical writing emphasizes the ethnocultural factors of the Holodomor with anti-Semitic overtones.
The Holodomor perceived as national martyrdom was able to counterweight the Soviet mythology of the “Great October Socialist Revolution”; it was obvious that national losses during the era of Stalinist repressions prevailed over the achievements of the Leninist “Ukrainization” of the 1920s and fit the mythology of the “Executed Renaissance.” However, Holodomor victimization couldn’t compete with the triumphalism of the Soviet mythology of the “Great Fatherland War.” In this case, Ukrainian elites met with challenges that prevailed over those connected with the “Ukrainian national revolution” paradigm.
Ukrainian territory during World War II was fragmented: most of it was occupied by the Nazis, who had no intention of allowing Ukrainian nation-statehood to be revived; the remaining territory was controlled by Nazi allies, Romania and Hungary, and, de facto, by the Polish underground army (AI<), as well as by Ukrainian Communist and nationalist guerrillas. Thus, the question arises: who actually represented Ukraine during the Second World War? The Ukrainian nationalists from the OUN/UPA and the SS Division “Halychyna” who fought for the independent state, the Soviet Ukrainian citizens who were an integral part of the Soviet Union, or the Soviet-Russian metropolis along with its Ukrainian creatures?
The Ukrainian historiography of the Second World War remains filled with many contradictions and eclectic combinations of mutually conflicting categories and definitions. The European definition of the “Second World War” for some time has led a symbolic battle, with sporadic success, against the definition of the “Great Fatherland War” in Ukraine’s public awareness, including in school textbooks. However, including the OUN and the UPA in the heroic section of the Ukrainian national discourse touches upon sensitive issues regarding such notions as integral nationalism, fascism, collaborationism, and the Holocaust. The OUN/UPA phenomenon is itself mythologized by some and demonized by others. The glorification of the OUN/ UPA raises opposition from part of the Ukrainian as well as of Soviet-Russian, Jewish, and Polish historians and politicians. Attempts to consider the problem of Ukrainian nationalism and collaborationism in a comparative European context or to declare mutual national reconciliation and forgiveness have not produced satisfactory results either. The same can be said of the rejection of the “heroic” historical narrative of the war by the academic historiography in favor of a more grounded, sociocultural one.
Thus, the Ukrainian historical narrative appeared to be torn between three competing discourses: the Soviet-Russian one, with its foundational mythologies of the “Great Fatherland War,” which has been sidelined by the new Russian national “Great Victory” discourse and the glorification of Stalin; the Ukrainian national discourse, similar to the Polish one in that it portrays Ukraine as a victim of both Hitler and Stalin, but with a heroic discourse connected to the OUN underground and the Ukrainian insurgency (UPA); and the European discourse of the Second World War based on the tragedy of the Holocaust. However, in fact there are only two mythologies that fight each other on Ukrainian territory: the Soviet-Russian one and the Ukrainian nationalist one.
So far, Ukrainian elites have not succeeded in “nationalizing” the “Great Fatherland War” legacy. To this end, a symbolic capital of the “Ukrainian national resistance” discourse to create an alternative national mythology that could challenge the Soviet-Russian discourse of “struggling against fascism as part of the anti-Hitler coalition” appeared to be insufficient. The symbolic map of the “Ukrainian World War II” is not marked with the sacral places of memory of major battles, which could provide the Ukrainian version of the war with a heroic mythology similar to the Soviet one. The battle of Brody, where the Ukrainian SS Division “Halychyna” was decimated by the Soviet Red Army, as well as local military operations by the UPA against the Nazis, pale in comparison with the operations conducted by the Soviet Red Army on Ukrainian territory in 1943-44. In addition, the Ukrainian national mythology of World War II, contrary to the Soviet-Russian one, is deprived of a religious content that is extremely important for implementation of a new version of collective identity.
The Ukrainian political elite so far have been transmitting contradictory signals. In the Ukrainian national narrative, Stalinism is considered the personification of the Soviet system with Ukraine as its victim. The government of Viktor Yushchenko even attempted to organize a Nuremberg-type tribunal in order to condemn the Stalinist government and to grant OUN/UPA members official status as “fighters for Ukrainian independence,” which in turn provoked irritation and protests not only in Ukraine but also beyond its borders. This policy was thoroughly revised by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, when highly placed officials and politicians in his “inner circle” made public declarations that at least partially rehabilitated Stalin. Communists erected monuments to Stalin while Ukrainian nationalists planted bombs under them. In turn, monuments to the UPA were under repeated attacks; they were dismantled periodically and replaced with the monuments to the victims of OUN/UPA. The battle of monuments coincided with a battle of schoolbooks, at the national and regional levels.
However, the events of the last two years made noticeable adjustments to this picture. The Ukrainian radical nationalists’ political influence increased substantially in the years of President Yanukovych. This trend accelerated further during Euromaidan, Russian military intervention in Crimea, and the Donbas war. Ukrainian battalions of nationalist volunteers were the only organized force that intervened on behalf of Ukrainian independence. As a result, nationalist symbols began to carry new meaning and did not provoke instinctive rejection in Ukrainian society, as it was before. During 2014 and 2015, the number of those who supported granting the OUN/UPA members official status as “fighters for Ukrainian independence” has increased from 27 to 41 percent, while the opponents of this idea have shrunk from 52 to 38 percent.
The fact that Moscow Avenue in Kyiv has been renamed recently after Stepan Bandera can be attributed to the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which has increased the demand for a clearly defined national mythology. Despite protests from at least some Kyivan citizens, as well as democratic “soft” intellectual opposition, such an event was unthinkable even in the years of President Yushchenko. Bandera for a country at war can play the same symbolic role that at one time belonged to Petliura and Mazepa, who are considered uncompromising enemies of Russia.
Whether the Ukrainian nationalist discourse of the Second World War can be compatible with the European one, especially in light of the growing tension between Poland and Ukraine around the issue of the Volyn massacre of 1943, remains to be seen. However, paradoxically enough, the Ukrainian nationalist narrative of the Second World War could possibly come to terms with the Soviet one, at least on the discursive level. Numerous Soviet monuments and memorials erected to commemorialize the “Great Patriotic War” mythology in Ukraine remain intact, contrary to the monuments to the “Great October.” They are merely being “recoded” with certain national symbols and patriotic inscriptions. Both warring sides on the Donbas borrow heavily from the Soviet propaganda arsenal, habitually compare their opponents to fascists, and describe the victories of their soldiers using labels such as the “Battle of Stalingrad” or “Defense of the Brest Fortress.” Speaking theoretically, the symbolic legacy of the war in Donbas has a chance to merge with the mythology of the “Great Fatherland War” within the updated Ukrainian discourse.
It remains to be seen how much in demand the new mythology will be among the new generation. In the absence of an intellectual and political consensus, historical memory in post-Soviet Ukrainian society continues to be defined by the mythology of the “Great Fatherland War.” According to data collected by the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center, 71.7 percent of Ukrainian residents polled in 2003 considered Victory Day to be a major holiday; by 2010 this number had increased to 74.9 percent. Arguably, up to the time this article was written, neither the Holodomor nor OUN/UPA, nor even the Ukrainian-Russian war affected significantly the popularity of mythology of the “Great Fatherland War” in Ukraine.
Ukrainian society has still been unable to reach a consensus regarding Stalin. In 1991, 27 percent of Ukrainians agreed that Stalin was a “great leader” and 44 percent disagreed. By 2006 the first figure (38 percent) exceeded the second (37 percent). Moreover, Stalin’s popularity increased across the spectrum of Ukrainian society, even among youth (by 10 percent) and middle-aged people (also by 10 percent). In August 2016, after two years of war against pro-Russian forces in the Donbas, 29.6 percent of Ukrainians interviewed by the Democratic Initiatives project and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology considered Joseph Stalin to be a great leader, with 36.9 percent of respondents disagreeing, and 33.5 percent undecided. There is no doubt that in this case, as in many others, Ukrainian society is still influenced by Russian politics of identity, in which historical amnesia and the glorification of Stalinism prevail.
Russkii Mir Versus Ukrainian Nationalism
It was the Russian Soviet elite led by Boris Yeltsin that played a decisive role in the dissolution of the USSR. At that time, the Russian Soviet elite began to revive its national identity, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic began to resurrect the attributes of national statehood that had been earlier sacrificed to the Soviet experiment. President Vladimir Putin has simply continued the policy of his predecessor to transform the remains of the uncompleted Soviet project into a new Russian national project. Thanks to their common mythological-utopian nature, the Soviet/Russian national dualism easily turned into Russian/Soviet nationalism. Russian national-communists have played an important role in this process. However, it was the Russian Orthodox Church—which for a time had been replaced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—that became the main foundation for the new Russian policy of identity.
For Putin, the disintegration of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century, one that could and should have been avoided. However, in contrast to President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus or President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, Putin followed a path of radical nationalization, not the preservation or revival of the Soviet legacy. Thus he had at his disposal the untapped reserves of Russian nationalism that had been stored and multiplied during the years of Stalin and Brezhnev. The main reason that the Soviet legacy was not fully and unhesitatingly discarded by the Russian elites was because of the Russian imperial tradition that de facto remained in it. Whereas in the past Russian nationalism had been sacrificed to the Soviet communist project, now it began to be revived in its traditional forms.
Following the logic of post-Soviet nation-state building, the new Russian elites turned to the precommunist era and began to rebuild the “Russia we had lost,” namely, the Russian Empire in the traditional packaging of a “single, indivisible” Orthodox Russia, flavored with the romanticism of feudal estates, imperial grandeur, and the White Guard mythology. This was the reimagined Russia, which was based on stereotypes that are easily discernible in paintings by Ilya Glazunov, films by Nikita Mikhalkov, and novels by Valentin Pikul’ of the latter half of the twentieth century. It has been introduced to former Soviet citizens together with the repressed imperial family, the official Orthodox Church, and the geopolitical fantasies of the Russkii mir. (68)
As it turned out, the historical mythology of the “Great October” was not needed in Russia any more. There was no longer any room, either, for Lenin or other fighters against Great Russian chauvinism in the new/old pantheon of Great Russians, although the Russian elites have thus far not mustered the courage to remove Lenin’s mausoleum from Red Square and numerous monuments to Lenin and his followers in a similar way as Ukraine recently did. But the communist ideology, along with all the rest of the political opposition to the imperial regime (including the democratic opposition), was marginalized and reinterpreted from the perspective of imperial nationalism.
The Great October Socialist Revolution holiday was replaced in Russia by the Day of National Unity, which appeared to be virtually identical to the revived imperial mythology dating to the first half of the nineteenth century and based on the Orthodox-Catholic/Russian-Polish conflict, marked by the expulsion of “unholy” Poles in 1612 from behind the “sacred walls of the Kremlin.” The mythology of the White Guard has been revived and confronted the Ukrainian “national revolution” mythology. The symbolical space of this mythology included half of post-Soviet Ukraine and was marked by respective monuments. Igor Girkin, a Russian military veteran and a key commander in the pro-Russian separatist forces in the war against Ukraine on 2014, happens to be a military reenactor obsessed with White Guard romanticism.
It appears that in Russia the historical mythology of the “Great Fatherland War” has replaced the mythology of the “Great October” once and for all. It combined both Russian and Soviet imperial legacies into a new national narrative. The new, even more Russified mythology of the war became the foundation of a new history policy of Putins regime, soaked through with anti-Westernism and Orthodox fundamentalism. The Russian narrative of the “Great Victory” has a religious basis, and Lev Gudkov has noted that it continues to undergo intensive sacralization, which blocks any attempts to rationalize the past—even to the extent of legally prohibiting any “assault” on the “holy.” One symbol of the new national mythology is the Ribbon of Saint George, which until recently could readily be seen on the streets of Ukrainian cities. It is perfectly obvious that the meaning of this symbol has turned into a manifestation of Russian national identity.
As for the mass repressions committed by the Stalinist regime during the “socialist construction” process, this question was displaced in official Russian historiography by the paradigm of “modernization.” More and more often Russian academics are applying the concept of modernization in order to “historicize” Stalinism, and explaining its “excesses” by historical “necessity” (to “overtake” someone, “withstand” something, etc.). In a new Russian history textbook, Stalinism is defined as a means of effective modernization. Here we see a direct link between the modernization paradigm and authoritarianism as a condition for the successful implementation of such a policy.
Regarding the Brezhnev mythology, it would be fair to assume that Putin is its alternative rather than a direct heir. The “enforcers” (siloviki) who came to power in Russia represent a specific segment of Soviet society. Just prior to the collapse of the USSR, they had been associated not so much with the corrupt Brezhnev and Gorbachev nomenklatura as with its dour Andropov-putschist alternative. Their members perceive the Brezhnev era without the enthusiasm that characterized the first generation of Ukrainian political elites. In this light, we understand that much more the decision to tear down gradually the democratic achievements of the perestroika period and the very memory of its liberal-democratic and anti-Soviet essence.
For the time being both the new Russians and Ukrainians elites have remained undecided as to their future(s) as well as their past(s). President Yeltsin’s rhetorical question, “What are we to do with Ukraine?” was mirrored by Ukrainian President Kuchmas statement “Ukraine is not Russia.” What exactly Ukraine is or is supposed to be remained unclear. However, step-by-step, Russian elites managed to formulate their attitude toward Ukraine. The new modern “Ukraine” that came to replace the early modern “Little Russia” did not fit in the national worldview of the “new Russians.” Project “Ukraine” was considered by them to be an artificial construction with no grassroots support at all. In the times of the Soviet Union, Moscow oscillated between “Little Russia” and “Ukraine” doctrines. Now, in Putin’s national Russian state, there is not only no room for “Ukraine,” there is none for “Little Russia,” either.
During Putin’s time in power, Ukraine’s history policies have been increasingly under fire. Virtually every action taken in keeping with these policies has prompted sharp public criticism and counteraction by the Russian administration. The Russian side has consistently opposed the paradigm of the “Ukrainian Revolution” of 1917-20 and the concept of the Holodomor as an act of genocide against Ukrainians. Special attention has been paid to the Second World War. Protests against the rehabilitation of the OUN and the UPA have been particularly vehement, with accusations of collaboration, fascism, and anti-Semitism being flung at these two organizations. In the modern Russian narrative of the “Great Fatherland War,” the OUN leader Stepan Bandera is assigned the role of Judas the betrayer that had earlier been reserved for Hetman Ivan Mazepa. Correspondingly, supporters of an independent Ukraine are classified as “Banderites” and “nationalists.” The five years of Yushchenko’s presidency were marked by ever-increasing “exchanges of fire” in the Russian-Ukrainian war of national mythologies, which occasionally sparked diplomatic and even economic skirmishes, until finally war broke out, the bloodshed continuing for the last two years.
Disagreements between Russia and Ukraine had been brewing long before the ouster of Yanukovych, but their mutual relations boiled over into open conflict only when Ukraine’s rejection of its Soviet legacy also prompted the rejection of its corresponding Russian imperial legacy. President Putin stepped over the line with his annexation of the Crimea exactly when Russian society became ready to accept and support his nationalistic hard line, both internally and externally with Ukraine playing the main “Other.” The Russian nationalist Aleksandr Sevastianov wrote, “Today, no kind of federation, or even a confederation, on the territory of Ukraine is in our interests anymore…. Anything that we can exact from a new Ukraine we should exact immediately.” Russia retains its dominance in the process of nationalizing not only the Soviet but also the common imperial-orthodox legacy, including its Little Russian component. On the other hand, the Ukrainian side proved to be reactive, not proactive.
And so, it seems like the Soviet/Russian era of ambivalence, multiple loyalties, and contradictory combinations of overlapped historical legacies and nested mental geographies turned into the era of mutually exclusive identities. However, it is hardly possible to assert that the Russian Orthodox-imperial nation can be transformed into an ethnocultural one, nor that the Ukrainian ethnocultural nation has converted into a political one in the near future. According to a poll conducted by the Razumkov Center in 2005, nearly 44 percent of Ukrainian citizens considered Ukrainian history to be “an inalienable part of the history of the great East Slavic people, as is the history of Russia and Belarus.” About half that number (25 percent) considered Ukrainian history to be wholly autonomous, and Ukraine to be the sole successor of Kyivan Rus’. In third place were those who found it difficult to respond to any questions dealing with Ukrainian history. Thus, about half of all Ukrainians deny their state its own national history; in other words, they reject its political legitimacy.
Considering their previous experience, it is doubtful whether either of the Russian and the Ukrainian relatively new nation-state building projects is capable of resolving the predicament of the heterogeneous cultural borderlands in the nearest future. As I have already written, one essential condition for this has to be the reinterpretation of not only the national text but the context—that is, the historical legacy common to both Ukraine and Russia. For this, Ukraine shall have to “reboot” its own national doctrine, to reorient its development vector from the past to the future, and to present “Brand Ukraine” as a new, flexible, and constructive entity, open to innovations and based on rational, not mythologized, picture of the world.
Conclusions
For Ukraine, coming to terms with its multiple pasts is like squaring the circle. History divides Ukrainians even more than language, (geo)political orientations, or regional differences. In this, Ukrainians confront the same challenges as all other peoples involved in the current European institutional identity-building process. Attitude to the Soviet legacy remains to be a point of historical bifurcation in the process of the national reidentification of Ukraine. However, the place and role of the Soviet phenomenon in Ukrainian history is still the subject of fierce debate. In society there is neither a political nor theoretical consensus on the question of what Soviet Ukraine was.
It seems to be clear only that the “Sovietness” in Ukraine has a long history. It is rooted in the specificity of the Ukrainian past that is closely intertwined with the history of neighboring states and peoples, primarily Russian, Polish, and Hebrew. This means that it is not a completely artificial phenomenon imposed on Ukraine from the outside. Presenting the Soviet era as a period of foreign occupation and attempting to erase it from the Ukrainian national narrative completely is hardly possible in the nearest future. Even at the discursive level, there are several serious obstacles on this path. The Ukrainian legacy of statelessness is associated with particular social values: intolerance, violence, and negative thinking. It is also associated with authoritarian and populist traditions in political culture, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, religious fanaticism, paternalism, and personal enslavement. The phenomena of entangled histories and nested geographies are inseparable from the phenomenon of heterogeneity of Ukraine’s historical and geopolitical legacy. In addition, one might get the impression that Ukrainian society itself is unwilling to take responsibility for the Soviet past.
Ukraine was tied to its recent past by not one but two threads, the “Soviet” one and the “Russian” one, and rejecting one of these components meant having to reject the other. The current attempt to break up with the Soviet past would be extremely difficult for Ukraine without Putin and his imperialist policy. Soviet cultural legacy is now reinterpreted differently in Russia and Ukraine; that is, according to their respective nation-state building projects. Since Russia denies the phenomenon of the Ukrainian nation and statehood in principle, Ukraine identifies “Sovietness” with “Russianness” and seeks to delete both of them from the national narrative.
It would be fair to assume that in the present circumstances, Ukraine cannot achieve this goal, no matter how high the “European wall” on the Russian border, or how long the lists of “undesirables” waiting to enter the country. The Russian problem is not only external but also an internal one for Ukraine. It cannot be solved as long as the Ukrainian national project is not able to absorb selected components of Russian historical legacy, at least on the discursive level, and proves its superiority in comparison with the Russian project in practice. So far Ukraine has been simply unable to do it.
The Ukrainian national revival paradigm has already fulfilled its main task to legitimize Ukraine’s independence in 1991. However, so far it hasn’t become both a consolidating factor and an alternative to the Soviet-Russian mythology of the “short” twentieth century. It simply has not been flexible enough to involve all former Soviet citizens into the new state-nation project. Ethnicization of the Soviet legacy revealed a cultural weakness of Ukrainian nationalism, while the concept of Ukrainian political nation displayed a weakness of Ukrainian statehood. Ukrainians were short of symbolical capital to erect their own Mannerheim Line in the fight against the Soviet-Russian colossus. The mythology of national suffering and heroic resistance that oppose the founding Soviet myths—those of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Great Fatherland War—often do not stand up to criticism, inasmuch as Ukrainians are to be found not only among the victims but also among the perpetrators.
The pantheon of Ukrainian great “men of state” consists of politicians whose achievements remained highly controversial. Unsatisfactory results of the Ukrainian nation-state building in the twentieth century undermined the political and symbolical potential of the “national revival” paradigm. The Ukrainian political elite have not proved that they are better than Soviet nomenclature. Accordingly, the post-Soviet Ukraine does not look like a convincing alternative to the USSR.
If one looks retrospectively at the practice of Ukrainian nation-building, it appears that, from the various options open for them, the Ukrainian political elite choose the simplest one. The political culture of the Ukrainian elite has been shaped by the Soviet-Russian experience; that is, lacking in dialogue and compromise. It seems that the Ukrainian elite continue to pursue the state-led model of nation-building “from above,” rather than implementing a policy of involvement. The political spectrum of Ukrainian elites is quite narrow. Currently there are no representatives of national communism, and Ukrainian Orthodox churches do not exercise the degree of influence that the Russian Orthodox Church holds in Russia. As a result, identity politics in Ukraine seems to be uncompromising.
It is no wonder that the “black-and-white” picture of the Soviet past, to quote Taras Kuzio, turned out to be too simplified to be accepted and supported by society. Much of the Ukrainian population does not accept a wholly negative representation of the Soviet past, neither at the individual or the group level. According to a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center in 2005, more than 25 percent of Ukrainian citizens would have liked to see the return of the Soviet Union. In 2011 more than 54 percent thought it would be better for the Soviet Union to have been preserved. According to a survey conducted by the sociological group “Rating” in October 2015, 31 percent of respondents regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, while 14 percent are undecided.
Dynamics indicate that every year the number of Ukrainians who regret the collapse of the Soviet Union is diminishing: in 2010 the figure was 46 percent, whereas in 2013 it was 41 percent; in 2014, 33 percent; and in 2015, 31 percent. However, those who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union still constitute a large part of society: almost half of the residents of southern Ukraine (49 percent), and 39 percent of eastern and central regions regret the loss of the Soviet Union. It would be both unethical and unrealistic to wait for them to die, because the Soviet myths can be revived by new generations. In Russia in 2005 nearly 60 percent of young people with no personal history of living in the USSR felt nostalgia for Soviet times. To be sure, nostalgia for communist times is typical not only of Ukraine but also of other postcommunist countries, where on average more than half the population now holds a positive view of the communist past. However, it is only in Ukraine that the problem of attitudes to the recent past is existential in its significance.
A war of monuments and toponyms in Ukraine is still underway. Erecting monuments to Mazepa and Petliura had been for a long time sabotaged by the local authorities. Monuments to Bandera, as well as to the heroes of Euromaidan and the war in Donbas, are sometimes desecrated. Renaming cities and streets provokes resistance on the local and grassroots levels. Moreover, the geography of such cases is not limited to the east and south of the country. For example, in Poltava only a third of residents support the law on decommunization, while more than 60 percent of the local residents are against it. In other cases the local authorities have resorted to outright manipulation. For example, in Kharkiv, Kalinin Street, named after the Soviet state and party leader, was “renamed” after Kostiantyn Kalinin, an aircraft engineer; while Spartakivs’kyi Lane began to trace its name not to the German communist Spartacus League of the early twentieth century, but to the name of the leader of the slave uprising against the Roman Republic.
Ukraine is not a “classical” nation-state. It is a borderland community, for which a state of ambivalence is the norm rather than the exception. This attitude is a matter of survival on the ever-turbulent periphery. Any opinion polls in Ukraine reveal an impressive number of people who remain undetermined or who avoid any certain response. It is they who hold the key to Ukraine’s future. In 2014, in the wake of the Russian annexation of Crimea, these people gave their loyalty to Ukraine because Russian army units intimidated them more than the slogans of the nationalistic Right Sector. But any sudden movements from the Ukrainian center are also met with suspicion. So far there is no clear understanding of how to turn this weakness into strength.
The Ukrainian national narrative can be updated with the national version of the paradigm of modernization. A modernizing paradigm in the Ukrainian context can and should be applied, not in order to rehabilitate Stalinism and impose a “managed revolution,” but to uncover those aspects of Ukraine’s past that in their time exerted an influence on the specific development of a number of European regions. These aspects include: relations between church and state; the effectiveness of private ownership; the link between law and morality; the interaction between the elites, government, and society; mechanisms for political and cultural domination, and so on. Such a paradigm of modernization would allow Ukrainian historians not only to synthesize the constructive elements of Ukraine’s Soviet and Russian legacies, but also to refocus public awareness in Ukraine from the past to the future and to liberate it from the burden of its “thousand-year” history of eternal suffering and eternal struggle. The idea of reconciliation with the Soviet past has been elaborated by the Ukrainian historians for a long time ago, but so far it has been ignored by the Ukrainian political elites.