Post Soviet Ukraine

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 THE POLITICS OF CULTURE IN TODAY'S UKRAINE
George G. Grabowicz
	The emergence of an independent Ukraine, as some have
argued, has fundamentally changed the balance of power in Europe,
and in the world at large. The process of the Ukrainian national
reawakening reveals a major model of post-communist transition; at
the very least it provides insights into future political and cultural
developments in eastern Europe. Similarly, within Ukraine itself,
the politics of culture, no less so than politics as such or indeed
economics, can serve as a measure of the true profile, and the future
prospects, of this new country. The fact that both in the West and in
Ukraine itself the inner workings of the politics of culture, as well as
the public issues, the players and the deeper structures are perceived
at this time only vaguely, if at all, should not deter our inquiry.
Society is a seamless web, but its cultural life is perhaps the most
revealing facet of its qualities and flaws, and of its vitality as such.
	Implicitly, the question of culture is all-encompassing, as is,
for that matter, that of politics as well. (In a recent article, Ivan
Dziuba, now Minister of Culture in Ukraine, alludes to the difficulty
by noting that there are more than one hundred definitions of what
culture is; presumably, that in itself can inhibit discussion, or
effective action, even before the empirical or analytical judgments are
brought to bear.) Our task here, however, is not to swell the list of
definitions or to provide a new synthesis, but to quickly survey the
state of culture in Ukraine--and by culture I will mean both the arts
(of which literature will provide a specific focus) and their
infrastructure, i.e., such underpinnings as education and language
policy, the realm of publishing, the media, and so on--with particular
reference to the way these matters are articulated in the political
discourse. Culture as a system of values, attitudes, traditions and
mechanisms of behavior will not be at center stage --not because
these are not important aspects (in fact, they are the very core of
culture), but because they constitute a distinct and highly complex
area that cannot be fully addressed here; its interaction with the
political process, the way politics impacts it, is also quite distinct.
One cannot, however, entirely ignore the complex of attitudes and
values that inhere in the notion of "spirituality" (dukhovnist'--a term
no less topical in Ukraine than "infrastructure"), and this, at least in
part, will also draw our attention.
	It goes without saying that our discussion is only preliminary:
by the very fact of speaking on the present situation, our analysis will
necessarily be based on fragmentary and shifting evidence. At the
same time, I am confident that the picture we can trace here is largely
accurate--at least for the time being. The question of prognoses and
prospects for change is a separate one altogether.
	In one sense the topic at hand is generic: virtually all
discourse on the present Ukrainian situation tends to fall back on the
question of culture, even if only in the most general and rhetorical
terms. Until recently (the intervening events have been so
momentous that it seems quite distant now), Ukraine was a nation
threatened in its very existence; in this frame, and for centuries
before, cultural expression was the surrogate for and the only means
of advancing political postulates and political action. Both overtly and
subliminally, culture was and remains the principal frame of
reference--quite irrespective of the fact, and in some degree precisely
because its workings and its present state have not been fully
analyzed. It is also universally true, but particularly at those times
when nationhood and statehood are being established, that culture in
all its ramifications partakes of politics. In a similar vein, again
universally, but especially when the process of nation building is
accompanied, as it is here by economic upheaval, all cultural activity
and all conceptualizations of the cultural situation are profoundly
affected by the economic picture. But these--the state of fundamental
transition, the overarching politization of life, the economic crisis--
while providing the basic frame, do not in themselves constitute the
picture of culture as it is made and conceived. And generally,
attempts at conceptualizing this process, of analyzing it, are still in
their embryonic stage.
 BACKGROUND: THE LEGACY OF COLONIALISM
	The general contours of the present situation in Ukraine are
known even by those who have only a passing interest in this area: it
is a situation of fundamental transition from Communism to post-
communism, from colonialism to post-colonialism, with only a
modicum of political stability, with only beginning efforts at
establishing a new national identity with its new infrastructure of
cadres, policies and institutions, and with an overwhelming
economic crisis, the grimmest and most apparent feature of which is
drastic hyperinflation. (The common wisdom that at this juncture the
economic picture is all-important and all-determining seems to have a
certain empirical and intuitive validity. One could note that one of the
most dismal postulates of what has been called the "dismal science"
is that in circumstances of hyperinflation all policy decisions and
moves become largely irrelevant. In the face of massive
pauperization the political and cultural scene fades in significance.
And we are all painfully aware that the rise of Hitlerism in Germany
was made possible by the total destruction of the German middle
class--and its values--by economic crisis, above all by
hyperinflation.)
	Each of these features of the present situation in Ukraine can
be the subject of closer analysis. At the outset, by way of
introducing the body of the argument, I would like to briefly focus
on some aspects of the central and defining moment of colonialism.
	One can begin with the historical parameter. The very notion
of colonialism is of course a historical one, but at the same time its
period extends beyond the purely chronological to also include the
cultural and psychological, and these, as we know, do not conform,
and are not measured by purely historical, temporal vectors. In the
Ukrainian case, the colonial experience that we speak of must
certainly include the entire eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
with but brief exceptions, most notably the 1920s, the entire Soviet
period--in effect the large bulk of the twentieth century. In sum, in
the course of its entire modern history, Ukraine can be said to have
existed in a colonial state. This picture clearly needs to be expanded
and qualified. (One can note, for example, that the early modern
period, beginning with the Ukrainian revival of the late sixteenth
century, from about 1580, which coincides, through the first half of
the seventeenth century, up to the Xmel'nyc'kyj Revolution of 1648,
with Ukraine's political and cultural existence as part of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, can also be characterized as colonial or
quasi-colonial.) The major historical qualification is that in the last
three centuries Ukrainian political and cultural existence was never
unitary, never fully within one overarching political-cultural system:
thus Ukrainian territories were both under Russia and at first Poland
and then Austria-Hungary; later again, within the Soviet Union, and
under Poland; later still, after World War II, while all of the
Ukrainian territories were part of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian
cultural and political activity also existed, and quite significantly as
we see more and more, in the emigration, in the West, in what we
now call the diaspora. This on-going, albeit always different
polycentrism, was a powerful antidote, I believe, to a colonial
existence of a pure type; it continued to introduce a political and
cultural corrective, and however subtly, modulate the overall picture.
At the same time, it could only modulate and not change the essence
of the historical experience.
	A major complicating feature here is that along with the
colonial model one could also apply the model of province or
provincialization. The basic movement of Ukrainian culture from the
seventeenth century to the eighteenth century is precisely that of a
semi-autonomous or vassal country, the Hetman State being turned
into a somnolent province of Russia. Provincialization in the
qualitative sense, for example, loss of quality through a systemic
brain drain, narrowing of horizons, distortion of the process of
intellectual and artistic production, and so on--was accompanied by
more classical features of colonial rule--especially economic
exploitation and the reshaping or distortion of all indigenous cultural
institutions and structures. It is highly revealing, for example, that
after the defeat of Mazepa at the battle of Poltava in 1709, which
dashed Ukrainian hopes for separation or at least autonomy, Peter I
introduced economic policies that had the clear and focused intent of
impoverishing Ukraine vis � vis Russia proper. In effect, while
turning Ukraine into a province, and thus purportedly a constituent
part of a larger administrative whole, the imperial goal was also to
weaken it, to prevent its resurgence by purposefully stunting its
growth and infrastructure (for example, by forbidding the publishing
of books). It was thus both a province, a colony and a conquered
country. In a word, just as the essence of Russian and later Soviet
imperialism is manyfaceted, so also Ukraine's colonial experience is
multilayered and even contradictory. And again I should note that
these are merely preliminary conceptualizations of the problem; a
fuller analysis is clearly a much larger task for the future.
	Perhaps the most obvious and universal (although not
necessarily the most essential) feature and consequence of the
Ukrainian colonial experience was a deeply ingrained sense of
dependence, and of derivativeness (vtorynnist). It is something
that was felt, and which still figures most prominently in recent
political and journalistic discourse--and its very appearance as a topic
marks a new degree of honesty in self-criticism. It is also something
that can be examined as a set of historical facts and processes. In the
first half, or rather two-thirds of the nineteenth century this is readily
reflected in the fact that in this period Ukrainian literature, and
through it the entire discourse of Ukrainian social and intellectual life
as such, particularly to the degree that it saw itself as specifically
Ukrainian, was couched in a complimentary or simply dual
relationship to the Russian Imperial context and its discourse. In a
word, in this period Ukrainian literature functions as an addendum to
the Imperial Russian Literature. It is worth looking at the very
beginning and at the end of this cycle. In the work that ushers in
modern Ukrainian literature in the vernacular, Ivan Kotljarev'skyj's
travesty of Virgil's Aeneid, the text is clearly conceived as an
addition, a supplement to the literature of the center--and we see it
textually--in the title page, and in the appended glossary. At the same
time, this new Ukrainian literature was even then seeing the imperial
center, its language and values and norms, as foreign, as the other.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s Pantelejmon Kulish, who more
than any other Ukrainian writer of this period contributed to
expanding the thematic and generic range of Ukrainian literature,
giving it depth and resonance, still identifies himself as a Russian
writer (in an imperial not ethnic sense, of course) as he explains to
the all-Russian reader why he, Kulish, chose to write his historical
novel, Chorna rada, in Ukrainian and on a Ukrainian topic. Between
the two poles stands Shevchenko, whose poetry is the very ground
on which subsequent Ukrainian national consciousness and
subsequent anti-colonial political and cultural energies rests, but
whose prose, is written in Russian, and his real, everyday and
human--as opposed to prophetic role--is fashioned of and rooted in
the existing imperial order. It could not be otherwise: precisely in
order to be the prophet and harbinger of liberation Shevchenko
needed to be part of the duality of the colonial-imperial, Ukrainian-
Russian, world.
	In general, the great bulk of Ukrainian literature of this time is
bilingual--Ukrainian and Russian; virtually all Ukrainian writers in
Russian Ukraine write as much or more in Russian as they do in
Ukrainian. In Western Ukraine, under Austria-Hungary there
obtains an analogous but more attenuated Ukrainian-Polish or
Ukrainian-German bilingualism. As important as it is, the linguistic
level is the surface, however, for beneath it lies the more general and
throughout the nineteenth century the virtually all-pervasive sense of
dual loyalties and contexts. In historical perspective nothing is more
evocative of this colonial matrix and the specific epiphenomenon of
dependence than the fact that for even the most progressive and
militant Ukrainian political thinker of that time, Myxailo
Drahomanov, the political future for Ukraine lay in federation with
Russia; mutatis mutandis Ivan Franko, until the time of his final
disillusionment, saw Ukrainian political reform only in the context of
overarching socialist politics; characteristically, too, the first
Ukrainian political parties--with a specifically Ukrainian political
agenda emerge only at the turn of the twentieth century. Compared
to this the sense of literary dependence or incompleteness seems
decidedly secondary.
	The second major feature and consequence of the Ukrainian
colonial experience, and, to my mind, one that is by far the more
essential and unique is that of the skewing or imbalance in the
cultural process itself, in its functioning and dynamics. Its most
important manifestation, I would submit, is the establishment, and by
the end of the nineteenth century the dominance of a particular form
of cultural syncretism. It expresses itself in a number of ways, most
directly in the mixing of genres, not only in literature but above all in
social action. By the nineteenth century Ukrainian society had
generated a number of defensive strategies to cope with the policies
of cultural colonialism and with the institutions that implemented it.
One was simply the assumption by literature, and political discourse
as such, of the stance and role of dissent, and particularly of social
protest; the other, with far-reaching deleterious consequences, was
the distrust of institutions as such. Most subtly, however, this was
the fusing of roles--of writer and social activist, of artist and political
leader. Literature which was the characteristic carrier and exemplar
of this strategy also inflicted considerable damage on itself as its
artistic potential was mortgaged to its civic functions. The modernist
attempts at liberating literature from this overloading and
overdetermination of functions was drawn-out and hardly successful:
in contrast to, say, the developments in Polish or Russian literature,
Ukrainian modernism was much less clear-cut and its programs
never clearly formulated.
	A concomitant of the syncretism of socio-cultural roles was
the hegemony of populism. From the mid-nineteenth century to well
into the twentieth Ukrainian populism or norodnyctvo became the
matrix and the touchstone of artistic, and cultural and political action.
Starting from the functional (and perhaps inevitable) role of ultimate
recourse and defense against official repression and general
disvaluation on the part of the dominant imperial culture, populism,
which at times took on nativist features, became a means of enforcing
a rigid non-differentiation in Ukrainian cultural and social activities.
Characteristically, the opposition to modernism, and to artistic
innovation, came from a fusion of civic-realist and populist
arguments. At its worst, any divergence from the realist canon and
populist premises was seen as un-Ukrainian or even anti-Ukrainian.
That this impeded cultural and artistic (and indeed political)
development goes without saying. What may be less evident is that
as a stance it is alive and not at all in the minority to this day.
	As an outgrowth of this one can see the general syndrome of
cultural traditionalism, defensiveness and conservatism--the
defensiveness of a culture and society threatened to its very core.
For as distant and improbable as it may now seem, in the nineteenth
century the official Russian line was that Ukrainian culture and
Ukrainian language do not officially exist--and have no right to exist.
	One could have hardly expected--especially after the
Revolution, the establishment of a Ukrainian Soviet State and the
period of official Ukrainization--that things could revert to the earlier
state of affairs. But the Soviet period, Stalinist and post-Stalinist,
with only small exceptions, has just such a reversal. And this
conflation of colonialism and totalitarianism is the final and greatest
trial in the Ukrainian historical experience. The history and full
socio-cultural analysis of this grim and anti-human experience is a
subject that is as vast as it is uncharted. One can hardly examine it
here, even by way of noting the major issues. Provisionally, and
recapitulating what may have already been noted, the depradations of
the Soviet experience, apart from the most obvious ones of genocide
and wholesale destruction of people and culture, art and economy,
are, as I see it, the following:
	1) the destruction of civil society and indeed the knowledge
of and memory of one;
	2) the effective introduction, through the facade of ideology
and the mechanism of the Party aparat, of Mafia-like structures into
virtually all institutions of the state and society;
	3) as a consequence of both of these, and of the concerted
battle against religion and any spiritual order other than the Soviet
ersatz one, a destruction of the idea of individual and spiritual
autonomy and of a socially sanctioned role for them. The sphere of
the individual was simply made criminal or pathological.
	Particularly for the non-Russian nations there was also
	4) near total isolation from the outside world and an incessant
imposition of cultural inferiority vis � vis the Russian dominant
culture and the privileged space of the center;
	5) and, again as a result of the foregoing, the fostering of a
pattern of self-contempt, and self-loathing, particularly evident in the
male population, born of political inefficacy and the inescapable taint
of collusion and collaboration.
	Beyond that, the deeper issue is that colonialism is as much if
not more a state of mind as it is social structures and institutions and
cadres. Post-colonialism, in turn, is a highly fluid notion. It may
signal the end of formal, or juridical colonialism and simply
designate independence, with no indication as to the new social and
cultural content; it may refer to the process of overcoming the legacy
of colonialism; or indeed it may be a strategy for renewal. Here I use
it largely in the first and second sense. At the same time, a strategy
for reform and renewal is utterly indispensable as public and national
policy and as a cornerstone of a new social discourse. The existence
of such a strategy is the question before us.
 POLICY OR POLITICS?
	The question may be put bluntly: although we have no reason
to doubt that Ukraine has its politics of culture (if nature abhors a
vacuum than politics abhors it all the more so) is there any evidence
that there is a policy on culture on the part of either the present
Ukrainian government or the Parliament? On the evidence the
answer would have to be no. To be sure, this contains a paradox,
for at present Ukraine is represented on the one hand by a Minister of
Culture, Ivan Dziuba, whose credentials, not only in relative terms,
but with all objectivity would appear to be most impressive, and
with a Vice-Premier for Humanities Policy, Mykola Zhulynsky, who
also has a reputation, if not that of a Dziuba, then certainly as a
cultural and specifically literary activist. In both cases, however,
there is less than meets the eye. If the issue is put in systemic rather
than in personal terms, it can be argued that neither appointment
actually translates into official activity or governmental policy as
such. To be sure, in present circumstances the question of
commitment and concerted policy is not apparent even in more
palpably critical areas, such as the economy, or implementation of the
rule of law; when compared to that, absence of clear policy in the
realm of culture is not unique.
	Clearly this requires some illustration. Since his appointment
as Minister of Culture a few months ago, Dziuba has not given--or
not had the opportunity or, more likely, the official approval to give--
a comprehensive, official statement on the part of the Ministry of
Culture as to its understanding of the problem and its strategy for
dealing with it. What makes this so glaring an absence is that this is
what Dziuba, like no one else, is eminently equipped to do. More
than any individual in Ukraine or outside of it he has devoted his life
and thought to precisely this problem. His book "Internationalism
or Russification" which brought him fame (and notoriety in official
circles) and catapulted him into the lead of the dissident movement in
the sixties, was essentially devoted to cultural policy. Some twenty-
odd years later, at the height of perestroika he wrote a long article,
indeed a treatise, on "Do we conceptualize Ukrainian culture as a
totality?" which again served as a catalyst for the discourse that led to
Rukh and the Ukrainian political revival of the late 1980s and
culminated with the Ukrainian declaration of Independence. Most
recently, at the first Conference of the Ukrainian Studies Association
of Australia, he presented a programmatic statement on "The
Independence of Ukraine and Problems of Culture" which in an
uncanny way seems to have anticipated the very issues he now faces
as Minister of Culture. In that article Dziuba addresses the issue in a
global way, stressing the historical dimension, the interface of
Ukrainian and Russian culture and the colonial subordination of the
former to the latter, the question of revivals and their forceful
termination, the question of national consciousness and the operant
role of the stereotypes (as he calls them) into which Ukrainian culture
has been set (both by outsiders and by Ukrainians themselves), i.e.,
such models as that of "peasant culture" (sil's'kist' ),of conservatism
or archaism, of dependence (an issue I have already alluded to), and
finally also offers, at least in broad outline, strategies for
reconceptualizing Ukrainian culture in the world context and from the
perspective of an independent country, and indeed proposes specific
tactics for the establishment of a new infrastructure for the
development of culture, i.e., in education, book publishing,
information, new cadres, international contacts, translations, and so
on. The list itself is massive. All of this, however--plans, vision,
commitment--still remains on paper; the actual reality is very
different.
THE LEVELS OF POLITICS
	The politics of Ukrainian culture involves, I submit, several
distinct levels. As I see it, these include: 1. the specific concerns
relating to Ukrainian culture that are continually being raised in the
broad political arena and the solutions or approaches that are being
advocated. In effect, this is the realm of cultural policy even though
it is not official or implemented policy. 2. the gamut of "players" so
to say, the range of involved participants in the formulation of the
problem, or more generally the discourse that they create around it.
For if one deals with politics in the way it really is, and not as an
abstraction, the question of players in the arena, with their premises
and agendas, capabilities and limitations, and their specific mental
sets, becomes all important. 3. fundamental issues. These are the
structures, one might say, that shape the overall state of Ukrainian
culture, its prospects and its emerging profile.
	Each of these levels (and not only the second) can be
illustrated by a range of individual cases or events. The Taniuk
affair, the Olijnyk affair, the Honchar anniversary, the recent
elections at the Academy of Sciences, the theatrical awards ceremony
(the Kiev equivalent of the Oskars)--the list can be expanded to
include virtually any prominent figure or happening--provide
invaluable material for understanding the politics of culture in their
raw actuality; clearly, these phenomena are of themselves more
colorful than the patterning of the process, but they can only
comprise an anecdotal history, which for all its color cannot supplant
a sense of the whole.
	To begin with matters of policy (stated or implied). In the
most general terms, judging by the press and the media, the issue
that attracts the most attention, and most heated commentary is the
basic issue of asserting the Ukrainian character of Ukraine, a new
"Ukrainizacia." This is the "minimum program " which commands a
broad consesnsus. But even this "minimum program" faces daunting
problems. For one, those that oppose it, in large measure the former
partaparat, are still a dominant political presence, and a majority in
the Parliament. In the absence of revolutionary change, i.e., under
conditions of legal procedure, such an opposition is a major
impediment--and to this central issue we will return. In terms of
substance, it is evident that the notion of "Ukrainizacia" is still rather
rudimentary--as indicated by the absence of overall goals or general
policy. In essence it remains a defensive stance that does not fully
take into account the fact that Ukraine is now a sovereign and
independent state and that as a result all matters pertaining to its
culture have a bearing on, and need to be seen in the light of, national
policy, even if in given areas that policy will be entirely laissez faire.
	There are several major components here, the most prominent
of which is language. Historically this has always been the issue of
issues--and rightly so, for language is the deepest and most effective
carrier of the cultural code, encapsulating collective memory and
values and identity, and recourse to it is the single most evident
means of identifying with the given culture. Even if that
identification is partial or conditional (if one is not ethnically
Ukrainian, for example, or even if one is Ukrainian, one may wish to
speak another language at home, say, Russian), knowledge and use
of the language signals one's acceptance of and respect for the
culture and the institutions, ultimately the state, that have arisen on its
basis. This much is a given, and is universally applicable. In
Ukraine, however, it is an issue: the goal of bringing into life the law
on language that was promulgated just before independence,
whereby Ukrainian is given the status of official language, is still far
from achieved. In some areas--the Crimea, the Donbas, Luhansk,
large areas of eastern and southern Ukraine--very little has been done
to implement it. In fact, depending on the region, there is still much
opposition, from local authorities, and the Russian speaking
population, to the introduction of Ukrainian. In short this is still a
struggle, and newspapers like Kultura i zhyttja often carry articles on
what is an on-going controversy, and, for many Ukrainians, an on-
going trauma.
	One may argue, of course, that with statehood achieved the
language issue recedes in importance: Ukraine (presumably) is now a
country like any other, with institutions, laws, citizenship and so on,
and the quality of being Ukrainian is now established and conveyed
through a range of formal measures (juridical, administrative, and so
on)--and not solely through the overarching, virtually metaphysical
modality of language. Moreover, it has been suggested that in the
interest precisely of assuring the viability of the new state, and of
asserting its multi-ethnic nature (Ukraine, after all, is home to all who
live there, not just the Ukrainians) the language issue, and its implied
ethnocentrism, should really be downplayed. It is more important, so
this argument goes, that there be publications in Russian loyal to the
new Ukraine than that they be in Ukrainian. And nothing will be so
counterproductive to this new state than a linguistic Ukrainianization
that needlessly alienates the large Russian minority.
	It is hard to disagree with these positions. But they do not
fully capture the situation. The major issue that is not considered
here is precisely the large and still applicable historical pattern of
Ukrainian dependence and second class existence; in the radical
formulation that was recently used by Jaroslav Dashkevych, who
represents the intellectual wing of Ukrainian nationalism, in areas of
Ukraine (he was specifically speaking of the Crimea, but this may be
extended to the other regions mentioned) Ukrainian society and
culture exist in conditions of "apartheid." The trauma that this
engenders--not only to the majority ethnic Ukrainians, but to the
fabric of pluralistic Ukrainian society--is real and it supercedes the
fine distinctions of whether the discrimination in question is on the
order of "apartheid" or of a less malign form. It certainly has
generated a gamut of responses, the most constructive and structured
of which are the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society,
"Prosvita" (Enlightenment), with which sections of the former have
merged, various publications, like the biweekly "Slovo" (or on the
right fringe of the spectrum, but with a telling name, the newspaper
"Mova je nacija" [The Language is the Nation]).
	The establishment of the Ukrainian language as a language
with prestige, with official status, and as the basic medium of
communication in a Ukrainian state is a legitimate issue, and one that
is entirely commensurate with the goal of a democratic and open
society. In contrast to the situation of some years ago, the "language
picture" is basically improving, the war is being won (above all due
to the official use of Ukrainian in the Parliament and in government,
and to new entrance requirements for higher education), but the fact
that it is still a struggle is indicative of the problems Ukrainian culture
still faces. Ultimately, however, this is only the surface of a deeper
set of problems, specifically the interrelation of Ukrainian and
Russian culture, the political and economic viability of the new state
and ultimately the overall attractive power of its society and culture.
	Analogous to the language issue is the problem of education,
of establishing a new "Ukrainian" curriculum, without communist
and Russocentric dogmas, distortions, and so on. Here, again, there
is on-going resistance. It is somewhat more covert than the at times
virulent opposition to linguistic Ukrainization, but it is present. As
with the language issue there is considerable progress--a Minister of
Education who is strongly supportive of Ukrainization, the move to
make the structures of Education (e.g., VAK, the Vyshcha
Atestacijna Komisija, which has the power to confer higher degrees)
sovereign and vested in Ukraine and not in "the center," in Moscow,
a general consensus (although for many it may well be more lip
service than genuine conviction) that Communist and imperial
dogmas must be shed, and a spreading desire among the middle and
lower echelons to assert Ukrainian history and culture as individual
and equal. But here, too, this is more on the surface, and more on the
popular level, than in deeper structures, or in the institutions that
actually set the tone. Looking beyond the immediately apparent one
sees that the changes are often more cosmetic than substantive.
Institutes' names are changed--from "Institute of Atheism" to
"Institute of Comparative Religions," for example, from "History of
the Party" to "Political Science"--but all the old people remain and
with them all their inculcated dogmas, limitations and, above all,
ignorance and incompetence. This is by far the bleakest aspect--the
fact that there is no real reform in the policy on "cadres." Especially
in the humanities and social sciences, which are the core of the
problem, there has been virtually no change, no significant let alone
massive realignement of personnel. Everyone who taught and
espoused Marxism-Leninism, official atheism, dialectical-
materialism, socialist realism, and so on, all such persons are still at
their posts, presumably professing something else, but in fact
capable of teaching or conveying only what they had done all their
lives. It is estimated that when the DDR was absorbed into the
Federal Republic of Germany only 25% of the scholars in the
Humanities and Social Sciences divisions of the East German
Academy of Sciences were kept on; the rest were simply let go. In
the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as of now, no one has been
fired or retired. There is not even any talk of this occurring in the
near future. At the general elections to the Academy, only two
months ago, Boris Paton, who has been President since the
Khrushchev era, and who had overseen the near total decline of the
Academy in the Humanities and Social Sciences, was easily
reelected; there was no opposition to speak of. The various calls in
the Ukrainian press for reform in the Academy were characterized by
the Academy establishment as radical rabblerousing--and went
unheeded. For its part, the answer this establishment proposes is
measured evolution; "we are not in the position" the argument goes,
"to indulge in rapid shifts or changes; we simply do not have the new
personnel to replace the old ones".
	While self-serving, this is also only a superficial answer,
indeed something of a red herring, and it is part of a larger
systematics to which we shall return. At this point, if one considers
scholarship, especially in the Humanities, as part of culture--and one
cannot but see it as such--then policy in this realm of Ukrainian
culture is absent, or, more accurately, is both passively and actively
obstructionist. Despite some cosmetic and symbolic activity--some
well publicized, but again only nominal moves to open this or that
Institute or section, to hold this or that conference, or announce such
or another prize--the structure as such has not budged. Insofar as
systemic academic reform is concerned, the whole picture is bleak.
	By all indications a similar picture obtains in other
institutions--museums, libraries, archives and so on, which are all
part of large centralized bodies or ministries. To provide an accurate
judgment, one needs constant and broad access to information--and
while there is more of it than ever before, it is still not fully available.
Judging by what is, the picture is very mixed. Depending on local
conditions there may be genuine improvements--as in L'viv where
the well-respected Dr. Krushelnytska was appointed director of the
main scholarly library and proceeded to try to reform its workings. In
the Kiev central scholarly library, however, after the incumbent
director was dismissed for malfeasance (but not officially indicted),
his replacement was drawn from the upper ranks of the bureacracy.
In both cases the operant causes and issues are local and personal--
and there is little evidence of a national policy on these matters.
	The most obvious instance of the assertion of a new
Ukrainianness appears in the mass media, in the press, the radio and
on television. And here the picture is also very mixed, showing
truly positive and negative sides at the same time. On the one hand
there is great variety and real openness and freedom, especially in the
print media, with dozens if not hundreds of new magazines,
newspapers, bulletins; many of these are very recent and many
(surprisingly good ones) are located in the provinces. Their overall
impact is unprecedented and unquestionably positive. On the other
hand, virtually all of these publications are handicapped financially,
often with little access to paper, with strictures (largely financial,
although in some parts of Ukraine also political) on mail
dissemination. Some have already shut down; many are on the verge
of bankruptcy. What is more telling is that when compared to the
Russian language press, originating in Russia and in Ukraine, the
Ukrainian language press is in an acknowledged inferior position--as
to financial strength, as to size of print runs, and above all, and this
is the hardest to admit, as to quality. While there are some very fine
printed sources--"Post-postup", and "Respublika" among
newspapers, Vsesvit, Suchasnist and some new ones like Khronika
among the journals--the overall picture, as virtually all in Ukraine
would admit, is of a decided advantage especially in quantity but also
in quality on the part of the Russian language press. Since the press
is now independent, one cannot directly speak of government policy
here. (Again, this is only partially true--in fact the government plays
a major financial role, for it subsidizes some publications and not
others). One can however, speak of government policy as to the
non-print media, radio and television, where it has a monopoly--and
here the picture is quite revealing.
	By all accounts the Ukrainian radio has variety and despite
being state run can often be interesting and unpredictable. Television
is another matter. While it is afforded a new, strengthened Ukrainian
profile, it appears in all respects as but a poor second to the Russian,
Ostankino channel which, as before, is broadcast directly to Ukraine
from Moscow. (As far as the now available western channels, CNN
and others are concerned, the contrasts are even more apparent.) The
difference in the quality of programming, the level of professionalism
(especially as regards commentary and discussion, access to and
involvement with western sources), the sheer sophistication of
staging and technical proficiency are all too obvious. This is doubly
unfortunate since television is so popular a medium. At the moment,
however, Ukrainianization has not signalled quality. In fact, in
television, it is more often associated with the staid and the
sentimental and the ethnographic. At times it is mawkish and
provincial in the extreme. The most innovative and challenging
developments both in contemporary and in traditional Ukrainian
culture are virtually invisible as far as the television screen is
concerned.
	The area where Ukrainianization had a great potential, and a
reasonable start, but where it has now suffered a serious setback is in
book publishing. In large measure the entire national rebirth of the
last few years was fueled by major advances in bringing the record of
Ukrainian history and culture to the public through dozens of
scholarly and popular publications. In the course of the last year or
so, however, as a direct result of massive inflation and steep
increases in publishing costs, book publication in Ukrainian has
fallen precipitously. As reflected in the ubiquitous book stands up
and down the Khreshchatyk, the standard fare is sex manuals and
pornography and cheap melodramas--all of it in Russian. While
there are some books, more often brochures, on Ukrainian topics
(many of them apparently subsidized by diaspora nationalist
organizations) the sum effect of market economics has been to drive
the very books that have speeded Ukrainianization off the market.
This is by far the most often heard complaint, and the evidence for it
is plain to see. To the extent that the government, which still has a
major monopolistic role in Ukrainian society, has or purports to have
a stake in Ukrainization, it is clear that that stake is primarily
rhetorical. Where before it would publish communist propaganda in
millions and millions of copies, year in and year out, it now has
made its stated commitment to supporting and asserting Ukrainian
culture entirely secondary to economic exigencies, purportedly taking
a laissez faire approach. So it would appear. But this is only on the
surface. The real reason is altogether different--and altogether
systemic.
A NEW IDEOLOGY OF "UKRAINIANNESS" ?
	If asserting a Ukrainian spirit, be it new or traditional, is the
surface of present cultural policy (and as we have just seen, it is in
fact more stated than real, more hoped for than implemented), then
the real content, that which lies beneath this surface, is an attempt to
establish a new Ukrainian state ideology. This is the closest we
come, I believe, to a national cultural policy. The conscious and
unconscious assumption, of course (for the new establishment is
after all the old establishment, with only minor changes), is that
every state has an ideology--how can one do without one? Precisely
in the spirit of pragmatism (not to say opportunism) that has been left
on the ruins of the old Soviet empire, and in keeping with the
systemic forces that we will examine in a moment, that ideology is
basically politics writ large--in effect it is the ideology of the state as
such. In a curious and entirely patterned way, this conforms with the
traditions of both the right (the nationalists) and the left (the
communists). The fact that the poles have been reversed, that in
Ukraine the latter are called right and the former left, should not
confuse us; it merely illustrates the changeable and contingent nature
of some labels. From both these sources, and from a general
consensus in the ruling establishment, and perhaps in the population
at large, there is agreement that the state is worth special, and
solemn, and programmatic attention--intellectually, emotionally and
above all ritually. This is not yet a full-fledged ideology of statism,
but it is quite indicative that calls for asserting, supporting and
expanding the task of state building, of instilling a new state pride
and state consciousness are continually on the lips of various
politicians and in the media. This is not an ethnic nationalism, for in
the calls for state building, "derzhavne budivnytstvo" or
"derzhavotvorennia" the appeal is to all the nationalities of Ukraine,
not only the Ukrainians, and as such it is a positive and pluralistic
conception, but it is also one which while maximally stressing
consensus and confluence of various societal forces all but
consciously downgrades the role of individual and minority opinion,
and beyond that seems rather indifferent to the cultural component.
(For the nationalists, one should add, the official emphasis on
pluralism is seen as a hedging on the essential Ukrainianness of the
country. As we have already seen, in the writings of their serious
spokesmen, Ukrainians are described as living in a situation of
apartheid, as a discriminated majority. At the same time, they are
correct in their judgment that the new ideology is sorely deficient in
its understanding of Ukrainian culture.) Since it is an ideology in the
process of being formed one cannot yet speak of it as having
definitively sacrificed cultural content (especially as it relates to
intellectual and artistic quality and to structural reform) in return for
consensus and political expediency--but the tendency is precisely in
that direction. What is already clear is that in this proto-ideology of
Ukrainian statism culture is seen functionally, as a political
commodity, or opportunity, or problem to be solved or financed, but
not as an immanent value. The test for this, again, is the question
of genuine, systemic reform, and in this regard culture, in the main,
is treated opportunistically.
	The final basic features of cultural policy--which in
themselves are broadly ramified, but which given the situation just
described must inevitably be in a preliminary state--are perceptions
of identity, especially as they relate both to one's history and
prospects for the future and to one's contacts with the outside world.
In effect, cultural policy must necessarily deal with history (past and
future) and international relations; without them it will remain in
some degree regional or provincial, colonial, or ethnographic. And
here again, there is much ambiguity. On the one hand, considerable
work is being done on restoring the record, on unearthing the past,
serious and often ground breaking work is devoted to the
euphemistically called blank pages of official Soviet censorship and
taboos and mendacity regarding the Ukrainian past, both distant and
recent. But this is still being done with only a modicum of official
government support. It may seem paradoxical, but in fact the
government and state structures of a country that has come into being
after having been condemned for so long to non-existence by its
colonial masters still have not given voice to a policy regarding this
centuries-long enforced, at times genocidally enforced non-being. It
is as if the state of Israel had doubts as to whether it should officially,
as a matter of state policy, study the Holocaust, or commemorate the
millions of victims of genocide. To put the question in this way is to
begin to answer it: Ukraine is not Israel. In Ukraine the perpetrators
of its former suppression, at the very least co-conspirators in this
policy, are still part of the establishment.
	If the examination of the past is only beginning, and only
semi-officially, the future is largely left unattended. The question of
planning and prospects, just like the question of the reform of
various structures (which is but a concrete instance of such planning)
is simply not a priority. This is particularly true as regards the
interrelation of Ukrainian culture, above all the arts and scholarship,
with the world at large. This issue has simply not reached the level
of national policy.
	One needs to be ever mindful, of course, that these are issues
facing a state in the process of being born, of a government still
learning the very rudiments of governance. In such circumstances
error and confusion are to be expected and in some sense even
forgiven. But this assumes that they are precisely that--error and
confusion. If there is a systemic pattern, if it is not error and
confusion, but conscious policy and different priorities, then our
image of a new state stumbling about like toddler learning to walk
will turn out to be sentimental and self-deluding.
THE PLAYERS
	Politics is policy with the human factor included. In the case
of the politics of Ukrainian culture, even the most schematic and
rudimentary description, not of individual players, but of the
categories of players can add immeasurably to our understanding of
the political arena. The spectrum, as I see it, includes several
distinct categories of players, each of them playing a very different
role in the creation and implementation of Ukrainian culture.
Specifically, the scheme I propose is based not on professional
distinctions (artists, administrators, publishers and editors, media
critics, and so on), but on their functioning within the system, and in
particular their relative presence and efficacy within the establishment
or the power structure as such. It ranges from those totally outside to
those totally within. At issue here is not just the delineation of the
categories, but their roles, and, as far as I can now determine, their
attitudes precisely toward cultural politics. If nothing else, this
rudimentary juxtaposition of forces can be instructive.
	In the first category I would place those who are exclusively
outside the power structure. Almost invariably these are artists,
writers, critics and so on who are young, who are outside of or
peripheral to the normal institutional structures, and critical and
avant-gardist in their attitudes. In large measure they represent a
budding, but nonetheless already formed counter culture; while
numerically very small--prominent among these are for example the
poets of "BU-BA-BU" (the acronym stands for "burlesque, farce and
buffoonery"), prose writers like Andruxovych, Pashkovs'kyj and
Dibrova, critics like Mykola Riabchuk, stage directors like
Proskurnia and Zholdak--they are the ones who are now producing
the bulk of what is innovative and exciting and what, to my mind will
remain as a lasting contribution to Ukrainian culture as it enters its
post-totalitarian and post-colonial stage. While some of them are
indeed tempted to try to join existing structures like the Union of
Writers, most are firmly and happily anti-establishment in their
attitudes and their creative work. Most significantly, while actively
engaged in their work, they are invariably highly pessimistic about
present cultural policies and the general state of affairs, and in the
words of Dibrova, are simply waiting for things finally to hit bottom
before there is a genuine renewal.
	The next category, of "cultural activists," constitutes the
rather sizeable group of those who are actively involved in main-line
or indeed establishment institutions but who were always genuinely
committed to Ukrainian culture; these are not the newly converted, or
the cosmetically and recently decommunized. Emblematic of this
group is Ivan Dziuba, once a dissident and indeed a prisoner of the
Soviet system, a critic and scholar who never took opportunistic
positions, and yet one who has now become Minister of Culture.
Similar to Dziuba, if not of the same stature is Anatolij Pohribnyj,
Professor at Kiev University, who is now deputy Minister of
Education. The Writers Union, the world of scholarship and the arts
can yield dozens of such individuals. Before one rejoices at this
bounty of talented and decent individuals, however, one needs to be
reminded that they are all relatively powerless; their present positions
are contingent on the support of their superiors. They themselves--as
is paradigmatically clear at the Ministry of Culture--are not in the
position to set policy as such, and indeed, as has been written more
than once, are simply without the means for enforcing existing laws,
let alone implementing innovative new programs. The Minister of
Education, for example, is basically powerless to remove directors of
Institutes who flaunt existing laws on the use of the Ukrainian
language, or various aspects of curricular reform. Characteristically,
even those in this group who are highly placed, even at a ministerial
level, are well aware of the inherent limitations placed upon them. If
one can generalize, their assessment of the present situation is
pessimistic and fraught with anxiety--and yet they are committed to
trying to work within the system to effect progress and reform. In
the opinion of many--especially those of the first category I
mentioned, the "new wave" or the counter-culture--they have in some
measure accepted a Faustian, no-win challenge, and in some measure
allowed themselves to be used as figureheads, or, at best, as soldiers
in the trenches. Only time will tell if their choice has been the most
effective. There is no doubt, however, that their effort and motives
are valuable.
	The third category, of "political cultural activists" consist of
individuals who were always active in the establishment, including
various party positions, but who while cultivating political careers
and power have also made a career of strategically and cautiously--
and always within the bounds of the emerging consensus--
supporting new policies at democratization and Ukrainianization. As
compared to the preceding, they have relatively more political power
since they are simply closer to the real power base--but they, too, are
appointees, and servants of, not principals within the system. Given
their higher status, and greater proximity to power, their attitudes
tend to be more sanguine as to prospects and policies relating to
Ukrainian culture--but here, too, there is a strong undercurrent of
pessimism and concern. In private expression they concede the
crisis. Their ability to directly express this, however, is severely
restricted.
	The next group is rather characteristic of the former Soviet
Union and is well represented in the Ukrainian case. These are the
former cultural figures, primarily writers, many of them poets,
people like Pavlychko and Drach, Movchan and Javorivs'kyj and
Lubkivskyj, who have become politicians by running for office and
being elected to the Parliament. They have a genuine power base and
have some measure of real power. Formerly they were genuinely
involved with culture--irrespective of the quality of their work. At
present, their involvement with cultural politics is altogether
secondary to their involvement with politics as such. And if one can
generalize on the basis only of surface impressions, it is extremely
telling, and more than a little dismaying, that for them culture, even
cultural politics, has on the whole taken a back seat to such
putatively more important issues as the economy or foreign relations,
or military matters. In a word, while having an intimate acquaintance
with the world of cultural politics they seem to have graduated
beyond it; to all appearances they are not the active advocates of
cultural change and reform that one might have assumed they would
be.
	The final category are the people with the real power, people
like Kravchuk and Kuchma and Pliushch, and their multifarious
colleagues and allies. Their hold on power is inversely proportionate
to their interest in matters relating to culture. Here (and this may
indeed be the way of the world) political expediency is the only coin.
Judging by actual decisions, or the lack of them, cultural policy,
specifically as policy of cultural reform and reconstruction, are not a
visible priority. At the same time it is from them that one is likely to
hear the most optimistic assessments of the present state of Ukrainian
cultural policies and activities.
THE UNDERLYING ISSUES
	In the broad complex of culture politics there are, to my
mind, three underlying issues: 1) the "inner form" that Ukrainian
culture will take, in effect its new content, 2) the outer or "generic"
form, and 3), most importantly, the nature of the present political
system that is shaping both of them.
	1. By "inner form" I mean the new canon of Ukrainian
culture. Implicitly, this is a process of creating a new understanding
of the historical past, a revision of traditional and deeply ingrained
assumptions (most prominently, the primacy of populism or
"narodnyctvo"), a complex and comprehensive understanding of the
gamut of Ukrainian cultural traditions, and ultimately a new sense of
Ukrainianness. Clearly this is a massive and long-term task, and as
in all societies, the establishment of the canon will be a struggle for
authority and power. The process of redefinition has already begun--
but it is only in its embryonic stage.
	The canon, in effect, is the "deep structure" of cultural
politics; it is the place where a society projects itself and its self-
awareness. It is its sacred space, and above all the seat of its self-
validation and authority. In practical terms the canon is the yardstick
of self-assessment and it can be taken as the prime indicator of self-
awareness.
	Initially the term "canon" was used to designate that which
was religiously orthodox and acceptable ("canonic"). In the religious
and historical context of Ukrainian culture this notion is even more
strongly conveyed by the image of the ikonostasis, the visual,
symbolic and ritual depiction of the collective hagiography. In the
course of time, "canon" has come to be a secular notion, most often
used in the contexts of culture and scholarship and, while projecting
the essential values of interpretation and authority, also suggesting
dialogue and discourse. The ikonostasis, however, cannot but
connote pre-secular or simply non-secular, religious and ritual value.
If anything, it implies divinely ordained hierarchy and permanence.
	The basic question facing Ukrainian culture today is which of
these models will turn out to be operant. Or will the two be somehow
fused, in effect, with the latter absorbing the former? To turn to the
question provocatively posed by Marko Pavlyshyn, one of the first to
juxtapose these models, can one, for example, keep the socialist
realist canon intact and simply add to it the emigre writers and the
former dissidents--and assume that they can all coexist? (This is
precisely the path being taken in the present day--albeit few and half-
hearted--attempts at a new literary history.) If not, how are we to
explain the differences between them? And how do we now judge
the fact that all those who extolled socialist realism and vilified the
emigres and the dissidents are still, for all practical purposes,
defining and interpreting the canon: they are still the authority. The
question in short is that of revision, or, as the deconstructionists
would put it, re-vision.
	From a broader perspective, what we see as reemerging here
is the already noted problem of syncretism, which now appears as
an attempt to fuse two incompatible value systems, the old Socialist
Realist canon with the new post-Communist one. The very phrase
that is so often used, the "reversing of the pluses and the minuses,"
suggests that what is at work here is simply mechanical substitution,
an unanalytical and presecular approach, a pattern, at best of adding
new heroes or saints, but not rethinking values or premises. In
practical terms, the co-existence of the old and the new creates a
climate of uncertainty and ambivalence, and at worst, cynicism.
Thus for some this only proves that there is no intrinsic difference
between them, and that all that matters is which "line" is now
politically "correct." For some, too, the ensuing confusion is taken
as evidence that the present social reality, ultimately independence
itself, are only transitory phenomena, and that in the end the old
verities will re-emerge.
	The moral and intellectual consequences of this kind of
syncretism must also be assessed, for in a real sense this also
becomes a policy of sorts. As reflected in the workings of much of
the establishment, particularly in the institutions ostensibly devoted to
furthering culture, it shades off into an all-purpose, generalized
conservatism, yielding a pattern of self-serving decisions--to simply
not choose, not discuss, ultimately not change, or, at most, to
minimize change.
	 2. The second major issue relates to the form or the model
of society that will emerge in Ukraine. Will it be part of the Third
World, or the democratic West (or at least a new East/Central
Europe, or will it belong in a still different, separate (and unequal)
CIS, a former Soviet Union in everything but name and external state
symbolism? In actual, social reality what will be the openess of this
society, its culture and literature to the outside world, to the West, to
its thought and discourse, and ultimately its understanding of civil
society. In sum, to the democratic world as we know it, with all its
features--from free markets and supermarkets to post-modernist
discourse and the flourishing of all kinds of minority opinions. At
the moment, optimism as to the ability of Ukrainian society, and its
culture, to overcome insularity and parochialism, centuries old habits
of colonial thinking and (at times, not always) a certain siege
mentality may be premature. Certainly the questions remain: how are
the arts being opened up? Who is doing it? And, more directly, what
is the response of the establishment to those who are doing this? As
I have suggested, at this stage the establishment is incapable of
accommodating major change, and thus the change that does occur is
forced into the role of counter-culture. The difference between this
and the officially sanctioned and subsidized culture is more like a
chasm, and the establishment, even those who consider themselves
liberal and democratic, sees little need, and has even less confidence
in trying to bridge the divide. The more distant prospects can hardly
be glimpsed.
	 The overarching question remains political: "Will the new
Ukrainian society and its culture be of an open or a closed model?"
In effect, will it have an ethnic or a pluralistic basis? Will it, in short,
be a civil society? The question hinges on many factors, and there
are grounds for both pessimism and optimism. Some crucial parts of
the questions are not yet posed, although they are on the brink of
being posed. The central one here is the most basic question of
identity: what is Ukraine and what is Ukrainian culture? What is
included? Is Ukrainian culture equivalent to the culture and legacy
of the ethnic Ukrainians or--especially in terms of an emerging new
paradigm--is Ukrainian culture tantamount to the culture and legacy
of all those who live and have lived in Ukraine? Is there a readiness
on the part of the Ukrainian ethnic majority, those who by definition
bore the brunt of Ukraine's historical traumas, the long struggle for
independence, to be catholic, generous and open, in their
understanding of the common heritage?
	On this issue there are indeed grounds for optimism. In the
prospective legal and constitutional frame--as regards civil and
human rights, as regards citizenship, freedom of religion and of the
press, even language policy and school instruction policy--there are
bright prospects. In a word, the discourse about these matters has
been, for the most part, gratifyingly enlightened. What remains to be
seen is how it will become policy and then be translated into life.
	3. On the opposite pole is the question of the present political
reality, the actual power base on which society, culture, literature and
all other societal functions rest. That reality is deeply ambiguous and
the fist judgment on it must tend to be pessimistic. In effect
Ukraine is now characterized by a far reaching duality of political
authority and power, one which underlies and projects virtually all
the anomalies I have been speaking of. For in Ukraine--for some
this may be a truism, but its ramifications have not been analyzed at
all--there are now two forms of power and authority: the communist
and the non-communist. The cleavage between them affects all
forms of collective life, making everything, literally everything
somehow ambiguous, contradictory or simply absurd. Reforms that
are not reforms, an economy that is neither a market economy nor a
centrally planned one, culture that purportedly is free to develop, but
which has no public policy or even concerted, official discussion as
to what direction it should take. Language policy that is not
implemented and that cannot be implemented in some areas.
Institutions that are neither public nor private. This even affects the
sphere of religion, where in a duality that is simply unthinkable in
terms of canonic law and practice, there are two orthodox
Metropolitans in the city of Kiev. But given the duality of power this
is very much part of the pattern.
	These seeming paradoxes reflect a deeper and grimmer
paradox of a country whose recent ruling elite--and still the majority
in the Parliament, the Communists--were determined not to have the
country, Ukraine, come into existence. Ideologically, they were the
antithesis of Ukrainian statehood--and yet they are now in effective
control of most regional and local governments and still a dominant
voice in the national government. It is precisely to forestall their
active opposition and sabotage (passive opposition and
obstructionism is clearly ongoing) that the President and the
government resort to all these ambiguities and vacillations, in a word,
to dual authority, to dvoievladdia. All functions of state and society
flow from this duality, and cultural policy (or lack of it) and the
exigencies and machinations of cultural politics above all.
THE QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE
	One can still often hear in the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukraine
itself the thought that given the historical tribulations, given--only a
few years ago--the desperate state of Ukrainian culture, the dim
prospects of Ukrainian national survival, and the absolute
impossibility, so it seemed, of statehood, the present state of affairs
is not at all surprising, and indeed, despite it all, a towering
achievement. The fact that the ultimate goal, statehood, has been
realized, more than compensates, so the argument goes, the
disappointing circumstances that attend it. In effect, we are again
asked to see that the glass, after all, is not half empty, but half full.
	This argument, to my mind, is reductive and potentially
dangerous on two counts. On the one hand, the suggestion that the
very existence of the state is an ultimate value, one which presumably
mitigates or transcends any of its real flaws, is a formula that can,
and in numerous cases has led to the justification of oppressive and
even totalitarian states. In today's Ukraine one hears from various
quarters, not just former communists and the newly impoverished
middle and lower classes, but the nationalists and indeed those who
pass for democrats, that what Ukraine desperately needs is a "strong
hand"; the desire for authoritarian rule is widespread and palpable.
Many in the Ukrainian western diaspora, particularly in its
establishment, seem to share this sentiment. While it is somewhat
reassuring that the professed (though still to be constitutionally
codified and, as experience shows, probably more rhetorical than
real) values of the Ukrainian political consensus are democratic and
pluralistic, it is troubling to see that for many the ardor of their
support for Ukrainian statehood is directly proportional to their
impatience with precisely these values.
	The second danger involves a confusion of the static and the
dynamic, mistaking a process for a thing. The glass will remain a
glass even if it is totally empty. A country run into the ground will
not long remain free and democratic, and may cease being a country.
For Ukraine, given its legacy of colonialism and the deeply
ingrained patterns of dependence in the thinking of its political
establishment, the deferral of true reforms constitutes a clear and
present danger.
	The final underlying issue is that for the outside world the
only thing that matters is the here and now: in the cold light of
objectivity, from the perspective of the "outside" world, all the
struggles and the sufferings on the road to independence are, if not
irrelevant, then "academic," a page of "ancient history." The past,
alas, is another country. With independence, Ukraine--whether its
ruling elites fully act on it, or even fully realize it--has become part of
the world, and it will be judged only by only one, harsh, but
universal standard. Ultimately, I believe, Ukraine will rise to that
standard. The road, however, will be arduous, and the timetable
unpredictable.
[The text of this article is based on the eight annual Ivan Franko
lecture delivered on April 12, 1993 at Carlton University, Ottawa.]
category:Dissolution of USSR