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Ukrainian Studies at Harvard –Highlights from a 1998 VOA Reporting Assignment |
By Adrian
Karmazyn
Next year
marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian
Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For half a century, the institute has been supporting high-quality scholarly
work on Ukrainian history, language and literature – and, inherently,
countering Russia-centric narratives about Ukraine.
HURI
credits
(1)
the Federation of Ukrainian Student Organizations of America and Harvard
professor Omeljan Pritsak as being the initiators of efforts to establish the
institute. Funding for creating
the institute largely came from the Ukrainian diaspora and was channeled
through what came to be known as the Ukrainian Studies Fund.
I travelled
to Harvard in the summer of 1998 as a radio journalist for the Voice of
America’s (VOA) Ukrainian Service in order to profile the people and activities
of HURI, a subject of particular interest for our audience in Ukraine. What
follows are some highlights from my reporting assignment which illustrate the
dynamism of Ukrainian studies at Harvard – one of America’s most prestigious
universities -- at a time when new opportunities for interactions between the
U.S. and Ukrainian academic communities were rapidly expanding and new
priorities were being implemented.
In an
interview, James Clem, HURI Executive Director,
explained that no other U.S. university has an institute devoted to Ukrainian
history, language, literature and politics.
And among other accomplishments, HURI-affiliated scholars have conducted
important historical research spanning Ukraine’s thousand-year history. But as
Mr. Clem said, in recent years, with Ukrainians having achieved independence,
much more attention is being focused on contemporary issues:
“During the
Soviet period it was very clear what our role was – it was concerned with
preserving an independent Ukrainian studies community at a time when
opportunities in Soviet Ukraine were very limited.
Now when Ukraine is independent, we are dealing with Ukraine much more
directly.”
For example,
Clem noted that a big program of exchanges of students and scholars has been
launched between Ukraine and Harvard which is tasked with helping Ukrainians
get acquainted with Western approaches to humanities and social studies.
The Ukrainian
Research Institute also facilitates specialists from both sides gaining access
to archives and other scholarly resources in the U.S. and Ukraine.
Besides this, HURI hosts seminars and lectures of experts who influence
American foreign policy. Speaking
about plans for the 1998-1999 academic year, James Clem said that HURI, by
itself or in cooperation with other scholarly centers at Harvard, expects to
hold several Ukrainian-themed conferences:
“We’ll be
starting off in November with a conference on Ukrainian-American writers.
We’ll be bringing in writers from across the U.S.
In December, we’ll have the next seminar for military personnel from
Ukraine on civilian control of the armed forces. In February, we will have a
conference on the topic of [Mykailo] Hrushevsky and state building, with a
comparative analysis of the experiences of other countries.
In April, according to plans, there will be a conference about Belarus.
In June – about Ukrainian-Polish relations.”
Having
provided funding for the establishment of HURI in 1973, the diaspora continued
to be engaged with the activities of the institute. Over the decades, some in
the community were not shy about criticizing the Ukrainian studies program at
Harvard, saying it pursues issues of secondary importance or research that has
more to do with neighboring countries than with Ukraine itself. James Clem
acknowledged the diaspora’s passionate feelings about HURI, noting that “this
is the only institute of its kind in the United States and it was founded by
the Ukrainian-American community; and because it is the only such institution
everyone has a personal opinion about our programs.”
Furthermore,
said Clem, from the viewpoint of the institute, current standards of
scholarship require that Ukrainian studies encompass a wide circle of issues.
He also underscored that HURI does not have a monopoly at Harvard regarding
Ukrainian studies. For example, the Harvard Institute of International
Development and the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) have their own programs
dedicated to economics and security, respectively, that focus on Ukraine.
[More information about KSG’s Ukraine-related activities will be provided
further below.]
Speaking
about his roots, James Clem shared that his mother is an immigrant from Ukraine
who came to the USA after World War II and he grew up in Miami, Florida, where
he participated in a Ukrainian dance group. Clem’s research interests include
the topic of Ukrainian political parties and a few years ago he conducted
research in Ukraine for his dissertation.
*
Since its
beginnings, HURI has been hosting a Ukrainian summer program where
undergraduate and graduate students can immerse themselves in Ukrainian
studies. During the Cold War with
the Iron Curtain limiting travel to and from Ukraine, the program was geared
toward American and other Western students.
In the summer of 1998, of the 53 students in attendance, 20 were from
Ukraine, clearly demonstrating the new opportunities for U.S.-Ukrainian
cooperation.
Ukrainian
Summer School director Vera Andrushkiw
explained that HURI in summertime is a place to improve your knowledge about
Ukraine and the Ukrainian language and to boost your professional credentials.
Although there are Ukrainian courses taught at other U.S. colleges, HURI’s
summer program is the broadest and most intensive, she said.
From morning until night during the span of eight weeks you are immersed
in a curriculum that includes Ukrainian language for business, 20th
century Ukrainian literature, Ukrainian social history and Ukrainian politics.
Besides this menu of courses there are other activities – special
lectures, drama productions, Ukrainian movies and concerts.
Andrushkiw said it is not odd that students have come to Cambridge from
Ukraine, because Harvard offers them something unique:
“Here they
experience a somewhat different methodology.
And secondly, they have the opportunity to listen to how Ukrainian
history is taught here; how Ukrainian politics is taught in a global context.
And I think this is very important.
And I think the fact that they are communicating with other students --
and last year, which was my first year at Harvard – students were asking me:
‘Why would Americans want to learn the Ukrainian language? Interesting but
strange. What will they do with
it?’ But now there really is a genuine interest in various Ukrainian studies
subjects; people are traveling to Ukraine to work.”
Students from
Ukraine said they probably most appreciate the approach of American lecturers
regarding Ukrainian subject matter.
And observing the increasing amount of American curiosity about Ukraine
and the business potential there was certainly a pleasure. But an unexpected
benefit of the HURI summer program is that it brought together students from
different regions of Ukraine, who otherwise would not have had the chance to
engage with one another and exchange ideas.
Tetiana
Skortsova, a student from Luhansk Pedagogical University said that “in Ukraine
we don’t have this kind of opportunity to communicate with representatives of
other regions. This is very
interesting for me to talk with these students and to see the differences
between eastern and western Ukraine or the capital, because there are
differences.” Differences in
educational experiences, for example, she said.
The 20
visiting students were sponsored by the International Renaissance Foundation,
Citicorp corporation and the Ukrainian Fraternal Association.
*
One of
the lecturers at the Ukrainian Summer School at Harvard was Paul D’Anieri,
a
visiting professor of political science from the University of Kansas in
Lawrence. In the summer of 1998 he
was lecturing on Ukrainian politics at Harvard within the Ukrainian studies
program. He had kind words for the
visiting students from Ukraine at HURI:
“I keep on
telling them that I’m learning more from them than they are learning from me.
They are excellent students for one thing.
They participate consistently, they are judicious thinkers, and that’s
why I’ve learned a lot from them.
I know a lot about political science and Ukraine – but they live there.”
D’Anieri
knows a lot about Ukraine because he spent the 1993-1994 academic year in the
country. He specializes in
Ukrainian foreign policy and the domestic factors which impact Ukraine’s
foreign relations. And the question of internal politics is often discussed
during his lectures in Kansas, he said:
“I teach a
course on Russian foreign policy, in which we do a pretty big section both on
Russia’s relations with Ukraine – but I also separately look at Ukrainian
foreign policy. I have a few
students that are interested in these questions. “
Besides
this, under his guidance two graduate students in Kansas were writing
dissertations about Ukraine.
Paul D’Anieri
is an American of Italian heritage.
As a graduate student in political science at Cornell University in the
1980s, he was interested in U.S.-Soviet relations.
In the spring of 1991, he received his Ph.D. and immediately faced some
career adaptations.
“Of course,
the Soviet Union collapsed and there were questions for me of what next,” he
recalled. “And pretty immediately to
me the interesting thing was how are all these countries going to get along
with one another, and I immediately began to study Ukrainian-Russian
relations,” he said.
Professor
D’Anieri almost exclusively researches Ukrainian issues, especially foreign
policy. He believes that Ukraine’s
biggest successes since independence are mostly visible in the international
arena. But he underscores that
further achievements in the sphere of foreign policy will depend on conducting
internal economic reforms.
It’s also
worth mentioning, he said, that Ukraine was able to avoid interethnic conflicts
which have engulfed other countries in the region.
Returning to
the question of engagement with the 20 students from Ukraine at Harvard,
D’Anieri said that during class time interesting discussions arose about
Ukrainization, relations with Russia, and reforms in Ukraine.
Although he personally has reservations regarding the activities of some
corporations or American recipes for economic development, D'Anieri says that
he was somewhat surprised by the viewpoints of this group of visiting young
Ukrainians. Despite the fact that
they have spent time in the West and attended lectures on the economy, some of
them are skeptical of foreign investment in Ukraine:
“The one
thing I’ve noticed is that there is still a big difference between the
standard, sort of American attitudes towards foreign investment and foreign
trade and the views of my Ukrainian students.
I’m not saying that they are mistaken, because I myself have certain
reservations when it comes to American recommendations regarding the economy.
But these Ukrainian students are much more suspicious about foreign
investment and foreign trade than American experts.”
*
At
Harvard, I also met Sarah Sievers,
who along with journalist Margarita Hewko, led an oral history project which
featured about 100 figures, capturing on videotape and transcribing their
reminiscences from the 1991 putsch in Moscow and the Ukrainian declaration of
independence. The list of
interviewees included Leonid Kravchuk and Viacheslav Chornovil.
“I think the
real strength of this material,” said Ms. Sievers, “is that we have people who
were the actors in creating independence for Ukraine. In the video recordings
they describe what transpired and our goal is to make this accessible to all
who are interested.”
In 1992 Sarah
Sievers became a diplomat in the newly opened U.S. embassy in Kyiv and,
subsequently, worked in an American organization fostering entrepreneurship in
Ukraine. While there, she met
journalist Margarita Hewko from South America.
They became friends and decided to launch a self-funded initiative of
gathering recollections. Sievers says that at that time one could not be
certain that any Ukrainian entity would focus on this important task:
“There are a
lot of difficulties. It’s no
secret that Ukraine is in the middle of an economic transformation, that it’s a
very painful one. And that limits what many people with good ideas and
initiative can accomplish.”
Other
project participants included such prominent journalists as Mykola Veresen,
Dmytro Ponomarchuk and Oleksandr Tkachenko.
Sarah
Sievers considers General Kostyantyn Morozov, who after the declaration of
independence became Ukraine’s minister of defense, one of the most interesting
interviewees:
“I
particularly like the interview we did with General Morozov and his description
of how he came to a decision as far as the orders given on the day of the
putsch. His actions were a true example for me.”
The project
also included interviews with Polish president Lech Walesa, Lithuanian
president Vytautas Landsbergis, U.S. national security advisor Brent Scowcroft
and U.S. secretary of state James Baker.
Sievers said
that for a time she believed Washington should have been more decisive in terms
of supporting Ukraine’s aspirations for independence. But her interviews with
high-level Americans made her reconsider the situation more within the context
of U.S.-Soviet relations and the then-current global situation:
“I must
confess that going into those interviews I was quite convinced that the U.S.
policy towards Ukraine, in my opinion, was not satisfactory. But I must admit
that I changed my mind after listening to their explanations.”
As Sievers
explains, it’s easy to forget how brutal the Soviet system was and it could be
expected that the putsch would be accompanied by a new wave of repression and
even killings. Most interesting for her was that when the putsch started to
fail, there was never an order from Moscow to Kyiv and other capitals of the
republics to use force.
In recent
years Ms. Sievers has been a researcher at HURI where she’s been working on
this memoir project about the restoration of Ukrainian independence. The
project received financial support from the Chopivsky Family Foundation’s
Yale-Ukraine Initiative and the government of the Netherlands. Sievers had
recently been appointed the executive director of the Center for International
Development at Harvard, headed by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs.
*
Another
important part of the work of HURI is bringing Ukrainian studies research to
print and to a wider audience. We
turned to Robert DeLossa, head of publishing at the Ukrainian Research
Institute, to explain how a niche publisher of Ukraine-related books
markets itself in the United States.
According to
DeLossa, in 1998, as in previous years, the institute has published books which
encompass a wide range of Ukrainian studies topics, from the distant past to
current affairs.
For example,
the institute has published historian Omeljan Pritsak’s work on the monetary
system and system of weights and measures of Kyivan Rus and a collection of
lectures of Ambassador Yuriy Shcherbak about Ukraine’s current geostrategic
role in the world.
Robert
DeLossa says that a year ago HURI reorganized its work, turning over
responsibility for marketing and distribution of its books to Harvard
University Press. This enabled
HURI to focus its attention on increasing the number of titles in its catalogue
-- and sales of books increased by 75%.
“I think the
lesson is you can’t do everything, said DeLossa, “especially if you have
limited resources and a limited staff.
You need to focus on one thing.”
So, who buys
Ukrainian books? What audience
does HURI count on? And how should you target your advertising? DeLossa
responded:
“That’s
actually a tricky question. We’re
still trying to figure out what the demographics are but we do know that there
are more courses at universities that make use of such books.
We propose our books to lecturers of general courses on Eastern European
culture and political scientists who are interested in international
relations.”
Robert
DeLossa noted that information about the HURI book catalogue is sent to the
members of the American Association for Slavic Studies and Harvard University
Press sends 30,000 copies of its catalogue to bookstores and individuals
throughout the U.S.A.
As for
HURI’s future publishing plans DeLossa said:
“We have an
exciting year ahead of us. We’re
finishing up work on Kostyantyn Morozov’s autobiography which, I think, will be
a breakthrough publication for Ukrainian studies in [the United States of]
America inasmuch as this book will be interesting for a very wide readership
audience. We are also planning books about the Union of Brest, Ukrainian-Jewish
relations during the time of the Bolshevik revolution and the Ukrainian
National Republic.”
*
Throughout
the year in 1998, HURI would hold various seminars on Ukrainian studies.
During my reporting assignment, there was a roundtable on ethnic
minorities featuring Roman Solchanyk (Rand Corporation), Zvi Gitelman
(University of Michigan) and John Paul Himka (University of Alberta).
Solchanyk’s
presentation was devoted to the question of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
He cited opinion surveys indicating that an overwhelming majority of
Russians residing Ukraine do net feel that they are subject to discrimination
in Ukraine. Among a significant amount of data that he presented he cited this
example: Of all the Russians who moved to Russia after the fall of the Soviet
Union, only 7% were from Ukraine – while 45% of all Russians residing in
non-Russian former Soviet republics lived in Ukraine.
And the decision of ethnic Russians to leave Ukraine is usually based on
economic motivations rather than ethnic considerations, noted Solchanyk. “Very
briefly, I think initially, the Ukrainian government in a very clever fashion,
pursued a nationalities policy that proved to be quite successful,” he said.
Meanwhile,
Zvi Gitelman, a University of Michigan political scientist, described how
proportionally more Jews from Ukraine emigrate abroad than Jews from Russia.
This, to a great extent, can be explained, he said, by the fact that
Jews in Ukraine traditionally did not feel an affinity to Ukrainian culture but
instead were more drawn to the dominant Russian language and culture.
Therefore, they have been more ambivalent toward newly independent Ukraine than
toward the successor of the USSR – Russia.
Gitelman says that according to data there is no basis to say that Jews
in Ukraine suffer from discrimination from the Ukrainian government or society
in general.
In his turn,
University of Alberta historian John Paul Himka conveyed that the question of
interethnic relations has deep roots in Ukrainian history.
Among other things, he mentioned the role of ethnic Germans in Ukraine’s
development, starting in the 15th century – although most of them
have assimilated.
The
lecturers at the HURI gathering expressed the thought that the most pressing
ethnic question in Ukraine today is that of the Crimean Tatars.
*
During my
visit to HURI, I had the pleasure of interviewing Roman Szporluk, Professor
of Ukrainian history at Harvard.
He had been my mentor over a decade earlier, when he was teaching at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and I was a graduate student there, writing
my thesis on the Soviet Ukrainian press.
Looking back
at how research was done in the pre-internet age, it’s interesting to
contemplate how reliant historians have been on journalists as chroniclers who
produce the “first draft” of history and how researchers clipped and saved
articles of interest from newspapers.
Professor
Szporluk explained that what was especially useful for him in his career was
the creation of a personal archive of newspaper “clippings” from the Ukrainian
press:
“I am a
historian that is interested in rather theoretical and philosophical issues but
I know that a historian cannot only speak in abstractions.
History is the history of people, living people. And that’s why these
types of materials help me very much. They are a very essential element of what
I do as a lecturer or author.”
Roman
Szporluk began collecting newspaper articles from the Ukrainian press in the
late 1950s when he was living in Poland. And he continued to do this, as it
turns out, during an especially interesting and important period of Ukrainian
history. People who decades ago
began to appear on the pages of newspapers that he was reading, today occupy
influential positions:
“At the
beginning of the 1960s there were appearing more often in newspapers,
especially in Literaturna hazeta, but also in Zhovten, Dnipro
and others, such names as Vitaliy Korotych, Yuriy Shcherbak, Ivan Drach, Ivan
Dziuba. And I created files on
these people. And now, for
example, in Washington there is a gentleman by the name of Yuriy Shcherbak – he
is the Ambassador of Ukraine in the United States.”
Szporluk
held out his folder filled with materials by Shcherbak, including an article
dating back to 1965 and a joint letter written by Shcherbak, Oles Honchar, Ivan
Drach and Roman Lubkivsky in response to an anti-Ukrainian speech given by
Russian vice president Rutskoi.
The
professor encourages all his students to clip articles from newspapers, catalog
them and save them, emphasizing that one day, in retrospect, you will realize
that “that which was once contemporary has become history -- and now you have a
unique collection of documentation of sources which anyone could have had but
only you have compiled it in this fashion.”
Szporluk
cautioned that one should not be a crazy collector of interesting anecdotes.
Instead, one needs to limit one’s collection, because a disorganized
dump of clippings can lead to a conflict within the family, he joked.
His archive is made up mostly of materials about the history of the
Ukrainian intelligentsia and Ukrainian mass media.
In 1998
Roman Szporluk, who held the Chair of Ukrainian History at Harvard, said he was
completing work on a new book on the history of Ukraine in which he devotes a
lot of attention to the events of the last decade, undoubtedly drawing on
information from his personal archive:
“A historian
should possess the kind of facts that he doesn’t just copy from other histories
[history books]. And that is why
these… [unique sources from] history, I think, add weight.
As you may know, currently at the Harvard [Ukrainian] summer school
there is a big group of students from Ukraine and I appealed to them: ‘you,
young people, begin collecting documents and writing your personal memoirs
about 1991, about Chornobyl, about life since that time.
Time will pass and you will look at all of this as history and you will
be very pleased that you have these documents, notes.
And you will see that you… remember them [these events] only because you
wrote them down in your diaries or books, or saved clippings or other
documents.’”
*
Kennedy
School of Government’s Ukrainian defense and national security exchanges.
At Harvard
University, most seminars, research and lectures on Ukrainian topics in 1998
took place under the auspices of the Ukrainian Research Institute.
But as mentioned earlier in this article, other entities at the
university were engaged in Ukrainian topics.
For example,
the Kennedy School of Government had programs focusing on the issue of
Ukrainian security.
The deputy
director of the program on National Security of Ukraine, Serhiy Konoplyov, said
his project at KSG focuses on the topic of Ukrainian cooperation with Western
security structures and the study of reform of the armed forces and civilian
control of the military.
The most
impressive event of the program is an annual two-week seminar in the U.S. for
30 Ukrainians which takes place in December.
“And they are
not only military,” said Konoplyov.
“About 50 percent,” he
continued, “are from the ministry of defense. And we also invite for this
program people who worked in the sphere of arms production, defense, national
security and intelligence. This
time we invited a few people from parliament, the cabinet of ministers, the
ministry of economy, the ministry of internal affairs.
So, it’s not only military but people who work on defense and security
issues in various government agencies and ministries.”
The Ukrainian
guests have the opportunity to engage with their American colleagues, listen to
lectures of experts, visit military bases, discuss important issues with
representatives of the Pentagon, State Department and Congress.
Konoplyov emphasized that “Americans do not teach Ukrainians how to
build up their military forces or how to establish civilian control – instead,
it’s a dialogue.” It’s about
communication, developing contacts and access to information about best
practices in the U.S. and other countries, and determining what’s applicable in
Ukraine, he said. Konoplyov added
that it’s a useful forum for interaction among Ukrainians themselves who might
not otherwise find time to meet back home.
Meanwhile,
the coordinator of a different security program at KSG, Olga Oliker, explained
that her project is designed to engage high-level officials and current
influential leaders.
In April of
1998, a working meeting was set up in Washington, DC, on the subject of Ukraine
and NATO with the participation of former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbot, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Borys Tarasiuk, former U.S.
Secretary of Defense William Perry, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense
Ashton Carter, and others.
As for the
impact of the meetings, Oliker said: “I think it takes time to see what kind of
changes they lead to. I think by
providing a forum for discussion and by ensuring that these issues do get
raised and discussed by Americans, Ukrainians and representatives of Europe --
we can facilitate a wider discussion of these issues. “
Olga Oliker
emphasized that the program is not pushing Ukraine towards NATO membership.
This should be decided by Kyiv, she said.
But leaders of the program believe that Ukraine’s participation in the
NATO Partnership for Peace program needs to be filled with real content so that
it will be similar to true membership in NATO. And it’s noteworthy that former
top U.S. officials like Perry and Carter continue to be engaged in issues
pertaining to Ukraine’s role in European security.
*
Today, the
Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard continues to be the leading institution
for Ukrainian studies in the United States, although an ever-growing number of
specialists on Ukraine work at various American institutions of higher
learning.
- May 29,
2022
* * *
This is the
third in a series of articles illustrating the type of reporting I was engaged
in as a radio journalist with the Voice of America’s (VOA) Ukrainian Service in
the 1990s. Previously, I have
written about my
1993 reporting assignment
in then-newly independent Ukraine (2) and my
1996 reporting assignment
at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (3)
A collection of VOA Ukrainian Service recordings is preserved at the
Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland.
(4) My memoir about my career at VOA is
included in a
collection of articles
published in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of VOA’s
Ukrainian Service. (5)
*Most of the
interviews for this story about HURI were conducted in English and then
translated into Ukrainian for broadcast to Ukraine.
For this article, the Ukrainian versions of interviewee comments were
translated back into English.
--
Notes:
1.
https://huri.harvard.edu/history-institute
2.
http://uaas.org.ua/karmazyn_en-reporting.html
3.
http://uaas.org.ua/VOAs-Ukrainian-Window-on-the-1996-Democratic-Convention-by-Karmazyn.html
4.
https://www.umacleveland.org/research/#Voice-of-America
5.
https://www.umacleveland.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/VOAUkr70th.pdf