2010-01-27 | Tadeusz A. Olszański

Viktor Yushchenko has been the first president of Ukraine to actively develop the country's historical policy, which was one of the most important aspects of his presidency. This was due to both Yushchenko's personal convictions and the views of the national-democratic and nationalist politicians in his circle. The main policy objectives have been to commemorate the Holodomor (the Great Famine), including obtaining international recognition of it as genocide, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's (UPA) fight against the German and Soviet occupiers. Shortly before the end of Yushchenko's term in office, his historical policy culminated in a court ruling which found Stalin guilty of genocide against the Ukrainian people (13 January) and the Hero of Ukraine award to Stepan Bandera (22 January). There is no doubt that irrespective of the result of the presidential election, the new president of Ukraine will not attach as much significance this historical policy, and may even discontinue it altogether.
 

The Holodomor case
 
Holodomor is the name in the Ukrainian language given to the catastrophic famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, which claimed the lives of around 3.5 to 4 million Ukrainians, according to reliable estimates. It was undoubtedly the result of Soviet economic policy at that period, and its particularly severe character in Ukraine was due to the fact that the Ukrainian localities which failed to meet the requirements for cereal supplies faced harsher repression than elsewhere. It is disputable, however, whether the famine was deliberately provoked, and in particular whether it was a crime against the Ukrainians as an ethnic community, or against the peasants as a social stratum.
Yushchenko has acknowledged the arguments supporting the interpretation that the Holodomor was a crime of genocide against the Ukrainian nation, and as a result of the efforts undertaken by Ukrainian diplomacy, this interpretation has been recognised by a number of states (including Poland in 2006). On 13 January 2010, the Kyiv Court of Appeals found Stalin and a group of his aides guilty of "genocide against Ukrainians as a national group", and closed the case in view of the defendants' demise.
Those measures, however, were less important than disseminating knowledge about the Holodomor in Ukraine, including through school education, and encouraging local communities to commemorate it, for instance by compiling lists of the names of victims. The response was massive, especially in central and eastern Ukraine.
Elevating the Holodomor to the rank of a national myth has been deliberate, in that the Great Famine is one of the few historical experiences which can unite all Ukrainians. While the western districts of Ukraine, which at that time did not belong to the USSR, were not affected by the Holodomor, their inhabitants recognise the Great Famine as a nationwide experience. This has also been conducive to the de-communisation of public awareness, as the blame has been put on the communist state leadership, while the Russian nation (apart from in statements by extreme chauvinists) has been mentioned only inasmuch as the current Russian state has taken measures to combat the memory of the Holodomor, thus identifying itself with the Soviet state.
 

The case of the UPA
 
The memory of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's combat against the NKVD and the communist administration of Ukraine is a clear dividing line for the Ukrainian public. It is only in the western districts of Ukraine, which belonged to Poland before World War II, that a majority of people hold positive views of the UPA; in the remaining parts of the country, attitudes towards it are indifferent, if not hostile. It is widely believed that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaborated with the enemy. At the same time, only a narrow elite group is aware of the UPA’s crimes against Poles, and most of those who object to the UPA tradition believe that it murdered ‘Soviet people’, which implicitly means the Russians and the Ukrainians.
Since he took office, Yushchenko has been making efforts to build up a positive memory of the UPA as a ‘Ukrainian national army’ which fought in World War II on the Allied side. He has also proposed that its members should be granted the status of veterans. The proposal could not be put into practice due to objections in parliament. Neither could Yushchenko promote the UPA tradition too overtly without damaging relations with Poland, which were important for him. For this reason, he only decided to confer the highest state decoration, the Hero of Ukraine, onto Stepan Bandera just before leaving office.
 

What future for the historical policy of Ukraine?
 
Yushchenko's historical policy has been partly successful. While he has failed to achieve many objectives (including UN recognition of the Holodomor as genocide), he has instilled a sensitivity to historical memory issues in the public, and initiated a number of important debates which will continue after the end of his presidency. The Holodomor has already become a permanent element of the national memory, although the 'positive' memory of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army is set to remain a regional phenomenon limited to western Ukraine.
Whoever wins the current presidential election, the new president will adopt a more pragmatic attitude towards the historical policy, and will not show the personal involvement that Yushchenko has displayed. The issues that have been central for Yushchenko are expected to drop down the Ukrainian leadership's agenda, probably for many years. Viktor Yanukovych will presumably put the experience of World War II as the Great Patriotic War (and the Ukrainian national war) back in focus, and allow for the cultivation of the memory of the Holodomor; but he will not make this part of the state policy, and certainly not of foreign policy. Yulia Tymoshenko, on the other hand, will use elements of the historical policy for ad hoc political purposes (electioneering in particular), but she is unlikely to have any fixed priorities in this regard.
Meanwhile, in the western districts of Ukraine, where the radical, chauvinist Svoboda party has been building a following, and where the local authorities have already previously awarded the status of veterans to some UPA members, one should expect more actions aimed at consolidating the myth of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as the ‘national army’; those actions will ever more often and increasingly overtly be directed against Poland and the Poles.

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