Ab Imperio, 1/2020 реса жителей Украины к сложным Trevor ERLACHER вопросам истории украинско-ев- рейских отношений в ХХ веке (в Україна на історіографічній особенности в 1930–1940-х гг.). мапі міжвоєнної Європи: Насколько мне известно, в на- матеріали міжнародної наукової стоящее время Химка работает конф. (Мюнхен, Німеччина, над монографией, посвященной 1–3 липня 2012 р.) = Ukraine политике ОУН(б) по отношению on the Historiographic Map of к евреям. Уверен, что такая книга Interwar Europe: Proceedings of the будет интересной и полезной. Она International Conference (Munich, обязательно должна быть также Germany, 1–3 July, 2012) / ред. переведена на украинский язык. Я. Мельник та ін. Київ: Інститут Хочется также надеяться, что бу- історії України НАНУ, 2014. 250 с. дущие исследования Скиры будут ISBN: 978-966-02-6810-4. более аналитическими, с соблю- дением необходимой дистанции Ukraine on the Historiographic между историком и объектами его Map of Interwar Europe is a stimu- исследования. lating collection of thirteen essays by some of the foremost historians of modern Ukraine. Edited by Yaro- slava Melnyk, Serhii Plokhy, Valerii Smolii, and Frank E. Sysyn, this book is the product of a conference held in July 2012 at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Ger- many. Andreas Kappeler’s opening lecture “What Is Ukraine? What Is Europe? What Is a Historiographic Map?” set the gathering’s agenda with a series of questions about a heretofore neglected aspect of the Ukrainian experience between the world wars in Europe: the historical profession. Leaving the situation in the Soviet Union to a subsequent conference (held in Kyiv the follow- ing year), Kappeler’s address asked the attendees to consider the lives and works of the Ukrainian histo- 339 Рецензии/Reviews rians who, by choice or necessity, Romanian, and Czechoslovak re- emigrated to Central and Western gions after numerous failed attempts Europe. Who should be included in to achieve independence – set this this group? What institutions and dilemma into sharp relief for Ukrai- schools of thought did they join or nians. If Ukraine is Europe, what create? How did the political and makes it so? historiographical situation in their Such questions seem all the more host societies affect their intellec- urgent in light of events since the tual labors? Did the Soviet world conference took place in 2012. But they left behind nevertheless shape Ukraine on the Historiographic Map their worldview? What became of of Interwar Europe already feels those scholars who chose to return like an artifact from a different era; and take part in the construction of before the Maidan Revolution, the a communist Ukraine? What were annexation of Crimea, the Russo- the parameters and chief concerns Ukrainian war, and the international of interwar Ukrainian studies? In ascendance of Euroskeptical right- what sense and to what extent were wing populism. Now, after six years the Ukrainian historians who relo- of bloodshed with no end in sight, the cated to Prague, Warsaw, Vienna, fundamental question of Ukraine’s or Lviv as “European” as the cities orientation – toward Europe or with they adopted and the universities that Russia – is as bitterly contested as employed or rejected them? ever. The writers in this volume The crux of the matter is Ukraine’s examined the problem from a van- location on the map of “Europe,” tage point of relative peace, when then and now. Of course, this is not Ukraine, despite its many domestic a geographic, but a cultural or civi- problems, seemed at least externally lizational distinction; one that places secure and free to follow its own the Soviet and Russophile aspects of path, quite possibly into a brighter, the Ukrainian past outside of Europe, more European future. With these within Moscow’s sphere and the hopes frustrated, much as they were “Eurasian” alternative. The confer- a century ago, it is unsurprising that ence’s focus on the Europeanness interwar events and personages loom of Ukraine and its exiled historians large in the historical and political continues a perennial debate among debates of contemporary Ukraine. Ukrainian intellectuals about their It would appear that no other era place in the world vis-à-vis East and has given modern Ukrainians more West. The interwar period – which heroes to praise, villains to condemn, witnessed the partitioning of the tragedies to lament, or sacrifices to Ukrainian lands into Soviet, Polish, honor. The interwar period weighs 340 Ab Imperio, 1/2020 heavily on historians of Ukraine “losers” as its “winners.” In doing today, so it makes sense to ask: how so, he uncovers the leftist roots and did their predecessors – the ones convictions of major leaders in the who lived and worked through those Ukrainian national movement, an im- grim years – understand their own plicit challenge to the Ukrainian dias- times and the past up to that point? pora’s fixation on right-wing actors, Opening this collection is an es- such as the conservative-monarchist sential piece of writing by one of the supporters of Pavlo Skoropadskyi or pioneers of modern Ukrainian his- the integral nationalists of the OUN toriography, Mark von Hagen, who and UPA, as the only true defenders passed away in September 2019. His of Ukraine from Russian and Polish contribution to the book – an explo- aggression. The victory of the Red ration of the life and thought of the Guards and the understandably anti- Ukrainian historian, political activist, Soviet attitudes of many Ukrainian and statesman Pavlo Khrystiuk – is émigrés led to an underestimation of a version of his introduction to the the traditions and accomplishments English translation of Khrystiuk’s of Ukrainian socialists, who were four-volume Notes and Materials on just as radical as the Bolsheviks, yet the History of the Ukrainian Revolu- saw no contradiction in carrying out a tion, 1917–1920, a publication that struggle against both socioeconomic von Hagen edited in his final years. and national forms of oppression In addition to shedding much-needed (P. 16). Soviet historiography was light on the pivotal, chaotic period of also eager to diminish and obscure the Ukrainian Revolution, in which Ukraine’s national communists.1 Von Khrystiuk was a key eyewitness- Hagen recovers a strand of left-wing participant, von Hagen’s analysis Ukrainian anticolonialism beyond makes several important interven- Wilsonian “national self-determina- tions in Ukrainian historiography. tion” (which Khrystiuk rejected as He situates these events in the global veiled imperialism) and Leninism twentieth-century phenomenon (whose adherents harbored too much of anticolonial movements at the residual Great Russian chauvinism). peripheries of collapsing empires. Ultimately, Khrystiuk reconciled Von Hagen underscores the original- himself to the Bolshevik experiment, ity and sophistication of Ukrainian returned to Soviet Ukraine in 1923, revolutionaries, showing that we and fell victim to the terror of the have as much to learn from history’s following decade. 1 This group has attracted more scholarly attention lately. See Stephen Velychenko. Painting Imperialism and Nationalism Red: The Ukrainian Marxist Critique of Russian Communist Rule in Ukraine, 1918–1925. Toronto, 2015. 341 Рецензии/Reviews Then as now, the writing of Ukrai- power to create states and nations, not nian history was an inherently political the elites. In the opposing camp stood endeavor. Schools of émigré Ukrai- the statist school, led by Lypynskyi, nian historical thought overlapped which held the opposite view that with political parties and ideologies, only a ruling class (in Ukraine’s case, and historians played leading roles the Cossack officers and other sym- in the Ukrainian revolution. Their pathetic members of the Polonized or conceptions of the past informed their Russified gentry) could build a state political behavior in the present. After and lead a nation. the revolution failed and its defend- Oleh Pavlyshyn’s essay shows ers had either fled to safety or been how these and other historians captured, the blame for defeat had to viewed their ostensibly academic be apportioned. Vladyslav Verstiuk interpretations of the revolution as outlines these mutual recriminations a continuation of the struggle from in his contribution, “The Ukrainian abroad. Despite a general commit- Revolution in Reflections of Interwar ment to realizing the ideal of unify- Émigré Historiography.” He focuses ing all Ukrainian lands in one state, on three key figures: Mykhailo Hru- they diverged sharply on whom to shevskyi, the first president of the blame and thus how to proceed. Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR); There was a tendency to focus Viacheslav Lypynskyi, a conservative “exclusively on subjective factors: monarchist of noble Polish extraction The ‘treason’ of the leaders, a fatal who served Skoropadskyi during his ‘difference of cultures,’ and the con- brief tenure in the revived office of sciousness of the population on ei- “Hetman of Ukraine” in 1918; and ther side of the Zbruch.” Pavlyshyn Volodymyr Vynnychenko, the UNR’s concludes that “the politicization of first prime minister and a critic of the Ukrainian history” left “historical revolution from the far left. Verstiuk objectivity” as a casualty of these reflects on how these academic po- polemics (Pp. 72–73). lemics reinforced political rifts that Interwar Ukrainian émigré poli- have persisted into the present. As the tics were entangled with the study leading representative of the populist of more distant historical epochs, school of Ukrainian history, Hrush- especially the period of the Cos- evskyi emphasized the power of mass sack Hetmanate (1649–1775). Frank movements and social forces rather Sysyn’s essay, “Hrushevskyi against than state actors, lauding Ukraine’s Lypynskyi: The Historian’s Fi- peasantry rather than its hetmans. nal Thoughts on Hetman Bohdan According to this account, it is the Khmelnytskyi and His Era,” revisits common people who possess the the division of Ukrainian histori- 342 Ab Imperio, 1/2020 ography into irreconcilable popu- to move to Soviet Ukraine.