Understanding Ukraine and Belarus A Memoir DAVID R. MARPLES This e-book is provided without charge via free download by E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info). It is not permitted to be sold in electronic format under any circumstances. If you enjoy our free e-books, please consider leaving a small donation to allow us to continue investing in open access publications: http://www.e-ir.info/about/donate/ i Understanding Ukraine and Belarus A Memoir DAVID R. MARPLES ii E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, England 2020 ISBN 978-1-910814-54-3 • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. 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The website is run by a non-profit organisation based in Bristol, England and staffed by an all-volunteer team of students and scholars. http://www.e-ir.info iv Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir For Carlton, Keelan, Akiko and Kaella, my beloved children v Abstract The book describes the author’s academic journey from an undergraduate in London to his current research on Ukraine and Belarus as a History professor in Alberta, Canada, highlighting the dramatic changes of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, his travel stories, experiences, and the Stalinist legacy in both countries. It includes extended focus on his visits to Chernobyl and the contaminated zone in the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as a summer working with indigenous groups in eastern Siberia. Visiting Belarus more than 25 times since the 1990s, he was banned for seven years before the visa rules were relaxed in 2017. In the case of Ukraine, it chronicles a transition from a total outsider to one of the best-known scholars in Ukrainian studies, commenting on aspects of the coalescence of scholarship and politics, and the increasing role of social media and the Diaspora in the analysis of crucial events such as the Euromaidan uprising and its aftermath in Kyiv. vi Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir Acknowledgements Dozens of people could arguably be included in this section since it covers a lifetime of activity. But I will keep it relatively short. I am indebted to the two anonymous reviewers, whose helpful and detailed suggestions I have followed closely. Likewise, Stephen McGlinchey at the University of the West of England in Bristol, Editor-in-Chief of E-International Relations, is the ideal editor: both patient and encouraging. I am also grateful to Edmonton friends Terry Mackey and Rylan Kafara for reading the manuscript in an earlier draft and offering thoughtful ideas for improvement. Roma Hadzewycz, Editor-in- Chief of The Ukrainian Weekly, kindly allowed me to reproduce in modified form (Chapter 6), articles that appeared in that newspaper from 1989. I do wish to acknowledge the support, dedication, and interest of my many students, especially those at the graduate level, who can happily be named. At PhD level they include David F. Duke, Aileen Espiritu, Elena Krevsky, Per Anders Rudling, Ilya Khineiko, David Dolff, Trevor Rockwell, Lizaveta Kasmach, Mariya Melentyeva, Brian Daley, Iuliia Kysla, Shona Allison, Ernest Gyidel, Frederick V. Mills, Eduard Baidaus, Oksana Vinnyk, Michael Dorman, Sean Patterson, and Anna Kupinska. My MA students have included, in rough chronological order: Andrew Juricic, Esther Van Nes, Eva De Marco, Todd Cooper, Sean Atkins, Nancy Slawski, Brian Halsey, Robert Heynen, Roman Zyla, Miranda Pollard, Paul Pirie, Daniel Grigat, David Ryning, Kim Palmer, Victoria Plewak, Nordica Nettleton, Declan Braiden, Meaghan Bernard, Amber Rommens, Greg Fowler, Oleksandr Melnyk, Rebecca Anderson, Jordan Vincent, Matthew Ostapchuk, Andreea Resmerita, Christian Basar, Claudia Lonkin, and Jeff Vavasour- Williams. All in their own ways have added considerably to my knowledge and career. Many have remained good friends. I would like to thank my former PhD supervisor, Everett Jacobs of Sheffield, England, for getting me started on this long road and my colleagues in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, with whom I have worked for many years, including as their Chair between 2014 and 2019. I have always felt the support of my longtime Edmonton friends Tim and Susan McRory, Donald Macnab and Susan Smith, Dennis and Patricia Edney, and Roman and Marusia Petryshyn. I hope the book is also of interest to my families in England and Japan, and especially to my friends living in what historians term “the East Slavic world.” vii Lastly, I thank my wife, Aya Fujiwara, for keeping me alive, hopeful, and loved through good times and bad. David R. Marples Edmonton, Alberta, Canada March 2020 viii Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir Contents 1. BEGINNINGS 1 2. ALBERTA 12 3. RFE/RL 24 4. MONITORING A NUCLEAR DISASTER 32 5. ENTERING THE SOVIET UNION 37 6. CHERNOBYL AND KYIV: 1989 43 7. GLASNOST IN UKRAINE 53 8. CAREER MOVES 65 9. BELARUSIAN TALES 70 10. WITH THE OPPOSITION IN BELARUS 87 11. YAKUTSK 100 12. MOSCOW AND CAMBRIDGE 108 13. HEROES AND VILLAINS 112 14. BANNED FROM BELARUS 125 15. MAIDAN AND HOKKAIDO 132 16. MEMORY LAWS 140 17. CIUS: THE LIMITATIONS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 148 18. CHAJSY: BACK TO STALIN 156 19. 2020 166 NOTE ON INDEXING 178 ix x Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir Preface In any memoir, it is always difficult to decide what to include and what to leave out. I decided to write this one as a result of prompting from some of my students who have often encouraged me to put some of the stories of my travels on paper. But no writer really knows whether their experiences are unique or common, whether their insights are in any way original. Still, I convinced myself that there were some unusual things about my own. First of all, my period of development as a scholar coincided with the later years of the Cold War, the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Moreover, I had spent this period both as an analyst and a graduate student, and began my academic career precisely during the time the Soviet system collapsed, and just a month before the failed putsch in Moscow that heralded the end of Gorbachev’s leadership, although not in the manner the putschists had intended. Second, I do think my engagement with Chernobyl and the disaster of 1986 to be something worth relating. This book contains original comments I made in my diary during the time of my visit there, largely unedited, though some of my 1980s prose seems alien and opinionated to me today. The disaster continues to draw public interest, thanks to new books and the documentary series of 2019 on HBO/Sky Television that evoked much anger in the Kremlin, but was generally lauded elsewhere. Third, my studies pertain to areas of much dispute, and even warfare, over historical memory, which has affected and influenced many scholars of Ukraine in particular. The time period coincided with the rapid development of social media, which has meant that propaganda on both sides – but particularly in Russia – has been rife, and those expressing opinions on sites such as Facebook and Twitter are not necessarily, and perhaps not usually from the academic domain. It is no longer possible to express views that do not coincide with one or another prevailing narrative and not receive a torrent of abuse, often from people we do not know and have no wish to know. Though Russia is a part of this monograph, the nations I know best, Ukraine and Belarus, feature most. They are starting to redefine their identities, often based on historical memory, and most often, in one way or another, the Second World War. Official and unofficial narratives often pay little heed to history. In Ukraine, memory is the source of serious polemics, arguments, violence, and commemoration and these escalated in the period 2013–2019 to levels never hitherto witnessed. With an oligarch and chocolate magnate at the helm, Ukraine’s position became more narrowly defined.