Does Ukraine Have a History?

Abstract

One answer to this seemingly simple question was suggested by a Ukrainian scholar when he retorted that if Ukraine has a future, then Ukraine will have a history. He thereby correctly put politics, including international politics, at the center of the discussion. A simple answer to the question is, of course, that the peoples and institutions that occupy the contemporary state of Ukraine have a history, in the sense of lived experience, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, the way all of us have pasts to which we can appeal. But if we re-ask the question, Does Ukraine have a history? and mean this time a written record of that experienced past that commands some widespread acceptance and authority in the international scholarly and political communities, then the answer is not so simple. The title of this paper echoes an important essay by Ukrainian historian Serhii Bilokin', Chy maemo my istorychnu nauku?'-literally do we have historical science? perhaps more clearly translated Do we have a tradition of historical scholarship? Bilokin', by the way, persuasively argues that it is too early to speak of such traditions. If we leave Ukraine and look to the political geography of history teaching, we find virtually no recognition that Ukraine has a history. In major Anglo-American, German and Japanese academic centers, Ukrainian history as a field (with a couple of important exceptions) does not exist per se; the exceptions only confirm the general rule. The Canadian government and Canadian Ukrainian emigrants subsidize Ukrainian history and culture in Canada, but here an abnormal situation exists in that nearly all the scholars are of Ukrainian descent. This fact has allowed mainstream historians to characterize Ukrainian history as searching for roots, national advocacy or some other partisan pleading, and to deny the field the valorization it seeks as