Stanislav KULCHYTSKY: “The historical process is not necessarily social progress; very often it is regression”

As the ancient Greeks rightly noted, a true scholar is not one who knows a great deal, but rather one who can compare and analyze the building blocks of his knowledge and examine facts. Our interviewee is Stanislav Kulchytsky, the noted Ukrainian historian, professor, and deputy director of the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of Sciences. Above all, he is a fascinating speaker.

Dr. Kulchytsky always analyzes every historical fact not individually but as elements in a chain of cause and effect. This particular trait ensures that everything he says always commands attention. One can argue with Prof. Kulchytsky, but there is no denying the solid and substantial footing and comprehensive nature of his views on history. As the scholar himself admits, to understand the hidden motive forces of, e.g., the Orange Revolution, he relied on many years of painstaking research on the revolutions of 1905, 1917-1919, forced collectivization and industrialization, and the events of 1991.

Stanislav Kulchytsky has written a series of articles for The Day on the preconditions, nature, and events of the Orange Revolution. Therefore, we begin our discussion with his views on this event, arguably the most important one in Ukraine’s political history of the 21st century.

“THE EVENTS OF 1991 FAILED TO RESOLVE BURNING PROBLEMS IN SOCIETY. THIS WAS THE MAIN CAUSE OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION”

“Dr. Kulchytsky, your publications on the history of the Orange Revolution have generated wide interest. If you compare our recent experience with the situation in Russia, at what stage of development is our northern neighbor? Is it at an evolutionary stage or are they still experiencing the revolutionary process that began in 1991?”

“Frankly speaking, I would say that at the moment Russia is not experiencing anything. There is virtually no development. I get the impression that one anticommunist revolution, i.e., the collapse of communism in 1991, did not resolve all the problems in the former Soviet republics and it could not. The Baltic nations are a separate case. They were joined to the USSR later than the other republics and preserved the structures of a civil society. The same can be said of our western Ukraine, even though it is significantly different.

“All the republics that went through the communist revolution (from 1918 to 1938) had the best representatives of their societies exterminated, and only those who could put up resistance remained. Here, of course, the historical process was more tragic and complex. In effect, the events of 1991 failed to resolve the burning problems within society. Let us consider what happened then.

“Without a doubt, a mutated communist civilization vanished. But the old nomenklatura, which represented a single organized force, remained in power. This nomenklatura continued to control political processes in the new conditions. Yet with the dictatorship gone, socioeconomic processes started to develop freely. Structures independent of the state began to emerge, forming a civil society. Economic structures, which were mainly oligarchic, began to appear. But they came to depend on the global market. This was demonstrated especially clearly in the days of the Orange Revolution, when the US ambassador had the nerve to resort to sharp language in his conversations with high-ranking representatives of our economic and political elites, who were looking for shortcuts to resolve the problem of the people gathered in Independence Square. He could do this because Ukraine had by then tapped into the global economy. The Iron Curtain fell a long time ago, making such tragedies as the events that took place in Novocherkassk in 1962 impossible.

“How did it all turn out? It turned out that the anticommunist revolution had to happen twice. The first revolution marked the disintegration of communism, while the second revolution was a culmination of the period of transformation, during which new economic and civic structures developed, new people appeared and established themselves, a new generation grew up (here I should note that I have strong doubts that it would be possible for these new people to come to power other than through a revolution). A colored revolution is a profound notion that embodies the second stage of the anticommunist revolution. Russia, unlike Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, did not pass through the second stage of the revolution. Meanwhile, these revolutions should objectively take place in every country that was dominated by communism, that is, also in Russia. It’s another matter that the duration of the transformation process can differ: in Ukraine it took 15 years, whereas in Russia it might take as long as 25 years. But even there this second stage of the revolution is inevitable. Why? Because, among other things, Russia does not have a dictatorship now. Everything depends on the people and how long society will put up with shouldering the burden of a state that cannot be considered lawful. These are the conclusions I have drawn from my analysis of the Orange Revolution, which has also provided an opportunity to revisit the entire period of Ukrainian history beginning with 1905.”

“In examining the events of 1991, you wrote that their characteristic feature was the fact that the nomenklatura, the only motive force at the time, abandoned the ideological values of communism. Are you absolutely certain that these values still existed at this time?”

“Objectively speaking, we can see that there is still the Communist Party of Ukraine and Petro Symonenko, along with the people who support him.”

“But don’t you think that, of all people, Petro Symonenko is convincing proof that the leaders of the CPU have nothing in common with communist ideology per se. They have more to do with pragmatism, which is a completely different thing.”

“They are no doubt materialists. They keenly sense what kind of situation in Ukraine would be most comfortable for them. They draw support from the older generation, which is why they are in parliament. Occasionally, they garner the golden share in parliamentary battles.”

“If you look closely, political parties in our society are still unable to form their own body of voters with stable ideological principles. Perhaps this is the ‘product of the collapse’ of communism, which you mentioned.”

“Absolutely. Our society cannot shift instantly from one dimension to the next.”

“WHAT IS THE PRIME SOVIET VALUE? IT IS PATERNALISM, THE HABIT OF THINKING THAT THE STATE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU IN ALL CASES, DOWN TO THE TINIEST DETAIL.”

“I agree. But perhaps it serves somebody’s interests not to let society move into this next dimension, thereby keeping voters in a state that would guarantee a trouble-free life for the leaders? Another important point is that it is extremely difficult or downright impossible to single out one political and ideological trend or another in society and say that we are dealing with staunch liberals, who have proved this with their words and deeds, or with true-blue socialists. Do you agree?”

“Perhaps the problem is that a large proportion of voters can’t or don’t want to give up their old, Soviet-era views. What is the prime Soviet value? It is paternalism, the habit of thinking that the state will take care of you in all cases, down to the tiniest detail. And when the Soviet system could no longer feed society, the state crumbled. This proved to be a tragedy for many people, for everyone worked for the government, in the public sector, and there was no private enterprise. Not everyone managed to adapt to the new times, to living in a market economy.”

“One would think that people would have experienced a ‘destatization’ in the past decade.”

“Notably, an overwhelming majority of jobs are now being created in the private sector, which is very important.”

“On the other hand, however, prices often depend on the steps taken by officials.”

“This is a result of the close symbiosis of political and business elites. Objectively speaking, this is the first stage in the transition from the Soviet economic system to a market economy. Perhaps the real path for such a transition involves the formation of financial and industrial groups, which in fact has happened in Ukraine. It will do little good to call for the elimination of such groups. This should not be done. However, they must be kept in check by the government, which must be kept in check by parliament, and parliament, in turn, by the public. Ideally, this is how it should be.

“There’s another interesting thing. What is the difference between Ukraine’s western oblasts and the Donbas? The fundamental difference is that the absolute majority of Donbas residents are employees of large and sometimes gigantic public sector enterprises that turned into proverbial white elephants in the early 1990s. But along came people who were soon able to get things moving, meaning the so-called Donetsk people, who established control over the Donbas economy. Unlike the Donbas, Ukraine’s west lacks major enterprises. Many western Ukrainians saw a way out of the economic crisis by earning a living abroad or developing small businesses. This provided a basis for the creation of different, mostly small, parties. The Donetsk and Dnipro economic region followed a different path of political and economic development. In a sense it saved Ukraine during the most difficult period of the mid- 1990s, some credit for which goes to those same financial and industrial groups, although a favorable price situation in the global market, especially for metal traders, also played a role. That was when the confrontation between Ukraine’s west and east began, fanned by politicians. There was a certain socioeconomic background to this. Basically, I think that divisions between the two parts of the country along linguistic, religious, or any other rights are absolutely artificial.”

“WHEN IT COMES TO THE EVENTS OF 2004-2005, IT IS TOO EARLY TO PUT A FULL STOP; PERHAPS A COMMA IS CALLED FOR HERE”

“Dr. Kulchytsky, let us proceed to another topic. Not only has the Orange Revolution become the subject of historical analysis, it has already made it into textbooks for fifth graders. What are your comments on this?”

“But this textbook contains only one paragraph on the revolution.”

“Perhaps the size, whether it’s a paragraph or a page, doesn’t matter, but the very fact that it is there does.”

“How could it be otherwise? One textbook or another always ends with an item on the most recent elections. In this case, the latest elections coincided with the Orange Revolution. In my view, it has changed society, and these changes are very discernible in the current opposition parties (former parties of power), which are replicating the style of the former opposition and resorting to such methods as appealing to the masses and speaking on their behalf. The opposition parties are taking advantage of wide-ranging opportunities that have become available to them, none of which they had before.”

“Do you agree with the description of the Orange Revolution as a ‘revolution of expectations’ that more often than not remain unfulfilled?”

“They are not, there’s no doubt about it. If you look at the party of power through a magnifying glass, you will see that the reigns of power are in the hands of people who are all too familiar. After all, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, and Kinakh occupied high-ranking posts under Leonid Kuchma. The political elite has split in half. It is important, however, that a new generation of politicians has come to power, a generation that has fewer Soviet traits than the one before.

“There are also interesting statistics from a survey that examined the Ukrainian population’s attitude toward the state, including the uniformed services, over a period of 10 years — from 1994 to 2004. It was conducted by the Institute of Sociology at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. Impressively, throughout these 10 years, 70% of those polled invariably called it a criminal state. These statistics were published in the press. The conclusions, if any, that the ruling elite drew from these statistics are a different matter.

“Personally for me, the most important consideration is not so much the Orange Revolution itself as the processes that have been unfolding in its wake before our eyes. When it comes to the events of 2004-2005, it is too early to put a full stop; perhaps a comma is called for here. To me, as a historian, this is obvious. There’s another obvious thing. A historian must seek to understand all the key events in the past 100 years, beginning with the revolution of 1905, which is something that I do. Without a doubt, analyzing the Orange Revolution helps me to interpret them. This way one can draw important conclusions.

“The following is an example of one such conclusion. Under the communists there was no division between state and society. Both fused into a grim single whole known as a ‘state-society.’ Not only did we have a totalitarian system, the kind that Germany had in the 1930s, we also had Lenin’s veritable ‘state-commune,’ of which he had been dreaming since 1917. How is one to trace the evolution of this ‘state-commune’ throughout the decades and the changes that it underwent? On the other hand, one must analyze and comprehend our views of our society, both past and present. One must determine the scholarly instruments to be used in this work. Of course, one cannot use the Marxist-Leninist method because it is basically a collection of speculations elevated to the level of scholarly disciplines, known as ‘scientific communism.’ Contemporary historical scholarship has effective methods of study, such as the method proposed by Arnold Toynbee. But even Toynbee hasn’t provided conclusive answers to these key questions: How should one interpret historical facts? How is one to establish connections between cause and effect? Frankly, I doubt that it is even possible to have an objective view of history.”

“YOU CAN’T CHOOSE YOUR PARENTS. LIKEWISE, A NATION CANNOT CHOOSE THE TERRITORY IT INHABITS OR THE TIME IN WHICH IT LIVES”

“What about a system of values? Isn’t this the key to the problem?”

“The fact is that a system of values is no doubt the primary consideration. Based on certain values, the historian selects the object of foremost attention, be it the economy, culture, or public consciousness. Naturally, different scholars approach this system differently, which is why they draw different conclusions about the course of the historical process. The historical process is not necessarily social progress; very often it is regression. Returning to Arnold Toynbee, I must point out that this outstanding 20th-century historian is credited with developing certain criteria that can be used to combine a set of historical facts into a single notion (for Toynbee this notion is ‘civilization’), and to trace the development of, say, ancient civilization from the murky past and compare it with other civilizations. Even in the current age of globalization it is a gross misconception to think that substantial differences between civilizations are vanishing. This is an absolutely superficial impression. Fundamental differences undoubtedly remain, even though from the viewpoint of technical progress nations are drifting together.”

“How real is the danger that Ukraine will become a participant in unforeseeable global processes without having formed and consolidated its own national identity?”

“It is an eternal truism that you can’t choose your parents. Likewise, a nation cannot choose the territory it inhabits or the time in which it lives. We are the way we are. And with this we should go out into the world or else we will be absorbed. The historical abyss will devour our national identity.

“I must confess that in my studies I always want to combine our national history with world history. I’m always curious about the way our history is seen by scholars who search for the most global patterns in social development. Norman Davies is one example. Unfortunately, in his works I haven’t found much in the way of scholarly conclusions concerning Ukraine. Another issue that has long piqued my interest is the sources of a civil society to which we aspire. Here the starting point for me is the belief that communism and civil society are absolutely incompatible.”

“What about the Russian commune? How far removed is it from a civil society?”

“You see, even 19th-century Russian thinkers thought that society could be united on this basis and that the commune was a guarantee of social progress and freedom. But time has proved these hopes wrong, because these are two different things: fundamental rights of the individual as opposed to the commune, with its patriarchal and collectivist system. The commune has its beginnings in the Trypillian culture and the primitive archaic family. All of these structures represent ancient stages in humanity’s development. Meanwhile, a civil society emerged in the expanses of North America when it was being colonized. Clearly, this society needed a core around which to form and this core was the Englishman, who was a Protestant at the same time (these two factors were crucial). This type of person acted as a kind of gravitational center. The American Constitution and laws appeared later. It is important to understand that America is a society before it is a state. As a society it is powerful. As a state it can be different because it is governed by humans, who can be different. Most importantly, America is a world leader primarily because it has developed structures of a civil society and not because it is the world’s most technologically advanced country. In this case technological progress is a derivative of a civil society.”

“HISTORIANS DID NOT DEVELOP AN UNDERSTANDING OF COLLECTIVIZATION OVERNIGHT”

“That’s very interesting. But let us return to the vision of our history.”

“In analyzing the historical experience of the 20th century, one must bear in mind that Euro-Atlantic civilization experienced an acute crisis that was connected to the transformation of a traditional society into a civil and democratic society. As for the events in Russia, there this process took a qualitatively different and far from evolutionary course: a revolutionary wave arose, at first a Soviet wave, not a Bolshevik one. In the early months of 1917, the Soviet trend in the Russian revolution had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks. After all, the first soviets [councils] were controlled by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, until autumn 1917. Yet the Bolsheviks managed to infiltrate the Soviet trend. Although they were a mere drop in the revolutionary bucket, a fact recognized by Vladimir Lenin, they managed to identify themselves with it. They transformed the nature of the revolution and in fact stopped it in order to begin their own revolution. They began it the way Peter the Great did it, namely by imposing reforms from the top down in an exceptionally cruel manner. Among these Bolshevik reforms were industrialization, collectivization, and the so-called cultural revolution, all of which complemented one another.

“Historians did not develop an understanding of Bolshevik collectivization overnight. It was only with time that they acquired a clear idea of the dispossession of wealthy kurkul peasants and terror by famine. Now many serious studies have been published both in Russia and Ukraine, which offer a fundamental examination of all these issues as well as brainwashing and manipulation of public opinion, without which collectivization and all the ensuing horrors would have been impossible.”

“In this connection we must recall the concept of a ‘post-genocidal society’ proposed by the late James Mace, who wrote frequently on this issue on the pages of The Day. There have been calls made at the international level to recognize the Holodomor, the manmade famine of 1932-1933, as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation. But don’t you think that this requires some concrete efforts and shifts in the consciousness of both Ukrainian and Western societies? Otherwise, such recognition would be pointless.”

“Undoubtedly, it is very important to us for the world to recognize that the Holodomor of 1932-33 was in fact genocide. I have a lot to say on this issue, which is a separate discussion altogether. I will only mention the attitude adopted by the international scholarly community toward this problem.

“This past July I went to Berlin to attend a congress of historians, in particular a panel devoted to the question of the Ukrainian Holodomor. There I spoke with the German professor Gerhard Simon, author of numerous studies on this subject. Serious scholars believe that the Ukrainian Holodomor was an act of genocide. The Italian professor Andrea Graziosi published his article in the Ukrainian Historical Journal, in which he examined in great detail the arguments of those who consider the Holodomor to be an act of genocide and those who think otherwise. He tried to compare these arguments and find out why scholars are failing to reach agreement.

“There are political reasons behind this and they are close to the surface. Think about it: as the self-proclaimed successor of the USSR, Russia is freely printing all sorts of books about Stalin and the era of the ‘chieftain of peoples,’ but denying historical conclusions that are not to its liking. The Russians categorically refuse to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33 as an act of genocide. Otherwise, they would have to acknowledge moral responsibility for Stalin’s crimes. For similar reasons Turkey refuses to recognize its responsibility for the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”

“This circumstance has not prevented Turkey from actively seeking EU membership. There is another striking thing. Immediately before the UN was supposed to vote on its Ukrainian Holodomor resolution, the Ukrainian delegation withdrew the wording about it being an act of genocide, which created quite a stir internationally but passed without notice in Ukraine.”

“I remember this event very well. It happened in 2003. One diaspora organization demanded an official explanation from Natalia Zarudna, then deputy state secretary of Ukraine’s foreign ministry. Their discussion took place at the Teacher’s House in Kyiv. According to Ms. Zarudna, out of pragmatic considerations it was important to Ukraine for the very fact of the Holodomor to be recognized, even without the wording about it being an act of genocide. Otherwise, it would be difficult to accomplish anything at all, because the US and Russia were opposed to this wording. I don’t know whether this pragmatism justified itself, but the fact is that in the end we gained a toothless resolution without official recognition of this atrocity, which was an atrocity no matter how you look at it.

“One thing in particular is harming the cause. Unfortunately, representatives of both the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukrainian political and public figures not only compare the Holodomor to the Holocaust, but even identify the former with the latter, speaking about the ‘Ukrainian Holocaust.’ For example, this approach is discernible in the recently published two-volume collection of Holodomor eyewitness accounts, prepared by Kyiv-Mohyla Academy students under the editorship of Professor Yuriy Mytsyk. Let us consider whether it is appropriate to use such a term. There is in fact such a thing as the ‘Ukrainian Holocaust.’ But what was it? The ‘Ukrainian Holocaust’ was the methodical extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews, residents of Ukraine, during World War II. This was the ‘Ukrainian Holocaust’ in the strict meaning of this term.”

“Perhaps this is not an essentially scholarly but rather a figurative description, which implies the scale of this tragedy.”

“Let it be a figure of speech. But think about its substance. It means that Stalin exterminated Ukrainians everywhere he could find them, today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, etc. Does this correspond to the truth?”

“The answer is obvious. But the bottom line is: When will Ukraine finally begin to defend its own system of values like other countries? After all, talk of pragmatism in this case simply hides the internal collaborationism, to put it plainly. There is another important question. Had the UN adopted a resolution to acknowledge the act of genocide against the Ukrainians, what would that have accomplished in practice?”

“Speaking about Russia’s response in particular, I don’t believe that a resolution to this effect would change Russia’s official stance, if only because the Russians’ counterargument is that in the 1930s, famine was everywhere. Indeed, Ukraine was not the only one affected by famine. Still, we must have a clear understanding of collectivization and its hidden meaning, why there was famine and why Ukraine found itself at the center of this tragedy, as well as the mechanism of artificially provoking famine in Ukraine.

“The situation in Ukraine was fundamentally different from events that were unfolding in other areas of the former USSR, including the regions affected by utterly horrible famine, such as Kazakhstan. But this fundamental difference has to be proven and explained both by the example of the 1932-33 Holodomor and within the broader context of Ukraine’s historical development in the 1920s and 30s. It has to be substantiated and explained within the context of the Kremlin’s so-called ‘national policy’ of the 1920s. This subject offers ample scope for research. A brief formula to describe the essence of this policy would be ‘two bears in a single bear hole.’ After all, despite being a union republic, Ukraine was large enough to be considered comparable to Russia, while the remaining republics were simply not comparable. This is why the Kremlin was ‘very concerned’ about Ukraine. It should also be recalled that in 1918-1920 Soviet (essentially Russian) armies were sent to ‘liberate’ Ukraine three times. Separatist trends in Ukraine caused great concern among the Kremlin chiefs.”

“LEGENDS ABOUT LENIN, ‘A BRIEF COURSE ON BOLSHEVIK HISTORY’, AND A FUTURE WITHOUT A MUTATED CIVILIZATION”

“Why do many people still believe that Joseph Stalin was bad and Vladimir Lenin was good?”

“I must confess that I used to think that myself. It was only when I began a really detailed study of Holodomor history that my beliefs were channeled into a completely different vein. Moreover, I was a Leninist. If you think about it, it is a fact that under Lenin famine was on the same scale as under Stalin. The 1921 famine in Ukraine showed clear signs of terror by famine. Even back then the remains of grain were expropriated in famine-stricken areas in order to suppress the resistance movement.

“In general, this is due to the fact that several Soviet generations were strictly raised in the spirit of the ‘Lenin legend.’ Clearly, this legend had nothing in common with the real historical figure. Even now (and I plan to prove this) our historical education and science rely on the ‘structural framework’ of the Stalinist Brief Course of History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). Of course, this book was rejected a long time ago (it should be noted that Ponomarev’s book, The History of the Communist Party of the USSR, which was used for a very long time in the 1960s-1980s, was essentially Stalinist in nature). The ‘structural framework’ has remained despite the fact that contemporary books address the Holodomor and Stalinist repressions. This is because the old scheme, which is still being used, describes as two separate events the February Revolution followed by the October Revolution, and so forth. There are many building blocks in this scheme.”

“Still, why do many people continue to believe that, unlike Stalin, Lenin was a good guy?”

“Stalin crossed the line of evil and crimes. Meanwhile, Lenin retreated when he visualized the scale of victimization that would ensue from this enforced, cruel, and merciless building of communism, and instead implemented the New Economic Policy. Moreover, he was prepared to give up the idea of the commune-state (we all know how important this concept was in the Bolshevik ideology). After December 1922 Lenin became disabled. He was alive only in the physical sense. The people who remained after him split into two groups of unmatched strength. One group (Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov) wanted to continue pursuing the New Economic Policy. The other group, mostly composed of leading party members, wanted to go all the way and break the people to the bitter end. And the latter group won.”

“You mentioned the unbreakable framework of the Stalinist ‘Brief Course of Bolshevik History.’ What, in your view, should replace this framework?”

“We need to understand clearly that the communist revolution had been taking place in the country for two decades (until 1938). We must clearly understand its consequences for both the economy and interpersonal relations. This is how totalitarianism was consolidated: initially at the level of state power and then in the public consciousness.”

“You used a very interesting term to describe the communist civilization: a mutated civilization. How do we get rid of this mutation?”

“By working. In the current situation this is the only answer and the only way. You know, I believe in the importance of historians’ contributions (if, of course, they are conscientious and examine facts in an honest manner), because history has always been an exceptionally potent lever for influencing public consciousness. This awareness gives fundamental sense to my modest work and my life.”