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UKRAINE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 183interested parties will consist of compatriots who live in the wide world.When we get around to putting the idea about direct contacts with thewide world into action, we should take a look at the Bulgarians and theSerbs—incidentally, peoples much more "peasant" in character than areUkrainians. Their young elites begin their preparation with the mastery ofseveral foreign languages as a prelude to study in the West. But, above all,Ukrainians have to hurry when they go about establishing direct contacts onan appropriate level. Otherwise, the "wide world" which they will quicklyabsorb without languages, travel, and effort will consist of imitations ofjeans, of hip packs, of Pepsi-Cola, and of rock music groups.* *The genre of this article—a short, general outline—does not require footnotes.Still, for the purposes of example and contrast, I shall mention twoworks which are close to its subject-matter: Eduard Winter, Byzanz undRom im Kampf um die Ukraine. 955-1939 (Leipzig, 1942) (the author ismostly interested in problems of ecclesiastical organization); and Ivan L.Rudnytsky, "Ukraine between East and West," in the collection of essaysby the same author, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History (Edmonton,1987), pp. 1-9 (the text first appeared in 1963; Ukrainian translation, 1976;Polish translation, 1988; the author considers the rôle the West and the twoEasts—the nomadic and the Byzantine one—played in the formation ofUkrainian national character). Finally, in a number of articles that appearedin the periodical Suëasnisf between 1963 and 1991, a number of authors(such as George Luc'kyj, Omeljan Pritsak, George Shevelov, Vasyl' Stus,and George Tamavs'kyj, to mention the most prominent ones) discussed—mostly prescriptively—Ukraine's choice between Eastern and Westernorientations, with Byzantium usually getting bad marks, and jeans and electricguitars, occasionally good ones. Cf. also Bohdan Strumiński,"Sućasnisf (1961-1991)," Kultura (Paris), 536 (May 1992): 120-32, esp.pp. 128-31.Harvard UniversityPostscript, June 1992: The recent rapid and spectacular changes in Ukraine do notdispose of problems discussed in the present paper. Such changes do tend to turn theattention of local elites and of Ukrainians abroad toward the West and the future—agood thing—but at the risk of foreshortening and blurring the historical perspective.The Byzantine heritage of both Greek-Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Ukrainian populationsand more recent long-range developments—the latest of which is the Russiancultural impact upon a large part of Ukrainian lands—can recede into the backgroundin the heady atmosphere of change, but their effects will not disappear overnight.