International Association of Ukrainian Studies seeks reform in ...

4 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2005No. 28Yevhen Stakhiv returns to Donetsk,where he once led nationalist undergroundZenon ZawadaYevhen Stakhiv admires the Kyiv skyline after his trip to Donetsk, where he hadbeen involved in organizing the region’s underground nationalist movementduring World War II.International Association...(Continued from page 1)Hagen reported.“If Ukrainian studies is supposed to besomething they care about, they could’vehelped,” Dr. von Hagen told The Weekly,referring to the Ukrainian government.As a result of the restricted funding,Dr. von Hagen said in his speech, holdingthe IAUS congress every three yearsis likely beyond the Ukrainian government’sfinancial ability and willingness.He suggested hosting the congressevery four or five years instead, andmoving it to a foreign country, such asPoland “whose national association hasbeen the most active.”Another crisis facing IAUS is its rapidgrowth that the congress budget cannotaccommodate, Dr. von Hagen said.Organizers received 1,300 applicants for acongress that typically accommodatedbetween 600 and 700 participants, he said.As a result, hundreds of scholars werenot included in the program, particularlythose belonging to the heavily representedKyiv contingent. Dr. von Hagen alsosingled out Deputy Minister forHumanitarian Affairs Mykola Tomenkoand Culture Minister Oksana Bilozir forities with its educational missions.Reforming the National Academy ofSciences has been under discussion for along time, Ms. Skrypnyk noted.She said she was concerned that shiftingIAUS conferences abroad wouldlimit the number of Ukrainian scholarsable to attend. Keeping the congress inUkraine also enables Western scholars tore-immerse themselves in Ukrainian lifeand culture, Ms. Skrypnyk added.While Ukrainians in the academicestablishment weren’t entirely receptive toDr. von Hagen’s criticisms, some academicsfrom the West welcomed his frankness.“It’s a bureaucratized, centralized,paternalistic academic culture inUkraine,” said Olga Andriewsky, a professorof history at Trent University inPeterborough, Ontario. “Everything isabout pecking orders. That’s why his callfor democratization is important.”An area that most scholars cited as indire need of reform is Ukrainian academia’srefusal to acknowledge degreesobtained abroad, or to allow studentswho achieve foreign degrees to matriculateback into the Ukrainian system.Scholars from 17 nations attended thefour-day IAUS conference and took partin about 125 overlapping sessions androundtables.by Zenon ZawadaKyiv Press BureauDONETSK – It was in Donetsk thatYevhen Stakhiv heard “surzhyk” for thefirst time, in 1942.He also saw a Ukraine different fromhis hometown of Peremyshl, meetingsurzhyk-speaking Russians andUkrainian-speaking Greeks.During his year and a half in Donetsk,Mr. Stakhiv realized Ukraine is a land ofdiverse people and cultures, causing himto shed his staunch Banderite views toadopt a more democratic, pluralisticapproach to Ukrainian nationalism.“I recall Donetsk as my evolution fromtotalitarianism to democracy, becausethere they taught me how to be a democrat,”said Mr. Stakhiv, who at 87 is stilltraveling, involved in scholarly pursuits,giving interviews to Ukrainian media and,of course, still charming the ladies.Mr. Stakhiv, a resident of New Jersey,returned to Donetsk to attend the congress ofthe International Association of UkrainianStudies. More than a half century ago, hehad been one of the leaders of Organizationof Ukrainian Nationalists underground inUkraine’s industrial heartland.The city is nothing like it was when hearrived in February 1942 in order to organizenationalists, Mr. Stakhiv said. Back then,it was known as Stalino. The city center hada simple grid layout, surrounded by mines.When the Nazi forces retreated from Russia,they burned and ruined Donetsk, he said.The city center as it appears today isentirely a product of impressive post-war,Soviet urban planning, consisting of spacious,tree-lined boulevards and attractiveparks.When he arrived, a horrible famine hadgripped the region at the time, Mr. Stakhivsaid. His first contacts in the undergroundwere with a teachers’ cooperative inHorlivka, a city northeast of Donetsk.Surprisingly enough, Mr. Stakhiv saidCommunists had not dominated theregion at the time, or not as much as theydo presently, he joked.There, he met Ukrainians who spokewhat he assumed was Russian. He asked ayoung boy named Volodia why his parentsspoke Ukrainian, but he spoke Russian.“As if I am speaking in Russian! I amspeaking in Yasynuvatskyi,” the boyreplied, referring to the Yasynuvata areaoutside of Donetsk, where a form ofsurzhyk was spoken.Among the people he met in Donbaswere Ukrainians who had fled theHolodomor – the Famine-Genocide of1932-1933, Mr. Stakhiv said. Working inthe mines ensured that one wouldn’t gohungry, he explained.During his underground activity in theDonbas region, Mr. Stakhiv said he mostfeared the German SS officers, whoasked local police to report to them anyonespeaking in a Halychyna dialect.On one occasion when crossing apatrolled bridge, local police stopped Mr.Stakhiv, who cried out loud in German,“The Russians are swine!”“So whenever the police stopped me, Ispoke to them in this coarse sort ofGerman,” Mr. Stakhiv said.Loose networks of underground nationalistshoused and fed Mr. Stakhiv. Heremembered discovering warehouses fullof fruits and pickled cabbage, cucumbersand tomatoes during the summer of 1942.“And we ate a vinaigrette,” Mr. Stakhivsaid. “Every day for lunch and dinner weate a vinaigrette. And there were beets.But then later there were no tomatoes,there were no pickles, there were no beets;so then the vinaigrette just became pickledcabbage. And that was good, too.”After organizing nationalists in thecities of Horlivka, Mariupol, and Staryiand Novyi Kramatorsk, Mr. Stakhiv wasforced to flee Donetsk.Under torture by the Germans, one mangave Mr. Stakhiv’s name to the Gestapo.That man’s daughter, with whom he hadstruck up a romance, told Mr. Stakhiv thatthe Gestapo was looking for him.“She yelled, ‘Flee! The Gestapo are waitingfor you. They took away my father,’ ”Mr. Stakhiv said. “And I fled Donetsk at theend of June 1942. If not for this girl ...”However, Mr. Stakhiv remained in theDonbas region until June 1943.During that time, his political viewsunderwent a dramatic change. When hefirst arrived in the Donbas, Mr. Stakhivsaid he was a staunch nationalist whobelieved in a one-party dictatorship witha chauvinistic program summarized bythe slogan, “Ukraine for Ukrainians.”“They told me that we’d better getlost,” Mr. Stakhiv said. “There are manynationalities here, and if you say Ukrainefor Ukrainians, then they’ll either killyou, they’ll chase you away or you’d betterrun away yourself.”First, he got rid of the slogan,“Ukraine for Ukrainians,” Mr. Stakhivsaid. Then he let go of the idea thatUkrainians are a higher race, as asserted(Continued on page 19)Zenon ZawadaDr. Mark von Hagen sits at an outdoor restaurant in Donetsk, as he speaks aboutthe sixth congress of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies.allowing Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves(Pecherska Lavra) to deteriorate, thearchival system to collapse and thenation’s film industry to decline.Additionally, the Ukrainian languageis weak and unstable in contemporaryconditions, said Dr. von Hagen, whodelivered his speech in Ukrainian, whichhe began studying only three years agowhen elected IAUS president. He builthis Ukrainian skills on his fluent Russian.Mr. Tomenko delivered a speech at theconference’s opening session, but leftjust before Dr. von Hagen spoke. He toldRadio Svoboda afterwards that Dr. vonHagen does not have an adequate viewof Ukrainian culture and even criticizedIAUS.“These books of between 300 and 500volumes, which are published with budgetaryfunding, don’t develop the Ukrainianlanguage or culture,” Mr. Tomenko said,referring to the academic journal publishedfollowing each IAUS conference.Hanna Skrypnyk, the IAUS vice-presidentfor this year’s conference and presidentof Ukraine’s National Associationof Ukrainianists, said there is no conflictwithin the IAUS.In his criticism of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, Dr. von Hagensaid it is overly concentrated in Kyiv;dominated by the natural and applied sciences,while ignoring social sciences;and unable to integrate its research activ-These leading Ukrainian studies academicscompared their research and discussedthe intricacies of Ukrainian history,linguistics, culture and ethnography,among other numerous subjects.Receiving special recognition at theconference was Donetsk native and formerSoviet political prisoner IvanDzyuba, who was awarded an honorarydoctorate by Donetsk NationalUniversity, and Bohdan Osadczuk, a prolificjournalist and professor at theUkrainian Free University in Germany.At the final session of the congress onJuly 2, Dr. von Hagen announced thatastronomer Dr. Yaroslav Yatskiv ofUkraine was elected as his successor tothe IAUS presidency.IAUS national association representativesalso selected Dr. Giovanna BrogiBercoff, a professor of Slavistics at theUniversity of Milan in Italy, as the newIAUS vice-president.Current plans are for the IAUS to holdits next congress in Symferopol, Crimea.Bringing the conference to Crimea willraise Ukrainian consciousness there, Ms.Skrypnyk said.Among the most visible and tangiblereforms to emerge from the congress isthat IAUS will consider hosting a smallerconference in Italy in the next year or twowith the purpose of fostering Ukrainianstudies outside of Ukraine and providinga more intense, academic atmosphere.