Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her
March 12, 2007 – 8:38 pmRepeatedly, the only manner in which those who disagree with my views respond by saying that I do not know Ukraine because I do not live there. This feeble attempt at engaging in debate is not only the preserve of Ukrainian citizens but also of diaspora Ukrainians who have lived in Ukraine and, as we would say in America, have “gone nativeâ€. The reality is very different. If it was indeed the case that one had to live in a country to understand it then the world would be faced by major difficulties. Ambassadors based abroad for 3-4 years would no longer presumably understand the country they were representing. Former US Ambassadors to Ukraine now based at Washington think tanks would no longer, if this argument was true, be able to provide good analysis on Ukraine. Meanwhile, government departments devoted to providing research and analysis for government foreign policy and their Ambassadors abroad would be also not useful as they would not be based in the country they were analyzing.
And what of the countless departments in think tanks and Universities which have researchers who work on regions of the world (such as my own Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies)? Do the numerous centers devoted to the study of Eastern Europe and the former USSR really know nothing? Does the Association for the Study of Nationalities, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Canadian Slavic Association and the British Slavic and East European Studies (BASEES) bring together people who are not really “specialistsâ€. Indeed, why am I bothering to attend the BASEES conference in Cambridge later this month? Indeed, if the argument holds true why is there a Ukrainian radio in the BBC in London, Radio Liberty in Prague and Voice of America in Washington?
Of course, arguments voiced from Ukraine that you only understand Ukraine if you live there are preposterous. The claim reflects an inferiority complex and a lack of countervailing arguments that they can bring forward to debates.
They also show a lack of understanding of the globalised world we live in. Globalization means a psychologically smaller world and one in which information is available 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world.
I will never forget a Museum of Emigration in Adelaide in beautiful South Australia (home to the Barossa valley where the best Australian wines are made). The museum painted a difficult life for Britons emigrating to Australia until the 1960s as it was so far from home. I felt a lot of sympathy for those emigrants that included Ukrainians and Italians who emigrated to Australia after World War II.
Today, this is no longer the case. Cheap international telephone calls, mobile telephones, air travel, the internet and satellite television make it no longer feel that you are so cut off and isolated. We moved to Canada in 2001 and although, like all emigrants, you miss home (London and Europe) it is easier to live here because of the internet (where we read the British media), we can watch BBC Canada and BBC America, follow international news on BBC World television, listen to British radio on the internet and travel regularly to Britain and Europe.
The same is true of Ukraine as one no longer has to live in Ukraine to experience and understand the country. In North America we have Ukrainian television on paid cable channels. In Toronto we have 2 free local Ukrainian channels, Kontakt and Svitohliad. We can read the Ukrainian media on the internet and in case we missed anything there are free internet web mailings of Western and Ukrainian articles. In Toronto there are at least 5 Ukrainian newspapers.
In Washington DC, where I have worked for 3 years, there is a constant flow of guests from Ukraine, either for short visits or on longer fellowships. Plus, we have a large fourth wave diaspora, including Myroslava Gongadze and Mykola Melnychenko. I will be speaking for the second time to the Orange Wave in Chicago in late March, a group that was established by fourth wave Ukrainians. Personal contact with Ukraine, through visitors and visiting Ukraine, is also therefore available to keep one in touch.
My father’s house in Yorkshire, England is not untypical. He has 6 Ukrainian television channels that he watches on a daily basis. My father-in-law does the same in Nottingham.
I remember watching the second television debate of the 2004 presidential elections in Yorkshire before flying to Ukraine to be an observer for the repeat second round on 26 December. It was surreal to watch the debate in my English home town with my father commenting on Viktor Yanukovych’s un-intelligible utterances.
But, my ability to follow events in Ukraine does not end there. My father is a Ukrainian citizen since 1998 and voted for the first time in an election in 1999 (it turned his stomach to travel from Yorkshire to London to vote in the second round in the Ukrainian Embassy for Leonid Kuchma). Britain is unique in the Ukrainian diaspora in that a large group of Ukrainian political refugees never took up citizenship.
My father arrived in Britain in 1948 from Germany where he had been taken at the age of 15 in 1942 to be a slave labourer. Like fellow Ukrainians in Britain he had legal residency and went abroad on refugee travel documents. In 1997 the Ukrainian law on citizenship changed dropping the requirement for five years residency. One had only to prove being born in Ukraine and had not already become a citizen of another country (as Ukraine does not recognize dual citizenship). My father fulfilled these requirements.
Let us therefore remember that today we are all residents of a globalised world.
4 Responses to “Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her”
Understanding Ukraine..
In fact in our globalized world distance sometimes may be the requirement for a full understanding, to better grasp the whole of the process, and not get drowned in details.
Ukrainians living in Norway, for instance, get a perspective on Norwegian society, which ordinary Norwegians living in Norway are blindfolded of, because they may compare Norwegian reality to their own Ukrainian, and get culturally open and sensitive.
The same goes for you and me travelling to Ukraine, with our western background, which ordinary Ukrainians lack, and compensate by guessing and idealizing. That`s why we need each other in globalized world not only to learn about the other, but also to understand our self.
Thanks, Taras!
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.html
By Sigurd Lydersen on Mar 19, 2007
Poor Bastards..
Dear Taras,
I understand from the last posting at your blog and the answer you sent me for my comment yesterday below, that you experience some kind of trouble in your professional work towards Ukraine. In a Western context you are regarded a leading specialist on Ukrainian affairs, and that was why we invited you from Toronto to Oslo to give the main lecture at our seminar on Ukraine May 3-4 2004. From your reply I can tell that your last blog-posting is directed towards the Ukrainians, making use of the “living in Ukraine is a requirement to understand her”-argument, to raise a wall between you and them.
Even though I haven`t followed your extensive writing on Ukraine regularly, I`ve mentioned a certain tendency. There was this scandal around a certain minister of finance shortly after Yuschenkos inauguration, where you were a leading figure in the campaign against him, for not being able to produce the document proving that he in fact had the phd-degree he claimed to have. I remember I sent you an e-mail at this occasion, and challenged you on your persecution of the new Yuschenko-government, and got an irritated answer, that I should n`t bother to tell you what to write and not to write.
The same approach is evident in your post on Jurij Luzhkovs visit to Crimea from February 27, http://blog.taraskuzio.net/2007/02/27/why-should-we-be-surprised-that-luzhkov-does-it-again/, where you actually call for a USSR-style totalitarian banning of Luzhkov not to arrive at the Crimean peninsula, as if the mayor of Moscow was to be regarded some kind of Russian contagious disease.
It is not so hard to understand why responsible Ukrainians feel a need to distance themselves from persons pushing for such measures. To ban Luzkov from visiting Crimea would mean a major victory in the Russian-Ukrainian propaganda-war, and fuel the Russian charge that Yuschenko represent a revival of the Ukrainian fascism from WWII, which justifies the harshest counter-measures, in self-defence.
In this way you run the risk of being perceived by ordinary Ukrainians as one of the many provocateurs instigating conflict and justifying harsh counter-measures. My Crimean-tatarian wife Zeynep with whom I met in the dramatic days of the orange revolution, tells how the Crimean-tatarian leaders held to their people that they under no circumstances should give after to provocations, when they made their demonstrations in Simferopol in the end of the nineties. When we walked on the Bankova-street in Kiev at the end of the orange revolution, I was puzzled to learn that the demonstrators had made their own guard to protect the guard protecting the presidential administration. On my inquiry they explained it with the need to prevent instigating provocateurs from reaching the guard, and provoke counter-measures. I read in the Ukrainian newspapers how guards against provocateurs were established spontanously, and stumbling into one another in fulfilling their duties under the orange revolution in the streets of Kiev.
This concept of self-emerging and regulating systems, some sort of “organic politics” is in my view the fascinating piece about the Ukrainian orange revolution, as an expression not of the raise of a people repressed by Soviet totalitarism, but a people having collectively “graduated” from the “Soviet University” with good results, and making use of their competence to provide success for themselves in the globalized village our world is rapidly shrinking into.
As a westerner as your self, Taras, I sympatize with the stress of loosing the grip with the Ukrainians, no longer being perceived as the unquestionable authority from the victoriuos western world, but being parked and marginalised as someone who simply do not understand what it is all about, someone to be laughed at behind your back and even face to face. You are not the only western specialist on post-Soviet affairs having this most unpleasant experience these days. I was called for an inquiry by the Oslo police a couple of months ago, on the complaints from the in Norway famous former Moscow-correspondent Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld, who reported on the transformation-processes in the USSR around 1991, tried to make sense of it for his Norwegian viewers, and earned nice money on books of the same purpose, with him self as the main charachter, the safe Norwegian handling it all for all of us. He is famous for his remark to Gorbachev, when Gorbachev on his height said to him that he knew him, and he replied, that he knew him too. This poor man lost his grip in front of the orange revolution, when I confronted him with the activity of the Moscow-based journalist Dmitrij Kiselev, who speaks Norwegian, has been working in Norway, and has been most helpful for Steinfeld, who regards him his friend. In an Ukrainian context Kiselev is rightly regarded a leading Moscow provocateur, who with his weekly talk-show on ICTV played a quite dirty role in making use of the poisoning of Yuschenko to question his legitimacy, since he claimed to have been poisioned without the necessary evidence. Mr. Steinfeld simply did not cope with my criticism of his great friend Kiselev, and decided to sacrifice me, as some sort of invalid. That was why I was questioned by the local Oslo police, which asked me whether I would play guilty for having been a “menace” for the well-known Steinfeld, and thereby help them out of the pressure exerted on them from Steinfeld and the Norwegian State Television-company he answers to. Unfortunately I could not provide them this service, but have complained the whole bogus investigation in for the state attorney and head of the Oslo police, to have it stopped.
I`m grateful for your openess on these matters, Taras, making evident the painful personal reality of being put aside as someone less worthy without the “proper understanding”, instead of running to the police to make them take affair, as my old friend Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld has done in relation to me, or as George Bush did in relation to the old friend of the Americans Saddam Hussein, only to widen their own problems,
poor bastards..
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen
Taras Kuzio wrote:
From: “Taras Kuzio”
To:
Subject: RE: [Taras Kuzio Official Blog] Comment: “Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her”
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:29:47 -0400
Sugurd,
I could not agree more! It’s a pity not all Ukrainians see it that way.
Best wishes,
Taras
vladkuz wrote:
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:07:41 +0200
From: vladkuz
To: sigurd lydersen
Subject: Kuznetsov190307
Dear Sigurd:
Thank you very much for your kind message. “Better late than neverâ€.
I was also proven again and again that our world is too small and we are all home-folks. Let me mention only Gunnar Skirbekk, your wife and your participation in so called Orange revolution. Maybe we met at Independence square those days! Maybe I could find your face in my video!
Are you still interesting in studies of Soviet and post-Soviet Philosophy in particular and science in general?
From the list of addressees of your letter I concluded, that there is a group of Western and East scholars that wish to study the history of Soviet philosophy. Am I right?
To my mind, this field of study is highly important not only for historians and philosophers, but also for policymakers in the former USSR and the West. Negative experience is experience too.
Ironically, there is (at least in Ukraine) no wish and resources to write the TRUE history of philosophy/science in the former USSR and post-USSR and even analyze the present state.
I tried to get your dissertation. I am sorry, I do not know any Norwegian languages.
Do you read Russian and/or Ukrainian? I can send to you some my papers. Papers on philosophy are written mainly in Russian and English, those on terrible situation in the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine – in Ukrainian. I hope that your wife can read Ukrainian.
With best wishes,
Vlad
sigurd lydersen wrote:
Dear professor Vladimir Kuznecov at Institute of philosophy of the National Academy Of Sciences of Ukraine,
Finally I found your comment for my introduction on the Soviet heritage of philosophy at my blog dedicated for it: http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.html. From the empty blog established for the purpose of leaving the comment, I can tell that you wrote it in December. I realize now that I should have left my contact-info at the blog, as I am to be reached directly at my e-mail sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com, or by cell-phone + 47 99 25 84 17 or home-phone +47 21 39 74 72.
I hope you accept my sincere apologies for not replying for your comment before, Vlad, as I do not check the blog regularly for rare comments, and I stumbled upon this one only by coincident. Checking out your home-page at http://www.kuz.org.ua/eindex.htm, I`m overwhelmed to realize with whom I`m dealing, and most grateful and humble for the interest you have payed for my blog on Soviet philosophy. I regard your comment not only a greeting and and aknowledgement from a Ukrainian professional college, but also the great institution which you represent, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
The bias you points out towards Moscow-centered philosophers in my and other western authors approach to this Soviet intellectual history, corresponds with the general impression I got while dealing with Ukrainian authors in front of the socalled orange revolution. The Ukrainian writer and journalist and at that time secretary of the National Ukrainian Writers Union (NSPU) Oleksandr Mikhajljuta, with whom I got connected under a visit in Kiev in april 2003 as a representative of a Norwegian authors union, made me aware of the Moscow-centered bias of western correspondents on the general political development, which I did my best from my position back in Norway to compensate for, by serving as a channel for mr. Mikhajljuta and other Ukrainian democratic patriots. Under my stay in Ukraine from July to December 2004, I did not pursue my professional interest in the Soviet heritage of philosophy at the educational and research institutions, not to complicate the already complex situation further, as my main ambition was to attract Norwegian-western attention to the Ukrainian decisive development, which I hard a hard time to succeed with, of course, with few supporters back home in Norway.
After the wedding with my crimean-tatarian Zeynep in Crimea November 26. 2005, I made use of the week in Kiev to settle the visa for her arrival with me in Norway, to finally pay a visit to the University of Taras Schevchenko and its philosophical department. Showing up without notice, I got a nice chat with deputy director Bugrov, who checked me out by claiming that Soviet philosophy was well-known to western colleges from the book by Loren Graham from 87, of which I`m quite familiar and had the chance to meet with Graham in Oslo the autumn of 99. – One bird does not make a summer, I held to Bugrov, and he loosened up and told about the great number of Ukrainian philosophers pursuing a Soviet agenda at the department, and the rater low regard of western guest-lecturers, deaf and blind of the Soviet development and background, and presenting very little new.
To hold this openly to the western guest-lecturers would be unpolite, and remove the Ukrainians of one of the few western academic contacts, while the need is to develop and strenghten such contacts. In this regard I find it interesting to learn from your homepage that you are the translator of the text-book of my old professors Gunnar Skirbekk and Nils Gilje at the University of Bergen. I`m familiar with this translation from my former occupation in the service of Norwegian authors, and am professionally curious about how it emerged, and why. Professor Gunnar Skirbekk was the first one I made my suggestion of a master-dissertation on the Soviet philosophical development for in the autumn of 96, where he showed rather critical and reluctant to what I proposed, doubting my ability to carry such a project through. I`m happy today to have proved this ability, as my dissertation was finished at the University of Oslo three years later, and is constanly lended out from the University-library by readers curious about my findings and conclutions: http://ask.bibsys.no/ask/action/show;jsessionid=0000MkM9EFR_vT1EypoL01mYNrC:116t9p56j?pid=000083801&kid=biblio
Stumpling over your comment from Kiev, Vlad, challenging for a widening of the approach from Moscow-centered philosophy, as the first comment ever on my blog dedicated Soviet philosophy, causes some reflections. Given an inner national rivalry in the field of post-Soviet philosophy, as a reflection of the general political situation, the National Academy Of Sciences of Ukraine suddenly to me seems as a very interesting institution to cooperate closer with in the necessary integration of post-Soviet and western philosophy, represented by my master-dissertation of 1999. I`m curious to explore the possibilites of such a cooperation, providing Ukrainian philosophers like your self a better chance to reach out for a western public, and act as the intermediary of western and post-Soviet philosophy. I realize from your comment that Ukrainian philosophers possible have another personal interest in such an integration than your more self-sufficient Russian colleges, answering to a political regime which tends more hostile to the west, in the old Soviet manner, and which has a certain interest in reviving the cold war of yesterday, to maintain the virtues of “peace and stability”.
Such thoughts are provoked in me by your little, but telling comment, Vlad, which I suppose is the true Vladimir Ivanovich Kuznecov, and no provocateur. If you are a provocateur, you are surely an advanced one, which I owe one, for this timely reminder.
Hope to hear from you, and my best greetings for you, your family, colleges and friends over in Ukraine, my second home-land. To learn more about me, please contact my Ukrainian friends Oleksandr Mikhajljuta on his cellular phone 8050 6915653, or the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Igor Lubchenko on his office-number 234 52 09.
I hope for and am looking forward to hear from you again, by e-mail, Vlad. I forward this answer of mine for Skirbekk and other relevant Norwegian professionals, professor Andrej Maidansky at the University of Taganrog, who has contacted me regarding our common interest in Evald Ilenkov, and Mikhajljuta and his translator, and the Helsinki 90-group, which appointed me their Norwegian representative the week in Kiev back in December 2005, but of which I haven`t heard anything since then. The former head of Helsinki 90, my great friend Jurij Murasjov, an ardent Ukrainian patriot and teacher, was killed by a car while walking on a pavement in Podil in early September 2005, which weakened the whole democratic structure in the defense of Human rights in Ukraine seriously, leaving unexperienced youngsters, his former students, behind.
So the struggle for democracy and human rights continues, in Ukraine as elsewhere, with Norway as no exception..
https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12590920&postID=111505300059714826
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
By Sigurd Lydersen on Mar 20, 2007
Promising
From Julija Timoshenko`s blog:
would say that Ukrainians should take their role as a country in between Russia and the West seriously, and have the impression that Ukrainians do, when they first elected Yuschenko president, and then Janukovich for prime-minister.
The British-born Taras Kuzio here made a lecture in Oslo at our seminar in May 4. 2004 which served as the title of the seminar, “The Ukrainian Choice. Democracy or Authoritarianism”. To make a choice is not a matter of serving as an intermediary, but to group with one of the rival gangs, to fight the other. Actually Kuzios perspective, which I was active distributing in those days, may be interpreted, and probably is interpreted by many Ukrainians, as an outright threat from a person close to the trigger-happy Bush-regime, that “either are you with us, and you better are.., or against us”. No wonder why a high rank secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs felt obliged to open the seminar, and state on behalf of the Norwegian government, that he hoped the Ukrainians would make “the right choice”.
That`s why I find it interesting that the same representative of the Bush-regime today argues at his blog that Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her, Kuzio, and replies for me that it is a pity that not alle Ukrainians see it like I do, that distance may be a prerequisite for a full understanding, and that Ukrainians see things in the West that we are blind of, while we westerners may see things in Ukraine, that the Ukrainians are blind of, so that we need each other not as “gang-members”, but to fully understand ourself, through the other.
- I couldn`t agree more with you, replied Kuzio, a friend of Timoshenkos and with good contacts at the central American power. I find that noteworthy, and rather promising..
http://www.tymoshenko.com.ua/ukr/forums/index.php?showtopic=17197&st=0&#entry231339
He, he..
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
By Sigurd Lydersen on Mar 22, 2007
Dear Taras,
I didn’t know you lived in Yorkshire. You might sign our Holodomor petition then, if you haven’t already.
http://www.holodomor.org.uk/
How tight did you wrap that BYuT scarf BTW?
Regards,
Jeff
By Jeff Mowatt on Mar 23, 2007