Post Soviet Ukraine

Permission to place the following essay at infomeister.osc.edu was received from the author and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Any subsequent dissemination of this essay beyond private use in print or electronic form must first receive permission from the author at rotger@harvara.harvard.edu.

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THE POLITICS OF CULTURE IN TODAY'S UKRAINE

George G. Grabowicz

The emergence of an independent Ukraine, as some have argued, has fundamentally changed the balance of power in Europe, and in the world at large. The process of the Ukrainian national reawakening reveals a major model of post-communist transition; at the very least it provides insights into future political and cultural developments in eastern Europe. Similarly, within Ukraine itself, the politics of culture, no less so than politics as such or indeed economics, can serve as a measure of the true profile, and the future prospects, of this new country. The fact that both in the West and in Ukraine itself the inner workings of the politics of culture, as well as the public issues, the players and the deeper structures are  perceived at this time only vaguely, if at all, should not deter our inquiry. Society is a seamless web, but its cultural life is perhaps the most revealing facet of its qualities and flaws, and of its vitality as such.

Implicitly, the question of culture is all-encompassing, as is, for that matter, that of politics as well. (In a recent article, Ivan Dziuba, now Minister of Culture in Ukraine, alludes to the difficulty by noting that there are more than one hundred definitions of what culture is; presumably, that in itself can inhibit discussion, or effective action, even before the empirical or analytical judgments are brought to bear.) Our task here, however, is not to swell the list of definitions or to provide a new synthesis, but to quickly survey the state of culture in Ukraine--and by culture I will mean both the arts (of which literature will provide a specific focus) and their infrastructure, i.e., such underpinnings as education and language policy, the realm of publishing, the media, and so on--with particular reference to the way these matters are articulated in the political discourse. Culture as a system of values, attitudes, traditions and mechanisms of behavior will not be at center stage --not because these are not important aspects (in fact, they are the very core of culture), but because they constitute a distinct and highly complex area that cannot be fully addressed here; its interaction with the political process, the way politics impacts it, is also quite distinct. One cannot, however, entirely ignore the complex of attitudes and values that inhere in the notion of "spirituality" (dukhovnist'--a term no less topical in Ukraine than "infrastructure"), and this, at least in part, will also draw our  attention.

It goes without saying that our discussion is only preliminary: by the very fact of speaking on the present situation, our analysis will necessarily be based on fragmentary and shifting evidence. At the same time, I am confident that the picture we can trace here is largely accurate--at least for the time being. The question of prognoses and prospects for change is a separate one altogether.

In one sense the topic at hand is generic: virtually all discourse on the present Ukrainian situation tends to fall back on the question of culture, even if only in the most general and rhetorical terms. Until recently (the intervening events have been so momentous that it seems quite distant now),  Ukraine was a nation threatened in its very existence; in this frame, and for centuries before, cultural expression was the surrogate for and the only means of advancing political postulates and political action. Both overtly and subliminally, culture was and remains the principal frame of reference--quite irrespective of the fact, and in some degree precisely because its workings and its present state have not been fully analyzed. It is also universally true, but particularly at those times when nationhood and statehood are being established, that culture in all its ramifications partakes of  politics. In a similar vein, again universally, but especially when the process of nation building is accompanied, as it is here by economic upheaval, all cultural activity and all conceptualizations of the cultural situation are profoundly affected by the economic picture. But these--the state of fundamental transition, the overarching politization of life, the economic crisis-- while providing the basic frame, do not in themselves constitute the picture of culture as it is made and conceived. And generally, attempts at conceptualizing this process, of analyzing it, are still in their embryonic stage.

BACKGROUND: THE LEGACY OF COLONIALISM

The general contours of the present situation in Ukraine are known even by those who have only a passing interest in this area: it is a situation of fundamental transition from Communism to post- communism, from colonialism to post-colonialism, with only a modicum of political stability, with only beginning efforts at establishing a new national identity with its new infrastructure of cadres, policies and institutions, and with an overwhelming economic crisis, the grimmest and most apparent feature of which is drastic hyperinflation. (The common wisdom that at this juncture the economic picture is all-important and all-determining seems to have a certain empirical and intuitive validity. One could note that one of the most dismal postulates of what has been called the "dismal science" is that in circumstances of hyperinflation all policy decisions and moves become largely irrelevant.  In the face of massive pauperization the political and cultural scene fades in significance. And we are all painfully aware that the rise of Hitlerism in Germany was made possible by the total destruction of the  German middle class--and its values--by economic crisis, above all by hyperinflation.)

Each of these features of the present situation in Ukraine can be the subject of closer analysis. At the outset, by way of introducing the body of the argument, I would like to briefly focus on some aspects of the central and defining moment of colonialism.

One can begin with the historical parameter. The very notion of colonialism is of course a historical one, but at the same time its period extends beyond the purely chronological to also include the cultural and psychological, and these, as we know, do not conform, and are not measured by purely historical, temporal vectors. In the Ukrainian case, the colonial experience that we speak of must certainly include the entire eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and with but brief exceptions, most notably the 1920s, the entire Soviet period--in effect the large bulk of the twentieth century. In sum, in the course of its entire modern history, Ukraine can be said to have existed in a colonial state. This picture clearly needs to be expanded and qualified. (One can note, for example, that the early modern period, beginning with the Ukrainian revival of the late sixteenth century, from about 1580, which coincides, through the first half of the seventeenth century, up to the Xmel'nyc'kyj Revolution of 1648, with Ukraine's political and cultural existence as part of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, can also be characterized as colonial or quasi-colonial.)   The major historical qualification is that in the last three centuries Ukrainian political and cultural existence was never unitary, never fully within one overarching political-cultural system: thus Ukrainian territories were both under Russia and at first Poland and then Austria-Hungary; later again, within the Soviet Union, and under Poland; later still, after World War II, while all of the Ukrainian territories were part of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian cultural and political activity also existed, and quite significantly as we see more and more, in the emigration, in the West, in what we now call the diaspora. This on-going, albeit always different polycentrism, was a powerful antidote, I believe, to a colonial existence of a pure type; it continued to introduce a political and cultural corrective, and however subtly, modulate the overall picture. At the same time, it could only modulate and not change the essence of the historical experience.

A major complicating feature here is that along with the colonial model one could also apply the model of province or provincialization. The basic movement of Ukrainian culture from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century is precisely that of a semi-autonomous or vassal country, the Hetman State being turned into a somnolent province of Russia. Provincialization in the qualitative sense, for example, loss of quality through a systemic brain drain, narrowing of horizons, distortion of the process of intellectual and artistic production, and so on--was accompanied by more classical features of colonial rule--especially economic exploitation and the reshaping or distortion of all indigenous cultural institutions and structures. It is highly revealing, for example, that after the defeat of Mazepa at the battle of Poltava in 1709, which dashed Ukrainian hopes for separation or at least autonomy, Peter I introduced economic policies that had the clear and focused intent of impoverishing Ukraine vis � vis Russia proper. In effect, while turning Ukraine into a province, and thus purportedly a constituent part of a larger administrative whole, the imperial goal was also to weaken it, to prevent its resurgence by purposefully stunting its growth and infrastructure (for example, by forbidding the publishing of books). It was thus both a province, a colony and a conquered country. In a word, just as the essence of Russian and later Soviet imperialism is manyfaceted, so also Ukraine's colonial experience is multilayered and even contradictory. And again I should note that these are merely preliminary conceptualizations of the problem; a fuller analysis is clearly a much larger task for the future.

Perhaps the most obvious and universal (although not necessarily the most essential) feature and consequence of the Ukrainian colonial experience was a deeply ingrained sense of dependence, and of derivativeness (vtorynnist''). It is something that was felt, and which still figures most prominently in recent political and journalistic discourse--and its very appearance as a topic marks a new degree of honesty in self-criticism. It is also something that can be examined as a set of historical facts and processes. In the first half, or rather two-thirds of the nineteenth century this is readily reflected in the fact that in this period Ukrainian literature, and through it the entire discourse of Ukrainian social and intellectual life as such, particularly to the degree that it saw itself as specifically Ukrainian, was couched in a complimentary or simply dual relationship to the Russian Imperial context and its discourse. In a word, in this period Ukrainian literature functions as an addendum to the Imperial Russian Literature. It is worth looking at the very beginning and at the end of this cycle. In the work that ushers in modern Ukrainian literature in the vernacular, Ivan Kotljarev'skyj's travesty of Virgil's Aeneid, the text is clearly conceived as an addition, a supplement to the literature of the center--and we see it textually--in the title page, and in the appended glossary. At the same time, this new Ukrainian literature was even then seeing the imperial center, its language and values and norms, as foreign, as the other. In the late 1850s and early 1860s Pantelejmon Kulish, who more than any other Ukrainian writer of this period contributed to expanding the thematic and generic range of Ukrainian literature, giving it depth and resonance, still identifies himself as a Russian writer (in an imperial not ethnic sense, of course) as he explains to the all-Russian reader why he, Kulish, chose to write his historical novel, Chorna rada, in Ukrainian and on a Ukrainian topic. Between the two poles stands Shevchenko, whose poetry is the very ground on which subsequent Ukrainian national consciousness and subsequent anti-colonial political and cultural energies rests, but whose prose, is written in Russian, and his real, everyday and human--as opposed to prophetic role--is fashioned of and rooted in the existing imperial order. It could not be otherwise: precisely in order to be the prophet and harbinger of liberation Shevchenko needed to be part of the duality of the colonial-imperial, Ukrainian- Russian, world.

In general, the great bulk of Ukrainian literature of this time is bilingual--Ukrainian and Russian; virtually all Ukrainian writers in Russian Ukraine write as much or more in Russian as they do in Ukrainian. In Western Ukraine, under Austria-Hungary there obtains an analogous but more attenuated Ukrainian-Polish or Ukrainian-German bilingualism. As important as it is, the linguistic level is the surface, however, for beneath it lies the more general and throughout the nineteenth century the virtually all-pervasive sense of dual loyalties and contexts. In historical perspective nothing is more evocative of this colonial matrix and the specific epiphenomenon of dependence than the fact that for even the most progressive and militant Ukrainian political thinker of that time, Myxailo Drahomanov, the political future for Ukraine lay in federation with Russia; mutatis mutandis Ivan Franko, until the time of his final disillusionment, saw Ukrainian political reform only in the context of overarching socialist politics; characteristically, too, the first Ukrainian political parties--with a specifically Ukrainian political agenda emerge only at the turn of the twentieth century. Compared to this the sense of literary dependence or incompleteness seems decidedly secondary.

The second major feature and consequence of the Ukrainian colonial experience, and, to my mind, one that is by far the more essential and unique is that of the skewing or imbalance in the cultural process itself, in its functioning and dynamics. Its most important manifestation, I would submit, is the establishment, and by the end of the nineteenth century the dominance of a particular form of cultural syncretism. It expresses itself in a number of ways, most directly in the mixing of genres, not only in literature but above all in social action. By the nineteenth century Ukrainian society had generated a number of defensive strategies to cope with the policies of cultural colonialism and with the institutions that implemented it. One was simply the assumption by literature, and political discourse as such, of the stance and role of dissent, and particularly of social protest; the other, with far-reaching deleterious consequences, was the distrust of institutions as such. Most subtly, however, this was the fusing of roles--of writer and social activist, of artist and political leader. Literature which was the characteristic carrier and exemplar of this strategy also inflicted considerable damage on itself as its artistic potential was mortgaged to its civic functions. The modernist attempts at liberating literature from this overloading and overdetermination of functions was drawn-out and hardly successful: in contrast to, say, the developments in Polish or Russian literature, Ukrainian modernism was much less clear-cut and its programs never clearly formulated.

A concomitant of the syncretism of socio-cultural roles was the hegemony of populism. From the mid-nineteenth century to well into the twentieth Ukrainian populism or norodnyctvo became the matrix and the touchstone of artistic, and cultural and political action. Starting from the functional (and perhaps inevitable) role of ultimate recourse and defense against official repression and general disvaluation on the part of the dominant imperial culture, populism, which at times took on nativist features, became a means of enforcing a rigid non-differentiation in Ukrainian cultural and social activities. Characteristically, the opposition to modernism, and to artistic innovation, came from a fusion of civic-realist and populist arguments. At its worst, any divergence from the realist canon and populist premises was seen as un-Ukrainian or even anti-Ukrainian. That this impeded cultural and artistic (and indeed political) development goes without saying. What may be less evident is that as a stance it is alive and not at all in the minority to this day.

As an outgrowth of this one can see the general syndrome of cultural traditionalism, defensiveness and conservatism--the defensiveness of a culture and society threatened to its very core. For as distant and improbable as it may now seem, in the nineteenth century the official Russian line was that Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian language do not officially exist--and have no right to exist.

One could have hardly expected--especially after the Revolution, the establishment of a Ukrainian Soviet State and the period of official Ukrainization--that things could revert to the earlier state of affairs. But the Soviet period, Stalinist and post-Stalinist, with only small exceptions, has just such a reversal. And this conflation of colonialism and totalitarianism is the final and greatest trial in the Ukrainian historical experience. The history and full socio-cultural analysis of this grim and anti-human experience is a subject that is as vast as it is uncharted. One can hardly examine it here, even by way of noting the major issues. Provisionally, and recapitulating what may have already been noted, the depradations of the Soviet experience, apart from the most obvious ones of genocide and wholesale destruction of people and culture, art and economy, are, as I see it, the following: 1) the destruction of civil society and indeed the knowledge of and memory of one;	2) the effective introduction, through the facade of ideology and the mechanism of the Party aparat, of Mafia-like structures into virtually all institutions of the state and society; 3) as a consequence of both of these, and of the concerted battle against religion and any spiritual order other than the Soviet ersatz one, a destruction of the idea of individual and spiritual autonomy and of a socially sanctioned role for them. The sphere of the individual was simply made criminal or pathological.	Particularly for the non-Russian nations there was also	4) near total isolation from the outside world and an incessant imposition of cultural inferiority vis � vis the Russian dominant culture and the privileged space of the center; 5) and, again as a result of the foregoing, the fostering of a pattern of self-contempt, and self-loathing, particularly evident in the male population, born of political inefficacy and the inescapable taint of collusion and collaboration.

Beyond that, the deeper issue is that colonialism is as much if not more a state of mind as it is social structures and institutions and cadres. Post-colonialism, in turn, is a highly fluid notion. It may signal the end of formal, or juridical colonialism and simply designate independence, with no indication as to the new social and cultural content; it may refer to the process of overcoming the legacy of colonialism; or indeed it may be a strategy for renewal. Here I use it largely in the first and second sense. At the same time, a strategy for reform and renewal is utterly indispensable as public and national policy and as a cornerstone of a new social discourse. The existence of such a strategy is the question before us.

POLICY OR POLITICS?

The question may be put bluntly: although we have no reason to doubt that Ukraine has its politics of  culture (if nature abhors a vacuum than politics abhors it all the more so) is there any evidence that there is a policy on culture on the part of either the present Ukrainian government or the Parliament? On the evidence the answer would have to be no. To be sure, this contains a paradox, for at present Ukraine is represented on the one hand by a Minister of Culture, Ivan Dziuba, whose credentials, not only in relative terms, but with all objectivity would appear to be most impressive, and with a Vice-Premier for Humanities Policy, Mykola Zhulynsky, who also has a reputation, if not that of a Dziuba, then certainly as a cultural and specifically literary activist. In both cases, however, there is less than meets the eye. If the issue is put in systemic rather than in personal terms, it can be argued that neither appointment actually translates into official activity or governmental policy as such. To be sure, in present circumstances the question of commitment and concerted policy is not apparent even in more palpably critical areas, such as the economy, or implementation of the rule of law; when compared to that, absence of clear policy in the realm of culture is not unique.

Clearly this requires some illustration. Since his appointment as Minister of Culture a few months ago, Dziuba has not given--or not had the opportunity or, more likely, the official approval to give-- a comprehensive, official statement on the part of the Ministry of Culture as to its understanding of the problem and its strategy for dealing with it. What makes this so glaring an absence is that this is what Dziuba, like no one else, is eminently equipped to do. More than any individual in Ukraine or outside of it he has devoted his life and thought to precisely this problem. His book "Internationalism or Russification" which brought him fame (and notoriety in official circles) and catapulted him into the lead of the dissident movement in the sixties, was essentially devoted to cultural policy. Some twenty- odd years later, at the height of perestroika he wrote a long article, indeed a treatise, on "Do we conceptualize Ukrainian culture as a totality?" which again served as a catalyst for the discourse that led to Rukh and the Ukrainian political revival of the late 1980s and culminated with the Ukrainian declaration of Independence. Most recently, at the first Conference of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia, he presented a programmatic statement on "The Independence of Ukraine and Problems of Culture" which in an uncanny way seems to have anticipated the very issues he now faces as Minister of Culture. In that article Dziuba addresses the issue in a global way, stressing the historical dimension, the interface of Ukrainian and Russian culture and the colonial subordination of the former to the latter, the question of revivals and their forceful termination, the question of national consciousness and the operant role of the stereotypes (as he calls them) into which Ukrainian culture has been set (both by outsiders and by Ukrainians themselves), i.e., such models as that of "peasant culture" (sil's'kist' ),of conservatism or archaism, of dependence (an issue I have already alluded to), and finally also offers, at least in broad outline, strategies for reconceptualizing Ukrainian culture in the world context and from the perspective of an independent country, and indeed proposes specific tactics for the establishment of a new infrastructure for the development of culture, i.e., in education, book publishing, information, new cadres, international contacts, translations, and so on. The list itself is massive. All of this, however--plans, vision, commitment--still remains on paper; the actual reality is very different.

THE LEVELS OF POLITICS

The politics of Ukrainian culture involves, I submit, several distinct levels. As I see it, these include: 1. the specific concerns relating to Ukrainian culture that are continually being raised in the broad political arena and the solutions or approaches that are being advocated. In effect, this is the realm of cultural policy  even though it is not official or implemented policy. 2. the gamut of "players" so to say, the range of involved participants in the formulation of the problem, or more generally the discourse that they create  around it. For if one deals with politics in the way it really is, and not as an abstraction, the question of players in the arena, with their premises and agendas, capabilities and limitations, and their specific mental sets, becomes all important. 3. fundamental issues. These are the structures, one might say, that shape the overall state of Ukrainian culture, its prospects and its emerging profile.

Each of these levels (and not only the second) can be illustrated by a range of individual cases or events. The Taniuk affair, the Olijnyk affair, the Honchar anniversary, the recent elections at the Academy of Sciences, the theatrical awards ceremony (the Kiev equivalent of the Oskars)--the list can be expanded to include virtually any prominent figure or happening--provide invaluable material for understanding the politics of culture in their raw actuality; clearly, these phenomena are of themselves more colorful than the patterning of the process, but they can only comprise an anecdotal history, which for all its color cannot supplant a sense of the whole.

To begin with matters of policy (stated or implied). In the most general terms, judging by the press and the media, the issue that attracts the most attention, and most heated commentary is the basic issue of asserting the Ukrainian character of Ukraine, a new "Ukrainizacia." This is the "minimum program " which commands a broad consesnsus. But even this "minimum program" faces daunting problems. For one, those that oppose it, in large measure the former partaparat, are still a dominant political presence, and a majority in the Parliament. In the absence of revolutionary change, i.e., under conditions of legal procedure, such an opposition is a major impediment--and to this central issue we will return. In terms of substance, it is evident that the notion of "Ukrainizacia" is still rather rudimentary--as indicated by the absence of overall goals or general policy. In essence it remains a defensive stance that does not fully take into  account the fact that Ukraine is now a sovereign and independent state and that as a result all matters pertaining to its culture have a bearing on, and need to be seen in the light of, national policy, even if in given areas that policy will be entirely laissez faire.

There are several major components here, the most prominent of which is language. Historically this has always been the issue of issues--and rightly so, for language is the deepest and most effective carrier of the cultural code, encapsulating collective memory and values and identity, and recourse to it is the single most evident means of identifying with the given culture. Even if that identification is partial or conditional (if one is not ethnically Ukrainian, for example, or even if one is Ukrainian, one may wish to speak another language at home, say, Russian), knowledge and use of the language signals one's  acceptance of and respect for the culture and the institutions, ultimately the state, that have arisen on its basis. This much is a given, and is  universally applicable. In Ukraine, however, it is an issue: the goal of bringing into life the law on language that was promulgated just before independence, whereby Ukrainian is given the status of official language, is still far from achieved. In some areas--the Crimea, the Donbas, Luhansk, large areas of eastern and southern Ukraine--very little has been done to implement it. In fact, depending on the region, there is still much opposition, from local authorities, and the Russian speaking population, to the introduction of Ukrainian. In short this is still a struggle, and newspapers like Kultura i zhyttja often carry articles on what is an  on-going controversy, and, for many Ukrainians, an on- going trauma.

One may argue, of course, that with statehood achieved the language issue recedes in importance: Ukraine (presumably) is now a country like any other, with institutions, laws, citizenship and so on, and the quality of being Ukrainian is now established and conveyed through a range of formal measures (juridical, administrative, and so on)--and not solely through the overarching, virtually metaphysical modality of language. Moreover, it has been suggested that in the interest precisely of assuring the viability of the new state, and of asserting its multi-ethnic nature (Ukraine, after all, is home to all who live there, not just the Ukrainians) the language issue, and its implied ethnocentrism, should really be downplayed. It is more important, so this argument goes, that there be publications in Russian loyal to the new Ukraine than that they be in Ukrainian. And nothing will be so counterproductive to this new state than a linguistic Ukrainianization that needlessly alienates the large Russian minority.

It is hard to disagree with these positions. But they do not fully capture the situation. The major issue that is not considered here is precisely the large and still applicable historical pattern of Ukrainian dependence and second class existence; in the  radical formulation that was recently used by Jaroslav Dashkevych, who represents the intellectual wing of Ukrainian nationalism, in areas of Ukraine (he was specifically speaking of the Crimea, but this may be extended to the other regions mentioned) Ukrainian society and culture exist in conditions of "apartheid." The trauma that this engenders--not only to the majority ethnic Ukrainians, but to the fabric of pluralistic Ukrainian society--is real and it supercedes the fine distinctions of whether the discrimination in question is on the order of "apartheid" or of a less malign form. It certainly has generated a gamut of responses, the most constructive and structured of which are the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society, "Prosvita" (Enlightenment), with which sections of the former have merged, various publications, like the biweekly "Slovo" (or on the right fringe of the spectrum, but with a telling name, the newspaper "Mova je nacija" [The Language is the Nation]).

The establishment of the Ukrainian language as a language with prestige, with official status, and as the basic medium of communication in a Ukrainian state is a legitimate issue, and one that is entirely commensurate with the goal of a democratic and open society. In contrast to the situation of some years ago, the "language picture" is basically improving, the war is being won (above all due to the official use of Ukrainian in the Parliament and in government, and to new entrance requirements for higher education), but the fact that it is still a struggle is indicative of the problems Ukrainian culture still faces. Ultimately, however, this is only the surface of a deeper set of problems, specifically the interrelation of Ukrainian and Russian culture, the  political and economic viability of the new state and ultimately the overall attractive power of its society and culture.

Analogous to the language issue is the problem of education, of establishing a new "Ukrainian" curriculum, without communist and Russocentric dogmas, distortions, and so on. Here, again, there is on-going resistance. It is somewhat more covert than the at times virulent opposition to linguistic Ukrainization, but it is present. As with the language issue there is considerable progress--a Minister of Education who is strongly supportive of  Ukrainization, the move to make the structures of Education (e.g.,  VAK, the Vyshcha Atestacijna Komisija, which has  the power to confer higher degrees) sovereign and vested in Ukraine and not in "the center," in Moscow, a general consensus (although for many it may well be  more lip service than genuine conviction) that Communist and imperial dogmas must be shed, and a spreading desire among the middle and lower echelons to assert Ukrainian history and culture as individual and equal. But here, too, this is more on the surface, and more on the popular level, than in deeper structures, or in the institutions that actually set the tone. Looking beyond the immediately apparent one sees that the changes are often more cosmetic than substantive. Institutes' names are changed--from "Institute of Atheism" to "Institute of Comparative Religions," for example, from "History of the Party" to "Political Science"--but all the old people remain and with them all their inculcated dogmas, limitations and, above all, ignorance and incompetence. This is by far the bleakest aspect--the fact that there is no real reform in the policy on "cadres." Especially in the humanities and social sciences, which are the core of the problem, there has been virtually no change, no significant let alone massive realignement of personnel. Everyone who taught and espoused Marxism-Leninism, official atheism, dialectical- materialism, socialist realism, and so on, all such persons are still at their posts, presumably professing something else, but in fact capable of teaching or conveying only what they had done all their lives. It is estimated that when the DDR was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany only 25% of the scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions of the East German Academy of Sciences were kept on; the rest were simply let go. In the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as of now, no one has been fired or retired. There is not even any talk of this occurring in the near future. At the general elections to the Academy, only two months ago, Boris Paton, who has been President since the Khrushchev era, and who had overseen the near total decline of the Academy in the Humanities and Social Sciences, was easily reelected; there was no opposition to speak of. The various calls in the Ukrainian press for reform in the Academy were characterized by the Academy establishment as radical rabblerousing--and went unheeded. For its part, the answer this establishment proposes is measured evolution; "we are not in the position" the argument goes, "to indulge in rapid shifts or changes; we simply do not have the new personnel to replace the old ones".

While self-serving, this is also only a superficial answer, indeed something of a red herring, and it is part of a larger systematics to which we shall return. At this point, if one considers scholarship, especially in the Humanities, as part of culture--and one cannot but see it as such--then policy in this realm of Ukrainian culture is absent, or, more accurately, is both passively and actively obstructionist. Despite some cosmetic and symbolic activity--some well publicized, but again only nominal moves to open this or that Institute or section, to hold this or that conference, or announce such or another prize--the structure as such has not budged. Insofar as systemic academic reform is concerned, the whole picture is bleak.

By all indications a similar picture obtains in other institutions--museums, libraries, archives and so on, which are all part of large centralized bodies or ministries. To provide an accurate judgment, one needs constant and broad access to information--and while there is more of it than ever before, it is still not fully available. Judging by what is, the picture is very mixed. Depending on local conditions there may be genuine improvements--as in L'viv where the well-respected Dr. Krushelnytska was appointed director of the main scholarly library and proceeded to try to reform its workings. In the Kiev central scholarly library, however, after the incumbent director was dismissed for malfeasance (but not officially indicted), his replacement was drawn from the upper ranks of the bureacracy. In both cases the operant causes and issues are local and personal-- and there is little evidence of a national policy on these matters.

The most obvious instance of the assertion of a new Ukrainianness appears in the mass media, in the press, the radio and on television. And here the picture is also very mixed, showing truly positive and negative sides at the same time. On the one hand there is great variety and real openness and freedom, especially in the print media, with dozens if not hundreds of new magazines, newspapers, bulletins; many of these are very recent and many (surprisingly good ones) are located in the provinces. Their overall impact is unprecedented and unquestionably positive. On the other hand, virtually all of these publications are handicapped financially, often with little access to paper, with strictures (largely financial, although in some parts of Ukraine also political) on mail dissemination. Some have already shut down; many are on the verge of bankruptcy. What is more telling is that when compared to the Russian language press, originating in Russia and in Ukraine, the Ukrainian language press is in an acknowledged inferior position--as to financial strength, as to size of print runs, and above all, and this is the hardest to admit, as to quality. While there are some very fine printed sources--"Post-postup", and "Respublika" among newspapers, Vsesvit, Suchasnist and some new ones like Khronika among the journals--the overall picture, as virtually all in Ukraine would admit, is of a decided advantage especially in quantity but also in quality on the part of the Russian language press. Since the press is now independent, one cannot directly speak of government policy here. (Again, this is only partially true--in fact the government plays a major financial role, for it subsidizes some publications and not others). One can however, speak of government policy as to the non-print media, radio and television, where it has a monopoly--and here the picture is quite revealing.

By all accounts the Ukrainian radio has variety and despite being state run can often be interesting and unpredictable. Television is another matter. While it is afforded a new, strengthened Ukrainian profile, it appears in all respects as but a poor second to the Russian, Ostankino channel which, as before, is broadcast directly to Ukraine from Moscow. (As far as the now available western channels, CNN and others are concerned, the contrasts are even more apparent.) The difference in the quality of programming, the level of professionalism (especially as regards commentary and discussion, access to and involvement with western sources), the sheer sophistication of staging and technical proficiency are all too obvious. This is doubly unfortunate since television is so popular a medium. At the moment, however, Ukrainianization has not signalled quality. In fact, in television, it is more often associated with the staid and the sentimental and the ethnographic. At times it is mawkish and provincial in the extreme. The most innovative and challenging developments both in contemporary and in traditional Ukrainian culture are virtually invisible as far as  the television screen is concerned.

The area where Ukrainianization had a great potential, and a reasonable start, but where it has now suffered a serious setback is in book publishing. In large measure the entire national rebirth of the last few years was fueled by major advances in bringing the record of Ukrainian history and culture to the public through dozens of scholarly and popular publications. In the course of the last year or so, however, as a direct result of massive inflation and steep increases in publishing costs, book publication in Ukrainian has fallen precipitously. As reflected in the ubiquitous book stands up and down the Khreshchatyk, the standard fare is sex manuals and pornography and cheap melodramas--all of it in Russian. While there are some books, more often brochures, on Ukrainian topics (many of them apparently subsidized by diaspora nationalist organizations) the sum effect of market economics has been to drive the very books that have speeded Ukrainianization off the market. This is by far the most often heard complaint, and the evidence for it is plain to see. To the extent that the government, which still has a major monopolistic role in Ukrainian society, has or purports to have a stake in Ukrainization, it is clear that that stake is primarily rhetorical. Where before it would publish communist propaganda in millions and millions of copies, year in and year out, it now has made its stated commitment to supporting and asserting Ukrainian culture entirely secondary to economic exigencies, purportedly taking a laissez faire approach. So it would appear. But this is only on the surface. The real reason is altogether different--and altogether systemic.

A NEW IDEOLOGY OF "UKRAINIANNESS" ?

If asserting a Ukrainian spirit, be it new or traditional, is the surface of present cultural policy (and as we have just seen, it is in fact more stated than real, more hoped for than implemented), then the real content, that which lies beneath this surface, is an attempt  to establish a new Ukrainian state ideology. This is the closest we come, I believe, to a national cultural policy. The conscious and unconscious assumption, of course (for the new establishment is after all the old establishment, with only minor changes), is that every state has an ideology--how can one do without one? Precisely in the spirit of pragmatism (not to say opportunism) that has been left on the ruins of the old Soviet empire, and in keeping with the systemic forces that we will examine in a moment, that ideology is basically politics writ large--in effect it is the ideology of the state as such. In a curious and entirely patterned way, this conforms with the traditions of both the right (the nationalists) and the left (the communists). The fact that the poles have been reversed, that in Ukraine the latter are called right and the former left, should not confuse us; it merely illustrates the changeable and contingent nature of some labels. From both these sources, and from a general consensus in the ruling establishment, and perhaps in the population at large, there is agreement that the state is worth special, and solemn, and programmatic attention--intellectually, emotionally and above all ritually. This is not yet a full-fledged ideology of statism, but it is quite indicative that calls for asserting, supporting and expanding the task of state building, of instilling a new state pride and state consciousness are continually on the lips of various politicians and in the media. This is not an ethnic nationalism, for in the calls for state building, "derzhavne budivnytstvo" or "derzhavotvorennia" the appeal is to all the nationalities of Ukraine, not only the Ukrainians, and as such it is a positive and pluralistic conception, but it is also one which while maximally stressing consensus and confluence of various societal forces all but consciously downgrades the role of individual and minority opinion, and beyond that seems rather indifferent to the cultural component. (For the nationalists, one should add, the official emphasis on pluralism is seen as a hedging on the essential Ukrainianness of the country. As we have already seen,  in the writings of their serious spokesmen, Ukrainians are described as living in a situation of apartheid, as a discriminated majority. At the same time,  they are correct in their judgment that the new ideology is sorely deficient in its understanding of Ukrainian culture.)  Since it is an ideology in the process of being formed one cannot yet speak of it as having definitively sacrificed cultural content (especially as it relates to intellectual and artistic quality and to structural reform) in return for consensus and political expediency--but the tendency is precisely in that direction. What is already clear is that in this proto-ideology of Ukrainian statism culture is seen functionally, as a political commodity, or opportunity, or problem to be solved or financed, but not as an immanent value. The test for this, again, is the question of genuine, systemic reform, and in this regard culture, in the main, is treated opportunistically.

The final basic features of cultural policy--which in themselves are broadly ramified, but which given the situation just described must inevitably be in a preliminary state--are perceptions of identity, especially as they relate both to one's history and prospects for the future and to one's contacts with the outside world. In effect, cultural policy must necessarily deal with history (past and future) and international relations; without them it will remain in some degree regional or provincial, colonial, or ethnographic. And here again, there is much ambiguity. On the one hand, considerable work is being done on restoring the record, on unearthing the past, serious and often ground breaking work is devoted to the euphemistically called blank pages of official Soviet censorship and taboos and mendacity regarding the Ukrainian past, both distant and recent. But this is still being done with only a modicum of official government support. It may seem paradoxical, but in fact the government and state structures of a country that has come into being after having been condemned for so long to non-existence by its colonial masters still have not given voice to a policy regarding this centuries-long enforced, at times genocidally enforced non-being. It is as if the state of Israel had doubts as to whether it should officially, as a matter of state policy, study the Holocaust, or commemorate the millions of victims of genocide. To put the question in this way is to begin to answer it: Ukraine is not Israel. In Ukraine the perpetrators of its former suppression, at the very least co-conspirators in this policy, are still part of the establishment.

If the examination of the past is only beginning, and only semi-officially, the future is largely left unattended. The question of planning and prospects, just like the question of the reform of various structures (which is but a concrete instance of such planning) is simply not a priority. This is particularly true as regards the interrelation of Ukrainian culture, above all the arts and scholarship, with the world at large. This issue has simply not reached the level of national policy.

One needs to be ever mindful, of course, that these are issues facing a state in the process of being born, of a government still learning the very rudiments of governance. In such circumstances error and confusion are to be expected and in some sense even forgiven. But this assumes that they are precisely that--error and confusion. If there is a systemic pattern, if it is not error and confusion, but conscious policy and different priorities, then our image of a new state stumbling about like toddler learning to walk will turn out to be sentimental and self-deluding.

THE PLAYERS

Politics is policy with the human factor included. In the case of the politics of Ukrainian culture, even the most schematic and rudimentary description, not of individual players, but of the categories of players can add immeasurably to our understanding of the political arena. The spectrum, as I see it, includes several distinct categories of players, each of them playing a very different role in the creation and implementation of Ukrainian culture. Specifically, the scheme I propose is based not on professional distinctions (artists, administrators, publishers and editors, media critics, and so on), but on their functioning within the system, and in particular their relative presence and efficacy within the establishment or the power structure as such. It ranges from those totally outside to those totally within. At issue here is not just the delineation of the categories, but their roles, and, as far as I can now determine, their attitudes precisely toward cultural politics. If nothing else, this rudimentary juxtaposition of forces can be instructive.

In the first category I would place those who are exclusively outside the power structure. Almost invariably these are artists, writers, critics and so on who are young, who are outside of or peripheral to the normal institutional structures, and  critical and avant-gardist in their attitudes. In large measure they represent a budding, but nonetheless already formed counter culture; while numerically very small--prominent among these are for example the poets of "BU-BA-BU" (the acronym stands for "burlesque, farce and buffoonery"), prose writers like Andruxovych, Pashkovs'kyj and Dibrova, critics like Mykola Riabchuk, stage directors like Proskurnia and Zholdak--they are the ones who are now producing the bulk of what is innovative and exciting and what, to my mind will remain as a lasting contribution to Ukrainian culture as it enters its post-totalitarian and post-colonial stage. While some of them are indeed tempted to try to join existing structures like the Union of Writers, most are firmly and happily anti-establishment in their attitudes and their creative work. Most significantly, while actively engaged in their work, they are invariably highly pessimistic about present cultural policies and the general state of affairs, and in the words of Dibrova, are simply waiting for things finally to hit bottom before there is a genuine renewal.

The next category, of "cultural activists," constitutes the rather sizeable group of those who are actively involved in main-line or indeed establishment institutions but who were always genuinely committed to Ukrainian culture; these are not the newly converted, or the cosmetically and recently decommunized. Emblematic of this group is Ivan Dziuba, once a dissident and indeed a prisoner of the Soviet system, a critic and scholar who never took opportunistic positions, and yet one who has now become Minister of Culture. Similar to Dziuba, if not of the same stature is Anatolij Pohribnyj, Professor at Kiev University, who is now deputy Minister of Education. The Writers Union, the world of scholarship and the arts can yield dozens of such individuals. Before one rejoices at this bounty of talented and decent individuals, however, one needs to be reminded that they are all relatively powerless; their present positions are contingent on the support of their superiors. They themselves--as is paradigmatically clear at the Ministry of Culture--are not in the position to set policy as such, and indeed, as has been written more than once, are simply without the means for enforcing existing laws, let alone implementing innovative new programs. The Minister of Education, for example, is basically powerless to remove directors of Institutes who flaunt existing laws on the use of the Ukrainian language, or various aspects of curricular reform. Characteristically, even those in this group who are highly placed, even at a ministerial level, are well aware of the inherent limitations placed upon them. If one can generalize,  their assessment of the present situation is pessimistic and fraught with anxiety--and yet they are committed to trying to work within the system to effect progress and reform. In the opinion of many--especially those of the first category I mentioned, the "new wave" or the counter-culture--they have in some measure accepted a Faustian, no-win challenge, and in some measure allowed themselves to be used as figureheads, or, at best, as soldiers in the trenches. Only time will tell if their choice has been the most effective. There is no doubt, however, that their effort and motives are valuable.

The third category, of "political cultural activists" consist of individuals who were always active in the establishment, including various party positions, but who while cultivating political careers and power have also made a career of strategically and cautiously-- and always within the bounds of the emerging consensus-- supporting new policies at democratization and Ukrainianization. As compared to the preceding, they have relatively more political power since they are simply closer to the real power base--but they, too, are appointees, and servants of, not principals within the system. Given their higher status, and greater proximity to power, their attitudes tend to be more sanguine as to prospects and policies relating to Ukrainian culture--but here, too, there is a strong undercurrent of pessimism and concern. In private expression they concede the crisis. Their ability to directly express this, however, is severely restricted.

The next group is rather characteristic of the former Soviet Union and is well represented in the Ukrainian case. These are the former cultural figures, primarily writers, many of them poets, people like Pavlychko and Drach, Movchan and Javorivs'kyj and Lubkivskyj, who have become politicians by running for office and being elected to the Parliament. They have a genuine power base and have some measure of real power. Formerly they were genuinely involved with culture--irrespective of the quality of their work. At present, their involvement with cultural politics is altogether secondary to their involvement with politics as such. And if one can generalize on the basis only of surface impressions, it is extremely telling, and more than a little dismaying, that for them culture, even cultural politics, has on the whole taken a back seat to such putatively more important issues as the economy or foreign relations, or military matters. In a word, while having an intimate acquaintance with the world of cultural politics they seem to have graduated beyond it; to all appearances they are not the active advocates of cultural change and reform that one might have assumed they would be.

The final category are the people with the real power, people like Kravchuk and Kuchma and Pliushch, and their multifarious colleagues and allies. Their hold on power is inversely proportionate to their interest in matters relating to culture. Here (and this may indeed be the way of the world) political expediency is the only coin. Judging by actual decisions, or the lack of them, cultural policy, specifically as policy of cultural reform and reconstruction, are not a visible priority. At the same time it is from them that one is likely to hear the most optimistic assessments of the present state of Ukrainian cultural policies and activities.

THE UNDERLYING ISSUES

In the broad complex of culture politics there are, to my mind, three underlying issues: 1) the "inner form" that Ukrainian culture will take, in effect its new content, 2) the outer or "generic" form, and 3), most importantly, the nature of the present political system that is shaping both of them.

1. By "inner form" I mean the new canon of Ukrainian culture. Implicitly, this is a process of creating a new understanding of the historical past, a revision of traditional and deeply ingrained assumptions (most prominently, the primacy of populism or "narodnyctvo"), a complex and comprehensive understanding of the gamut of Ukrainian cultural traditions, and ultimately a new sense of Ukrainianness. Clearly this is a massive and long-term task, and as in all societies, the establishment of the canon will be a struggle for authority and power. The process of redefinition has already begun-- but it is only in its embryonic stage.

The canon, in effect, is the "deep structure" of cultural politics; it is the place where a society projects itself and its self- awareness. It is its sacred space, and above all the seat of its self- validation and authority. In practical terms the canon is the yardstick of self-assessment and it can be taken as the prime indicator of self- awareness.

Initially the term "canon" was used to designate that which was religiously orthodox and acceptable ("canonic"). In the religious and historical context of Ukrainian culture this notion is even more strongly conveyed by the image of the ikonostasis, the visual, symbolic and ritual depiction of the collective hagiography. In the course of time, "canon" has come to be a secular notion, most often used in the contexts of culture and scholarship and, while projecting the essential values of interpretation and authority, also suggesting dialogue and discourse. The ikonostasis, however, cannot but connote pre-secular or simply non-secular, religious and ritual value. If anything, it implies divinely ordained hierarchy and permanence.

The basic question facing Ukrainian culture today is which of these models will turn out to be operant. Or will the two be somehow fused, in effect, with the latter absorbing the former? To turn to the question provocatively posed by Marko Pavlyshyn, one of the first to juxtapose these models, can one, for example, keep the socialist realist canon intact and simply add to it the emigre writers and the former dissidents--and assume that they can all coexist? (This is precisely the path being taken in the present day--albeit few and half- hearted--attempts at a new literary history.) If not, how are we to explain the differences between them? And how do we now judge the fact that all those who extolled socialist realism and vilified the emigres and the dissidents are still, for all practical purposes, defining and interpreting the canon: they are still the authority. The question in short is that of revision, or, as the deconstructionists would put it, re-vision.

From a broader perspective, what we see as reemerging  here is the already noted problem of syncretism, which now appears as an attempt to fuse two incompatible value systems, the old Socialist Realist canon with the new post-Communist one. The very phrase that is so often used, the "reversing of the pluses and the minuses," suggests that what is at work here is simply mechanical substitution, an unanalytical and presecular approach, a pattern, at best of adding new heroes or saints, but not rethinking values or premises. In practical terms, the co-existence of the old and the new creates a climate of uncertainty and ambivalence, and at worst, cynicism. Thus for some this only proves that there is no intrinsic difference between them, and that all that matters is which "line" is now politically "correct." For some, too, the ensuing confusion is taken as evidence that the present social reality, ultimately independence itself, are only transitory phenomena, and that in the end the old verities will re-emerge.

The moral and intellectual consequences of this kind of syncretism must also be assessed, for in a real sense this also becomes a policy of sorts. As reflected in the workings of much of the establishment, particularly in the institutions ostensibly devoted to furthering  culture, it shades off into an all-purpose, generalized conservatism, yielding a pattern of  self-serving decisions--to simply not choose, not discuss, ultimately not change, or, at most, to minimize change.

2. The second major issue relates to the form or the model of society that will emerge in Ukraine. Will it be part of the Third World, or the democratic West (or at least a new East/Central Europe, or will it belong in a still different, separate (and unequal) CIS, a former Soviet Union in everything but name and external state symbolism? In actual, social reality  what will be the openess of this society, its culture and literature to the outside world, to the West, to its thought and discourse, and ultimately its  understanding of civil society.  In sum, to the democratic world as we know it, with all its features--from free markets and supermarkets to post-modernist discourse and the flourishing of all kinds of minority opinions.   At the moment, optimism as to the ability of Ukrainian society, and its culture, to overcome insularity and parochialism, centuries old habits of colonial thinking  and (at times, not always) a certain siege mentality may be premature.  Certainly the questions remain: how are the arts being opened up? Who is doing it? And, more directly, what is the response of the establishment to those who are doing this? As I have suggested, at this stage the establishment is incapable of accommodating major change, and thus the change that does occur is forced into the role of counter-culture. The difference between this and the officially sanctioned and subsidized culture is more like a chasm, and the establishment, even those who consider themselves liberal and democratic, sees little need, and has even less confidence in trying to bridge the divide. The more distant prospects can hardly be glimpsed.

The overarching question remains political: "Will the new Ukrainian society and its culture be of an open or a closed model?" In effect, will it have an ethnic or a pluralistic basis? Will it, in short, be a civil society? The question hinges on many factors, and there are grounds for both pessimism and optimism. Some crucial parts of the questions are not yet posed, although they are on the brink of being posed. The central one here is the most basic question of identity: what is Ukraine and what is Ukrainian culture? What is included? Is Ukrainian culture equivalent to the culture and legacy of the ethnic Ukrainians or--especially in terms of an emerging new paradigm--is Ukrainian culture tantamount to the culture and legacy of all those who live and have lived in Ukraine? Is there a readiness on the part of the Ukrainian ethnic majority, those who by definition bore the brunt of Ukraine's historical traumas, the long struggle for independence, to be catholic, generous and open, in their understanding of the common heritage?

On this issue there are indeed grounds for optimism. In the prospective legal and constitutional frame--as regards civil and human rights, as regards citizenship, freedom of religion and of the press, even language policy and school instruction policy--there are bright prospects. In a word, the discourse about these matters has been, for the most part, gratifyingly enlightened. What remains to be seen is how it will become policy and then be translated into life.

3. On the opposite pole is the question of the present political reality, the actual power base on which society, culture, literature and all other societal functions rest. That reality is deeply ambiguous and the fist judgment on it must tend to be pessimistic. In effect Ukraine is now characterized by a far reaching duality of political authority and power, one which underlies and projects virtually all the anomalies I have been speaking of. For in Ukraine--for some this may be a truism, but its ramifications have not been analyzed at all--there are now two forms of power and authority: the communist and the non-communist. The cleavage between them affects all forms of collective life, making everything, literally everything somehow ambiguous, contradictory or simply absurd. Reforms that are not reforms, an economy that is neither a market economy nor a centrally planned one, culture that purportedly is free to develop, but which has no public policy or even concerted, official discussion as to what direction it should take. Language policy that is not implemented and that cannot be implemented in some areas. Institutions that are neither public nor private. This even affects the sphere of religion, where in a duality that is simply unthinkable in terms of canonic law and practice, there are two orthodox Metropolitans in the city of Kiev. But given the duality of power this is very much part of the pattern.

These seeming paradoxes reflect a deeper and grimmer paradox of a country whose recent ruling elite--and still the majority in the Parliament, the Communists--were determined not to have the country, Ukraine, come into existence. Ideologically, they were the antithesis of Ukrainian statehood--and yet they are now in effective control of most regional and local governments and still a dominant voice in the national government. It is precisely to forestall their active opposition and sabotage (passive opposition and obstructionism is clearly ongoing) that the President and the government resort to all these ambiguities and vacillations, in a word, to dual authority, to dvoievladdia. All functions of state and society flow from this duality, and cultural policy (or lack of it) and the exigencies and machinations of cultural politics above all.

THE QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE

One can still often hear in the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukraine itself the thought that given the historical tribulations, given--only a few years ago--the desperate state of Ukrainian culture, the dim prospects of Ukrainian national survival, and the absolute impossibility, so it seemed, of statehood, the present state of affairs is not at all surprising, and indeed, despite it all, a towering achievement. The fact that the ultimate goal, statehood, has been realized, more than compensates, so the argument goes, the disappointing circumstances that attend it. In effect, we are again asked to see that the glass, after all, is not  half empty, but half full.

This argument, to my mind, is reductive and potentially dangerous on two counts. On the one hand, the suggestion that the very existence of the state is an ultimate value, one which presumably mitigates or transcends any of its real flaws, is a formula that can, and in numerous cases has led to the justification of oppressive and even totalitarian states. In today's Ukraine one hears from various quarters, not just former communists and the newly impoverished middle and lower classes, but the nationalists and indeed those who pass for democrats, that what Ukraine desperately needs is a "strong hand"; the desire for authoritarian rule is widespread and palpable. Many in the Ukrainian western diaspora, particularly in its establishment, seem to share this sentiment. While it is somewhat reassuring that the professed (though still to be constitutionally codified and, as experience shows, probably more rhetorical than real) values of the Ukrainian political consensus are democratic and pluralistic, it is troubling to see that for many the ardor of their support for Ukrainian statehood is directly proportional to their impatience with precisely these values.

The second danger involves a confusion of the static and the dynamic, mistaking a process for a thing. The glass will remain a glass even if it is totally empty. A country run into the ground will not long remain free and democratic, and may cease being a country. For Ukraine, given its legacy of colonialism and the deeply ingrained patterns of dependence in the thinking of its political establishment, the deferral of true reforms constitutes a clear and present danger.

The final underlying issue is that for the outside world the only thing that matters is the here and now: in the cold light of objectivity, from the perspective of the "outside" world, all  the struggles and the sufferings on the road to independence are, if not irrelevant, then "academic," a page of "ancient history." The past, alas, is another country. With independence, Ukraine--whether its ruling elites fully act on it, or even fully realize it--has become part of the world, and it will be judged only by only one, harsh, but universal standard. Ultimately, I believe, Ukraine will rise to that standard. The road, however, will be arduous, and the timetable unpredictable.

[The text of this article is based on the eight annual Ivan Franko lecture delivered on April 12, 1993 at Carlton University, Ottawa.]