aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Re: Ukraine and we

["Bohdan Vitvitsky" <BVitvitsky@comcast.net>]

Some random thoughts and reflections prompted by recent events in Ukraine 
and messages related thereto shared among members of this list:

Some, and sometimes much, of what transpires in Ukraine is strange, and not 
infrequently bizarre.

But what have we done to try and develop a concepetual and intellectual 
infrastructure to help Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians understand contemporary 
Ukraine?  Have we developed the infrastructure to understand a society that 
is the survivor of the triple traumas of genocide, totalitarianism and 
colonialism?  I don't think we've provided an adequate understanding of the 
effects of even one of those traumas.

Have we offered a credible explanation for why a kind of socio-political 
inversion seems to prevail in Ukraine, in the sense of that which is normal 
in other societies (e.g., a sense of patriotism; genuine concern and debate 
about the national interest; a familiarity, at least among the elites, with 
the country's foundational historical events and its most salient 
literary-cultural constructions) being abnormal in Ukraine, and that which 
is abnormal in other societies (e.g., tolerating a religious confession that 
operates as a fifth column to subvert the state) being normal in Ukraine? 
Not only have we not explaned these phonomena, we have not in any effective 
way even described or documented them.

Have we been vigilant in public discourse to challenge when Ukraine is the 
object of the application of double standards, always to its detriment (the 
struggle to survive by other nations being heroic, the struggle by 
Ukrainians tawdry; promotion of the native language and culture in other 
countries being so natural as to evade notice, it in Ukraine being evidence 
of "nationalism")?  Have we just finally put to rest repeated age-old 
factual distortions, such as that it was the "Russians" who lost 20 million 
during WW II or that Ukrainians were mainly victimizers rather than victims 
under the Nazis?

Have we recognized that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, 
and that more of us must try to become public intellectuals in addition to 
being merely academic experts in our specialties?  After all, Edward Said 
managed to be both, and under somewhat challenging circumstances.

Bohdan Vitvitsky