MK: So our next distinguished speaker is Dr. Serhii Plokhii. He is Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History from Harvard University. He was appointed to this position in July 2007. Plokhii came to Harvard from the University of Alberta, where he was a professor of history and associate director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. He previously taught at Harvard as a visiting professor in fall 2005 and spring 2003.

Plokhii first earned his scholarly reputation through several writings on the early modern religious history of Ukraine completed years before the onset of glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union. After relocating to Canada, this study culminated in a sweeping book, "The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine" (Oxford University Press, 2001).

He is also the author of two other books: "Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History" (University of Toronto Press, 2005) and "The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus" (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He is now writing another book which is related to Yalta conference of 1945 in which he intends to explore a cultural dimension of this event. In March 2008 Doctor Plokhii has published his new piece of work “Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past” (University of Toronto Press).

Mr. Plokhii received a B.A. in history and social sciences from Dnipropetrovsk University in 1980; an M.A. in history from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow in 1982; and a Ph.D. in history from Kiev University in 1990.

So please join me in welcoming Dr. Plokhii, the floor now is to you. Thank you.

SP: Дуже дякую за представлення і дуже дякую за запрошення! As you have just heard from my short biography, I have been here in North America for quite a while. And the traditional way to address the Ukrainian audience in North America is – it is how I was taught – that you start in Ukrainian, to please the older folks. This is probably the first audience where I am starting in Ukrainian to create uproar with the younger generation, as opposed to the older one.

You heard that I spent significant part of my life studying Cossacks and early modern history, identities and the question is – what I am doing here. Europe is about the future, we are talking about the road of Ukraine to Europe. And probably some of you are familiar with this statement on Ukrainian history made by Volodymyr Vynnychenko at the crucial point in Ukrainian history in 1917. He wrote down in his diary that you can’t read Ukrainian history without bromide (без брому українську історію читати неможливо).

So I guess I belong to that generation that tries to rewrite Ukrainian history and to make it a little bit more optimistic than it used to be. And history is important in a sense of understanding not only where we are coming from, but also in understanding what our goals are; and especially important in a sense of realizing where we are right now at this point.

We are living really though a very interesting, exciting and sometimes disappointing time. There was the Orange revolution, the events of 2004 and 2005, and the high expectations. The ideal was that in 2005 Ukraine would be part of the European Union. Today we are living in 2008, and we lived through a number of crises in political sphere in Ukraine. We know that Europe is not overexcited and not looking forward to accepting new members. Partly, this is related to the lack of reform in Ukraine, partly it is related of course to the – or maybe largely related to – the processes that are going on within European Union. But the joining of European Union and joining Europe remains one of the major goals and tasks of Ukraine as a state, as a nation and as a society, as a cultural entity that is still in the process of formation.

Maybe we are not part of the European Union, but we are certainly part of Europe. And convincing people in Ukraine that Ukraine is Europe and convincing the world, Europe and North America that Ukraine is Europe is extremely important factor changing our identity, our goals, and our values. And that’s where diaspora in general, that’s where the students who study here – whether you will stay or whether you will go to Ukraine, whatever your future will be – that’s where we can contribute to this process. This is the process of joining Europe, of sharing European values, this is the process that really can change a destiny of Ukraine as a country, as a nation. We are lucky enough to be at this turning point in European history and to contribute to it, to influence it, in one way or another.

Now, is really Ukraine part of Europe or am I just making it up to produce a new happier type and kind of Ukrainian history? Well, when you look at the map in geographical terms, you know that Europe, unlike European Union, has no borders and no boundaries. It only has frontiers. It’s up to us to define the borders and boundaries of Europe – either Ukraine is in or Ukraine is out. The ancient Greeks, they draw their border on the river Don (Tanais). So from very early on, from ancient times, Ukrainian lands were considered to be part of Europe. Where does this new border on Ural Mountains come from? It comes from 18^th century, from the mid-18^th century, from Russian geographers who decided that Russia was Europe. What they did was that they redrew the boundary of Europe. Moving the boundary to the Ural Mountains and saying that beyond the Ural Mountains are the colonies, while the Russia proper is a European country, it is in Europe. So this is one example of imaginative geography, one example of identity and how important it is to believe in what you are and to convince others to believe in that as well.

The origins of Ukrainian movement, of Ukrainian idea are very closely connected with the European choice. Ukraine became independent in 1991, and normally what was said: we were denied our independence for centuries and so on, and so forth, and there were enemies to the right and enemies to the left (of course, there were enemies within us, but you prefer not to talk about that). In reality, the idea of Ukrainian independence is a very young idea. We see it being formulated only at the beginning of the 20^th century. So from that perspective, Ukraine becoming independent is tremendous success, in terms of intellectual history this is less than one hundred years!

Idea of Ukraine becoming part of Europe is older than the idea of Ukrainian independence. It comes from Mykhailo Drahomanov, it comes from the second half of the 19^th century. The first President of Ukraine Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, prior to becoming the supporter of independence, was a strong supporter of Ukraine joining the European federation. So from that point of view, from that perspective, in terms of tradition, in terms of intellectual history, Ukraine is formed within the context of European discourse.

Ukraine’s right for existence was denied again within the context of European discourse and debates on European topics. Vissarion Belinsky, one of the leading Russian Westernizers (западник) and one who attacked poetry of Shevchenko, who attacked the right of Ukrainian language and literature to exist. And how did he do that? His argument was very simple: Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian language are not European; for Ukraine to join Europe, it has to go though the medium of the Russian culture and Russian language. So we are against Ukrainian and against Ukrainian culture, because they are not European and they are actually pushing us back. It was the Slavophiles (Славофіли) who supported to a degree the Ukrainian idea, not the Westernizers, not the Russian intellectuals oriented toward Europe. The right of Ukraine to exist as a cultural entity was challenged in 1920s by someone called Iosif Dzhugashvili (Joseph Stalin) who attacked Hvyl’ovyi with his slogan: away from Moscow and orientation toward the culture of Europe, toward Paris.

So this debate, this discourse – whether Ukraine is part of Europe or it is not part of Europe – is going as long as modern Ukrainian political thought exists, at least since mid-19^th century. It goes through the entire 20^th century, and it is not a surprise that after 1991 we face this challenge, we face this question again. And the main question is how we are going to answer it.

There are lots of things like Russian factor – it was mentioned before – that works against Ukraine joining Europe. There is a fatigue in European Union in regard of the further enlargement and extension of the European Union. But I think that the key issue is what Ukrainians in Ukraine think about themselves, what they think about the European prospects, what we here think about ourselves and our identity – cultural, political, and other types of identities.

There are a lot of things that disappoint us, a lot of things that we want that they would be different. And one of them is of course associated with the lack of political reform in Ukraine, the lack of economic freedom, to a degree. But in what we have heard today in terms of the development of business – who are the leaders of orientation toward Europe? These are businessmen, young people irrespective of their divisions between the “orange” camp and “white and blue” camp. And when you look at that, I am more optimistic. I want you to be more interested in Ukrainian history and culture, and to look at this as a source of optimism. And history can be such a source of optimism.

All of you, of course, know that there is European square downtown Kyiv, and recently it became the place where the “orange” forces were mobilizing their mass campaign. Looking at the history of change in the name of the European square, I actually find a source of optimism. This square started as Tsarskaya ploschad’ (Tsar’s Square), then in 1930s it was renamed into Stalinskaya ploschad’ (Stalin’s Square). In my days in Kyiv, it was called Ploscha Lenins’kogo Komsomolu (Площа імені Ленінського Комсомолу). And today it is European Square (Європейська площа). So, there is optimism in history after all.

And to convince yourself, to convince others that Ukraine is in Europe, that we are Europeans – I know you have really busy schedules - just find time, take the course, get to educate yourself and educate others. Thank you very much for invitation! Thank you very much for listening!