Independence. Archive. Prognosis. Ukraine in 1991-2021 and Beyond

Chair:
Dr Alessandro Achilli, Vice-President, Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand and chair of the conference Organising Committee

Speakers:
Professor Natalia Chaban, President, Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand
Professor Margaret Cameron, Chair, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Ms Liana Slipetsky, President, Association of Ukrainians in Victoria (AUV) South-Eastern Branch, representing Mr Slawko Kohut, President, AUV
Mr Jurij Suchowerskyj, Chair of Directors, Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia

Chair:
Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne

Before 1991, the history of the Soviet Union was routinely told as the history of ‘Russia.’ This tendency made some sense while the Soviet Union was in existence: the country was geographically largely continuous with the old Romanov empire, the Russians were the largest and most influential ethnic group, Moscow was its capital, Russia its lingua franca, and, ever since the 1930s, Russian history had become part of the legitimizing narratives stabilizing the regime. With the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the deficiencies of this narratives became obvious. A growing literature began to replace the Russo-centric story with a bundle of more or less connected national histories of the fifteen successor states. We now have a library of such studies, many of very high quality. But what of the Soviet Union itself? How do these new national histories recalibrate the overall trajectory of the Soviet experience? This lecture addresses these questions through the case study of Ukraine. How does telling Soviet history from a Ukrainian perspective change the chronology, the main actors, and the plotline? What impact did the opening of Ukraine’s archives have on the writing of Soviet history? What parts of the old story remain the same and what new vistas are opened up? The answers, as we shall see, are complex and tentative. The work on integrating Ukraine’s history and Ukraine’s archives into the larger history of the Soviet empire is only at its beginning.

Mark Edele is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states. He is the inaugural Hansen Professor in History at the University of Melbourne, as well as a Deputy Associate Dean. He was trained as a historian at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Moscow and Chicago. His publications include Soviet Veterans of the Second World War (2008), Stalinist Society (2011), Stalin’s Defectors (2017), Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union (with Atina Grossmann and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2017), The Soviet Union. A Short History (2019), Debates on Stalinism (2020); and, with Martin Crotty and Neil Diamant, The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century. A Comparative History (2020). His latest book, entitled Stalinism at War. The Soviet Union in World War II, was published in 2021. He is a Chief Investigator on ARC Discovery Grant DP200101728, “KGB Empire: State Security Archives in the former Eastern Bloc,” (December 2020-December 2023), which draws substantially on Ukraine’s SBU archive; and ARC DP200101777, “Aftermaths of War: Violence, Trauma, Displacement, 1815-1950,” (June 2020 – June 2024). He teaches the histories of the Soviet Union, of the Second World War, and of dictatorship and democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Chair:
Olga Oleinikova, University of Technology Sydney

Papers:
Volunteering and civic imaginaries in the Russian-Ukrainian war
Olga Boichak, Brian McKernan, The University of Sydney

Women and Revolutions in Ukraine
Olena Nikolayenko, Fordham University

The Spanish Flu and the WWI Ukrainian Military Monument in Łańcut Poland in the Context of Polish-Ukrainian Relations Past and Present: the Role of Dr W.S. Kindraczuk, Łańcut Pharmacy owner
Romana M Bahry, York University

Chair:
Felicity Hodgson, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Toward sustainable community archives
Maryna Chernyavska, University of Alberta

Immigrant Photography in Western Canada: Thomas and Lena Gushul’s Art
Jelena Pogosjan and Maria Mayerchyk, University of Alberta

She made sure the children were vaccinated…
Dmytro Yesypenko, University of Alberta

Discussant:
Nataliia Khanenko-Friesen

Chair:
Felicity Hodgson, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Interrogating Diaspora and Cross-Border Politics
Olga Oleinikova, University of Technology Sydney

Social capital of Ukrainians in Melbourne in times of global pandemic
Olha Shmihelska, Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand

Being and belonging: Ukrainians in the diaspora during the past decade
Corinne Seals, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand

Chair:
Marko Pavlyshyn, Monash University

Papers:
Politicised Identities and the Donbass War
Tobias Hansson, Macquarie University

Literary sources of new identities in the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine
Mykyta Grygorov, Charles University in Prague

The Political Cult of the Dead in Ukraine. Traditions and Dimensions from the First World War to today
Guido Hausmann, University of Regensburg and Iryna Sklokina, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv

Chair:
Alessandro Achilli, University of Cagliari, Italy

Papers:
“I Never Thought of Natasha as a Person” – Ukraine and Ukrainians in Gabriele Goldstone’s Historical Fiction
Mateusz Świetlicki, University of Wrocław, Poland

Discovering the Autoimage of Ukraine: from historical fiction to contemporary films. The case of Storozhova Zastava [The Stronghold] by Volodymyr Rutkivskyi
Maryna Vardanian, Kryvyi Rih Pedagogical University, Ukraine

Historical memory and national perspective in contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and youth
Tetiana Kachak, Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ukraine

Memory-formation in the contemporary Ukrainian literature for young adults: literary text as an archive for future generations
Halyna Pavlyshyn, University of Tasmania, Australia

Chair:
Dmytro Yesypenko, University of Alberta

Papers:
The temporary labor migration and the brain drain from Ukraine after 2014
Denys Kiryukhin, Skovoroda’ Institute of Philosophy (NASU)

From the support of Ukrainian sovereignty to the idea of the ‘regional independence’: Tracing the trajectory of the 1989-1993 miners’ movement in the Donbas on the basis of archival sources.
Kyrylo Tkachenko, University of Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder

Deindustrialization and its political implications: post-Soviet Ukraine in comparative perspective
Alexandr Osipian, Osteuropa Institut, Freie Universität Berlin

Public perceptions of emigrants and diaspora in pre- and post-Euromaidan Ukraine
Iryna Lapshyna, Ukrainian Catholic University

Chair:
Yana Ostapenko, Monash University and Association of Ukrainians in Victoria

Papers:
E-archives and E-databases as the Means for Interpretation of Ukrainian Nazi Prisoners’ Experience
Olesia Isaiuk, National Museum “Lontskoho Prison” Liberation Movement Research Center

Memory snacking the Ukrainian way: Tiktok as the participatory archive of the first post-Soviet decade in Ukraine
Mykola Makhortykh, University of Bern

Leninopad: 30-year history of dealing with Soviet monuments in Ukraine
Valentyna Kharkhun, Nizhyn Mykola Gogol State University

Chair:
Marko Pavlyshyn, Monash University

The collapse of socialism in the early 1990s in Europe caused former socialist societies, long imagined as homogeneous and stable, to confront various external and internal pluralization processes. Members of these countries witnessed and participated in the growing differentiation of their societies along economic, ethnic, cultural, political and social stratification lines. This multifaceted social differentiation was accompanied by the no less profound process of pluralization of history and historical narratives, amidst the growing recognition that former socialist societies had more than one ‘past’. In rediscovering the complexity of national histories, personal testimonies and ego-documents have played an increasingly significant role altogether contributing to the ongoing democratization of history across all former socialist countries, including Ukraine. Many unknown voices from the past and from “below” continue to enter authoritative historical debates in Ukraine today, all collectively contributing to history’s growing multivocality. How do personal accounts – collected in oral history projects, found in personal letters and memoirs, and rediscovered in former communist archives – help historians craft their perspectives on Ukraine’s past and present? How do these accounts sustain official and alternative historiographies? At what point personal accounts become ‘testimonies’ and what do they testify? What is the future of personal testimony in historical research in an increasingly digitized world and in Ukraine in particular? An oral historian and cultural anthropologist, in this presentation I revisit the burgeoning field of ego-document creation and preservation in Ukraine and examine its impact on the production of new historical narratives. Importantly, I argue that personal testimonies of the past have been effectively used to validate historical accounts, oftentimes transforming witnesses of history into history’s forgotten agents.

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is the director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and Huculak Chair in Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, both in the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. Her research interests include oral history, post-socialism in Europe and Ukraine, diasporic identities, labor migration, and Ukrainian Canadian culture. She authored two monographs, “Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland and Folk Imagination in the 20th Century (U of Wisconsin Press, 2015) and “Inshyi svit abo etnichnist ‘u diї: kanads’ka ukraїns’kist’ kintsia 20 stolittia (The other world, or ethnicity in action: Canadian Ukrainianness at the end of the 20th century)” (Smoloskyp Press, 2011) and co-edited three collections, including “Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines” (U of Toronto Press, 2011) and “Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe” (U of Toronto Press, 2015). Dr. Khanenko-Friesen is the founding editor of the Canadian Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching and Learning. Her current book project has the working title “Decollectivized: The Last Generation of Soviet Farmers Speak Out.

Chair:
Yana Ostapenko, Monash University and Association of Ukrainians in Victoria

Papers:
Prysiaha-1919, the Canadian connection, and how 101 years later a dying museum filled a lacuna in the history of Ukraine’s Struggle for Independence
Ksenia Maryniak, University of Alberta

Community-Based Archives of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus
Mykola Murskyj, Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America
Iryna Voloshyna, Indiana University, Bloomington

Chair:
Halyna Pavlyshyn, University of Tasmania, Australia

Round table participants:
Ostap Kushnir (editor), Lazarski University in Warsaw

Oleksandr Pankieiev (editor), University of Alberta

Margaryta Khvostova (contributor), Lazarski University in Warsaw, Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition in Ukraine

Serena Giusti (contributor), Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa

Mikhail Minakov (contributor), Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars

Chair:
Dmytro Yesypenko, University of Alberta

Papers:
When Alternative Culture Becomes the Voice of the Nation: Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry, 1995-2021
Alessandro Achilli, University of Cagliari, Italy; Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand

Virility, Virtuosity, Virtue: Some Representations of Masculinity in Ukrainian Literature since 1991
Marko Pavlyshyn, Monash University

Ukrainian Women Playwrights and the Evolution of New Drama in Ukraine
Oleksandra Wallo, University of Kansas

Discussant:
Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas

Chair:
Yana Ostapenko, Monash University and Association of Ukrainians in Victoria

This presentation will focus on the opening of Ukrainian archives and traces its effects on new interpretations of Ukrainian historiography. Furthermore, it will briefly consider reinterpretations of Ukrainian history proposed by historians based outside Ukraine.

In the early 1990s, as Ukraine regained independence, it also opened its archives. During that first decade, the opening up proceeded slowly, by no means resembling a “revolution”. In practice, access to the archives still smacked of Soviet era restrictions, so at best we could refer to it as an evolution. In addition, new high service fees and non-transparent rules further limited citizens’ access to archival records. Historians working on the 20th century commonly believed that the most important archival resources were located in Moscow, where many previously unavailable materials were indeed found. Based on those findings, as well as on access to historical materials available in diaspora collections, existing historical judgments were gradually reevaluated, prompting a reorientation of Ukrainian historiography.

In a parallel development, the 1990s marked a gradual departure from the Soviet interpretive frameworks. Those perspectives were replaced with interpretations developed by émigré historians active in the post-war decades. Fresher approaches, resulting from the use of new methodologies such as postcolonial studies or oral history, certainly added to the multitude of perspectives, yet they were only minimally based on archival research.

By the mid 2000s, significant changes in legal regulations of access to the archives took place, most importantly allowing for the opening of the SBU archives. However, in 2010, as Ukrainian politics pivoted back, restrictions to certain collections returned. Even so, between 2007 and 2010 historians managed to put into circulation many documents that enabled a radical break with Soviet historiographical models. These approaches were not fundamentally new, but rather rooted in previous research by émigré historians. Two examples are studies of the Ukrainian underground and – to a much greater extent – of the Holodomor.

In the last few years, namely 2015-2021, Ukrainian archival collections have become more accessible than ever, thanks to new laws expanding access to public information. Historians can now retrieve materials even from collections related to the Ministry of the Interior or the Counterintelligence Service. Since archives in Russia remain fully restricted, Ukrainian collections have become a vital resource for historians from all over the world. To what extent did the availability of previously restricted or top secret collections change our interpretive frameworks? It seems that – with a few exceptions – we cannot see the forest for the trees. By and large, we are still not able to contextualize events more broadly. Scholars in Ukraine have yet to embrace new trends in world historiography – entangled history or global history. The work of Serhii Plokhy (Yalta; Chornobyl) and Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands; Black Earth) demonstrates how effectively archival research pairs up with attempts to place specific historical events in a broad context.

Ola Hnatiuk is a Polish and Ukrainian scholar, professor at the University of Warsaw and Kyiv Mohyla Academy, translator, diplomat and civic acitivist. Vice-president of Ukrainian PEN centre. Her scholarly work has been located in the borderlands between the disciplines of history, the history of ideas, philology, literary studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of culture. She has been editor-in-chief since 2017 of the project Ukraine. Europe 1921–1939 the aim of which is to publish little-known documents that counteract falsifications of history, which are still prevalent in eastern Europe.

Her main publications include Courage and Fear (Academic Study Press and Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, Mass. 2020), a study of Lviv/Lwów under Soviet and Nazi occupation, 1939–1945 [English translation of Odwaga i strach, published in 2015; Ukrainian translation – Kyiv 2015], Pożegnanie z imperium. Ukraińskie dyskusje o tożsamości [Farewell to Empire. Ukrainian Debates on Identity] (Warsaw, 2003) Ukrainian translation Прощання з імперією. Українські дискусії про ідентичність, 2005.

She has won many prizes including Pruszyński Prize of the Polish PEN Club [Poland, 2018] For services to the Humanities and Literature, Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta [Poland, 2012] For public service, in particular contributions to Polish-Ukrainian dialogue, Antonovych Prize for scholarly achievments and public activity. [USA, 2010], Jerzy Giedroyć Scholar Prize [Poland 2004] For: Pożegnanie z imperium.

Chair:
Felicity Hodgson, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Shimmering archives, or researching sexual and gender dissent in Ukraine
Olenka Dmytryk, University of Cambridge

Feminist theorizing in the independent Ukraine beyond nationalism and anti-nationalism
Vira Sachenko, University of Giessen

The Legacy of Ol’ha Kobylianska: The New Woman in Contemporary Ukraine
Ali Karakaya, Yeditepe University, Turkey

Re-telling of History in Ukrainian Cinematography after 2014
Olha Voznyuk, University of Vienna

Chair:
Sonia Mycak, Australian National University

Papers:
Independent reading: Yuri Mezhenko’s Archive as a personal project and historical projection
Olena Haleta, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

An archive as a repository of objective evidence through a period changing ideology: The Sukhomlyns’kyi archives.
Alan Cockerill, Monash University

Chair:
Dmytro Yesypenko, University of Alberta

Papers:
The Soviet Regime through the Prism of Family Stories: Vision of History in the Ukrainian Fiction of the Two Last Decades
Tetiana Grebeniuk, Zaporizhzhia State Medical University

The impact of archives and fiction on our understanding of Chernobyl
Oksana Weretiuk, University of Rzeszów

Publishing Marks of Ukrainian Development Since 2014: Market Trends, Iconic Cases, World Awards
Halyna Lystvak, Ukrainian Academy of Printing (Ukraine), Scholar at Lane Kirkland Scholarship Program at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Poland)

Chair:
Alessandro Achilli, University of Cagliari, Italy

Papers:
Performative citizenship in post-1991 Ukraine: historical premises and current manifestations
Valeria Korablyova, Charles University in Prague

The beauty and horror of society’s unpredictability, or Why Ukraine is like the Gorgon Medusa
Anna Tashchenko, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Post-Revolutionary Flux: Ukrainian History in the Classroom
Anastasiya Byesyedina, The University of Sydney

Chair:
Andrii Yasinovskyi, Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv

Papers:
The images of Ivan Fiodorov in Russian historiography
of the first half of the 19th century
Pavlo Yeremieiev, Kharkiv National University, Ukraine

Valuable Ukrainian printed books from the 16th-17th c. in Bulgaria
Vasya Velinova and Mariya Polimirova, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Copies of the Ostrih Bible in Hungary: Witnesses of Confessionalization,
and Migration of Books Between Eastern and Southern Slavs
Sándor Földvári, University of Debrecen, Hungary

Discussant:
Frank Sysyn, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

Chair:
Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Speaking of Personal Agency in Rural Ukraine: Former Collective
Farmers on Power Relations in the Kolhosp
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

“Today, history is being made in Ukraine.” Oral history and experiences
of unfinished revolutions and wars: reasoning about debatable and (in)obvious
Halyna Bodnar, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

“We just moved in, and this is it”: Housing and home space as a site of
(dis)remembrance of the vanished East-Central European populations
Eleonora Narvselius, Lund University, Sweden

Discussant:
Gelinada Grinchenko, V. N. Karazin National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

Chair:
Natalia Chaban, University of Canterbury, President, Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand

Presentation:
Mobilization of International Support for Ukraine in Deterring Russian Aggression in 2022: The Case of Australia
Volodymyr Shalkivskyi, Chargé d’Affaires, Embassy of Ukraine in Australia

Question and Answer Session

Volodymyr Shalkivskyi graduated from Kyiv Shevchenko University (MS economics, 1998), the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, USA (MA resource management, 2002), and the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine (MA international relations, 2012). He has had more than 20 years of diplomatic experience within the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, including its Arms Control Department, Economic Cooperation Department, and EU and NATO Department. Prior to coming to the Embassy of Ukraine in Australia in 2019 Volodymyr Shalkivskyi was responsible at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine for issues related to implementation of the Ukraine-EU Free Trade Zone Agreement. His foreign postings include the Embassy of Ukraine in Sweden (economic agenda, 2005-2009) and the Embassy of Ukraine in the US (IMF, World Bank, Finance and Energy portfolio, 2012-2016).

Chair:
Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Ukrainian Community Archives in Victoria, Australia: A Stocktake
Alessandro Achilli, Marko Pavlyshyn and Olha Shmihelska, Association of Ukrainians in Victoria (Australia) Archival Project

Creating a Community Archive: The Association of Ukrainians in Victoria Archival Project (AUVAP), 2020-2021
Yana Ostapenko, Monash University, Association of Ukrainians in Victoria

The role of literary journals in the Ukrainian-Australian literary field
Sonia Mycak, Australian National University

Acknowledgements on behalf of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand

Chair:
Dmytro Yesypenko, University of Alberta

Round table participants:
Ihor Kulyk, Director of the State Archive of the Ukrainian Institute of
National Remembrance

Anton Drobovych, Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National
Remembrance

Andriy Kohut, Director of Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service
of Ukraine

Roman Podkur, Senior Research Fellow of Institute of History of Ukraine

Chair:
Alessandro Achilli, University of Cagliari, Italy

Papers:
A society with a movie camera: shaping an archive of amateur filmmaking
Bohdan Shumylovych, Center for Urban History Lviv, Ukraine

Toward the Making of a National Cinema: Writing and Researching VUFKU since Independence
Yu-Hsuan Hsu, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

Cinema without a viewer – Ukrainian feature films (1991-2014)
Olga Gontarska, Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau

On the Borderline Between Literature and Music: Ukrainian Contexts of Sentimental Style and Genres
Iuliia Bentia, Modern Art Research Institute, National Academy of Arts of Ukraine

Chair:
Sándor Földvári, University of Debrecen, Hungary

Papers:
The impact of Viennese archives on Ukrainian culture in the era of modernism
Stefan Simonek, University of Vienna

Let the “Controversial” Writer Speak: Yurii Kosach and Archives
Olha Poliukhovych, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy

Intergenerational Trauma and (Dis)Continuity in Contemporary Ukrainian War Prose
Iryna Tarku, University of Giessen

Chair:
Mark Edele, University of Melbourne

Papers:
Thirty Years of the Ukrainian Language Revival: Language Ideologies in Flux
Natalia Kudriavtseva, Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University

Anti-nationalist Populism in Ukraine
Svitlana Shcherbak, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine