Chapter 11.1: "Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence"
Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence is an award-winning book that explores the relationship between two of Ukraine’s most historically significant peoples over the centuries.
In its second edition, the book tells the story of Ukrainians and Jews in twelve thematic chapters. Among the themes discussed are geography, history, economic life, traditional culture, religion, language and publications, literature and theater, architecture and art, music, the diaspora, and contemporary Ukraine before Russia’s criminal invasion of the country in 2022.
The book addresses many of the distorted stereotypes, misperceptions, and biases that Ukrainians and Jews have had of each other and sheds new light on highly controversial moments of Ukrainian-Jewish relations. It argues that the historical experience in Ukraine not only divided ethnic Ukrainians and Jews but also brought them together.
The narrative is enhanced by 335 full-color illustrations, 29 maps, and several text inserts that explain specific phenomena or address controversial issues.
The volume is co-authored by Paul Robert Magocsi, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University. The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter sponsored the publication with the support of the Government of Canada.
In keeping with a long literary tradition, UJE will serialize Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence over the next several months. Each week, we will present a segment from the book, hoping that readers will learn more about the fascinating land of Ukraine and how ethnic Ukrainians co-existed with their Jewish neighbors. We believe this knowledge will help counter false narratives about Ukraine, fueled by Russian propaganda, that are still too prevalent globally today.
Chapter 11.1
Contemporary Ukraine
Following the declaration of independence in August 1991 and its confirmation by a popular referendum vote in December of that same year, Ukraine entered a period of transition. The transition in question was from former Soviet authoritarian rule with its command economy to a democratic republic with a free-market economy. The transition has not always been easy, and the previous Soviet political, legal, and social system — including cultural values — remains embedded in Ukrainian society even after a quarter-century of independence.
Politics and society
Among the first challenges of the new state was to determine its political structure. The country's legislature, the Supreme Soviet (Verkhovna Rada), formerly made up almost exclusively of Communist party deputies, remained a one-chamber national parliament but was now comprised of deputies from several political parties. The leader of the strongest party with the most deputies generally becomes the country's prime minister.
When after several years of debate independent Ukraine finally adopted its first constitution in 1996, the country became a unitary state. The republic's head of state is a president elected by popular vote for a seven-year term. The relative powers of the president and prime minister have been altered several times through constitutional amendments. The old Soviet administrative structure according to oblasts (regions) was retained, with their governmental heads (governors) appointed by Ukraine's president. The one exception to the country's unitary structure is Crimea, which has the status of an autonomous republic with its own parliament.
Although Ukraine is comprised of over a hundred different nationalities, the so-called titular nationality, ethnic Ukrainians (77.8 percent of the population in 2001), was given pride of place. The 1996 constitution specifically calls on "the state to promote the consolidation and development of the Ukrainian nation, and of its historical consciousness, traditions, and culture." Among the most important of the cultural elements is the Ukrainian language. Despite its status as the state language, large segments of the population — ethnic Ukrainians as well as ethnic Russians — use Russian (or more likely the Ukrainian-Russian mixed language mockingly called surzhyk) as their common mode of speech. The struggle to enhance the Ukrainian language has frequently become a source of political conflict between nationally conscious activists and Russian speakers, who are often reluctant to give up their native speech in favor of the state language.
Aside from the Russian language, Ukraine has had to redefine its relationship with its largest neighbor, Russia. Those relations became particularly complex after the ascent to power of Vladimir Putin (from 2000 as president or prime minister), who has tried to draw independent Ukraine into Russia's larger geopolitical sphere. Among the issues that proved to be a source of disagreement and conflict between the two countries were Ukraine's reluctance to join the Commonwealth of Independent [former Soviet] States and the Russian-inspired Eurasian Customs Union; Russia's demands to maintain its Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine's Crimean port of Sevastopol; the price of natural gas from Russia and its transport through Ukrainian territory to central and western Europe; and periodic Russian interference in Ukraine's political and economic affairs, whether in industrial eastern Ukraine, Crimea, or even Transcarpathia in the far west.
Relations with Russia have also had an impact on Ukraine's relations with the rest of Europe. Should Ukraine be Western-oriented and draw closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), or should it be Eastern-oriented and seek closer ties with Russia and its Eurasian sphere? These options, or some combination thereof, remained high on the agenda of all Ukrainian political figures from presidents and cabinet ministers to parliamentary deputies.
As a nominal democratic society, Ukraine has as its ideal the rule of law, although it has had great difficulty in matching ideals with often corrupt realities. For example, inadequate or complicated tax and property laws have discouraged investment by foreign companies in the country's economic sector. And, while there are constitutional guarantees for national minorities (including Jews) and some schools do provide instruction in languages other than Ukrainian and Russian, there are little or no state funds allocated for cultural institutions, publications, and other national group activity. It is for this reason that certain minorities receive funds for cultural and educational work from their "mother" country — from Hungary for the Magyars, from Turkey for the Crimean Tatars, from Israel and international Jewish organizations for the Jews, and so on.
Perhaps the most successful changes in Ukrainian society since independence are connected with the revival in religious life. Churches barred or heavily restricted by the Soviet regime (Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and several Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish orientations) as well as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Russian Moscow Patriarchate now operate freely and openly. All have increased the number of their adherents and, most visibly, have contributed to an architectural boom through the reconstruction of existing and the building of new churches, synagogues, and mosques. Along with growth has come controversy and conflict, usually over property and jurisdiction, most particularly between the Greek Catholics, the Moscow Patriarchal Orthodox, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, and the Kievan Patriarchal Ukrainian Orthodox.
But, in the end, the most serious problems facing Ukraine in the twenty-first century remain the unbalanced economy, the slow pace of legal reform, and the ongoing corruption throughout all levels of society and government. During the decade-long presidency of Leonid Kuchma (1994–2004), Ukraine's currency was stabilized and economic productivity gradually increased. The country's new-found wealth was anything but evenly distributed, however, and instead was in the hands of a few dozen businesspeople who, following the collapse of Soviet rule, managed to take over former state-owned enterprises and create monopolies to increase their personal income. Several of these enormously wealthy individuals, known to the public as oligarchs, courted favor with President Kuchma in order to protect and enhance their business interests. Government cooperation with some oligarchs and the alienation of others out of favor with the president led to increasing corruption that filtered down throughout all levels of society. All the while the vast majority of the population lived in poverty-like conditions and was subject to increasing psychological insecurity caused in large part by the breakdown of health and other social programs that had functioned to some degree under Soviet rule.
One visible result of these conditions is a marked decline in Ukraine's population, from 51.4 million in 1989 to 48.4 million in 2001 and an estimated 45.5 million in 2013. Many factors have contributed to the demographic decline: a drop in the birth rate (helped by high levels of abortion), emigration abroad in search of work, and an overall lower life expectancy. Consequently, the demographic pattern among ethnic Ukrainians is basically stagnant. On the other hand, most other ethnonational groups, with the exception of the Crimean Tatars, have declined in numbers since Ukraine's independence whether as a result of assimilation (Russians who now identify as ethnic Ukrainians) or return to the "home" country (Poles to Poland, Magyars to Hungary, Jews to Israel and North America).
Ukraine's post-independence revolutions
With regard to political corruption and the increasing tendency toward authoritarian rule, the worst example took place in late 2004, when the government of President Kuchma tried to assure the election of a hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych. The efforts to rig the October–November 2004 presidential elections failed, however. In what came to be known as the Orange Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens throughout the country protested peacefully and managed to overturn the election results in favor of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. As the candidate calling for strong civic institutions as the basis of democracy, for a market economy under the rule of law, and for greater integration with the rest of Europe, Yushchenko was installed as Ukraine's third president in early 2005.
Both international observers and Yushchenko supporters were convinced that the Orange Revolution would bring about the kind of political, economic, and social change that was earlier heralded in central Europe by the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989. Those expectations were not fulfilled, however, because of the relatively quick collapse of the Orange coalition caused by the growing friction and eventually open antagonism between its leading figures, President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko. This provided an opening for the challenger in the 2004 election, Viktor Yanukovych, to win a closely contested election in 2010 and be installed as independent Ukraine's fourth president.
At first glance, one might assume that Ukraine experienced no radical change as a result of the Orange Revolution. At best, it might be considered just another — albeit dramatic — phase in Ukraine's painfully slow evolution from Soviet-style authoritarian rule to a parliamentary and free-market European-style democracy. On the other hand, the Orange Revolution did instill in large segments of Ukraine's citizenry (especially of the younger generation) the conviction that civic participation and protests are not only possible but necessary as the best means of securing change. In effect, there was a revolution of the mind — to paraphrase the Czechoslovak statesman Václav Havel — whereby Ukrainians, regardless of ethnic background, came to believe that they could take to the streets, express their will, and bring about political change.
Certainly, most Ukrainians felt deceived by the failure of the Orange political coalition to deliver on its political promises. Would, therefore, the populace slip again into civic lethargy and accept the burden of their country's centuries-long authoritarian past and the apparent impossibility of lasting political and social change? If so, how could one legitimately say that there was a revolution of the mind in 2004?
The test came in late 2013, when, after half a year of discussions about signing an association agreement with the European Union, President Yanukovych suddenly reneged on his promise to sign the accord and instead announced plans to enter the Russian-inspired and dominated Eurasian Customs Union. Immediately, on 22 November, Ukrainians took to the streets, converging on Kyiv's Independence Square — the Maidan. As happened a decade before, hundreds of thousands of protesters braved the winter cold with ongoing peaceful demonstrations that caught the attention of the international press and the world's social media.
In contrast to the 2004 Orange Revolution, however, this time Ukraine's authorities under Yanukovych reacted with lethal force, resulting in several weeks of clashes and deaths on both sides. At the same time, Russia under President Putin tried to help his beleaguered ally, Yanukovych, by unleashing a vociferous international media campaign that depicted the Maidan protesters as fascists and antisemites, and their leaders as part of an illegal junta whose goals were not only to wipe out the Russian language in Ukraine but to cleanse the country of its ethnically Russian inhabitants.
In fact, the protesters on Kyiv's Maidan and throughout much of the country included citizens of all ages, professions, and ethnic backgrounds. Jews were especially prominent not only as speakers at protest rallies but also as civilians who armed themselves in the face of attack by government-backed forces. Those who died defending the Revolution of Dignity (as it came to be called), and who were subsequently immortalized as the Sacred Hundred (Nebesna Sotnya), included an ethnically representative cross-section of Ukraine's population, including Jews.
In the end, the government's use of force against the protesters failed. On 22 February 2014 President Yanukovych fled the country and was replaced by an interim government. During the next several months, national elections held in May and October gave Ukraine a new president (Petro Poroshenko), parliament, and prime minister (Arsenii Yatsenyuk). The post-Maidan government set out to implement a series of long-overdue reforms; it garnered the support of major western powers, in particular the United States; and it signed an association agreement with the European Union, thereby firmly adopting a pro-European rather than pro-Eurasian (i.e., Russian) political and economic orientation.
Whereas Putin's propaganda campaign failed to undermine the revolution unfolding on the Maidan, his goal to destabilize Ukraine was more successful in other parts of the country. At the end of February, local militia groups, with clandestine assistance from Russia, took over Crimea's parliament. Within a week, Crimea's government leaders proclaimed their intention to join the Russian Federation. After a mock referendum, on 21 March Crimea was formally annexed by Russia, allowing Putin to announce to the world the return of this "historic Russian land" to its rightful motherland. Russian propaganda and promises of military support also encouraged self-styled paramilitary rebels to take over parts of eastern Ukraine, where by October they had declared independence in the form of a Donetsk and a Luhansk "people's republic." Commentators have aptly described the resulting conflict as a frozen war between Ukraine and Russia, which, in turn, has seemingly reignited the last century's Cold War between the West (the United States) and the East (Russia).
Understanding the Jewish experience
In the first years of Ukrainian independence, the Ukrainian ruling elites sought and found ways to disassociate Ukrainian national strivings from Soviet state-sponsored antisemitism and anti-Zionism. At the same time, they attempted to introduce normality into Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the country and in the diaspora. Although these attempts sometimes had far-reaching pragmatic goals and had little to do with Ukrainian-Jewish reconciliation, in the long run they brought about new developments in the country's inter-ethnic relations. Many supporters of Ukrainian independence were sympathetic toward Jews, especially former dissidents and gulag "prisoners of conscience." Their presence in Rukh explains in large part why this leading non-Communist movement in the years of Soviet Ukraine promoted strong measures toward inter-ethnic reconciliation and outwardly rejected antisemitism. For example, in April 1991, responding to KGB-orchestrated rumors about anti-Jewish pogroms, Rukh organized mass demonstrations of solidarity with the Jews of Kyiv. Once Ukraine gained independence, Rukh's strong stance on Jewish issues became part of mainstream Ukrainian politics.
Holocaust remembrance
The government of independent Ukraine realized that for years Jews in Soviet Ukraine were forbidden to speak aloud about their wartime past. Therefore, the new Ukrainian authorities resolved once and for all to do away with the previous ban on Holocaust commemorations and introduce a more responsible attitude to Jewish suffering during World War II, even if it would be hurtful to Ukrainian national pride. In September 1991 Ukraine commemorated on a nationwide scale the fiftieth anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, acknowledging that there were ethnic Ukrainians and others in the country who had participated in atrocities against Jews during World War II. Ukraine's first president, Leonid Kravchuk, did much to set a new tone in Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Despite criticism from other high-ranking officials in his entourage, the president during a state visit to Israel in early 1993 boldly proclaimed Ukraine's responsibility for the wartime anti-Jewish violence on its territory and asked for forgiveness. In yet another high-profile setting, the International Conference on Antisemitism in Brussels, President Kravchuk reiterated the Ukrainian government's determination to promote the rebirth of Jewish life in Ukraine and to combat antisemitism. He was the only top-ranking political leader of a former Soviet republic at the Brussels conference, and his message was unequivocal: his government would continue to do its best to disassociate Ukraine from the moral burden of the Soviet past.
Holocaust commemorations did, indeed, became part of the official discourse in Ukraine at both the national and local levels. Holocaust commemorations did, indeed, become part of the official discourse in Ukraine, with officials at the national and local levels promoting the erection of monuments at sites of mass murder of Jews. Funding for such monuments has generally not come from the government but rather from Jewish sources, whether individuals or associations, mostly in North America. As a result, Holocaust monuments, appeared in several cities and towns (Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Rohatyn, Zolochiv, among others), becoming an inseparable part of Ukraine's cultural landscape. The visual imagery of the monuments and the inscriptions on memorial plaques underscored specifically Jewish victimization, in stark contrast to the vague, even hypocritical references to murdered "peaceful Soviet citizens" on monuments created during the Soviet era. All this, moreover, was done at a time when the economic crises in post-Soviet countries limited to a significant degree the funding available for cultural purposes. That these activities were not ubiquitous and that not every mass grave was marked with a corresponding monument should not be seen as reluctance to recognize the wartime Jewish tragedy, but rather as negligence on the part of the authorities toward commemoration of the Ukrainian past in general.
Certain practices started by President Kravchuk have been followed by other Ukrainian political leaders, in particular the custom of using Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) as an occasion to address the Ukrainian people with references to Nazi atrocities and calls for inter-ethnic tolerance. Ukraine's media followed suit. While the very word Holocaust had never appeared in Soviet public discourse, major television channels in independent Ukraine began to air feature films portraying or referring to the Holocaust in Ukraine, including The Commissar (made in 1967 and shelved, then re-released in 1988), The Ladies' Tailor (1990), The Father (2004), and the Hollywood-produced Schindler's List (1993). Local Jewish historians published books on various aspects of the Holocaust in Ukraine, such as the Drobytskyi Yar killing site and the Yanovskyi labor camp, located in Kharkiv and Lviv respectively.
For its part, the Yad Vashem Institute in Israel has by now identified more than two thousand five hundred Ukrainians who helped save Jews during the Holocaust, and honored them with the title, Righteous Among the Gentiles (Heb.: Hasidei umot ha-olam). Such honorees include several Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) priests and monks, among whom the best known is from western Ukraine, Archimandrite Klymentii Sheptytskyi, the brother of the head of the Greek Catholic Church at the time, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi. According to the number of individuals honored as Righteous Gentiles, Ukraine ranks fourth after Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Despite decade-long efforts on the part of Ukrainian diaspora organizations and individual Jews (in particular Holocaust survivors), the question of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi being recognized by Yad Vashem among Righteous Gentiles has not yet been resolved.
In order to assure a professional understanding of the World War II Jewish experience in Ukraine, centers for the study of the Holocaust were established with funds raised by Jews living abroad or from wealthy oligarchs in Ukraine of Jewish descent such as Igor Kolomoisky and Viktor Pinchuk. The work of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in Kyiv and the Tkuma Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies in Dnipropetrovsk has already helped to raise a greater awareness of the Holocaust in Ukrainian society through the dissemination of knowledge of the wartime Jewish plight among high school and university students. This has occurred through short-term intensive seminars, summer programs, conferences led by specialists from Israel and North America, and the publication of scholarly journals on the Holocaust. The centers in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk have also been instrumental in helping extend to Ukraine the American-based Spielberg project (USC Shoah Foundation's Institute for Visual History and Education), whose goal is to record the recollections of Holocaust survivors and the Righteous Gentiles who saved them.
Crimes against humanity trials
Ukraine's new approach toward Holocaust commemoration was not immediately followed up by legal actions. For instance, no attempts were made to identify and prosecute those involved in crimes against humanity on Ukrainian territory, and there was almost no discussion of local collaborators. In effect, there was no broad social consensus on this complex issue. For example, in 1993, when the Israeli Supreme Court was reconsidering the case of Ivan Demyanyuk (most likely wrongly identified as "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at the Treblinka death camp), a number of Ukrainians gathered near the Israeli Embassy in Kyiv to protest on behalf of a person whom they considered innocent. For a variety of reasons that had little to do with scholarship, Ukraine's Jewish scholars could not make up their minds regarding the Demyanyuk case. The result was that for over a decade researchers in Ukraine simply avoided the theme of collaboration.
In the end, a distorted attitude toward the Holocaust came to replace the omission of the topic that was characteristic of the previous Soviet regime. The authorities in independent Ukraine sought to distance themselves from what they considered Nazi crimes against the Jews committed on Ukrainian soil. They rejected and/or dismissed any attempts to discuss the involvement of local Ukrainians, particularly the UPA-OUN fighters and Ukrainian volunteers in German police units, who were implicated in the mass executions of Jews.
The subsequent elevation to hero status of these entities, as well as the Galicia Division within the military forces of Germany, allowed for little if any nuanced discussion. In western Ukraine, in particular, the local authorities maintained the view that ethnic Ukrainians serving in the Nachtigall Battalion and Galicia Division were war heroes precisely because they fought against the Soviet Union, a regime deemed responsible for the mass murders of nationalist Ukrainians in 1939–1941. The implication is that the UPA-OUN, Ukrainian police, Nachtigall, and the Galicia Division had nothing to do with the Final Solution. It is only recently that some specialists who study Ukraine (whether of Ukrainian or non-Ukrainian ethnic background) have started to address this topic in a scholarly manner.
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