Radio Svoboda: Ukrainians and Jews Have Had Many Examples of Cooperation—Karatnycky

When Russian propaganda directed to the West tried to present the Ukrainian Maidan as an assembly of fascists and antisemites, the Ukrainian Jewish community stood up to protect the democratic movement. Thousands of speeches, articles, interviews, and scientific research totally destroyed the propagandistic clichés.

In Moscow they did not expect that the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue had progressed so far, and that Ukrainian Jews would advocate for Ukraine not only in Moscow, but also among other representatives of their Diaspora in the world. We discuss this with one of the active participants of this dialogue, a co-founder of the “Ukrainian Jewish Encounter” organization and American political scientist Adrian Karatnycky.

AK: I think you are totally right saying that the Maidan became a signal of the fact that the Ukrainian Jewish community and its leaders are ready to support Ukraine’s democratic and European choice. And it was the culmination of a process that took place in Ukraine over the last 23 years.

When the Jewish community of Ukraine gradually changed its Soviet identity that was rooted in Russian culture to a patriotic one regarding Ukraine, they became conscious citizens of Ukraine. But of course, when Jewish leaders actively participated in the Maidan and there were Ukrainian Jews among the heroes of the Maidan, this new identity of Ukrainian Jews emerged clearly.

RS: The process of rapprochement and mutual knowledge, in the opinion of many representatives of these nations, had begun earlier when Jewish and Ukrainian dissidents were side-by-side in Soviet camps and were often accused of “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism” and “Zionism.” How important, in your opinion, is this part of the history?

AK: I think there were a large number of factors. We can recall the dialogue of Soviet dissidents from both sides, the first Ukrainian Presidents who started to commemorate the memory of the victims of Nazi occupation, and the discussion in civil society of the issues of the Holodomor and the Holocaust, a significant part of which took place on the pages of the journal Krytyka.

Another important factor in this convergence was that for nearly a quarter of a century Ukraine and Israel have had good interstate relations, regardless of the political situation or the names of presidents. Relations between the two nations were built on a solid foundation. There were some unpleasant moments connected with the proclamation of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych as “Heroes of Ukraine”, but they could not knock this positive relationship off course.

The last factor that I would like to mention is the immigration of Ukrainian citizens, Jews and non-Jews, to Israel. I have in mind temporary workers, workers who were looking for jobs in Israel, and Ukrainian Jews, that is young people who grew up in an independent Ukraine and saw themselves as Ukrainian Jews. I think these factors served to change the balance.

RS: For centuries Ukrainians and Jews have been separated by strong stereotypes that are supported by different people and organizations. We can recall the wave of anti-Ukrainian media coverage not too long ago regarding the trial of John Demjanjuk. It seems that such stereotypes are the strongest not in Ukraine, but in the Diaspora, where the two communities live together. How did you manage to establish such a dialogue in the Diaspora?

AK: We also had predecessors in this dialogue. There were attempts to establish ties by Canadian professor Petro Potichnyi in the 1980s. Numerous conferences on these topics were conducted by Rutgers University Professor Taras Hunczak, who studied Simon Petlyura and his times, and many others.

The fact that the Ukrainian and Jewish Diasporas lived in the same countries, and often were even neighbors, have made such a dialogue necessary and natural. But of course to have this conversation among academics was much easier than to reach a wide audience and to create a common narrative for the two communities. We are working on it a lot. We invite Ukrainian scholars, Jewish scholars, and academics who are not related to any of these communities but who study the Jewish history of Ukraine, and try to find a consensus about what happened in history, where there is disagreement and where there is misunderstanding.

But regardless of how important the research is, I think that what happened after the Maidan—when the leaders of both communities found a way to each other and felt the need for this dialogue—became even more important. While in the early 1990s such meetings took place sporadically, they have now become more regular.

We have started a series of initiatives, and one of them is about the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Andrei Sheptytsky who, as the head of the church, saved nearly 150 Jews in Ukrainian monasteries as well as in his own residence during the Nazi occupation. Together, we are trying to turn a discussion from a concentration on purely negative and problematic pages to looking at the more positive aspects, which were more numerous. Examples of peaceful and fruitful coexistence are less known.

For instance, in Bukovina there were over one hundred years of shared history with no documented pogrom. This is an example of a historical period of peace and cooperation between the two communities which academics have not yet studied much. All these things have been discussed for many years in the Diaspora, and they change the situation.

RS: Stereotypes, of course, work both ways. In Ukraine there still is a strong bias against Ukrainian oligarchs of Jewish origin. And you probably also have to respond to critics of your decision to give Viktor Pinchuk the Andrei Sheptytsky Award for 2014, which is jointly awarded by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine and the “Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter” (UJE) , of which you are co-director. How will you respond to critics? Do you think that after the Maidan, and after many Jewish businessmen proved themselves to be Ukrainian patriots, the debate will resolve itself?

AK: First of all, we have witnessed surprisingly low support for the politics of ethnic division in Ukraine after the Maidan. This was shown by the two electoral campaigns that took place in Ukraine after the Maidan. Secondly, indeed many oligarchs, Jews and non-Jews, rose up to defend Ukraine in the time of crisis. I think that the discussion in Ukraine is more about issues of state governance and problems in fighting corruption, and it is a healthy and mature discussion that does not apply to the ethnic origin of people who became wealthy.

As for Mr. Pinchuk, he received an award for very specific services of merit—for the revival of the memory of the Holocaust, for the revival of Jewish life in Ukraine, and for his work at the “Yalta European Strategy,” which has been an important venue for discussions about Ukraine among European and North American leaders. This is an example that every business in Ukraine should follow.

Returning to the Maidan, I want to say that indeed it is largely due to the participation of Jewish leaders and activists who could directly inform the world about what was happening in their country and who created a positive attitude in the world to the civil movement in Ukraine and to the state that Ukrainians are trying to build.

Interviewer: Maria Schur

Originally appeared: http://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/26690732.html

Translated by: Olesya Kravchuk, journalist, interpreter

Edited by Peter Bejger