Will Brehm  0:00
Liz Shchepetylnykova, welcome to FreshEd.

Liz Shchepetylnykova  0:25
Thank you for having me.

Will Brehm  0:41
So, there’s been a lot of talk sort of late about Russians imperial ambitions in Ukraine, which is where you are from. And of course, this isn’t the first sort of Imperial conquest that Ukraine has experienced. Can you sort of give listeners by way of background? What are some of the instances in history of foreign powers trying to control or conquer Ukraine?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  2:02
Yeah. Ukraine is indeed located in this part of Eastern Europe, which has been a target of multiple colonial ambitions over the centuries. There are many reasons for it. Oftentimes, natural resources including oil and gas, but most frequently “black earth”, which is widely discussed also in historic scholarship in terms of its fertility and the value it has for the region more broadly. Interestingly enough, even nowadays, in Ukraine, you can hear stories of people who experienced living in up to five different states without ever leaving their village. So, Russia today is the most widely discussed colonial power on this territory, however, of course, there were many others.

Will Brehm  2:52
What were the others?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  2:53
So, before the World War One, a part of Ukraine has been incorporated into the Habsburg empire. Nowadays, you can hear from locals that it was one of the most civilized empires that ruled over Ukrainian territory, which is not something that comes in mind of many scholars. And after, in 1917, the Ukrainian part that was a part of Russia has actually tried to separate proclaiming an independent Ukrainian People’s Republic. Similar has happened in western Ukraine, where in 1918, Western Ukrainian People’s Republic was formed. And a year later in 1919, they’ve signed the Union Treaty, which has basically brought what is now widely known as Ukrainian territory together. However, because this territory has been under control of so many imperial powers without its own statehood, there was very little information available to Western powers, in particular, about the region and globally, native Ukrainian population, or Ruthenians, as they were called, at the time have largely not been heard. They’ve been mostly enslaved by the colonial powers who serve them, and therefore, after the World War One, the negotiations of the winning powers have resulted in Ukraine, although proclaimed as an independent state, being once again partitioned at that point between the Soviet Union and the Polish Republic. So, you can see how this story has continued throughout the 20th century. When you look at the history of the World War Two when Stalin and Hitler through their path, first partition Poland, and in that way, Stalin takes over part of Western Ukraine, then, of course, Nazis would go against Stalin and reoccupy this territory, making it the territory of double occupation, as Timothy Snyder puts it, right? So, after the Second World War, Stalin and the Soviet Union will take back the territories of Western Ukraine, and join them with the other territories that at the time have formed the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. And it’s not until 1991 that Ukraine would become an independent solid state in itself. This is of course, a very high overview.

Will Brehm  5:36
Of course, yeah. I think that insight you had about there’s people in certain villages in Ukraine that are sort of nostalgic for a particular empire -the Habsburg Empire. And it’s sort of absurd, but it goes to the heart of I think what you’re sort of saying is that there’s been so many different occupying powers in that part of the world. And of course, some have been worse than others. And so, you can get nostalgic for a particular form of empire. It’s ironic, but it’s also quite telling.

Liz Shchepetylnykova  6:03
Absolutely. And for those of the listeners who want to learn more about it, there’s an excellent book by Serhil Plokhy, The Gates of Europe, which talks about many of these aspects and details.

Will Brehm  6:15
So, I want to zoom in on sort of the most recent form of occupation that’s going on; the sort of the Russian aggression, the Russian war in Ukraine. And I just want to know, from your experiences, both as a scholar but someone who is from Ukraine; what is that sort of particular form of imperialism? What does it look like today?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  6:39
This is an excellent question, and also very challenging to answer because there’s very little that is known about Russian imperialism, particularly in the higher education community. Russians have denied their imperial and colonial legacy. They’ve, of course, also engaged with much disinformation about Russia’s history and their relationships with people living in diverse parts of the territories that they’ve colonized. And we have to also, I think, be critical ourselves as an academic community, because oftentimes scholars have oriented themselves towards Moscow or St. Petersburg as imperial centers where knowledge has been largely generated. And that also contributed to marginalization of the perspective of colonized people, both colonized by Russian Empire, and later by the Soviet Union. I think from my personal experience, and from my research, it is important to understand that Russian imperialism has some common characteristics across the various regions and peoples that Russia has occupied. But it also varies. So, what I’m going to be talking about in terms of Ukraine has some analogies somewhere else, but not necessarily is the same, because Ukraine geographically lies on this frontier of European civilization. And that geographic location and several historical events that were happening there has made it critical for Russian historical claims to take over this particular territory and control it. For example, you know, their very name, Russia comes from their ancient state roots, which was based off Kyiv. So, it is very hard for a state to claim their name if they don’t have control over a particular territory where that name comes from. Similarly, Kyiv was the religious center, and that’s where Christianity has spread out from to other territories of Eastern Europe. This is a reference that of course, we can hear very often on the news these days from some Russian politicians. What is another important factor is that Ukraine’s proximity to other European countries made it much easier for people on this territory and intellectuals in particular to engage with various ideas. For instance, first universities in the region appeared particularly in Ukraine, right? So, the oldest institution in Ukraine, Ostroh Academy, dates back to 1576. And then Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which educated so many Russian imperial intellectuals and Leeds was founded in 1632. So, you can see how that geographic location, that intellectual proximity, made Ukrainian territory really critical to the Russian Imperial project. That’s where they draw their legitimacy from it. And that makes that process of colonization very context specific. So, for instance, one of the key aspects of Russian colonization of Ukraine is uniformity. So, in order to make sure that Russia has legitimate claims, and its political dogma is not challenged, for Russians, it was practically critical to basically make sure that Ukraine as a separate national idea, did not exist. And as some historians would argue, the key challenge to the Russian Empire was really the very idea of nation, because it has challenged the way the relationship has been built between Russians in the Imperial center and those on the outskirts of empire. So, from that perspective, what the Russians did in order to implement this uniformity was a whole array of different tools. One of them is very well known and understood in other contexts, particularly in North American; it’s settler colonialism, right? So, particularly during the establishment of cities in Ukrainian territory and industrialization, most of the people who would move to the cities would not be Ukrainian. The reason for that is actually very pragmatic. Because this was happening in the 19 century before the abolition of serfdom -and under serfdom, Ukrainian peasants had not had the opportunity to choose where they would live because they belonged to a particular landlord. Therefore, what happens is Russian serfs who actually had an opportunity to move as long as they paid a tax to their landlord would move to newly established Ukrainian cities to take on jobs in factories and various enterprises that were established. Another aspects of this, of course, is the control over the movement of the territory, right? So, the Russian colonialism has often focused on making sure that specific categories of Ukrainian populations are in the places and working on the tasks that are particularly valuable to the Imperial economic development. And we can see this most vividly during the early years of the Soviet rule, which has led to one of the biggest tragedies of Ukrainian population in the 20th century. Particularly during the collectivization of farms, Ukrainian peasants have been not supportive of this process. There were numerous peasants uprising, also, by the way, because in some territories, people already had the right to private property. So, collectivization for them, essentially meant that their private property is being taken away. And because of that resistance, that Ukrainian population has demonstrated, we have had the biggest famine in our history. Nowadays, we call it Holodomor that happened in 1932-1933, and killed over four million Ukrainians. It’s one of those cases where this is an event that has been absolutely intentionally made by the Soviet authorities as a payback to the Ukrainian peasants, yet, it has been denied and censored for decades. But of course, Ukraine is a very vast territory, and its population is not just ethnic Ukrainians, and it’s not just peasants, so we can see those diverse manifestations of Russian colonialism in the experiences of other ethnic groups in  the territory of Ukraine. Particularly those issues of limited settlement opportunities could be seen in the experiences of Jews in Ukraine because Jews have been limited to the pale of set amounts since Russian Imperial times and it also limited the kind of professions that they could undertake. So, limiting their professional opportunities on the territory as well. In the south of Ukraine, settler colonialism has been merged with religious assimilation, for instance, because southern Ukraine has been traditionally occupied by Crimean Tatars, which is a Muslim population native to this region, particular native to Crimea. And what has been seen during the Soviet period in that territory is of course massive unveiling of Crimean Tatars and this is an experience which a lot of people in Central Asia also had to go through unfortunately. So, there are many different manifestations which are both unique but also can be seen elsewhere. However, unfortunately, there’s little scholarship -especially critical scholarship- produced about these historical experiences through isolation of those colonized people and their intellectuals, oftentimes, their perspectives have been silenced. And at the same time, unfortunately, over decades, we’ve seen that there was very little critical reflections coming out about it from Russian intellectuals. So, I hope that with Ukrainian perspective, slowly emerging and integrating into the global academic discourse, we can provide a kind of decolonial view on the Russian Empire

Will Brehm  15:35
And this is sort of where we’re gonna get you today. It’s quite interesting to see the connections of higher education, and the intellectuals in higher education, and their connections to the Soviet Union, to Russia, because they’re so geographically close. How would you describe the connection between intellectuals and the higher education system in Ukraine with the quote, unquote, West. If we were to go in the other direction, look towards Europe and into North America; what’s the connection? How would you describe that connection between Ukraine and the West?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  16:10
So, what we know so far is really that Ukrainian intellectual tradition developed in very close relationship with the European. And Ukrainian thinkers and scholars consistently engaged with their European counterparts throughout centuries. Medieval universities that I’ve mentioned before, such as Ostroh Academy and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, largely drew on Greek philosophical traditions and European theological traditions in their education. In the 19th century, we see a growing influence of German philosophy and philosophical ideas on both, intellectual community and universities themselves. In some instances, for example, in case of Kharkiv University, a German scholar, Johann Baptists Schad, was the one who came to chair the first philosophy department. So, there’s this very close interplay. In Kyiv University, at the time, in order to get a position a scholar was first sent for several years research to Europe. For example, this is what happened to a famous Ukrainian political thinker and a first sociologist as he calls himself; Mykhailo Drahomanov. He completed his studies at the university, and then the university has commissioned for him to go to Europe before he could take the lecturer’s position. This interchange of ideas has been constantly going on until the Soviet occupation, basically. With the integration of Ukrainian territory into the Soviet Union in 1922, what we see is this increased isolation of the intellectual community. However, that doesn’t mean in the case of Ukraine that there was no engagement with the West, as we call it, and Western ideas, because by this time, there is a growing Ukrainian intellectual diaspora in the West. So, we see that, for instance, during the interwar period, when Soviets are trying to take over Ukrainian territory, some of the researchers moved from Ukraine to other European countries. A famous Ukrainian historic and Mykhailo Hrushevsky, at that time, establishes a first Ukrainian Sociological Institute, for example, abroad. During the World War Two, a lot of Ukrainian researchers have been displaced to European countries, many of them lived in the DP (displaced persons) camps for years, and there, they’ve created what is now known as the Artistic Ukrainian Movement. Inside of the DP camps, they basically created their own educational institutions to train young children and teenagers and engage with themselves with those ideas. Many of them would eventually stay in Europe, and some would move to North America. So, in the 20th century, we’ve seen establishment of some of the critical Ukrainian research institutions, for example, in Canada, the Ukrainian Research Institute at the University of Alberta. And then of course, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. So, diaspora essentially has continued to play this critical role of deconstructing Soviet narratives about Ukraine at the time when Ukrainian intellectuals in the Soviet Union were largely isolated from the global academic discourse. And this would later, in 1991, once Ukraine becomes independent, contribute to development of the newly independent intellectual landscape in Ukraine that has very much kind of relied on this diasporic knowledge.

Will Brehm  19:55
You know, it’s really quite fascinating to see the sort of shifts over time when it comes to intellectual histories and how ideas move and how people move, and then how different sorts of political projects get created and then, like you said, start looking inward and put up barriers. But these ideas and these people who have migrated out previously were able to sort of build up their own scholarship and, or collectively, as well. And in the article that you written, you make a big distinction between sort of intellectuals and intelligentsia to try and help us make sense of some of these dynamics. Can you give the listener a little bit of an overview? Why is it important to distinguish between intellectuals and intelligentsia? And why are you using those terms to help make sense of this phenomenon?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  20:42
Absolutely. Intelligentsia is a very peculiar term, which is mostly used in Eastern Europe really. It emerges as Malia said, as a class of this thinking man in Barbera society. Because at the time, you know, in 19th century, what we’re observing in this territory is that Russian Empire is modernizing much slower compared to other European empires and that essentially means that access to even basic education is very limited. So, intelligentsia emerges as this group of people who are first and foremost focusing on enlightenment, on engaging with the masses and sharing knowledge. However, what we see later on is that there is a growing disparity and a growing disconnect between what is happening in Eastern Europe -particularly the parts that are integrated into the Russian Empire- compared to other territories in Europe, and that leads to growing antagonism between Russia and the rest of the Europe. And in a sense, it creates a foundation for this dichotomy that I’ve discussed in my paper, because Russians are beginning to juxtapose themselves with Western Europeans. And this develops fully during the Soviet period, because once the Soviet Union is being formed, and the communists take over power, they’re using this idea of intelligentsia to justify basically their claim to power. The reason for that is very simple and very straightforward; neither of the Bolshevik leadership have actually been working class people. They’ve all had access to some sort of higher education, some of them dropped out, others were kicked out. But nevertheless, they were no working man. So, they needed a concept that could justify why they are leading this communist revolution. And they use the idea of intelligentsia specifically for those purposes. They’ve expanded it to include all kinds of people. And then they weaponize it by arguing that essentially, intelligentsia is a moral group that is concerned with moral aspects of life, whereas intellectuals have been used as a synonym to Western capitalists. And by creating that dichotomy, they basically made sure that this idea that has developed at the time in the West, that intellectual is someone who could question the power, who could criticize the power, that idea would not take roots in the Soviet Union because intellectuals were portrayed as this very negative phenomenon to begin with, and intelligentsia was kept at bay with this idea that the role of intelligentsia is to be moral authority, rather than engage in the questioning the actual authority of the Communist Party.

Will Brehm  23:42
Interesting. So, now let’s fast forward to the sort of end of the Soviet Union, what happens to intellectuals and the intelligentsia, and just sort of Ukrainian higher education discourse? What happens in this moment of radical transformation away from the Soviet Union?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  24:02
So, I think what’s important to highlight here is that there is no radical transformation. What we’re seeing is very gradual change because Soviets systematically eliminated Ukrainian intellectuals. There were professors who were fired and deported and killed since 1922 onwards, whole generations executed in 1930s and then in the 1960s. In Ukraine, in particular, until 1985, there were political prisoners who died in Gulag. So, the whole idea of perestroika or opening up to the West has really been an idea that maybe has resonated with experiences of people somewhere in Russia, but not really in Ukraine. And for that reason, when every generation had to kind of reinvent the ideas from the scratch, 1990s presented this unique opportunity where several generations of intellectuals could actually engage with one another. For the first time, what they were able to do is really to ask a question; what is Ukrainian intelligentsia? Not the Soviet intelligentsia in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but the Ukrainian one and coming together around that passion has been probably the most important aspect of it in the 90s. And this opening up and liberalization kind of took on that also allowed them to engage in discussing this question with their colleagues in the diaspora because they started coming back to Ukraine, and helping establish new academic institutions. The real push forward really happened after the 2004 Orange Revolution, when political liberalization really allowed to open up a lot of archives and get access to much of the information and knowledge that was censored during the Soviet period. And that kind of marked this period of really rethinking and relearning what was and what is the role of Ukrainian intellectuals and intelligentsia.

Will Brehm  26:12
How would you describe the role of intellectuals in Ukraine before the recent war with Russia? Like before Russia invaded, how would you describe the shape of the intellectual community in Ukraine?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  26:25
Before 2014 and Russian invasion, the Ukrainian intellectual community has been often struggling with dealing with its Soviet legacy, and this is something that we talk in detail about with Professor Anatoly Oleksiyenko, in our most recent paper, “What comes after the post-Soviet”, as we try to elaborate on this concept of de-Sovietization. Because the downside of that very peaceful divorce as [?*] calls it between Ukraine and Russia or the Soviet Union was the fact that many of the Soviet elites stayed in power. And that includes faculty, that includes rectors of universities, that includes administrative staff in the university. So, the names of the department might have been changed from “scientific communism” to “history of political movements”, but the people haven’t changed. So, what we saw quite a bit during those first two decades of Ukraine’s independence is this significant path dependence; the reluctance to acknowledge strong influence of the Soviet legacy and reluctance to engage in deconstructing that Soviet legacy. In 2014, the impact of “the revolution of dignity” and the Russian invasion has pushed forward that discussion a little bit, but we have seen mostly very narrow measures. The idea of de-Communization is one of those examples, for instance, where there is an acknowledgement that Ukraine has to depart from this communist legacy, but it doesn’t necessarily look deep into the behavioral patterns, into the intellectual patterns. It was very much focused on just rebranded once again, right? So, a very performative kind of Soviet style action. What was important after 2014, was the fact that there began this movement towards disengaging from the Soviet legacy. And it’s a challenging process once again, but at least it allows the Ukrainian intellectual community to abandon this dichotomy of intellectuals versus intelligentsia to come to realize that there’s a need for a new interpretation of the role of the intellectual in this society, that being a so-called post-Soviet academic that does performative work no longer works. It no longer serves the purpose. So, that will be probably the major shift. And, of course, you know, it still continues to develop.

Will Brehm  29:13
Has anything changed since February of 2022? You know, in the last, say, two years, when Russia invaded Ukraine, again. Has the intellectual community changed again, or has it pushed forward this process even more to a greater extent? What happened since the war started two years ago?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  29:35
So, I think we have to acknowledge that this is a very challenging question, because first and foremost, I know from my dissertation research, that a lot of scholars are very reluctant to reflect on their experiences because they think it’s just a little bit too fresh at this point. And of course, you know, our concern with objectivity requires that we take a little bit more time and space. However, I think that there are at least several things that we can already identify that have changed. First and foremost, I think what changed is really the way that the purpose of intellectuals is seen now within the academic community. So, from my dissertation research, I know that a lot of intellectuals do acknowledge at this point that there is no place for a university as an ivory tower in the Ukrainian context. So, for a scholar, it is necessary to serve a broader society, and that manifests in a variety of different ways. First and foremost, of course, in formulating new ideas and census. Second, in criticizing the government and those in power. And third, of course, in terms of engaging with the public. So, for instance, we see this through this gradual transition from the discourse of de-Communization towards the discourse of decolonization. And this attempt to not just write academic papers, but to actively engage with communities and to actively engage across the disciplines in order to formulate what does decolonization mean, in the Ukrainian context, right? And there’s much more nuances emerging right now, because it’s a very intentional process of trying to verse boundaries and engage with diverse groups. And one of the scholars that I’ve interviewed for my thesis, I think, has articulated it very well. The decolonization project in Ukraine is very much a project about understanding what is Ukrainian-ness?

Will Brehm  31:44
You know Liz, it’s so fascinating to think how this sort of intellectual history that you’re looking at in Ukraine, you know, it says something about decolonizing. But, of course, in Ukraine, colonization is so multi-layered and multifaceted and over centuries, right? I mean, we’re talking a very long time that you’re trying to sort of decolonize. So, I guess the question is something about what does the Ukrainian experience offer the larger sort of global discourse on decolonizing knowledge, which is quite commonplace today?

Liz Shchepetylnykova  32:17
Yeah. It’s an excellent question. I think there are at least two points that I can clearly see right now. First and foremost, the Ukrainian experience really shows that decolonizing is a non-linear process and the naive perspective of many academics in the early 90s, that post-Soviet states somehow are just gonna become normal Western States really was naive. The process of transformation is much more complicated. And the second part that I think is critical goes back to what Spivak wrote back in 2006, about how often unfortunately, or arguably falsely in academia, it is perceived that colonialism has only one model because we’re so often focused on the single nation as a colonizer and a single nation as a colonized, right? The case of Ukraine really highlights how different colonial powers on the same territory could create this space, which is very challenging and very complicated, and very complex, and how one of those powers could be a power that claimed for decades to be anti-colonial, particularly in the case of Ukraine in the Soviet Union. So, I think that we are offering a perspective which could really provide us an opportunity to broaden understanding of colonized and colonizer and what does it really mean to engage in decolonization, not only in academic communities, but also in a broader society.

Will Brehm  33:59
Well, Liz Shchepetylnkova, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. Really a pleasure to talk and fingers crossed on your dissertation defense coming up.

Liz Shchepetylnykova  34:07
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being with you.

Want to help translate this show? Please contact info@freshedpodcast.com

Related Guest Publications/Projects

What comes after post-soviet?: De-sovietization in higher education and research

Mending the divide: Intellectuals and intelligentsia in Ukrainian scholarly discourse

Mentioned

A history of Ukraine: The land and its peoples Colonial history of Ukrainian
The Habsburg mobilization of ethnicity and the Ukrainian question during the Great war

The Polish-Ukrainian Agreement, 1920

Timothy Snyder – Commemorative causality

The Nazi occupation of Soviet Ukraine

The Soviet Ukraine in historical perspective

The Gates of Europe: A history of Ukraine

National University of Ostroh Academy – Oldest university in Ukraine

Kyiv Mohyla Academy

Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine

The Ukrainian famine of 1933 

Sovietizing Jews in the Ukrainian province, 1919-1930

‘New Russia’ and the legacies of settler colonialism in Southern Ukraine

Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies –  University of Alberta

Harvard Ukrainian research institute

The origin of the Russian intelligentsia

The Ukrainian intelligentsia and genocide

Ukraine’s Orange revolution

What comes after the “post-soviet” in Russian Studies

Decommunization in Ukraine, 2014-2020

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The intellectual origins of modern Ukraine

The Kiev Academy: a bridge to Europe in the 17th century

Ukrainian philosophical thought at the brink between East and West

Making the Soviet intelligentsia

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Ukrainian intellectual history at empire’s end

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Ukrainian intelligentsia in post-soviet L’viv

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Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com