In Mr. Lozynskyj’s earlier article, he wrote the following: “John [sic!] Himka was a notorious Soviet apologist and remains a Ukraine detractor.”
The first allegation simply drags the discussion to the level of the gutter. I have known Professor Himka for many years and he was never a supporter, advocate or sympathizer of the SovietUnion. Second, what is a “Ukraine detractor”? In this case it appears to mean he does not hold the same opinions as Lozynskyj.
Himka was born in Detroit of Ukrainian and Italian ancestry. His mentor and predecessor at the University of Alberta, the late Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, was a brilliant scholar who helped bring Ukrainian studies into the mainstream and is revered today in Ukraine as well as North America. Himka completed his Ph.D. under the tutelage of Roman Szporluk, then at Michigan and subsequently the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of History at Harvard University.
Himka is one of the most popular teachers at the University of Alberta and has attracted a plethora of outstanding graduate students from Ukraine, Japan, Poland and other countries. He is widely accepted as the leading scholar on 19th century Galicia, and has now turned his focus to the Holocaust, as well as Ukrainian Church studies. His books have received international critical acclaim.
Over the past few years, Himka has indeed revised his views on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (known as OUN, whose members fought for Ukrainian national independence in the first half of the 20th century) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the organization’s military wing, known as UPA), based on his archival research. His conclusions may not be popular but they are not motivated by some grudge against the community in which he was raised.
Let me now make eight brief comments on Lozynskyj’s second editorial.
First, Himka’s response to Lozynskyj’s original opinion piece was not tardy at all. That response was offered in mid-March, but for unknown reasons was not published by Kyiv Post until Sept. 21 ("Ukrainian past and future", a delay of more than six months. It did appear promptly, however, on the Internet list of publications on Ukraine issued by the chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa [www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca/pdf/UKL442.pdf].
Second, Himka was referring to the Kolodzinsky Division of UPA-North, and not Colonel Kolodzinsky of the Carpathian Sich army. So the rest of Lozynskyj’s third paragraph is irrelevant.
Third, Lozynsky’s reference to Marco Carynnyk’s “lack of credentials” is little less than character assassination. Carynnyk, a respected poet and translator of Dovzhenko, is a private scholar and the author of a forthcoming book from Yale University Press on Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians in the summer of 1941. Inter alia, he has published a major article on OUN in Harvard Ukrainian Studies and co-edited a collection of documents on the famine with Lubomyr Luciuk and Bohdan Kordan.
Fourth, plainly . Himka made a typographical error with regard to Taras Bul’ba-Borovets, as he would be well aware that he was the founder of UPA rather than the OUN. Mr. Lozynskyj describes that mistake as “obscene.” “Unfortunate” would have been a more appropriate word. Moreover, it does not negate anything that follows, i.e. Bul’ba-Borovets did deplore the slaughter of Poles that followed in Volhynia in the spring and summer of 1943.
Fifth, one wonders whether research grant donors, such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, impose conditions on their grantees. All scholars need to fund their research, but it does not mean they adopt partisan opinions or standpoints.
Sixth, Lozynskyj more than once has commented on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, which he describes as “fertile ground for embellishment.”
Yet eyewitnesses proved vital for the uncovering of the events of the Famine-Holodomor of 1932-33, especially those gathered by the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine in the 1980s, led by James E. Mace. In response, the Communist Party leader of Soviet Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, was forced to acknowledge the existence of the Famine for the first time in December 1987. As in all scholarly research, eyewitness accounts are an important way to support and corroborate archival documents and official reports.
Seventh, what is one to make of the confused allusions to Soviet documents in Mr. Lozynskyj’s article? In paragraph four, he writes that Himka “must be aware of Soviet predilection for forging both documents and witness protocols.” He then proceeds to use Soviet evidence to support his last statement that the Nuremberg Trials did not uncover any wrongdoing or even mention OUN and UPA. One cannot have it both ways. If Soviet evidence is unreliable because of forgeries or otherwise, then this surely applied to the materials presented at Nuremberg as well.
Lastly, with regard to Nuremberg, it proved to be simply the beginning of an investigation not the end point. Historians, unlike lawyers, do not close cases, not least because our knowledge of subject matter increases over time. Thanks to the opening of new archives in the former Soviet Union, the availability of new CIA materials, and the vastly improved communication between scholars, we know far more about events of the Stalin years than we did during the Cold War period or even by the end of the 20th century.
Again, the example of the Famine-Holodomor is instructive. Most of the primary documents consulted in recent works emerged after the end of the Soviet Union, and especially in the years of Yushchenko’s presidency. As with OUN and UPA, historians were able to uncover new revelations, as evidenced by the plethora of new books in Ukrainian, Russian, and English.
However, the key issue in today’s Ukraine, as the recent arrest of Ruslan Zabilyi has demonstrated, is the need for scholars’ continued unfettered and free access to such documents. Without that we cannot have a debate at all. In the meantime, those of us who are still free to speak should at least adopt a civil tone.
David R. Marples is author of Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2008).
