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Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her
Dr. Taras Kuzio, 08/04/2007 15:01
 Repeatedly, the only manner in which those who disagree with my views respond by saying that I do not know Ukraine because I do not live there. |
This feeble attempt at engaging in debate is not only the preserve of Ukrainian citizens but also of diaspora Ukrainians who have lived in Ukraine and, as we would say in America, have “gone native”. The reality is very different. If it was indeed the case that one had to live in a country to understand it then the world would be faced by major difficulties.
Ambassadors based abroad for 3-4 years would no longer presumably understand the country they were representing. Former US Ambassadors to Ukraine now based at Washington think tanks would no longer, if this argument was true, be able to provide good analysis on Ukraine. Meanwhile, government departments devoted to providing research and analysis for government foreign policy and their Ambassadors abroad would be also not useful as they would not be based in the country they were analyzing.
And what of the countless departments in think tanks and Universities which have researchers who work on regions of the world (such as my own Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies)? Do the numerous centers devoted to the study of Eastern Europe and the former USSR really know nothing? Does the Association for the Study of Nationalities, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Canadian Slavic Association and the British Slavic and East European Studies (BASEES) bring together people who are not really “specialists”. Indeed, why am I bothering to attend the BASEES conference in Cambridge later this month? Indeed, if the argument holds true why is there a Ukrainian radio in the BBC in London, Radio Liberty in Prague and Voice of America in Washington?
Of course, arguments voiced from Ukraine that you only understand Ukraine if you live there are preposterous. The claim reflects an inferiority complex and a lack of countervailing arguments that they can bring forward to debates.
They also show a lack of understanding of the globalised world we live in. Globalization means a psychologically smaller world and one in which information is available 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world.
I will never forget a Museum of Emigration in Adelaide in beautiful South Australia (home to the Barossa valley where the best Australian wines are made). The museum painted a difficult life for Britons emigrating to Australia until the 1960s as it was so far from home. I felt a lot of sympathy for those emigrants that included Ukrainians and Italians who emigrated to Australia after World War II.
Today, this is no longer the case. Cheap international telephone calls, mobile telephones, air travel, the internet and satellite television make it no longer feel that you are so cut off and isolated. We moved to Canada in 2001 and although, like all emigrants, you miss home (London and Europe) it is easier to live here because of the internet (where we read the British media), we can watch BBC Canada and BBC America, follow international news on BBC World television, listen to British radio on the internet and travel regularly to Britain and Europe.
The same is true of Ukraine as one no longer has to live in Ukraine to experience and understand the country. In North America we have Ukrainian television on paid cable channels. In Toronto we have 2 free local Ukrainian channels, Kontakt and Svitohliad. We can read the Ukrainian media on the internet and in case we missed anything there are free internet web mailings of Western and Ukrainian articles. In Toronto there are at least 5 Ukrainian newspapers.
In Washington DC, where I have worked for 3 years, there is a constant flow of guests from Ukraine, either for short visits or on longer fellowships. Plus, we have a large fourth wave diaspora, including Myroslava Gongadze and Mykola Melnychenko. I will be speaking for the second time to the Orange Wave in Chicago in late March, a group that was established by fourth wave Ukrainians. Personal contact with Ukraine, through visitors and visiting Ukraine, is also therefore available to keep one in touch.
My father’s house in Yorkshire, England is not untypical. He has 6 Ukrainian television channels that he watches on a daily basis. My father-in-law does the same in Nottingham.
I remember watching the second television debate of the 2004 presidential elections in Yorkshire before flying to Ukraine to be an observer for the repeat second round on 26 December. It was surreal to watch the debate in my English home town with my father commenting on Viktor Yanukovych’s un-intelligible utterances.
But, my ability to follow events in Ukraine does not end there. My father is a Ukrainian citizen since 1998 and voted for the first time in an election in 1999 (it turned his stomach to travel from Yorkshire to London to vote in the second round in the Ukrainian Embassy for Leonid Kuchma). Britain is unique in the Ukrainian diaspora in that a large group of Ukrainian political refugees never took up citizenship.
My father arrived in Britain in 1948 from Germany where he had been taken at the age of 15 in 1942 to be a slave labourer. Like fellow Ukrainians in Britain he had legal residency and went abroad on refugee travel documents. In 1997 the Ukrainian law on citizenship changed dropping the requirement for five years residency. One had only to prove being born in Ukraine and had not already become a citizen of another country (as Ukraine does not recognize dual citizenship). My father fulfilled these requirements.
Let us therefore remember that today we are all residents of a globalised world.
The opinion originally appeared on Dr Taras Kuzio's blog on March 12, 2007.
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15/08/2008 15:48
