By Walter Kish

Despite the fact that Ukraine has had a rich and interesting history spanning over a thousand years, it has not been well served by the world’s historians, either in decades and centuries gone by, or in contemporary times. History, they say, is written by the victors, and Ukraine has too often been the vanquished. In recent centuries, it has been kept submerged by the imperialistic domination of the Russians and the Poles, both of whom strove mightily to deny the existence of Ukraine as a legitimate nation state and Ukrainians as a distinct ethnic group. The Soviets were particularly effective in propagating the myth that Ukrainians were just “Little Russians”, and Ukrainian nationalists simply “Banderite” bandits. They went so far as to distort and co-opt history by appropriating the Kievan Rus era and claiming it as being exclusively the origin of “Russian” history.

Regrettably, the western world has by and large bought into much of this fiction. One important reason for this is that much of the “European” history we are taught is very western Europe-centric. Pick up any comprehensive history of Europe and you will find little if any coverage of anything east of Poland or the Balkans. What little there is, deals almost exclusively with Russia. Mention of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldovia, Georgia, Armenia and the like, is usually done in passing, or relegated to the footnotes. Part of this historical myopia is undoubtedly due to western European chauvinism. Some of it can also be attributed to the fact that eastern Europe for most of the past millennium was part of orthodox “Byzantium”, which an antagonistic, largely Catholic western Europe chose to shun when it couldn’t overcome or convert it. Lastly, Russia, xenophobic for much of its history, purposely restricted contact between its far-flung empire and the west. The Iron Curtain had its roots long before Communism even had a name.

The end result is that to this day, most people are blissfully unaware of even the most cursory facts about Ukrainian history. Even in Canada, which saw vast waves of immigrants arrive from Galicia at the turn of the century, this woeful ignorance saw thousands of Ukrainians incarcerated in internment camps during the first World War as “Austrian” enemy aliens.

It has only been in the past decade, since Ukraine gained its independence, that the world has begun to pay a little more attention to this “new” nation state, and is beginning to realize that there is a long and established history behind it. Two excellent histories of Ukraine published in English by Orest Subtelny and Paul Magosci have considerably helped the cause of making Ukrainian history more accessible to the English speaking public. Nonetheless, the impact of these books has understandably been felt mostly within the English speaking Ukrainian community.

Being a history buff, I have been patiently waiting for the non-Ukrainian historical establishment to recognize the deficiencies in their past treatment of our history and redress their historical oversights. I am pleased to say that I have finally found the proverbial “light” at the end of the tunnel. This past Christmas, I was given a rather weighty book as a present titled “Europe, A History” by Norman Davies, Professor Emeritus of the University of London, and Senior Member of Wolfson College, Oxford. Written by a distinguished historian with a very readable literary style, the book has been an international best seller and in the space of some close to 1400 pages provides a detailed and well written history of Europe from pre-historical to modern times. What makes this book almost unique among others of its type, is that it actually gives almost as much attention to the historical developments of eastern Europe as to its western counterpart. Even more impressive is that it manages to avoid the centuries of omission, misinformation, and distortion of Ukrainian history and provides a rather balanced and accurate account of its past. Although still not as comprehensive in Ukrainian content as I believe is merited, Ukrainians are nonetheless given their due as a distinct nationality with a distinct history.

I suffer no delusions in believing that Ukraine has finally “arrived” on the world scene and has taken its rightful place as one of the major nation states of Europe. However, this book is a hopeful sign that perhaps Eastern Europe in general, and Ukraine specifically, are finally being accorded proper respect and accurate treatment in the analysis of Europe’s historical evolution. A genuine understanding of this area’s turbulent past is vital towards insuring it will have a more peaceful future.