[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: CSM; EDM; FT

[Deychak, Orest]

Christian Science Monitor

Ukraine: opening of secret archives shines light on famine, repression

President Yushchenko says his country must confront its past. But critics say deeper examination of authoritarianism and the starvation that killed millions could be dangerous. 

May 5, 2009

By James Marson | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

 

Kiev, Ukraine

In 1933, Mykola Bokan travelled across the Chernihiv Region of Ukraine taking photographs of his starving compatriots. 

These were the victims of Holodomor, the "death by starvation" unleashed by Stalin that killed millions across Ukraine. The same year, Mr. Bokan was arrested and sent to a prison camp for 10 years. He didn't survive his sentence. 

"Stories like this deepen our knowledge of our own history," says Volodymyr Vyatrovych, director of the archives at the state security service, or SBU, the KGB's successor in Ukraine. "That's why we want the maximum number of people possible to get to know these documents." 

In January, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko ordered state archives to declassify, publish, and study all documents relating to Holodomor, the Ukrainian independence movement, and political repressions during the Soviet period from 1917 to 1991. 

There's a lot of work for Mr. Vyatrovych and his colleagues to get through: He estimates there are 800,000 documents from which to remove the "secret" seal. 

"As a totalitarian system, the Soviet Union relied on the KGB. That means that these documents shed light on all aspects of Soviet life," he says. 

The aim of the work is to make the documents available at digital reading rooms across the country and the Internet, and to publish collections. Vyatrovych says the publicity drive has already boosted interest, and not just among historians. "More and more people are coming to find out about relatives," he says. 

Unlike many ex-Soviet states, such as neighboring Poland, Ukraine has seen limited attempts at lustration. The country's history, for centuries intertwined with its eastern neighbor Russia, is politically sensitive because of the polar opposite interpretations that people follow. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, for example, which fought in World War II, was portrayed in the Soviet Union as Nazi collaborators. To many in Ukraine, however, they are freedom fighters and symbols of the anti-Soviet independence movement. 

But since Yushchenko's dramatic rise to the presidency in the wake of the Orange Revolution in 2004, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest a rigged vote, he has made a concerted effort to draw attention to Ukraine's history. His main focus has been on promoting recognition of Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people. 

Although famine struck a number of areas in the Soviet Union as a result of Stalin's initiative to create collective farms, many historians argue that the famine was exacerbated in Ukraine in order to quell separatism and punish Ukrainians. 

"Promoting a reappraisal of our history is one of Yushchenko's greatest achievements," says Stanislav Kulchytsky, one of Ukraine's most famous historians, who is best known for his pioneering work on Holodomor. "Sadly, it brings his popularity down, as many people are stuck in the old views they were brought up on." 

The opening of the archives has not passed without controversy. Olha Ginzburg, a Communist Party member and head of the state archives committee, claims that all necessary files have already been declassified, and has opposed the publication of archival documents. 

Vyatrovych counters that this may be true of some archives, but certainly not of his. "Some political forces don't want the documents to see the light of day because it will affect their popularity." 

Some pro-Russian opposition politicians have criticized Yushchenko's drive as nationalistic and dangerous. But Vyatrovych says fears of social tensions are exaggerated. 

"My colleagues in other ex-Soviet countries said that when they opened their secret service archives, people also told them not to do it as it would cause a civil war," he says. "But it didn't happen, and won't happen here. It's a myth." 

History as politics

Yushchenko's portrayal of Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people has also raised hackles at the highest levels in Russia. Confrontations - particularly over gas - have erupted frequently since the Ukraine's Orange Revolution, as Russia has reacted angrily to what it sees as Ukraine's realignment with the West. 

When Yushchenko organized a 75th-anniversary commemoration last November, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev refused to attend, accusing his Ukrainian counterpart in an open letter of "[using] the so-called 'Holodomor' ... to achieve short-term political goals." A number of countries, including the United States, have recognized Holodomor as genocide. 

While Yushchenko has pushed a highly critical approach to Soviet history, Russia has in recent years gone some way towards rehabilitating Stalin's image, portraying him in school textbooks as an "effective manager" whose actions were "entirely rational." 

Ukrainian historians complain that access to some Russian archives is much more restricted than it was in the '90s, and numerous requests for cooperation have been rejected. 

In February, a group of Russian archivists and historians presented a book of historical documents that they said showed that the famine was not directed specifically at Ukrainians. Vyatrovych welcomed the move, saying he is not concerned by the interpretation. 

"We are pleased that we have provoked them to take this step," he says. "The most important thing is that the documents are put out there. They speak for themselves, and much louder than any interpretation that is attached to them." 

But not everyone is listening. Professor Kulchytsky, the expert on Holodomor, complains that older generations aren't open to revising their Soviet views. "It was easy to end the economic totalitarianism after 1991," he says. "It's much harder to end totalitarianism in people's heads." 

Yushchenko's focus on history has also irked many at a time when he is deeply unpopular at home and the economic crisis is hitting harder in Ukraine than anywhere else in Europe. 

But Vyatrovych is adamant that his work has more than academic significance. "The mobilization of society to solve the many problems we have is only possible if it isn't torn apart," he says. "And we can only achieve that if we come to a better understanding of our past." 

Eurasia Daily Monitor 

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/

May 6, 2009

The Ukrainian-Russian Cultural Conflict

Discussions over the many conflicts between Ukraine and Russia have focused on the more well known: the status of the Russian language, unpaid energy bills and gas pipelines, withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet, Russia's invasion of Georgia, support for Crimean separatism, and future NATO membership. What is less widely known is the undeclared Ukrainian-Russian cultural war that is as bitter as any other aspect of the poor state of the bilateral relationship between Ukraine and Russia.

The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has significant ramifications in Ukraine and Russia's domestic politics, national identities and geopolitical orientations. It has long been established that the language spoken by Ukrainians (Ukrainian or Russian) and their attitudes towards Russia shaped by their stance on culture and history, in turn influences the voting patterns of Ukrainians -into pro-Western and pro-Russian orientations. These orientations then influence attitudes towards their support for Ukraine's integration into the CIS, NATO and the EU.

Unlike in the 1990's, Russia under Vladimir Putin has gone on the offensive in seeking to counter what it sees as the "Ukrainian nationalist" view of Ukrainian history and culture which has been propagated by President Viktor Yushchenko since his election in January 2005. Yushchenko's active and personal involvement in reviving the Ukrainian national memory has added to the deep-seated antagonism that Russia's leaders hold towards him.

The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has become acute as a consequence of the release in April of a new Russian film about Nikolai Gogol's fictitious Cossack leader Taras Bulba. The film was sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Culture at a cost of $20 million and took three years to produce.

The new Taras Bulba film has obvious ideological and geopolitical ramifications. Bulba is portrayed as fighting "Western enemies" and dies for "the Orthodox Russian land." The film's director Vladimir Bortko openly admitted that his aim was to increase "pro-Russian" sympathies within Ukraine and to propagate the myth that Ukrainians and Russians belong to one narod. The film unashamedly propagates a pan-Slavic line that has won praise from Russian nationalist politicians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Taras Bulba opened on April 3 in Moscow's Kinoteatr Oktyabr to thunderous applause at Bulba's "Russian soul" speech and scenes where Cossacks expel Poles from Ukraine. The film has aroused widespread public interest and criticism and has already grossed $14 million in Russia and Ukraine (Kyiv Post, April 22). The film has attracted both older viewers, nostalgic for the USSR, and younger people because of its abundance of gratuitous violence (www.life.pravda.com.ua, April 3).

It was released for the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth who, although born in Ukraine, wrote in the Russian language and has traditionally been viewed as a "Russian" writer. The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has therefore descended into an historical dispute over Gogol.

On April 1 President Yushchenko visited Gogol's museum in his native Poltava region (www.president.gov.ua, April 1). At a concert in Gogol's honor, Yushchenko said, "Gogol wrote in Russian, was a Ukrainian, and thought and felt himself to be a Ukrainian. I believe it is ridiculous, and to a certain extent the conflicts surrounding which country he belongs to are demeaning" (www.president.gov.ua, April 1). On the same day, Vladimir Putin hailed Gogol as an "outstanding Russian writer."

The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war had earlier become contested over Yushchenko's propagation of the 1933 famine as directed against Ukrainians and as genocide. Russia has gone on the offensive against both of these Ukrainian claims.

On February 25, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a DVD which will be followed later this year by 3 volumes of 6,000 historical documents to counter the Ukrainian claims. The Head of Russia's Federal Archives Agency Vladimir Kozlov, introduced the DVD at a Moscow press conference, with the claim that the famine was "the result of [Stalin's] criminal policy" against the peasantry, rather than against any specific ethnic group (www.rian.ru, February 25).

Ukraine's debunking of Stalinism and its publicizing of the famine, has forced Russia under Putin to digress from its full-blown rehabilitation of Stalinism. While rejecting Ukrainian claims of an ethnic genocide-famine, Kozlov was forced to admit that a crime (famine) had indeed taken place against the peasantry, as a result of Stalin's collectivization policies. Russia's rehabilitation of Stalinism has propagated the myth that it was the elites who had suffered the most from Stalin's purges (www.gulag.ipvnews.org, September 16, 2006).

The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war and differences over national identity has become acutely important in Ukraine's presidential elections, which are invariably perceived as deciding the country's geopolitical future as either lying with Russia and the CIS or with the West. This was the case in the 1994, 1999 and especially in the 2004 presidential elections, when Russia heavily intervened to halt the "nationalist" candidate (Yushchenko) and lost. Putin has since taken this as a personal defeat that requires some form of pay back.

With six months remaining until the elections, Yushchenko has described himself as a person who does, "not belong to those people who waver in their patriotism. I am not a little Russian, I am not a khokhol (derogatory term for little Russians). I am a Ukrainian" (Eko Moskvy, April 3). Yushchenko continued, 'I am a Ukrainian president, I know that this country requires an ideal president' (www.president.gov.ua, April 3).

Ukrainian opinion polls suggest the "pro-Russian" Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych and the "treasonous" Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are the two leading presidential candidates, neither of whom therefore match Yushchenko's requirements for a "patriotic" president. On April 24 Ukrayinska Pravda and four days later the pro-Yushchenko Ukrayina Moloda both ran leading articles on negotiations already underway for a new "pro-Russian" coalition between the Party of Regions and the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT), facilitated by Vladyslav Surkov, first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration.

The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war is part of a wider on-going undeclared conflict between both countries over their evolving national identities. Ukraine's "quadruple transition" has focused on nation and state building, as well as democratic and market economic transition. Russia, which did not declare independence in August 1991, became a reluctant independent state and under Boris Yeltsin it never settled on what nation and state it was building. Under Putin, the emerging Russian national identity is unwilling to accept a Ukraine in any guise except one populated by "little Russians."

--Taras Kuzio

Eurasia Daily Monitor

May 8, 2009

Moscow Pressuring Ukraine on its EU Pipeline Deal 

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, commencing talks with her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 29, said that a "certain confrontation" in the gas trade between the two countries will soon become history. She had planned to meet Putin on April 8, but Moscow re-scheduled the visit in the wake of the March 23 Ukraine-EU agreements on modernizing Ukraine's gas pipelines -which Moscow rejected. There was apparently no confrontation in Moscow this time, but Tymoshenko achieved less from her visit than she expected. The only promise that she secured from Putin was that Ukraine will not be fined for buying less gas in January-April. However, she failed to secure either a $5 billion loan or an agreement on gas for storage in the underground reservoirs for next winter.

At the start of the talks, Tymoshenko thanked Putin for allowing Ukraine to buy less gas from Russia this year. Ukraine had pledged to buy 5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in the first quarter, but bought only 2.5 bcm because the Ukrainian industry, whose output shrank by more than 30 percent in the period, could not consume the agreed volumes. The January 2009 contracts between Naftohaz Ukrainy and Gazprom provided for fines in such cases. Putin estimated the fine, including for an unspecified amount of gas that Naftohaz failed to buy in April, at $2 billion, but he said it would not be applied as Russia understands that Ukraine is in a difficult situation due to the global recession (UNIAN, April 29). This was the only positive result achieved by Tymoshenko in Moscow.

Tymoshenko failed to obtain a definite answer to her earlier request for a $5 billion loan. The cash-strapped Naftohaz, had expected that the loan would be used to buy Russian gas. However, Putin said that additional consultations were needed on this (Interfax-Ukraine, April 29). The Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli reported on April 30 that Russia agreed to lend $5 billion to Ukraine, with the condition that $3 billion will be used to buy gas. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Hryhory Nemyrya, denied this saying that "this issue was not discussed in this context during the talks" (5 Kanal TV, April 30).

Putin and Tymoshenko agreed on a deal whereby 0.8 bcm of Russian gas would be pumped into Ukraine's underground storage facilities for the winter in exchange for a respective sum in fees for the transit of Russian gas across Ukraine to the EU. That was far less than the 19.5 bcm of gas that Tymoshenko had hoped to secure in exchange for transit fees over a longer period. Putin gave no clear answer, but he noted that this quantity of gas would cost exactly as much as Tymoshenko wanted to borrow from Russia -$5 billion. He suggested that Ukraine should try to borrow that sum from the EU, and he said that Gazprom was reluctant to pay Naftohaz with gas for transit for several years ahead, fearing complications in the event of Naftohaz's possible reorganization (UNIAN, April 29).

The 17 bcm of gas that had been kept in the underground reservoirs in western Ukraine from 2008 were instrumental for the country's survival in January, when Russia stopped the gas supplies for two weeks over a price dispute. While Ukraine was consuming gas from its reservoirs, several Balkan countries were left to freeze in the absence of Russian gas, which is pumped through Ukrainian pipelines. The storage gas was bought from Russia at $179.5 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2008, which allowed Ukraine to purchase less gas in the first quarter when Russian gas prices reached $360.

Talks on both the loan and gas for underground storage will continue between the two governments. In the meantime, Tymoshenko used the opportunity, however, to make several statements pleasing to Russia. She said that Ukraine was no longer selling arms to Georgia and was not planning to resume these sales (Interfax-Ukraine, April 29). Ukraine did sell arms to Georgia ahead of the Russian-Georgian conflict in August 2008, which exacerbated existing tensions in the relationship between Moscow and Kyiv. Tymoshenko also promised to "minimize" any protectionist measures in bilateral trade with Russia amid the global recession, and to do her utmost to support Russia's aim to join the WTO (Interfax, April 29). Ukraine joined the WTO in May 2008, which Russia hopes to do in 2010.

Russia and Ukraine apparently agreed to differ on the plans to upgrade Ukraine's gas pipelines that carry Russian gas to Europe. Putin reiterated his earlier proposal, which was suggested in 2002, involving the idea of an international consortium to manage Ukraine's pipelines. In this case Russia would play a major role in the consortium, rather than the minor role assigned to it in the projects to upgrade its pipelines agreed between Kyiv and the EU on March 23. Tymoshenko invited Russia to participate in the Ukraine-EU projects by supplying pipes and other equipment (Interfax-Ukraine, April 29).

--Pavel Korduban

Financial Times

www.ft.com

Gas billionaire claims fraud over lost unit

By Stefan Wagstyl in London, Thomas Escritt in Budapest,and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev 

Published: May 8 2009 

A new row erupted yesterday in the murky east European gas trade when Dmitry Firtash, the Ukrainian gas billionaire, claimed he had lost control of a key subsidiary through the fraudulent actions of a renegade employee.

The dispute over the ownership of Emfesz, a big Budapest-based gas and energy company, comes weeks after Mr Firtash was squeezed out of the Ukrainian gas trade under the terms of a new Russian-Ukrainian contract signed after the January gas supply crisis.

Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, agreed to supply Ukraine directly, cutting out Rosukrenergo, a company jointly owner by Gazprom, Mr Firtash and another Ukrainian businessman.

In the latest argument, which raises fresh concerns about Europe's gas security, Mabofi, a company wholly owned by Group DF (Mr Firtash's holding company), alleged its 100 per cent stake in Emfesz had been "fraudulently transferred" to RosGas, a Swiss-based company.

Mabofi claimed that, unbeknown to Mr Firtash, Istvan Goczi, the Emfesz chief executive, had used old powers of attorney to carry out the transaction, which had been registered with the Hungarian authorities. Mabofi added that it had no information on the beneficial ownership of RosGas but one of its directors was Tamàs Gazda, a Hungarian lawyer, who was formerly employed by Emfesz, "under the direct instructions" of Mr Goczi.

"[Cyprus-registered] Mabofi is now actively pursuing all of its legal rights in Hungary, Cyprus and Switzerland, and is confident that the ownership of Emfesz will be restored to its rightful owner as soon as possible," said Mabofi in a statement.

Robert Shetler-Jones, a Group DF director, said the "fraudulent and illegal" share transfer had come as a complete shock to the group and to Mr Firtash.

At Emfesz's offices an employee, who declined to give his name, turned down requests to speak to Mr Goczi or Mr Gazda, saying neither was in the country. He said in an e-mail that according to company records Emfesz now belonged to RosGas and Mabofi was its previous owner.

Yesterday's development follows Emfesz's efforts to secure gas supplies after the end of Rosukrenergo's Ukrainian contract. Emfesz announced last week it was switching its gas purchases from Rosukrenergo to RosGas, the first time RosGas's name was publicly -mentioned.

Emfesz then said RosGas belonged "to Gazprom interests". The claim was immediately denied by Gazprom, which said: "Gazprom has no relation to RosGas. It is not part of Gazprom."

Asked yesterday to clarify any connections between RosGas and Gazprom, the Emfesz employee said RosGas would soon publish information. Sergey Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman, declined to comment.

Emfesz has been a key element in Mr Firtash's business empire, with pre-tax profits in 2007 of 4.3bn forints on revenues of 179bn forints (£570m). It supplies about 20 per cent of Hungary's gas, has export contracts elsewhere in the region and plans a 2,400 megawatt power station.

Group DF has long made far more money from supplying gas via Rosukrenergo and Emfesz to central Europe than from Ukraine, where it claims to have made losses. It has been under immense political pressure since Yulia Tymoshenko returned to power last year as Ukrainian prime minister, pledging to cut out Rosukrenergo. Vladimir Putin, her Russian counterpart, agreed this year to exclude intermediaries.

The deal left unclear what would happen to Rosukrenergo's non-Ukrainian gas trade but the company's difficulties have multiplied, notably with the Ukrainian authorities taking control of its gas stores.

 

 

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