Untitled Document

Ukraine's Rogue President

BY ADRIAN KARATNYCKY
Wall Street Journal, 9 October 2002

In his speech Monday night, President Bush laid out the threat posed by the Iraqi regime should it be able to "buy, produce or steal" the ingredients for a nuclear weapon. But while the idea that any nation would willingly aid the murderous intentions of Saddam Hussein has long seem far-fetched, the possibility hit close to home in recent days. Just a week before the speech, the Bush administration confirmed that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had approved the sale of an antiaircraft radar system to Iraq. President Kuchma's decision, in clear violation of United Nations sanctions, may be the first sign of complications with loose technology in the states of the former Soviet Union.

Russia's Cynical Embrace

If Mr. Kuchma resigns, Ukraine's Iraq-gate will have borne positive fruit. If he does not, the U.S. will confront two problems: Ukraine's president will demonstrate to other leaders that you can conspire with Iraq and get away with it. And Mr. Kuchma's inevitable isolation will drive Ukraine, a strategically important country of 50 million that sits on NATO's eastern frontier, into Russia's cynical embrace.

Both outcomes would cause headaches for Europe and the U.S. But the worst would be if Ukraine's movement toward Europe, democracy and the rule of law is hijacked by Mr. Kuchma's insistence on remaining in office.

Mr. Karatnycky is president of Freedom House and co-editor of "Nations in Transit" (Transaction Books, 2002).

http://www.wsj.com/

Washington Times October 9, 2002

Evidence said to absolve president
By David R. Sands

Ukraine's top prosecutor said yesterday that he had found no evidence to support charges that the government sold forbidden radar systems to

Iraq, but conceded he has not questioned President Leonid Kuchma about his role in the scandal.
     Prosecutor General Sviatoslav Pyskun said in a telephone interview from Kiev that his review of records in the case and sworn testimony from officials involved left him convinced that Ukraine had not delivered the sophisticated early-warning Kolchuga radar system to Saddam Hussein.
     "We have not asked the president directly, but we already know his point of view," Mr. Pyskun said, speaking through an interpreter. "The simplest way to solve this problem is to rely on the evidence, because we are not construing evidence only based on conversations."
     A secret tape-recording of Mr. Kuchma from July 2000, apparently authorizing the sale through a Jordanian middleman, prompted the deepest crisis in U.S.-Ukrainian relations in years.
     The State Department announced the suspension of $54 million in direct government aid to Ukraine on Sept. 16, after determining that the tapes of Mr. Kuchma, recorded by a disaffected military aide who subsequently sought political asylum in the United States, are authentic...

http://www.washtimes.com/

Ukraine's troubled Kuchma pins hope on gas deal with Russia

AFP, 6 October 2002

ZAPOROZHYE, Ukraine, Oct 6 (AFP) - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, plagued at home by opposition-led protests and tainted abroad by alleged arms sales to Iraq, on Sunday wrapped up meetings on a potentially lucrative gas deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Kuchma, who later flew with Putin to Moldova where the two will meet with leaders from other former Soviet republics, said he expected to sign an agreement on Monday that would send natural gas from Russia through aUkrainian pipeline toward Western markets.

Putin, who called the deal "complicated" but promising, said: "We must find a common economic interest."

"Friendship and cooperation with Russia is one of the priorities of Ukrainian foreign policy," Kuchma said.

"Russia cannot exist without Ukraine, nor can Ukraine without Russia," he added.

During the leaders' talks, some 600 protesters demonstrated in Zaporozhye calling for Kuchma to step down, Ukrainsky Noviny news agency reported.

The proposed gas consortium may also include Germany, Italy and France, Putin said.

The addition of Western partners could inject a hefty investment sum of up to 2.5 billion dollars (euros) into Ukraine to refurbish existing
pipelines, and up to 15 billion dollars for further extensions.

Last June Putin and Kuchma signed a declaration of intent with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to help develop Ukraine's pipeline network.

Russian gas giant Gazprom exports 130 billion cubic meters (4.6 trillion cubic feet) of gas to Europe every year, 90 percent of which is transported across Ukraine.

Observers on Sunday said Putin was giving the increasingly embattled Kuchma a much-needed show of support.

"Putin knows that Kuchma is having difficulties both within and outside of his country. He wants to take advantage by advancing Russian interests in Ukraine," Volodymir Lupatsy, director of the Sofia Center of Social Research, said.

But opposition lawmakers, who have led protests in recent weeks calling for Kuchma's resignation, said the deal threatened to put Kiev's gas industry under the power of Moscow.

"Ukraine's independence in the energy sector is at stake," opposition deputy Olexander Gudyma said.

Socialist and communist leaders, as well as the center-right head Yulia Timoshenko accuse Kuchma of corruption and abuse of power, but the Ukrainian strongman has categorically refused to quit before the end of his mandate in 2004.

Tainted by scandal and accused of ordering the assassination of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, Kuchma has seen his popularity ratings plunge in the three years since his re-election, with nearly 55 percent of Ukrainians wanting his resignation.

Opponents have latched on to US claims that Kuchma personally approved the sales of military equipment to Iraq as further proof he is hurting the republic.

Washington has accused Kiev of selling four military radar systems to Baghdad that could be against US and British warplanes. If confirmed, the sale would be a blatant violation of UN sanctions against Iraq, imposed following the 1991 Gulf War.

In Moldova, Kuchma and Putin will attend a two-day summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose association of 12 former Soviet republics.

Journalists Form Independent Union To Fight Censorship, Coercion

By Askold Krushelnycky
RFE/RL, 7 October 2002

Ukrainian journalists have for years complained of government censorship and interference in their work. This weekend, journalists for the first time took practical steps to oppose that censorship and held a meeting to organize an independent union.

Kyiv, 7 October 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Ukrainian journalists, fed up with what they say has been years of censorship and interference by the government, met on 5 October and agreed to form an independent union to combat official coercion.

More than 110 journalists, many of them well-known names from Ukraine's newspapers, television, and radio channels, and representing media from across the political spectrum, met in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to set out the basis for the new organization.

Censorship and official meddling in journalists' work has long been an issue in Ukraine. The journalists attending the meeting say Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and his administration have been making increased efforts to exert control over a media already subject to interference.

Last month, an opposition member of parliament handed out copies of what appeared to be a secret memorandum sent regularly to media editors detailing precisely what politically related issues to cover and which ones to drop.

Editors at state-owned media tend to take direct orders from the presidential administration, regardless of such memoranda. Owners of private television, radio, and newspaper companies, meanwhile, are kept in line by the threat of having their licenses revoked or being targeted by the tax police or other state bureaucratic bodies.

Many individual journalists have reported being subject to intimidation or threats. Some five journalists have been murdered since Ukrainian independence -- most of the cases remain unsolved -- and many others have been subjected to beatings.

Officials from the United States, the European Union, and Ukraine's political opposition often voice concern about media freedoms. They have particularly criticized coverage of elections when the authorities use all pressure at their disposal to eliminate positive coverage of political opponents.

This weekend's meeting about forming an independent journalists' union was hosted by Andriy Schevchenko, a television journalist and presenter who resigned two weeks ago in disgust at what he called official meddling and censorship.

Tens of other speakers discussed how official interference in their work is increasing. They said that individual journalists trying to stand up to official pressure were often fired or intimidated into submission and that a union was the best way to protect themselves.

The meeting concluded with an agreement that its participants would first demand talks with the authorities to discuss the attempts at censorship, which they say contravene Ukraine's Constitution. Strikes could follow if the talks lead nowhere.

Schevchenko said that he was pleased with the large attendance at the meeting and said he hoped even more journalists will take part in the new organization's future work. "I know that only the top people have come today because the disaffection in journalists' circles with what's happening is very large. Therefore, I believe that in this hall we can have not just a hundred people, but thousands of journalists who want to change things for the better," Schevchenko said.

Schevchenko believes the government will agree to dialogue. "I think that the government must agree to a dialogue with us because this situation cannot carry on endlessly. The situation is such that the journalistic system is still carrying out to an extent the instructions of the government, but if you look at almost every journalistic workplace, the reserves of trust toward the government have almost been exhausted," Schevchenko said.

The meeting's participants decided that apart from tackling the censorship issue through talks with the government, the new organization will provide legal and financial help to journalists who lose their jobs as a result of resisting official pressure.

Attendees elected a coordinating committee, which will officially register the new union and will plan its work. Members did not decide on a final name for the union. A journalists' union already exists in Ukraine, but is generally dismissed as a holdover from Soviet times, when the media was an integral part of the government propaganda system.

Participants also elected a separate strike committee whose job will be to negotiate issues and to organize strike action if necessary.

One of those elected to the coordinating committee is well-known television journalist Yevhen Khlibovytskyy. He explained why he thinks it is essential that journalists act now. "There's an anecdote about that one time a woman serves her husband a burned breakfast, and he gathers up his things and leaves her. He doesn't leave because she served him a burned breakfast, but because it was the last straw -- there had been plenty that had gone on beforehand. And, in the same way, the recent attempts to exert pressure are not something unique. They've happened before, but they have been so cynical that we simply cannot allow ourselves not to oppose them because we understand that if we do not stand up for our rights now, then tomorrow this deprivation of freedoms will be institutionalized and legitimized, and the opportunities to oppose it will have disappeared. We will simply lose the fight for the mass media and for freedom of speech, and so this is, in practice, the last chance we have," Khlibovytskyy said. "The most important issue is that of journalistic standards. We just want to be able to do our work. In this situation, we do not want to behave as part of the political opposition or of the government or other political structures. We simply want to create a system in which we can, without hindrance, carry out our professional obligations."

Another member of the coordinating committee, television presenter and news journalist Danylo Yanevskyy, said the meeting marks an important watershed in the way journalists are reacting to censorship. He said that there had been previous discussions among journalists about setting up an independent union, but they had never gathered enough support. "This is the first time during the existence of independent Ukraine, the first time in the last 11 years, that journalists who belong to different media -- private, state -- have come together and formulated a common perspective on a whole array of painful issues associated with the mass media in Ukraine," Yanevskyy said.

He said that government pressure on journalists had galvanized them into action. "The government has gone to the limits in its attempts to pressure those mass-media organizations that until recently had the strength to offer different points of view. And the politics of this government are based on trying to exclude those political forces, which represent no less than half of Ukrainian society. Journalists today demanded the right not to be interfered with in reporting on the views of various political groups about political processes that are taking place in Ukraine or in the rest of the world," Yanevskyy said.

The meeting adopted a resolution on objectives they want to pursue initially, including: asking for parliamentary hearings with the participation of the presidential administration to investigate government censorship, demanding that the prosecutor-general begin criminal investigations into government attempts at censorship, and calling for authorities to renew efforts to trace and bring to justice those who have murdered journalists.

Yanevskyy thinks that the government will feel threatened by the journalists' stance and may fear that the union will cooperate with the political opposition in defying the Kuchma government. "I think that this is a part of the threat [the government] feels. They cannot allow the unification of journalists on the side of the political establishment in Ukraine that opposes today's government. [Those in the government] cannot allow a united front [of journalists and opposition politicians], and therefore, they will believe that they will have to compromise with the journalists and introduce some cosmetic steps to diminish the increased tension that today increases between the government on one side and journalists, as a social group, on the other," Yanevskyy said.

This weekend's meeting came after journalists at Ukraine's second-largest news agency threatened to strike last week over censorship. They said stories judged to be critical of President Leonid Kuchma were not allowed to run.

The journalists at the UNIAN news agency said stories about opposition figures were being changed or eliminated by the company's new director, Vasyl Yurychko, the former editor of a pro-Kuchma newspaper, "Presidential Herald," who was appointed to UNIAN last month.

Yurychko called the dispute a "misunderstanding" and said: "There can be no talk about censorship. UNIAN should be an objective agency and go about its business covering all political forces."

UNIAN's political editor, Albina Trubenkova, said the standoff ended for the time being after Yurychko signed a declaration with journalists on 3 October in which he promised not to apply censorship and to halt threats to fire the scores of staff members involved in the protest.

The official in charge of information policy in Kuchma's presidential administration, Serhiy Vasyliev, also denied there was any censorship at UNIAN and said the conflict was a "theatrical act" instigated by opposition politicians calling for Kuchma's resignation.

The journalists gathered at Saturday's meeting considered including among their demands the dismantling of Vasyliev's department. But the issue for now has been passed to the coordinating committee, which later this week will determine the date for its first meeting.

Ukraine Insider: Yushchenko's War

Sun, 06 Oct 2002

THE UKRAINE INSIDER - is distributed via the Internet free of charge to all interested parties as a source of in-depth information on political events in Ukraine, including behind-the-scenes coverage of significant current issues, the positions of policy-makers, tactics and strategy information on Ukraine's ongoing struggle toward a free and democratic society.

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THE UKRAINE INSIDER
Vol. 2, No. 11
October 6, 2002
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THE "MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES" WRIT LARGE

For months to come politics in Ukraine will center around one question - will Viktor Yushchenko become (some would say "be allowed to become") President of Ukraine in 2004?

Following the virtual collapse of the government's ability to predetermine election results (See The Ukraine Insider, Vol. 2, No. 9 from April 2, 2002), President Leonid Kuchma and his associates are faced with a quandry. In December, 2000 Kuchma had nominated the relatively obscure head of the National Bank, Viktor Yushchenko, for Prime Minister. Upon his appointment Yushchenko had done the unexpected, namely, he paid arrears in government wages and pensions, which propelled him to the top of the list of popular politicians. Yushchenko deservedly achieved poll ratings as yet unheard of in Ukraine, to the order of 30% and more. The ruling elite, including Kuchma, became so concerned regarding Yushchenko's popularity that he was removed from office in April, 2001, as soon as the Constitution allowed it.

Now, with the March 2002 relative election triumph for Yushchenko's coalition, "Our Ukraine," and his continued stubbornly high personal
ratings, many Ukrainians are assuming that Yushchenko will be Ukraine's next president following elections due in October 2004. They would be wrong to do so. President Yushchenko would represent a sea change in Ukrainian politics. And that is why "Bankova" (Kuchma's administration) is working overtime on making sure Yushchenko does not become president.

Kuchma has done his best to minimize in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) the practical results of Our Ukraine's relative victory in March. First, deputies elected to the Rada in majoritarian districts were corralled into the government coalition, For a United Ukraine, which itself received only 12% of the vote on the proportional side. Second, government pressure, still quite effective on an individual basis, was brought to bear against members of the Our Ukraine faction, causing seven deputies to defect. Third, based on the first two steps, a bare minimum of 226 votes was collected to elect Wolodymyr Lytvyn to the post of Chairman of the Rada, a very powerful position.

Thereafter Kuchma made a move that surprised many by appointing Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Social-Democratic Party (united), head of his presidential administration. Of all his post-election manouvering, this move by Kuchma was the most important since, with it, he did several things at once. He took a tough politician, reputed to be connected with organized crime in the Surkis financial empire, and made him de-facto head of the "Stop Yushchenko!" effort. Kuchma also let Rada Chairman Lytvyn know that the latter was not to be "The Anointed" - a presidential successor hand-picked and blessed for the task of securing continuity. Finally, Kuchma created enough confusion that has left his options wide open.

One option not widely discussed until this past summer, is that Kuchma himself will try to continue on as president after 2004 (this scenario was predicted a year ago in The Ukraine Insider, Vol. 1, No. 5 from September 20, 2001). A month ago Roman Bessmertny, Kuchma's former parliamentary representative but now a Yushchenko supporter, revealed Bankova's plans to see Kuchma through to a third term. Several weeks ago Wolodymyr Semynozhenko, Vice Prime Minister and a close aide to Kuchma's wife, Ludmilla, publicly stated he thought Kuchma should be given "two more years." Another Kuchma crony, though recently out of favor, Oleksandr Volkov, has been busy proclaiming to any who would

listen that Kuchma must stay on as a guarantee of stability.

One thing for sure, Kuchma will keep up the pressure on Yushchenko. About 25 criminal cases have been opened up against parliamentarians and businessmen who support Yushchenko. Reportedly, at a meeting this past August in Krym (Crimea), Kuchma lambasted Yushchenko from the moment the latter stepped into the room. Medvedchuk stands behind the recent moves against freedom of the press, including personnel changes and a censor appearing at the news agency UNIAN. In general, the "Stop Yushchenko" campaign will unfold along the following lines: 1) downsize Our Ukraine's parliamentary faction further; 2) continue to tighten control over the mass media and use it to decrease Yushchenko's ratings; 3) stop the nascent opposition in its tracks.

For his part, bizarrely, Yushchenko continues to pin hopes on being nominated by Kuchma for the post of Prime Minister, at which he has
already burnt the current regime. He has repeatedly complained to Kuchma of harassment of his supporters, particularly the most vulnerable cross-section, the entrepreneurs, but to no avail. Most puzzling is Yushchenko's insistence on remaining on the sidelines of the largest demonstrations the country has seen since independence. "The Three" united against Kuchma - Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Moroz and Petro Symonenko, are calling for Kuchma's resignation or removal, precisely what Yushchenko needs.

Today, on a popular level, Ukrainians repeat that the regime is in agony, the only question is how long the agony will lastЉ Given that Kuchma and his associates/cronies have amassed fortunes in the billions of dollars, including through the sale of weapons to Iraq (See The Ukraine Insider, Vol. 2, No. 10 from April 15, 2002), they are likely to fight "fingernals on glass" against the possibility of Yushchenko's coming to power. Ukraine, after all, has never experienced a regime change distancing the former ruling Soviet elite from power. Political struggle at the top has been an internal nomenklatura affair. Now Yushchenko threatens this tradition.
Yet Yushchenko's own actions leave room to wonder if he even knows that he is in the midst of a battle for his political survival.

[In the following issue: The "opposition" dissected]

EUROPEAN UNION TO RECOMMEND 10 CANDIDATE COUNTRIES FOR ADMISSION

Reuters, 4 October 2002

BRUSSELS -- The European Commission will recommend next week that 10 candidate countries should join the European Union in 2004 but will propose no date for Turkey to start accession talks, an EU source said Friday.

The 10 are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta. The EU executive will propose a target date of 2007 for Romania and Bulgaria to join the bloc, the source said.
Despite strong U.S. pressure, the Commission will not recommend giving Turkey, the 13th candidate, a date for starting entry negotiations, though it will also not prejudge a final decision by EU leaders when they meet for their big ``enlargement summit'' in Copenhagen in December, the source said.
The Commission's regular report on the aspirants, due out next Wednesday, will call for strict monitoring of candidates' implementation of EU law after entry negotiations are concluded in December and the treaty is signed next April.
``They (the candidates) have been carrying out reforms for 10 years. They will continue to make reforms but it will be within the EU, not outside it,'' the source said.
Many EU diplomats fear that the mostly impoverished, ex-communist candidates will still be unable to meet the bloc's tough standards on a wide range of issues from food hygiene to state aid even after they join the Union.

http://www.reuters.com/

Soviet crimes remain unpunished

Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL, 3 October 2002

Ukraine's ambiguous relationship to its Soviet past is nowhere more apparent than on the streets of downtown Kyiv.

A small monument to the artificial famine of 1932-33, which caused upwards of 7 million deaths in Ukraine, has stood on Mykhailivska Square in central Kyiv for over a decade. However, it was not until 2000 that the hammer and sickle insignia was finally removed from the facade of the parliament building. To this day, a similar insignia remains prominently visible on a building overlooking Independence Square. The massive Lenin statue that formerly dominated the square (when it was still named after October) was quickly removed after independence and has now been replaced by a grandiose monument to independence. At the other end of Khreshchatyk, though, a smaller, "more artistic" Lenin statue continues to preside over Bessarabsky Square.

In fact, statues of Lenin still stand in countless Ukrainian towns. The "Black Book of Communism. Crimes, Terror, Repression" published in France in 1997 and then by Harvard in 1999 provided evidence that the victims of Lenin's party exceeded those of the Nazis. While neo-Nazi parties are banned in Germany, a fifth of Ukrainians still vote for the Communists. The Soviet system has never been denounced in total, the way the Nazis were in Germany and Austria. In fact, this would probably be impossible given the former Soviet Ukrainian nomenklatura still rules Ukraine.

More than a decade after the USSR collapsed, dealing with Soviet crimes against humanity - an issue first raised in the glasnost era of the late 1980s - remains unfinished business.

Soviet famine denial

In an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1987, the veteran dissident Vyachaslav Chornovil wrote, "The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land."

Not surprisingly, the Communist Party of Ukraine was unwilling to come to terms with the famine. In a speech devoted to the 70th anniversary of Soviet rule in Ukraine, CPU leader Volodymyr Shcherbytsky admitted that famine had occurred as a consequence of collectivization, but he attributed the "serious food problems" to an "unforeseen drought." Only in 1990 did the CPU, admit that the famine had taken place - and to this day, it denies that it was the result of deliberate policy.

During the Gorbachev era, it was liberal Moscow publications such as Ogonyok that first covered the famine as a "man-made" Stalinist crime. Yury Shcherbak, then head of the Green World Association and now Ambassador to Canada, said in a 1988 interview: "The famine of 1932-33 was definitely not due to any natural disasters. There was no drought, no hurricanes which could have provided the reason." In his view, there was no doubt that "the famine was organized from above."

The Writers Union of Ukraine produced the most revealing accounts of the famine and Great Terror. In early 1988, the famine was first described as a "holodomor" (terror famine) directed at the peasants and leading to a "holocaust of millions." The famine was followed by the "Great Terror," which targetted the cultural-political elites who had spearheaded Ukrainianization in the 1920s.

At the time, the poet Borys Oliynyk called for the publication of a "white book," in which "not only is Stalin fully exposed with stenographic clarity and precision, but also the degree of guilt of every member of his coterie is defined, and not only are the victims identified by name, but those who planned and carried out illegal acts."

The confusion surrounding attitudes to the Soviet past in post-Soviet Ukraine is exemplified in Oliynyk himself. He continues to be a member of the Communist Party, which consistently ignores the famine and other Stalinist crimes. Not surprisingly, Ukraine's post-Soviet authorities have never published a "white book."

Western denial

It was not only the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that denied - and whose successors continue to deny - that artificial famine had killed millions of Ukrainians, Kazakhs and others in 1932-33. Right through to the late 1980s - and in some cases still now - Western textbooks of Soviet history and politics tended to ignore the famine and downplay the brutality of the Soviet collectivization campaign. Some of the authors were simply apologists of Stalinism. Others were admirers of the "progressive" nature of the USSR. Bedazzled by the achievements of Soviet modernization in the 1930s, they would admit only begrudgingly that some "unfortunate mistakes" were made. To this day, many scholars continue to play down the total numbers murdered under Stalinism and deny Ukrainians were targeted in the famine. The peasants died not because they were Ukrainian, but because they were peasants - and anyway the famine struck throughout the USSR.

Even after the Gorbachev-era Soviet press published death toll figures for the 1930s which exceeded Robert Conquest's conservative estimates in his "Harvest of Sorrow. Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine," the book was dismissed as "rubbish" by Moshe Lewin, an American academic. Alexander Dallin, who many view as the father of modern Soviet studies, dismissed the idea that the famine was artificially planned. Writing in the New Republic in 1986, Alec Nove, a respected expert on the Soviet economy, accused Conquest of "accepting the Ukrainian nationalist myth."

The widespread antipathy for Conquest among mainstream academics echoed the views of Western Communists such as Canadian Douglas Tottle, who wrote "Fraud, Famine and Fascism. The Ukrainian Genocide Myth From Hitler to Harvard" during the late 1980s. Writers in New York's Village Voice and the London Review of Books claimed that the mythical famine was part of the anti-communist campaign against the Soviet Union unleashed by Ronald Reagan. Conquest's book was placed on a par with Hollywood films like "Rambo" and "Red Dawn."

Although Stalinism is undoubtedly a discredited ideology, few in Ukraine or the West wish to equate it with Nazism. Western academics still see Nazism as intrinsically evil, while insisting communism always had good intentions. Soviet crimes against humanity are the fault of "Stalinism" or "mistakes," not the Communist Party or Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Counting the cost

Discussion of the famine and Great Terror in the Gorbachev era press produced a wide range of death toll estimates. Dissident historian Roy Medvedev believed a fifth of the Soviet population, 38 million people, suffered under Stalinism. Of these, 12 million died, including 6 million in the famine in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus and Volga region. Another 10 million were deported or dekulakised. Other figures gave 25 million dead or imprisoned before 1935 and the same number from 1935-1953, a total of 50 million dead and repressed. Conquest gave the total dead resulting from the famine and dekulakisation as 14.5 million, 80 percent of whom were in Ukraine. New research in the 1990s produced even higher figures.

During the 1930s, the population of the Russian SFSR increased by 28 percent. In the same period, the Ukrainian population lost upward of 10 million people, 5-7 million due to the famine. According to demographic projections, Ukraine's population should have reached 38 million by 1939. The results of the falsified Soviet census of 1939 showed only 31 million. Accordingly, Ukraine's population growth in the twentieth century has been much slower than Russia's. By the 1989 Soviet census, ethnic Ukrainians represented only 40 out of the Ukrainian SSR's 52 million (12 million Russians had migrated to Ukraine during the Soviet era). Since 1992, the population has declined by another 3 million. The left accuse Ukraine's new ruling elite of a new "genocide," but they refuse to acknowledge guilt for the 1932-33 famine.

Stalinism and Soviet nationality policies produced a divided Ukraine and a hobbled peasantry. While Ukrainians were demographically dominant in all urban centers, they were culturally dominant only in western regions. Stalinism also ethnically cleansed the Ukrainian presence from the Kuban region of the North Caucasus. Since the 1930s, Sovietization and Russification in eastern Ukraine has produced a passive population where civic activity is low and oligarchs hold sway, opposed only by the hard line Communists. It is not coincidental that three out of four opposition forces (Our Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko and the Socialists) have their roots in the more active, nationally conscious and less sovietized western and central Ukraine.

Punishing Soviet crimes

Calls by writers in the late Soviet era for those who were responsible for Stalinism to be brought to trial have fallen on deaf ears. Lazar Kaganovich, one of the Soviet leaders closest to Stalin in the 1930s, was allowed to live in peace and obscurity in Moscow until his death in 1991 at the age of 98. Medvedev wrote, "He had quite as many crimes on his conscience as those hanged at Nuremberg."

The only former Soviet countries to have put former members of the secret police on trial are Latvia and Estonia. This has provoked a furious reaction from Russia, which has itself been exhibiting an increasingly confused attitude to the Soviet past since it adopted the old Soviet anthem with new lyrics.

Back in the Gorbachev era, Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Musienko called upon his countrymen to "clear themselves of the nuclei of slavery that have eaten their way into the cellular tissue of our bones, of the slime of conscious deceit, of fear, servility and lack of self-esteem." Nearly two decades after Gorbachev introduced perestroika and glasnost in the USSR, this worthy call has still to be acted upon by Ukraine's leaders.

CANADA - UKRAINE SECURITY SEMINAR

22 TO 24 OCTOBER 2002

Ukraine and Russia in the New Europe

What is the Future of Europe

Defence Reform in Ukraine and Bilateral Defence Cooperation with Canada

The International System after 11 September

Presenter: Dr Roman Jakubow, Department of National Defence

Chair: Marvin Wodinsky, Department of Foreign Affairs and International
Trade (TBC)

To discuss in general terms the nature of the international system following the 11 september attacks (i.e., the international context within which both Ukraine and Canada must operate). Il will include the main tenets of US policy, the war on terrorism, emerging security threats. This session will not specifically focus on either Canadian or Ukrainian policy perspectives, and should allow seminar participants a wide latitude for intervention in the discussion that will follow.

Ukraine and Russia in the New Europe

Presenter: Dr. Taras Kuzio,University of Toronto

Chair: Colonel M. Snell

To examine Ukraine's and Russia's policies toward Europe, the EU and NATO enlargement. The influence of energy politics and the impact of personalities should also be raised. Questions that should be addressed include: how Ukraine and Russia conceive of their role in Europe and with the EU (the presentation should not focus exclusively on Russo - Ukrainian relations).

What is the Future of Europe

Presenter: Dr. Charles Pentland, Queen's University

Chair: Dr. Roman Jakubow, Department of National Defence

To review ongoing developments in Europe generally, with some suggestion as to where events are leading. This session should not concentrate only on the EU, but should also include broader political or regional issues that bear on the future of the European state system and international stability generally.

Defence Reform in Ukraine and Bilateral Defence Cooperation with Canada

Presenter: Dr. Ben Lombardi, Canadian Forces Command and Staff College (TBC)

Chair: Colonel M. Snell, Director NATO Policy.

To review the status and challenges of defence reform in Ukraine. The presentation should not be a synopsis of the State Programme for Reform of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Instead, it should provide a basic overview of the policy issues/problems being faced by Ukrainian policy makers.

UKRAINE AND THE OTHER

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/slavic/ukr_conference/
Fourth International Conference of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia in co-operation with the Shevchenko Scientific Society in
Australia

Melbourne, 7-8 February 2003

CALL FOR PAPERS
Among the categories that help organise our observations and thoughts in the humanities and social sciences are identity and difference.
     The convenors of "Ukraine and the Other" hope that the conference will provide a forum for the consideration of definitions, boundaries
and demarcations, as well as encounters, influences and conflicts as they pertain to Ukraine and things Ukrainian.
     We invite papers, both conceptual and empirical, that address the conference theme from the perspective of cultural, literary and linguistic studies, history, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, diaspora and migration studies, religious studies, multi-
and intercultural studies, gender studies or other relevant scholarly disciplines.
     Papers on other topics in Ukrainian Studies will also be welcome.

VENUE: International House, University of Melbourne, 241 Royal Parade,
Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia.

ACCOMMODATION: International House, $50 Australian per person per day, including breakfast. AUD 1.00 = USD 0.55 (rate for 9 October). Other options available; see conference web page.

REGISTRATION: $150 Australian. Registration forms should be printed from the conference website. On request, forms and the full text of the Call for Papers may be e-mailed as attached documents or sent by airmail.

OFFER OF PAPER: title to be submitted with registration form. A short abstract may be requested. Deadline: 6 December 2002. Languages: English or Ukrainian. Duration: 30 or 20 minutes.

ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Jonathan Clarke, Jonathan.Clarke@arts.monash.edu.au
Marko Pavlyshyn, Marko.Pavlyshyn@arts.monash.edu.au
Irene Romanowski, Irene.Romanowski@arts.monash.edu.au

CONFERENCE WEBSITE in English and Ukrainian
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/slavic/ukr_conference/

POSTAL ADDRESS
Ukrainian Conference
Slavic Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
PO Box 11A, Monash University, Victoria 3800
Australia
tel: +(61) (3) 9905 2259, 9905 2253
fax: +(61) (3) 9905 5251

Hrushevsky, Volume 8 launch

Tue, 08 Oct 2002

The Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies invites you to the book launch of
VOLUME 8 of MYKHAILO HRUSHEVSKY'S HISTORY OF UKRAINE-RUS' THE COSSACK AGE, 1626–1650

The launch and reception will be held at the CROFT CHAPTER HOUSE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

at 4 pm on SUNDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2002

The History of Ukraine-Rus' is the most comprehensive account of the ancient, medieval, and early modern history of the Ukrainian people. Written by Ukraine's greatest historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the ten-volume History remains unsurpassed in its use of sources and literature. The English-language edition of the History makes the national history of Europe's largest new state available to the English reader for the first time.

Volume 8, The Cossack Age, 1626–1650, deals with the period when the Cossacks' emergence as a political power, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic developments, and the Khmelnytsky Uprising made Ukraine a focal point in European and Near Eastern affairs. Based on an exhaustive examination of the sources and scholarly literature, Hrushevsky's volume stands as the most comprehensive account of this dramatic period in Ukrainian history. Ukraine's central role in the international politics of the time makes the volume important to specialists and students of East European, Central European, Ottoman, Russian, and Jewish history, as well as to those studying revolution and state-building in early modern Europe.

Contemporary Belarus

Wed, 9 Oct 2002

Dear Colleagues, I am very proud to announce that our book 'Contemporary Belarus: between democracy and dictatorship' by Korosteleva, R. Marsh and C. Lawson, has just been published by RoutledgeCurzon (11 October 2002).

The book aims to fill the gap in contemporary literature regarding Belarus by analysing its current developments in a comparative way from historical, political, economic, and cultural dimensions. It also looks at international relations, especially those with Russia, USA and the
European Union, and Belarus’s security policies. The book uniquely combines views of NATIVE and western academics, theorists and practitioners, young and established scholars, and aims at wider readership.

The price for the book of a specialist area is a bit dear (55 pounds) in my opinion, however, I do hope this will not prevent you from making a use of it. In cooperation with the publishers we are organising a promotion campaign to help advertise the book. Should you be interested in obtaining a copy for the university or your personal use (there are many parallels drawn with the neighbouring states in the book), please do not hesitate to contact me or the publishers directly (http://www.tandf.co.uk/books/default.html) or amazon.com/co.uk.

Your commentary or your review of the book will be most highly appreciated!

Many thanks in advance, and best wishes,

Elena.

Dr Elena A. Korosteleva-Polglase,
British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Department of Politics,
Adam Smith Building,
University of Glasgow,
Glasgow,
G12 8RT

Tel. 0141 330 6445
Fax. 0141 330 5071
E-mail: E.A.Korosteleva@socsci.gla.ac.uk
Web-site:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/politics/staff/korosteleva-polglase.htm

UKL 185, 9 October 2002

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Dominique Arel, Watson Institute
Brown University, Box 1970
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Providence, RI 02912
401 863 9296 tel; 401 863 2192 fax
reply to: darel@brown.edu

Robert De Lossa
PO Box 5385, Wayland, MA 01778
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reply to: radelo@earthlink.net
http://www.ukrainianstudies.org