Visit to the Maidan

My initial dismay at having an eleven-hour layover in Kiev was erased when I realized that I could use that time to venture into the city and visit Megan, one of my fellow graduate students in Soviet history. I was interested to see how Kiev had changed since I had last been there four years ago.

The first thing I noticed was that Borispol airport was brand new. It really looks fantastic, and it’s a shame that there won’t be too many tourists around to take advantage of the spiffy new place. (Tip for the adventurous: Ukrainian International Airways is having a fire sale on tickets!) Also, as I was passing through security, one of the Ukrainian security agents actually made a joke—in English! Definitely the first time that has ever happened to me in the former Soviet Union.

After a month in Chisinau, where it seems like about two thirds of the conversations I heard were in Moldovan Romanian, it was strange to suddenly understand all the conversations going on around me. For all the controversy about language politics, Kiev is still firmly a Russian-speaking city. I only eavesdropped (or rather, attempted to eavesdrop) on a few Ukrainian conversations all day. Certainly belies the notion that this is a battle of Russian speakers against Ukrainian speakers!

They’ve also rebranded one of their city bus routes as the “Sky Bus,” so it’s now very easy to find the right transportation to connect to the metro. Once I made it to the “Golden Gates” metro stop, I met up with Megan, who is doing archival research at an archive located in the St. Sophia Cathedral complex.

Statue of Yaroslav the Wise in front of Kiev's reconstructed Golden Gates.

 

Historians reunited in Kiev!

Our first stop was the Maidan, the epicenter of the protest movement and the site of major street battles in February between protesters and Berkut, the now-disbanded Ukrainian security services. After a successful regime change, the Maidan is no longer occupied but the barricades and tents remain as a sort of museum to history-in-the-making. With the annexation of Crimea and an ongoing civil war/anti-terrorist operation/undeclared Russian invasion (depending on your perspective) in some of the far-eastern regions, it remains to be seen whether the revolution will be a Pyrrhic victory. According to Megan, most people in Kiev seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the election of the new president Poroshenko. After all, they remind her, at one time they had also celebrated the victory of the now-deposed Yanukovych.

At first is was a shock to see the wide, open central square turned into a warren of makeshift tents and barricades topped with barbed wire.

Photo I took of the Maidan in June 2010

Maidan, July 2014

Maidan, July 2014

Memorials honored those who had died in the fighting with security services.

Makeshift memorial

On that sunny afternoon it was hard to imagine that just a few months ago, I had watched a YouTube video with Ukrainian priests on the same stage incanting prayers over the burning barricades as night battles with Berkut raged. 

Main stage at the Maidan, now displaying photographs of the deceased

Among the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar flags, there were also red-and-black UPA flags. The Ukrainian Partisan Army was the main Ukrainian nationalist anti-Soviet resistance in western Ukraine during World War II. They were sometimes allied with the Nazis, although the Germans also put UPA leader Stepan Bandera in a concentration camp (and promptly freed him when they thought he would be useful for battling the Soviets).

Poster of Stepan Bandera in the Maidan

They were advocates of what is called “integral nationalism.” UPA ideology argued that the Ukrainain nation was like a body that needed to be cleansed of impure elements—namely, non-Ukrainians. (As historian Amir Weiner points out, this predilection for cleansing the body politic was not so different from Soviet purges of class enemies and traitors.) UPA actively took part in massacres of Jews and Poles.

UPA ideology has little in common with the views of most Maidan supporters. The main far-right party polled in the low single digits in the parliamentary election. My impression is that pro-Maidan Ukrainians are much more likely to support a sort of Ukrainian civic nationalism instead. Considering that the Maidan movement has the full support of Ukraine’s Jewish and Crimean Tatar community, Russian propaganda that some sort of neo-UPA fascist junta has taken over the country is hardly persuasive. However, the portrayal of Stepan Bandera as some sort of national hero is certainly disturbing. It’s hard to decide who was worse—the UPA or the Soviet state. Neither provide much inspiration for way forward for Ukraine today.

The Maidan’s erstwhile Christmas tree, now covered in various banners and signs, could probably form the source base for an entire academic paper. Unlike Russian government propaganda, which seems to be actively stirring up hatred towards Ukrainians, there have been some efforts on the part of the Maidan movement to distinguish between Russians and the actions of their government. Hence the sign, “We love Russians—We despise Putin.”

Maidan "Christmas tree"

After our excursion into recent history, we dived into some not-so-recent history. Although I’ve already visited the St. Sophia Cathedral twice, it always merits another visit.

St. Sophia's Cathedral. The baroque exterior was commissioned in the seventeenth century by the great Orthodox metropolitan Peter Mogila, who by the way was from Moldova.

St. Sophia’s was originally built in the eleventh century by the royal family of Kievan Rus’, the Slavic state to which all three East Slavic nations (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) trace their origins. As such, it is essentially ground zero for East Slavic Orthodox Christianity. Made into a museum in the 1930s, the cathedral and its grounds are remarkably peaceful to wander through.

This is actually the entrance to the archive Megan is working in. Jealous...

On my way back to the airport, I bought the latest issue of a Ukrainian weekly, Kommentarii, tempted by its irresistible (to a historian, at least) headline—”Who will re-write the history of Ukraine.” I was treated to an excellent series of articles focusing on historical debates between Ukraine and its neighbors. The main article sought to demonstrate how the current Ukrainian historical paradigm tends to demonize Ukraine’s neighbors. The fact that Ukrainian journalists are doing some serious historiographical soul-searching at a time like this gave me hope for the future.

It may be pretty far down on the list of problems caused by the war in Ukraine, but the fact that fewer tourists are now likely to venture to Ukraine still saddens me. Kiev is a beautiful city, and I felt completely safe, as the city is far from the current conflict. I was glad to have the chance to spend even a few hours in Kiev.

Statue of Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky not far from the Maidan and St. Sophia.