Cambridge, MASSACHUSETTS – Located next to Harvard University's massive government and international studies center, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute has been helping to shape Ukraine's image in the United States since 1973.
As a humanities institute that focuses on Ukrainian history, language
and literature, it has eight students currently and hosts conferences and
speakers. Political scientist Alexander Motyl is a frequent guest. Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum is currently a research affiliate.
Historian and author Timothy Snyder attended its summer program during the late
1990s, and America’s third ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, visited the
institute for briefings.
Since its founding, the institute has published around 100 books that
have shaped how Westerners think of Ukraine today.
“We publish scholarly books that give a correct interpretation, correct
information,” associate director Lubomyr Hajda told the Kyiv Post.
Hajda, a pioneer of Ukrainian studies in the United States, has watched
the institute’s development ever since he was a graduate student at the
university in 1966. The institute was started with student fundraising
campaigns and support from Harvard professor Omeljan Pritsak.
The institute’s first seeds were planted in the 1950s by political
refugees from Ukraine after World War II. “There was a very large contingent of
young people who were entering universities, and everyone… was faced with
having to explain (to friends, neighbors, teachers) that we are Ukrainians and
not Russians,” Hajda says.
But the ad hoc process of educating Americans one-by-one had its limits.
A scholarly authority was lacking on the subject, so diaspora university
students started raising money to establish Ukrainian studies at a leading U.S.
university “that would provide authoritative, academically proven information
to the academic world,” according to Hajda.
Harvard University was the respected institution chosen. Students were
able to raise enough money and collaborated with Pritsak, who had a very well
“conceptualized and developed intellectual project” of Ukrainian studies, Hajda
says.
Today, the institute holds numerous conferences on such topics as
denuclearization, language politics, economic reforms, the deportation of the
Crimean Tatars, and information wars and propaganda. In the spring of 2016,
Hajda and Motyl are to conduct a comparative analysis of “good and bad
nationalisms” at a symposium hosted by the institute.
The institute also became a popular reference point when the Euromaidan
Revolution started in November 2013.
“There was a lot of interest in those events and people were turning to
us,” Serhii Plokhii, HURI’s director and a Harvard history professor, told the
Kyiv Post.
Sometimes Plokhii received three to four interview requests per day
during those events. “On a certain level we were struggling because the
institute was created as a humanities institute with a focus on history,
language and literature.”
But the media bubble burst after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“It looks like the focus of the media changed, because now it became not
a Ukrainian story, but a Russian story,” Plokhii said.
Russian specialists were more in demand afterwards. “But again, we were
very much part of this general effort to discuss, illuminate, to educate the
public,” he added.
The Ilovaisk tragedy – when invading Russian forces killed 366 Ukrainian
soldiers in August 2014 – was another media peak. But afterwards, the institute
went back to its traditional role of holding academic events, publishing articles
and books, and offering course study.
The institute’s operating budget for this year is $1.7 million
consisting of 74 endowments, all coming from U.S. citizens. This includes money
for salaries, funding for research, and spending on holding conferences and
various events.
Tymish Holowinsky, the institute’s executive director, says that last
year the institute spent $90,000 alone on funding students for its summer
program. “For eight units (two courses) and living on campus it costs almost
$11,000 for seven weeks… That’s only really (enough) for nine students,”
Holowinsky says.
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute plan to open a branch in
Ukraine was put on hold because of funding issues, since endowments can only
come from Ukraine, according to Harvard’s policies.
“We can’t generate interest in the business community in this particular
project at this particular time,” Plokhii says. “We’re getting some hints that
some foundations would give, but that is coming from foundations that we’d prefer
not to work with right now.”
Graduate students from some of Harvard University’s departments have
shown increased interest in Ukrainian studies. “The strategy is not to turn
them into specific experts on Ukraine, but have people who study Ukraine in a
broader context,” Plokhii says.
Overall, the circle of U.S. scholars in Ukrainian studies has grown,
Holowinsky says, more acknowledge Ukraine as a separate entity. Although the
institute does not take a political stance on Ukraine’s situation, there is a
fundamental consensus among all of the staff members.
“For everyone it is absolutely clear that Ukraine is under attack, that
it is being invaded,” Plokhii says. “Everyone certainly believes that the West
has to help Ukraine get out of this situation, and that the only way out is
comprehensive reform.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Ilya Timtchenko can be reached at
[email protected].
