Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (C) reacts as he attends the 70th memorial ceremony tribute to victims of the 1941 Nazi massacre of Jews at the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv, on Oct. 3. The Nazis murdered 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar on Sept. 29 and 30, 1941, in an atrocity that has only been properly commemorated in recent years as the deadliest shooting massacre of the Holocaust. AFP PHOTO/SERGEI SUPINSKY If the Euro 2012 started tomorrow, tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world would arrive in Kyiv. Most of them will come to the heart of modern-day Ukraine: Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square.

When visitors come to this place many they will remember the courageous protests during the 2004 Orange Revolution and for some, even the student protests and hunger strikes during the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Many others, perhaps not as well-versed in history, will come to the square simply because it is one of the nicest places in Kyiv to sit, rest, people-watch, grab a snack and buy souvenirs.

If the tourists peruse the souvenir tables lining the side of Maidan near the post office they might find some items among the chachkas, t-shirts, and magnets that will shock them.

On these tables they will find books with titles like, “Jews in Ukraine Today: Reality without Myths,” “The Jewish Syndrome,” and “The Worldwide Moscow-Jewish Problem.”

Some of these books describe how the Holocaust never happened and how Jews are trying to destroy modern-day Ukraine, while others illuminate the conspiracies of the Freemasons. If the visitor is not disturbed enough with the anti-Semitism and freemason fantasies, one can also find Russophobic publications too. Some visitors will be horrified to see the book of infamous American racist and former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, “The Jewish Question through the Eyes of an American: My Investigation of Zionism” being sold in Ukrainian.

The majority of this literature is published by the university press of the private Ukrainian university, the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP).

MAUP is well-known as the “University of Hate” in the West for its support of Holocaust deniers and its egregiously offensive publications and conferences. Over the past five years, MAUP’s despicable activities have been well documented by western and Ukrainian academics and journalists alike, including Per Rudling and Oleksandr Naiman.

In 2005, a number of Ukrainian intellectuals here and abroad also wrote a letter condemning the activities of MAUP. Thankfully after this publicity some (but not all) of the literature has been removed from the main bookstores in Kyiv. Despite these courageous efforts by intellectuals, this hate literature still lines the bookshelves of bookstores throughout Ukraine, especially in Volhynia and Galicia.

Surely, visitors might ask themselves some of the following questions after seeing this display of hate. “Can I imagine this hate literature being sold in Times Square or Trafalgar Square or at the Brandenburg gate?” “What does this literature being sold in such a prominent place say about this country’s priorities and orientation?” “How would they feel if visitors came to their country and in the heart of capital at the main souvenir stands, hate literature was being sold?”

The scholar, Anna Veronika Wendland, recently argued in a debate about Omer Bartov’s book Erased in a Ukrainian journal that until scholars can learn to set aside offensive stereotype that all Ukrainians were and are ubiquitous anti-Semites, only can a real debate occur about Ukraine’s troubled past would remain unresolved. While I can hardly think of a scholar local of foreign who does not agree such stereotypes are harmful and unproductive, I’d counter that Ukrainians also need to start helping themselves. And the hate literature would be a great place to start.

Some may counter, like the president of MAUP, Heorhii Shchokin, has on occasion, that it is anti-democratic to outlaw literature of any sort and that giving neo-Nazis an outlet is, in fact, the essence of “democracy.” This literature need not be banned -- it should simply be relegated to the dark basements and meetings of the societal outcasts who write and pedal them. Just as in the West, the owners of stores and public space (be it the government in this case) have a right to decide what is sold on their premises. Pushing out the hate need not take the form of repression and thus risk the martyrdom of the purveyors.

As a scholar who lived in Ukraine over the last year, I see the Euro 2012 tournament as a great opportunity for Europeans and the world to get to know Ukraine a little better and find out all the amazing things Ukraine has to offer. I and many of my Western colleagues who work here would like nothing more than for this event to be a success. Disturbing hate literature on the Maidan will send the wrong message to visitors. To continue to turn the cheek to the most hateful and destructive in their midst, albeit a minority, only hurts Ukraine on a whole. Please remove the hate and preserve the Maidan as a space for freedom and democracy.

Jared McBride is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Los Angeles in the history department. He is currently a Fulbright-Hays scholar researching his dissertation on World War II in Volhynia in Ukraine.