For many people, history has long ceased to be a science and has become part of literature. It is edited just like a novel is edited before it is published. Something is added, something is thrown out, something is changed. Something is polished and smoothed, some ideas are made more prominent while others are played down.
As a result of this editing, instead of a familiar past event, its new “formula” arises, and the significance of the event is changed, as is its influence on events today.
Some politicians are very fond of commissioning new editions of history so that it better fits their ideology and their new ideological discourse. Sometimes a change in emphasis appears completely innocently and has no long-term consequences.
I remember how President Viktor Yushchenko was fond of Trypillian culture (archaeological culture of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age on the territory of Ukraine and Moldova that dates back to 5,000 years BC.) He sincerely believed that Ukrainians are the heirs of this culture.
Several amateur and professional historians began to write books about the Trypillian culture, as if it were the cradle of the Ukrainian nation. At the same time, the first private museums of Trypillian culture arose near Kyiv, where archaeologists once found traces of this civilization.
Since the departure of Viktor Yushchenko from Ukrainian politics, no one talks about there being a direct connection between Trypillian culture and modern Ukraine.
Putin’s revisionism
On the other hand, President Putin has long been fond of editing history in a way that does impact on contemporary life. His article, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the victory over fascism, was published and read even in the United States.
It makes no sense to go into detail about this article, but in our current situation – when President Putin is ready to turn three thousand kilometers of the Ukrainian border with Russia and Belarus into an endless front line – it is worth quoting from its final paragraph.
“Based on a common historical memory, we can and must trust each other. This will serve as a solid basis for successful negotiations and concerted actions for the sake of strengthening stability and security on the planet, for the sake of prosperity and well-being of all states. Without exaggeration, this is our common duty and responsibility to the whole world, to present and future generations.”
Having written this article, Vladimir Putin said that, Ukraine was invented by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Apparently, before Lenin, there was no Ukraine. An earlier version of Russian history stated that Ukraine was invented by the Germans at the end of the First World War.
This version was favored both in Soviet times and in post-Soviet Russia. But now we need to focus on the words of the current president of the Russian Federation.
In some ways, he may be right, because it was the Germans who helped Vladimir Lenin secretly travel to Russia from exile, in order to lead the 1917 revolution and overthrow the tsar!
He was sent to Russia from Germany in a sealed railway carriage under the guise of valuable cargo. Under modern Russian law, Vladimir Lenin must be considered a “foreign agent”. In theory, this should be written on his mausoleum on Red Square: “Foreign agent Lenin”!
You can laugh a lot at the paradoxes of rewriting or editing history in the Russian Federation, but inside Ukraine, history can be a thorny topic too. Every now and then there are heated disputes between objectivist historians and patriotic historians.
Selective history
One such a dispute is currently ongoing between Yaroslav Hrytsak, author of a brilliant new book on Ukrainian history, Overcoming the Past: A Global History of Ukraine, and Volodymyr Viatrovych, an enthusiastic historian, author of many books and former director of the National Institute of Memory.
The main question of this dispute is: can memory and history be selective? It may very well be! In fact, we live in this “selective” history. Recently, in downtown Kyiv, not far from the Golden Gates, a memorial plaque was hung on the wall of the building in which a Boulangerie cafe is located.
The board depicts a man in a military uniform of 1918-1920. His name is Mykola Krasovsky. The plaque states that he was an important intelligence officer in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and that he lived in this house in the early 1900s.
For 99.9 percent of Kyiv residents, his name means nothing, and those rare people who know the name of Mykola Krasovsky most likely do not know that he had something to do with intelligence.
In fact, for most of his life, Krasovsky was a renowned detective who solved the most intricate and complex crimes in and around Kyiv. He was also one of the investigators in the most famous anti-Semitic case in the Russian Empire – the Case of Mendel Beilis.
This case was very similar to the Dreyfus Affair in France. Both cases really showed how common anti-Semitic views were among the European and Russian elites. And not only among the elite.
Mendel Beilis was accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Kyiv in order to obtain “blood for making matzah” for Passover. Mykola Krasovsky from the very beginning did not believe in the version of ritual murder. He soon also found the real killers, who turned out not to be a Jews at all, but local Kyiv thieves.
The authorities needed a Jewish version of the murder. Krasovsky was dismissed from the case. The authorities even tried to put him in jail for embezzlement of 15 kopecks from the state. It is a pity that his participation in the Beilis Case is not mentioned on the memorial plaque.
Maybe we should ask the Kyiv police to hang another one on this house with the words “Legendary Kyiv detective Mykola Krasovsky”?
It would also be good to ask Polish historians to look in the archives for data on his service in Polish intelligence, as well as on the date and place of his death.
Sadly, Ukrainian historians still do not have even these biographical details of an important figure from our history.
Andrey Kurkov
