The Burden of Ukrainian History
All East European nations experienced a traumatic twentieth century, but Ukraine's trials were particularly tragic. During World War I, much of the Eastern Front combat took place on Ukrainian soil. From 1917 to 1920 Ukrainians fought and lost a war for independence. Under Soviet rule in the 1920s, many of Ukraine's artists and writers were killed or exiled and their works banned. The brutal collectivization of agriculture, begun in 1928, was followed by a Soviet-made famine in 1933, when some six million Ukrainians starved to death in the countryside where collectivization was fiercely resisted. Also in the 1930s, Ukraine's intellectuals and most of its native communist leadership were executed in Stalin's Great Terror. Tens of thousands were exiled to Siberia.
During World War II, Ukraine was a battleground twice between German and Soviet armies as the Germans first advanced and then retreated in fierce fighting. Between these two campaigns, Ukraine bore the brutal brunt of Nazi occupation for three years during which more than three million Ukrainians perished and more than one million of Ukraine's Jews were executed in the Holocaust. After the war, more deportations and arrests followed in a Soviet campaign to suppress nationalism and dissent. Armed resistance to Soviet rule by Ukrainian insurgents lasted into the early 1950s.
While no one escaped unfathomable suffering, it seems, in particular, Ukraine has been plagued by the periodic slaughter of its men folk. And what of the surviving men who made it home? It doesn't take a session with a psychologist to understand that men have suffered psychological trauma for generation upon generation. The psyche of Ukrainians, as Oleksander Kulchytsky, an eminent Ukrainian psychologist, pointed out, has been shaped by these shattering events, especially by the Bolshevik terror and oppression, Soviet efforts to indoctrinate the people and industrialize the economy, and the widespread resistance to communism.
It is to these traumatic experiences as well as the political subjugation and denial of their language that Kulchytsky attributes Ukrainian feelings of inferiority, tinged with a sense of injustice at the wrongs done to their country. The compensation, as he puts it, "...often takes the form of idyllic dreaming (reveries) about the coming of the reign of truth, brotherhood, and universal freedom. Ukrainian socialist and liberal political parties are full of these beliefs". Dr. Jurij Savyckyj, an American psychiatrist who has studied mental health in today's Ukraine, reports that some of the most resilient and courageous Ukrainians he met suffer from deep-seated feelings of powerlessness and despair, stemming from years of insecurity and state terror. Savyckyj believes that their sense of victimization could inhibit democratic and societal reforms for many years to come:
"In older people... elements of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder are present in varying degrees. Many have responded by feeling helpless, apathetic, powerless and detached from events. Young people seemed especially cynical and indifferent. There was a sense that, although "free at last" from the Russian Communist yoke, each person carries a private burden they can not describe.... People casually mentioned the arbitrary execution of parents, siblings, relatives and friends as they recounted life's milestones.... We must remind ourselves that these people have lost 20 million family members within the past three generations, in a different kind of holocaust. In [U.S.] terms, this would be the loss of 60 million Americans, especially those with any form of education or business initiative."
Chernobyl, with its nuclear fallout, is the most recent of Ukraine's traumas. By 1994, as many as eight thousand had died from illnesses caused by the 1986 blast and its aftermath, and that number is increasing rapidly. An area the size of Alabama has been contaminated, many thousands of inhabitants have had to be resettled, and the long-term radiation cleanup costs consume 12 percent of Ukraine's annual budget. The toll on future generations is incalculable.
The traumas of the twentieth century left their mark on the Ukrainian psyche. In public – on streets and in the Metro – Ukrainians are quiet and reserved. They avoid eye contact with strangers, refrain from calling attention to themselves, and mind their own business. On meeting a foreigner, they are likely at first to be suspicious and cautious, retreating behind a protective barrier. Smiles from foreigners, especially Americans, puzzle them. Ukrainians seem to be asking, "Why do Americans always smile at us?"
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