Well, welcome everybody. Welcome to this special edition of the Art History Radio Hour.
My name's Geoff Batchen.
I'm the Professor of History of Art here at the University of Oxford, and I am the show host of this edition of the Art History Radio Hour.
Let me just quickly - for those of you that haven't joined us - before mention the describe the etiquette:
If you have a question, if you wouldn't mind using the golden hand function at the top right of your Teams screen.
Olena and I are going to be talking for a while and then I'll be inviting questions from our audience.
So please feel free to take a note and think of a question.
You can either put that question in the chat function, or you can raise your hand and ask Olena question yourself. In a little while,
Olivia, who is helping behind the scenes to operate today's Art History Radio Hour, is going to be putting some links in the chat function.
If you have an interest in contributing, for example, to the assistance of refugees, particularly those that are now on the border with Poland,
there'll be some links there and which you can find out some more information about how to make a contribution.
So, in light of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, we decided we should devote a radio hour to the history and culture of that country.
And joining me today is Olena Chervonik,
a Ukrainian doctoral student in History of Art who has family members who are currently in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine.
So, let me begin by thanking Olena for being with us. I'm sure, this an incredibly stressful and upsetting time.
Before we go on, perhaps I could just ask you how your family members are faring?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, I mean, they're OK more or less.
My brother is in Kyiv, and he is the one we're worried about the most at the moment.
My parents are about 100 kilometres away from Kyiv.
In the city of [INAUDIBLE]. It's a regional centre.
It's not a small city, but it's been more or less quiet so far because it's kind of inland and it doesn't have
anything strategically important in terms of like military infrastructure.
And so, they have been shelled kind of on the suburbs, but not in the city.
But then Kyiv, of course, is effectively under siege.
And because Russians can't really penetrate on land, they can't really penetrate the defence of actually any city.
They did not occupy anything.
And so, they started bombing, as you know, they started bombing the civilians because it's like impudent(?) rage, like they cannot do anything to get in.
And that's scary. And like the latest,
there is information that they've started, there are some kind of bombs, thermal bombs and they constantly increasing this,
the level of threat, the nuclear bombs and stuff.
And we see that Putin, I don't think, is going to stop doing whatever he's doing, like all his threats.
I don't think like his threats are discursive, you know, he's actually probably preparing
to make it the large scale, even more so, I don't know.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: I think you were telling me your brother is in charge of a bomb shelter? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: so, he's actually listening to us right now.
I just saw. Yes, he is. So, he tried sign up for territorial defence.
By the time he showed up there, they told him ‘we don't have any resources’ like, people within the first day in Kyiv itself,
there are 40000 people signed up for the defence, and so there is no, you know, extra armour,
they can't equip him,
and so, he's doing whatever he can within that small district that he's staying on the left Bank of Kyiv and yes, the bomb shelter.
When they say ‘bomb shelter’, we're talking really about a parking garage in one of the residential buildings,
so, it's underground and that's where people are hiding. but they're like guarding the bomb shelter, some logistics questions about the shelter.
and then recently the army actually started well, asking people to help them create barricades,
and so, this is what my brother has been doing, like helping barricading the train road within the city,
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: In a way, this radio hour came out of the conversation Olena and I were having a few days before the invasion began,
because a particularly striking element of the invasion is Putin's strategic use of history as one of his military weapons.
In his speech on February 21, Putin claimed that Ukraine does not warrant recognition as an independent state,
being no more than an artifice cut out of Russia by a misguided Lenin in 1917.
so, history seems to be at stake in this particular situation.
in fact, the medieval empire Kievan Rus' was anchored by Kyiv from at least the mid-11th century
and at that time included large amounts of territory that now fall within Ukraine,
Belarus and Russia. after the Bolshevik revolution, a Ukrainian people's republic was declared on the 23rd of June 1917.
but this was forcibly transformed into the Ukrainian soviet socialist republic in 1922 and thereby incorporated into the Soviet Union.
in that context,
at least six million Ukrainians lost their lives defending the Soviet Union during world war two. In 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
a referendum was held in Ukraine and 92 percent of the people who voted, voted for independence.
there's been a kind of messy 20 years in Ukrainian politics.
but in 2013, after a move by the Ukrainian government towards closer ties with Russia, civil protests led to the overthrow of the then government.
as a consequence, in 2014, Russian forces entered Ukrainian territory and annexed Crimea,
claiming then that ninety seven percent of the population were in favour of such an annexation.
now, in 2022, we have Putin claiming that his invasion is about restoring Ukraine,
and it's for 44 million people geographically the second largest country in Europe to their rightful place within a greater Russian homeland.
in the face of all this, Olena & I thought that as historians ourselves,
we should invite a discussion of the role that historians and especially art historians,
that being our particular area of practise - what role we might play in this context.
So, the big question seems to be, is there in fact, a distinctive Ukrainian identity, language, history, culture?
and I thought that rather than talking about these things in abstract terms,
I would invite Olena to come onto the Radio Hour because her own personal story touches on many of the elements that I’ve just,
you know, quickly surveyed.
so, I thought maybe we would begin by tracking through some of Olena’s life story to
see whether a personal account can offer us some insight into these bigger questions.
So, Olena, you were actually born of Ukrainian parents?
but as a citizen of the Soviet Union. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about what it was like to be a citizen of the Soviet Union.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: well, I mean, I was a child in the 80s, which already in effect.
I mean, it was still a Soviet Union, of course, but it was already Perestroika, like,
you know, all of those things that eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
so, I kind of saw the tail end of this and we actually started talking with you before about the language.
and I think this is probably a very good starting point from unravelling like what soviet
union was in terms and what was the relationships of Ukraine within that construction,
which I personally very kind of vocally insist that Russia is an empire and Ukraine-Russia relationship is, you know, imperial colonial relationship.
but a lot of people, a lot of historians actually doubt that or argue against that because, you know, they start saying,
we understand that Russia is an empire in terms of colonising the Caucasus or the central Asia because, indeed,
there is a huge difference in terms of like religion and in ethnicity and language.
but Ukraine and Russia, like, you are so close, you have so many similarities, like is this really in a colonial kind of dependency?
and of course, you know, the question is, how much difference is a difference?
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Let’s talk about that because, you know, you grew up speaking both Russian and Ukrainian.
Was that typical for citizens of the Soviet Union?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, I would say that Ukraine is bilingual, really. so, I did.
I grew up speaking Russian. I would say not even Ukrainian.
I grew up speaking Russian, although ironically, my family doesn't have Russia like they're not ethnically Russian.
From what we can, we would trace down to the fourth generation.
we don't have Russians in my family. so, my father of Belarus and polish origin.
he was born in Belarus and his family moved to Ukraine in the end of the 50s.
And so, my mom was born in Ukraine. she's partly Ukrainian, partly Jewish and partly Karaim(?) or we think so.
they're almost extinct now, but it's a Turkic people of Judaic religion.
it's like very kind of specific concoction.
so anyway, but my mom's family, so my parents were already Russian speaking, but my mom's family, my grandparents, great grandparents,
they were Ukrainian speaking like, we actually have postcards and letters in our family archives with, you know.
People writing each other and sharing Ukrainian with Ukrainian alphabet because it is slightly different.
and so, the thing is. and then when I talk to my grandparents on my dad's side,
they were telling me that they spoke some kind of combination of Belarus and polish, so their generation was not Russian speaking.
so, this is really a soviet, you know,
soviet attempt at conjuring up a new soviet subjecthood that was supposed to be Russian
because Russian was a was kind of a lingua franca because Soviet Union was a mixture of,
you know, whoever. so, it was a lingua franca in a sense that it was, of course, more convenient to have one common language.
but at the same time, it was also a tool of kind of levelling all the ethnic differences or removing them or making, you know,
and in in that way, making people more obedient, less insisting on their own ethnicity and therefore autonomy.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Let's talk about the two languages, because that's come up a number of times, I’ve noticed in news reports.
What is the difference between Ukrainian and Russian that they share Cyrillic or some versions of Cyrillic?
but what is the distinctions between them? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, you know, it's Russian and Ukrainian do belong to the Slavic group.
the Slavic languages also. I mean, it's a larger group, but they also have three branches.
we have, you know, south Slavic, west Slavic and east Slavic.
so east Slavic is Russian, Ukrainian and Belarus and west Slavic is, let's say, polish, Czech and Slovak, south Slavic, is like a Croatian and Serbian.
and so, it's the kind of relationships that to explain it very, you know, in a fast way,
it's a kind of connexion and difference that we have between, let's say, Spanish and Italian or Italian and French.
it's like it's a same language group.
yes, they share the same source – Latin - they share the vocabulary, the syntactic structure they kind of, like, I’m pretty sure,
if you are Italian native speaker, you probably understand something of French without ever studying in French.
but does it mean that they are identical or it does it mean that, you know, how close? They’re different languages.
and of course, in within linguistics discourse, there is this very famous phrase that language is a dialect with an army.
so, once you have an actual political statehood, you can say my language is different from yours,
although in effect, Croatians and - people are going to hate me for that -
but Croatian and Serbian are one language and now they're different because of course it's a, you know, it's two different political entities.
I would say that Russian and Ukrainian are much more different than Serbian and Croatian.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: now you told me that there are some sounds or at least a sound that you know is an accident Ukrainian that Russians don't use?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: oh, well, we have quite a few of those sounds and letters.
and so, with all this Russian censorship and harassment of Ukrainians, that's been going on for, not just years and decades, but centuries.
one of the ways Russians were really trying to, you know,
to kind of deny Ukrainians their identity is through denial of language, including removing letters from the alphabet.
so, during the soviet time, we had a couple of letters that were erased.
and so, with the independence in 1991, one of the first decrees that our parliament did is to reintroduce the letters.
and now with this ongoing war that we have - so the Russian soldiers -
there is a common language that the enemy and us are speaking, so Russian soldiers moving, they can communicate.
however, we speak a slightly different Russian and Russians cannot pronounce certain sounds.
and so now we have something of a shibboleth. There are there are certain letter, there certain words, that you can ask,
like, if you're not sure of what it is, you can ask the person ‘can you say [INAUDIBLE] or can you say [INAUDIBLE]’ If they can't, it’s like ‘oh, you're Russian?’
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Yeah, now, you might say the soviet homogenisation of language is that - I really have only just become aware of this -
a consequence of the invasion was the shift from Kiev to Kyiv, from ‘the Ukraine’ to Ukraine.
Tell me a bit about that. How was that indeed, a Russianisation of Ukrainian words?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Kyiv, yes. Because we don’t say ‘Kiev’ we say ‘Kyiv’. it's a slightly different sound. But then ‘the Ukraine’ is, of course, you know,
this is not within the Slavic linguistics and it's more English.
And the thing is, in English, you use the definite article when you are talking about federation as opposed to an independent state.
So, you don't say ‘the France’ or ‘the Germany’, but you say the EU, the United States,
because it's a federation, it's a conglomeration of smaller countries.
and so, the Ukraine was precisely the linguistic marker of colonial dependence.
it was supposedly not an independent state or just part of.
and that's why there was an article. But it was actually removed within English.
I know this because I worked for the Kyiv Post in mid 2000s, which is the English-speaking newspaper in Kyiv.
and so, the article was removed officially from like old style or style guides like Associated Press and a couple of other, Reuters,
for example, because they would spread it to all the journalists saying, ‘OK, we're not writing ‘the Ukraine’ anymore’
it's incorrect. So, it's been a while, it's just that, you know, some people,
on occasion [INAUDIBLE], I suppose. [GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: I mean, I’ve always said ‘the Ukraine’ without really realising that there had been a change.
Let's just talk about 1991 because, you know, remarkably, you lived through this moment of independence.
I mean, what was it like to be a young person? I guess a student at that time, you know, in the very moment of a country’s coming into being.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: yeah. well, first of all, I was 13.
so, I think I will. I mean, I’m pretty sure I was not aware of what was happening at all.
and I was not a really politically inserted into all of this.
and another thing is maybe it's worth mentioning.
So, I was born in Ukraine, but then my parents moved to Tuva, which is called the autonomous Republic of Tuva,
that is how the locals pronounce it. It's in central Asia. Tuvans actually claim that they have the centre of Asia.
they have a monument there, and it's kind of border is bordering with Mongolia and Russia and I think part of china.
and so, I spent my first 10 years of my life,
I was there, maybe a little more. and of course, we were all speaking Russian.
there we were all Russian. Because we were very different from Tuvans,
and it wouldn't matter that you came from Ukraine and we came back to Ukraine because
it was obvious that the Soviet Union was probably just going to disintegrate.
if you remember at the time, there were a lot of conflicts arising.
so, there was there was a huge war between Armenia and Azerbaijan,
and everyone was afraid that it's going to flare up in, you know, in other parts of the country.
and then also Tuvans did not want to be part of the Russian federation that they were annexed by Russia in 1944.
and so, it's always been kind of, there's always been tension there.
we lived under curfew, for example, and so my parents decided it's like time to move and go back home.
and we arrived to Ukraine right before independence, basically.
but again, I was too small to understand what was happening, and I was more concerned about how to get to, I really wanted to study English.
there was no, not that many resources. we're talking about the time pre-internet, basically.
and so, you could only read something that was published in the Soviet Union,
which was a lot of those books being ridiculous, censored, like you couldn't get the sense of real language.
and I don't know where I got this idea. like, I somehow knew that, you know, there are other languages.
English is there. so, I really wanted to study English. I was really trying to figure out where to go.
and I entered the key linguistics university to study the languages, English and French, and also the theory of literature.
and I have to say this was the moment - so it was already independent Ukraine as we were talking before with you -
I never had a soviet passport because I came of age when I was 16 and was already independent Ukraine.
You get a passport at the age of 16. [GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: You get an internal passport for identification purposes?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Yeah, and that's another thing that a lot of people don't -
it's like, internal passport, external? What are you talking about? this is also a soviet legacy.
no one could travel in that country. it was not possible.
you wouldn't have documents to go outside or you would, but you would have to apply to go through secret service, blah blah blah.
So, there was no, there are no documents for international travel.
There are just documents for internal use. but when the independent came, obviously you said you could travel.
and so, they said, ok, let's have external passports.
so, we basically have until today we have two passports, two actual documents.
yeah, I’ve never had the soviet one. so, but I went to a linguistics university already with an independent Ukraine and studied languages.
and, you know, all this idea. so, within the Soviet Union, this Russian Ukrainian binary construction was definitely very hierarchical.
Russian was the language of culture, of sophistication, of higher education.
you wouldn't be able to study in a university using Ukrainian, you know, Ukrainian was only for home use.
and it was, there was a lot of kind of condescending attitude to people who would speak Ukrainian because it was,
you know, it's a language of a rural area, presumably not a language of science.
Russians were constantly telling us, you can't, you know,
you can’t study physics and chemistry and maths in Ukrainian because you guys just don't even have the vocabulary, you know?
and then I started doing,
linguistics theory of languages and, you know, I realise at some point the oldest binary is nonsensical.
there are no better or worse languages. from the linguistics point of view, it just doesn't make sense.
you know, languages evolve. they have different spheres of what, but like, there is no really hierarchy in that.
and that's when I started thinking, ok, what is going on here?
like, why do we have these two languages in the kind of, you know, that kind of relationships?
and I actually started reading the history of Ukrainian language and got into this whole
history of national struggle national building through that, through that door.
and there is a running joke that if you want to understand
the history of Ukrainian, the struggle for independence. just read the history of Ukrainian language.
it's all. they're all literature, you know? yeah, yeah.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: after you studied linguistics for a while, you studied in the united states -
this is your life - but this is kind of the we’re structuring the first part of this conversation.
but by 2004, you were back in Ukraine and therefore you were there during the orange revolution again, another sort of independence moment.
but by this point, you are a little older and presumably far more self-consciously aware of it.
what was that experience like and was? There an antagonism between Russia and Ukraine?
was that at the heart of it? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: So, I was there, I was working for the Kyiv post, which at the time was, well,
it was the only English language newspaper and it was the most independent because the rest of the press in the country was censored.
but they couldn't censor the Kyiv post because it was all American and Canadian editorial board established by an American.
and also, you know, we were completely independent in that way. and so, we could report whatever we wanted.
we were harassed all the time. [GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Can I just ask: was it only published in English or was it
published in Ukrainian? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: No, only in English.
and then I also worked for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
I was teaching English, and maybe I should talk about this academy a little bit,
well, let me let me answer the question about this Russian-Ukrainian, this whole -
I do not think that the opposition between Russian speaking,
Ukrainian speaking, was there during the first revolution because the,
you know, because Ukrainians won the revolution basically and the Russian candidate at the time,
well, the candidate at the time was trying to usurp the power. Yanukovych was actually backed up by Russia.
so, it's still the same Yanukovych, 2004 and 2013, is the same person.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: let's just clarify because it is the complex politics. He is Ukrainian, but he was backed by -
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Yeah, he's Ukrainian.
he was backed up by Russia. so, you know, Ukraine got independence, but Russia never left us alone.
and there was constantly this kind of infiltration of both country's political and cultural and whatnot sphere, trying to bring Ukraine back.
and so, one of the ways Russians were trying to do this is to, you know, to establish their own candidate like their own person, basically.
and so. that failed, Yanukovych got well, he was ousted at the time, but he lost.
and only after that moment,
we started being bombarded by this propagandistic discourse about two Ukraine’s. We actually know who introduced -
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: The two Ukraine’s: those who were in effect native Russian speakers and those who were not.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Yes.
it was like, you know, a particular kind of a sabotage message that certain people created and started circulating really everywhere.
you know, on tv and everywhere.
and so, it was supposedly about two Ukraine’s: Russian speaking, Ukrainian speaking, in east and west and we are so different and we are fighting.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: And did you feel that, you know, living in Kyiv? I mean, was that something you felt on a daily basis or was this sort of, I don't know,
something the chattering classes were talking about, but ordinary people were somewhat bemused by it?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: I mean, it was it was really a propagandistic construction.
I did not experience that. I mean, yes, we had Russian speakers.
yes, there was a tension about trying to elevate Ukrainian,
to a certain status that it would become a language of education and science and culture.
and there was the opposition, but not in terms of, like – [GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: So, by this time, Ukrainian was the national language had been declared the national language,
and so, there's some effort to flip the binary and make Ukrainian the dominant language?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, it's been declared. but like really this this transition from Russian being the main language, to Ukrainian
being the main language - it's a transition.
it's like years and years in the making because we're talking about people switching into a different language.
it's not easy. like my parents until today speak Russian. They don't support Russia in the least,
but you can't just, you know, when you are 70, you can’t just start speaking a language.
you didn't grow up speaking, you know, it's difficult.
so, it's kind of a transitional moment.
and so yes, I was older when it was orange revolution and kind of more aware and I was working for the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
it's an it is an extremely important, very symbolic institution in Ukraine because the academy was,
I mean, the contemporary version of it was really established 1991.
but it's the contemporary University claims that it’s an heir, it's a continuation of
the academy that was the original one that was established in 1632
and it exists from 1632 until 1817.
We had a University in Kyiv. It was the first University on that territory, eastern Slavic territory.
just to give you some facts:
The Moscow University – Russian, iconic, and first, was established in 1755 by Lomosov, who in 1735 studied in Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
So, this is where the learning starts from - on our territory.
and the academy was really about, you know, banned by the Russian Tsar in 1917 because it was too dangerous.
and so, it was kind of restarted resurrected in 1991, and it was.
and of course, it was extremely pro-Ukrainian and I worked at the academy when this
whole tension between Yanukovych and Yushchenko started and it became apparent that Yanukovych is trying to,
you know, to steal the election. So, the first people who went on Maidan were students of
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and I went there. so, I can say that I was the first one there.
it was actually not clear what's going to happen.
you know, it was at that moment, I wouldn't say it was like dangerous, dangerous, but it was the beginning.
but there is something about Ukrainian revolutions.
students are the first one to go, and usually what happens is that a student go, militia beats them up.
the rest of the country says ‘you cannot do this to our children’ and then the rest of the country rises, and it's exactly what happened in 2004.
and it's exactly what happened in 2013. so, I participated a little bit.
I mostly photographed and I do still have an analogue camera,
and so, I still have rolls somewhere, probably in the US, of the Orange Revolution.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: If you write your autobiography, it's going to be a wonderful read.
Now, because of our current disciplinary interest,
at what point - well, I think you've told me this before - but at a certain point you became interested in art history,
possibly because of your experience in the united states. but at what point did you become aware of the Ukrainian art or history of Ukrainian art?
when did you first see an exhibition or flip through a book which claimed to be a Ukrainian history of Ukrainian art?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Yeah, after the Orange Revolution, I went to the US and I lived and studied there.
and that's when I started taking classes in art history kind of almost by accident.
and then just as it happens to all of us, you just start taking an elective and then you switch.
But in 2011, I was in Ukraine in august, and that was the, you know, 20 years of independence.
and there was a very large exhibition in Kyiv of Ukrainian art,
contemporary Ukrainian art, and that was the first time I ever saw anything of Ukrainian art.
and it was mind blowing, like I was really, really impressed to realise I knew nothing about my own culture.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: That's what interests me.
Is that because it was the first time had been an attempt at such an exhibition or you just haven't tuned in before that?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: I mean, frankly, because I didn't tune in and partly because, yeah,
there was nothing of that scale before, but I was actually thinking,
like, if we start talking about Ukrainian art, how on earth do I present this?
Because it's a huge topic. and so, I guess something to mention in the Soviet Union, that, whatever it was like, Russia permitted Ukraine
certain agency, you know, allowing Ukraine to have certain agency. But in terms of art, Ukraine could only have
ethnographic or folk art. So, this is how you could express yourself, ethnographically, because you are like a rural, little people,
a little dim-witted. You're not modernised, you cannot have anything of value.
and it was just so ingrained, you know, so everything was kind of folkish.
It's not something that I was interested in, you know, a lot of young people -
it just doesn't speak to youth culture, directly. We always wanted to,
always were looking to the west and interested in America, and I think that was kind of my path,
you know? So, it's not because other types of Ukrainian art didn't exist, it’s because they were constantly,
you know, those types, and that kind of art was censored, was erased.
people were actually - by censored - I mean, people were killed.
Just to give you an example: when the Soviet Union started,
so, we did have, as you mentioned, we did have three years of independence.
there was a national Ukrainian people's republic and at the time,
those three years, a lot of institutions were actually founded. The Ukrainian Academy of Science, the Ukrainian Art Academy.
You know, there was really a moment of institution building and of course, a moment of kind of flourishing of the arts.
And with the Soviet Union, Lenin did an interesting thing.
He realised at some point that - in order to build this cohesion - he should be kind of less aggressive maybe.
And so, there are a couple of years, then he introduced this economic liberalisation.
He allowed private, you know, private ownership and stuff like this.
but then also he introduced the policy of nationalisation,
meaning that he would allow people of whatever ethnicities of those Soviet republics to exercise their culture.
So, we had for a brief moment what's called now Executed Renaissance.
we had amazing, amazing cultural revival in terms of, you know, literature and arts and music and all of that.
it all was destroyed within the year.
basically, there was this Great Purge, 1937-1938,
when the Soviets killed around 300 Ukrainian intellectuals. Some of those intellectuals died on the same day.
So 3rd of November, it's when they killed all of our poets,
all of our writers, all of our musicians.
I mean, it's insane. They all have the same death, you know, death date.
And after that, we had another moment of revival,
a brief revival in the 60s.
It was a liberalisation in the Soviet Union in general, and of course in Ukraine.
and a lot of Ukrainians started to say, ok, now it's the moment to exercise language and literature and stuff.
and those are the people who were really cosmopolitan.
They were looking, like, they were not doing art in terms of folk,
ethnographic folk art. [GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: So, what were they? I mean, what is Ukrainian about Ukrainian art?
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: How would one recognise it? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: Oh, that's a difficult question, but -
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Well, here's the real question: if I went to that exhibition with you,
would you be able to say to me, oh, this is what's distinctive, it's not Russian. this artist is doing this.
they're looking at a specific landscape or they're through, you know,
through the iconography, they're conjuring a particular Ukrainian traditional history.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: You know, I don't really think that art works like this, I mean, of course, you can say, ok,
there's the Ukrainian landscape or there is some kind of decorative moment
or decorative elements that probably come from Ukrainians embroidered shirt.
But I don't think any kind of art, when we say it's American, it's British, it's not because of iconography of something,
I think it's because of the novelty of looking at the world in a different way.
and then retrospectively we say: ‘that that could only happen in that culture’ which is not true.
it's just the new way of doing stuff.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: But, I guess what I’m wondering is as a consequence, first of the 1991 independence and then of this 20-year anniversary,
are people making different claims art. In other words, that people saying, finally, we have a history of Ukrainian art?
well, finally, we have a Ukrainian history. finally, we have a book devoted to Ukrainian literature.
I mean, is there a kind of incipient nationalism that necessarily comes with independence?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, I would say that the national consciousness and the sense of national identity is definitely -
it didn't start with independence. Ukrainians have, we've had it, for years and centuries.
and in terms of Ukrainian art, we actually have a publication that's called the History of Ukrainian Art that was created in 1967-1970.
Do I have time to talk about this?
Because it's a fascinating story. It’s a detective story of how that publication appeared.
So, a group of people in the Ukrainian Academy of Science, in 1953, it's like, Stalin dies and immediately
some people say ‘Oh, wow, let's write Ukraine history of Ukrainian Art’
But, the real one, meaning, not Ukrainian folk art and not a history of embroidered shirts,
but the history of the material culture of our land,
at whatever, you know, whatever historical period,
of people who lived in that land. So, they actually started this.
By the way, this history has been digitised and you can actually access it.
So, they start the first volume with, you know, with Trypillia(?), with [INAUDIBLE], with Greeks,
because we have Greek settlements in Crimea, in the south of Ukraine,
not Greek artefacts that entered in that part of the world, by trade or by,
you know, by military expansion, or something, but by Greeks establishing cities and living there.
and so, we have we have Greek artefacts originating from our country, from our land.
Is this Ukrainian art? It's Ukrainian art.
and so, this is what this publication did. the issue, of course, was outrageous for Moscow.
so, when those scholars started saying ‘this is our plan, Moscow’ and they had to get an approval.
Moscow said ‘History of Ukrainian what? there is no such object of study’,
‘you can’t write a history of a non-existent entity’,
you know, ‘you need to destroy the manuscript’. So those people started hiding the manuscript and trying to rewrite it.
They were only able to start publishing [INAUDIBLE]
So, we're talking about almost 10 years, not 10, 12 years of lag.
So, when they publish the first volume, Moscow started saying, ‘well, ok, you have a History of Art’
‘but why is this so long? Two volumes are enough. What are you going to talk about in six volumes?’
‘there is no object of study’. So, they were constantly denying, you know, this publication because it was not just about embroidered shirts.
and so, I would say, this is like, this is Ukrainian history, Greek heritage.
this is actually a good point to explain what Putin is doing and why he is so fixated on Ukraine,
because a lot of people ask him, does he need more land?
Russia is a huge country. Siberia is huge.
they can’t manage their own resources. Why would you need more, more land, more resources?
no, he's after history. because Ukraine is in effect, is kind of an anchor.
our territory is kind of an anchor to, you know, all of those ancient civilisations to the Greeks, the Romans, the Venetians,
they were all there, they lived there to [INAUDIBLE], which again, Moscow has a very kind of tenuous relation,
like, you know, it's arguable how much of Kyiv’s heritage is actually in Moscow, you know, exported into Moscow.
If you cut this off, you kind of have to admit that Russia is really in early modern formation.
and Putin wants it to be ancient, because since 18th century Russia is building
the doctrine of Russia as the third Rome. They actually have texts
that say Russia is the third Rome. Well, how do you justify yourself as some kind of Rome?
so, it is a battle for history, for material culture.
but what's interesting is that it's kind of a discursive battle because Putin wants to connect Russia to Kyivan Rus’ and at the same time,
what he's doing right now, he's actually bombing Chernihiv. Kiev and Chernihiv are both ancient cities.
And we only have just a couple of Kyivan Rus’ churches in the country and two of them are Chernihiv. Very important churches.
He's in the centre and he's bombing the centre.
and so, he's, you know, he's discursively connecting himself to Kyivan Rus', but he's trying to, you know, to destroy its material culture.
yeah. I think it's an interesting point to ponder, because
I personally think that he is afraid of material culture of that period because,
artefacts testify in a different way. you can bend words,
you can create whatever mythological construction with words.
but once you have an artefact, you can date it, it has stylistic features.
you know, it starts telling you something else that you can actually, you can't really negotiate.
and so, Putin wants to be part of Kievan Rus’,
but he's afraid that once you start looking at all of this, everyone is like: ‘it’s in Ukraine, you can’t have it, it's in Ukraine’
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: so, let me just ask you just another point in your own story.
just because I think it will give some people insights into what is going on right now,
which is when you were working at an art centre in the Crimea in 2014,
not Crimea, the Donetsk. could you perhaps quickly tell us the story of what happened to that art centre?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: well, so yes, we it was a private initiative of transforming a defunct soviet factory into an art centre. Well, not an art centre,
we called ourselves a platform for cultural initiatives. and so, we did all sorts of stuff from education about ecology, small crafts and also arts.
I worked as a curator of Ukrainian art.
so, I was there when this whole annexation started.
I went to Donetsk in march 2014, and that's when Russians started bombing the airport.
we had a huge battle for the airport that was totally destroyed.
and so, on June 9th, 2014, we were seized by the Russian battalion.
They came to our centre.
they called themselves Battalion East, Battalion Vostok. The soldiers were mostly Chechen, not Russians,
there were a couple of Russians who were very obviously in a higher position,
they were all in military fatigues, but they didn't have an insignia.
so, you couldn't say, ‘oh, this is this army, and that's the rank’
but very obviously, those higher officials were speaking very distant Russian. As Chechen,
some of them couldn't even speak Russian that well, you know, they're just mercenaries.
and so, they basically kicked us out. but in a very polite way, and it's like, ‘you should go’
and of course, you don't argue with a guy with a Kalashnikov. and we managed to relocate some of our stuff, but some of our collection.
but most of it was lost. And it was lost because, our point was, most of our collection,
most of the stuff that we were doing there was site specific, meaning that artists created installations that were kind of embedded.
in the territory, and you couldn't take it away. We worked with Ukrainian artists, but we also worked with [INAUDIBLE],
He was the first artist who came. We worked with Daniel Buren, with Kader Attia and those people actually created those site-specific installations.
Daniel Buren did this amazing stuff with different coloured glass, almost like stained glass of a medieval cathedral.
I mean, it was all beautiful. so, it was lost. and ever since, Russia actually turned our art centre into a concentration camp,
and when I say concentration camp, you know, it's not for kind of a sentimental effect.
it's a prison where they torture people. it's all documented.
we have some people who were there who stayed in that prison for a year and then they were exchanged.
and so, they actually, you know, as witnesses, they actually speak about all these kinds of inhuman things happening in there.
and we, of course, filed all sorts of lawsuits against, you know, against the seizure to several international courts.
So, the court of the human rights in Strasbourg, but also, I think, to the criminal court in the Hague.
and so, this is just now that this whole, you know, what Russia has been doing to Ukraine.
first of all, it's escalated to unprecedented level, and this is now that we have enough evidence for all these eight years.
and this is another thing I want to emphasise. the war with Russia didn't start now.
the war with Russia started in 2014, so we've been at war all this time.
and so, we have enough evidence that we actually think that the, you know, the criminal court in the Hague is going to act upon all this evidence.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: A lot of people wouldn't realise that part of your work as an art historian has been to translate the work of others into Ukrainian.
and over the last few years, you've actually translated a number of important texts about photography by John Tag,
Roland Barthes and even myself, into Ukrainian. I have my copy here, my Ukrainian book,
but I’m wondering if maybe you could explain to people listening why you've been so dedicated to that task?
because some of the books are available in Russian and certainly, of course, in English for those that can read English,
but I know you've been very dedicated to the idea that they should come out in Ukrainian, and that might well speak to the current situation a bit.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, I mean, I am convinced that translation is a political act.
precisely because we have a different culture and different language, we have to have access to,
you know, to international thought via our language, not via Russian.
This kind of access also gives us a way to develop
the discourse, you know, vocabulary, Ukrainian vocabulary,
A Ukrainian way of speaking about things and which in effect changes our consciousness away from Russia.
I truly believe that language does kind of shape the way you see the world.
and I do believe that Ukrainians see the world differently, and that's why I am very insistent on introducing -
I mean, obviously, as an art historian, I have a particular sphere of my own work -
and so, I am very insistent of introducing this theory of photography into, you know, into my own culture.
and so, we were supposed to start publishing Roland Barthes on 24th of February and by publishing, I mean - not publishing - printing.
so, we turned on the printing press, in the morning, and – yes.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: So, I think that's an interesting element of what you do as a Ukrainian Art Historian.
So, we've almost come up to our hour, but let me just invite anybody listening,
who might have a question for Olena,
the best thing to do would be to put up a little yellow hand so that we can call on you and you can ask the question yourself.
but if you prefer, you can write a question into the chat function.
[AUDIENCE]: Thanks so much, this was a really wonderful presentation, it was so rich, I learnt so much.
I was particularly interested in your articulation of the meaning that the destruction of historical monuments might have for Putin,
and it made me think of cultural genocide as a political tool in Bosnia in the 1990s.
do you think it can be pushed that far? [OLENA CHERVONIK]: I think that's exactly what's happened, and it's a genocide.
you know, when we talk about Ukrainian culture,
especially within the soviet period, and some people started telling me,
‘oh, well, you know, within Russia, there are also dissidents, like, people who are also opposing the regime, and there are also going to be persecuted’
and it's all true.
But in order to be a dissident in those terms, you would have to be politically motivated.
and you would have to be very kind of obviously politically opposed in the state and then producing in some kind of political statement,
Whereas, in Ukraine, it was enough to be Ukrainian to be executed.
A lot of those artists that were killed on November 3rd, 1937 didn't produce any political messages.
they were just speaking in Ukrainian language. They were writing lyrical poetry about love in Ukrainian language.
and I think that's an, you know,
that's an ethnic genocide because you are killed for the fact that you are of a particular ethnicity.
Well, ethnicity or nationality.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Does anybody else have any questions or like to follow up?
If somebody has a question, please feel free to speak up and ask it.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: It’s a heavy topic, everyone needs time to digest it.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: I think one of the things that for me comes out of this conversation,
one of the frustrations, in a way of this conversation, is all of us are
witnessing this invasion and the destruction and death that follows in its wake,
and we're all wondering, ‘well, what can we do?’ I mean, here we are.
but I think one of the reasons I wanted to talk to Olena was to focus on those things that one can do, in one's own practise, in one's own life.
One can write against tyranny. One can write history.
one can speak truth. one can you know, I don't know, articulate the stories that enable people rather than suppress people.
And that is what certainly people in our profession, here at Oxford, are trying to do every day.
and I think it's important for us to cling to the belief that, that is in fact, an effective politics of the kind.
It’s not the same as firing a gun or defending a church, but long-term history,
writing and the doing of history, the writing of literature, the composing and playing of music.
these things are important, and they must be seen as important and they must be seen as contributing, as I say to, you know, actions against tyranny.
so, I am hoping that people listening today have come away,
both with a more nuanced understanding of what it is to be Ukrainian and the situation that Ukraine finds itself in today,
but also, with a renewed faith in the capacity of history and the humanities to engage the issues that matter and make a real contribution.
Olena, was there anything else you'd like to say, anything else you'd like to encourage people to do?
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Well, you know,
I just looked up that you have a certain links and I should probably give you more because we have quite a few initiatives to donate to the army,
and actually, the volunteer initiatives, kind of NGO initiatives, but also an account established by
the Ukrainian government to donate to the army, to donate to the medics, to the needs of the refugees.
but also, our Ukrainian Cultural Institute started circulating a petition for boycotting Russian culture.
and I just saw, on this museum association website of Britain, the British cultural secretary, I think,
is talking about boycotting Russian culture and removing Russian patronage from all sorts of institutions.
and it looks like Tate is already doing this and a number of
high profile museums in the world and in the US, in Britain as well have been patronised by Russian oligarchs,
you know, they're removing - the British museum actually cancelled their exhibition of a trans-Siberian railway, just now.
But yeah, so you know, the help can be both financial but also kind of discursive.
And there is a huge point. I don't know if again, if I have time for this, but you started talking about how,
you know, our work is important because it's kind of against tyranny.
But what I’m wondering, is this way we've lived with this myth of Russia as an unbeatable country because,
you know, the myth of the Russian might and power,
but there is also a myth of the great Russian culture, especially great Russian literature and music,
and I don't know ballet and all of that,
and I’m thinking, OK, how is this possible that this country produces people, say, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky,
but at the same time, this is the country that's been harassing their neighbours for, you know,
for years and years and decades and centuries, within the last kind of in contemporary history.
They've really harassed Georgia, Moldova, Syria, Chechnya, now Ukraine.
I mean, it's a recurring thing. So,
how does culture work? Does culture help anything?
If we have this great Russian culture that actually is not a barrier to, you know, to exercise all these atrocities?
What does this mean to have great literature in a country? What does it do?
Do we misunderstand what art is or what culture is, and it's actually not a tool for betterment and innovation and sophistication?
Or is there something specifically [INAUDIBLE] about Russian culture? I don't know the answer.
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: Let's not go there. I would have said there's nothing intrinsically anti tyrannical about art, per se,
but this is why we develop, you know, art historical capacities for assessment.
we need to look at each instance in its own context and debate it, civilly, debate it, one way or the other.
[OLENA CHERVONIK]: Do you think there is an intrinsically anti-tyrannical capacity in art history?
[GEOFFREY BATCHEN]: No, not specifically anti-tyrannical. I mean, this is why, of course, when I have students in a class, I debate with them about,
what kind of art history should we be doing? what kind of questions should we be asking?
You know, what kind of evaluations should we be propagating in our work?
and that's because indeed, art history is not one thing, but also, it's not necessarily a good thing.
There are good and less good types of art history, at least in my estimation.
and I guess what I want from my students is for them to make assessments for
themselves about what kind of art history they themselves will be pursuing.
But we seem to run out of questions Olena.
Thank you so much. There's lots of messages of support in the chat if you'd like to just read those.
I know we all are thinking about you and your family.
But of course, about Ukraine in general, as I say, it's very upsetting and frustrating to watch it from afar and feel like we're not doing anything.
Just to remind people about the links that I put in there.
Two of them have to do with, you know, macro cultural questions, but two of them are right here in Oxford.
If you go down to Little Clarendon Street, you can see there are people packing up clothes and medicines to send to refugees on the Polish border,
so, if you want to take some real-life action, you might wander down there, to Little Clarendon and find out what you can do to contribute.
Olena, thank you very much.
Good evening and thank you, everybody.
Thank you. Bye.