- Official Post
Der bisherige Leiter des Instituts für Nationales Gedenken (Український інститут національної пам'яті), Volodymyr Viatrovych, ist von der neuen Regierung kürzlich abgesetzt worden. Viatrovych war ja durchaus nicht unumstritten. Auf seiner Gesichtsbuch-Seite hat Osteuropa-Politologe Andreas Umland einen lesenswerten Kommentar dazu geschrieben:
Short comment on the future of the Український інститут національної пам'яті / Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP):
Without having any preference, say or voice concerning the work of this Ukrainian governmental research center, I would recommend to increase the ACADEMIC aspect of its operation. Its recently deposed head Volodymyr Viatrovych is a distinguished political activist who has made his own contribution and significant impact on Ukraine's post-Soviet development during, among others, the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions. Also, Viatrovych has been frequently mentioned and discussed in academic and analytical outlets including such prominent journals as Foreign Policy or Foreign Affairs.
However, the NGO Viatrovych came from, the Центр Досліджень Визвольного Руху / Center for the Research of the Liberation Movement (still, a member of the Реанімаційний Пакет Реформ - РПР), has been identified, in the scholarly literature, as a front organization of the ОУН - Організація Українських Націоналістів / Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. See: https://spps-jspps.autorenbetreuung.de/files/yurchuk_umland_jspps_4.2_2.pdf page 33, footnote 9. Oddly, Viatrovych thus represented himself one of the major objects of investigation and interpretation of the Ukrainian government's UINP that he headed from 2014 to 2019. Research institutes and their research objects should be better kept apart - especially in such sensitive areas as the history of wars, nationalism and ethnic strife. No surprise thus what the publication and presentation foci of the UINP have been since 2014....
Ukraine has a number able and talented academic historians of different ages and sexes who publish in major peer-reviewed outlets, and not only with popular non-academic publishers, websites and newspapers. Ideally, the new head of the UINP should, unlike Viatrovych, have a couple of articles published in Scopus Indexed Journals, and be her- or himself a less popular topic of memory research and scholarly discussion than Viatrovych has been. See https://spps-jspps.autorenbetreuung.de/files/myroslav_shkandrij_jspps_4.2.pdf
It may be wise for Ukraine to have a UINP director who is her- or himself a respected PARTICIPANT rather than frequent OBJECT of international academic debates. For instance, Ukraine's new UINP director may want to have published noted research papers or review articles, in such seminal Ukrainian outlets as Український історичний журнал or Часопис КРИТИКА - Journal KRYTYKA, or in reputed English-language journals with a focus on Eastern Europe, like Nationalities Papers or Harvard Ukrainian Studies (not to mention generic history or memory journals). To have another TV star, proliferate publicist and prominent activist rather than well-regarded historian at the helm of the UINP could be a risky enterprise, as the deterioration of Polish-Ukrainian relations as a result of Viatrovych's activities have shown since 2014.