Ukrainian historian and public intellectual Yaroslav Hrytsak: “The strategy of Ukraine is to leave history behind and to start a new chapter in history”

Yaroslav Hrytsak is the Ukrainian historian, public intellectual, professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University. Mr. Hrytsak explained the importance of overcoming history for Ukraine. Also, he elaborated on the difference between Ukraine and Russia in way of thinking and political tradition. 

“We wish to leave history behind us”

Yaroslav Hrytsak lives in Lviv. He said that this city has a variety of cultures: Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, Armenian and German. Sometimes Lviv is compared to Sarajevo. Particularly this diversity of the city has its roots with the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of the 17th century. This conflict was probably something akin to the French-German conflict or the Polish-German conflict. But luckily enough, this is a very good example and probably one the best by achievement that this conflict was reconciled. 

— We finally reconciled with these Poles and it probably took 30 years. There was a kind of reconciliation. Now you can clearly see the level of support in terms of mobility, economics and others provided by Poland which wasn’t feasible approximately 30 to 40 years ago. This is what we are trying to do. We want to overcome history very much like the Germans did. We wish to leave history behind us.                                                                                                    

Mr. Hrytsak added that it’s important to stop seeing Ukraine exclusively in the shadow of Russian history. In his opinion, it is the politically correct and historically wrong thing to do.          

“The historical truth is one of the first victims of the war”

Yaroslav Hrytsak noted that the main difference between Russia and Ukraine is in political tradition. 

— It is the way that we were able to create a kind of civil organization, institutions and resilience. All of these things are very much embedded in history. This is attributed to us having a different history to them.

He also mentioned that the historical truth is one of the first victims of the war: 

— All declarations that Putin said about  Ukraine are historical at the root of it. They don’t make any sense but basically it is about history. Russia is only thinking about past history. And Putin is thinking like a 19th Century Imperialist.