Imagine the scene: an open-aired historical museum a few miles outside of Kiev, Ukraine. In the distance, a horseman dressed like a Cossack pranced by, and picturesque homes and churches lined the crest of a nearby hill, where we set our picnic. Homemade goodies were spread out on the bench, and a beer, which my young hosts, students at a nearby university, had not allowed me to pay for, was set in front of me.
Konstantin, like all the other students, spoke excellent English, far better than my English or Ukrainian. It may sound like a clich? or even condescending, but Konstantin seemed like a nice kid. Dressed much like my Saint Louis University undergraduates in warm up pants and a T-shirt, he carried a cell phone in a terrycloth case. He asked me “what the situation with Jews” was in my own country. This was a tough one to call, I thought. What was he actually asking? I said that Jews were well integrated into our society, and were well respected, generally speaking.
Then Konstantin very seriously said to me, “in the old days, it was often a Jew who owned the tavern in a town like this. He would overcharge the people, and that’s why Jews had such a hard time in Ukraine.” Several other students nodded. Then a girl offered, “My grandmother lived near to where the Jews used to live, in.” and she named a town I didn’t know. The conversation trailed off. It was an awkward moment, but much more than that, too.
The rest of the day, I wondered, these new Ukrainians, hooked up to the world on the Internet, better versed in the facts of American foreign policy than many people here, interested in the world and hopeful about the future: Where did they get their information about Jews? Ukraine was once home to hundreds of thousands of Jews, although today, their numbers are greatly reduced. Had these students ever known any Jews? Was the old story of the wily Jewish merchant gouging the honest villager a tale repeated untold times throughout Europe, one learned from parents or grandparents, from teachers or professors, or from anti-Semitic publications and Web sites that have sprung up all over the former Soviet Union?
Like most things, this attempt to explain the persecution and eventual destruction of a minority group does not exist in a vacuum. Anti-Semitism and denial about the facts of history are so often encountered these days in the context of a newly visible and intense nationalism common to all of eastern and central Europe. There is something direct and even refreshing in the expressions of national and ethnic pride that the last 12 years of changes in Eastern Europe have made possible. Many of the students and teachers I met spoke of their Ukrainian cultural heritage with disarming enthusiasm and touching love for their county.
Yet a people so long denied the fact of their own history are still struggling with gaps in their own knowledge. In a downtown Kiev restaurant, Sergei, a smiling 20-year-old, told me, “We were always told that a famous church in our city had been destroyed by the fascists [this is how the Nazis are usually referred to], but now we sometimes hear that Stalin blew it up.” Was their national landmark demolished by hated invaders or by a leader some still revere? Will the truth be harder to accept than the lies people have been told for decades?
And what is to be done with the knowledge that many Ukrainians supported the Third Reich, at least at first? Can a country only beginning its journey toward integration into the world community afford to look at the murkier chapters of its own history? Or again, can it afford not to? The passage toward maturity as a nation, just like the process toward maturity in an individual, can be a complicated one, and cannot be rushed.
Ukraine is a long way from St. Louis, and its problems with identity, national pride and discrimination may seem rather remote from our own struggles here with urban crime, pollution and greedy sports-team owners. But Ukraine, just like every other place in the world, is not as far away as it used to be. When I first went there nine years ago, letters took weeks to arrive from Kiev, and today e-mail links me instantaneously to my colleagues. St. Louis families are adopting Ukrainian children, and someday soon, the Ukrainians hope, will be doing business in Kiev as well.
The symbols and tools of globalization were evident in this country, as in so many others I have visited. But Konstantin’s question holds within it a warning: The trappings of our own materialist, consumerist world only overlay and do not eliminate long-held attitudes and beliefs. As we all become what may seem to be at first glance a “global village,” some of our fellow villagers, whether they hail from Karkhov or Khartoum, are as deeply rooted in their own traditional identities as some of us are here by the Arch.
Can we learn from each other not merely the superficialities of popular culture, but the nuances that help us understand who we have been and what we want to become? Konstantin is bright and curious enough to learn new ways of thinking about his own culture, as are my own SLU students-we only need to give both of them a chance. And a few days later, as I boarded a plane back for the States, I reflected that this is the single biggest reason why I am still a teacher.
Paul Shore, Ph.D., teaches in the Educational Studies Department of Saint Louis University.
