Ukraine has great possibilities for developing agricultural production, which it owes largely to favorable natural conditions, including fertile, predominantly black, soils, and climate conducive to farming in most of its regions. At present, however, the Ukrainian economy and, especially, agriculture are in the period of emerging from a deep and protracted crisis connected with problems posed by the implementation of the process of systemic transformation and reconstruction of Ukraine's statehood. The level of agricultural production - especially of animal production, is still lower than it was before the start of systemic transformation. Systemic changes in agriculture have not produced the expected results. Huge transfers of arable land from collective to private farms have significantly lowered its productivity. The level of food consumption in Ukraine is very low, far lower than the consumption's rational norms. However, in recent years – especially in the years of bumper crops, Ukraine has become a large exporter of grain, oil plants and oil, which suggests that despite the continuing shortage of capital the country is slowly coming out of the deep crisis. In this context it is important to ask whether Ukrainian agriculture is able to achieve shortly a significant growth in production and to become a major exporter of food and agricultural products. An answer to this question is also important from the point of view of development possibilities of Polish agriculture.
The article focuses on the so -called Ukrainian issue in the light of the Polish conservative thought in the times of the Second Republic. The problem of conservative ideology regarding the matter has been thoroughly examined here, not only in the days preceding the outbreak of the First World War, but in the between the wars period as well. The in -depth analysis carried out below clearly shows that the conservatives were, in their majority, strong supporters of the modus vivendi policy which Poland, they believed, could only benefit from. This sentiment, however, had been frequently reviewed, depending on the current political and economic situation, both on the national and international scene. Before Poland regained her independence in 1918, they had been often inclined to support the idea of federation and, hoping for the eruption of social and political turmoil in Russia, consequently propped up the activities of the Ukrainian nationalists there. In the between the wars interlude Polish conservatives adopted basically two different approaches to the problem of the Ukrainian issue: some would claim that assimilation was the only answer, others would resolve to the postulate of the Great Ukraine. Regardless of their attitude and political sentiments, though, the conservatives consequently supported the idea of Polish national minority growing strong in number and political magnitude on the eastern frontier, traditionally dominated by the Ukrainians. This uncompromising stance, however, mostly brought about by the cultural and socio -economic backgrounds, had never, intentionally at least, instigated any form of ethnic conflict.
This paper seeks to lay out certain critical reflections on social transformations, changes in memory politics and its representation in the Ukrainian museum narratives over the years of independence. In particular, it focuses on the challenges involved in constructing various forms of historical memory, it determines the ways of its representation in current museum narrative practices, illustrates memory politics controversy over the historical issues of the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933, World War II and the Holocaust and reveals the place they occupy in historical memory and museum narratives of different regions of Ukraine. Correlations between historical memory, identity and museum narratives of different regions of Ukraine are highlighted.
The author of the article recalls views of Ukrainian ideologue Jarosław Staruch concerning the essence of Nazism and Bolshevism. Staruch presented his political thought in a book titled The Specter of Fascism. The book was written in Ukrainian and published by an “underground” printing shop in 1945. In 1946 its issue was renewed; Polish edition also appeared at the same time. The precise place of the book’s publication remains unknown. It is known, however, that Staruch’s manuscript was published on a territory which only a few years before had been occupied by German forces and which in 1945 — already for a period of two years — remained under Soviet control. The author was therefore intimately familiar with operating mechanisms of both of these totalitarian regimes. Broadly defining the identity of Nazism and Bolshevism, showing the origins of their emergence and their most important characteristic features, and warning against their consequences, Staruch emphatically claimed that both of these totalitarian systems are almost identical in nature.
Article examines the relationships between the Ukrainian statehood (national revolutionary of 1917-1921, Soviet and post-Soviet) and the Crimean Peninsula. Crimea had been incorporated into Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 because of economic reasons. After 1991, Crimea is a carrier of permanent troubles for Ukraine, however essentially, the conflict between Crimean Russians’ separatist movement and Kiev had been “neutralized”, thanks to the status of autonomy, stabilized in 1998. The Crimean Autonomy and its supporting Russian speaking population of Crimea is very disapprovingly viewed by national-oriented Ukrainians of the “continental” Ukraine. However, the local Crimean Ukrainians are mostly Russian-speaking and identify themselves with political aims of Crimean Russians. The attitude of Ukrainians toward the Crimean Tatars — third of three main important ethnic groups in the Crimean triangle of conflict — is very complicated. The Ukrainian state has not developed any consistent policy of readaptation Crimean Tatars and policy of Crimea’s integration with the rest of Ukraine. Whereas, it is a subject of a discussions among politicians, scientists and journalists.
The researcher identified three main entities that have an impact on Ukraine, Russia, The United States and the European Union. Ukraine occupies their place in foreign policy each other is also a perception of the importance of Ukraine in Moscow Washington and Brussels. Therefore no coincidence that the analysis of Russian policy towards Ukraine in the book took more than twice the space of a description of activities and concepts that Kiev has developed against the EU or the USA.
For many years Ukraine remained one of the chief grain producers in Europe. The destructive agrarian policy initiated at the end of 1929 by the Stalinist leadership reduced Ukrainian agriculture to a state of ruin and condemned the local peasants to an atrocious famine which in Ukraine alone took the life of at least 3 million people. Throughout the time of the famine, the Ukraine and the Soviet Union as a whole were officially presented as free of hunger; more, the Bolshevik propaganda praised the magnificent life enjoyed by members of state farms and honestly working peasants in the Soviet state. Every Soviet newspaper of the period, regardless whether it was a local or a union publication (such as 'Pravda' or 'Izviestiya'), contained larger or smaller texts about 'comfortable life in the kolkhoz'. The Soviet press did make frequent mention of the famine, but only whenever it described the 'tragic plight of the peasants and workers starving in capitalist states. The Bolshevik propaganda, however, did not limit itself to negating the actual existence of famine in the Soviet Union, but made all possible efforts to prove to the world that information reaching the West was the mere product of the imagination of 'counter-revolutionary elements interested in discrediting the Soviet state'. In this respect, considerable successes of Soviet propaganda included the skilful presentation of Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus, i. e. areas most effected by the famine, to the French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot
The paper focuses on the reception, analysis, and interpretation of Parisian Cubism in Ukraine through the lens of the writings and paintings of Ukrainian modernist painter Oleksa Hryshchenko (1883-1977), best known by the French transliteration of his name, Alexis Gritchenko. Gritchenko’s own paintings, and those of his Kyiv colleagues, Alexandra Exter and, most especially Oleksandr Bohomazov, show evidence of an assimilated volumetric Cubism, a Cézanniste compression of space, and an affirmation of the picture surface through facture—an expression of the kind of “simultaneity” that the icon image offers the spectator. For his part, Gritchenko’s study of the compositional values and “rules” of colour in ancient iconography in tandem with the modernist developments of Cubism led to new discoveries for his own art, and the concept of “colour dynamos” (tsvetodynamos) —the renewal of colour as an artistic element, according to both the compositional strictness and the physicality of the flat medium of ancient iconography.
Article deals with the experience of the Slovak Republic in its preparation of accession to the European Union. The author emphasizes possibilities of using this experience to Ukraine. The examples and arguments of successful cooperation between Ukrainian and Slovak institutions are used to underline the importance of such cooperation in advance of Ukraine's European integration.
In the article the results and flow of local elections in the Trans-Carpathian region and Ukraine have been analysed on the basis of statistic data. The positive specifics and lacks of the normative part of elections holding have been characterized, as well as their influence on the evolution of the party system of Ukraine. The conclusions have been made on the prospects of party composition in Ukraine.
Bohemka and Veselinovka in Ukraine were founded at the beginning of the twentieth century by descendants of Czech religious emigrants of the eighteenth century. Nowadays, both villages are inhabited predominantly by Protestant Czechs who still constitute a majority, as well as by Ukraininas of Orthodox denomination and, partly, by individuals of other nationalities. In the article the ethnical and confessional identity of inhabitants of both villages is being presented through the analysis of funeral and postfuneral rites and their material manifestations. In both communities funerals and funeral feasts are celebrated; besides, rites commemorating the deceased are observed: 'pominky', that is, remembrances of the dead that take place in precisely determinated intervals, 'provody' or collective visits of cemeteries accompanied by feasting on the graves, and also remembrances of deceased soldiers at memorials. Most of these rituals stem from Orthodox tradition, but nowadays also Czech inhabitants of the communities participate in them. They struggle to belittle them, because they are not compatible with their tradition as well as with their religious ideology. Dissimilarities, but also coming together of both groups manifested itself on both cemeteries. Coming together had been realized thanks to more intense social bonds among members of both groups. The (post)funeral rites contain in themselves expressions of ethnic and confessional identity through symbols, such as cross and chalice. Such rituals not only make reference to tradition, but they introduce the participants into the system of reciprocal relations and corroborate the existing social bonds.
The text is transcription of interview done with Zygmunt Wenglowski who was born in 1925 in Sorochyn. Memories says about education in Polish Autonomous Districts in interwar period and fighting as a soldier of the Polish First Army (Berling’s Army) during the second world war.
The present article provides an insight into the early modern Ukrainian Latin prose and, drawing on the writings of Yan Yuzefovich, Yoanikiy Bazilovich, Erasm Sikst and Yosif Ruts’kiy, discusses its artistic and informative value. This is the first time that the Neo-Latin literature of Ukraine is presented to the scholarly public in Slovakia in a broader historical perspective.
Polish-Russian negotiations from the first half of 1683 constitute an important stage in the history of relations between the two countries during the second half of the seventeenth century. Both Russia and the Commonwealth aimed at a compromise at the time of a successive phase in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern and Central Europe. The anti-Ottoman rapprochement of those countries was rendered complicated by their rivalry for Ukraine. In the course of the Crimean-Russian negotiations of 1681, Moscow unsuccessfully demanded terrains on the right bank of the Dnieper and the Zaporozhe region. In 1682 the Commonwealth, profiting from the political crisis in Russia, embarked upon a failed attempt at depriving Russia of Ukraine and the Smolensk region. All these factors adversely affected Polish-Russian relations on the eve of the Ottoman expedition against Vienna. The Russian mission arrived in Warsaw at a time when the parliamentary session of 1683 had almost ended. Up to then, a defensive-offensive alliance had been already signed by Austria and the Commonwealth. The prime objective of both allies was to draw Russia into the league. The latter, however, did not hasten joining the alliance, since it was still facing the threat of unrest on the part of the Cossacks and the 'streltsy'. Furthermore, the government of Tsarevna Sophia and Chancellor Golitsyn wished to benefit from the international situation in order to improve the conditions of the Bakhchisarai alliance. Fearing that the Commonwealth would conduct a revision of the treaty of Andruszów (1667), the Russian diplomats insisted that King Jan Sobieski swear an oath, pledging the observance of all the earlier signed Polish-Russian treaties. The Commonwealth opted for an unwavering stand vis-a-vis Russia: Jan III refused the oath, and already in 1683 the Polish side made considerable efforts to engage Russia into an anti-Ottoman league. A Polish envoy was dispatched to Moscow. Russian diplomacy considered a grant to the state of Muscovy of terrains annexed upon the basis of the treaty of Andruszów to be an indispensable condition for joining the coalition. Despite the fact that both sides did not reach an agreement about the alliance, the negotiations conducted during the first half of 1683 delineated an eternal peace and alliance, signed in 1686 (the so-called Grzymultowski treaty).
This article investigates the role of economic restructuring in the construction sectors in the Czech Republic and Ukraine. Our analysis is based on a unique dataset obtained via questionnaire surveys in Zakarpattia region of Ukraine and multivariate models linking prior work experience in the Ukrainian construction sector and the likelihood of working in the Czech construction sector, net of other theoretically important controls. The results of our research show that integration of the Czech and Ukrainian construction sectors has created international “structural channels”, that push migration from Ukraine to the Czech Republic along occupational lines. We draw implications of the analysis for the broader international economic restructuring and integration in the European Union.
The conception of rebuilding Poland within pre-partition borders - which the Vatican took into consideration at the time of creation of the Versailles system - could initially testify to a disregard for the problem of Ukrainian statehood. As a result of the incessantly changing political -military situation in Ukraine in 1917-1919, the Vatican maintained a certain distance towards Ukrainian endeavours to create a state, and at the time of the Polish-Ukrainian war waged at the turn of 1918 limited itself to protecting the interests of the Uniate Church and the war victims in Eastern Galicia. In the contacts between the Vatican and Ukraine the latter proved to be more active, since it was concerned with winning the backing of the authority of the Apostolic See for her pro-independence strivings. Tyskevych, the Directorate's diplomatic representative at the See, nominated in 1919, was indubitably capable of stirring considerable interest in Ukrainian issues and won the Curia's endorsement for Ukrainian pro-independence postulates. On the other hand, de iure recognition by the Apostolic See remained, from the viewpoint of international law, unresolved. The successor of Tyshkevych - the Redemptorist Bonne - concentrated his efforts on the Galician problem. Despite multiple controversies, the appointment of an Apostolic inspector, for quite some time raised by the Ukrainian side, ended successfully. In the conducive climate of the Polish-Ukrainian alliance of 1920 the Vatican counted on the mission conducted by Genocchi, to which the Directorate also attached great importance. However these expectations were crushed by the resolutions of the treaty of Riga and the fact that Poland had abandoned her Ukrainian ally.The prime obstacle for the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Apostolic See and the Ukrainian People's Republic proved to be political reality, which simply did not foresee a place for an independent Ukraine.
In the circumstances of existing tendencies towards integration within uniting Europe, it is necessary to surmount mental stereotypes, which, from the historical point of view, have perceived borders and border zones as the areas of potential conflict, battlefield or buffer-zone, where all more significant investments are exposed to possible risk. Surpassing this legacy of the past is relevant also in the case of the Slovak-Ukrainian border zone, which though having a real potential is stigmatized by the phenomenon of periphery and border zone. The realized research, which is the subject of the study, assesses a current state of cross-border cooperation between the Slovak Republic and Ukraine and exposes its positives and at the same time also deficiencies, which are reflected by its participants.
As the result of the fall of the Soviet Union, the process of building (and rebuilding) the Ukrainian identity took on new dynamics. The type and specificity of the Ukrainian version of post -communism are important factors which determine this process. In the article, the author demonstrates that the first split in the communist elites in Ukraine occurred as a consequence of the following dividing line: „the country – servants of Moscow”. It happened even before the Bolsheviks seized real power over Ukraine. Then, it was a significant factor which consolidated the Ukrainian dissident movement. Not long ago, the conflict resulting from the division „the country – servants of Moscow” resurfaced during the so -called „Orange Revolution”. In accordance with Jadwiga Staniszkis’s theoretical findings, and in particular in the light of the concept of „the three beginnings”, these facts allow us to state that the Ukrainian version of post -communism belongs to the Central -European type. This was confirmed by the events surrounding the presidential election of 2004.
This article offers an analysis of the scenarios of outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war and their impact on European security. The basis of each scenario is a definition of the interests of both Russia and Ukraine in this war, a hypothetical description of the assumptions of their fulfilment (full success of one or the other country in the war or partial success) and, at the same time, the expected impact of the full or partial success of one or the other country, i.e., direct actors of the war, on the international order. The scenario analysis is based on an examination of the course of fighting in the period from the beginning of the Russian invasion on the 24th February (until the end of November) to identify the degree of probability of the fulfilment of each scenario.
The fundamental reform of public administration in Ukraine started after political changes in 2014. This process is connected with decentralization, which is to ensure the transfer of finances and political powers from the state administration to self-government. Ongoing municipal reform is needed to create a viable self-government in Ukraine. The article deals with examples of good and bad practice in the implementation of public administration reform in Ukraine.
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