On October 20, 2022, the XXIII round table “Ukraine in search of mature national statehood” was held at the University Club of Washington, DC. Its title this year is “Formation of a strong but sustainable national identity – modern efforts”.
The meeting was the second in a trilogy of UA Quest roundtables (2021-23), dedicated to the study and assessment of Ukraine’s efforts to establish a distinctive, but large-scale, national identity. The task of the UA Quest roundtables is to look at the present, while examining Ukraine’s attempt to define itself – in the midst of a war that threatens the country’s very existence – through four vectors: a sense of “common history”, a sense of “common culture”, the ability to accept/assimilate the “other”, and a sense of a “common future”.
Head of the board of the NGO “All-Ukrainian Democratic Forum” Yaryna Yasynevych was the speaker of the panel session “Work on the formation of a common “sense of the past and present”.
She talked about the information campaigns that took place in Ukraine and aimed to change the optics of looking at the difficult history of the 20th century.
The panel discussion was moderated by Adrian Karmazyn, former head of the Ukrainian service of the Voice of America, among the speakers were Mykola Posivnych, senior researcher of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Paul Robert Magochy, prof. history of the Department of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto.
Speaking of “Ukraine’s path to mature statehood” its participants emphasized that creating a common view of Ukrainians on their past was a difficult process.
The authorities, which were dependent on Russia, tried to return Ukrainians to the paradigm in which they existed for decades, when they were trained to think that those who oppressed Ukrainians’ desire for freedom were heroes, and fighters for independence, such as soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, were considered criminals.
“The attitude of Ukrainians to the past was formed on the basis of ignorance,” the Ukrainian public figure and communications expert emphasized in her speech Yaryna Yasinevych.
In total, the round table consisted of four panel sessions and three focus sessions. More than two dozen speakers spoke at the meeting.
The forum aims to help clarify a broader issue – the pace of Ukraine’s aspiration to achieve “mature national statehood”.
