The representative of the Russian Federation saw fit to attack my qualifications. I take this rebuke from the Russian state as a badge of pride, since it is a very minor element in a larger attack on Russian history and culture. My work has been devoted, among other things, to chronicling the mass murder of Russians, including at the Siege of Leningrad . I have been proud over the course of my career to learn from historians of Ukraine, Poland, Europe in general, and also from historians of Russia. It is unfortunate that leading historians of Russia and the leading scholars of Russia are not allowed to freely practice their own disciplines in their own country. It is unfortunate that organizations such as Memorial , which have done heroic work in Russian history, are now criminalized in Russia.
It is also unfortunate that memory laws in Russia prevent the open discussion of Russian history. It is unfortunate that the word Ukraine has been banned from Russian schoolbooks . As a historian of Russia, I look forward to the day when there can be free discussion of Russia's fascinating history.
Speaking of history, the Russian representative denied that there was such a thing as the history of Ukraine. I would refer the Russian representative to excellent surveys by historians who know both Ukrainian and Russian, such as the recent work by my colleague Serhii Plokhii at Harvard. I would refer people in general to my open class on Ukrainian history at Yale, which I hope shares the significance of Ukrainian history more eloquently than I can here.
More fundamentally, I would like to thank the Russian representative for helping me to make the point that I was trying to make in my briefing. What I have been trying to say is that it is not for the representative of a larger country to say that the smaller country has no history. What the Russian representative has just told us is that whenever Ukrainians, in the past or at present, claim that they exist as a society, that is "ideology" or "russophobia." The Russian representative has helped us by exemplifying the behavior I was trying to describe. As I have been trying to say, dismissing someone else's history, or calling it a disease, is a colonial attitude with genocidal implications. The empire does not have the right to say that a neighboring country has no history. The claim that a country has no past is genocidal hate speech. In helping us to make the connection between Russian words and deeds, this session has been useful. Thank you.
TS 14 March 2023