Ukraine’s troubled history of foreign domination coupled with the country’s lack of experience as a sovereign nation have often meant that non-Ukrainians have dictated a highly slanted interpretation of Ukrainian history to a prone population in order to suit their own interests. The arrival of independence in 1991 did not rid the country of this difficult and often divisive historical legacy overnight, and it remains a subject on which everyone has an opinion. This trend is evident everywhere from the political arena to the cultural sphere, where debate remains fierce over the very nature of the Ukrainian nation and the personalities who embody the ideals of the nation. This has made Ukraine perhaps uniquely fertile ground for what could be termed a broadcasting sensation of national interest which has swept the globe in the past five years since its inception in the UK at the turn of the millennium.
A global phenomenon
In 2002, the BBC launched Great Britons, a ground-breaking series which was designed to offer viewers in the UK the chance to vote for the top one hundred Britons of all time. It generated huge media interest and stimulated a lively public debate, with multi-million audiences tuning in to watch every week before eventually voting for wartime prime minister Winston Churchill as the overall Greatest Briton. He came in ahead of Princess Diana and a number of more contemporary cultural icons including footballer David Beckham and Beatles singer/songwriter John Lennon.
The success of this series prompted a rival British broadcaster to produce a show entitled Worst Britons, highlighting viewer selections of the worst representatives of Britain historically, with Tony Blair coming top of this negative list. It also led to a host of similar franchises around the world from Argentina to Finland.
With countries all over the world embracing the realities of mass immigration and globalisation, the issue of national identity has gained new currency and made the Great Britons formula a potent ratings winner.
Highlights included the controversial Belgian edition, which saw the emergence of two rival shows in the country’s Flemish and French speaking regions which ended up selecting markedly different Greatest Belgians, but few countries have the potential to match Ukraine when it comes to loaded historical debates over national identity. As a result of the potent potential the coming Great Ukrainians project looks set to pour petrol on the flames of the on-going discussion and place the search for a new, post-independence understanding of Ukrainian history at the centre of public discussion.
Shuster at the helm
The project is the brain child of celebrated political commentator Savik Shuster, who rose to national prominence in Ukraine with his Free Speech political talk show on ICTV, which began in the immediate aftermath of the Orange Revolution and soon became something of a flagship for the country’s new-found media freedoms.
Shuster, who recently left ICTV to join Inter channel in a big money move, had previously worked as a prominent TV presenter in Russia and had attempted to host a Great Russians series, but met resistance from the Kremlin, which was reportedly concerned that current Russian president Vladimir Putin could not be guaranteed a high finish in the overall ratings. The risk of an embarrassing lack of public support for Putin was enough for officials to pull the plug on any Great Russians series.
What makes a real Ukrainian?
The Ukrainian version of this popular international franchise will follow the general model established by the British concept, with an initial gala show introducing the concept and inviting viewers to participate in voting followed by a series of programmes advocating the case for each of the top ten personalities chosen by the nationwide ballot. The end result will be an overall winner given the honour of number one Great Ukrainian, but rather than settle the debate this is likely to generate a whole new round of discussion.
The initial programme is set to go on air November 16 at 21.30 on Inter channel in the slot usually occupied by Shavik Shuster’s weekly political debate show, guaranteeing a large national audience. The initial introductory show plans to address the fundamental issues raised by the Great Ukrainians project, namely what constitutes a Ukrainian and how important such factors as language, birthplace and ethnic origins are in deciding who is eligible to be considered a great Ukrainian. Stars such as the Klitschko boxing brothers and leading politicians will participate in a VIP audience voting procedure that will deal with all these thorny subjects.
“Yaroslav the Wise was actually a Scandinavian and Bulgakov saw himself as Russian while Gogol is known throughout the world as a Russian writer and Golda Meir was Jewish and went on to be one of the founders of Israel, but why shouldn’t they be worthy of recognition as great Ukrainians?” reasons Vakhtang Kipiani, the chief editor of the Great Ukrainians project.
“Joseph Conrad was born in Berdychiv to a Polish family before going on to become one of the great English-language authors, so logically he could be claimed by the Ukrainians, Poles and English. Then there are those who are ethnic Ukrainians but grew up outside of the territorial boundaries of the country. Should people of Ukrainian heritage like pop art king Andy Warhol or hockey legend Wayne Gretsky be considered? Ultimately what matters is how people consider any given historical figure, and whether they regard them as Ukrainian or not,” reasons Kipiani.
Ukrainians before Ukraine
The original Great Britons show was also not without its controversies over who could qualify as an entrant, with question marks being raised over some notable non-British figures to appear on the final top 100 list. Irish nationals Bob Geldof and Bono of U2 fame were both nominated, as was Queen front man Freddie Mercury, who, despite being one of the most easily recognisable British pop icons of the latter half of the 20th century, was actually born in far off Zanzibar to Indian Parsi parents. The debate about whether ruling royals from the age of the Kyiv Rus empire are also nothing new to the franchise, with a number of Great Britons hailing from the ancient mists of time when Britain had not yet emerged as a historical or even geographical concept. Both Boudica, the warrior queen who laid waste to Roman Britain before committing suicide with a snake bite, and King Alfred, who fought the waves of Viking invasions in the Dark Ages, featured prominently in the UK list and yet neither would have had any idea what the concept of being British might entail.
Likewise, as a result of the coming TV series here in Ukraine, there is in all probability going to be a debate surrounding the accuracy of describing any of the Kyiv Rus rulers as Ukrainians, but it is all part of the appeal as far as the people behind the show are concerned. Kipiani reflects that the concept of Ukrainian nationality is relative and connected to historical memory as much as to the personal understanding of the idea among the various historical figures put forward in public voting so far. “We have not included any Scythians or encountered anyone voting for them, as they are lost in the mists of time, although we know they also lived here in today’s Ukraine. But the monarchs of the Kyiv Rus era ruled their empire from Kyiv, so it is only natural that people should look on them as part of the Ukrainian historical heritage,” he reasons.
Fuelling the identity debate
Ultimately, Kipiani sees this TV project as part of the bigger process of national soul-searching that is part of the state-building process Ukraine is currently undergoing.
“This debate is particularly pertinent to a country with as many apparent internal contradictions as Ukraine, and one which is so relatively new to sovereign rule. We hope to reignite the debate and accelerate the national discussion of who we are. It is a discussion that is already going on across the country today, and we aim to encourage this trend,” he adds.
The interest in Ukraine’s national identity has inspired everyone from artists to advertisers in recent years. A 2003 nationwide competition run by advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi entitled ‘I am a Ukrainian’ and inviting participants to send in their thoughts on the subject provoked a record response of thousands of entries, while the dialogue over Ukraine’s national identity has spilled over into the political arena repeatedly since the 2004 Orange Revolution.
Results of the primaries
Ever the electoral innovators, Ukraine’s version of the show will contain a new element of early voting which has been dubbed by organisers as primaries in honour of the American presidential election voting model. This initial stage of voting has already been carried out all over Ukraine, taking in opinion in university halls and town squares from Donetsk to Drohobych and a grand total of 10,000 people questioned.
Over 2,000 different personalities featured in the results, but once the numerous highly personal votes for mothers, brothers and loved ones were taken into account, a pattern emerged of national perceptions that presented the people behind the Great Ukrainians idea with a clear picture of who the population rates as national heroes.
Interestingly, these results demonstrate far less of a divergence in voter preferences than the results of recent political general elections and offer interesting insights into who Ukrainians of all political persuasions consider to be the great figures of their national history.
The initial top 10 produced by these primaries are national bard Taras Shevchenko followed by Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnitskiy, 1918 independence leader Mykhailo Hrushevskiy, famed Ukrainian language writers Ivan Franko and Lesya Ukrainka, philosopher Hryhori Skovoroda, post-Soviet nationalist champion Vyecheslav Chornovil, political icon Yulia Tymoshenko, WWII independence guerrilla inspiration Stepan Bandera and current head of state Viktor Yushchenko, with footballer Andriy Shevchenko finishing in 11th place and the Klitschko brothers guilty of robbing each other of enough votes to secure a top five finish.
No room for Soviet Ukrainians
Other results of interest include pop singer and Okean Elzy frontman Slava Vakarchuk in 21st place, post-revolutionary head of the short-lived Ukrainian state Symon Petliura in 33rd place, and current day Donbass strongman Viktor Yanukovych in 40th place. Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk lies in 46th place, while Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was born in the Dnipropetrovsk town of Dniproderzhinsk, barely scraped into the top 100 despite holding more power in his hands than any other Ukrainian in history. He is one of a mere handful of Soviet-era Ukrainians to have made it into the top 100, with such luminaries as the scientist Yevheniy Paton, today known to Kyivites thanks to the bridge that bears his name but more celebrated internationally as the genius behind the T-32 tank design that helped win WWII, left out completely.
Even in the industrial Donbass itself the legendary coalminer Aleksiy Stakhanov, who gave his name to over-performing proletarians throughout the USSR thanks to his prodigious coal mining exploits in 1930s Donetsk, didn’t even warrant a mention.
Kipiani explains Yanukovych’s relatively low finish, which is notably lower than the top ten placing achieved by both his contemporary political rivals Vitkor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, as a result of people’s perceptions of greatness. “While Yanukovych may well gain most votes in the south and east of the country, he is not necessarily considered a great Ukrainian there, but rather a prominent political figure. Contrarily, in these regions Viktor Yushchenko rarely garners much of the electoral vote but scored well in our poll as people consider him to be a great Ukrainian, regardless of their own political sympathies,” offers Kipiani. Curiously, Mr. Yanukovych did not in fact even make it into the top ten in his beloved Donetsk, but local oligarch and the country’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov did.
Moscow frowns on Ukrainian history
Amid widespread enthusiasm for the project, there was noteworthy refusal to participate. This came from the Moscow University affiliated branch of the Sevastopol University, which claimed that its students didn’t have time to take part in the survey, something which Kipiani puts down to the existing Moscow policy of denying the existence of a separate Ukrainian history and preferring to regard the subject as within the wider realm of Russian history.
Elsewhere in Russophile Crimea there was a notable divergence in voting patterns between the residents of the capital city Simferopol and the coastal holiday resort of Yalta. In the landlocked capital those questioned were much more likely to opt for historical personalities in line with the selections of Ukrainians elsewhere in the country, whereas in the seaside paradise of Yalta pop sensations such as Sofia Rotaru and Natasha Mogalevskaya dominated the nominations.
Voting for this ambitious Great Ukrainians series will run until December 14, when the polls will close and the initial 100 finalists will be calculated. From that point on the process of producing videos for each and every one of the top 100 will begin, with the first 10 all commanding feature length presentations. The viewing public will finally see the results in spring 2008, when a new round of voting will be initiated to determine the overall winner from the top 10.
