News
17.01.2024
Victor Pinchuk Foundation hosts discussion “The history of Ukraine and the future of the world” on the occasion of WEF 2024
On 17 Jan 2024, Victor Pinchuk Foundation hosted “The history of Ukraine and the future of the world” discussion on the occasion of WEF in Davos (Switzerland). The event was held as a part of the Deciding Your Tomorrow project, organized by Victor Pinchuk Foundation and PinchukArtCentre in cooperation with the Office of the President of Ukraine. The panel explored scenarios for the future of Ukraine and its ageainst Russian aggression. Global political leaders, thinkers and activists discuss key aspects of Ukrainians’ defense of life and freedom and it offers a chance to revisit what is at stake in Ukraine.
Among the participants of the discussion were Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University; Yaroslav Hrytsak, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Ukrainian Catholic University; Serhii Plokhii, Professor of Ukrainian History, Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University; Nataliya Gumeniuk, co-founder of Public Interest Journalism Lab and The Reckoning Project, moderated the discussion.
Serhii Plokhii said: “Ukraine is an important, if not central, part not only of the fall of empires at the end of the Cold War but also of what happened with decolonization processes in the Asia-Pacific.”
Serhii Plokhii also opined that the world leadership’s policy of appeasing Vladimir Putin led to the war in Ukraine: “The road to this war is very much a story of appeasement. It’s the appeasement of the 1930s replayed in the 1990s and 2000s. Unfortunately, it’s hard to fully realize this until a catastrophe of such a scale as this war happens, and you get very cautious about using the terms like ‘appeasement’ and parallels with the 1930s. But having the largest war in Europe since World War II, I’m afraid that we don’t have any other choice but to look back and learn the lessons from the 1930s and 1940s.
Timothy Snyder picked up the line about parallels with World War II and said: “I think that Ukraine was in a better position in 2022 in a certain way. Unlike Poland in 1939, Ukrainian authorities stayed in the country. Unlike Poland in 1939, Ukraine is a democracy with active civil society. And unlike Poland in 1939, Ukraine has done a very good job militarily defending itself.”
Timothy Snyder also stressed the importance of Ukraine in global history: “The language that I speak, Ukrainians speak, and the language spoken by half of the people on Earth, are Indo-European languages. All of those languages seem to have come from what is now southern Ukraine and some of southern Russia. That is a very significant claim and suggests that this territory is important not only for the history of settlements but also for the history of culture.”
Yaroslav Hrytsak said: “I don’t see any reason to be proud of being a central subject of global history taking into account the current circumstances. I see now a kind of tragedy, personally for me. I would rather live in a country like Switzerland than in Ukraine, which has been such an ‘interesting’ country for a thousand years - fighting for the freedom.”
“Somehow Ukraine has been caught by history and our strategy is to break out of it. But in order to implement this strategy and become another country like Switzerland or Italy, you have to understand history better,” Yaroslav Hrytsak said.
Photos from the event are available here
Video is available here
