UW-Oshkosh Professors Hold a Panel Discussion on Effects and Implications of Russia-Ukraine War

UW-Oshkosh professors explained the “historical mythology” that led Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops into Ukraine.

They spoke during a panel held for students and the public.

“As I watch this situation develop, we have a sense where Putin is caught in historical mythology, and in some ways, doesn’t know how to get out of it,” said Associate Professor of History Karl Loewenstein, PhD.

The panel was held after Russian forces began their attack on Ukraine the week before, Feb. 24. The university began collecting questions from students across the campus to be addressed by the panel of experts and friends of Ukrainian citizens and discussed the collected questions while also taking live questions from the audience during the panel.

Student questioned the probability of the U.S. becoming involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine and the effectiveness of Russia’s propaganda on their citizens.

Associate Professor of Political Science Tracy Slagter, PhD. shed some light on what scenario would cause U.S. involvement, saying that it all depends on threats towards NATO.

“President Biden has put troops on alert, so they’re going to be going [to Europe] to defend that Eastern border of NATO,” said Slagter. “He’s been pretty definitive as saying, ‘No, we’re not going to have engagement in actual combat there.’” lol

Associate Professor of Anthropology Jordan Karsten, PhD. drew from recent conversations with Ukrainian friends he’d made over the last 14 years while he visited the country to work on Neolithic excavations.

“It’s hard to overstate the fact that most of these soldiers did not realize what they were going to do,” said Karsten. “They basically say they had no idea that they were going to invade Ukraine; And, that if they invaded Ukraine, they didn’t realize why they were there.”

Karsten, who has close ties with the Ukrainian citizens he worked at dig sites with, was present for the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution in Kyiv’s Independence Square and has spoken extensively about hopes and fears for the country with Ukrainians he considers close friends. In light of the perpetuating worry that Russia will return to its Soviet-era policies and ideals, Karsten explained Ukrainians’ fear of a reoccurrence of Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by Soviet Ukraine in the 1930’s that killed an estimated 3.5 million Ukrainians.

“When you went down [to Independence Square]… what they said is they knew that their future was with democracy,” said Karsten. “Their future was with the European Union, and the reason was they saw what Russia was like.”

According to Karsten, Viktor Yanukovych, the former prime minister of Ukraine, mirrored aspects of Russia that Ukrainians found unfavorable. He was accused of electoral fraud and voter intimidation before Ukrainian citizens assembled in Kyiv and successfully ousted him from office.

“They saw that the standard of living [in Russia] was not high,” said Karsten. “They saw that you couldn’t hold your politicians accountable at the ballot box because all the elections were rigged… What they saw in their own president at the time in 2013 and early 2014 was mini-Putin.”

Kartsten told a personal anecdote about a time when he and a Ukrainian friend bonded over Led Zeppelin albums. At one point in their discussion, his friend recounted how he’d used to sneak to Verteba Cave to listen to contrabanded music right before the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

“They aren’t going back there,” Karsten said. “It’s just that simple.”

Karsten said that Ukraine presents a Slavic example of what can be possible if countries adopt Western values along with rooting out corruption and kleptocracy.

“Now Putin, in this mythological version of history, is trying to justify an invasion of a sovereign nation that’s striving for democracy, striving for a lack of corruption,” said Karsten. “And so he calls them Nazis.”

Karsten said the Russian government is reaching for a justification to invade, because the kicker is that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, and so was the last prime minister of Ukraine.

Expanding upon Russia’s justification of invading Ukraine, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies Ula Klein, PhD. said she sees Russia as being a major oppressor on the world stage that has supported repressive regimes that “don’t believe in human rights.”

“Putin’s narrative that he’s taking back part of Russian separatist states, or that Ukraine belongs to Russia, or that they were destined to be together is faulty in the extreme,” Klein said. “Establishing whose land is whose is an exercise in futility.”

Slagter attributed the guise of denazification to what she believes to be Putin’s fear of Western liberal democracy’s reach, something she says is worth fighting for.

“What I see here is actually something kind of hopeful…” said Slagter. “And that is the resilience of international law in the face of aggression.”

When it came to an expansion on the topic of “historical mythology,” Loewenstein said that it’s clear and self-serving. He says Vladimir Putin is caught in a really simplistic, Russian imperialist mythology, and he worries about how Putin will respond when his mythological vision has failed.

“What’s happening right now is that historical mythology is coming into conflict with the facts,” said Loewenstein. “And the facts of the moment that we face are that Ukrainians don’t accept the imperialism mythology that Putin has been discussing.”

Students attending the panel discussion expressed a strong interest in giving toward efforts to aid Ukrainian refugees, citizens and soldiers. UW-Oshkosh student Raiden Montero, a double major in history and Japanese studies, had made friends in Ukraine that have now taken to the frontlines to defend their country. He pitched his idea for a clothing and supply drive for Ukrainian refugees. Montero had spent two weeks in Ukraine in 2019 and travelled through Kyiv to stay in Fastiv. There, he met his good friend Roma; they’d practiced Judo together because Montero had been travelling as part of a wrestling program with the university, and they’d both had an interest in the art.

“I made really close bonds with these Ukrainians, and I looked at my friend’s story,” said Montero. “[Roma] was the third friend that I’ve known that was a regular civilian strapped up, ready for war with AK-47’s… In Ukraine everyone is rushing to the frontline.”

Professor of History Michelle Kuhl, PhD. moderated the discussion and reminded the audience that “in order to make [studying abroad] in Ukraine possible, local Ukrainian individuals, families and businesses supported the [student] groups from Borschiv.”

Lab tech and field archeologist Trisha Jenz graduated from UW-Oshkosh in the Fall of 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology. She traveled to Ukraine with Jordan Karsten to work on excavations four times from 2016 to 2018 and was the fifth panelist for the discussion. Jenz identified a group of about seven audience members in as other students that had traveled to Ukraine with her and shared her sentiments about the Ukrainian people.

“There’s three big things that I really think about, and it’s their strength, their resilience and their perseverance,” said Jenz.

Karsten also provided suggestions for ways to aid Ukrainians, which included donating money to humanitarian causes within Ukraine and contributing to local efforts in aiding Ukrainians.

“If you watch it on television, don’t forget that the people there are regular people,” said Karsten. “Even if you don’t know these people, I think the outcome of this fight really is in a lot of ways who wins: authoritarianism or democracy?”