James E. Mace (February 18, 1952 – May 3, 2004) was an American historian and prominent researcher of the man-made 1933 Great Famine known as Holodomor. Born in Oklahoma, he held an undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University. After receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the University of Michigan with a thesis on national communism in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Following the advice of Omeljan Pritsak, the director of the Institute, he started doing research for Robert Conquest's book on the Great Famine in Ukraine...

Most Europeans, it is fair to assume, view a constitution as a largely immutable document, a cornerstone of the state changed only on rare occasions for compelling reasons of public interest. But Ukraine has been in constitutional turmoil for five years – and its constitutional foundations are being undermined at an accelerating pace, to a point where Europe should be profoundly worried. In the wake of the Orange Revolution of 2004, far-reaching changes were made, including a major reduction of presidential power. A power vacuum emerged where once there had been a balance...

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister recently promulgated a new “modernized” foreign policy which has been evolving since President Victor Yanukovich took office. This unambiguous position statement should be serious cause for concern for the people of Ukraine and the world’s democracies interested in cultivating a Western style democracy in Ukraine. Two components, in particular, comprise this declaration. The first is an unequivocal pronouncement of Ukraine’s non-aligned status, but not “a synonym entirely of the Switzerland brand,” points out the Foreign Minister. This distancing from NATO is softened somewhat by assurances of continued cooperation with NATO. Still the current...

The deal struck between presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Victor Yanukovych on 21 April 2010 in the east Ukrainian city of Kharkov has opened the way for the rapid expansion of Russian state-owned and affiliated companies into Ukrainian energy, aviation, arms production and banking sectors. Here was a new push for re-establishing the domination of Russian language, mass culture, official mythology and methods of governance within the Ukrainian "brother land." Russian ambassador to Kiev, Mikhail Zurabov, recently outlined the future relationship between the two countries at a press conference: "We are just one people!" As a keen observer can see, the deal struck between Moscow and Kiev goes far beyond civilian issues...

Every so often, a new term or name gets introduced into the media lexicon. The public first heard the phrase “agents of influence” when Canadian Security Intelligence Service head Richard Fadden uttered the term in a nation-wide broadcast on CBC on the eve of the G8 Summit. He admitted that two BC provincial cabinet ministers and several municipal politicians and public servants were suspected of being under the influence of foreign regimes, implying Beijing. His accusations have been supported by the subsequent US spy network swap a week later, when ten Russian spies were exchanged for four “Western” spies held captive by Moscow. What’s surprising is not Fadden’s claim, but the reaction of many Canadian politicians to Fadden’s revelation. It’s naive of ordinary Canadians and politicians to imagine that Canada has been free of foreign interference and...

Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, and Patriarch Kirill flocked to Ukraine last week. While the official goals of the visits were different, each promoted the Kremlin’s ideology of a single Russian worldview and personally congratulated President, Viktor Yanukovych on his birthday, the man who made it possible for them to preach this ideology in Ukraine. His predecessor, the nationalist President, Viktor Yushchenko, and Putin, shunned each other. Relations between Kyiv and Kirill’s church were strained, while Luzhkov was persona non grata in Ukraine. These relationships have dramatically changed under Yanukovych. The guests...

I did not expect to hear the call of a muezzin while visiting Simferopol recently. Not that hearing the chosen being invited to their devotions troubles me. I admire the dedication of these chosen worshipers who devote themselves to their faith in spite of the distractions of daily life. Yet other residents of this Crimean city find the five-times-daily summoning of Muslims to prayer, the adhan, worrisome. It reminds them that ownership of this peninsula is contested. They forget one thing – it always has been. Nearly the size of Belgium, Crimea historically was a bridgehead connecting the empires of the Eurasian steppes with those of the Black and Meditteranean basins. Invaders have come and gone – ancient Greeks and Scythians, Rome’s legions, then Goths, Huns, Khazars, Byzantines, various Turkic nomads, Venetians, Genoese, Ottoman Turks and, finally, Tsarist Russia’s armies, conquering in 1783...

Canada-Ukraine relations were the focus of a wide-ranging discussion during a meeting of Ukrainian-Canadian community organizations and NGO representatives with the Hon. Peter Van Loan, Canada’s Minister of International Trade. The meeting participants included Oleh Romanyshyn, President, League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), and Editor-in-Chief of Homin Ukrainy/Ukrainian Echo; Chrystyna Bidiak, President, League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW); Margareta Shpir, President, Canadian Friends of Ukraine (CFU); Lisa Shymko, Chair, Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Centre (CUPC) of the CFU; Orest Steciw and Borys Potapenko, National Executive, LUC...

The new director of Ukraine's National Memory Institute says that while the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine was "the result of difficult circumstances," it was not artificially provoked, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports. Millions of Ukrainians died in the famine, which was at least partly the result of restrictions imposed by Soviet leader Josef Stalin on farmers across the Soviet Union. Valery Soldatenko told RFE/RL that he drafted a resolution on the famine that was adopted by Ukraine's Communist Party in January 1990, and he has not revised his view since then. That resolution for the first time...

One person was killed and eight injured on Wednesday when a bomb exploded at a Ukrainian church controlled by the Moscow Patriarchate in Zaporizhia, local authorities reported. The explosion is the first such attack in Ukraine and comes as Russian political and religious leaders have been seeking to increase their influence in the country. The SBU security service launched its investigation into the attack and agents have been examining the site of the explosion. The blast was most likely to deepen the split between the two Ukrainian Orthodox Christian churches: one controlled by the Kyiv Patriarchate and one controlled by Moscow Patriarchate...