I arrived at the Fulbright Ukraine office in downtown Kyiv on a Friday night in late January for a casual pizza and wine night. The occasion was to welcome one of our new Fulbright grantees to Ukraine and to mingle with other scholars and professionals who were working on projects in the country. Despite having conversations about further Russian invasion and war, the atmosphere that evening was nonetheless calm and relaxed. The mood that night mirrored how the rest of Ukraine felt at the time, and the idea of having to leave the country due to renewed threats seemed like a remote possibility. War threats do not easily startle a country that has been illegally occupied by Russia since 2014.
People’s Friendship Arch in Kyiv, Ukraine. All photos provided by the author.
The next day, I trekked out to Kyiv’s city limits to meet a friend. He and his wife had welcomed their first child a few days earlier, so I met him near the hospital to have lunch and help him acquire some items for their newborn. In a small café, we chatted over warm bowls of borscht and pampushky (a type of Ukrainian garlic bread) about his excitement surrounding the birth of his daughter. After lunch, we strolled through the snow in a nearby open area where children were sledding, and families were enjoying the last bits of sunlight the day had to offer. After walking back to the hospital and saying our goodbyes, I caught an Uber back to the city so that I wouldn’t be late for a scheduled dinner with a fellow PhD student, whom I met in the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government just a day before. For me, it was another busy weekend in Kyiv. Despite the prospects of war, life went on.
I returned home from dinner that evening feeling relatively sure that I, and other Ukraine Fulbrighters, would be able to stay in Kyiv and continue with our research, at least this is what I was led to believe. General assurances from my program, coupled with messaging from the US Embassy in Kyiv, reiterated that we were staying put and standing in solidarity with Ukraine. My desire to stay was shattered that night when I received a group message from our director telling us that we would need to pack and leave the country within the next few days. Our program, we were told, was being temporarily suspended. We were given the option of returning to the United States where our grants would end and we would obtain alumni status, or we could go to Warsaw, Poland where we could continue on with our grants indefinitely. It was made clear that the possibility of returning to Ukraine was very low. I knew at that moment that my dissertation research year was over.
Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).
After losing out on my original research year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the requirement to leave Ukraine during the middle of my already delayed research trip hit me on a different level. All that I had worked so hard for came crashing down in an instant. In that moment, the oft-quoted phrase “all that is solid melts into air” took on new meaning. I was originally supposed to go to Ukraine on a Fulbright grant during the 2020-2021 academic year, but then COVID-19 struck. I watched with dread as my original grant was delayed multiple times until it became clear that we weren’t going. The Institute of International Education (IIE), who administers different Fulbright programs including Ukraine’s, stated that they would not defer grants, so those of us who won awards for the 2020-2021 cycle were encouraged to reapply for 2021-2022.1 I felt defeated knowing that I had to reapply for a new funding cycle even though I had already been named a finalist for the previous year. Like so many others, I reapplied for the 2021-2022 cycle, but it turned out to be for nothing. Fulbright ended up reversing course and deferring our original grants, thus rendering our applications for 2021-2022 useless. The road just to get to Ukraine was a long one, but the road out was much shorter.
St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv.
I finally arrived in Ukraine in October 2021 to finish research for my dissertation on the aftermath of the 1932-33 famine (now commonly referred to as the Holodomor) as well as the 1946-1947 famine in Soviet Ukraine. In short, my larger project examines the issues and problems the 1932-33 famine left behind for survivors to deal with in the immediate aftermath. I study, for example, how survivors mourned the dead, the ways in which people grappled with trauma and attempted to come to terms with what happened, and the efforts by Ukrainians to make sense of their suffering through artistic outlets such as writing and poetry. In addition to this, I also investigate how larger fears of future famine transcended Soviet borders and became of concern internationally and how the experiences of 1932-33 shaped understandings of the 1946-47 postwar famine for those who lived through the third major famine to hit Ukraine in the twentieth century. During the months I was there, I worked in numerous archives and libraries in Kyiv and elsewhere that held important materials related to my research. Due to my sudden departure, I only had about four months of archival work done when I was scheduled to have eight.
Fall in Kyiv.
On the day I left Kyiv to go to Warsaw, my landlord gave me a big hug and stuffed a bag of chocolates into my luggage. As I got into the car to go to the airport, she mustered a smile and told me “Все буде добре” (Everything will be okay). I knew, at least in a sense, that she was right. As an American who is part of a prestigious academic grant program, my exit came easy. I was the one running away, and it came with immense guilt. Even though I am now in Poland, I continue to worry about my friends and the people that became my Ukrainian family on a constant basis. If something more happens, it will be them that have to pay the price.
It was only after being in Poland for about ten days that I was able to take stock of myself, both academically and personally. In the span of less than a week, I lived in an apartment in Kyiv, a hotel in Poland, and then a small studio in Warsaw. Shuffling between hotels and Airbnb rentals leaves the mind little space to think through a complex dissertation project. Since our program is revaluated every thirty days, I will be on the move constantly for the foreseeable future.
Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland.
This unexpected sojourn to Warsaw forced me to confront the uncertainty of finishing my dissertation. Before I left Ukraine, I made a plan with my advisor that put me on track to finish the PhD by late spring 2023. It was a solid deadline that adhered to my writing schedule and, more importantly, gave me something to work toward in what I thought might be my last year of grad school. Now, I’m not sure. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time in the archives before I left Ukraine, so I didn’t leave the country empty-handed. It will take a couple of months to sort through my material and see what will be useful for my project. I may have just enough to float on, I may not. Time will soon tell.
My evacuation out of Ukraine was a unique situation, but my loss of research time was not. As a grad student in the last stages of their PhD, I’ve met many others whose research agendas were halted due to the pandemic and its ongoing effects. Many people fail to understand that the effects of COVID-19 will continue to reverberate for years throughout academia. Students who lost out on research time in 2020 and 2021 are still struggling to get into the field. Take my situation and add it to the pandemic and circumstances become untenable. We are expected to be continually flexible while environments remain fluid, but it’s not sustainable. The brightest minds who are working so diligently to finish their degrees—the ones who are the future of colleges and universities—are tired, burnt out, and wondering what’s left for them at the end of the finish line. Contingency plans, constant reevaluations, and renewals every thirty day cannot become ways of life.
Monument to the Solidarity Movement in Warsaw.
- IIE prepares U.S. Fulbright students pre-departure to their host country. The institute communicates with grantees and processes paperwork before the student embarks on their grant. Once a student however is in-country, there usually is a specific Fulbright office, commission, or foundation that works directly with students. In some cases, it is the U.S. Embassy in that country that assists students while they are in-country on their grant.
