Navigating History: An Interview with Professor Monica Eppinger and Her Decades-Long Role Helping Americans Understand Ukraine
06/30/2021
As a legal scholar, anthropologist, professor and co-director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Saint Louis University School of Law, it is no surprise that Monica Eppinger stays busy.
But earlier this year, her schedule reached a fever pitch, overtaken with events, talks and interviews regarding the still developing Russian-Ukraine war. From 1995 to 1997, Eppinger served at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, and thereafter back in Washington, D.C., in policy-making related to Ukraine, work for which she was awarded a Superior Honor Award, the State Department's highest civilian honor. She subsequently earned a Ph.D. specializing in the legal institutions, doctrines, and reforms of post-Soviet Ukraine.
Her knowledge has been heavily requested in response to the modern-day conflict. She has spoken to groups ranging from a synagogue in Chicago, to a North American peace group spanning four countries and three languages, to the San Francisco Economic Forum, to a Wash. U. policy forum, to the SLU Board of Trustees; and made scholarly presentations at the European Union Center of California, the University of Chicago, and soon to the University of Toronto, among others.
At SLU LAW, she organized a two-session event, one session featuring Prof. Seixas-Nunes on the relevant law of war and one session featuring Prof. Eppinger herself on “Ukraine: What You Need to Know,” for the SLU community. Although she no longer works for the U.S. Embassy, Eppinger still holds the responsibility to assist Americans in understanding the history and the citizens of Ukraine. In addition to her schedule, Monica Eppinger found the time to sit down and explain her personal history with Ukraine, her predictions for the war, and encourage further outreach for SLU LAW affiliates.
On her Ukrainian Experience
Formally speaking, I was a foreign service officer in the U.S. Diplomatic service. As a diplomat, I served one tour of duty in the U.S. Embassy to Kyiv, Ukraine.
In my position there, I was responsible for several portfolios. In one portfolio, I was responsible for fostering the rule of law and human rights in Ukraine, which could range from fostering judicial reform, to religious minority or gender or LGBTQ equality, to providing technical advising on anti-corruption efforts.
As part of another portfolio, I served as the embassy liaison to parliament the year they were writing their post-Soviet constitution. My job was to find out what competing drafts for constitutional provisions were, which were the leading drafts, the background on ideas making it into constitutional language and what ideas were gaining salience.
I was also available as a conduit if parliamentarians or staff were interested in technical advice. For example, if they were drafting one provision on freedom of the press and another on free and fair elections, somebody might say they were really stumped about how you ensure free and fair elections. If you have free press, candidates could lie about each other in the press and whoever had the biggest mouthpiece would win.
If there was a question like that, I could give my own response having to do with libel or slander protections ... but then, I could offer something like: “Would you all be interested in hearing about another country’s experience on that?” If the answer was yes, we could plan to bring over lawyers, judges, law professors and journalists from the United States. Or maybe experts from Asia, Europe or Africa. We could bring in these different experts to think it through together with Ukrainian colleagues’ different approaches, different options and different experiences with a free press and free elections.
So, part of my job was to ascertain their thinking on provisions of their new draft constitution and report back to Washington. Another part of my job was to be a conduit for technical advising.
And, in general, my job was to try to make friends on behalf of the United States. I was there from 1995 to 1997; Ukraine had only been independent for a little over three years when I got there. People were still really making their minds up. Part of my job was just to try to be a real American that someone could talk to. I wasn’t some boogeyman or some Cold War enemy. I was just a normal person with pluses and minuses. But people could try to get past stereotypes about the United States by engaging with me and, likewise, I could try to get past stereotypes about Soviets by engaging with them and representing their reality back to Washington.
On Representing the United States
Anybody who is in the diplomatic service, whether you like it or not, represents "America" 24/7. Whether you're in the office or not, whether you're on the job or not, no matter what country is your host country, to anyone who associates you with the U.S. Embassy, you are America to them.
I didn’t feel pressure to be a "real American" because, you know, I am myself! This is me, warts and all. Where I felt pressure was to try to represent their reality and their point of view back to Washington so there would be no wrong ideas about who Ukrainians are.
.... I think the war right now, between Russia and Ukraine, in no small part, is because President Putin has been getting bad advice. I think he does not understand Ukrainians. The people in his embassy in Kyiv that had equivalent job to me, either they’ve misrepresented Ukrainians, or he hasn’t listened. Because I think that he consistently misunderstands Ukrainians and that means he gets Ukraine wrong and that has consequences for all of us.
That’s where I felt the most pressure: to try to understand their perception of their world from their point of view and to try to translate that back to Washington in a way that would be meaningful to the decision-makers there.
And that can be hard because people have their preconceptions. There’s a preconception in Washington that when the Cold War ended, freedom broke out all over, everyone wanted to have their own property and have a multi-party democracy. Some people did, but some people didn’t.
There’s a preconception in Washington that when the Cold War ended, freedom broke out all over."
Monica Eppinger
On Measuring Success
Gosh, I’d like to give us an A+. In retrospect, I’d probably give at least my own performance a B+ or a B. I’d like to think that I got the important things right. But then I left the diplomatic service to be a scholar so I could look more deeply into things and then you learn more and you realize that, yeah, I had my own filters. Or two years seems like a long time to learn and to build expertise there, but after you’ve been there for two years more, you realize all the things you didn’t know.
I think that one of the things we got wrong was not understanding some of the continuities. It seemed to us like when the Soviet Union ended and a new country was founded, everything was completely new, but it wasn’t necessarily for Ukrainians.
I remember interviewing a judge for my scholarly research. Ukrainians had written their new constitution and they had put in the constitution the right to property. Under socialism, the government owned all the property, that was a defining feature of the old system. To us, it was a crucial question when Ukrainians were writing their constitution, were they going to allow the right to property? In the end, they did put private property ownership in the new constitution. In doing follow-up research on that, I interviewed a judge who had basically acted as the attorney general for Ukraine. He’s been on the Supreme Court of Ukraine. He was also a member of parliament when they were drafting the constitution. He is and has long been an important figure in Ukrainian constitutional and legal development, a key person to talk with about the implementation of constitutional provisions. Interviewing him, I said that passing the 1996 Constitution "created property rights." He jumped in to interrupt and say that “it strengthened the pre-existing rights we had in property.” And I said, okay, tell me more! Because in the United States, we thought that was a completely new reform, that it was a page-turn. But, in his perception, that was a project they’ve been working on for a long time.
On the current refugee crises in Aghanistan and beyond
There are some big differences. One difference is that the United States has been engaged in military conflict in Afghanistan for twenty years so there was an understanding by the American public that we were deeply implicated in that situation. There was a different sense of ownership in that crisis.
The Russian invasion has only been going on for one day shy of two weeks [note: the interview with Dr. Eppinger took place on March 9, 2022]. It’s too early to say, but at this point, I think the narrative about Ukraine is very different. Unlike the Afghan military and government in the face of the Taliban resurgence, in Ukraine, this is not a group of people that is being portrayed as melting away and surrendering in the face of the Russian invasion. From what I'm understanding from friends on the ground and new sources, there is significant resistance. That leads to another significant difference with the situation of refugees fleeing Afghanistan last August and September. Right now, a lot of Ukrainians are saying: “Okay, I've turned the kettle off. I’ve taken my one backpack and I expect to be back.” It’s a little more of a Pompeii situation. Ukrainians fleeing the invasion, whether across a border as refugees or to another part of Ukraine as "internally displaced people," are expecting to be back soon ... But who knows how that will play out?
I think that the valorization narrative of the Ukrainian resistance is going to affect the public pressure on our politicians to provide refugee status for people fleeing the conflict. A huge humanitarian gesture that should not be overlooked is that the European Union is allowing Ukrainians to have a three-year temporary visa. There's an example there.
In terms of numbers, this is the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever had. The previous record, if I’m not mistaken, was 1.2 million in a single year in 2015 during the Syrian war. With Russia's war on Ukraine, we’ve had two million in two weeks. It’s on scales that dwarf World War II of people running for their lives. [Note: After over forty days of war, that number doubled to over four million refugees having fled the war in Ukraine.] From reports, the Polish people have been displaying so much kindness. There are people in cars coming to the border and offering rides. People arrive with vats of tea. But what is not in place is widescale institutional support.
I had one friend who decided to stay in Ukraine even though her city is going to be bombed. One reason she stayed is what she heard from her neighbor who managed to get out, a middle-aged woman with two kids, a thirteen- and a nine-year-old. They got all the way to Poland, and they stayed in contact with my friend still in Ukraine. The neighbor reported, “People here couldn’t be nicer; we’ve been offered tea and chocolate no less than fifteen times a day. But we still don’t have any place to sleep.”
So, the gestures from individuals have been heartwarming and profound. But for the people left in Ukraine, they’re thinking twice because there’s this woman with two little kids who are sleeping on the ground of a school or a warehouse for the last four days without a blanket.
In a completely different experience, I have friends who have four kids under the age of eight. It took them a week to get from Kyiv to the country they were trying to get to escape the conflict -- what would normally be a twelve-hour drive took seven days -- but when they finally made it to their destination, it turns out a non-profit organization was all set up for refugees. My friend wrote me: “We have made it to Austria, and we have living quarters, people have provided us food, and tomorrow the kids start school and daycare.”
Compare those two experiences of families fleeing a city under invasion. In the first, individuals, overwhelming kindness, tea and chocolates, but without a systematic institutional response, no secure place to live; compared with, in the second, institutions, systemic response, housing, food security... a set-up so prepared that the kids could even start trying to get back into a routine the day after the family arrived.
[The United States has] a little bit of time to get ourselves in order. It’s worth thinking about what kind of refugee reception we want to have here.
On how you can get involved locally
There’s a lot of different ways SLU could be supportive. There’s been discussion about an international tribunal to try Putin for war crimes. There would have to be a lot of intellectual labor in that enterprise. With Professor Seixas-Nunes, we have one of the world’s authorities in that area of law.
There’s a lot of room for potential action. If [Ukrainians] are going to be temporarily somewhere, why not here? Not that the University would need to create a permanent program but bringing in Ukrainians in a temporary space would enrich our community. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of opportunities and we would smart not to miss them.
On her priorities for making a difference
I will be continuing my program of research and writing regarding Ukraine. It is more crucial than ever that we in the U.S. understand Ukraine, its regional context, the war, and what's at stake for us. This takes long-term development of expertise, knowledge, and contacts. In addition to my past scholarship on Ukraine, I have already put out one short article on the war context, have another couple longer articles in the works, and am guest-editing an issue of a scholarly journal on Russia in the World. Through CICL, I'm working with Prof. Seixas-Nunes to organize a SLU LAW Symposium next spring that will result in a SLU Law Journal volume on Mechanisms of Accountability in the Law of War. And I have three book projects underway on different aspects of contemporary Ukraine. For all of those projects, SLU LAW provides an indispensible platform for thought and action.
Past Scholarship:
On Common Sense: Lessons on Starting Over from Post-Soviet Ukraine
Nation-Building in the Penumbra: Notes from a Liminal State
Property and Political Community: Democracy, Oligarchy, and the Case of Ukraine
Ukraine and the Evaporating Hyphen of Market-Democracy
Herding History: Law and Collective Subjectivities in the Dairyspheres of Ukraine
But there are some other things particularly in response to the present emergency, defense of Ukraine, and the humanitarian crisis resulting from Russia's war on Ukraine. One thing that is a twinkle in the eye is to create a benefit concert with musicians who want to support Ukraine, and maybe the University could host that. There may be other productive ways that SLU can lead other regional institutions in providing support for Ukraine and for Ukrainians who have had to flee the war, and I'm exploring possibilities there. Ukrainians themselves are already thinking passed the war -- for example, and I mention this to highlight the optimism and confidence in Ukraine amidst the tragedy and heartbreak, debating amongst themselves which countries' leaders they should invite to the victory parade when Ukraine wins! We should be thinking beyond the war as well. The level of physical devastation is enormous and the efforts of re-building will take all the help we can muster.
It is really one of those things where the need is so great, it’s just how creative you can be. We would love to have alumni involved as the SLU LAW community responds. There are so many ways to be a "person for others," and I know the greater SLU LAW community will rise to the occasion.
— By Elliot Laurence and Monica Eppinger