When I was a Fulbrighter in Ukraine, 2000-2001, I fear I was something between a bete-noir and a cause-celebre (could there be Ukrainian equivalents of those terms?). I was assigned to a regional university (at my own request, actually), and my reports and communications were a litany of complaints about poor planning and poor organization at my host institution, lack of student response, etc. I had arrived in Ukraine, hoping to teach American history, in English, to the advanced foreign-language students in my host university. As it turned out, I was able to help only a few with their English, and I complained bitterly about the obstacles in my way.

At the end of my Fulbright year, the director in Kyiv asked me, of all possible choices, to come to Washington to speak to the next group of Fulbrighters about to leave for Ukraine. I supposed that she wanted me to provide "shock treatment" to shake any illusions they might have about how smoothly things would go. The incoming Fulbrighters were a little surprised at my approach; after my fairly devastating review, very critical from the point of view of all the things that we normally evaluate in programs of higher education, one asked me bluntly, "Wasn't there anything that you liked about your Fulbright year in Ukraine?" I answered, to their amazement, "Only that it was the best year of my life, the peak of my career to this point." I tried to explain about the joys of finding a few capable and productive people trying to work a transition in a corrupt and dying system; about the few extraordinary students who did take advantage of what Fubrighters were offering them; about the pure satisfaction of knowing that one is definitely making a contribution, no matter the problems. I thought I did a pretty good job of saving myself and maybe of easing the director's doubts about her decision to bring me to the orientation.

Now I realize that the director was thinking in a different direction altogether when she invited me to the orientation. I think she understood that my willingness to wrestle with difficult matters was a sign of my commitment. At the conference, she really made no substantive comment about my presentation. "You will write about your work in Ukraine and about the history of Ukraine," she predicted, although I had no plans to do so at that time. She wanted me at the orientation, I think, because she knew that my work in Ukraine was only beginning; for some Fulbrighters, the end of the term marks the real beginning. As impressive as the Fulbright experience can be, the bigger story may well be the contacts that continue, the work that gets published (on both sides), the other programs that are tapped by U.S. and Ukrainian scholars who first met under Fulbright's auspices, and the gradual strengthening of ties between groups of scholars isolated from one another for so long by global politics.

Since I left Ukraine in July 2001, my connections there have been more personal, with students and colleagues, and less official than before. Lately, however, professional projects keep popping up and the opportunities in those directions have been increasing.

The first "extension" of my Fulbright involved the academic career of one of my Ukrainian students. At the end of my Fulbright year, I served on the interview committee that chose the first group of Fulbright graduate students from Ukraine. To my delight, a student from my host institution, who had taken one of my courses and who had worked for the Fulbrighters, was one of the successful candidates. Since then I have been able to follow her progress closely, and it has been good progress, soon to end in a U.S. master's degree. I visit her when I am in her part of the U.S., and I call her, at least monthly, just to talk. We really did not know each other very well before, since she translated for the other Fulbrighter in my host city, but because I have worked in Ukraine, she told me about things that she cannot easily explain to her friends and supporters who have never been there—for example, how it is possible to be so homesick for your poor native land while in the Land of Plenty, how one has feelings of guilt vis-a-vis family and friends who do not have such an opportunity and may never have it, how to find one's place and plan one's future amidst the dizzying intellectual/academic buzz of the American university. As someone who worked in Ukraine, I can connect to those feelings which remain a mystery to her other friends in America. I can also take great satisfaction in my association with an extraordinary young scholar whose intellectual prowess, impressive as it is, is even surpassed by her strength of character and personal resolve. As a historian I like to think about the type of people who are needed in a developing, struggling country, to bring it more prosperity. So, although this is now a personal rather than an official connection, my association with this graduate student is certainly connected to my professional and scholarly interests, the business of higher education. And it all began during the Fulbright.

I attempted a more direct engagement with Ukraine by sponsoring the college education of a Ukrainian in the U.S., although that project quickly fell through. One of the young men who translated for us had fallen through the cracks in the Ukrainian system and was unable to begin his university education. His language skills equipped him for education in the U.S., so I offered to sponsor him as a foreign student at my university. It was a large financial commitment, likely one that few Fulbrighters could make. In the process of preparing for his departure, I learned how difficult it can be for Ukrainians to obtain visas to the U.S., even when all the requirements have been met. I saw first-hand how humiliating it is to be denied a request for a visa, which we obtained only after appeals and extra trips to Kyiv. At my home university this student made all A's in his first semester, but then during a holiday trip home he decided not to come back to the U.S. In part, his decision was connected to his unpleasant experiences during the visa process in the U.S. consulate in Kyiv; those experiences were then unfortunately coupled with fears faced by foreign students in the U.S. after the events of 9-11-01, which cast a pall on his very first month at my university. In the intervening year, this young man has managed to find a place for himself, studying in Western Europe. Though I no longer support him financially, I email him regularly, occasionally telephone him, and even visited him once to see how things are going. To my great satisfaction, things are going very well. On my return to my host city, his parents hosted me for a dinner, and I presented them with a photo album of their son in his new life. I did my best to answer their many questions about his life there, and I think I have been able to serve as a very important link in their difficult separation.

Things often do not turn out the way one plans, in the post-Fulbright experience. Things can actually turn out even better than the plan, with new, more interesting developments. Although I was disappointed with my courses in English language, I had better luck in my own field: with the help of translators, my work in the History Faculty was very satisfying. The students were interested in the topics that we discussed and in the different approaches to historical analysis. Their papers, in Ukrainian and Russian, showed that my course was quite successful.

Through the History Faculty I also had the good luck to connect to a like-minded spirit in my own field of research, and this person lives quite far from my host institution. The Fulbright brought us together, quite incidentally. Near the beginning of my Fulbright year, I attended a conference celebrating five years of an independent History Faculty at my host university. I had great difficulty understanding the lectures at that conference. The keynote was in Ukrainian, a language that I could not understand at all until I had been living there for several months. The most entertaining talk, from the evidence of the audience laughter, was by a Jewish historian from Odesa. He spoke using Russian words that I knew, but I could not follow the way he was using them. Later, we were all on a tour in the Ukrainian wine country, where I sat at lunch with the keynote speaker and the Dean of the History Faculty at Kharkiv University. They spoke to me in very understandable Russian, and suddenly I found myself immersed in discussions of historiography, comparing approaches in the U.S. and Ukraine, as well as comparisons of the work of our respective history departments and their curricula. It was a wonderful exchange of ideas, the kind of thing I had always hoped for on the Fulbright. At the end of the meal, the Dean from Kharkiv invited me to his conference, to be held the following June, right at the end of my term in Ukraine.

I attended the Kharkiv conference on historiography, and I gave a talk that attempted to periodize European history according to shifts in tendencies to unite or disintegrate the political structure of Europe. That talk was later revised and published, in English, in the journal of the Kharkiv History Faculty. Although the Dean was busy enough at that conference, he made the effort to see that I had a most interesting time in his city and his university, and the publication of the article kept us in touch.

On my return trip to Ukraine, two years after I left my Fulbright post, I first spent some time in Kyiv, in the Fulbright Office, where they were planning a conference on "The Idea of the University." Then I went directly to Kharkiv, where I was a guest in the home of the Dean of the History Faculty. I learned that his scholarly work concentrated on the history of higher education in Imperial Russia and the early Soviet period. My own research also centers on problems of higher education in Europe during that same period. I brought him a little article I had published earlier, on Wilhelm Humboldt and the German university, and I hoped we could plan some future work together. Before my weekend in Kharkiv was over, the Dean made me promise not only to publish a translation of the Humboldt article in the university journal, but also to attend his conference next June, ready with a talk and an additional article on relationships between the universities of Germany and Russia before 1939.

There were more unexpected developments during my "grand return." One of my first and best students from my home university now teaches in Istanbul. He insisted that I fly down there for the weekend, and I did. I was very pleased to see him working successfully in the university there, and to meet his lovely Turkish wife, and I was astounded by his ability to speak freely in Turkish after only two years. He also told me of his interest in working in a Turkic-speaking country of Central Asia. Of course I encouraged him and I told him about the Fulbright program, as well as about other agencies that might be interested.

Back in Ukraine, back at the university that had hosted me, I find that they do not resent, or even remember, my earlier complaints and problems. They are making some fine progress, and they recall that I tried to help. They are glad that I am "still aboard," still interested in what they are doing. And I have met another young Ukrainian, falling through the cracks in the education system, who is ready to work toward an education. I will be trying my hand as sponsor once again.

And so I will be back in Ukraine, next year, to participate in a conference in Kharkiv and again to visit my friends in my host city. The consular official who is chief liaison to the Ukrainian Fulbright program has told me, "There are some difficulties for Americans here, of course, but Ukraine seems to get to people when they come; it grabs their hearts and does not let go." She did not tell me why she thinks this is true, but I can venture an explanation based on my experience. Ukraine is a big, interesting, in selected spots even very beautiful country. But what grabbed me and would not let me go was the opportunity to work with the kind of people who want to do something about Ukraine's serious problems, especially to explore how higher education might provides some avenues of alleviating some of those problems. Such people want to build a better life for Ukrainians, and they also want to increase Ukraine's role in worldwide networks of education and culture. I was very privileged to be able participate in this process as a Fulbrighter in Ukraine, but I could not stop just because my Fulbright term was over. I had to continue with the work. A person can search for a long time for a place that fits that person's talents and interests. I have found the place. I see no need to look further. In the world of Fulbright experiences, I wonder if mine is unusual. I suspect that others can tell similar stories.

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