A meeting in a Ukrainian Home with Northern Lights
The most important thing in my journalist expeditions is that I am constantly moving ahead, whereas the selection of text material and photo shooting is an improvisation, like in jazz. Only after having visited, on car and on feet, over the most interesting places in Vorkuta and its neighborhood, while the weather was fine, did I call the head of the Vorkuta Civic Organization “Ukraina,” Valerii Stasiuk. When he heard that I had been staying in Vorkuta for a couple of days by that time, Stasiuk even grew angry a bit: “We are not strangers for you.” I did not tell him that selecting journalistic material is an improvisation.
Soon after that we were sitting at the table in the Ukrainian Home. This is a nice-looking office located in the Center of Vorkuta’s National Cultures. It consists of several rooms: “the courtyard” (beautiful Ukrainian landscapes are painted on the walls of this spacious room), a hall, a room, a chancellery, and a kitchen.
Soon after having unfolded the geographic map of the Russian Federation, I started to tell our fellow compatriot about my ultimate route from Chukotka to the Kola Peninsula, I assumed that Stasiuk knows quite well the coast of the North Ocean and the neighboring arctic area. I asked in surprise: “Did you go there on feet?” The reply was as follows: “I was guarding the state border of the Soviet Union from the Kolyma River (village Chersky, North Yakutia) up to Archangelsk Oblast (Kolguyev Island in the Barents Sea) since the age of 17. That is why I know pretty well the places you’ve been to recently. After graduating from the Almaty Frontier School, I started my officer’s service as a lieutenant in Georgia on the border with Turkey, and I finished it three years ago in Vorkuta as a lieutenant colonel on the post of the head of the headquarters of a separate Arctic Frontier Guard Unit. Now I am working as the head of the municipal department of civil defense and extraordinary situations, I’m also heading the Vorkuta-based NGO ‘Ukraina,’ because I’m really fond of singing Ukrainian songs and gathering my fellow compatriots in order to speak our native language, develop culturally and spiritually. Of the 117,000 population in Vorkuta, approximately 25,000 are Ukrainians. And there used to be more.”
Where are you from?
“I’m from Khmelnytsky region, village Popovtsi, Letychiv raion. My wife Tetiana is from that place too, we were classmates. Our family was in a strange land like a small association, now we have in Vorkuta a big Ukrainian association. Its main striking force is the chorus Northern Lights, which performed in Kyiv, in Ukraina Palace in 2005 at the Fourth Worldwide Forum of Ukrainians. And back in 1999 at the initiative of this chorus’s member Mikhail Fedkovich Vorkuta held the First Festival of Ukrainian Song ‘Chervona Ruta.’ Now this festival (timed to The Day of City in Vorkuta, November 26) has a republican status, it is attended by Ukrainian ensembles not only from different cities of Komi Republic, but also from Novy Urengoy, Yakutia, and even our Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia.”
I can write much about the Ukrainian diaspora in Vorkuta, because for me as a journalist it was an extraordinary revelation, to learn the surprising biographies of our fellow compatriots, their courage, rebelliousness to fate, and deep love for Ukraine. I will only quote the letter of the head of Vorkuta’s administration V. Budovsky dated 2008: “Dear Valerii Dmitrievich and participants of the choir ‘Northern Lights,’ together with your admirers you have made the Ukrainian song a part of the heritage of our multinational Vorkuta, by this promoting the art and culture of the Ukrainian people. The highest praise for your creative work is the full houses and applause of the audiences of all generations.”
An interesting detail: not only Ukrainians sponsor the Northern Lights and other amateur performers, but also Russian Vasiliy Sovetnikov, Georgian Bizhan Chkhetiya, Dagestan Ruslan Magomedov. “Your songs and dances make our life easier and more interesting,” they explain their attitude to Ukrainian artists.
And one more thing. When the Northern Lights perform the song “The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows” to Taras Shevchenko’s verse, everyone in the audience rises and gives a standing ovation to them.
