In 2003 The Day and Prof. Stepankov discovered each other
Prof. Valery Stepankov considers the restoration of the classical status of the Kamyanets-Podilsky State University the main event of 2003. “At last historical justice has been restored. I hope that in the nearest future our university will be named after its founder, the famous son of the Ukrainian people Ivan Ohiyenko,” he said.
Valery Stepankov recalls those October days when the classical university celebrated its 85th anniversary. During the official and unofficial events on this joyous occasion the hosts and guests of honor communicated and discussed their time and history along with the lessons of history. On those days the Tuzla affair was in the public eye and proved a test for the state, politicians, and citizens. Meanwhile, Prof. Stepankov dedicated the 33 years of his scholarly life to the study of events relating to the Ukrainian National Revolution of the Seventeenth Century.
Those days also saw the release of the book Dvi Rusi under the general editorship of The Day’s Editor-in-Chief Larysa Ivshyna. Timed to coincide with the university’s birthday was the presentation of this book addressing the relationship between the two neighbors, Ukraine and Russia. Prof. Stepankov gave the authors of this book — celebrated Ukrainian scholars — their due for the profundity of their research and impartiality of commentaries, and shared some of his views with Ms. Ivshyna.
Our editor discovered in her interlocutor a remarkable personality, who knows history, views contemporary events through the eyes of the Ukrainians of the days past, wants contemporary Ukrainians to be proud of their past, makes subtle conclusions, and shows concern. His interlocutor from Kyiv made the same indelible impression on Prof. Stepankov. “One is enriched intellectually from communicating with outstanding personalities. I was lucky to have met and talked to the talented journalist Ms. Ivshyna. The Day also became a wonderful revelation for me. It stands out for its professionalism and weighed features. Materials on history in this respectable publication enable the reader to gain an objective idea about the most important pages in the history of the Ukrainian people. Thus The Day is doing a great deal for the development of Ukraine’s political identity and fosters a feeling of national dignity and self-respect,” he said.
However, quite unexpectedly for Prof. Stepankov the conversation continued not only on the pages of the newspaper. Soon after that memorable meeting Stepankov received a friendly invitation to deliver a lecture to the students and teachers of the Ostroh Academy, whom The Day has befriended before.
Excited by the unexpected attention, the enthusiastic professor boarded a bus to Ostroh, which is many miles away from Kamyanets-Podilsky, and arrived ahead of time in order to concentrate and prepare for the meeting with an unfamiliar audience. During the hours-long trip he recalled his scholarly life — for six long years he went from door to door among different officials with his candidate’s dissertation. For it was only recently that his approaches and judgments have been recognized as correct, while “in those days you couldn’t refer to Hrushevsky.” He recalled how he ploughed through the archives like a coal miner to find the actual materials: “The ink would freeze in my pen.” As he traveled he thought what exactly of his vast knowledge on the topic he would condense in his lecture limited in time.
Prof. Stepankov dedicated his lecture in Ostroh to the topical problems of the Ukrainian National Revolution of the Seventeenth Century. “It so happened that this lecture was the first such lecture in the past twenty years of my life. And I’m sincerely grateful to Ostroh Academy Rector Ihor Pasichnyk for the opportunity to deliver my lecture. I’m very grateful to Ms. Ivshyna for initiating this invitation. The subsequent publication of this lecture on the pages of The Day came as a pleasant surprise to me,” Prof. Stepankov said, speaking about those unforgettable days in 2003.
In the assembly hall of the Ostroh Academy he saw the vigilant eyes of students and colleagues, who had a great opportunity to listen to an outstanding scholar and get answers to the questions that troubled them. Meanwhile, he, as if a sower, believes that what he has sown will sprout and yield a bumper crop: there is a generation free from the old sense of inferiority. Building bridges between the past and present, the lecturer provided food for their ambitions.
Of course, Prof. Stepankov noticed the conditions in which his Ostroh colleagues work and live. They are better than those in which he does: “In that cramped Khrushchevka apartment I have no room for my books.” However, he will not exchange it for the luxurious conditions offered him elsewhere: “I won’t exchange Kamyanets-Podilsky for any other city.” Outside this town on the River Smotrych lies the village where his parental home is. After an exhausting winter he always goes to his native village, takes off his shoes, and walks barefoot in the yard and garden just like his parents did, verifies how the trees have wintered, and regains his strength. This is his land, air, and water. He is a patriot to the core.
A modest professor from the periphery, which is home to one of the most famous history schools of the country, is not used to being in the limelight. Quietly and without publicity he works in the archives of Kyiv, Lviv, and Warsaw, expanding the range of sources for the study of events of the period that is the subject of his scholarly quest and producing scholarly works in written and oral form. “The materials I uncovered refute the thesis that Ukrainian history cannot be read without bromide (Volodymyr Vynnychenko — Ed.),” he says.
He is thankful that the year 2003 proved fruitful in terms of scholarly achievements: “In creative cooperation with Valery Smoliy, academician of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, we managed to publish a revised edition of a monographic study Bohdan Khmelnytsky, which offers a new perspective on a series of major aspects of the great hetman’s political activity.”
As for the military art of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Prof. Stepankov had a great opportunity to deliver a lecture addressing this topical issue in front of generals, senior military officers, and military journalists of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. He delivered this lecture shortly after his visit to Ostroh. “Minister Yevhen Marchuk himself found time to attend my lecture. I hope Minister Marchuk and his colleagues found interesting what I told about the strategy and tactics of military operations of the Ukrainian army and espionage and counterespionage of those days. Again, this knowledge comes from archival sources. I haven’t been shown the curricula according to which our cadets are taught now. But until recently this aspect of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s activity remained outside (our) historiography,” said Prof. Stepankov, adding that he is glad that “a general in plain clothes is returning the army to its national traditions and directs his efforts toward infusing the Ukrainian military with a sense of dignity, pride, and patriotism.”
He knows what he is talking about: “We have things to be proud of. Recall the Battle of Batih. It was a brilliant victory of the Ukrainian army and perhaps the most humiliating defeat of Poland in those days.” Thus he welcomes the attention that those who train the defenders of our homeland pay to analyzing Ukrainian military operations of olden times. He considers this a precondition for Ukraine’s joining NATO. He was deeply moved to have been given the honor to contribute to this cause with at least one lecture for the military top brass.
Looking back at the year 2003, Prof. Stepankov recalled his participation in a roundtable: “We had an interesting discussion organized by the Institute of Ukrainian History of the Ukrainian National Academy of the Sciences. The discussion topic was “The Pereyaslav Rada and Russo-Ukrainian Agreement of 1654: History, Historiography, and Ideology.” In my view, Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his following were forced to make this move in exchange for Russia’s military assistance in their war against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But it was neither a reunification, nor annexation, nor union.”
He feels enthusiastic that an objective view of history based on fundamental and comprehensive study of the sources has dominated our historical science. At last there is no need to prove the obvious: “Conditions have been created for fruitful work.” Thus he attempts to catch up on the time when he “spent six years going from door to door with my dissertation.” He directs his scholarly quest toward seventeenth-century Ukraine. However, in the Kamyanets-Podilsky University he chairs the Faculty of World History: “Unfortunately, life went this way.” It was that life, which was dominated by ideology. He contemplates the present relying on the studies of the dim and distant past: “We are completing a historical portrait of the great Hetman Petro Doroshenko. In February 2004 I’m traveling to Poland to resume work in the archives. At my own cost, of course.” He looks forward to new meetings, especially those without partings.
