Author of The Cathedral proclaimed Judas

They did not spare him, either. Several days ago we all learned that Oles Honchar was another Judas. At least such was the decision of a group of people in the course of The Last Supper 2000 art action, a project (one of the “in” words these days) invented by artists Anatoly Fedirko and Iryna Kalenyk. They appointed 12 apostles of the twentieth century, from among the worthiest personalities of Ukraine, and Jesus Christ. The latter was personified by Oleksandr Dovzhenko; as for Judas, the role seems to have been assigned Ivan Dziuba at first, but after a second vote Oles Honchar was approved. They called it a ratings vote.

Such was the election technology. Or maybe a sum total of technologies? Another marketplace show, an attempt to liven up people’s daily life by turning things upside down, pushing those resting on laurels off their cozy seats?

Somehow, the show turned out anything but funny. If you ask me, I am also tired of the textbook Father Taras with his lambskin hat and walrus mustache. On the other hand, when you read about Shevchenko in one of Kyiv newspapers describing him as something akin to a pickpocket and lecher, or when you watch and hear on television about Ukraine having had no culture, period, you feel as though your country were one vast empty field good enough for texts borrowed from the blessed West, you find yourself resisting involuntarily. This is nihilism and it is understandable and natural only when kept within moral bounds. People have always tended to denounce classics from the modern standpoint; new generations come and the new broom rule applies: values are reevaluated and standards replaced. But smearing one’s name, humiliating one’s dignity — meaning the universal dignity, that of the entire nation — when the Judas role is assigned someone who fought Judas types all his life and suffered because of them, is a different story. It is a sign of a serious disease.

Gentlemen, do you not think that there is really less and less hope left for reviving the morals in this society and building a new political order, something we all hoped for so much in the early 1990s? Instead, we increasingly often bump into characters described by Dostoyevsky as demons, evil spirits, for whom the lasting and inviolable law is that all are lowest of the low. All, without an exception. Well, if this be the case, anyone is bad enough to play Judas. There are no gods left. Let’s party! Now we are free to act as we please! Hang loose!

After World War II, Oleksandr Dovzhenko planned a story titled “The Death of the Gods.” He never wrote it, leaving behind separate notes. The story is about a village where drunk icon-painters decorated the church with fellow villagers’ portraits in lieu of saints. The people refused to pray in front of them. The archpriest arrived from Chernihiv and ordered the blasphemous pictures painted over and the church redecorated. As the new images appeared, showing totally strange faces, everybody was happy. Is this story not about the 1990s here? Except who can guarantee that everybody will be happy to see strange faces to worship?

Dovzhenko also wrote “The Last Supper” episode. It is about how the picture was painted and how the painters held counsel on who to choose as prototypes. Who? Of course the prophets and apostles. Where are they? There are none. What do you mean none? Why? Our icon-painters cannot paint from memory. That’s the way they were trained, they say. They can only paint from nature. Otherwise their pictures will be bad. They lack creative imagination. The impression was that Fedirko and Kalenyk dramatized Dovzhenko’s unwritten story.

Oles Honchar did write his version of “The Death of the Gods.” I mean his famous novel The Cathedral. But is it really famous? Does the artist Fedirko know it? In the late 1960s, Honchar called for preserving the cathedrals of people’s souls. He reminded us that our body and soul are the house of God that must be built and expanded and kept with jealous care. He reminded us that there was moral law within us, so we did not have to wait for someone to come and assert it in the world around us.

What happened afterward? The day following “The Last Supper 2000” saw the presentation of the book Thorny Road to the Temple: Oles Honchar in the Sociopolitical Life of Ukraine in the 1960s-1980s (Ridny Krai, Kyiv, 1999). A documentary collection by P. Tronko, O. Bazhan, and Yu. Danyliuk. They offer a rather impressive picture of the writer’s persecution after his Cathedral was published. They all pounced on him: colleagues and politicians alike, trying to bury him alive, a man whose activity meant so much back in the 1960s.

At the time Oles Honchar presided over the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. He was in his creative prime, at the peak of his literary fame. It was also the time of his pitched duel with the regime. Of course, some will grin sarcastically: some duel! He was just another Party court writer, producing works as ordered from above. Indeed, there are many wishing to judge the past using the multiplication tables. Because “all are scum,” especially those crowding by the feeding trough at the top.

Documents show that for as long as Oles Honchar remained at the head of the Writers’ Union he allowed no one to be expelled. Petro Shelest, the then Ukrainian Communist leader, treated the writer in a complex manner. Apparently, he would have preferred someone more flexible and obedient. Eventually he got one. Oles Honchar was replaced by 72-year-old Yuri Smolych. The latter was too old to intercede for, say, Ivan Dziuba, the way Oles Honchar had, or for any of the young writers of the 1960s who were then under heavy ideological fire. Honchar was pushed into the background and the bureaucrats heaved a sigh of relief.

There are so many brave fellows these days! Except that they have shown their stamina mostly in reevaluating past values. But when it comes to objecting to something now, at a time which is actually not as liberal and unrepressive as the regime tries to portray the period, this number turns out heavily depleted. And nor do we have any books matching Honchar’s Standard Bearers and The Cathedral. We must speak well of the bridge we go over. Rather than hurl stones at our fathers, let us continue their cause, easing their pain. And there will be always enough characters to issue and label.

From Oles Honchar’s diary, September 23, 1973: “Party committee. Election meeting tomorrow. Discussed the report today. Here is the text. Based on comparisons how it was [under Honchar —Author] and how everything is now. It says they are finally from the ‘inferiority complex.’ Precisely those that were kept in the shadows.” And a list of names, people lacking talent but without any complexes” That was what happened. People came without morals and principles (except the principle of good money and good food). The night of Malanchuk was gathering over Ukraine, and the poisonous seeds of nihilism were sprouting.

Then, at the turn of the 1990s. There was the burning hope for the revival of cathedrals in people’s souls. Now, instead of that bright flame we have a dim lamp with much smoke. Gone is Oles Honchar; gone is Vyacheslav Chornovil. And everybody is allowed to do everything. Everything! Judas types in the first place. They pushed their way from the tenth echelon and are now marching up front. Why not? With everybody looking on tightlipped. Maybe that’s the way it should be.

From Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s diary: “There is no good in Ukraine. We have not respected one another enough. We thought we would sweep our yard clean with a red- hot iron broom. And we kept proving something to each other.” How true!