Below Prof. Volodymyr PANCHENKO, Ph.D. in philology, of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy National University, interviews Yevhen CHYKALENKO the Younger

Stirring sugar in my tea, I noticed a large letter Ч [Cyrillic character pronounced ch] embellishing the teaspoon. “Must be from your grandfather’s Kononivka estate?” I asked the host. He nodded: “I have a dozen of them.” Yevhen Chykalenko pulled the drawer of the kitchen table and I saw an assortment of silver spoons and forks; silverware that must have been laid out for his grandfather Yevhen Kharlampiyovych Chykalenko’s guests, among them Mykhailo Starytsky, Mykola Lysenko, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Volodymyr Vynnychenko... I was visiting the grandson of the prominent Ukrainian philanthropist and public figure, author of unique Memoirs (1861-1907) and diaries (half of these are still to appear in print), publisher of the sole Ukrainian language public-political newspaper Rada in the Russian Empire (1906-1914). His grandfather was what would be known today as an “effective proprietor.” His estates in Kononivka (currently in Cherkasy oblast) and Pereshory, not far from the railroad station Mardarivka in Odesa oblast, were considered exemplary at the time. In 1905, during peasant rebellions, no one set fire to his property; he knew how to deal with the peasantry without making enemies. Everything he did was dedicated to the sole objective of putting Ukraine back on its feet... Historian Dmytro Doroshenko wrote to Chykalenko toward the end of 1924: “You have done so much for the Ukrainian cause, I think that every decent Ukrainian owes you something that can never be repaid; by doing you a favor he will only carry out his duty...”

Mr. Chykalenko, no one can take in your family tree at once. What about you? When did you realize that your surname was a very special one?

“I realized it rather early, although there was an unspoken ban on mentioning Yevhen Chykalenko. And the things they wrote about him! In a [Soviet] paper on Kotsiubynsky I read about a ‘Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist’ landlord, Kotsiubynsky’s ‘annoying neighbor.’ Meaning my grandfather who was actually Kotsiubynsky’s and many other writers’ benefactor.

“My father was afraid to tell me about him to keep me out of trouble. But under Khrushchev’s thaw, sometime in 1962-63, he told me quite a few things. I was amazed to learn that, in 1918, my grandfather Yevhen Chykalenko was nominated, among others, for Hetman of Ukraine. He had declined the honor, believing that the post should be occupied by a military man. It was thus Pavlo Skoropadsky took office.”

How old were you when you learned about your grandfather?

“I was past 20... mother also told me a lot of stories. Grandfather’s wife Mariya Viktorivna lived with my parents. She bore Yevhen Kharlampiyovych five children: Hanna, Viktoriya, Levko, Petro, and Ivas (my father).”

Do you remember her?

“No, I never saw her. She died in 1932 and I was born in 1939. My grandfather never separated her legally, but since 1909 lived with another woman, Yuliya Mykolayivna (by the way, his wife’s niece). During the civil war, when it came time to emigrate, Yevhen Kharlampiyovych left Mariya Viktorivna his Kononivka estate and a dacha [in this context most likely a villa] in Alupka. I have all the deeds of purchase and other papers attesting the title to that property. Once I read about a relative of Prince Lubart, owner of the Castle of Lutsk, who had long claimed title to it. I am not the type, however, but I wouldn’t mind at all if the state helped me revive the newspaper Rada published by my grandfather...”

In a letter to Volodymyr Vynnychenko (July 1908), Yevhen Chykalenko wrote: “My cultural death will come with the end of the newspaper. I will die like a Ukrainian Don Quixote. I will hide somewhere in the countryside lest I see or hear all those self-proclaimed conscious Ukrainians; in a word, I will return to the ‘primordial state’ of a native landlord who doesn’t care about anything but his farmlands...”

From Yevhen Chykalenko’s Diary: “The newspaper’s death of anemia is another Berestechko, a shattering blow to our Ukrainian movement.”

How do you picture your grandfather? Has anyone told you that you have some of his features?

“He died ten years before my birth, in 1929, but I have his image clear in my mind, primarily from the stories I’ve heard about him from my father and Levko Yevhenovych’s (my uncle’s) friends, including Prof. Charlemagne, he died sometime in 1963-64 in Kyiv. Also from Fedir, son of Fedir Matushevsky. His father was Rada’s editor-in-chief. Once I was visited by granddad’s carriage driver from Kononivka. He said he was going to die, so he came to say goodbye.

“My grandfather was a very decent man, he always kept his word. Once someone came to buy his wheat, but he had promised it to someone else, they had even agreed on the price. The visitor was willing pay double, but my grandfather was adamant, ‘I gave my word,’ he said, and he hated lies...”

You read his Memoirs later, in the 1990s, didn’t you?

“No, I was in my thirties when I did, then I would reread it many times.”

From Dmytro Doroshenko’s letter to Yevhen Chykalenko (June 22, 1924): “When it [i.e., the Memoirs ] appears in print as a book, it will mark an extremely important event in our literature, as our history in fiction form, written by one of those directly involved, an eyewitness. I only wish you could expand the subject matter and dwell on certain events in more depth, then the book would be to our citizenry the Ukrainian equivalent of [Aleksandr Herzen’s] My Past and Thoughts.”

Have you sought places associated with your grandfather — in Kyiv, Konotop, or Pereshory?

“Of course I have. My grandfather owned several houses in Kyiv. One was at 56 Maryinska-Borshchahivska (now Saksahansky Street), another on that same street, opposite the Strazhesko Hospital. The first floor was occupied by the Trybynskys, a family of reputed Kyiv physicians. The second one was occupied by the Chykalenkos. Pavlo Tychyna, then a young poet, used to visit them... The building was torn down in the mid-1960s, but my father had shown it to me when it was intact. There is a building a short walk from the Golden Gate on Yaroslaviv Val. Its second floor accommodated the Rada’s editorial office. My father bought a small house on Dorohozhytska Street in 1923 or thereabouts. He and his wife Mariya Viktorivna lived there. But I haven’t visited Konotop. My father joked once, ‘We’ll go there when we have a car. After all we are children of a landlord, aren’t we?’ We never did... My grandfather’s house in Kononivka was torn down a long time ago. Previously it accommodated a grade school and there were six memorial plaques on the wall by the entrance!”

Was that building made of wood?

“Yes, and with very fine woodcarving. Kotsiubynsky visited Kononivka when working on his Intermezzo. When the remains of Uncle Levko were to be transferred to the local cemetery, the local authorities told us they would agree to the transfer if all expense were paid by the Chykalenkos. In Pereshory everything was different. All they asked us was When? Some two thousand people met us — me and Aunt Oksana Chykalenko-Lyntvariov with her daughter Marina (they live in New York). Children clad in national attire greeted us with bread and salt... Everybody knew that Yevhen Chykalenko’s son would be buried there.

“Nothing is left of my grandfather’s house in Pereshory. It had stood atop a hill and the courtyard opened on a beautiful panorama. Anton Staselevych, CEO of a local farming business, told us, ‘I went to school there.’ The building was destroyed in 1988. See that brick on my shelf? It’s from that building’s wall... There is little left of the church in Pereshory, just the walls. It was demolished. Uncle Levko’s ashes were scattered under a 100-year-old pear tree which he climbed as a boy. Part of the ashes were buried at the graveyard. The funeral was with military honors, a salvo was fired over the grave, then there was a funeral repast, the whole thing was covered by a film crew...”

Probably you haven’t seen Levko Yevhenovych, either. He had a Ph.D. in archaeology and spent most of his life in the United States.

“No, I haven’t. I know that Uncle Levko was a member of the Little Central Rada as a young man. Uncle Petro was a secretary at the UNR Embassy in Istanbul. Later, he returned to Kyiv, much to his own detriment as it turned out. He was arrested in 1928 and sentenced to ten years in the Solovki [popular, albeit ignominious name of the Northern Special Purpose Camps on the Solovetskiye Islands in the White Sea and near Arkhangelsk, known in the West as Archangel], but he was transported only as far as Kursk where he died. Aunt Hanna and her husband Sigmund Keller settled in Germany. Aunt Viktoriya went there, too... My father, Yevhen Chykalenko, Sr.’s youngest son, received five years and served his term in the Far East.”

From Serhiy Yefremov’s letter to Levko Chykalenko (February 13, 1922): “There are people living in your house I don’t know; I am not sure if anything of your records left there has survived. However, I believe that Ol. Havr. managed to take something with him. I am told that books marked by Yevh. Kharl. were sold at the bazaar. Likewise, there is hardly anything left of the furniture. The portrait of Yev. Kharl. has been salvaged.

“Ivashko visits me now and then (he has got married!); Petrus drops in less frequently. M. Vikt. lives in the countryside, managing somehow, although the rural situation is disturbing...”

From Hanna’s letter to Levko (February 19, 1922): “I received a letter from Mother, Ivashko, and Tetiana; they are OK, but apparently their living is hard, although their letters are so cheerful and philosophical that I am envious. Mother writes, ‘Don’t bother to send us anything, we are accustomed to making do without basic necessities.’ Worst of all, they were burglarized this January, the robbers took everything, even the children’s clothes...”

Mr. Chykalenko, what were your father’s charges when they sent him to the prison camp?

“Counterrevolutionary activity, conspiring to stage an armed uprising, although my father said that his militaristic moods never reached farther than handling his Monte Cristo gun. After serving his term, he visited Kyiv, staying there for the day, and left for the Far East, taking his wife and daughter with him. I was born there, in the vicinity of Blagoveshchensk. During World War II, my father served in the Soviet Army, spent some time with artillery, then built approaches to Stalingrad. He was even awarded the medal “For Defense of Stalingrad.” I vividly remember two things at the time: getting scared by an IL-2 low-flying attack aircraft and using my toy spade to help dig a bomb shelter...

“After demobilization in 1944, my father worked on the construction site of the Baikal-Amur Railroad (the project started long before Brezhnev came to power). He never received a higher education, every time applying for enrollment he would be rejected as ‘an element alien to the people.’ Our family returned to Kyiv in April 1946.”

I see things at your place, evidencing your interest in history...

“It just happened that way. I am not a historian by training, I am a graduate of a prospecting college, but I worked in line with my qualification for slightly over two years, because I was enrolled in the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (which my father wasn’t destined to graduate from). I worked the rest of my life as a teacher with a machine-building technical college and later with the KPI.”

What is precisely your interest in history? Are you collecting it?

“I learned to read at a very early age. I had no toys to play with, but Mother somehow got a set of ABC blocks. As a young boy, I was very fond of ancient myths, then my interest would expand. I started collecting swords. Look at this curved one, it used to be worn by policemen in the Russian Empire. This one is a Hungarian broadsword. I used to have a lance dating from 1815 and an interesting rapier. Once I was offered a samurai sword, but where could I get 10,000 Soviet rubles to buy it? As we were moving out of the apartment we were robbed, including Mme. Lenormand’s tarot cards Aunt Hanna had brought from France and with which the legendary Frenchwoman had told Napoleon’s fate. Instead of jacks and queens they had pictures of a road, coffin, serpent, and so on.”

What about Yevhen Chykalenko’s memorabilia?

“I have given a lot of things to the history museum (my grandfather’s desk set, awards, decorations, including the badge of the Kharkiv Academy of Agriculture, Central Rada’s typewriter presented by Mariana Furredi, one of his granddaughters). I donated to the Lesia Ukrainka Museum about forty of his rushnyk embroidered towels, each with a label on which he wrote the name of the village the towel was from, name of the embroideress, and date of purchase. All this had survived by sheer miracle. I have books signed by Serhiy Yefremov and I can only wonder how they weren’t confiscated by Cheka-GPU-NKVD people when they searched every nook and cranny of his place. He could have been executed for just one of Yefremov’s book, Under the Ax (1918) with the open letter to Yury Kotsiubynsky. Apparently they didn’t find it. I also remember a photograph with Gorky, Kotsiubynsky, and Lenin. Viktoriya Chykalenko, my aunt, is serving tea. It was taken at Capri... A man would visit my mother, he wanted that photograph so much, he promised her a special ‘USSR pension’ in return. I don’t remember what happened to the photo in the end — just as I don’t know what came of Aunt Viktoriya. Most likely she died at the hands of the NKVD, as did her husband Oleksandr Skoropys-Yoltukhivsky, quite a colorful figure in Hetman Skoropadsky’s entourage.”

What’s your favorite pastime now that you are on pension?

“I’m fond of bees. They have such a tranquilizing effect, I can’t imagine my life without bees. My granddad did, too.”

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote in The Life of the Bee: “No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in its own...”

— P.S.: The Day regularly writes about people that can be described as the conscience of the nation, without exaggeration. We believe that such people are ignored even now, in this independent country, although they should be kept in the limelight, awarded, invited to receptions, and shown on television... Yevhen Chykalenko the Younger, whose grandfather said that “one must love Ukraine not only with one’s whole heart, but also with all of one’s money,” is a vivid example. How many know this statement today, a statement made by a prominent Ukrainian philanthropist and public figure, without whose assistance so many stars of our national culture would not have risen above the horizon in the early twentieth century? So where is our national pride? What kind of elite do we have? There is not a street or a memorial plaque bearing Yevhen Chykalenko’s name (there is a building at the corner of Yaroslaviv Val and Lysenko Streets, once accommodating the Rada’s editorial office). Volodymyr Vynnychenko said, “I believe that they will have to decide on a street as the site of a monument to you.” Was he wrong?