Borys VOZNYTSKY: “War made me realize that things are more fragile than they seem at first glance”

Mr. Voznytsky, what prospects does ICOM membership offer Ukraine?

“The Ukrainian National Committee has been active for nearly a decade, and we are entitled to attend all European conferences and work with ICOM committees, of which there are twenty-six: the International Committee for Literature Museums, Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, Committee for Arms and Military History, etc. How good it would be if our museums joined in this work, whose aim is to develop and enrich. Unfortunately, reality rarely matches expectations, for lack of funds makes such trips impossible, and we cannot send anyone to any of the committee meetings.”

When was the last time you personally attended any of the meetings?

“Back in 1990. The presidium meets in Paris, while the committees gather in a different country every year. This year, the Committee for Literary Museums will meet in Buenos Aires, and the one for history museums will be meeting in Spain. I can only imagine with sadness and happiness how all the world’s museums will be sharing their accomplishments and displaying new expositions. We too have much to show and be proud of. Yet, whenever you mention trips abroad to local officials, their usual response is to shrug. When I was vice- president of the Soviet Committee of the Council of Museums, I was lucky, for I could travel every year. The last time I was asked to choose between Paris and Japan, I said that I wanted to visit Paris again, because I wanted to study museum documents and see how they take care of their castles. Even in those days I was obsessed with castles, and at the gallery we were already working on the defensive fortifications of castles. I remember that I liked the expositions at the French Army Museum. I confess that when I was wandering around the museum halls, the thought occurred to me that the day Ukraine has such a museum we will have true statehood. However, we have yet to open a museum of such a caliber.”

How many museums are there in Ukraine?

“Nearly 300, which is a very small number. Ukraine has as many museums as Holland, except that Holland is the size of Lviv oblast. Switzerland has three times as many museums as Ukraine. Russia had 900 museums before the Soviet Union collapsed, and over the past decade their number has doubled. They are experiencing an unprecedented museum boom. Meanwhile, we have yet to open a museum of technology; we may be the only country in the world without one. Does this mean that we have no technology whatsoever, no inventions or interesting gadgets? This is utter nonsense.”

Two years ago the papers wrote that this kind of museum was being created.

“Enthusiasts of this museum keep beating on the doors of Lviv City Hall, requesting permission to open the museum on the site of the tram depot, but so far everything is at a standstill.

“If you ask me, the unique expositions that could be displayed in Lviv cannot be found anywhere else. Museums are being built around the world, but they have little to display. Meanwhile, here we can open museums en masse — a museum of technology, museum of the liberation struggle, you name it. Incidentally, the latter has been discussed for a decade now. Moreover, Lviv is the capital of baroque sculpture. There are also many baroque sculptures in other countries — Italy, France, and the Czech Republic — but all of them are in cathedrals and churches. Meanwhile, we need separate premises for them because all the sculptures that were in Polish Roman Catholic churches were destroyed. We have saved what remains of them — over 12,000 items. Thus, Lviv could open a museum that would make the whole world gasp in awe. It would be topped off with the masterpieces of the world-famous artist Pinzel.”

TIME TO DISPLAY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

It is common knowledge that you and your gallery staff have saved so many cultural monuments that they could fill dozens of museums. Almost every day you would get into an old truck and head for remote villages. You rescued icons from burned-out ruins, rummaged through attics, and fished fragments of iconostases out of puddles. People say that some of your adventures were sort of like detective stories, when you would work under conditions of strictest secrecy, lest anyone learned that an old sculpture hidden under layers of Soviet-era paint was a priceless monument that would fetch you enough money at an auction to leave a fortune to your heirs.

“I am grateful to my colleagues for not betraying their cause, losing heart, or succumbing to the lure of money. It’s a tremendous thing to have people of like mind among your colleagues. This is why we are opening exposition after exposition, albeit not without difficulty. Now work is in full swing at the Potocki Palace. Incidentally, now that Lviv is literally crumbling to pieces, the government has allocated funds for restoration work. This money is being used to complete the renovation of Bandinelli House and the Potocki Palace, the latter of which we may open this September. We are now dividing our gallery in two, with the art of the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries to remain on our main premises and the European artworks of the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries to be relocated to the Potocki Palace. In a separate hall we plan to show Ukraine as it looked in the Europe of those days.”

Do you have any plans for private collections?

“Now, perhaps for the first time, we want to display private collections, in particular that of Yaroslava Muzyka, who donated it to us in the 1980s — all of her works and things that she collected her entire life. Thus far, all of this has been gathering dust, much like the collection of Ostroverkhov, a native of Lviv. The latter’s collection is somewhat grimy, because it was collected by all possible means. Yet, it features unique items that people absolutely must see. Ostroverkhov’s collection is now on display at the castles, and items from the collection have been used to decorate the interiors of two rooms at the Potocki Palace.

“I must admit that we are only just now beginning to display the works of our collectors, which is something new for us, whereas in the West this is common practice. All they want is for us to specify that such-and-such a collector donated the collection. Is this so difficult?”

SACRAL ART NEEDS PROTECTION

At a news conference I heard your opinion to the effect that many sacral artworks have been lost in recent years.

“Thankfully, some positive developments have been seen in recent years. We are becoming smarter, and our lovers and collectors of sacral art are found specifically in religious circles. Individual churches and monasteries have begun collecting articles. The most striking example of a collector is Father Sebastian of the Studite Order Monastery, who has collected nearly 3,000 sacral artworks and splendid icons. The monastery also runs restoration ateliers. For the first time in Ukraine works of sacral art have been displayed at the Studite Monastery in Uhniv and at Lviv’s St. Michael Church. I would like to stress the following. It doesn’t matter what Father Sebastian has collected, what matters is what he has saved from destruction. After all, bizarre things are happening now: new churches are being opened and old ones renovated, and the community wants everything to be perfectly new. How much we have lost because of this negligence! People are often afraid to talk about it, for it concerns church matters, but this issue must be discussed. It is common knowledge that in the twentieth century 80% of Ukraine’s sacral heritage was destroyed as a result of wars and ideological campaigns under the Soviets. In the 1950s, when churches were closed in Western Ukraine and priests deported to Siberia, more than half of all churches (800 in the Lviv area alone) were razed to the ground. A mere 20% of our nineteenth-century churches remain, of which 14% are in the western part of Ukraine, while only 6% are scattered across the eastern regions. A total of 15,000 churches were razed to the ground in Ukraine. Meanwhile, every such church had an iconostasis with thirty icons. This means that we lost half a million icons. Beyond the River Zbruch, not a single icon from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries has been preserved, except for a couple of eighteenth-century icons.

“However, this was not the only type of destruction. One well known member of the Ternopil-based Rukh [People’s Movement], Ihor Hereta, was the first to declare that since Ukraine’s independence more [sacral artworks] have been destroyed than in the fifty years of Soviet rule. He meant Halychyna. Neither priests nor people understand the value of such things, when they declare: ‘Why do we need this old junk? We should sell or throw it away and paint the church with new, fresh colors, so that it will look picture perfect.’ The Orthodox Church wields a rather free hand in this respect and never seeks our advice. According to Orthodox canons, if an icon has faded and cannot be used in prayer, the church can burn it, dump it in a river, or bury it. So when our Museum of Religious History handed twenty-four icons over to the Drohobych community, they burned them! The generation that had ties with the church of the 1920s and 1930s is no longer alive, while the new generations are not familiar with such names as Novakivsky, Monastyrsky, Kovzhun, Osinchuk, Kholodny — artists who painted brilliant iconostases that deserve attention and careful treatment. The current generation was raised on the art of social realism, and at times it cannot appreciate an authentic icon, or Byzantine and post-Byzantine icon painting. All they want is a living semblance of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

“Fortunately, we have established productive ties with Greek Catholic seminaries and the Catholic University. It appears that young priests in fact have no idea of what’s good or bad either. Thus, there is a need for extensive edifying activity. Incidentally, St. George Cathedral has at last formed a committee to study artworks and to oversee the renovation and construction of churches. This is a very positive development.”

The Poles recently awarded you two major prizes. You have been named a Meritorious Worker of Polish Culture and were awarded the Jan Zachwatowicz Prize ‘for a personal contribution to the cause of preserving the common East European cultural heritage of Poland and Ukraine from destruction.’ Word has it that when you went onstage to collect the prize in Warsaw, the applause lasted for several minutes. This is to say that Poland respects you no less, if not more, than Ukraine. Some say within this context that this was Poland’s way of thanking you for preserving its cultural heritage. After all, these castles are Polish by definition. Second, some people accuse you of failing to persuade Poland to treat Ukrainian monuments in like manner.

“Today, old wooden churches are being energetically rebuilt in Poland. Researchers are publishing fundamental, amply illustrated studies. As far as Polish castles in Halychyna are concerned, this is a debatable issue. They were designed by Italian architects (e.g., the Pidhirtsi and Zolochiv Castles were designed by Andrea Del Aqua) and built by Tatar captives and Ukrainians. Only Tatars inhabited the village of Voroniaky outside Zolochiv. In the Catholic monastery in Pidhirtsi and in Olesky Castle we discovered bricks bearing numbers written in Cyrillic script, which means that Ukrainians made them. Meanwhile, these castles belonged to Polonized Ukrainian families. Ukraine’s centuries-old problem is that our elites have always betrayed the Ukrainian people — all those Vyshnyvetskys, Potockis, and Ostrozkys. They obtained lands from the Polish king in return for becoming Poles.

“Incidentally, Jan Zachwatowicz once said that ‘cultural heritage has no passport,’ since he too was accused, in Beirut, of taking a suspiciously great interest in Gothic art, especially German Gothic art. Banal as it may sound, art is the only form of human activity that unites people and dismantles all kinds of barriers.”

“TEN MILLION WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY”

I recently came across an opinion expressed by Kliuchevsky, who said: “Art is a substitute for life, which is why art is admired by those whose life has been a failure.

“This doesn’t apply to me. I have a wonderful daughter and two grandchildren, who are also involved in art. Meanwhile, I think no one will question the fact that I have lived a full life.”

Is there any secret to the fact that you have enjoyed a high standing with all governments?

“Even my friends used to tell me about the heated arguments in connection with the reasons why I was allowed abroad even when the Iron Curtain was firmly in place. Some would remark, ‘Doesn’t this prove that Voznytsky was, say, nothing lower than a KGB captain?’ To this I can unambiguously reply by showing you a precious document, my soldier’s book. People who have been tested by fire have a harder time abandoning their moral principles. I simply worked.”

Have you received a just reward for your work? You live in a cramped, two-room apartment on a pension of 170 hryvnias. Meanwhile, some priceless things have passed through your hands. Haven’t you ever wanted to be rich?

“The rich quickly change from being people who make money into people who guard them single-mindedly. My dedication has been to other things: art, fine company, and beautiful women.

“Recently a book was published about me. My friends say it’s not a good book and have suggested that I write one myself. I often remember things and put them down on paper. Yet, whenever I recall women in my life, my hand stops writing. Some things are too personal and shouldn’t be mentioned. It should be admitted that it is to women that men owe who they are. Above all I am indebted to my mother. She prayed for me so fervently that I was blessed with a happy fate. On several occasions I found myself in hopeless situations. Suffice it to say that twice I was the only survivor after my entire company perished in an attack. Twice my mother received notifications claiming that I had died a hero’s death. Once she was told that I had been executed by firing squad in 1943. It turned out to be someone else. I was drafted to the front in 1944, when I was seventeen years old. I fought in the Baltic republics and was even sent to fight against Japan, but the war ended before I got there. I wasn’t demobilized until 1950.

“After my father and all of my kin passed away, I understood that I would never be returning to my home, so I took a feather comforter made by my mother. You asked whether I feel cold in the unheated castles, where I have to spend nights every now and then. I will answer that in Pidhirtsi Castle my mother’s feather comforter keeps me warm. In Zolochiv Castle I also have a comforter that someone very dear gave to me.”

In what way do women mould men?

“Sometimes in very unexpected ways. At the front I met an attractive and jolly sniper girl. She was sent to the trenches for rejecting the captain’s advances. We talked for several hours, about nothing in particular, and cracked jokes. Suddenly a German sniper’s bullet hit her. My God! I think I never cried like that before. But who was she to me? This was a chance, wartime encounter that has affected me my entire life. I realized that things are more fragile than they seem. Beauty should be protected and rescued from ignorance and death. Perhaps I have been so determined in saving works of art because I met this woman on my life’s journey.”

You have many reasons to feel happy; you have managed to accomplish a great deal. The so- called Golden Horseshoe, a tourist route that runs through the castles, may be called, without undue modesty, your brainchild. Still, is there anything that you regret?

“I regret not having ten million.”

But you said that you didn’t want to be rich.

“I don’t need this money for myself. I need this amount to complete the reconstruction of the castles. Sometimes I spend sleepless nights thinking where to get 200,000 hryvnias at least to build the gates. Every castle has its own construction crew, but none of my people can make castle gates. The workers are paid 205 hryvnias each; until recently they were paid 180. People recreate beauty in an attempt to preserve it for posterity and are paid a pittance. Never before have I been interested in political rallies, but today I watch events closely, as they are unfolding. I sometimes compare numbers. Word has it that the presidential elections will cost 300 million hryvnias. If I only had this money, I would renovate all the castles and palaces across Ukraine, restore museums, and open so many wonderful expositions! There is no excuse for a person who spends money in vain and destroys [artworks] instead of cherishing them. The minute we finally understand this, we will all be truly happy.”