Lina Kostenko’s new historical novel diagnoses current society

What do we say to ourselves, stepping into the third millennium? What will we take with us except debts? The current regime is utterly bankrupt. Leonid Kuchma’s aphorism, “Only the blind cannot see economic changes,” shows that glaucoma or cataracts have befallen not only the Ukrainian people, but the entire world, except, of course, those closest to the top. For the rest, Independence Day in Ukraine is a holiday marked with tears of grief, not joy. “So what kind of people are we?” asked once a talented prose writer, now a mediocre politician. A surfeit of ethnopsychologists has surfaced, yet there is no answer. Why has this country, with so many negative lessons in the past — from Kalka to Kruty to Berestechko to Baturyn — not learned a single one? Swedish historian Englund wrote that there would have been no Sweden the way it is now, had it not been for the Battle of Poltava. Imperial thinking is history now and “thanks to that defeat interests were united, divergences and inner conflicts vanished.” Victories are another manifestation of self-consolation and conservatism; defeats are a “revision of one’s views, a quest for development.” We had no imperial thinking, for we had to protect ourselves and what little we had as our own. As for historical lessons, it was not that we never learned them; rather, we tended to forget all them very soon. A self-apparent fact that requires little if any comment.

The front cover of Lina Kostenko’s new historical novel Berestechko (Ukrayinsky Pysmennyk, Kyiv, 1999) shows a Hetman’s mace lying in the grass. Our destiny depends on whose hand will pick it up. One is reminded of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s saber stolen in 1992 at Pereyaslav. Leonid Kravchuk, then President, declared he would personally supervise the investigation, but then he lost his own mace.

We have long known about Kostenko’s book and excerpts have appeared in print, but it came off the presses after independence when the author herself became aware of the need to put it out, as the state was now “faced with the threat of final defeat.” The story is centered on an event mentioned by practically every man of letters who has written about Khmelnytsky. It was the fifth battle in his war, following those of Zhovti Vody, Korsun, Pyliavka, and Zboriv. Pavlo Zahrebelny wrote in his I, Bohdan: “Ukraine fell at Berestechko. And when it arose it was no longer its young and headstrong self. It had aged a thousand years.” Lina Kostenko’s novel, written as Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s monologue, has the Battle of Berestechko as the starting point, a center from which force fields spread to the past and future. Tortured by doubts and regrets in his Pavoloch fortress, Khmelnytsky tries to find an answer to one question: “We had every advantage. Why did we lose?” Indeed, for a month troops were maneuvering and the Poles, after declaring total mobilization, were closing in on Ukraine by three routes. They could have been defeated even before they joined forces, yet Khmelnytsky’s 100,000 Cossacks wasted time going in circles and when the Tatars approached (almost 40,000 men) the Polish forces (including mercenaries and servants) numbered 210,000. And the khan played traitor at the start of the battle, pulling out. Khmelnytsky raced after the Tatars and was actually captured and held in custody for 10 days, the duration of the battle. The Poles used brushwood to erect a bridge across the Pliashivka River and pushed the Cossacks there. During the night Colonel Bohun led most of the troops out of the trap, but then panic started and the Poles routed all that remained. “Three hundred broke as one,” defending a small island called Zhuravlykha. The write describes a Cossack in a small boat wielding a scythe, killing Poles left and right. The last outburst of courage before death. And what about the Hetman?

A month before the battle he could not come to peace with himself. His older son Tymish had hanged his stepmother, Bohdan’s young beautiful wife, for high treason. I drank, was tortured, could not
sleep,
Dreading others’ mocking smiles
like snares.
That was how I took the field and
fought,
Defeat already gnawing at my heart. Treason, however, was not the only cause of defeat. The novel is singularly stereoscopic; it seems to touch all the sore points in Ukrainian history. The Hetman never built the state he wanted, try as he did: I’ve worked so hard to beat the
Poles,
I’ve made them suffer all these
years!
Why couldn’t I don the
Monomakh cap
When I was at the peak of glory?
When I entered Kyiv astride my
horse
After Pyliavka, after Zhovti
Vody?
They made me welcome with
church bells ringing,
People said I was another
Moses.

The Hetman analyzes the objective and subjective causes of defeat, yet through the politician’s reasoning comes the voice of a man in despair, one who can see centuries ahead and mourns his country’s lot. Long-suffering Ukraine, the shining
star amidst my perils!
Where are your sons, mother? One
can only wring one’s hands.
Some die for you, others betray,
Still others know not who their
mother is.

Sensing that his death will be followed by national discord and power plays (“All want my mace. All are fighting for power.”), Khmelnytsky predicts long years of trouble that have actually reached our day: So everything leads to ruin.
We are sinking in misery.
Some are fighting for Ukraine’s
destiny,
Others biting and clawing for the
juiciest tidbit.

The text is so powerfully worded and penetrating, one wishes to repeat lines from it over and over. Ranging from cool analysis to self-condemnation to captivating publicistic outbursts, instant insight, out of Khmelnytsky’s heart and into the soul of the nation. A penetrating look at the very roots, mental magma, mystery of archetypes. And out of this all arises the vivid picture of today’s realities. While we mumbled about
freedom,
Others won it with their hands.
We are still singing in dying voices,
The way we did when they made us
slaves.

And then Colonel Nebaba’s ghost materialized before Bohdan and told him his future, about Pereyaslav where he would disgrace himself as Hetman, with Bohun breaking his sword over the knee and walking out of the council, followed by those refusing to swear allegiance to Moscow; about the Russian tsar’s oppressive rule, and that two hundred years later another “well- spoken Hetman” would come to power and say that Bohdan drank too much... Nebaba added, “I would rather die again” than see what is to happen to Ukraine.

Khmelnytsky would pull himself together, summon the men under his banner and shake the Polish kingdom hard again in the Battle of Batih, but it would be as though some fatal force were driving him into a “dragon’s mouth” (Valery Shevchuk). Lina Kostenko writes: “The time will come for us, hopeless and despairing.” Perhaps — as some historians maintain — had Khmelnytsky surrendered his mace to Bohun, Ukraine’s destiny would have been different. The Hetman always spoke of his Colonel highly: “The man knows how to send the hearts astir,/ He’ll make all of Ukraine ring like a huge church bell.” And further on, “He’ll never bother politicking, he’ll never sit under the sword of Damocles./He’ll make swords of his own, using thoughts for want of steel.”

Rigid parallels are drawn between the present day and those bygone realities. Lina Kostenko’s novel diagnoses our society at its current stage. I am certain the novel will give rise to lengthy reviews and treatises, perhaps even doctoral dissertations. Consider a final quotation on Ukraine at the cups of the millennia: Times long since gone and
present day,
Ukraine about to go the third
millennium’s way.
So many strangers come to stay,
deep-rooted,
And our own traitors in a deadly
hideaway.
They’ve picked the locks and opened
every door,
Letting in Europe’s freezing winds.
All we have in abundance is graves,
graves, graves.
And the Black Road’s Slaves’ Trail
With chained people’s tears and
wail.
We have come to hate this world
Filled with hired assassins and
homebred eccentrics.

Lina Kostenko’s book has appeared at a crucial period in Ukraine. We have learned from neither our own nor others’ mistakes, walking the razor of history. Yet we are in a vicious circle and have to break loose, sooner or later. We have had ample time to make the rest of the world wonder at our hyperinflation, corruption, and suppression of the Fifth Estate while nurturing a fifth column. When will all this biting and clawing for the juiciest morsel on high end?

The novel breathes our eventful past, yet the pains of its heroes are the same as we now experience. It is like a huge church bell ringing, making one wish with all one’s heart for it to be a final and true awakening, because we will never hear the bell rung after us.