March 9 marked
Taras Shevchenko’s 185th birthday
“... When will we see our own Washington with new and righteous
laws? And someday he will come,” the poet wrote. When his statue was unveiled
in the US capital in 1964, bearing this anti-Soviet legend, the KGB decided
to make sure whether he wrote this in the mid-nineteenth century.
He did. The poet also turned out to harbor ideas of which
Soviet scholars knew nothing, content with the excerpts they had dug up,
sorted out, and adjusted to the official propaganda.
Does this mean that the enthusiasts unveiling his statues
on other continents know a different Shevchenko? Not the “revolutionary
democrat” all Soviet generations were taught? For example, Oleksandr Archipenko’s
monument in Paris depicts a prophet with a meaningfully pointing hand.
The poet’s life story and creative heritage are fantastic, they cannot
be fitted into any propaganda pattern. Of course, for Soviet ideologues
a zealot fighting tsarist autocracy, wearing peasant clothes, defending
the starving and downtrodden masses, was ideal; this figure could be (and
was) used as yet more graphic evidence of how well the Bolshevik Revolution
had solved all of society’s problems, and, of course, erecting a monument
in the so-called capital of the so-called Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
was a number one priority.
Thus, no one even tried to fully comprehend Shevchenko
under the Soviets. One of the metamorphoses in the poet’s life took place
shortly before his death. After Nicholas I’s death, Taras Shevchenko, having
spent ten years in exile, returned to St. Petersburg. Soon he was awarded
the title of Academician of Fine Arts and, on the crest of fame, was made
welcome by the creme of the capital’s aristocratic families. However, this
role did not set well with his Cossack nature, and he made a point of wearing
peasant clothes and stressing his parentage in the shocked aristocratic
eyes. A photograph dating from that period has since been extremely popular
with a great many people, including those still in bondage (whatever its
twentieth century form). Proof? Take a look at a Hr 100 banknote. In a
word, this image has been taken for granted. The fact remains, however,
that Shevchenko was anything but an old stooping man. He returned from
exile at the age of 44 and planned to marry a young girl.
For this reason there are monuments portraying a young
national bard and others a gloomy peasant patriarch. There are hundreds
of his statues all over the world.
But this is not all: external contrasts can, after all,
be reconciled. The greatest problem comes from different interpretations
of his legacy. His popularity was such that every political force remembered
to make him their “supporter.” Indeed, Shevchenko always fought all forms
of bondage. Of course, he was severely opposed to the Russian autocracy
and combined Ukrainian patriotism with solidarity with other national liberation
movements. Finally, he often conversed with God and reproached Him for
allowing injustice.
It was only natural for Ukrainian patriots to consider
Shevchenko their apostle. The narodniks (Populists) and later revolutionaries
saw him as a poet eulogizing the struggle for liberation. They had a point,
but the worst thing was that categorizing the poet had to be kept in line
with the given party’s program and rules: who is not with us is against
us.
When Bolshevik ideology became official and this motto
made obligatory, the poet had to be adjusted to a new class program. With
all its totalitarian straightforwardness. Soviet propaganda used Shevchenko
to strengthen the foundations of the evil empire which was now referred
to as “a family free and new” (borrowed from Shevchenko’s “ Testament”
where he calls for Ukraine’s liberation and independence).
Bolshevism was a jealous god. Of course, they could not
accept Shevchenko conversing with God, with his love and prayers. So they
committed perhaps the worst act of violence against the poet’s heritage.
They resorted to blatant falsification. His works were “edited” in accordance
with “needs of the new age.” This was not difficult, for by then the national
bureaucrats had developed their parlance and imposed it on Ukrainian culture
and history. Pavlo Tychyna wrote on the subject, “We will make all words
fit our size.”
Shevchenko’s image was distorted, adding distinct touches
of hatred. Now he was a materialist, atheist, placed in the front ranks
of the struggle against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” And woe unto
those who tried to steal a glance under that disguise or even call it disguise.
This was a totally different Shevchenko whom the people
no longer recognized. A split personality. Remarkably, only several works
were shelved and kept secret. All the others were falsified and propagandized
in terms of class struggle and sociological primitivism. But the goal was
achieved: Shevchenko was now estranged from God and his people, a mouthpiece
of ideas he never espoused but wholeheartedly loathed. And the most remarkable
metamorphosis was that this inveterate dissident had become a pet minstrel
in the Soviet court. Countless monuments were erected and unveiled with
great pomp and only anecdotes hinted at the truth, like the one about a
Shevchenko literary soiree dedicated to Comrade Stalin.
Of course, there were those who tried to refute such brutal
mystification. Some spoke their mind in public and were severely punished.
Books were published abroad, but they were in practice accessible only
to those who knew the truth anyway but kept that knowledge to themselves.
The falsification of Shevchenko, imposed on four Soviet
generations, is over at long last, but the stereotypes are still there,
because some prefer them to the truth. Everybody knows that a straight
backbone is better than a curved one and that straightening it takes agonizing
treatment, yet it can easily return to the previous state afterward if
one does not follow the doctor’s orders.
Shevchenko, who united the nation with his love, in this
eviscerated world was placed before distorting mirrors, and we lost the
aureole of this severe prophet who scourged the cruel and insatiable.
New books are published and the poet is interpreted in
a new manner, truthfully. There is hope that Shevchenko, who explained
to a many a generation the spirit and letter of The Word, will continue
to speak in the hearts of all those seeking the Truth and Beauty.
All this is good, but a certain Oles Buzyna maintains in
Kievskie Vedomosti that the poet is no longer relevant. As many other newspaper
philosophers, the author tends to jump to conclusions, saying that Shevchenko
just does not sound right these days. Moreover, Mr. Buzyna refuses to acknowledge
his talent, supporting this allegation by the trite “I am not alone but
legion.” The easiest way would be to shrug him off as yet another academic
underachiever, hence his being “legion.” But suppose he was an honors student
all the way and then forgot all about his “views” recited at his last graduation
exam and then entered the market with his nose to the wind?
Why, then, is the market against Shevchenko? He cuts a
figure seen from afar, standing out amongst a pagan crowd, trying to “force
his way to the palace” (as in “The Dream”).
We are surrounded by lesser people captivated by their
own consumerism. A gray flood of vulgarity is washing away the foundations.
Dwarves do their dance macabre, waiting for the rest of the structure to
collapse, for it embodies a world totally alien to them.
Classics have a very poor market and those willing to pay
the real price cannot afford it. And then someone looking very much like
Oles Buzyna stands on a barrel and addresses the crowd, speaking in a language
they all understand and appreciate.
And standing above this is Taras Shevchenko, saying, “Things
come and go with no end, Where do they come from? Where do they go?







