“A distinguished figure like James Mace only highlighted our slavish core”
A conversation about the great Ukrainian on the Culture TV channel
On July 16 the Culture TV channel broadcast a program in its Dialogue series. The invited guests were The Day’s editor Larysa Ivshyna and the historian Volodymyr Boiko, who talked about James Mace, the well-known American researcher of the Ukrainian Holodomor and a contributor to The Day.
The Dialogue series was launched four years ago with the aim of profiling the members of Ukraine’s national intellectual elite. To date, invited guests have included art specialists Nelli Korniienko and Dmytro Horbachov, actors Bohdan Stupka and Gregory Hlady (Hryhorii Hladii), stage designer Davyd Borovsky, translator Anatol Perepadia, philosophers Myroslav Popovych and Serhii Krymsky, and artist Myroslav Medvid.
“We have an archived recording dedicated to the memory of James Mace,” said Tamara Boiko, program producer and issue manager at the state-run Culture TV and Radio Company. “I have long been toying with the idea of devoting an entire show to him, with the participation of The Day. Your newspaper discovered James and introduced him to Ukraine. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, Ukrainians know very little about themselves and, consequently, they are wandering aimlessly toward their future. In contrast, Mace was a trailblazer, and I am firmly convinced that we need him more than ever. Free Ukrainian words, such as Mace was known to utter, are seldom heard in our country.”
The history of Mace’s relationship with the newspaper is evidenced by the articles that he published in The Day, starting in 1998, and two books from its Library Series — The Day and Eternity of James Mace (2005) and James Mace: “Your Dead Chose Me” (forthcoming). When the program was being recorded, I seized the opportunity to ask the historian Volodymyr Boiko to share his reminiscences of James Mace.
“I first heard about James Mace when I was still a student. At the time, in 1989, I got hold of a samvydav(samizdat) copy of the proceedings of the US Congressional Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Many years later, I came across Jim’s articles in The Dayand began to read them regularly. In 2002, I invited him to speak at the Chernihiv Center of Retraining and Professional Upgrading for Local Government Officials, which I head.”
How did your fellow countrymen react to the truth about the 1932-1933 Holodomor?
“The audience listened to Jim somewhat tensely. They seemed to be stunned that he could permit himself to speak so frankly not only about the past but the present day. Naturally, some people knew and some guessed about the political roots of the Holodomor, the dysfunctions and pathologies of the Ukrainian elite and society, but nobody had ever dared to say this out loud. One of James’s listeners gave him a very precise characteristic, calling him a FREE MAN.
“Do you remember Taras Petrynenko’s song “I Am a Professional Slave”? He sings these lines: ‘I am a professional slave in spirit and blood. By social origin, I am a slave, too.’ I must say that a distinguished figure like James Mace highlighted our slavish core. That’s why he was often undervalued in Ukraine, where he was even considered an inconvenient person.
“The price of freedom is very high — everywhere. And not everyone is prepared to pay it.”
I think it was a great responsibility to be friends with him.
“I couldn’t say that we were friends. I was a guest at his home a few times. He let me use his ‘holy of holies’ — his computer. Unfortunately, we were fated to know each other only two years, and all that time Jim was ill. I once visited him in the resuscitation room at the hospital. What could I say to a man who is between life and death? ‘Please come to Chernihiv. We remember you,’ I said, squeezing those few words out. ‘All right,’ he replied seriously, ‘I will.’ And he did come in a few months. I like taking pictures, and I have kept the photographs of his first and second visits. Now I wish I had taken more. I wish I had recorded our intellectual conversations. They were most often about politics and current events in Ukraine, which James would absorb and react to quite painfully.
“The wiser and more profound a person is, the less such a person demands a special attitude. It is enough to be sincere and friendly. And you feel a great emptiness when they leave this world.”
