Lviv and Ostroh: Synthesizing intellectual circles

The fifth meeting of the Lviv University Inter-Departmental Debating Club was held at the Ostroh Academy at the invitation of the Ostroh Free Intellectual Exchange Youth Club, sent the day before. Interpretation of Kostomarov’s Two Russian Nationalities gave rise to the discussion, the seminal work having been reprinted as part of the “Armor-Piercing Political Writing” series and provided with foreword by D. of Sc. in Philosophy, Professor, and Vice Rector of the Ostroh Academy Petro Kraliuk.

The trip to Ostroh proved a good opportunity for Lviv students to discover the cultural life of Volyn. The day before, the debaters visited Ulas Samchuk Literary Museum in Rivne to learn more about the prominent Ukrainian writer and journalist’s life and peculiarities of his social environment. We saw there again that every corner of our land uncovers some part of Ukraine’s noble soul. Samchuk’s Volyn is marked with hardened creative talent, full of European traditions and will to fight. It seems that all these features were intertwined in the writer’s own works. By the way, Samchuk was nominated for the Nobel Prize. It comes as no surprise that the students decided to devote their next roundtable to discussing the great Volynian’s journalistic achievements.

After Rivne, we came to Ostroh. On entering the academy’s courtyard, we were immediately engulfed by its incredible, emotional atmosphere. Shapes of the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates and Aristotle could be seen in the waning light of day. Later on, we would learn more about the university’s history, visiting its chapel, seeing a copy of the Ostroh Bible with our own eyes, descending to the mysterious underground cells that once housed the Capuchin convent, and calling on the library. Tour of the princely Ostrozky family’s castle was another part of the visit’s program.

No doubt, Ostroh is a treasury of the Ukrainian spirit. Firstly, it induces an especially strong feeling of being lost in time. History easily becomes reality and vice versa in the academy’s microclimate. Secondly, it is pulsing with harmony, where science is more than just immersion in intellectual work and search for knowledge, but appeals to the spiritual depths, too. Thirdly, the academy draws our attention to the fundamental principles of the Orthodox faith, so tenaciously fought for by the institution’s princely founders in the bygone era. Therefore, the history of the Ostroh Academy as an Orthodox center is a building brick of our Ukrainian identity, marked by an ancient Christian tradition.

Learning more about the Ukrainian temples of learning, one gets to understand better how multidimensional the Ukrainian nation is. For instance, the Ostroh Academy testifies to the strength of the Northern Ukrainian Orthodox tradition, while the Lviv University exemplifies multicultural and multi-denominational Galicia. Our meetings with Ostroh students have shown that we are different, since we have been educated in differing cultural environments and mental paradigms. However, we are united by our Ukrainian identity, having in common our language, history, culture, and the church born in Volodymyr’s baptism. Synthesizing our academic centers, we are creating a true spiritual map of Ukraine, free of stereotypes and mutual insults. Kostomarov wrote in his work about the identity issues troubling Ukrainians and Russians. After a century and a half, his topic is, unfortunately, still relevant. We hear a lot of talk about the idea of “Russian World” currently.  However, we have an opportunity to revive our own, Ukrainian world. The recipe for it is very simple, in my opinion, as we need just start exchanging thoughts between academic circles. We have learned that yet another debating club is being organized in Donetsk, so we will expand the coverage of inter-university exchanges. We can be sure, at least, that the Lviv-Ostroh intellectual communication line has been laid out already through our joint efforts!