Stus Museum homeless in Donbas

It will be recalled that there was a Vasyl Stus museum in Horlivka for a long time – the only one in Donbas and one of the few in this country as a whole. This unique establishment largely functioned thanks to the efforts of its founder and main enthusiast Oleh Fedorov.

“It was in 1996: I heard about Stus on the radio and his figure intrigued me. I decided that my fellow countrymen should know more about him,” Oleh FEDOROV says. “When I came to know the whereabouts of Stus’s son, I phoned him to say that I intended to establish a museum, and we agreed to meet in Kyiv. I gradually got acquainted with Stus’s other relatives and his fellow political prisoners. Then I saw Vasyl Ovsiienko who promised me to bring prison fatigues for the museum.

“Only 10 copies of Vasyl Stus’s first illegal book came out, and each of which was addressed to a specific person. I came to the woman who had helped him publish this book. She says: ‘I can’t give you this book.’ I say in reply: ‘I can’t but have it in the museum.’ But she finally gave me the book, with tears in her eyes, on condition that I will make a copy of it.

When the Ukrainian diaspora in the US came to know that a museum of this kind was going to open, they found a Stus book which had been published in a small print run in Germany to nominate the poet for the Nobel Prize. The Americans brought this book, with a gift inscription from the translator, to Horlivka. Each of the museum’s items has a similar story, for the people who knew Stus still keep as rarities some things associated with him.”

Meanwhile, the increasing expenses for keeping this non-profit establishment and the venerable age of its founder made the latter face a dilemma: either to hand over the project to some other reliable entity or to leave it to its own devices. This posed a threat to the entire noble idea.

Local patriots were the first to respond to the signal of distress. They noted, quite aptly, that one of the periods in the dissident poet’s life was associated with Horlivka – he taught in a local school after graduating from the teacher-training institute and doing military service.

“If you pressure the local authorities quite well, they will surely find new premises for the Stus Museum – especially at an educational institution, closer to younger generation who will be none the worse for knowing more about their outstanding fellow countryman,” says the well-known Horlivka activist Ihor SLAVHORODSKY.

But the authorities followed a different way. Hanna HERMAN, chief of the Presidential Administration’s General Directorate for Humanitarian and Sociopolitical Issues, unexpectedly intervened into the growing debate on this regional culturological problem. She announced that the self-supporting museum would be transferred to the oblast center and even funded from the budget. She claimed that many Donetsk residents were still unaware of their fellow countryman’s contribution to national culture and the grandeur of his civic exploit. “They did not read Stus, they do not know him and cling to stereotypes. But this will not last forever. I believe better times will come,” the high-placed official said for effect. Herman also said she had put the problem across to President Viktor Yanukovych. Knowing where the Kyiv wind blew, Andrii Shyshatsky, chairman of the Oblast State Administration, also hastened to show concern and promised to make an optimal decision.

More than six months have passed since then. The exhibits, which Fedorov had been so lovingly collecting, were taken to Donetsk. They are still waiting for their fate at an ancillary room of the Krupskaya Regional Library. As the library director Liudmyla NOVAKOVA told The Day, no funds were allotted “for Stus.” So the exhibit can only be mounted, at best, next year to time with the poet’s 75th anniversary – but still as a “temporary arrangement,” essentially upstaging the existing Shevchenko Literature and Art Museum.

By contrast, the library surprisingly easily found premises for the Russian Center. In general, Novakova does not hide her skepticism about the new unwelcome “tenant.” “I am not sure that our library is the best place for this exposition,” she says.

But, fortunately, there is an alternative. Viktor TUPILKO, chairman of Chornobyl Help, an all-Ukrainian non-profit organization of disabled Chornobyl veterans, stood up for the poet’s memory. The Donetsk office of this organization has housed a self-supporting Ukrainian patriotic museum, Smoloskyp (Torch), for several years, so a section dedicated to Vasyl Stus would organically complement this unique collection. “It is a place where scholarly conferences, excursions for schoolchildren, and patriotic young people’s meetings are regularly held, so the exposition will not sit gathering dust in oblivion,” Tupilko maintains. “And we are prepared to make available a room which the regional library director says they cannot even dream of.” But, having studied the Chornobyl veteran’s proposal, a commission of Donetsk culture officials remained firm: as the Horlivka exhibits have already been put on the state’s balance sheet, it is totally impossible to get them back into private hands. Meanwhile, the unique museum of a patriotic poet in fact remains homeless in the “capital of coalminers.”