Ukrainian Journalism Suffers Double Blow

Last Tuesday shocked all those who knew TV cameraman Taras Protsiuk. There are a great many because Taras’s free and friendly nature let him make new friends easily. Last Wednesday night his colleagues, friends, and casual acquaintances exchanged e-mail letters, lit candles, and raised glasses in his memory. As nobody was sure of being able to attend his funeral, many decided to pay their last respects by communicating with each other. Distant Baghdad and the shelled Palestine Hotel suddenly became very near and part of the memory. The next day brought another shock: Oleksandr Kryvenko was killed in an automobile crash. Like the day before, the brain tried to reject the news and seek confirmation to the contrary.

An obituary clichО says, “in the prime of life.” But it is indeed in the prime of their lives that these two passed away. This causes bewilderment, quite a natural first reaction. Death never comes at the right time, but it is all the more unexpected when it comes to those who are young and full of energy.

These two were major figures in Ukrainian journalism. Taras was a born cameraman and a crack professional whose cold-bloodedness in extreme situations allowed each of us to see the real world in customary and rather cynical settings, at breakfast for example. He was a professional on an invisible frontline. And whenever the national media were swept away by some new tempest in a teapot about Lilliputian figures, he would change us a bit through his daily and seemingly unobtrusive work, adding precise and sometimes even less than pleasant details to our idea of ourselves. Society badly needed such active and utterly humane people — both at the dawn of our independence and, as time shows, now.

Oleksandr Kryvenko, who launched and was editor-in-chief of the Lviv-based Post-Postup, was more of a public figure in the past few years. Yet, Post-Postup, with its ironical and biting style in the period when the idea of Ukrainian statehood was germinating in human minds, gave each of us the dimension of national identity we so needed. This publication reached the peak of its popularity at a time when life in Ukrainian society was extremely politicized. He was a mouthpiece of new ideas and one of the active makers of Ukrainian reality. Sashko’s Galician style added special color to what might be called a branch of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Our Ukrainian Studies which he co-authored. Standing next to him, even those who barely knew Ukrainian tried to speak it. But his main trait was dynamism and readiness to change his attitudes and seek new ways of doing things. One could challenge and argue with him, but the very fact of his presence brought cause us all to move forward to the point where all the chaff was gone and all the truth was left.

These painfully tragic events have shown that our journalism still has its own major figures. Both Taras and Oleksandr were those who could write the history of our country on the basis of their own lives. And we must ask ourselves who else an do so now. We must reappraise our attitudes toward one another, love more, and speak words of support to the living. Why should we await another death?

We express our deep condolences and sympathy to the families of our departed colleagues. The Day’s journalists wrote this obituary with a sense of bereavement so that Ukrainians know and remember them.