Nobel Prize: the grapes craved by the fox

KYIV — Discussing claims to this most prestigious (and most authoritative) award largely reflects our desire to integrate with the world cultural space as intensively as possible. This not only means declaring this noble desire, but also actually doing something about it. This is all the more necessary because the course of events connected with the emergence and assertion of the Nobel Prize nomination movement in Ukraine reflects topical problems facing the current national elite and its relations with the rest of society, government, and the international community.

Probably the most topical reason for our current interest in Alfred Nobel and his benevolent initiative is that Ukrainian society badly needs moral authorities. Nostalgia for higher things long ago passed all critical limits of expectation and hope.

Logic is a tough affair: without a leader, a nation does not have a cultural capital; without this there is no nation.

Our paradoxical reality, the result of disharmony in the first decades of state building, is such that the Ukrainian Nobel movement is based not in the capital but in the regional center of Ternopil. This is only natural, considering that Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk (once known as Stanyslaviv), the former center of Austrian culture in the 18th-19th centuries, are closer to European civilization than, for example, Slobidska Ukraine or the Dnipro and Azov Sea regions.

Further proof of the appropriateness of this exception is that research on this subject is being published in Kyiv and certain oblasts (the encyclopedic reference work Laureates of the Nobel Prize: 1901-2001, Oleksandr Levchenko’s book The Nobel Intellectual Elite and Ukraine, the collections Ternopil Nobel Readings, and Mykola Sulyma and Mykhailo Dovbenko’s substantial publications).

What does this mean-that quantity is growing into quality? Probably.

At any rate, a convincing argument is that most authors who crave the Nobel Prize have finally begun working primarily with documents — primary sources — to broach the crucial subject of the Ukrainian Nobel movement. Until recently many of these publications vividly reflected our preoccupation with attempts and claims to join the ranks of those on whom this world-famous prize has been conferred. Today, it seems we have finally realized that contacting the Nobel Committee (by submitting applications, forwarding collective letters) and proposing to consider the achievements of some outstanding intellectual or another are simply the first steps on the road to the goal, which by no means guarantee that this glorious end will be reached.

Besides excessive emotionality and subjectivity, which are germane to a considerable number of studies and popular publications, there is something else that complicates the objective assessment of our place in the Nobel movement, namely, the Nobel Prize founder’s prerequisite that documents relating to Nobel Committee decisions can be made public knowledge no earlier than 50 years.

Therefore, we can only discuss nominees between 1901 and 1955 inclusively. If, for example, Vasyl Stus and Oles Honchar were considered as candidates for the Nobel Prize, the pertinent documents will be available after 2035.

Yet even if the Ukrainian state, restored in 1991, is officially considered to be without a Nobel Prize winner, this does not mean that we have been standing aside from the process of discovering the world’s best intellectuals.

I believe we have every right to mention eight Nobel laureates who were born on ethnic Ukrainian territories, as well as some 20 laureates who are directly linked with Ukraine. (As studies continue, there may be additions to this list.)

On what do I base my statement about Ukraine’s involvement with the Nobel prizes? What I mean here is the desire to grasp Ukrainian contributions to the civilized progress of mankind.

This process is not nationally unique. Today, most European countries and cultural-autonomous regions have actively joined it. Proof of this is found in the huge numbers of Web sites on this subject.

Even a superficial analysis of the available material attests to the same kind of emotionality that many of us display. For example, Russians consider all those who came from the territories that were once part of the Russian empire and the USSR as “their own” winners. In other words, the Russian list includes Poles, Finns, Belarusians, and other former Soviet citizens, not to mention Ukrainians. This makes a certain amount of sense. Instead of some 10 actual laureates, the Russian Federation believes it has about 40.

It is difficult to achieve consensus in this matter. However, it is possible if the leaders of the global intellectual movement are regarded as islands of unity and understandethnic Ukrainian lands that were at one time part of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, or Czechoslovakia, and who later became US, Israeli, or French citizens, do they not unite these countries and those that became their legal successors? They united them culturally, which is probably a stronger tie than a political one. Dante Alighieri lived in a country other than his homeland, yet he believed that he saw the same sun and sky as in his native land.

ROALD HOFFMANN: UKRAINE IS THE PROMISED LAND OF MY HEART

In 1908 Ilya Mechnikov became the first Nobel laureate who came from Ukraine. He was born in the village of Ivanivka, in what is now Kharkiv oblast. Together with the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich, the French citizen Ilya Mechnikov (Elie Metchnikoff) received the prize in recognition of “his work on immunity.”

In 1944 Isidor Isaac Rabi from the Galician town of Romaniv, in the vicinity of Peremyshl (today: Przemysl in Poland), who later became a US citizen, became the second “Ukrainian” winner of the Nobel Prize “for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.”

In 1952 the American Selman Abraham Waksman, born in the village of Nova Pryluka (today in Vinnytsia oblast), became the third native of Ukraine to be awarded the prize “for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis.”

So far the only “Ukrainian” winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (fourth on the overall Ukrainian list) is Agnon (Shmuel Yosef Halevi Chachkes). He was born in the town of Buchach (today in Ternopil oblast) in 1888. The Nobel Committee awarded the prize to him and the German poet Nelly Sachs, in his case “for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.”

Simon Kuznets, born in Kharkiv in 1901, is fifth on the Ukrainian list of geniuses to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971, “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth.”

Brest-Litovsk (once the Ukrainian town of Berestia) is the place of birth of the 1978 laureate Menachem Begin, born in 1913, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s President Anwar al-Sadat for helping the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Roald Hoffmann, who was born in Zolochiv, Lviv oblast, consistently declared his Ukrainian background. In 1981, he and Kenichi Fuku of Japan shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their theories concerning the course of chemical reactions,” which they developed independently of each other.

Eighth on our list is the French physicist Georges Charpak, who was born in 1924 in Dubrovytsia, Volyn oblast. In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber.”

Since I am approaching the Ukrainian Nobel laureates list primarily from the standpoint of understanding among peoples, there is reason to dwell on its expanded version — in other words, winners who were born into families originating from Ukraine.

Poet Boris Pasternak (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1958) was born in Odesa. His father Leonid Pasternak was a noted painter whose creative legacy includes portraits of Taras Shevchenko. His son Boris went even further, leaving behind excellent translations of poems by Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Pavlo Tychyna, and Maksym Rylsky.

Eric R. Kandel, the American who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2000, was born in Vienna, but his mother came from Kolomyia and his father from Olesko near Lviv. The Kandels wandered from one continent to another during their flight from Nazi persecution.

Saul Bellow (Solomon Bilous), the winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a vivid and indisputable representative of Jewish American prose. But who can deny that his talent is nourished by Odessa-based Jewish humor, which is characterized by irony flavored by acerbic sadness that was carried across the ocean by his Ukrainian ancestors?

How can one ignore the following testimony published in one of the world’s most authoritative reference sources, the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “My parents, Charles Brovarnik and Pearl Gorinstein, were born in Zhytomyr in the Ukraine and came to London in 1908 as part of the vast Jewish immigration”? This is how Herbert C. Brown, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979, begins his autobiography.

In my perhaps emotional conviction, researching Nobel laureates or the history of another prestigious international prize means above all recognizing the large-scale attempts of people throughpation in this competition or experiments and by the will of destiny or historical circumstances, out of some 800 awards nearly 30 were won not by citizens of Ukraine but the US, Israel, and France. (Ukrainian territories, called gubernias, were part of the Russian empire and provinces of its Western neighbors; later we existed as administrative-political regions of the USSR. The Russian Federation, which proclaimed itself the legal successor of the USSR after 1991, claimed as its own the achievements of Nobel laureates who were not only born in Ukraine, but were also connected to it through relatives and other ties).

In addition to the above-mentioned winners who were born in Ukraine (Pasternak, Kendall, Bellow, Brown), I should mention Piotr Kapitsa, who was a descendant of the old Ukrainian aristocratic Stebnytsky family; Milton Friedman, whose parents were born in Zakarpattia; Lev Landau, who became a scientist during the Kharkiv period of his life; and Yitzhak Rabin, whose father was born in Kyiv. This list could be continued. Mikhail Sholokhov, Mikhail Gorbachev, and even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn never denied their Ukrainian roots.

Naturally, we should not hold public discussions about our “sad lot” in relation to the Nobel prizes, like our neighbors do: “As we can see, according to the number of awards thus calculated, vast Russia with its human potential shares the 8th-10th places with Austria and Japan by managing to get ahead of tiny Denmark only in the last year of the 20th century, owing to the fact that the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Academician Zhores Alferov on Oct. 10, 2000. Ahead of us are Holland and Switzerland, neither of which stands out by their territory and population. The situation looks totally hopeless when one compares Russia’s nine awards with those won by scientists in the United States, Great Britain, times, and in the third case, 6.3 times.”

To better understand this statement, we should recall that the US has some 170 Nobel winners; Great Britain and Germany, some 60 each; and France and Sweden, about 20 each.

Today, the Russian Federation and Ukraine are actually on the same level in terms of Nobel Prize winners. You will agree that Russia has some, primarily legal, grounds for claiming Mechnikov, Waksman, and Kuznets, who were born in Ukraine, then part of the former northern empire. But how can they “call their own” Marie Skladowska-Curie, the Polish woman who made her scientific discoveries in France? The same applies to Henryk Sienkiewicz, let alone Finnish nationals.

Unfortunately, these paragraphs are sparked by the moods of the above-mentioned publications. Nobel laureates must be discussed primarily for the purpose of establishing mutually advantageous cooperation within the international scientific community in order to assert a world cult of knowledge.

THROUGH THE PRISM OF FACTS AND OBJECTIVE DATA

Obviously, there is no sense in citing from the well-known list of Ukrainian Nobel hopefuls, which was drawn up by enthusiasts, because this topic is received too emotionally in the circles of our national elite. Therefore, I will deal primarily with undisputed authorities and recognized documents.

On Nov. 26, 1915, Yosyp Zastyrets, Ph.D., sent a letter to the Nobel Committee in Vienna, proposing the candidature of the writer Ivan Franko (both were Austro-Hungarian subjects). Oleksandr Levchenko, the meticulous researcher of Ukrainian Nobeliana, notes that this letter is stored in the Swedish Academy’s archives as Item No. 19, dated 1919. literary or cultural. Franko’s candidature was supported by the Swedish historian Hjarne of Uppsala University.

There are clearly formulated procedures for handling documents at the Nobel Committee. Submissions are received in September. The deadline for submissions is the following February. Candidates are selected in April and May. Their merits are studied in June and August, and committee meetings to select the winners are held in September and October.

Zastyrets’s letter is dated Nov. 26, 1915. Therefore, his proposal concerning Franko could not have been considered because it was late. The next year, 1916, Franko’s candidacy was not considered because he died on May 28. According to the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a deceased candidate is struck from the list.

There have been cases in the Nobel Foundation’s history when prizes were awarded posthumously, but this exception from the rule was not extended to Ivan Franko.

In determining his criteria, Alfred Nobel stressed that the prize for literature is to be awarded to an author who has produced “the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency” or which reflects human ideals. These criteria can be variously interpreted. Such merits may have something to do with works of a humanistic and creative nature and are thus considered a contribution to mankind’s progress.

The Swedish Academy awards authors whose works have been published and won broad public and critical acclaim. Such works are adjudicated by jury members (or experts) who are intellectuals of world caliber (particularly other Nobel laureates).

According to the way he titled himself in his application, Zastyrets was a professor at a gymnasium, doctor of philosophy, and school principal.

In 1915 the prize went to the French prose writer Romain Rolcommittee by the 1912 Nobel laureate Herbert A. Hauptman.

Now the most sensitive question arises: for what reasons besides romantic ones have we been mulling over information about Franko’s nomination (and not just his) for the Nobel Prize for dozens of years? (I specially emphasize the adjective “sensitive” because later I will consider the nomination for this prestigious award of another poet, Vasyl Stus.)

I will not give an answer to this question; let everyone find it out himself. I will add, however, that there is no information concerning Franko and his nomination on the Nobel Committee’s official Web site. (I will be glad to be proven wrong, but a search for information on various sites has not yielded any results. Later I will discuss the kind of information the Nobel Committee is disseminating, particularly with regard to Ukraine.)

Incidentally, there is no open information (dating back to 1901-1955) concerning other possible Nobel candidates: Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Todos Osmachka, and Ulas Samchuk. Samchuk was proposed in 1980, so this information is still closed. As for Vynnychenko, and Osmachka’s self-nomination (forbidden by the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation), most likely everything came to a halt at the initial stage: the submissions were registered and that was all, just like in Franko’s case.

“SPLASH US SOME FRESH RANKS, OH SEA!”

These lines from Pavlo Tychyna’s cycle In the Cosmic Orchestra (1921) can be continued: “Beget giants for us, oh earth!”

A longing for giants of spirit and intellect (and politics and statesmanship, it could be logically added) is already felt by the younger generation. At least this is the impression one gets from research whose content is determined by topical issues of national Nobel studies. Vakhtang Kipiani has disseminated his online essay “Stus and Nobel, the Demystification of a Myth” (Ukrainska Pravda, 22.07.2006), a detailed analysis of documents, publications, and scenarios relating to the topic “Vasyl Stus and the Nobel Prize.”

The most convincing argument about the probability of Stus’s nomination is the claim by his supporters that his candidature was supported by Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll of Germany. Some respectable periodicals even informed their readers that the prestigious award had already been conferred on the poet, but his death changed everything.

However, there is no documented proof of this. Although it is true that Boll urged the Soviet government to show a humane attitude to the political prisoner, he made no mention of Vasyl Stus as a Nobel candidate.

The fact is that in the latter months of 1984 an international committee was set up in Toronto to help the process of awarding the Nobel Prize to Vasyl Stus in 1986. The committee included intellectuals from the Ukrainian Diaspora and members of the international community. Its immediate objective was to translate Stus’s works into English and popularize his name throughout the world. The committee members’ activities were cut short by the news of his death. The Stus case is the same as the Franko case.

The inference from both situations cannot remain uninfluenced by the general Ukrainian sociopolitical situation. Until we have a full-fledged literary process, with its leaders accessing other worlds where other languages are spoken, we cannot hope for international recognition.

Governments keep changing in Ukraine, but the critical situation remains unchanged, particularly in the book-publishing sphere and the cultural-educational domain in general. Stagnation in the sphere of humanities in Ukraine continues against the backdrop of intense Russification in every sphere of Ukrainian life, which was launched by tsarist Russia and has now reached a point where it threatens Ukraine’s national security and future as an independent country.

Ukraine is still absent from the European and world information space, and medium-level English language publications a la Mykola chuk’s list” that represents Ukrainian literature in the world. It is topped by the author followed by his wife, Natalka Bilotserkivets, Andrii Bondar, Halyna Kruk, Oleh Lysheha, Vasyl Makhno, and Serhii Zhadan. Clearly, each of these writers is interesting and original, to use a modern cliche. In our opinion, however, only Yurii Andrukhovych should be mentioned, because his works are being translated throughout the world, and with his concrete presence in Europe (where he lives and takes part in various public and cultural-political events) he can claim international recognition.

There is every reason to see next to Andrukhovych Vasyl Holoborodko, who is not on the Riabchuk list. Indeed, this poet does not live in the capital, but his works have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, Polish, Serbian, and other languages. His books are being published in the world. In other words, Holoborodko has long been at the center of spiritual, cultural, and intellectual Ukraine.

The statement above is a discrete thought and does not claim to be a discussion.

Riabchuk is an example of the subjective approach to Ukrainian literature, which in turn reflects the world perception of this literary critic. How can one fail to notice the creativity of writers like Lina Kostenko or Mykola Vinhranovsky, who can never be accused of lacking a truly independent stand in both the creative and public domain? The high creative level of their poetry is beyond question.

Yet how can all this be judged in the absence of literary and art criticism and periodicals in Ukraine, ones that would be adequate to our cultural needs? Literature has been crowded out of the national information space.

The Ukrainian writer today is locked not in an ivory tower but one whose walls are made of indifference, lack of culture, and egotistical political confrontation. That is why only enthusiasts are preoccupied by the subject of Nobel prizes and Ukraine.

NOBEL CORRESPONDENT YAKOV NOVIKOV: IGNORED BY OUR NATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDISTS, AND OUR REAL NOMINEES

It may also be symptomatic that my romantic discussions of Nobel topics have not once touched on those individuals who have collaborated with the Nobel Committee since its inception.

The first of these was the Odesa-born writer and sociologist Yakov Novikov, who was born in Odesa in 1849. His works were published in Russia, US, and Europe. His sociological-cultural study The Russian People remains topical. Novikov was a member of the Standing Commission of the International Peace Bureau (he was a representative of Ukraine at this international organization) and a pacifist. He was active at a time when our continent was under the influence of ideas expressed in the slogans of the struggle for a United States of Europe. (We are now witnessing the realization of this idea, the brainchild of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803.)

Our fellow countryman was a man of advanced world views, who keenly responded to the challenges of the day. In 1902-1912 Novikov and his colleagues submitted 10 names to the Nobel Committee, 9 of which were accepted. Swiss journalist Elie Ducommun (1833-1905), one of the founders of the International Peace Bureau (Pacifist Coordinating Center in Europe), received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902. In 1905 the prize went to the Austrian writer Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914), author of Die Waffen nieder (Lay down Your Arms), a novel that won international acclaim. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of her meritorious efforts to uphold peace in Europe.

Another successful submission made by Novikov was the Italian journalist Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1833-1918) who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907 for what was referred to as the special significance of his articles and public appearances that fostered underWars, Insurrections and Peace in the Nineteenth Century published in 1903-1910.

The Novikov-nominated French diplomat and champion of peace, Paul Henri d’Estournelles de Constant (1852-1924) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1909 for concluding successful arbitration accords between France and neighboring countries.

Among Novikov’s other successful submissions was the Austrian publisher and journalist Alfred Hermann Fried (1864-1921). The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Fried in 1911 in recognition of this “most hardworking pacifist author.”

Apart from the Odesite Novikov, submissions were made by S. Sirchynsky, member of the State Council from Kyiv, and F. Kleinwechter, Ph.D. (Economics) from Chernihiv.

We have documented proof that among the Nobel Peace nominees from Ukraine in 1901-1955 were Mykhailo Tyshkevych (1857-1930), Maksym Kovalevsky (1851-1916), and Osvald Baltser (1858-1933).

Kyivite Mykhailo Tyshkevych, whose name was submitted in 1910, 1911, and 1927, was the founder and president of the Kyiv Society of Peace Supporters. He was nominated by Sirchynsky, Andrii Bohutsky (member of the State Duma), and Gerhard Boncal (member of the French Parliament).

Information on Tyshkevych can be found in Ukrainian encyclopedias. He was born on Nov. 7, 1857, in the village of Andrukhivka, Kyiv gubernia. A descendant of an old Ukrainian aristocratic family, he was a count and the owner of considerable estates. He had an artistic education. After meeting the historian Volodymyr Antonovych, he became engrossed in Ukrainian affairs. As a patron, he supported students. As a politician, he was a champion of Ukrainian autonomy, and published articles on Ukrainian topics in the European press. As a member of the Directory, he officially represented the Ukrainian National Republic at the Holy See, led the Ukrainian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, and headed the UNR’s diplomatic mission in France. In the last years of his life Tyshkevych withdrew from politics and died in the Polish town of Gniezno near Poznan.

In 1912 the members of a Russian interparliamentary group submitted the name of the parliamentarian, Prof. M. Kovalevsky, to the Nobel Committee. The future historian, jurist, public and political figure was born on Sept. 2, 1851, in Kharkiv. He studied at the local university and later taught at the universities of Moscow, Stockholm, Oxford, and St. Petersburg. Persecuted by the Russian authorities for his democratic views, he was forced to live abroad. In 1901 he founded a higher school of social sciences in Paris, where Mykhailo Hrushevsky taught history. After returning home he was elected to the State Duma. He took part in Ukrainian political and cultural life and protested against tsarist persecution of the Ukrainian language. He published the journal Vestnik Evropy and edited the encyclopedic publication The Ukrainian People in their Past and Present.

In 1926 the Law Faculty of Lviv University submitted the name of a local professor, Osvald Baltser, to the Nobel Committee as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize (on Prof. P. Dabkowski’s initiative). The future history professor was born on Jan. 23, 1858, in Khodoriv and studied at the Lviv, Jagiellonian (Cracow), and Berlin universities. He taught at Lviv University from 1887 until his death.

Unfortunately, all three of these Ukrainian nominees were not awarded the prestigious international award. To sweeten the bitterness of their failures, I will open several more pages of the Nobel archives. Nobel laureate Ilya Mechnikov from Kharkiv was nominated in 1901, 1902, 1903, and 1904 until he was awarded the prize in 1908. The prominent Russian author Leo Tolstoy was nominated several times in 1901-1909, but never received the award. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the members of an Austrian interparliamentary group in 1901.

The initiator of the 1899 Hague Conference also did not measure up. Communist dictator Joseph Stalin was nominated twice, in 1945 and 1948, first by Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was also a member of the Nobel Committee, and then by Prof. Vladislav Riger of Charles University in Prague. Before the Second World War, Adolf Hitler was nominated by a Swedish parliamentarian named E. Brandt. Hitler’s like-minded comrade Benito Mussolini was nominated in 1935.

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In the well-known fable a fox who fails to reach a cluster of grapes thinks they are sour. If we continue our romantic talk about the Nobel Prize without doing anything, we will find ourselves in a similar situation.