<I>Spodvyzhnyky</I>: Political Milieu of Lesia Ukrayinka
Recently, Osnovni Tsinnosti [Fundamental values], an SDPU(O)-sponsored publishing house, released a new book by prominent literary critic Alla Dyba, Spodvyzhnyky [Brethren]: Lesia Ukrayinka in the Circle of Social Democrats. A culmination of over two decades of scholarly research, this book is discussed in the interview with Alla DYBA below:
“Who originated the idea to write this book? How did it all begin?”
“It probably began in 1975, when fresh out of the Kyiv Shevchenko University I went to work in the Kyiv Museum of Lesia Ukrayinka, where I was offered to research the topic of Lesia Ukrayinka and Social Democrat Serhiy Merzhynsky. It was then that I made the first steps in my scholarly quest and met (initially by correspondence) prominent Lviv-based researcher Leonila Mishchenko. Meanwhile, one of my first scholarly trips was to Minsk for ten days. Yet materials collected and amassed with time required some actual representation. In my museum, I staged thematic exhibitions, soirees, and attended conferences. I began to publish some results of my research in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly collections. Shortly afterward I was even offered to prepare a small book on this topic. I wrote some basic texts and had the first cover layout prepared. But...”
“So why was that first edition of the book never published?”
“It was the time of the infamous 1991 coup, which disrupted not only publishing plans. The society experienced what Maksym Slavynsky, a fellow of Lesia Ukrayinka, described in one of his articles in the early days of World War I as a gigantic tornado that has pulled into its whirlwind the peoples of Europe, “wiping out all the mainstays of a political equilibrium that had been preserved with so much pains, destroying territorial boundaries, and setting in motion racial and national molecules, which, as if in a gigantic retort, mix, attract, and repulse, obeying the laws of attraction and repulsion.” The world has changed since then, much like Ukraine and we have. For this reason, the new edition of the book looks significantly different in many respects and has a somewhat different content, since in the Soviet period I would not have been able to speak so freely, if at all, about the pursuit of statehood by Lesia Ukrayinka and her associates, did not know about (and if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to quote from) the book by Slavynsky, The Nation State Problem in the USSR, didn’t know of the historical and political science studies by Valentyna Hoshovska and Yury Lavrinenko.”
“The book quotes many old documents of the gendarme department. How, when, and where did you manage to obtain and study these documents and incorporate them into you work?”
“At one time I and my colleagues, then deputy directors for research at the Kyiv Museum of Lesia Ukrayinka and now doctors of philology Borys Shalahinov and Vadym Skurativsky, and later curator of our museum and prominent researcher of the life and work of Lesia Ukrayinka, candidate in pedagogy Hryhory Avrakhov, sent queries to dozens of archives across the former USSR. Subsequently, I worked in many of them myself. From those and other museums we received photocopies of the documents we needed. They became exhibits of the Kyiv Museum of Lesia Ukrayinka and formed a documentary groundwork for the future essays appearing in Spodvyzhnyky. Understandably, today for many political and economic reasons such work would be much more difficult. Thus, the book is also unique in this respect.”
“The book contains a very interesting and detailed chronicle of the public and political life of Lesia Ukrayinka, in particular her ties with Social Democrats. Who originated the idea to create this special manual?”
“The literary editor of the book, Mr. Vasyl Khopta, offered me to prepare a section Lesia Ukrayinka: Milestones of Political and Public Life. He once mentioned that in the famous book by Anatoly Kostenko, Lesia Ukrayinka, that had been published as part of the Zhyttia Slavetnykh [Lives of the Great] Series, such a chronology of events appeared in a separate section. It seemed to us that this chronicle, designed to show the evolution of public and political views of the poetess and make her personal portrait more pronounced, would not be superfluous in the closing section of the book after the main unifying essay (Ukraine Will Become a Political Force no Matter What) and the list of references. I’m glad that our idea has not proved vain.”
“Why is Spodvyzhnyky dedicated to Leonila Mishchenko?”
“Because she is the person, whose research (in particular her fundamental source study Political Poetry of Lesia Ukrayinka) motivated me to delve into the creative world of Lesia Ukrayinka, into her unique milieu, and into the source base that helped study her phenomenon, this being the fundamental of all fundamentals not in literature study alone. It was Leonila Mishchenko, Ph.D. in philology and professor at the Lviv Ivan Franko National University, who was among the first to notice my deep interest in this theme. She supported me in every possible way, tried for a long time to convince me to write a candidate dissertation, and offered to be my research advisor. Unfortunately, dramatic circumstances in my life made this impossible. This is why today I am truly happy to dedicate and present this book to my research advisor, even if unofficial. I am also morally indebted to those people, who helped me with research. These are not only my Minsk colleagues — writer and public figure Serhiy Hrakhovsky, doctor and journalist Yakiv Basin, and prominent Belarusian historian, philosopher, and pedagogue Mykhailo Iosko — but also staff of the Museum of the First Congress of the Social Democratic Party Council and Volodymyr Rumyantsev, the son of the owner of the conspiratorial apartment that housed the congress, and the families of Chyrykov and Posse, Shvedov-Tupchansky and Radzimovsky-Tupchansky, Merezhynsky, Kryvyniuk, Lindfors-Zhdanovych, Slavynsky, historian Serhiy Bilokin, literary critics Hryhory Avrakhov, Hryhory Zlenko, Anatol Kostenko, Oleksandr Doon, Fedir Pohrebennyk, Oleksiy Stavytsky, Oleksandr Rysak, Larysa Miroshnychenko, Oksana Fisun, Tamara Borysyk (Skrypka), Tetiana Tretiachenko, Yevheniya Deich, Stepan Kaban, Roksana Skorulska, Maryna Chuyeva, Iryna Shcherbaniuk, as well as staff of countless archives, museums, and libraries. In the course of our cooperation, many of these people have become my good friends, and this is why it is so important for me to thank each one of them.”
“The book has a very nice design. Who designed the layout? It looks quite contemporary, while simultaneously its content and design go back to the epoch of Ukrainian modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. How did you manage to achieve this interesting effect?”
“The book design in fact reminds one of the design of books published during the lifetime of Lesia Ukrayinka and Vasyl Stefanyk. Even in our artistic concept we relied on the rich creative traditions of Ukrainian book publishing, combining them with modern computer technologies. I am sincerely grateful to artist Oleksandra Khrebtova for not only heeding all my wishes but also for using her talent to create an inimitable face for the book. The result is before us. My only regret is that the footnotes do not mention the name of artist and poet Vitaly Hubenko, whose original portrait of Lesia Ukrayinka dated 1971 has been used in the cover design and has become the calling card of the book, for which I am sincerely grateful to Mr. Hubenko himself and to my good friend, soloist with the National Bandurists Choir of Ukraine, prominent collector, art critic, and poet Yevhen Doroshkevych, who provided this portrait along with other interesting materials.”
“Incidentally, the two big sections of illustrations in the book feature several unique leaflets from the private collection of Yevhen Doroshkevych. Moreover, the book is extremely rich in illustrations. How and where did you collect them? Most of the photos are unique, according to the inscriptions, and have been published for the first time. Whence such illustrative richness?”
“The book in fact has a rich iconographic appendix — nearly eighty illustrations, which create an inimitable visual sequence for each essay in the book, thereby making the essays more pronounced and profound. These materials, much like everything else in the book, took decades to collect. This is a result of years of my cooperation with all those people, whom I already mentioned, in particular the descendants of the relatives and friends of Lesia Ukrayinka. The originals of unique photos from their familial albums have been added to the fund of the Kyiv Museum of Lesia Ukrayinka. I am happy to have found these priceless photos, grateful to museum photographer Valentyn Bondarenko, who duplicated them for me, and grateful to the Osnovni Tsinnosti Publishing House staff, who agreed to include these illustrations in the book. In my view, they have enriched it, while my profiles of prominent figures of the epoch and milieu of Lesia Ukrayinka have become more visual and closer to us thanks to those photos.”
“Who initiated the preparation of the new, fuller, and more fundamental edition of this book? Whom do you, as its author, owe the realization of this project?”
“Above all I owe it to my dear fellow scholars and my children, who encouraged me to revisit my older studies, believing that their source study potential could make them useful even in our difficult epoch, while as a documentary source it could be interesting to our descendants. Of course, I am sincerely grateful to the staff of the Osnovni Tsinnosti Publishing House, people who not only took interest in the materials I have collected but also showed great tolerance and patience, while I was finishing the book and while I together with the editors went through the book with a fine-tooth comb. Given the fact that Spodvyzhnyky appeared in a most difficult period of my life — when I was recovering from a major operation immediately after my dear parents died — the book itself and all those people involved in making it helped me live and survive. Among those whom I would like to thank sincerely are publishing house director Olena Levchenko, literary editor Vasyl Khopta, and technical editor Halyna Shalashenko. Moreover, I would like to note that Spodvyzhnyky appeared as part of the Spadshchyna [Heritage] Series, which is published in close cooperation with the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united). Although I far from always support the ideas of SDPU(O) and often do not understand some of their actions in the public and political fields, I believe that only by tangible and good deeds in the name of Ukraine’s progress can we pave our own road to the future. I remember as in March 2001 I received a letter full of despair from my Lviv colleague, writer, and director of the Ivan Franko Museum Roman Horak. He then told me about yet another fire set to the Franko Memorial in Nahuyevychi. I showed this dreadful letter to my son and he to his friends. And soon thanks to SDPU(O) the Nahuyevychi Museum was renovated. This is a tangible and important deed. If those in power in this country have the money and ways, then I think they should do something good and tangible for their own country and its people. The editions dedicated to Bohdan Kistiakivsky, Yulian Bachynsky, and Lesia Ukrayinka will no doubt go down in history as such deeds in the name of the future.”
“Mrs. Dyba, are you a member of any party, and what views do you uphold?”
“I have never been a member of the Communist Party, neither am I today a member of any political party and have no such intention. My family has always professed tolerance and moderation, while my father, who had been goaded to join the party until the day he retired, always dismissed such invitations by saying that he was not mature enough to join. Moreover, we have always remembered that our predecessors were in fact the best representatives of the old Ukrainian intelligentsia — from Cossack recorder Kanevsky to his descendant Blahochynny, the museum philanthropists Tarnovskys, teachers, agronomists, and nurses. Some were forced to emigrate from Ukraine during the revolution, while others, as Reverends Hryhory Radetsky and Ivan Kanevsky, were deported and executed in the 1930s. For this reason, we always treated the authorities with caution, careful to keep our distance, and thus none of us pursue either an official or party career.”
“Ms. Dyba, in your study you have touched on numerous complex and sometimes thorny issues, in particular the problem of interethnic relations. What did you pursue within this context?”
“Fortunately or not, such problems always exist and therefore are quite relevant today, while their roots go back many centuries. I found it very interesting to study how Lesia Ukrayinka and her brethren Maksym Slavynsky, Pavlo Tuchapsky, and Mykhailo Kryvyniuk understood and interpreted these problems. For this very reason I found it necessary to dwell in more detail on the book by Maksym Slavynsky, Nation State Problem in the USSR, and on the correspondence between Lesia Ukrayinka and Mykhailo Kryvyniuk. Incidentally, Lesia Ukrayinka is often associated with two diametrically opposed notions. Some consider her a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist, while others view her as an uncompromising and hard-line internationalist. In my view, however, she was rather a proponent of European national patriotism, which was also supported by Garibaldi, Masaryk, and Charles de Gaulle. Lesia Ukrayinka did not tolerate social, national, or any other subjugation, even if out of necessity or as part of some stage on the way toward a better future. This had always been a painful issue for her. Evidence of this are her letters, dramas, lyrics, and articles. For this reason she always sought some righteous way in Ukraine’s quest for statehood. For this reason, in one of her letters to Mykhailo Kryvyniuk in 1903 she wrote, “It is time to state once and for all that the ‘neighborly peoples’ are only neighbors, which, although bound by common thrall, essentially have no common interests, and for this reason they should continue side by side but independently, without interfering with the neighbor’s internal affairs.” I think that if we the descendants listened to these opinions, there would have been no Afghanistan, Chechnya, Karabakh, Transnistria, or Tuzla — I mean not the geographical names but the bitter metaphors they have become in political science. Then in the past century Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus would have a somewhat different and not so tragic history. But, unfortunately, history has no alternatives to what has been.”
“What are your regrets? Is there anything uncompleted you would like to make up for in the future?”
“I am very sorry that while the book was being written Mykhailo Iosko, Anatol Kostenko, and Serhiy Hrakhovsky died, while I haven’t heard from my good friend Yakiv Basin from Minsk for the past four years and have been unable to find him. Much has been left untold in my book, as I did not have the opportunity to dwell on the complex personal and political destiny of Lesia Ukrayinka’s brother Mykola Kosach and cousins Anton and Pavlo Shymanovsky, did not pay enough attention to the Kovalevsky family, the similarities and differences between the sociopolitical views of Lesia Ukrayinka and her parents, uncle Mykhailo Drahomanov, and aunts Olena and Oleksandra Kosach. This would have made the personal portrait of Lesia Ukrayinka only more pronounced. I dream (but will I ever live to accomplish it?) of writing a separate book about Serhiy Merzhynsky. I also hope that now that I work in the Department of Manuscript Funds and Textual Studies of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences and have direct access to sources (creative archives of Lesia Ukrayinka and other classics of Ukrainian literature) I will be able to delve deeper still into my favorite theme, and, consequently, ther e will be new ideas, quests, and books.”
