Suchasnist [Contemporaneity] And Its Contemporaries

Kyiv’s Planetarium hall hosted presentation ceremony of the Suchasnist magazine’s annual prize, which was held precisely under the imaginative model of the open space. What distinguished this ceremony from the previous ones was reminding the audience of the magazine’s venerable age: forty years since the first issue came out and eight years since the magazine began to be published in Ukraine. The winners who contributed to the Suchasnist during the year 2000 were greeted and honored with traditional literary-patriotic speeches mostly dealing with Ukraine’s lamentable state compared with the European cultural universe. Ivan Dziuba, Suchasnist’s former editor-in-chief and now chairman of its editorial council, announced the names of Oksana Pakhlovska, literary critic (for the article “Ukraine’s Men of the Sixties: The Philosophy of Revolt,” Suchasnist, 2000, No. 4), Ihor Losev, political scientist (for a series of articles on sore spots in Russian- Ukrainian relations in recent years, 2000, Nos. 6-8 and 11-12, 2000), and Moisei Fishbein, poet (for a selection of poems in No. 1 and Total Rush poetic series, No. 12). This choice did not surprise the audience, as well as the symbolic sum of the prize emphasizing the nonmaterial value of the winners’ creative work.