“Laboratory” of European thinking

“In my opinion, there are two types of publications. One is a ‘tree’ that has taken deep roots in and feeds off the sap of the national soil, while its branches and crown are reaching high into the sky. This tree may be broken by winds, lose leaves, go through good or bad times, but it always stays alive. It circulates the sap, provides shelter, and bears fruit. The other type of publications is the ‘advertisement post.’ Yes, it may be very convenient, easy-to-handle, and functional, but…”

This is the already well-known opinion of Larysa IVSHYNA, editor in chief of Den/The Day, which she expressed in her “Word to the Reader” in Extract 150, a new publication in the Den/The Day Library series.

Undoubtedly, these words apply, first of all, to Den, a daily whose pages have for over 13 years been drawing inspiration from deep national—historical, cultural, and philosophical—roots rather than from sensational news items or crime stories. Den can be said to have borrowed this approach to newspaper-making from the characteristic Ukrainian life philosophy, in which the tree of life is one of the fundamental symbols. This philosophical “invention” of our forefathers allows us to interpret the latter-day developments in a special way—by looking attentively into the past, on the one hand, and clearly outlining future prospects, on the other.

The figure of a “life tree,” which Ms. Ivshyna used to illustrate Den’s attitude, is at the same time an appropriate metaphor for understanding what Extract 150, a collection of the newspaper’s most high-profile publications in the past 12 years, is. Selecting texts for the book, we not only relied on our biased vision of what is best. Above all, we took into account the opinions of our precious contributors and no less precious readers. It turned out that many articles in this two-volume publication, which saw the light of day in the 1990s and dealt with the fundamental problems of Ukrainian development, still remain topical today. Why did it happen? What does this mean? Extract 150 gives an exhaustive answer to these questions. It can be summarized in one phrase that Ms. Ivshyna said in the foreword: “Acquiring experience is quite a difficult job for society…”

“I could say this book is endless,” said Volodymyr PANCHENKO, Doctor of Sciences (Philology), member of the presidium of Ukraine’s National Union of Writers, member of the Academic Coordination Board in Literary Studies, a professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, on the eve of the Extract 150 presentation in Lviv (incidentally, it is Prof. Panchenko who advanced the idea of publishing this book). “The book has no time limits. When the publication had already been prepared for printing, Den carried some more articles which I personally remember very well.”

HARMONIOUS POLYPHONY

Extract 150 has epitomized the most valuable ideas and thoughts of a large number of our highly-intellectual contributors. They sometimes take different stands on a certain problem, but this in no way prevents them from remaining on the side Ukrainian society. Professor Petro KRALIUK, Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), member of Ukraine’s National Union of Writers, First Vice Rector of the National University of Ostroh Academy, said: “Some might say that these views are somewhat unconventional and are not shared by everybody. But I think views like these are readily shared by intellectuals—the people who can think. Extract 150 represents a lot of authors, it shows polyphony of views, but it is harmonious polyphony.”

“These two volumes have confirmed that we have brilliant authors. After all, nobody has ever doubted this. I wish the media more often spotlighted these individuals,” Mr. Panchenko said and then recalled, “When I was a graduate student at Odesa State University, my colleague, poet, literature researcher, and satirist Mykhailo Strelbytsky said this phrase: a society should know how to hide its fools. What we have is just the reverse, i.e., those whom Strelbytsky called fools have captured all TV screens now, whereas the wise ones are being hidden. The newspaper Den’s strong point is that it shows the light of intellect aimed at analyzing our present through the prism of the past.”

“Extract 150 follows the best traditions of Den’s quality standards. The first thing that impresses you in the book is ‘presence’ of the Ukrainian elite,” said, in support of Panchenko’s view, Yevhenia SOKHATSKA, chairperson of the All-Ukrainian Ivan Ohienko Society, a professor at the Department of the History of Ukrainian Literature and Comparative Studies of Kamianets-Podilsky National Ivan Ohienko University, “the illustrious names of Mykola Zhulynsky, Yevhen Marchuk, Yurii Shapoval, Stanislav Kulchytsky… I am very pleased that my modest name is also among them. Extract 150 has confirmed again that Den and its editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna first of all highlight people—perhaps little-known but honest and staunch. This is why Den is popular in Kamianets-Podilsky. It is called an intellectual newspaper, and newsagents can see people literally fighting for its Friday issue. Always broaching socially important subjects, Den assumes vital and I would say exalted importance.”

Among the authors of this book is also the artist Anatolii Kazansky. He has unfortunately departed this life, but his cartoons always prove to be prophetic. “Although he has no longer been with us for over ten years, his sketched prophesies are still on first pages and, from now on, on the covers of our library’s books. These sketches are sometimes even more topical than texts,” says Ms. Ivshyna in the preface to Extract 150.

“It is quite symbolic that the book’s first volume depicts a Baron M nchhausen of sorts, who is trying to pull himself out of the swamp by his own hair. It seems to me we must do the same, i.e., pull ourselves out of the quagmire we are in by our own effort,” Kraliuk said, interpreting the book’s cover, “for, unfortunately, there are not many institutions and organizations in this country that can help us do so. What our national TV channels and tabloids are doing is nothing but trampling Ukrainians down into a quagmire. The newspaper Den/The Day is one of the few institutions that are trying, in spite of a difficult situation, to pull us out of the swamp.”

THE “OZONE LAYER” OF SOCIETY

Den means not only our acclaimed academics but also, to a large extent, our readers. The newspaper would not have established itself without the latter. The Den’s Mail section, now an integral part of the book, shows that they are shaping us and our newspaper’s “destiny as much as the newspaper is shaping its readers. Naturally, there are stories much to Den’s heart’s delight, such as “Anna’s List” which we often refer to—and deservedly so. For is it not the ability to influence human destinies that measures the effectiveness of a publication? Is it not the very thing by which it tries to gain the right to exist in society?

“The ozone layer is also thin, but it actually keeps our planet alive. And intellectuals are the ‘ozone layer’ of a society—they are not only ‘ex cathedra’ people but also the readers who write us letters. We placed some of our readers’ letters in the second volume, which strikingly show a firm spirit, wisdom, and intellectual charm in communication, details, knowledge, and learnedness,” Ms. Ivhyna recently told Radio Liberty, speaking about Den’s novel publication.

By analogy with the well-known proverb “A man is known by the company he keeps,” we can say that our company is the entire thinking and reading Ukraine.

“A newspaper can really change human destinies, which I think also occurred to me. Let me tell you about what once happened in my life. It was very important for me, and, incidentally, some say it was only natural. In 2003 we celebrated the 85th anniversary of Kamianets-Podislky University. I was very much depressed at the time because, although the Ivan Ohienko Society had been pressing for naming this first Ukrainian state university after its founder, we met with a refusal,” Yevhenia Sokhatska reminisces. “As I can remember, it was Dmytro Tabachnyk, a vice-premier in the Viktor Yanukovych government, who played an especially nasty role in this. We were close to being awarded national status, but being named for Ohienko was out of the question. And it was Larysa Ivshyna who dispelled that sadness. She came as part of a governmental delegation to celebrate our university’s anniversary. While all the VIPs with Volodymyr Lytvyn at the head quickly ran away to attend Oleksandr Moroz’s birthday party, Ivshyna came onto the stage and said a really heartfelt word about the problems of national education, historical memory, and spirituality. This is who I began to collaborate with the newspaper.”

Although our intellectual Ukraine is disjointed, we are trying to unite it into a single productive field. I mean very concrete things. For example, it is during the launching of Extract 150 that Oxana Pachliowska and Petro Kraliuk met at last.

The idea of Ukraine’s internal integration also lies behind Ms. Ivshyna’s visits to this country’s universities, which was then summarized in the album-book My Universities. What prompted young people to accept this idea was foundation of the Ostroh Free Debate Youth Club.

“I would also call Den an experiment station of sorts, at which we nurture ideas and outline major initiatives which the state can and must adopt,” Ms. Ivshyna also says in the preface to Extract 150.

The idea of Ukraine’s internal integration also pervades the Den photo exhibition which, incidentally, opens for the 13th time on Friday this week.

Volodymyr Panchenko put emphasis on this function of the newspaper at the Lviv ceremony:

“The newspaper Den and its editor have totally reconsidered and transformed the very idea of a newspaper as such. By all accounts, a newspaper can be something more than just a newspaper—it is also a people’s mouthpiece and a movable people’s university (if you recall the Itinerant Artists). The tours of universities made by the editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna and the invited contributors is a very important mission which prompts me to use a metaphor. There are some ‘islets’ of intellect, thought and culture, which sometimes are unaware of each other. So the newspaper Den is uniting them into an ‘archipelago.’ And the newspaper’s super-goal is to create a ‘mainland.’ It is very important that these islets feel as is they were a whole. For what we really lack is the feeling of self-sufficient integrity.”

CULTURE IN THE CONDITIONS OF BARBARITY

The above-mentioned initiatives of Den’s “laboratory” as such would have no sense if they were not based on a certain position and a reliable philosophical platform.

“Once we were established in 1997, we stated that we would promote the construction of a civil society—even though this looked a bit exotic in the atmosphere of the 1990s. I would say Den has been in opposition to the largest part of the journalist world since 1997. After the night of the 1999 [presidential] elections, when Ukraine failed to jump over the political abyss, I said a ‘Napoleonic’ phrase at an editorial briefing, where half the journalists were absent (as a saying goes, a defeat is an orphan): ‘From now on we will be dealing with society.’ For when the limits of freedom are being narrowed, one should go upwards,” Ms. Ivshyna says in the preface.

And although we are still smarting from that unused chance, the experience “digested” and concentrated in Extract 150 can be regarded as another chance which can only be used if it is well understood.

“This is sort of Ariadne’s thread which shows the way that society and we have gone in the past 12 years. I am inclined to believe that the newspaper Den has been a good pilot,” Den’s editor in chief says.

“We can often hear the word ‘Ukrainocentrism’ which Larysa Ivshyna also uses. But is of paramount importance that this Ukrainocentrism is not provincial, that it does not focus on itself,” says Prof. Oxana Pachliowska, holder of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the Sapienza University of Rome, research fellow at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature (incidentally, in addition to attending the launching of Extract 150 at the Lviv Forum of Publishers, Ms. Pachliowska also launched her own book, Ave, Europa!, published by Pulsary). “No other print media in Ukraine have done so much for the development of relations between Ukraine and Poland, Ukraine and Europe as a whole, as Den has. I also mean addressing the Russian, Jewish, and Tatar problems. This newspaper highlights and tackles all the painful Ukrainian issues in the European key.

“When I began working at Rome University in 1991, when Ukraine had just become independent, I felt ‘white’ envy, reading the most popular French, British, and Italian newspapers, which organically combined politics, culture, sociology, and philosophy. Every day a European citizen buys a newspaper and, although they turn its pages in between cakes and coffee, their consciousness organically absorbs a lot of cultural elements. Den is sort of a phantasmagoric—in our conditions — ‘laboratory’ of European thinking, which has achieved a synthesis of three elements, i.e., politics, sociology, and culture.

“However, this newspaper was born and is developing not in Western Europe, where there have been in fact no problems with cultural development and where the state has always cared for the development of culture. This newspaper grew in the conditions of the outright cultural barbarity of our post-Soviet governmental, cultural, and other institutions. For example, 36 million hryvnias have been spent on the organization of a few recent visits of the prime minister, while the state has been spending an annual 1,200,000 on book printing, which is considered, incidentally, an awfully large amount. I am not talking about the color of political figures, for any color becomes the color of deception and uncultured attitudes — in the conditions when tremendous amounts of money are being wasted on empty rhetoric and where culture is the last thing the state is thinking of.

“This is why Den is the creator of intellectual journalism in the conditions of downright cultural barbarity. One can, of course, treat Den as just a newspaper, but in reality it is an intellectual ‘laboratory.’ What is, in my view, interesting in it is the combination of journalism and historiography. Just a few years ago I personally could not imagine that I would be contributing to a newspaper. This seemed unnatural to me because there are scholarly journals, after all. But Den, with its extremely effective formula, is now the most effective instrument of propagating scholarly knowledge. We are still unable to assess impartially what Den is doing to reconstruct our historical memory, for we are participants in this process. But I think the role of Den will be duly appreciated in a few years’ time. For historical memory is not just the presentation of sorrowful information but the construction of a certain ethics of relationship with the existing knowledge.”

“The newspaper Den is not just an informational publication. It is a creative atmosphere that contributes to the raising of a civil society,” says Yevhenia Sokhatska. “It is telling that Extract 150 is being launched in Lviv, a city permeated with the European spirit. I think such presentations should be held in all the cities and universities of Ukraine.”

We are certain to take Ms. Sokhatska’s opinion into account. We hope that the entire Ukraine, from Ostroh and Cherkasy to and beyond Dnipropetrovsk, will shortly see and read Extract 150. For as long as intellectual Ukraine is drawing support from such people as Pachliowska, Kraliuk, Sokhatska, and Panchenko, Ostroh and Kamianets-Podilsky will never be called a province. You will agree, after all, that geography is a secondary thing in this matter.

COMMENTARIES

Maria TYTARENKO, lecture, Department of the Foreign Press and Information, Lviv Ivan Franko National University:

“I already have a Ukrainian version of James Mace materials from the Den Library. I was looking for another one to present my friends with but, unfortunately, all had been sold out. Now I am planning to get your new two-volume publication, Extract 150. Regrettably, I could not attend the launching of Larysa Ivshyna’s My Universities, for I was on a business trip abroad, but I still want to get hold of one. Naturally, I browse through Den’s internet version, but I not always find what interests me in the archives. I subscribed to Den after the presentation. I am now suggesting to your editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna that she publish articles by Serhii Krymsky and Oxana Pachliowska as separate books. This would be very interesting.”

Maria YAKUBOVSKA, chairperson, Lviv regional branch, Ukraine’s National Union of Writers:

“Out of all the other endless Forum events, I chose the launching of Extract 150 because this was projected from the very beginning as an intellectual action—first of all, because of interesting intellectual authors. I was eager to hear their opinion on the current state of politics and philosophy. Secondly, I always attend all the events organized by Den — above all in order to hear what the editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna will say. I always find it interesting.”

Marta PYSARCHUK, second-year student, Journalism Faculty, Lviv Ivan Franko National University:

“I have bought this book to read and learn a lot of things. I hope I will manage to correct some of my mistakes because the book’s articles were written by people who have extensive life experience.”

Iryna FARION, Associate Professor, Ukrainian Language Department, National University of Lviv Polytechnic; member of the Lviv Oblast Council, Svoboda association faction:

“I think that a state’s main capital is by no means its natural resources or financial capacities. A state’s main capital is its people. The newspaper Den cooperates with the people who are symbols of our culture. I was personally attracted by the names Kraliuk, Sokhatska, and Panchenko. Kraliuk is interesting to me as an historian, for he researches national identity in the 16th and 17th centuries, which is our source, and if we do not know our sources, we will lose any prospects.

“It was in fact interesting for me to see the opinion and vision of those people and hear about the current state of affairs. But I am making the following conclusion in this context: your newspaper bears a very commonplace title—Den (“day”). We do not count The Days of our lifetime, for this would only narrow the time span. I would like to wish you to create an era day by day. I think you can manage to do so if you continue collaborating with such contributors.

“One more piece of advice: please use the word ‘Ukrainian’ more often than the word ‘European.’ Europe is interesting because it is varied and multicolored, and the riot of colors makes the world beautiful. Let the Ukrainian color turn The Day into an era. Let me thank you again for the opportunity to mingle with my colleagues, exchange information, and create our common intellectual space.”