“These books call for giving up simulation”

We continue to publish readers’ comments on our new products. The 67th Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest fair of books, was held in Germany on October 13-18. Ukraine was also represented at it. Last year, there was no Ukraine’s bookstand there due to the Donbas war and economic difficulties. This year, there was a Ukrainian stand, which was put up exclusively through the efforts of publishers and volunteers. This stand was mainly stacked with books on the Maidan and the Donbas war. Among them one could also see Den’s new products: the books from a political triptych – “The Trap,” or A Case without a Statute of Limitations by Ivan Kapsamun, I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk by Valentyn Torba, and Catastrophe and Triumph. The Stories of Ukrainian Heroes by Maria Semenchenko, as well as Ukraine Incognita. TOP 25, Day and Eternity of James Mace in English, and Wars and Peace in Polish. While foreign readers and publishers are acquainting themselves with books on the important events in Ukraine, Ukrainian readers are buying them at a brisk pace. Please hurry up because we are running out of our new products. Try to buy and read them and do not forget to share your impressions.

“UKRAINE WILL RETURN TO  CONSTANTINOPLE”

Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day

Dmytro STEPOVYK, Doctor of Art History, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Theology, Professor:

“Reading your wonderful newspaper, I recall an event that occurred almost 60 years ago. I was an 18-year-old youth from Volyn, a 1st-year student at Kyiv University’s School of Journalism. Our foreign press instructor Matvii Shestopal once brought The New York Times to the classroom. We were all surprised to see a large book. Naturally, he showed us the headline and a few pages, and we tiptoed to gingerly touch this newspaper during the recess. We were flabbergasted that our instructor had brought over this ‘atomic bomb,’ a publication that was officially so much maligned and looked down upon. Although I was very young and, of course, stupid, I still thought deep in my heart: good Lord, when will Ukraine have a newspaper like this, at least to outwardly, which you will hardly read in a week (but it came out daily)? And now we have one. It is Den/The Day. If you subscribe to it, you don’t want another one. You have what to read for the whole week. There are a lot of big-time newspapers in Europe, and whenever you are there, you can see the way Westerners read them – they just skim over the headlines and throw the newspaper away. But nobody throws Den away! It is read. Whether or not people subscribe to it, they read it from A to Z. It is a journal-type newspaper – all of its articles are large, very interesting to read, informative, and truthful.

“For this reason, I, who have forgotten journalism over the past 47 years of being in the National Academy of Sciences system (I work now at the Maksym Rylsky Institute of Art History, Folklore Studies, and Ethnology and have three doctorates), get back to it via the newspaper Den. Therefore, Den personifies Western journalism today, although we are not yet an integral part of Europe. From the very outset, Den was European in both form and content.

“Now about the book Return to Tsarhorod. When I saw the title and a slightly open door on the cover, I thought it was a provocation. Why did I think so? Because I knew history, I knew what kind of a Russian Empire foreign minister Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov was under three 19th-century tsars. Why did the tsars prefer to appoint him as minister? Because he toyed with an idea to ‘move the capital from St. Petersburg to Constantinople.’ Dostoevsky once said: ‘Constantinople will be ours one day.’ And this was the goal of the 1878 Balkan War – not to liberate Bulgaria but to conquer Constantinople and relocate the capital to that city. And I am thoroughly convinced that the current events in southern Ukraine are the goal of this wolf – to ‘return’ Ukraine’s whole south from Odesa to Donetsk and then the Balkans ‘to the capital.’ This version is true for the crazy. But, in Den’s interpretation, returning to Constantinople is a totally different thing: Ukraine will return to Constantinople. It will return in terms of religion – the ecumenical patriarch is sure to recognize our church. This is the idea of this splendid book.”

“WE MUST ENCOURAGE THE  PUBLICATION OF  BOOKS LIKE THESE”

Valentyn NALYVAICHENKO, ex-chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine:

“This year’s novelties of Den’s Library – ‘The Trap,’ or A Case without a Statute of Limitations by Ivan Kapsamun, I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk by Valentyn Torba, and Catastrophe and Triumph. The Stories of Ukrainian Heroes by Maria Semenchenko – represent the current Ukrainian political journalism. It is about the tragic events, which every Ukrainian is concerned about: from Russian aggression to the fact that the previous leaders betrayed the state, left it plundered, and criminally incited the events in the east. This triptych of political writing honestly points at those who planned, prepared, and implemented the horrors of this aggression. They are communists, Regionnaires, and corruptionists. They are the so-called Cossack otamans maddened by holding sway and looting.

“If we want to hold out and not to submit to our fate, we must not only read, but also encourage the publication of books like these. We must support authors and publishers. I am firmly convinced that the money candidates are spending in their election campaign could be spent not on so many billboards but on supplying every school with modern-day literature. It is this kind of literature that Den publishes. These books call for giving up simulation, lies, and inactivity which the authorities love so much.”

HOT REMINISCENCES ABOUT THIS WAR

Oleksii KORSUN: “Among the characters of the book Catastrophe and Triumph… is Major Vitalii Postolaki, my daughter’s husband, who was killed in February 2015 in Debaltseve”

“It is impossible to read the book Catastrophe and Triumph. The Stories of Ukrainian Heroes, recently published by the Ukrainian national newspaper Den’s Library, without mental anguish over the heroes who were killed and injured in eastern Ukraine, over the soldiers who were tortured and brutalized as POWs by the cruel and sinister enemy from Russia or his deceived Donetsk or Luhansk henchman,” says Oleksii KORSUN, chief editor of Rehabilitated by History, a Transcarpathian oblast book of memory. “This book is essentially a collection of documents and facts, recorded by participants in the events as well as by honest Ukrainian journalists, about heroism and self-sacrificingness of Ukrainian citizens – very young people who have nevertheless seen what other will not happen to see in all their lifetime, and older persons who have long been struck off the lists of reservists, but the feeling of anxiety for their fatherland’s destiny called on them to rush into the hell of battles. Among them is Major Vitalii Postolaki, my daughter Olena’s husband and the father of their two children, who was killed in February 2015 in the battle of Debaltseve, just on the eve of his 50th birthday.”

Oleksii Korsun continues: “The Ukrainian state has marked fittingly the heroic exploit of Vitalii and soldier friends. But every time I stand before his grave I ask myself: what did his comrades-in-arms, whose graves are next to Vitalii’s and in other cities and villages of our region, do in life, what kind of people were they – those who encountered the brazen invader face to face and did not retreat?

“Time is relentlessly flying by. Losing the time, we can also lose, unwittingly, the memories of the gallant defenders of their native land, those who died for their people. I mean there should be, by all means, a martyrologic book about all the warriors – those who have fallen and those whom God saved their life. This is necessary for our Ukrainian nation to live on and preserve its genetic memory. I hope this book is sure to appear – in the reminiscences of relatives and friends, in the essays of journalists, teachers, and students, in autobiographic materials, official documents, and, naturally, in photographs in order to leave the serene images of our gallant fellow countrymen to the coming generations.

“And I sincerely thank Den’s journalists for the job they are doing instead of governmental bodies today to immortalize the 21st-century Ukrainian heroes, the worthy great-grandchildren of their glorious great-grandparents, by recording the hot reminiscences of the eyewitnesses of their triumph and tragedy for history.”