Cultural line versus political geometry
The modest exhibition called Literary Institute in Paris, 1946-2001, which was opened in the Museum of the History of Kyiv, will hardly suffice to give the man in the street enough information to understand the place and role of the Instytut Literackie (Literary Institute) and of the journal, Kultura, its publication, in the European and especially Polish-Ukrainian context of cultural and political cooperation. For people who know something about this subject (such exhibitions had already taken place in Kyiv more than once), this is another chance to touch the great and traditionally underestimated legacy of Jerzy Gedroyc.
The Literary Institute is a publishing house founded in Rome in 1946. Since 1947 it has been based in Maisons Lafitte near Paris. This is one of the most outstanding Polish emigre organizations publishing works by Polish writers, papers on political science, documents, publicist works, etc. It also issues the main Polish emigration’s magazine, Kultura, whose editor Jerzy Gedroyc presided for over fifty years. The ideas advocated by the journal have played a historic role in forming the views and ideology of a significant sector of Polish emigration and the understanding of Central and Eastern European problems by the Western European intelligentsia. From the very beginning Gedroyc suggested rejecting any claims and making compromises for the sake of good neighbor relationships. In his magazine he created a concept of cooperation of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Belarus, and Lithuanian emigration representatives as a prototype for the future dialogue of nations freed of the totalitarianism. The Polish Solidarity movement adopted Gedroyc’s system of values. He is considered one of the spiritual leaders of this movement, whose program included Kultura’s ideas. “This is the only case in history when an idea elaborated in emigration moved to the motherland, rooted, sprouted, and the new governments adopted it and made reality,” notes longtime author, Ukrainian Bohdan Osadchuk. Indeed, the activities of a man who spent decades in emigration had a decisive influence upon the changing of the political and social order in Poland. Even Hertzen with his Kolokol (Bell) could not do as much. “The lesson of history is that Poland’s decay will always be a decay for Ukraine, and vice versa...” (Jerzy Gedroyc, Eurasia No. 1, 1995). Gedroyc died in 2000 at the age of 94. Nashe Slovo (Our Word, Ukrainian weekly in Poland) a special issue in Polish language dedicated to the legendary editor, in which Gedroyc was called “a great supporter of Ukrainian statehood and mutual understanding between Ukraine and Poland.” He lived through a whole century: all its deformations, hopes, rebirth of states, and establishment of historical justice. He was one of the outstanding personages of the twentieth century. After Gedroyc’s death, Ivan Dziuba wrote in an article dedicated to his memory (PiK No. 35, 2000), “Poland has lost a great son. Ukraine has lost a great friend.”
The Literary Institute in Paris, 1946-2001 exhibition is a part of the Kyiv in Warsaw, Warsaw in Kyiv Project carried out within the program of the Polish-Ukrainian Forum. This action is a response to the Holy Places of Kyiv and Kyiv, City of Mikhail Bulgakov, exhibitions organized by the Museum of the History of Kyiv in the spring and fall of 2001. Ambassador of the Polish Republic to Ukraine Marek Ziolkowski, Mykola Zhulynsky, Ivan Drach, the secretary of the Ukrainians Union in Poland Petro Tyma, and other people interested in the Ukrainian-Polish cooperation were present at the opening. The atmosphere of communication did not require any translation: the two kindred languages got mixed up organically, charming one’s ear and creating an easy atmosphere of a true mutual understanding. For me, personally, it became also an affecting contact with one of the branches of my national origin.
The exhibition opening was combined with the presentation of Bohdan Osadchuk’s book, Ukraine, Poland, the World. This event took significantly more time and had drawn more public attention. The book is composed of the translations of selected articles and comments published on the pages of the legendary Kultura over half a century. The original was compiled under the guidance of the culture studies specialist Krzysztof Czyzewski and published in Poland by the Pogranicie publishers. The Smoloskyp Publishing House did the Ukrainian translation, with Valentyna Grynyk-Sutanowska as compiler. As the author noted, he did not take part in compiling the collection, or he would have done it in a slightly differently. The introductions were written by Jerzy Gedroyc himself, (“The most valued voice... and probably the last one before his death,” according to Mr. Osadchuk) and by Czeslaw Milosz, Polish poet and the Nobel Prize laureate. The book is also adorned with an excerpt from Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski’s speech on decorating Mr. Osadchuk with a prestigious state award, the Order of White Eagle.
Bohdan Osadchuk is more popular in the Western Europe and with our Polish neighbors. A true Ukrainian who had never renounced his origin (so, in an open letter to then President Lech Walesa published in the Warsaw Rzeczpospolita newspaper he refers to Ukraine as “my country”), Osadchuk lives in Berlin and works as a journalist. He had worked thirty years for an influential Neue ZЯrichen Zeitung Swiss newspaper, which has almost 230 years of history and comes out three times a day. Once Khrushchev, outraged by one of its truthful articles, demanded the Swiss ambassador fire the journalist. The ambassador answered that they would sooner fire him than a good journalist. Incident ally, Osadchuk was among those who recorded Khrushchev’s diplomacy: on October 12, 1960, the Soviet leader made fool of himself in the Blue Hall for the United Nations Plenary Sessions by stamping his fists and shoe on the rostrum and shaking his fists at the chairman. Osadchuk constantly worked with the German press and has contributed to Kultura since 1952. In his introduction Jerzy Gedroyc called him “the principal source of information on Eastern European affairs for Western society.”
“Due to him [Osadchuk] and Gedroyc Poland was among the first European countries to recognize Ukraine’s independence,” writes Czeslaw Milosz. Further he remarked, “If young people on both sides of the border understood that it is here, at the turn of two languages and two cultures, that many tasks on which the fate of this part of Europe depends are awaiting them, they would find their goal and become happy with it.” Osadchuk also conducted scholarly research at the Free University of Berlin. He is professor of modern history there.
Ukraine, Poland, the World contains thirty-six articles of informational and analytical character. The preciseness of characteristics and faultless view on the consequences of the studied processes is amazing, taking into consideration that the author had for obvious reasons never been to the USSR and occupied Ukraine. The book embraces the period from 1952 to 2000. This is one of those rare books, which are hard to tear oneself away from, a model of European journalism, objectivity, analyticity, and boundless patriotism of a Ukrainian living far from his homeland. Its style is astonishingly simple, clear and simultaneously precise, while the narrative tone comes through a prism of a constant personal experience.
“Some of the restored stone buildings with gorgeous facades situated in the city center, in Pechersk shady lanes, and in the Podil in lower Kyiv, delight one’s eyes... Contrasts are everywhere. Science and culture are in the worst position. Not only because of lack of the formerly existing subsidies and grants, but even the publishing houses, which barely make ends meet, are burdened with big taxes. Rich Russia’s publishing houses profit by this, flooding Kyiv with books, newspapers, and magazines...” This is a quotation from the modern chronicles of 1997 (Kultura, No. 7/8). Has much changed since then? How much should have changed? Mr. Osadchuk explains his objectivity, in part, with his lack of “regional patriotism,” replaced with an “all-Ukrainian” one. Our state owes him, displaying at least bad manners, since in respectable society there is a tradition to give thanks for good deeds. In a time when dozens of awards are given only for personal devotion, none of them seem to have been given for devotion to Ukraine.
Prof. Osadchuk is now in his eighties. However, he arrived in Kyiv for the book presentation, hale and hearty. One must remark that from the whole presidium he was the most attractive to the eye, devoid of Soviet complexes, a lively and intelligent interlocutor, a great joker, especially entertaining for the ladies. There is also one mystic detail that could become fatal. The thing is that recently Prof. Osadchuk was to fly to Zurich by the plane that suffered an awful crash, but changed his booking and took an earlier flight. Ukraine has met its son and friend one more time.
