“Elite Requires Infrastructure to Show Itself”

Larysa IVSHYNA, The Day’s Editor-in-Chief:

“Today there is no need to carry on propaganda in society or set tasks for it. Obviously, a totally different approach to this issue should grow ripe in the university atmosphere. Our society must set tasks for our politicians and do this in the imperative mode, so that they know they are working for us. I am sure you know many such people. We, newspaper workers, are certain that those who say that there is no elite in Ukraine are wrong. I would even risk stating that Ukraine has its own aristocracy, one based not on property rights but on the level of its spiritual aspirations and moral requirements, which it imposes first on itself and also teaches others. The Ostroh and Kamyanets-Podilsky Universities along with the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are strongholds of the Ukrainian spirit. Ukraine’s elite requires infrastructure to demonstrate itself. Simply saying that this elite exists is not enough. There must be some demand for it and ways to show itself in society as well as to those with power.

“You are striving to return the name of Ivan Ohiyenko to your university. However, no less important is the task of filling your life with new content, by reaching the high standards not only in educational work, which your professors are trying to do, but also to fill it with some public content, as he always dreamt of.

“A daily newspaper in two languages and a weekly English language digest means hard work for those who do it. However, there was a time when our newspaper took a rather harsh political stand. We had reasons for this, and I am convinced that the society could also have made more radical steps in the years of independence. However, it is not only in politics that one can realize his or her views on the situation in the state and be helpful to the society. We tried to work with public opinion and work out a viewpoint on history helping our contemporaries to find their way in life and build their future.

“This is why since 1999 we started very actively to create the History and I section. The section’s name itself implied that we would actively intervene in the process. This is not a passive collection of historical knowledge but learning it and working to formulate our own stand. You enjoy an incredible luxury of communicating with high-class thinkers like your Professor Valery Stepankov. He once said that Ukrainian journalists and historians should interpret all historical events and facts from the viewpoint of Ukrainocentrism. Obviously, there is a need for us to qualitatively reconsider the mass of knowledge around us. History and I was an attempt to do this, involving best historians, philosophers, and cultural critics.

“George Bernard Shaw once called history the vitamin of liberty. Our social organism suffering from vitamin deficiency needs a very strong dose of this vitamin in the form of popular films, books, etc.

“We have too little time left to build a modern state. We are in the midst of competition. We can answer all the challenges of our time only when society synthesizes as powerful a political and scholarly elite as possible.

“We long ago decided that we should celebrate our newspaper’s birthdays in a constructive way. Newspapers are supposed to display what they produce. We are not a food factory; we produce knowledge and ideas. So we decided to demonstrate to you our product. Last year Ukrayina Incognita’s whole pressrun was sold out in four months, becoming a bestseller in a sense, since for a Ukrainian book, considering that our market is flooded with Russian-language kitsch, this is a really good result. This year we issued a second edition. I would also like to add that it is very dear to me and that today it is presented by Serhiy Makhun, editor of the History and I section. He, together with Ihor Sundiukov, organized the whole process. In this book you will find many renowned in Ukraine authors who contributed to this analog of a contemporary textbook.

“ Dvi Rusi continues the same theme. Its subject is the complicated relations between Ukraine-Rus’ and the Tsardom of Muscovy, and also between contemporary Ukraine and Russia. Since you have a very strong history department, it will hardly be an eye-opener for many of you. Still, The Day has posed many questions in a way that has never been done before. The book includes works by Lina Kostenko and Serhiy Krymsky, our spiritual tutors. I want you to join the audience of our readers, friends, and authors.”

Anatoly FILINIUK, Rector, Kyiv State Polytechnic University:

As a historian specializing in Ukraine’s incorporation into the Russian Empire, after looking through your books, I saw that you had used sources authored by prominent scholars; I saw the names of Stanislav Kulchytsky, Taras Hunchak, Yury Shapoval, to mention but a few. Together with my colleagues, I would like to ask what was exactly your concept when preparing such books and inviting scholars to contribute to your newspaper? Also, what kind of principles did you abide by, what was your main idea?

Larysa IVSHYNA: The concept is self-evident, as the book Ukraine Incognita is a story about a country in the heart of Europe, one little known elsewhere in the world and of which we also know so little, even though we live here.

For this reason, we first realized that we had failed to grasp the meaning of our own country; we couldn’t understand it, not with our head or even our heart. This country is extremely diverse, rich, and absolutely unique. Yet we must comprehend its historical value. It has so many different aspects. I wanted to offer the reades a view of that terra incognita at an altogether different angle.

Take the article titled “The Third Ascent.” We read that an independent country is made up of the independent individuals who inhabit it. This is the conceptual cornerstone of the book. Ukraine Incognita is about a country unknown to people elsewhere in the world, as well as to its own population.

I, together with Yevhen Marchuk and my very good friend Olha Herasymiuk, traveled to Chyhyryn. Olha wrote a very exciting article titled “Every Ukrainian Must Visit Chyhyryn.” She stressed that every Ukrainian should go there to walk its streets, for it was there that envoys from the great powers had once arrived and waited to be granted an audience with Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

I would be happy if even one of our ideas were heeded publicly. Why not work out a curriculum called The Golden Circle at our schools and lyceums? So our children could visit every historic site in Ukraine, from the first to the tenth grade? Our children should visit Moryntsi (Taras Shevchenko’s home village), Chyhyryn, Kamianets, Kaniv, Khotyn, and St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv (where they came so close to building a fitness facility). They will have to build their own Ukraine, relying on its inexhaustible sources of knowledge and its new visage. Our school and instructors should be made fully aware of this.