A letter to the EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Dear Ms. Larysa,

I have been reading the newspaper Den/The Day for almost 11 years, and now my relatives and friends are also doing so. This started with the English-language version. The newspaper always contains urgent, verified, and interesting information. The historical materials, interviews, analytical articles, and letters to the editor are unique and meaningful. There are things to read, discuss, and share with my colleagues and friends. People are not indifferent to such a wonderful country as Ukraine and its history, know about its difficult past, but they believe in its future. We, Ukrainians, are aware of our problems and sometimes want to forget them, but it is still better to identify them and try to do something useful, without bombast, just for ourselves.

Actually, I tried to tell, get interested, explain to, teach, and check the knowledge of medical students from Israel, Iraq, India, China, Morocco, Moldova, Russia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the US. Ukrainian students have presented reports, essays, and analyses on the basis of Den/The Day articles on the history of Ukraine. Can you imagine that nobody, except for the Ukrainians, had ever studied the history of Ukraine in school? So it would be out of place to say “well, you know” or “but you studied this in school.” Can you imagine that the foreign young people do not know Ukrainian, do not read Cyrillic, and find it difficult to orient in this country’s geography and even the toponymy of Odesa, where they have been staying for several months? I am in no way trying to hurt them, for they are extremely talented, open to contact, positive and openhearted people who have considerable knowledge, but we should get them interested in something new and keep this interest up. Besides, as you understand, they are not historians by profession. There were no textbooks on the history of Ukraine, and we spoke English, recalling sometimes some French and Latin expressions, something from German or Spanish. Among them, there are agnostics, Judaists, Muslims, and Christians. We had a large map of Ukraine, I would bring all kinds of analytical journals and newspapers, find the photographs of churches, historians, actors, the military, politicians, architectural and archeological monuments, photo albums of cities and castles, fragments of films and cartoons, and music videos. What helped me very much were old, black-and-white issues of The Day in English, which I found in my home archive, and the Den album that you presented me at Odesa National University in 2004. The student groups consisted of 10 to 30 people. To avoid a monologue and open a dialogue, I told them to prepare brief reports on the history of the cities Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Chernivtsi, of the scientists Iliya Mechnikov and Nikolai Pirogov, of the writers Nilolai Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, and Ivan Franko, on the particularities of Ukrainian celebrations of Christmas and Easter Day, the history of Cossacks, the ethnic cuisine, customs and rites. For example, the Turkish students Umut and Serdar, the Kurds Maksum and Nesim delivered reports on the history of Cossacks and the Ottoman Empire’s army, Yulia from Israel and Valeria from the US spoke on the life story of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and Divia from India – on Ukrainian dishes, Hasan, Ali, Omar, and Ahmed (Iraq) – on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odesa. We even managed to conduct “What? Where? When?” on the history of Ukraine. I can also remember wise and meaningful answers and comments from the students Azem, Mahmud, Adam, Zair, and Iayar from Israel.

My friend Allen Hughes from Virginia surprised me with his knowledge of the history of my homeland. While we were talking about Ukraine, Allen proved to be knowledgeable about the Ukrainian-Polish relations, Executed Renaissance, figures of culture, names of almost all oblast centers, the Middle Ages, etc. Then he took out from his suitcase two thick volumes by Paul Robert Magocsi and Orest Subtelny in English. He asked me to find in Odesa some English-language books about Ukraine. In May 2011 the exhibit of the Ukrainian Book in Odesa region took place in the Gorky Library. We attended the exhibit with my other friends, Bill from New Jersy, Tommy from Pensylvania, and Charles from South Carolina. They wanted to find at least several English books there, and I was saved by the two books: one with a folk fairy-tales and a collection of James Mace’s articles. There was only one copy, Halyna Dolnyk found it for us. Allen had an argument with Bill on who would buy the book, after all it was me who bought it and I lent it to Allen for a couple of days. As an American, he liked the vision of his compatriot. Frankly speaking, Allen was reluctant to return me the book, because he really liked it. He admitted that the author’s views are very liberal, honest, truthful, and far from propaganda and officialese.

Ms. Larysa, when you paid visit to my alma mater with a presentation of the first books from the Ukraina Incognita Series in Russian and Ukrainian, I asked you a question, whether Den was going to publish any English articles from its English-language digest. Both then and now there have been a bad need for this, and I could acutely feel the lack of such a book while I was teaching history to the students of the Odesa Medicine University. While the governmental officials are pulling each other by the hair, trying to prove what the “right” textbook should be or write books, which are later acknowledged a violation of author’s rights and compilation, James Mace made an attempt and discovered Ukraine to the world. He should be glorified and honored for the hard work and efforts he made, so that Ukraine really came up with an opportunity to join Europe and show itself to the world.