Day of the Mustachioed at The Day

However, speaking of mustaches as a mass phenomenon, we may divide them (in military and ethnic terms) into three categories: those of musketeers, Hussars, and Cossacks. (Representatives of the former and latter military estates engaged each other in a soccer match in Dakhno's nice animated cartoon As the Cossacks Played Soccer).

The musketeers' thin mustache underlined their wearer's certain "refinement" and origin of a count. The Hussar-type mustache was already "closer to the common people." They betrayed recklessness and adroitness. But the powerful Cossacks' mustache directly embodied the strength of people. Even by shape, it resembled the roots of a legendary oak-tree under which the Dnipro Cossacks used to gather on the Khortytsia island.

Since our contest was Mustaches of Ukraine, we  would prefer, of course, the Cossack type, though, in principle, a mustache is not the only facial decoration a man of any ethnicity can afford (in complete set with a beard or without, as he wishes). A mustache makes everyone look brave and youngish, while the gesture performed by the bel ami of Guy de Maupassant (the writer also wore a mustache) - turning up the mustache - still inspires awe in us. Especially, if this mustache is as gorgeous as that of our winner.

Ivan Levandovsky, the owner of a gorgeous Cossack mustache from the town of Pochayiv, did not consider it an April fool joke when invited to a reception held in our editorial office in honor of his victory in the contest initiated in our newspaper by Andriy Kurkov. On April 1 he accepted numerous gifts, including some for his son Bohdan who is celebrating his majority. We were also presented with gifts in return: a wonderful publication containing the photos of his works as a woodcarver, who restored an iconostasis in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery of the Caves, will now be kept as a keepsake in our editorial office. Our guest told a story of how he had become the pupil of an outstanding master of woodcarving who grew a wonderful thick mustache even at the age of 95. In memory of his teacher, Mr. Levandovsky continues the glorious tradition of manly embellishment, which we assume his sons will one day adopt as well.

The meeting was attended by members of the jury: the Ambassador of the Czech Republic in Ukraine Jozef Vrabec and first secretary of the German embassy in Ukraine Carsten Meyer-Wiefhausen, who suggested jokingly (and a little seriously) that the three countries unite their traditions and hold a contest of mustache-wearers who drink the beer of these countries. Although Mr. Vrabec joked that one might invent very many things to avoid shaving, still the cheer concerning the serious question of the role of mustaches in the history of fraternal mutual relations were only partially jocular. Since the Mustaches of Ukraine Contest is from now traditional for our newspaper, Latvia's ambassador in Ukraine Peteris Vaivars has already agreed to be member of the jury, in addition to the judges mentioned earlier.