“Identity and modernization” in action

Slogan “Historical knowledge into the network!” is not new for Den/The Day. During one and a half decades of the newspaper’s existence, owing to collaboration with competent historians, philosophers, culture experts and ethnographers, our edition has published (also online) a unique array of materials, dedicated to contradictory, little known and even unknown episodes of the Ukrainian past. Forgotten phenomena, names and subjects were gradually made public and available not only to scientists, but also to the whole Ukrainian society.

It is enough to mention that Den/The Day was the first to publish James Mace’s “A candle in the window,” which ended up as a nationwide campaign honoring the Holodomor victims of 1932-33.

This intellectual collection, which is so necessary for Ukraine in order to revert to its European essence and for our society to return its memory, have been settled down on the website www.day.kiev.ua for a number of years since 1997. We always emphasized the importance of issues brought up by our authors, thereby, step by step, book by book creating the library series of “Ukraine Incognita.” In 10 years, we have published 11 books. And this September the world will see the 12th. It will be traditionally presented at the Publishers Forum in Lviv.

Besides, Den/The Day was the first among Ukrainian (and possibly among all post-Soviet) media to publish the electronic archives of its publications for 1997-99 on a CD. It was a really significant moment when Klara Gudzyk presented Den/The Day’s electronic library to Pope John Paul II. This is already history. And not only the newspaper’s history, but also the Ukraine’s one. By the way, Den/The Day is planning to publish new electronic books.

The editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna is confident that our history is the most powerful source of Ukrainian identity, and yet without understanding (and for someone – without reconsidering) of history, Ukrainian modernization is impossible. “An attentive ‘reading of processes’ which have happened and are going in the post-Soviet space now convinces me that the struggle is carried on not only for resources or for oil and gas, but primarily – for a place in history,” noted the editor-in-chief.

Since the Ukrainian society just started moving towards the intelligent view on its history and taking a more active interest in its past, Den/The Day decided to give new life to important historical issues.

The Ukraine Incognita website (incognita.day.kiev.ua) contains traditional historical sections that are familiar to Den/The Day’s readers: “History and I,” “Route Number One,” “Family Album of Ukraine”; and also the new ones: “TOP-books worth reading,” “Intellectual Calendar,” “Den’s Readers Online” and “Polemics.”

For the first time in the Ukrainian web space, incognita.day.kiev.ua will present the Virtual Collection of the best Ukrainian museums, which will allow users to see museum exhibitions with their own eyes.

An interactive heading “Intellectual map of Ukraine” will be formed gradually using the “public contribution” method. Here, we pass the key role to our readers and encourage them to get involved in the process of forming the intellectual map of our country, recreating the past of their region – be it a city, village, hamlet or even a street.