Ulas Samchuk: author, journalist, patriot

The people of Rivne oblast recently celebrated the 99th birth anniversary of the outstanding Ukrainian man of letters Ulas Samchuk. Unfortunately, even today, in the thirteenth year of Ukraine’s independence, most Ukrainians have either never heard of the Homer of Volhynia or, still in thrall to Soviet propaganda clichОs, consider him a Nazi henchman.

Meanwhile, Ukraine should be proud of the fact that Ulas Samchuk, whose powerful novel Volhynia was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, is part of the international literary elite. He was the first writer in the world to reveal the truth about the 1932-1933 manmade famine in his novel Marya and to extol UPA fighters in the novel What Fire Does Not Heal. No less important was Samchuk’s contribution to political journalism: the culmination of his journalistic career was the editorship of the Rivne-based newspaper Volhynia, which began publishing in 1941.

Ulas Samchuk is one of the few Ukrainian authors whose oeuvre aroused serious interest among Western critics. They all considered it an honor to review his novels, novelettes, and plays, praised his absolute professionalism, and emphasized the fact that Samchuk was at one and the same time a major prose writer and renowned journalist. It could not be otherwise, for Ulas Samchuk was always at the center of sociopolitical life in Ukraine and Europe. When he turned forty, he wrote: “I was born, raised, and matured in wartime. Eleven years of war and revolution, fifteen years of exile, and fourteen years of peace; Polish, German, and Hungarian prisons; three illegal border crossings. [I was] an eyewitness to uprisings in Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Carpathian Ukraine, the Protectorate (Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia — Ed.), the General Government (Nazi-occupied Poland — Ed.), the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine, the Second and Third Reich...”

Yet, the principal source of this great writer’s brilliant ideas and journalistic mastery was his native Volhynia for whose sake he lived and worked and which he eventually glorified in the universally known novel of the same name. The old town of Derman, where Ulas Samchuk was born on 20 February 1905, was a centuries-old Ukrainian cultural center. Its Holy Trinity Monastery was the seat of Ukraine’s first rural printing house founded in 1603-1605 by Domian Nalyvaiko. Through the doors of the monastery school passed such prominent Ukrainian figures as Ivan Fedorovych, Iov Kniahynytsky, Antony Hrekovych, Iov Boretsky, and Melety Smotrytsky. It was the cultural aura of Derman that laid the groundwork for Ulas Samchuk’s philosophy and talent. Describing his hometown, the writer declared: “I consider Derman the planet’s center of centers...”

Samchuk succeeded in transforming his profound love for his hometown into an all-embracing and boundless devotion to Ukraine, which was perhaps at its greatest peak during the Nazi occupation. Paradoxically, the very element in Samchuk’s vital activities, which led Soviet propagandists to call him a “Goebbels” was by far the brightest page of his biography, a simultaneous manifestation of courage and wisdom. It was precisely in 1941-1942, when Samchuk, as editor of Volhynia, displayed consistency and determination in defending Ukrainian interests. Andriy Zhyviuk, a scholar of Samchuk’s life and oeuvre writes: “One should be keenly aware that a compromise, i.e., the publication of a newspaper that highlighted the views of German officials (for which Soviet critics censured the writer) was inevitable.” Meanwhile, this was the only correct step for a loyal OUN member who thus found his niche in the complex conditions of the Nazi occupation.

Thanks to the editorial and journalistic talent of Ulas Samchuk and a regional galaxy of such contributors as Oleh Olzhych-Kandyba, Olena Teliha, Yevhen Malaniuk, Yury Klen, and Fedir Dudko, Volhynia managed not only to reach a fantastic circulation in those days — 60,000 copies — but also to become a virtual lodestar for many Volhynians. Samchuk’s newspaper also played a not insignificant role in the formation of the UPA. As soon as the Nazis grasped the enormous danger behind the journalist’s brilliant idea, they threw the editor- in-chief of Volhynia in jail in the spring of 1942.

What exactly frightened and incurred the wrath of the Reichskommissariat’s leadership? Without a doubt, it was the newspaper’s pro- Samchuk, who within a period of six months published thirty editorials, including such brilliant and biting articles as “Kruty,” “Shevchenko,” “Europe and We,” “Heroism of Our Time,” and “A People or Rabble?” which are still relevant today. His article “It Was Thus, and Thus It Will Be” so alarmed the occupation authorities that immediately after its publication in March 1942, they closed the newspaper and arrested the author. Although Samchuk had a talent for diplomacy and used Aesopian language, forcing readers to read between the lines, he was unable to conceal his independent and anti-Nazi stance. “History is recording a new page,” he wrote. “Another space, called Ukraine, is being erased from the map of Europe... The pessimists (the Germans — Author) will never exterminate us, but the main thing is that they will never destroy the millions and millions of spiritually powerful people who, if need be, will crawl into the earth (a threat to the occupiers and an allusion to the Ukrainian insurgents’ hiding places — Author), only so as not to be swept off the face of the planet.” For these words alone Ulas Samchuk deserves to have monuments erected in his honor all over Ukraine, for under the brutal conditions of the Nazi occupation he alone openly appealed in the legal press to the Ukrainians to launch massive resistance to the Germans and all other outsiders.

Ulas Samchuk was also the author of such marvelous travel reports as Through the Storm and Snow, In the World of Approximate Values, and The Wheels Must Spin, in which he documented the most pivotal events of 1941-1943 in Ukraine, issuing a death sentence to the Soviet communist system and the imperialistic attempts of the German authorities to enslave the Ukrainians.

Notwithstanding the fact that after the war Samchuk spent forty years in emigration, outside his Fatherland, he never severed his spiritual ties with Ukraine. In an alien land he continued to write ferthe vitality of his ideological platform was manifested in the creation of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (New York, 12-19 November 1967), which essentially marked the beginning of the unification of Ukrainians throughout the world — an event that has retained its relevance to this day.

We are thus dealing with a unique phenomenon in world literature: in Ulas Samchuk we have an outstanding writer who was the chronicler of Volhynia and the life of the Ukrainian people during their greatest tribulations, as well as a first-class journalist. It is only natural therefore that his name is being rescued from oblivion. On the initiative of the Rivne oblast branches of the National Union of Ukrainian Writers and the Ukrainian People’s Party, the Rivne City Council has announced a competition for the best monument to Ulas Samchuk, to be unveiled on Theater Square on the day the writer’s centenary anniversary is to be celebrated. This will be a token of respect on the part of his grateful fellow countrymen and an act of supreme justice. For Ulas will be standing at the intersection of two editorial offices — his Volhynia and the current Volyn.

Indeed, Ukrainians have every right to flaunt Ulas Samchuk for the whole world to see. In his article of 1941 entitled “A Raised Sword,” he wrote: “Today every nation wants to live...to live passionately, to live at any price. Whoever fails to understand this now will, sooner or later, fall victim to his own shortsightedness. Only a free, peaceful, and mutually respectful family of nations can shape the world’s destiny.” Today these words, written by one who had a keen understanding of war, are relevant as never before.

P.S. Perhaps now, on the eve of Ulas Samchuk’s centenary jubilee, the authorities will finally recognize the genius of Volhynia and republish a complete collection of his works.