THE STATE OF UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE: An overview from Harvard: Literature and culture (08/25/96)

THE STATE OF UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE: An overview from Harvard

Literature and culture

On July 12, the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University held a public roundtable discussion on the current state of Ukrainian literature and culture. The roundtable was moderated by HUSI Director Halyna Hryn. Participants included: Mykola Riabchuk, literary critic and deputy editor of the Kyiv journal Vsesvit; Solomea Pavlychko, professor of literature at the University of Kyiv- Mohyla Academy; and George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Chyzhevsky Professor of Ukrainian Literature at Harvard.

Mykola Riabchuk: Inasmuch as I write mainly on politics here in the United States and literature and culture in Ukraine, I hope that I have a non-partisan attitude toward literature. But now, I'd like to present to you two different points of view on the contemporary literary situation in Ukraine, one very pessimistic, and another a bit more optimistic.

The first view is expressed mostly by the members of the old, traditional Writers' Union of Ukraine. There are more than 1,000 members in this union, which survived perestroika and independence, and probably will survive everything in the future that happens in Ukraine. This union was founded in 1934 as a Stalinist organization, and played a very ambiguous role in the history of Ukrainian literature and culture.

Another view is expressed by younger (although some of them are more than 50 years old) writers who were never engaged in the activities of the Writer's Union and its publications. These writers haven't suffered from the collapse of the Soviet Union because they had never benefited from state support or subsidies. Now they can write as they used to, sometimes can even publish these works, and moreover are no longer persecuted by the KGB. This group is probably small, but more interesting, and, of course, this group is more optimistic.

The large group of official writers believed that the independent Ukrainian state would retain its support for literature and culture, but that the old socialist realism methodology would just be replaced with national realism. But nothing like that has happened. The newly independent state is far from supportive of literature, of culture.

These writers, who created a federation of Ukrainian intelligentsia called the "Congress of Intelligentsia" with the major aim of struggling against Russification, published a half year ago a "Manifesto of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia" in which they deplored the state of publishing of contemporary Ukrainian writers. Unfortunately, they have overstated their case and many reading this Manifesto perceive it as just old writers who cry wolf. For instance, they wrote that only 3 percent of Ukraine's books are written in Ukrainian. On closer inspection, it turns out that this is only belletristic works and ignores history, philosophy, sociology, etc. and such phenomena as the large Ukrainian-language translation project of the Soros Foundation. This hyperbole diminishes the meaning of this document, and that is a pity since it touches on some very serious problems in Ukrainian cultural life.

The authors of the manifesto are right that independence has not changed the prevalence of Russian culture and language in urban areas in most Ukrainian cities. Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, in particular, still feel themselves a minority, humiliated and dispossessed of many basic rights such as education and access to Ukrainian books or journals. The language and culture of the former metropole still dominate in Ukraine and this vulnerability involves all the younger generation, not just the writers, in politics or social problems.

Solomea Pavlychko: In my opinion Ukrainian literature was at a "crossroads" at least five years ago. There was a time, by the end of perestroika, when individual choices had been made: to go to the barricades - to become a political activist, to engage completely in state-building - or to go into pure aesthetics, abstract philosophy or history. While the older generation of writers was facing this choice, the younger generation was simply writing, exploring styles never before used, experimenting with forms, and developing previously "forbidden" subjects.

Ukrainian literature has never been as diverse and multifaceted as it is now. There have never been so many women in it and so many forceful feminist voices. It has never been as confessional as it is now (Oksana Zabuzhko), never so elegant and playful (Yuriy Andrukhovych and Yuriy Vynnychuk). Numerous new groups have been formed, and journals have appeared all over Ukraine. They often cease publication after the second or third issue, but this is only natural, given the economic situation. The most important thing is that they are published not just in Kyiv or Lviv, but in Zhytomyr, Poltava, Kryvyi Rih and other places.

Some people used to say that there are too many writers and poets in Ukraine. My feeling was always the opposite. I always thought that there are not enough writers in Ukraine. (There are around 1,500 members in the Writers' Union - which includes Mykola and me; if you include non-member writers, you can double this number). I am sure that in the state of Massachusetts there are more poets than in the whole of Ukraine.

Today I sense that literary life is awakening. For two years I have been a member of a jury for a literary prize established by the Smoloskyp publishing house for the best manuscript by authors less than 30 years old. Last year there were 18 manuscripts submitted. This year there were 48. I am sure that next year we will have more than 100. Previous winners were from the Donbas and Yalta, Kharkiv, Kyiv and other cities and even villages. One was only 14. So the literary community is not aging and is not concentrated solely in Kyiv and Lviv.

The most interesting thing is the subject of the new writing. Those who are 35 to 45 are obsessed with the immediate past. They try to understand and explain it, especially such burning questions as why Ukrainian literature was dominated by socialist realism and why it supported the regime. At times they try to gain revenge on those who were their mentors 10 years ago. It is clear that this generation is living through a deep psychological drama.

The most young (those who are younger than 30) have no interest in the past or in the petty wars of the different members or groups in the literary community. They are interested in linguistic play, abstract philosophical issues, love and sex, Western and Eastern religions, music and art. They are very much attracted to cultures outside Ukraine.

So I am very optimistic despite everything. We are in the midst of a very complicated reality. I hope literary texts written now will be interesting not just for the Ukrainians but for the world outside Ukraine.

George Grabowicz: The whole notion of an ongoing roundtable for the last 10 years on Ukrainian literature at the crossroads is like Hemingway's moveable feast. But at the same time I feel that confronting the major issues is a challenge - we need to continue to re-evaluate and rethink these things, even if they have been said before.

One of the things we need to rethink is what we mean by literature, when we put the question of "Ukrainian Literature at the Crossroads." There are several possible areas which one might be talking about, and two, maybe three, of these were already discussed. One of these is the question of literary talents: in that regard I think it is a very optimistic picture. There simply are many very talented people out there.

Another thing is the content of literature - mainly things like genre, styles, and themes. I think that in this regard there is indeed variety, and that is a very new, post-Soviet development. Especially thematically and stylistically. Genres are a different matter. For example, drama is still somehow weak, still underdeveloped, because it relies on the theatre. And the theatre is part of a large infrastructure and superstructure, which requires government support - and it's not getting it. And, unfortunately, for every [Volodymyr] Dibrova who writes a piece and gets it published in Suchasnist, there are 10 hacks, and they are the ones that end up being staged. But that may just be very impressionistic.

But literature is also the institutional aspect of things and this is where I think the situation is by far the worst. The existing institution is an old Soviet one, the Spilka - the Writers' Union. There is also no institutional literary criticism to speak of. That is a major problem, because literature without a literary, critical response and resonance ends up becoming very sui generis. It can live, obviously, and Ukrainian literature in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries precisely lived without literary criticism. But it's not a very healthy state of affairs. Literary scholarship is in rather poor shape. It, too, needs to be refined. I don't want to make a blanket judgment that everybody is bad - I am certainly not suggesting that. I would just say that on the institutional and organizational side, things are not well off.

Then there is the question of literary or receptor psychology: the way people look at literature and see their roles. The Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz once quipped that in the romantic period if you walked into a salon and said "I'm a poet," everybody thought that was a great thing to be. Now, he says, to say "I'm a poet" is just a notch above saying "I'm a dogcatcher." That may have been true for Poland in the 1960s, but it's still not true in Ukraine. I think being a poet still carries with it a certain degree of prestige. There is a different set of expectations around literature which is still, I think - poetry in particular - an important vehicle of national identification.

Which leads us to another basic question, which is how do we judge these matters? Oksana Zabuzhko says that in Ukraine until recently people would sometimes stand in line to buy books of poetry. Lina Kostenko's books, when they appeared, were sold out - in a matter of days sometimes. There is still a tremendous readership out in Ukraine. The question is, is it really receptive of those newest and most active new talents?

There are also artistic or stylistic issues to be looked at accompanying the re-discovery of a legacy. As a function of freedom, you can now read on a much broader scale than ever before. Now you can experiment in language in the way Bohdan Zholdak does, writing his stories in surzhyk, bringing into the sphere of literature, or "high literature," that which is definitely low or uncanonical. Parody has become a very functional, and strong, element. Feminism and the issues of sexuality and sexism have become strong components, not only for women writers, but even for older writers reflecting new influences.

But some things haven't been resolved. While the confessional strain of writing is much more valid than before, at the same time there has been no excoriation or denunciation or exposé of the Spilka, as I think has happened in Russian literature. The process of really facing up to what has happened has only barely begun. I would not advocate the need for a vengeful literature, but at the same time I think there is a tremendous amount of problems from the past to be faced and things to be done.

* * *

A lively and lengthy question-and-answer session ensued, beginning with the comment that the colonial nature of Ukrainian literature at present should not be too discouraging since a new generation of writers, defined by the events of 1991 and untouched by the experience of censorship, is now active. The universalism of writing in the post-modern age and the place therein of Ukrainian literature were discussed, with doubt being expressed that Ukrainian writers were operating in such truly post-modern conditions as absolute access to information.

A spectrum of reactions to the use of surzhyk in literature was registered, ranging from fear that the Ukrainian language would be eroded, to acknowledgment of surzhyk as one of the ephemeral manifestations of the (protest) rock culture of the 1980s and its rap/rock successor of the 1990s, to celebration that the panoply of linguistic subsets in Ukrainian literature had been enriched.

The discussants and audience were in general agreement over the publishing crisis: that publication levels for Ukrainian literary works are regrettably low and distribution poor, with serious effects for writers and readers alike. Some participants felt that the level of readership and writing, and national confidence in the value of Ukrainian literature were still too low to support a healthy literary scene.

Discussion ended with a brief final look at the problem of a continuing lack of genuine literary discourse, explained at least in part by the presence of unchanged power structures and resulting in the perpetuation through the school curriculum of Soviet cultural traditions and stereotypes.