PERSPECTIVES: Shevchenko, Gogol and the Ukrainian language (03/24/02)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Shevchenko, Gogol and the Ukrainian language

At a reception on Capitol Hill in 1985, I spoke with Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, then boss of Soviet Ukraine. When I described the episode to others, the first thing many people asked was whether he spoke Ukrainian. After all, Shcherbytsky was notorious for his hard line against the language, and he was never heard to speak it in public. As it turned out, his Ukrainian was perfectly fine. As for my protest to him over Russification in Ukraine, he dismissed it as a non-issue. "People speak whatever's easiest for them. Most Ukrainians prefer Russian," he commented.

I would say that's still true. Just as it's been for centuries, the Ukrainian language is a project, a work in progress that reflects certain realities, particularly political ones.

In March we honor Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko. No one is more identified with the Ukrainian language. In the 1830s, both he and his countryman, Mykola Hohol - the world knows him as Nikolai Gogol - made their way to St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, where people went to be noticed, to make a career.

Born near Poltava in 1809, Gogol was five years older than Shevchenko. At the age of 22, he made it big as writer with "Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka," a collection of sentimental and humorous stories about rural Ukraine. He followed up with "Taras Bulba," the story of the Kozak who executes his own son for betraying his people. Gogol's most celebrated work is "Dead Souls," in which a con artist buys the papers of serfs who had died since the last census to serve as collateral for a loan to buy an estate with living souls.

Although Gogol wrote about Ukraine, he did so in Russian for a Russian audience. Ukraine, for them, was much like Texas is to Americans: a rustic frontier with lots of colorful characters. Taras Bulba and the Kozaks were heroes much like Sam Houston or Davy Crockett. For Russians, "the Ukraine" was part of their country, just as the "the Midwest" is part of the United States or "the Yukon" is part of Canada.

The same year that Gogol published Taras Bulba, 19-year-old Taras Shevchenko also was living in St. Petersburg. But, unlike Gogol, he was a serf painting fences, walls and tile roofs. His master pocketed the earnings. By some miracle, a group of St. Petersburg intellectuals befriended the young slave, were impressed with his intelligence and talent, and bought him his freedom.

He then enrolled in art school and began a career as a professional artist. Like Gogol, Shevchenko was immersed in Russian culture and society, speaking Russian with patrons, friends and publishers. He was also a voracious reader, familiar with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Schiller, the Bible, etc., all of which he read in Russian - there were no Ukrainian translations. He even kept his diary in Russian.

Despite this, Shevchenko was assertively Ukrainian and chose that language for his poetry collection, the "Kobzar," published in 1840. Here, Shevchenko tapped into the same material Gogol used: Ukrainian folk mythology, village lore, the glory of the Kozaks. His secret poems - the ones that got him arrested - aggressively condemned serfdom, tsarism and Russian domination of his homeland.

Witnessing the excavation of ancient burial mounds in Ukraine, for example, Shevchenko wrote a bitter poem, "The Plundered Grave." From their perspective the Russian archeologists were taking treasures from the provinces to display at the Hermitage Museum in the capital. For Shevchenko, they were grave robbers, plundering Ukraine's heritage.

Gogol, the Russian writer, won praise and rewards for his work. As for Shevchenko, the critics ripped him for writing in a "dead language." For disfranchised Ukrainians, though, the "Kobzar" was a sensation. Orphaned at an early age, Shevchenko was truly a child raised by a village. He embraced the stories, tragedies and values of the Ukrainian peasant, then gave it all back in the form of gorgeous verse in a language the people understood. Instinctively, he knew that their liberation was linked to their language. The tsar sensed this as well. Two years after Shevchenko's death in 1861, he banned Ukrainian - a ban that prevailed until 1906.

Fortunately, western Ukraine was ruled by Austria-Hungary. There, inspired by Shevchenko, Ukrainian culture burgeoned. Activists even smuggled tiny bootleg copies of the "Kobzar" across the border to keep memory of Shevchenko alive in tsarist-ruled Ukraine.

In the decade following the collapse of the Russian Empire, Soviet Ukraine experienced an explosion of literary energy. It ended in horror in the 1930s, as tens of thousands of Ukraine's intellectual elite were arrested and murdered because of their devotion to their language and culture. Not surprisingly, people began preferring Russian over Ukrainian, and careerists oriented themselves on Moscow. What is surprising is that the Ukrainian language survived at all. Even Shcherbytsky spoke it fluently.

What's also astonishing is how the language has survived in the diaspora, even into the second and third generations. Immigrants and refugees from Soviet terror sent their children to Ukrainian Saturday schools and gave them a college education. These children and grandchildren now have responsible positions in business, academia, the arts and government. That's how I got to attend the reception honoring Shcherbytsky. And that's how I found out he spoke Ukrainian. It was the only language we had in common.

That scene is now repeated many times, only in much friendlier contexts. Ukrainian officials, businessmen, artists and others are coming to the West to find a Ukrainian-speaking diaspora that is eager for them to succeed. And even though Russian is easier for them, just as English is easier for us, we speak Ukrainian or at least make sure the translators use Ukrainian, not Russian. All this is a small part in the project, the work in progress that the Ukrainian language has been for so long.

Slowly, Ukrainian is working its way into more general usage. In Ukraine it's become a prerequisite for any politician seeking national office, for any diplomat who seeks a coveted posting. Even the Russian ambassador to Ukraine promised to learn the language. (He's still working on it.)

Shevchenko, I think, would be pleased to see where his steadfastness over the language issue has brought his people. It's just taken a while to get there, and there's still a long way to go. As for Gogol, his magnificent works are well worth reading - in the original Russian or any number of fine translations, including English and his native Ukrainian.

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