August 28, 2015

Why Europe?

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Historian Timothy Snyder, arguably today’s foremost expert on Ukraine, has a fascinating article in the July 21 issue of the New York Review of Books, “Edge of Europe, End of Europe,” where, among several others, he cites 1920s Ukrainian author, critic and cultural leader Mykola Khvyliovy and his relevance to today’s events.

I first heard about Khvyliovy in Prof. Gregory Golembiowsky’s class in the early 1960s at “Ridna Shkola” Saturday School in Cleveland. World War II was still a recent memory; so was the Holodomor. Ukraine then seemed a hopeless cause, politically and nationally. The country’s borders were sealed, the population utterly cowed, Russification was rampant, prospects for liberation were zero. Yet here was Prof. Golembiowsky – a true scholar who worked on the line at Ford Motors during the week to support his family – sacrificing his Saturdays to teach immigrant kids like me, believing it would make a difference someday. And for him, Ukraine’s destiny was linked to Khvyliovy’s philosophy.

Born and raised in the Kharkiv Gubernia of eastern Ukraine, Khvyliovy was 25 in 1919 when he joined the Bolshevik branch of the Ukrainian Communist Party in the midst of the war that would determine the fate of Ukraine and the world for the next three generations. Like millions of others around the globe, he believed Marxism was the ideal social-economic framework, even as he promoted Ukrainian national aspirations, which were burning white-hot in the wake of the post-World War I revolutions convulsing the former Russian Empire.

Building on the legacy of Shevchenko, Franko, Ukrainka and others, Khvyliovy inspired and led a literary/cultural movement which we remember as the “Ukrainian Renaissance.” His philosophy was summarized in three slogans: “Toward Europe,” “Away from Moscow” and “Educate the Proletariat.” It electrified the cultural class.

Literature, art, theater, cinema, radio flourished in the 1920s. Ukrainians exhibited in Berlin, Paris and Rome, even winning international awards. Ukrainian radio often scooped Moscow with genuine news. By the end of the ‘20s, 85 percent of newspapers and 80 percent of books published in Ukraine were in the Ukrainian language. That’s when Joseph Stalin unleashed the full force of the Soviet state against Khvyliovy and his movement. Thousands of cultural workers were arrested, tortured and then either executed or exiled to Siberia for a slower death. Khvyliovy as the leader was brutally challenged to repudiate the Ukrainianization policy. He answered with a dramatic suicide in May 1933, even as millions in the surrounding countryside were starving. For the next half century, Soviet Ukrainian culture went into a defensive crouch. And yet Khvyliovy’s message, silenced as it was, remained potent. Beleaguered dissidents, harassed and oppressed by the KGB, looked to the West as a beacon.

For the Soviets (and now for Russia) censorship was an essential tool which could take some curious turns. Consider “Soviet Ukrainian Literature,” a standard textbook published in 1979 by the Higher Education Publishing House in Kyiv about Soviet authors, poets and playwrights, many of whom created memorable works, but within the boundaries set by censors who answered to the very same KGB. What makes the book so curious is a single sheet (pp. 83- 84) about Mykola Khvyliovy, predictably vilifying him. That single sheet had very carefully been razor-bladed out and another one pasted in its place – presumably 15,000 times for the total number of copies published. I don’t know what the original page said, I only know that after the book had been already been printed someone decided it had to be revised. That speaks to the power of Khvyliovy’s message – one Soviet authorities could not ignore or let go unanswered. Taking orders from Moscow as they did, they just weren’t sure what to say. Moscow is still flummoxed.

For centuries, official Russia has had a problem accepting its “Little Russian brothers” as a separate nation. Ukrainians differ on that. It’s not just geography, it’s a matter of mindset. No one said it better than Russian literary giant Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910), reflecting on the legacy of ancient Rus’:

“One Rus’ has its roots in universal or at least European culture. In this Rus’, the ideas of goodness, honor and freedom are understood as in the West. But there is another Rus’: the Rus’ of the dark forests, the Rus’ of the taiga, the animal Russia, the fanatic Russia, the Mongol-Tatar Russia. This last Russia made despotism and fanaticism its ideal… Kyiv Rus’ was a part of Europe, Moscow long remained the negation of Europe.”

And indeed, from the 10th to mid-13th centuries, when Moscow was but a village, Kyiv was a commercial crossroad between Europe, Byzantium and Islam exercising political sway and cultural-religious influence from the Black Sea to the Baltic. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Kyiv was a center of learning with ties to the West. But that was all centuries ago. Today, Moscow is a world power and Ukraine, as it has perennially, struggles to escape Russia’s dominance.

In the last 25 years, Ukraine has had three revolutions – the most recent triggered in November 2013 when corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych rejected an Association Agreement with the European Union and, under pressure from Vladimir Putin, opted to align his country with Russia. You know the consequences.

The Revolution of Dignity was 20 months ago; the Orange Revolution 10 years ago and independence not even 25 years ago – a lot of history for one generation to generate and absorb. And it’s been all about Europe – an orientation Ukrainians embrace and Russia rejects like a vampire would holy water… only not really. Russia’s ruling class parks its assets in Western banks, sends its children to Western schools, vacations on the Riviera and in Switzerland, shops in Milan, and owns apartments in London and Manhattan. But that’s where they draw the line. Europe is for the ruling class; Russia is for everyone else, including Ukrainians, whether they like it or not.

Well, it should surprise no one that Ukrainians reject Russian rule. It’s been associated with an unending series of catastrophes – serfdom, Russification, famine, wars, slave labor, censorship, nuclear melt-down, you name it – which is why Ukrainians have gone to the Maidan to peacefully demonstrate and are now engaged in an actual war for Europe. And, as Dr. Snyder points out, there’s a lot at stake, not only for Ukraine but for Europe itself.

 

Andrew Fedynsky’s e-mail address is [email protected].

 

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