A shepherd came, saddened forever,
To write the truth about immortal souls.
Dmytro Pavlychko. “The Shepherd.”
For this I was born, and for this
I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
John 18:37.
I was reading the mosaic-like poem-cycle “Fragments from an Epic” by Yosyp Zbihley—a compatriot of Mykola Mushynka—and I imagined the silent, calm, and proud march of the Rusyns “from century to century” that he depicted.
Who are they,
The Rusyns?
People of mountains and wedge-like valleys.
People of silvery streams,
enchanted
by the blue of the sky.
The age-old Rusyn-Ukrainians walk through the Carpathians, “through space and time, through the bustle and vanity of ideas,” and at their head, with a primer and poems, are the two Oleksandrs—Dukhnovych and Pavlovych—and the great Adolf Dobriansky. In the front ranks, or rather, in the most prominent place, the colorful figure of Mykola Mushynka stands out, a man whose immensity of “labors and days” is too vast to fully capture. This “people’s awakener,” wrapped in silvery-gray hair and always greeting you with a friendly smile, steps with dignity, rejoicing that behind him, “calmly, proudly, quietly,” walk his Rusyns.
Bareheaded.
And in hats.
In homespun `hunia` and `chuha` coats, in heavy woolen `kaban` overcoats—
in sleeveless jackets and sheepskin coats.
In `drelykh` trousers
and trousers of felt,
barefoot and in formal
or worn-out `postoly` shoes.
And he himself, the guardian of their ancestral memory, of the material and spiritual culture of the Rusyn-Ukrainians, is outwardly no different from them. On his head, a karakul hat; on his feet, `bochkory`-style `postoly` shoes; on his shoulders, his grandfather’s `chuha` coat; his father’s woolen `holoshni` trousers, girded with a leather outlaw’s belt; and peeking out from under his `brushliak` vest is a white embroidered shirt.
It seemed as if this was him, the Bacha—a shepherd-enchanter—who would raise his gnarled shepherd’s crook and the folklore group “Kurivchanyn,” which he, as Mykolai Kovaliv, had secretly nurtured away from the prying eyes of Party functionaries and special services, would lift the song “I Was, Am, and Will Be a Rusyn” to the very peaks of the fir trees.
How many of them, the Rusyn-Ukrainians, revived their national memory, based on folk songs, ritual holidays, stories, and legends, thanks to the bold, enthusiastic energy of the local Ukrainian schoolteachers Mariia and Ivan Popovets, who were inspired by the selfless creative participation in the “Kurivchanyn” folklore group of Mykolai Kovaliv-Mushynka, a shepherd at the collective farm in his native village of Kuriv.
Several generations of Rusyn-Ukrainians passed through this unique artistic school of national education, in which, for nearly a quarter of a century, the author of his first folklore studies, “Spells and Calendar Rituals of the Village of Kuriv” and “Family and Household Rituals of the Village of Kuriv,” resurrected traditional folk culture with special spiritual delight.
And when this collective farm shepherd, after driving the cattle into the pen, watering and feeding them—especially the bull and the reliable guard dog—had his own supper and appeared on horseback at the school in his native village, what cheerful laughter, what a flash of song and witty jokes would brighten the circle of the Kuriv intelligentsia. Not all his fellow villagers knew what a cruel fate had driven this famous professional folklorist, with a doctorate in philosophy and a candidate of sciences degree in philology, into the mountains for a good five years to tend to the artel’s heifers and calves. After a year of unemployment, the recent university professor was forced to respond in the fall of 1973 to a desperate plea from the head of the agricultural artel: “Honest masters! We need shepherds! The cattle have to be driven out to pasture, and there’s no shepherd to be found!”
A shepherd was found for the 150-head herd “thanks” to the Communist Party leadership and the secret security organs (the StB) of Czechoslovakia, which fired the professor from Prešov University for allegedly harming the “friendly Soviet Union” and undermining the “foundations of socialist society” by communicating with the “darkest forces of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian emigration.” The Czechoslovak State Security established that Mykola Mushynka’s works published in the West “bordered on criminal activity,” and thus any further academic or teaching work was out of the question. He was forbidden not only to publish but also to hold any position involving contact with people. So the most authoritative researcher of the folklore of Prešov region Ukrainians was left to communicate primarily with cattle—around the clock, every day, without days off. And yet, even in these extremely unfavorable conditions for scholarly work, this former “director above all directors,” as his assistant shepherd, Yar, put it, managed to write and publish academic articles. While grazing the cows, even during periods of heavy rain and cold winds, Mykola Mushynka would read, tucking his book into a plastic bag. He set up a study in the shepherd’s hut, where he would snatch an hour or two from his round-the-clock watch for academic work. There, in the hut and on the mountain meadow, he received guests—his friends from Kuriv, scholars, ethnography students, journalists, and even visitors from Ukraine, Canada, Poland, and the United States. And, of course, the ever-watchful agents of the Czechoslovak security services, who closely monitored the dissident’s life and activities.
In truth, the Soviet KGB had not left the postgraduate student of the Department of Folklore and Ethnography at Prague University uncontrolled either. When he arrived in Kyiv for a three-year internship (1964–1966) and was enrolled as a postgraduate student at the Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv, he was under constant surveillance, almost daily, in Ukraine. Mushynka’s name would be placed on the “blacklist” of authors who were forbidden to be published, quoted, or even mentioned in publications.
The Kyiv period holds a special, and still not fully understood, place in Mykola Mushynka’s creative biography. An inquisitive young scholar, sensitive to new literary and cultural phenomena, he quickly assimilated into the spiritual atmosphere of the “Sixtiers” socio-literary movement. His friendships and interactions with Ukrainian dissidents such as Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Honchar, Ivan Dziuba, Les Taniuk, Viacheslav Chornovil, Mykhailo and Bohdan Horyn, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Hryhoriy Kochur, and a number of other poets, writers, artists, literary historians, and theater figures stimulated his process of national self-awareness and self-identification. This opened new paths for the young scholar to understand the development of national literature and art and the emergence and flowering of new forms and styles, many of which were oriented toward Western aesthetic traditions and the latest artistic trends. Mykola Mushynka not only eagerly absorbed all this but, perhaps surprising even himself with his reckless courage, began transporting samvydav literature to Czechoslovakia and further into Europe. Taking advantage of the fact that as a postgraduate student at a Soviet university he had a service passport and his luggage was not subject to mandatory inspection, he carried materials of the Ukrainian “samvydav” across the Soviet-Czechoslovak border: poems by V. Symonenko, I. Drach, D. Pavlychko, Lina Kostenko, V. Holoborodko, and I. Kalynets; articles by I. Dziuba and I. Svitlychny. In the other direction, into Ukraine, he brought Czech and Slovak newspapers and magazines, and various kinds of so-called reformist literature. Of course, Mushynka also brought to Ukraine the latest issues of the Ukrainian-language press from Czechoslovakia—the magazines and newspapers *Duklia*, *Nove Zhyttia*, *Druzhno vpered*, and *Veselka*, as well as works by B. I. Antonych, O. Oles, and V. Grendzha-Donsky...
The patience of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR finally ran out. When Mykola Mushynka attempted to transport the manuscript of Ivan Dziuba’s work *Internationalism or Russification?* across the border, he was seized in Chop by Soviet KGB agents disguised as a team of customs officers. After lengthy and exhausting interrogations, filled with persistent threats and enticements to cooperate with the authorities, he was handed over to the Czechoslovak security services. They too began to intimidate and lure him into the trap of collaborating with them to expose the anti-Soviet activities of Ukrainian nationalists, but Mykola Mushynka disappointed the Prague security organs with his stubborn refusal to expose the enemies of the socialist system. In the end, the regional committee of the Communist Party in Košice had to punish its member through disciplinary action—along party lines.
The social atmosphere in the country was filled with the ozone of democratization. The “Prague Spring” was visibly emerging on Europe’s doorstep, and the Czechoslovak party organs no longer dared to impose harsher repressions on dissidents. Thus, in the case of the unyielding Mykola Mushynka, they limited themselves to a reprimand and a “stern warning,” mollified by his admission of his mistakes and a “sincere confession.” Meanwhile, it was extremely important for the young scholar to take advantage of the democratic upsurge in the country to publicize the results of his academic work by defending his completed dissertation, titled “Volodymyr Hnatiuk as a Researcher of Transcarpathian Folklore and His Connections with Czechs and Slovaks.” This historiographical work about the outstanding folklorist was “grown” from previously unknown materials from his creative legacy, which Mykola Mushynka had discovered in archives in Kyiv, Lviv, and Moscow, as well as in private collections. It is not surprising that the defense of his candidate dissertation at Charles University in October 1967 was successful.
The search for memorial materials and physical evidence about a person, their circle, and their era occupies a significant place in a scholar’s research. Thus, while investigating the life and work of Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Mykola Mushynka discovered a large number of original documents, photographs, and personal effects, which enabled the creation of a full-fledged memorial museum to the distinguished folklorist in his native village of Velesniv in the Ternopil region.
It seemed that his life in the world of scholarship was unfolding on a solid and promising foundation. Then came a new level of professional recognition: the title of Doctor of Philosophy, which the Faculty of Arts at Šafárik University in Prešov awarded Mykola Mushynka for a series of works dedicated to the history of folklore studies of the Ukrainians of the Prešov region. He also found work in his field at the University’s Research Office for Ukrainian Studies. It was in this institution that Mykola Mushynka discovered his inherent gift as a scientific organizer and coordinator of research. Thank God, censorship had been abolished in Czechoslovakia, opening access to publications appearing abroad, which now entered the country without hindrance. Dr. Mushynka, the Secretary of the Research Institute, developed collaborations primarily with Ukrainian studies research, educational, and cultural centers in Western Europe, the USA, Canada, and Ukraine, mainly through the exchange of printed publications—monographs, collections, journals, encyclopedias, and reference books. Within a few years, the office had amassed thousands of different publications, testifying to the existence of a vast body of world Ukrainian studies. This, of course, inspired Mushynka and led him to the idea of uniting Ukrainian scholars from around the world to exchange scientific ideas, works, and experience, and to coordinate research activities. It was thus natural that the energetic and creatively prolific folklorist proposed convening an international scholarly seminar in Prešov, at which a preparatory committee for the International Association of Ukrainianists was elected. The focus was on the International Congress of Slavists, scheduled for August 1968 in Prague, where it was planned to formally establish the International Association of Ukrainianists. Mykola Mushynka and Orest Zilynsky organized a meeting of Ukrainianists in Prague during the Slavists’ congress, but the members of the Soviet Ukrainian delegation, V. M. Rusanivsky and H. D. Verves, refused to support the proposal to create the International Association of Ukrainianists. It had not been approved by the Party leadership in Kyiv, let alone Moscow. But the seed had already been sown, and Ukrainian scholars in the West were not going to wait for scholars from Soviet Ukraine to agree to join the International Association of Ukrainianists. However, this process of uniting Ukrainianists worldwide was halted by the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
Those who fought for freedom and democracy, who signed the “Two Thousand Words” manifesto and led thousands upon thousands of other patriots, tried to save the face of socialism in the so-called people’s democracies from being completely effaced by the grimaces of communist despotism and totalitarian-repressive leveling. Mykola Mushynka was among those who actively protested against the Soviet aggression and supported the “Two Thousand Words” manifesto. He knew he was taking a serious risk—he could lose his beloved job, which was focused on the systematic study of Ukrainian folklore in the Prešov region. And his successes in this field were impressive and captivating. The anthology of folklore of the Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia, *From the Depths of Ages*, which appeared in print in 1967, contained over 300 songs, 13 incantations, descriptions of rituals, 370 proverbs, 150 riddles, and 40 fairy tales, legends, anecdotes, and stories. The anthology’s author, Mykola Mushynka, had traveled to dozens of Ukrainian villages in the Prešov region, met with hundreds of people, and collected this vast body of folk culture from 112 Ukrainian villages. Even earlier, in 1963, Mykola Mushynka, in collaboration with the Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Svidník, had published the museum’s first scholarly collection, *From the Ukrainian Folklore of Eastern Slovakia*, with which the scholar initiated the systematic research work of this museum and its publishing activities.
*The Scholarly Collection of the Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Svidník*, which appeared thanks to Mykola Mushynka’s initiative and under his editorship in 1965, opened a wide path for systematic folklore-ethnographic and cultural-educational activities, the results of which were now beginning to be published, introduced into academic circulation, analyzed, and synthesized. One after another, volumes of the *Scholarly Collection* appeared, some in several books, forming, year after year, a special library series of these academic publications of the Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia. Mykola Mushynka deserves immense credit for this, as he himself worked with inspiration and self-sacrifice on folklore expeditions and involved other scholars in this work—not only Ukrainians but also Slavists from among the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, and colleagues from Canada, the USA, and other countries.
One must possess such talent, such organizational skills, great patience, persistence, and conviction to draw the attention of folklorists, ethnographers, art historians, and Slavists in general, not only from Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia, and Soviet Ukraine, but also from Canada and the United States, to the historical fate of the Rusyn-Ukrainians, to the folk culture of Ukrainians settled in the Carpathian and Balkan regions, and to Ukrainians in various countries around the world. The Ukrainian scholar was concerned not only about the fate of Ukrainians in the USSR, where the communist regime suppressed the national spirit and aspirations for freedom and democracy through Russification, political terror, and repression, but also about the future of the Ukrainian ethnos in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Throughout 1968, Mykola Mushynka published a series of articles in the journal *Druzhno vpered* under the title “Following Ukrainians Around the Globe.” Particularly telling was the final, 12th summary article, in which Mushynka presented sad statistics showing that at that time, not a single periodical was published in the Ukrainian language in any of the republics of the USSR except Ukraine, while in 16 Western countries, 330 Ukrainian newspapers and magazines were being printed.
Thanks to the publication of his books and articles in Ukraine, Poland, Yugoslavia, Canada, the USA, and other countries, and especially his weekly broadcasts on Radio Liberty and his visits to Ukrainian centers in France, the USA, and Canada, the name of Mushynka—the folklorist, ethnographer, literary scholar, and Slavist—became exceptionally popular and authoritative. During the long period of his removal from academic work, from 1972 to 1990, Mushynka “published five books and more than 150 scholarly studies, popular science articles, and reviews in the West.” Especially noteworthy are his works that appeared in print abroad: the album *Ex-Libris of the Ukrainian Sixtiers* (Bound Brook, 1972), *Volodymyr Hnatiuk and Transcarpathia* (Paris, 1975), *Orest Zilynsky, a Scholar with the Soul of a Poet* (Bound Brook, 1983), *The Folk Culture of the Southern Lemkos* (New York, 1987), and *The Life and Work of Volodymyr Hnatiuk* (Paris, 1988).
After the artel’s shepherd was relieved of his duties of tending to the herd of cows, his horizons of communication with the world did not narrow. Mykola Mushynka was content with his new position as a stoker in the housing management office of the city of Prešov. True, for two whole years, he combined two jobs: shepherd in the summer, stoker in the winter, and from the fall of 1976 until May 1990, he was exclusively a stoker servicing gas boilers. Great opportunities arose, thanks to summer vacations that were often long and unpaid, for the stoker-scholar to travel and, most importantly, to conduct folklore-ethnographic expeditions. These trips resulted in the work *The Folklore of the Rusyns of Vojvodina*, a series of publications in the Yugoslav journal *Nova Dumka*, and a number of folklore studies dedicated to the culture of Ukrainians in Romania and the Lemko-Ukrainians in Poland. And how many forgotten and half-forgotten names of Ukrainian writers, scholars, artists, musicians, theater personalities, and public and political figures did Mykola Mushynka resurrect! This is a special and significant page of his research activity. Most of these studies are full-fledged scholarly investigations into the life and work of figures like Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Mykhailo Vrabel, Filaret Kolessa, Ivan Pankevych, Floriian Zapletal, František Tichý, František Hlavaček, Yurko Kolynchak, Jan Onuško, Yosyp Markov, Volodymyr Libovytsky, Volodymyr Sichynsky, Ivan Zilinsky, Mykhailo Kachaluba, Symon Narizhnyi, Orest Zilynsky, Ivan Matsynsky, Stanislav Dnistriansky, Volodymyr Liubovytsky, Ivan Kulets, Stepan Klochurak...
By the way, about Klochurak—the former Minister of Economy and Armed Forces of Carpatho-Ukraine, who spent nearly thirteen years in a Vorkuta concentration camp—Mushynka wrote the book *Knight of Freedom* and edited the first volume of his memoirs, *To Freedom*...
With particular pride, the scholar recalls his discovery of the manuscript of Ivan Holubovsky’s work *With the Sweep of Mighty Wings*, which sheds light on the life and creative destiny of the talented Ukrainian artist Oleksa Novakivsky. Later, Mykola Mushynka would track down 53 of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and sketches, which were recently exhibited with great success in museums across Ukraine.
Mushynka has a special gift for sensing, for foreseeing the paths to discovering valuable manuscripts, rare texts, paintings, and art collections. This is confirmed by his search for the unknown works of Oleksa Novakivsky; 140 paintings by the Ukrainian artist Ivan Kulets; a unique collection of 500 negatives of wooden churches and other ethnographic monuments of Transcarpathia and the Prešov region by Floriian Zapletal; letters from the distinguished Ukrainian geographer Stepan Rudnytsky; and the already mentioned archival materials of Volodymyr Hnatiuk...
In 2012, the scholar continues to publish the archival materials he has collected under the heading “The Documents Testify... From the M. Mushynka Archive,” having previously systematically published his findings on the history of culture, literature, and art under the heading “From the Chronicle of Culture.”
Even the boldest imagination cannot grasp the full extent of the scholarly interests, research passions, and creative affections of this pastor of Ukrainian culture and science. Who is he, this scholar and writer, insatiably hungry for creative work, this man insatiable in his sacrificial love for his native Rusyns, Carpatho-Ruthenians—for the Ukrainians, above all for those living in the 250 villages of southeastern Slovakia? Even though a significant part of his Rusyn countrymen have declared themselves of Slovak nationality, they still preserve in their songs, rituals, and customary culture something of their own, something Lemko, something Ukrainian—their own language, their deep national self. And the great mission of Mykola Mushynka, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, is to save this organic part of the Ukrainian ethnos, above all by describing every vanished or vanishing Rusyn village, preserving the richest folk melodies, the spiritual and material evidence and examples of folk culture, and clarifying the historical mountain passes, obscured by silent centuries, which the consanguineous Rusyn-Ukrainians overcame in their struggle not to be lost among other peoples, but to be reborn and affirmed. It is to bring to the world the unique folklore and ethnographic heritage of his native Prešov region and of all of historical Transcarpathia. And perhaps most importantly, to convince his Rusyns that they are an organic branch of the great Ukrainian ethnos, culturally rich, spiritually complete, and worthy of universal respect and admiration. It is precisely for this that the Lord gives birth to such sacrificial shepherds, who, against all unfortunate circumstances of personal life, in defiance of prohibitions, isolations, humiliations, and slander, have unswervingly and firmly blazed their own path, convinced that it is the one true way, because it leads them to their kin, to their native people, to serve whom is a high honor and a great national mission. So may the life of this spiritual shepherd of his people, who “grew from a shepherd” and was destined, in the figurative words of Dmytro Pavlychko, “to write the truth about immortal souls,” continue for many years to come:
Blessed be his life,
Torn apart and healed, like a wound.
Zhulynsky, Mykola. “The Ukrainian Pastor of Culture and Science.” // *Ukrainian Literary Gazette*. – April 23, 2016.
Zhulynsky, Mykola. “The Ukrainian Pastor of Culture and Science.” // *Slovo i Chas* (Word and Time). – 2016. – No. 6. – pp. 74-80. – Bibliography at end of art.