The childhood and youth of this extraordinary person fell on difficult times for his native land. When the boy was four years old, Polish pacifiers raged in the village where his grandparents lived; when he was “past thirteen,” his neighbors were being arrested by the NKVD; at the age of seventeen, he had to witness Nazi repressions against his friends from the gymnasium; and at twenty-three, he himself ended up in Bolshevik imprisonment, sharing his mother’s fate. It was then that the character of an intellectual was forged, one whom no political regime could ever subdue.
In the words of Yaroslav Dashkevych himself, there were two factors that formed his convictions: “On the one hand, there is the family factor in which I was raised. And on the other, school and youth organizations.” The scholar’s father, Roman Dashkevych, was a general-khorunzhy of the UNR army, then a lawyer, and a leader of sports-patriotic societies in interwar Western Ukraine. At the age of seventeen, the young man had to say goodbye to him forever—his father emigrated to Austria to avoid certain death in Stalin’s camps and was never able to return to Lviv. His mother, Olena Stepaniv, was a legendary chetar of the UHA, a teacher at the Basilian Sisters' gymnasium in Lviv, and an activist of the “Ridna Shkola” [Native School] in the interwar twenty-year period, and later an associate professor at Lviv University.
Undoubtedly, his parents could not help but raise their only son in the same patriotic spirit in which they themselves were raised. However, Yaroslav took a slightly different path, which is quite understandable in the context of a different, more merciless era. When asked if Yaroslav Romanovych had any connection to the OUN, he answered me this way: “Directly, no. I was not and am not a member of any organization or party. This means I don't sympathize with anyone, but it's not a matter of any formal membership.” Young Yaroslav did not join the UPA either, as many of his close friends from the gymnasium did. He chose his own path—at the beginning of 1944, he entered the medical institute. It can be assumed that it was then that he finally decided to continue his parents' struggle for the Ukrainian state exclusively on the “scholarly front.”
In that same year, 1944, the Bolsheviks returned to Lviv. Yaroslav Dashkevych transferred to Ivan Franko Lviv State University, to the Faculty of Philology. Along with his studies, he worked in the academic library and conducted scholarly research. After graduating from the university in 1949, the young scholar tried to get into graduate school. “But,” the scholar recounts, “it was already a time when I simply wasn’t allowed.”
In the same year, he made an unexpected move—he enrolled in the oil institute in Moscow. About the reasons for this decision, Dr. Dashkevych says half-jokingly: “I always believed that one should have not one, but several educations. A person should be, if not comprehensively, then at least not one-sidedly prepared.” Of course, it is much more natural to assume that the move to the capital of the USSR was an attempt to avoid the new wave of Bolshevik repressions that had begun in Western Ukraine. However, the punitive bodies of the communist regime already had considerable experience in “catching” those destined for the meat grinder of repression—Dashkevych was arrested that same year, 1949.
Yaroslav Romanovych recounts his arrest as follows: “The immediate cause was that I was sending various materials to Leningrad for a Shevchenko collection. For example, if there were newspaper clippings, one side would have information about Shevchenko, and the other might have something the authorities didn't like. Then came helping the underground and storing anti-Soviet literature. But it’s clear that the kind of family I came from played a significant role.” In fact, 1949 was a turning point in the historian’s life. He then faced a choice: either to cooperate in one form or another with the Bolshevik regime, or to sacrifice personal freedom for the sake of his convictions. Although when I asked him if the Bolsheviks tried to persuade him to cooperate, he laughed in response. According to Yaroslav Dashkevych, he was too odious a figure for the regime for them to have such conversations with him. On the other hand, the Soviet system was willing to pay a high price for the conscience of such a figure—and, without a doubt, he understood this, but he did not engage in collaboration with the communist occupiers.
Dashkevych served seven years in special camps for political prisoners with a prison regime, and he was not rehabilitated until 1995. After his imprisonment, Yaroslav Romanovych had to endure a total of thirteen years without a job. And during all this time, we will not see any attempt to make a deal with the regime, although “letters of repentance” were a fairly common phenomenon among Ukrainian intellectuals of that time.
In fact, the phenomenon of Yaroslav Dashkevych lies in the fact that even during the Soviet era, he managed to conduct active scholarly work that went far beyond the ideological framework of the time. Of course, among his numerous scholarly works, one can also find topics such as “The Contribution of Galician Internationalists to the Development of Communist Turkmenistan” or “The Communist Press in Eastern Galicia.” But, as the scholar himself rightly states, “it was not a conjunctural approach; it was a task for me to work on this topic at the Institute of Social Sciences.” After all, even the most odious topic can be explored professionally and honestly.
However, the historian's main field of research is Armenian studies and Oriental studies in general. He said he took up this topic because “it is a large gap that has not yet been studied in the history of Ukraine. We look either to the North or to the West, and we forget that there was, for example, the East, the real East.”
Despite obstacles from the Communist Party, the scholar managed to publish his works in scholarly journals both in the USSR and abroad. According to Dr. Dashkevych, he sent his texts abroad thanks to connections with Armenian scholars. The consequences of such “freethinking” were not long in coming: “Repressions, of course, there were. For example, a severe reprimand from the university rector, Maksymovych. At that time, the Institute of Social Sciences was subordinate to the university, and there were all sorts of sanctions for publishing abroad.” In addition, the scholar had to publish articles in Soviet scientific journals under pseudonyms.
Understandably, these were non-remunerated works. As Yaroslav Dashkevych recalls, “at that time, one could not count on proper payment. And after 1972, I could not publish anything in Ukraine at all. A ‘blacklist’ was compiled and sent to all editorial offices and publishing houses. Moreover, it was forbidden not only to print, but also to mention or cite.” Did he write any texts “for the drawer”? “I don't think I wrote ‘for the drawer,’ because after writing something, I tried to publish it somehow. In the USSR, it was easier for me to do this in Armenia or Russia, but not in Ukraine, where that ‘blacklist’ was strictly enforced.”
At the same time, Dr. Dashkevych actively participated in dissident activities. The scholar says: “My participation in the dissident movement consisted of quite close ties with Russian dissidents in Moscow; I personally knew the leading Russian dissidents. There was also a dissident movement in Ukraine—cooperation in the semi-legal press, which was typewritten. Financial aid from the West for people who were persecuted here also came through my connections.”
Such activity could not fail to attract the close attention of the KGB, not to mention Yaroslav Romanovych's “aggravating” past. When asked how often he had to “communicate” with the special services, the scholar answered briefly: “They summoned me from time to time. I had four searches—that’s also a form of communication.” In Dr. Dashkevych’s opinion, a second arrest was prevented because it would have had too wide a repercussion in Ukraine and abroad. However, the communists had enough opportunities to make the scholar’s life unbearable even without imprisonment. What was the most painful? “The arrest of my mother... A large library disappeared, confiscated during the arrest and searches. And, obviously, the path to any normal scholarly activity was blocked. After all, I had to defend my candidate’s dissertation in Armenia. The Armenians offered me a job with them, but everything was done through the channels of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to prevent them from hiring me.” And on a purely human level, it was not sweet when former colleagues would cross to the other side of the street to avoid greeting him.
Undoubtedly, in conditions of continuous persecution, the desire to leave the USSR, or at least the Ukrainian SSR, could arise from time to time, as other dissidents had to do. Yaroslav Dashkevych denies having such intentions, but facts from the scholar's life story lead one to assume that things were not so straightforward: the attempt to study in Moscow, the attempt to get a job in Armenia... But whatever the case, he managed to endure all the hardships and not betray his convictions. When I asked him how he held on, the scholar replied: “First, I had some help here, in the USSR, from the Armenians, and besides that, from time to time, the emigration from abroad helped financially.” And there was also the moral support and understanding from his wife, the late Liudmyla Sheremetyeva-Dashkevych, and like-minded friends…
After Ukraine gained statehood, Yaroslav Dashkevych was finally able to undertake full-fledged scholarly work, defend his doctoral dissertation, head a large research institution, and widely publish his works in both professional press and in the popular science genre. In 1997, on the occasion of the scholar's 70th birthday, he was awarded the Order "For Merit," and later he was awarded the title of Honored Scientist and Technician. Despite this, Dr. Dashkevych does not speak very favorably of the Ukrainian government. Comparing the state policy in the humanitarian sphere during the presidencies of Kravchuk, Kuchma, and the current President, the scholar asserts that it should be assessed rather negatively: “Because this is the basket that has never been properly filled. They did not allow science to develop. That’s one thing. And secondly, old beliefs and stereotypes remained in science, particularly in the humanities. In many universities, all this is passed on to the new generation, and this is a great harm.” As for the relationship between the intelligentsia and the authorities during the period of independence, “the main negative is that the authorities are mostly not interested in the intelligentsia. The authorities, of course, try to use the intelligentsia, but they do the minimum for culture and science.”
Paradoxically, after the Orange Revolution, some of the not-so-best changes occurred in Yaroslav Dashkevych's life. I was talking with the scholar right on the day of the second anniversary of the Maidan. And I heard from him the disheartening words: “For two years now, I have been receiving fake calls related to the well-known ‘archive case.’ No one responds. They call at night to keep me from sleeping.” But the historian cannot capitulate—not with that biography, not with that experience, not with that grit. That is why even today he is at the forefront of the struggle to save our national heritage—historical documents and national memory.
Finally, I asked him what the response of the modern Ukrainian intelligentsia should be to the internal and external threats that have arisen before Ukraine. Yaroslav Dashkevych replied: “Obviously, the elevation of internal self-organization to a higher level. Because our intelligentsia does not form a united front against all those threats. It is scattered and divided, just like all other political forces.”
The life path of Yaroslav Romanovych Dashkevych is, first and foremost, a life of scholarly work. He is the author of over a thousand scholarly works. In 1996-1997, the scholar headed the expert commission on historical sciences of the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine. Currently, he works as the deputy director of the M. S. Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. All this time, the historian has tried to fulfill his civic mission primarily as a scholar. However, in recent years, he did step over his principle of not joining any organization or party, becoming the head of the Committee for the Protection of Archives in 2005. And if a scholar who has principally stood outside political institutions his entire life became interested in politics in his later years, this, apparently, indicates that we live in times when no conscious Ukrainian can afford the luxury of being aloof from public life.
Happy birthday, Teacher!
Andrii Shevtsiv is an activist of the OPORA Civic Network
"Lvivska Gazeta,” No. 59 (59), December 14, 2006