UNDER UNCLEAR CIRCUMSTANCES.
Twenty-five years ago, the artist and patriot Rostyslav PALETSKY died.
Shlyakh Peremohy, nos. 1-2 (2590), 2004. – January 1.
From time to time, I come across his only photograph (from 1970) in my home archive. And each time I remember his good-naturedly ironic smile when he first shook my hand.
“Rostyslav Paletsky. Amateur artist of the ‘Mayak’ kolkhoz.”
“You must be painting for workdays, using wallpaper?” I was ready to joke. “And this with your exhibitions abroad.”
“If those Japanese knew about my earnings, they might at least have sent a few brushes. Because I don't keep pigs, and you can't borrow bristles from the boar on the pig farm.”
On the left of the photograph is Maria Ovdiyenko, a philology student from Odesa University, who came for folklore practice to the village of Troyitske in the Lyubashivka district of the Odesa region. Immediately realizing the uniqueness of the rural artist's work, she suggested that I, then an editor at the Odesa television studio, make a program about him.
R. Paletsky was born on January 10, 1932, in the village of Kokhanivka, Ananyiv district, Odesa region. He studied to be a bricklayer, but due to his health, he returned home and became the head of a club. And when he led the Troyitske House of Culture, he initiated the creation of “Pearl of the Steppe”—a center for folklorists and folk craftsmen who collected and studied interesting examples of embroidery, weaving, pysanka-making, tales, legends, and more. A year later, on the basis of this group, the literary and artistic association “Steppe Ear of Grain” was formed.
In the House of Folk Art, built to his own design, Rostyslav Mykhailovych taught decorative painting to schoolchildren and adults. When my television crew arrived, many works by the teacher himself were on display, including a series of paintings based on Lesia Ukrainka’s fantasy play “The Forest Song.”
I met this master for the second time the following summer (1971). Thanks to I. Kozyrod, who was on his way to Troyitske to select works for a solo exhibition at the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, which he headed at the time.
“And what prompted you to take up decorative painting specifically?” I asked Rostyslav Mykhailovych. “You could have painted landscapes or portraits instead of toiling over meticulous ornamentation.”
“I started drawing as a child. When I watched, mesmerized, as my mother decorated the chimney or the stove, and before Easter, she would work magic with paints on pysanky. Or when my father would paint a chest or chairs. And then one day, I felt as if I had a calling for these folk patterns...”
I noticed that Paletsky's interest in Cossack themes and the heroic epic of our people had deepened. I can’t even compare him with anyone else.
“Paletsky is an innovator in this genre. And he astonishes the world with this,” Kozyrod confirmed my thoughts. “He often invents his own ornamental compositions. While famous masters of decorative painting, say, Maria Pryimachenko or Hanna Sobachko-Shostak, are content with the symbolism of animals and birds, Rostyslav turns to the stylization of historical figures and famous literary characters.”
“Perhaps therein lies the secret of Paletsky's success, the fascination with his works at foreign exhibitions?” I ventured.
“Unfortunately, when one of our artists starts getting praise ‘abroad,’ our leading comrades usually look for reasons to give the opposite assessment,” Ivan Ivanovych reminded me and drew a bleak conclusion. “This means, Rostyslav, that you are already overstepping the prescribed limits...”
The third and final meeting with him took place that same year, in October, right after the arrest of my friend, the dissident poet Oleksa Riznykov. Paletsky had come on some business and, at the same time, carried out a delicate errand for his folklorist neighbor.
“Raisa Chernets asked me to tell you that you were right when you warned her...”
“So, the KGB agents confiscated my letters from her,” I guessed.
“The same day she returned to the village from Odesa. They were following her. They even gave her a ride from the bus stop to her house.”
We imagined how this simple-hearted elderly woman tried to pay the “good boys” in the black Volga, and we couldn’t help but laugh.
“I almost forgot,” Rostyslav Mykhailovych said, holding my hand as we parted. “A strange man visited me recently. Supposedly a consultant or an expert from the Ministry of Culture. He said that in my works at the exhibition he saw a ‘tendency to slide toward nationalism.’ He strongly advised me to stick to the canons of decorative painting and to draw flora and fauna, not Cossacks.”
“They’re consulting everywhere now, warning against deviation...”
“They—you mean the KGB?” the master decided to clarify.
“Of course. They are the main ‘guardians’ of literature and art.”
Also in my archive is a letter from R. Paletsky (1972). He reproaches me for not sending any news to Troyitske, saying he had wanted to outline a “line of cooperation” to publish a book-album. He also asked me to pay attention to the work of his younger brother Yurko, born in 1941. But I had no time for correspondence back then. The investigation into the case of three dissidents was ongoing. I was frequently summoned for interrogation at the KGB.
And Paletsky, at my request, provided some information: he received a bronze laureate medal for his first solo exhibition; he was the only one from the region whose works were presented at the All-Union Exhibition; in 1971, he was awarded the title “Honored Master of Folk Art”; his paintings were exhibited in Odesa, Kyiv, Leningrad, Moscow, Izmail, and Poltava, and were also seen by Poles, Bulgarians, Germans, Czechs, and Japanese; he had 8 thematic exhibitions, each with 50-60 works. A color documentary film was made about R. Paletsky, and another in 1993.
I. Kozyrod has a strange photograph of this master. He is pointing at a watch, as if reminding us how much time he has left on this earth. And was it not that dark premonition that in his last years extinguished his creative zeal and caused depression? On the one hand, one can understand this self-taught genius. Under the pretext of lacking a special education, he was alienated from the children’s decorative painting studio, which by then had the status of an art school. When it came to exhibitions, cultural officials berated him for idealizing the Cossack era and so on. The Mystetstvo publishing house stopped work on his album. And in the Union of Artists, his application for membership was somehow “lost.”
In a letter to I. Kozyrod in the autumn of 1972, I read:
“My wife, as you know, was also an artist at the kolkhoz. But the other day, in the office there, the prosecutor took an interest in me. It turns out, someone doesn't like us. This utterly outraged me... So I am officially resigning from my position as an artist. I’ll go to the production brigade. I need peace, because my heart is getting worse. And in the spring, I will disappear from Troyitske. Enough. I am cutting all ties.”
Perhaps he had not yet realized that the reason for the investigation was not even his modest earnings from side jobs. That he had ended up on a secret KGB surveillance list. His works, which could have spurred national self-awareness, had evidently caused concern.
Moreover, someone was actively informing the “proper authorities” about R. Paletsky’s ideologically dangerous plans: guiding the “Steppe Ear of Grain” association to study “superstitious” (in fact, ancient) customs and rituals, creating a museum of “relics of capitalism” (obviously, folk life) of the Black Sea region, and publishing a book about the “self-proclaimed” (probably, non-certified) masters of the village of Troyitske. There was also a “tip-off” that Paletsky had seen an old towel somewhere with anchors and... a trident.
Doesn’t all this “smell” of nationalism?
So it was decided to break this stubborn artist. By any means necessary.
“I have everything related to Paletsky. Even your letter, written in the summer of ’73. Asking me to go and save him,” said I. Kozyrod, shaking his head, when we were brought together by shared memories a full 30 years later. “But I also knew that Rostyslav had been hounded into the ground. He was broken and only occasionally sat down to paint.”
After the repression (1972), I had many problems of my own. But if only I had known...
Paletsky’s death was mysterious. On the whole, the version of his demise matches the one later described in the foreign collection "Russification of Ukraine":
“On March 10, 1978, in the village of Troyitske, Odesa region, the Ukrainian artist Rostyslav Paletsky was murdered in his own home by ‘unknown criminals.’ He was found with a fractured skull. On the eve of his death, a suspicious-looking man came to the Paletskys’ house... The authorities spread rumors that Paletsky died because he was drunk, fell, and hit his head... As a painter, Paletsky was distinguished by great talent, Ukrainian color, and patriotic themes. After his death, there was no obituary or even a mention in any Soviet newspaper, despite his paintings being exhibited throughout the USSR and abroad...”
One significant correction: this happened not on March 10, but on March 7. And where did Paletsky’s widow go? Maria, frightened by anonymous threats, quickly sold the house for a pittance and left for Odesa, where she had relatives. But every year she came to pray at Rostyslav’s grave. Until her own death.
The subsequent fate of “Steppe Ear of Grain” is also disheartening. For a time, it held on and produced a creative harvest. But eventually, the artistic springs in Troyitske silted up. Only a few masters are named, including history teacher Larysa Babynets—R. Paletsky’s best student, who teaches children decorative painting in the “Dyvotsvit” studio. Not a single mention in the press of that time... So the compilers of the encyclopedic dictionary “Artists of Ukraine” (K., 1992), without troubling themselves with inquiries, did not indicate R. Paletsky’s date of death. As if he had been lost somewhere in the hinterland.
“I praise you for your unshakeable will,” he ended his message to me.
I understand that these last words are simply a tribute to our deep mutual friendship. In our heavy thoughts about our downtrodden people. And so I perceive them as a moral testament to be just that. For everyone who professes the idea of a united Ukraine.
Prepared by Vasyl Ovsienko on May 2, 2009.