WE JUST MARCHED ON…
The Tenth Anniversary of the Ukrainian Culturological Club
(Vasyl Ovsienko. The Light of People: Memoirs and Journalism. In two books. Book 2 / Compiled by the author. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2005. – pp. 102–106).
“Old Bolsheviks with pre-revolutionary credentials”—that’s how it was fashionable to style oneself among the Bolsheviks. Until the 1930s. Until they were shot...
I don’t know if it will become fashionable over time for participants in the struggle for independence to style themselves as “old revolutionaries” (the watershed being August 24, 1991), but members of the Ukrainian Republican and Republican Christian parties, in accordance with their statutes, count their party tenure from the day they joined the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union.
But in the era of Gorbachev’s “glasnost,” the very first organized force (or as they wrote then, “informal association of citizens”) in Kyiv was the Ukrainian Culturological Club (UCC). Its creators were mostly young people—recent political prisoners Serhiy Naboka, Leonid Milyavsky, Inna Cherniavska, Larysa Lokhvytska, Olha Heiko-Matusevych, as well as Vadym Halynovsky, Iryna Alter, Oleksandr Karabchiievsky, and Volodymyr Fedko. Under the guise of a district Komsomol “event” at the “Liubava” club-cafe on August 6, 1987, they organized a public discussion titled “Ukrainian Culture: Myths and Reality,” where they raised issues silenced by Soviet propaganda: the 1933 famine, the oppression of the church, freedom of speech. The discussion was attended for the first time by recently released political prisoners from the concentration camps, Yevhen Sverstiuk and Oles Shevchenko. It was here that the idea of creating a permanent “Ukrainian Culturological Club” arose—such an innocent sign, not at all political and in the spirit of “perestroika.” Especially since precedents for the emergence of unauthorized gatherings and public organizations already existed in Moscow, Leningrad, and the Baltic countries. Acting legally and openly, they spread ideas that were oppositional to Soviet ideology.
The precedent gained wide publicity. New people were drawn to the Club. Arkadiy Kyreiev was elected chairman of the UCC, and later Serhiy Naboka. Its activists included Ihor Zaporozhets, Tetiana and Anatoliy Bytchenko, Yevhen Obertas, Vitaliy Shevchenko, Petro Borsuk, Yaroslava Danyleiko, Taras Kompanychenko, Mykola Lysenko, Vasyl Gurdzan, Klym Semeniuk, Taras Antoniuk, Anatoliy Lupynis, Dmytro Korchynsky, Lohvyn Babliak, Yevhen Chernyshov, Nadiia Levchenko, Oleksa Mykolyshyn, and others. They created a history section (Yuriy Ohulchansky) and a language section (Vladyslav Ishchenko). Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Viacheslav Chornovil, and Mykhailo and Bohdan Horyn were also present here. Political prisoners, upon their release, came straight to the Club. Thus, Mykola Horbal was brought here by his wife, Olha Stоkotelna, in the very first days of his return to Kyiv. On the third day after my release, August 23, 1988, I, the author of these lines, also came.
Discussions about Hryhoriy Skovoroda and the Chornobyl disaster were also held in “Liubava,” with three more in the “Suchasnyk” youth hall. The debate “White Spots in the History of Ukraine” gathered the most participants. The reaction to it was an article by Oleksandr Shvets in “Vechirniy Kyiv” on October 18, 1987, titled “Theater of Shadows, or What Lies Behind the Scenes of the So-Called Ukrainian Culturological Club.” The article made its way through the regional newspapers, and condemnatory responses from indignant Soviet citizens appeared. Here is the level of some of them: one denouncer wrote that we were supposedly indifferent to the fate of Ukraine because she heard a poem by T. Shevchenko being read at a Club meeting: “Menі odnakovo, chy budu ya zhyt' v Ukrayini, chy ni...” (It is all the same to me, whether I will live in Ukraine or not...).
The Club began to be denied premises. They gathered on the slopes of the Dnipro, in Hydropark on the beach, and in apartments, until its seat was established at 10 Olehivska Street, on a high hill opposite the Zhytniy Rynok, in the courtyard of Dmytro Fedoriv. This cost the owner several attacks by “unknown persons” on the street and many summonses and visits from the police, but he did not give in.
Today, former members of the UCC can be seen among the leaders of many political and public organizations—from the very radical to the center-right, from UNSO to the RChP. Back then, they were all united by a thirst for freedom of speech and the national idea. When the iron shackles of censorship and bans on organized activity fell, the Club's activists went on to make politics each in their own way, and that is normal.
Caught up in their affairs, the “old revolutionaries” remembered their anniversary only in the fall and gathered at the hospitable home of Dmytro Fedoriv on Sunday, December 7, 1997. Petro Borsuk made a list and took a roll call—out of 60 people, about 40 came.
The group reached a unanimous conclusion: it is necessary to collect all the publications and texts of the UCC reports, as well as the memoirs of the participants, and publish them as a booklet. Because it is known: history is, unfortunately, not always what happened, but what is written. If the people who know the truth do not write it, others will come and write what they need to.
“And they are already writing,” said Mykhailo Horyn. “On November 13, that same ‘Vechirniy Kyiv’ published an article by Volodymyr Kmetyk titled ‘The Velvet Season of Ukrainian Dissidence,’ where very recent history is deliberately distorted. They write, for example, that the Ukrainian Helsinki Union was a cultural organization, that it was for a confederation of the peoples of the USSR... But we know very well that our declarations were only a part of our intentions! Confederation was a step toward the destruction of the empire, which was accepted by public opinion, while the idea of independence was not yet accepted then. And our cultural work was the awakening of national consciousness with the aim of restoring statehood. We were not confederalists! We have always been independents. People need to be explained why we talked about confederation under those conditions.”
The KGB was more meticulous in this regard. But it recorded its own truth. An objective researcher would have to compare their truth and ours and write an objective historical essay.
Viacheslav Chornovil promised to restore the “Chronicle of Resistance” column in the “Chas-Time” newspaper for this purpose:
“Rukh is ready to assist in publishing a booklet about the UCC. It is necessary to research the influences—Baltic, Moscow... As soon as ‘Glasnost’ appeared in Moscow, two weeks later we had the ‘Ukrayinskyi Visnyk’ (end of 1987). We were waiting for a precedent. The culturological sign was political mimicry, as was the ‘Ukrainian Helsinki Union’ (in July 1988, the UCC joined the UHU in its entirety). We were thinking about how to create a political party in such a way that it wouldn’t be obvious that it was a party. We hoped that the International Helsinki Federation would accept us as a member and protect us. But when we sent them the Programmatic Principles of the UHU, they said: but this is a political program! And we were not accepted there…”
Dmytro Korchynsky’s proposal that, as a form of satisfaction, the memoirs about the UCC’s activities should be published by that same “Vechirniy Kyiv” was met with approval.
“The most high-profile action of the UCC was the environmental demonstration on the Square of the October Revolution (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti) on April 26, 1988—the second anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster. KGB agents stood in the city center every five meters,” recalls Oles Shevchenko. “They brought in equipment, started patching the asphalt to have a reason to ban it. About fifty people were arrested and released during the night. I was given a special honor: 15 days as a ‘hooligan’.”
And how can one forget the youth demonstration against service outside Ukraine? The boys marched through the whole city to the Kyiv city military command (Dmytro Korchynsky pushed a stroller with his child in front of him). We threw away their flags and put up blue-and-yellow ones… Or the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus-Ukraine on the slopes of the Dnipro: it was a challenge to the Moscow officialdom. We said: this event happened here. And Moscow, “Russia was not even in the world then” (T. Shevchenko). Then we collected signatures demanding the release of imprisoned members of the “Karabakh” committee in Armenia. At that time, potential participants were grabbed at home or on the streets and taken outside the city. This cannot be forgotten...
Yevhen Sverstiuk. At that time, we were breaking through a wall. It was quite visible; we knew what we were breaking through. We didn’t have far-reaching plans, but we wanted to speak and do what we thought was necessary, despite the authorities’ threats. It was a moral, ethical, intellectual, and spiritual confrontation with the regime. The biggest challenge to it was a meeting to which it did not know how to react. The party and its directives still existed, but they could no longer imprison people… I mean the celebration of Vasyl Stus’s 50th birthday. At the end of 1987, we were discussing how to announce to the world the poet who had died in a concentration camp over two years earlier. I read a report about V. Stus. Then someone said: “Stand up!” One of the “comrades” did not stand up—and thus exposed himself (and they were already afraid of being exposed). I said that this text would be sent abroad to UNESCO. It was signed by three PEN Club members—Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychnyi, and myself. It was an appeal to the International PEN Club. A respected Ukrainian poet abroad said he would not translate this appeal. It was, he said, politics. But people were found who translated it. The President of the International PEN Club sent a telegram to M. Gorbachev. After that, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine became interested in a figure like Vasyl Stus. This was a matter that had a real result. It exists as a document, not just as a memory.
Dmytro Fedoriv. I want to tell you how we organized the evening for V. Stus. Oles Shevchenko and Yevhen Obertas came to me. We agreed. The next day, my KGB “curator” comes running. He said his boss wanted to talk to me near the “Era” cinema. The man introduced himself as a colonel:
“So, you’re having a Stus evening?”
“No. I know better what’s happening in my own house.”
“And if it does happen at your place, will you let us know?”
“Alright.”
On Saturday, I called the “curator”: we need to talk. We went to his boss. I said: there will be a Stus evening at my place after all.
“And did you give your consent?”
“I did.”
“If you gave your consent, then we won’t forbid you. I would just ask you to inform us what Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska will say.”
“Are you serious? Who do you take me for? I can’t do that. Besides, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. I’m inviting you to the evening yourself.”
“Really? No, I won’t come…”
Dmytro Korchynsky. The history of this period will record what processes were taking place in the power structures. But when the history of natiogenesis is written, the UCC will take its proper place there. For people who have not previously participated in rebellions, in turbulent events, it is difficult to grasp that it often depended on one person whether people would go to storm the royal palace or disperse. So it was here: a dozen and a half people took the first step—and what they did later no longer matters. I was in the second wave of UCC members. We, students of Kyiv University, heard about it and came, knowing the names of Chornovil, the Horyns. If there had been no UCC, many things would not have happened… I am grateful to all of you. What you did then gave you the right to make further mistakes.
Vasyl Ovsienko. I remembered that even in the Kuchino concentration camp in the Urals, we learned about the Club’s existence from a publication in “Vechirniy Kyiv.” Vitaliy Kalynychenko was being taken to Ukraine at the time, to the KGB “for brainwashing,” and he brought back a clipping. We rejoiced that there was already an organized movement in Ukraine too. On September 3, 1988, on the eve of the anniversary of the deaths of Yuriy Lytvyn and Vasyl Stus, I was here for the first time, speaking freely about the circumstances of their deaths, reciting Stus’s poems from memory… I am glad to see so many dear people together again. Stus wrote:
І галактичний Київ спижовіє
У мерехтінні найдорожчих лиць.
Those dearest faces are here. Thank you for being who you were and who you are.
Photo by DMYTRO PONAMARCHUK: members of the Ukrainian Culturological Club on December 7, 1997, under a viburnum tree near Dmytro Fedoriv’s green gate at 10 Olehivska Street. Sitting from left to right: Petro Borsuk, Dmytro Fedoriv, Serhiy Naboka, Fred Anadenko, Mykola Lysenko, Vasyl Ovsienko; standing: Oleksandr Kovalenko, Petro Danyliv, Dmytro Korchynsky, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Mykola Hvozd, unknown, Vladyslav Ishchenko, Halyna Kulahina, Oles Shevchenko, Borys Shylenko, Nadiia Levchenko, Viacheslav Chornovil, Yuriy Ohulchansky, Yevhen Obertas, Petro Lytvyn, Oleksiy Zadorozhnyi, Renat Polovyi.
Narodna Hazeta. – 1997. – No. 50 (331).
