The Ancient Trail of the Salt Merchant

The Day should be congratulated on having expanded the scope of interesting materials on its pages, specially considering that these features have a definite social importance. This expanded scope is evidenced by the publication of the second book, Dvi Rusi, of The Day Library Series. The first book, Ukraine Incognita, succeeded in crossing the boundary between the known and unknown to the readership, marked on the medieval charts something like “Here there be dragons.” In the recent Soviet past, this meant a boundary jealously guarded by the censors. The second book of the series deals with things both known and unknown in the Ukrainian-Russian social interaction domain — rather, with certain intriguing aspects thereof.

Dvi Rusi is actually about events in the life of the peoples of Eastern Europe that can be referred to Ukrainian and/or Russian history. Accordingly, the authors broach the subject of interrelationships in the historical experience of both nations. Larysa Ivshyna, as Editor-in-Chief, set the conceptual task of determining the civilized coordinates of their modern cooperation. History, meanwhile, emerges as a subject no less topical than current politics. A national idea — in our case the Ukrainian one — is defined as awareness of one’s own historical experience.

In view of this, Dvi Rusi’s authors sought a way to express precisely how the Ukrainian people tried to rid themselves of all the hoary myths dealing with their past, their heroes, integrating all those past portrayals into the tough current realities, into the ongoing ruthless civilization process. In this context, the reader is sure to find a large amount of interesting heretofore little-known factual data.

The ancient Romans are known to have applied the term author (auctor writer, progenitor) to military leaders who were able to conquer new territories and bring them into the empire. There are unexplored recesses of our soul, albeit in the sphere of historical possibilities, in opening up new historical horizons, in finding further evidence of joint Ukrainian- Russian historical experience — precisely where the authors of the new book appear to have struck oil.

The point of departure is appropriating the legacy of Kyiv Rus’. The book sets the task of tracing back the ways and methods (considering the failed concept of a trilaterally unified people), using which Ukraine-Rus’ transformed into Rus’- Russia, due to dynastic considerations, through the Vladimir-Moscow Principality of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; also considering that it was accepted by Halych-Volyn duchy and sometimes kingdom, which, under the historical circumstances, was destined to pursue a purely Ukrainian historical course.

The book elucidates the key historical landmarks, ranging from the division of the Monomakh dynasty in 1132, producing two offshoots, the elder Kyiv one, the younger one footed in the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality, Petro Sahaidachny’s campaign against Moscow, and on to the Council of Pereyaslav. The latter could only reach a formal agreement (suzerainty or protectorate) on Ukraine’s accession to the Moscow domain. The treaty was subsequently signed in Moscow and further on repeatedly falsified by Moscow, so much so that Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky would eventually denounce it.

The authors further illustrate the enviable prospects of Ukrainian-Russian cooperation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (focusing on both the positive and negative consequences), until the Soviet period, offering an unbiased assessment of Stalin’s rule. The important thing is that episodes from that historical period of cooperation are rendered not separately, but in their personal representation. One finds striking realistic portrayals of such Russian-Ukrainian historical figures as Nikolai Berdyaev, Aleksandr Herzen, Dmytro Bortniansky, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Nikolay Leskov, Dmytro Troshchynsky, to mention but a few.

At this point one is reminded of the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov and his dream of a country existing not just in space, but also in time, a country where the present and the past would form something akin to what we know as Chumatsky Shliakh [the salt merchants’ galaxy that cannot be measured by centuries]. In fact, Dvi Rusi is very much like that time travel, serving as additional proof to what Goethe wrote in his Testament that nothing in the past will sink into oblivion, as the future lures one with its prospects. Eternity fills every moment of one’s earthly life.

St. Andrew’s Hill

The first book of The Day Library Series, Ukraine Incognita, came off the presses in record time: from July 25 to September 13, 2002. When I visited Larysa Ivshyna to propose a digest incorporating the historical column’s best features, I discovered that the seeds were planted in fertile soil. Articles dealing with history were carried by a number of contemporary publications (in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine), but the point was that The Day was presenting such features meant for a thinking readership, helping them to better comprehend what was happening, the political process in Ukraine. It was like blood running in the veins of the living organism we know as Ukraine.

Then we had the second book of the series, Dvi Rusi, broaching acute subjects in Ukrainian-Russian relations, shown from an historical standpoint — but most importantly presenting the Ukrainian viewpoint. Mykhailo Maksymovych once made an apt statement, addressing his opponents, stressing the importance of viewing things from the right angle: “Many of you [in Great Russia] view the whole of the land of Rus’ from the top of Ivan the Great’s [great church bell in Moscow]; here [in Little Russia] others view it from the Zaporozhian Sich, the poetic Savur Grave; personally, I view all of the land of Rus’ from the Dnipro, from Old Kyiv, from St. Andrew’s Hill...”

Ukrainians have always had problems reading their own history, for what they had available was difficult to understand. In addition, our historical mentality is an injured one. It is because of lack of knowledge of our past, because of surviving stereotypes (with whole generations taught to view Ukrainian history through the Russian prism).

Dvi Rusi is a sad book, it has much to say on all those minor and major national defeats and losses. At the same time it proposes to take a courageous look at ourselves and at our neighbors. By carefully studying the materials contained there, many of the readers on both sides of the divide can receive a kind of therapy.

Personally, I find the Cossack period and vicissitudes of the twentieth century most comprehensively represented, largely due to such qualified authors as Viktor Horobets (also the book’s scholarly consultant) and Yury Shapoval. Their articles make up the lion’s share of the materials contained in Dvi Rusi, and this had a definite impact on the general concept. I should also note numerous literary studies contributed by such universal authors as Serhiy Makhun and Ihor Siundiukov. They, as The Day’s leading historical columnists, had the important task of elucidating various themes and portraying different historical personalities. They coped with the task and are appreciated by their readers.

The topic of Kyiv Rus’ seems less fortunate in this sense. I think this problem addresses not so much The Day as it does our historical science in general. A markedly limited number of historians, among them literally a handful of young researchers, appear to specialize in the Ukrainian medieval period. I was thrilled to read Volodymyr Richka’s article Kyiv Rus’: Whose Legacy? It is about Ukrainian scholars losing their battle for the Kyiv heritage to their Moscow counterparts. The topic cries for a sequel, maybe even as a series of publications or as a public debate. The very notion of defeat makes one object. Does it mean that all the i’s have been dotted and t’s crossed? In fact, Volodymyr Richka invites his readers to further ascertain specific ways and means of continuity whereby Kyiv Rus’ became Rus’-Ukraine, Rus’-Russia, or Belarus. This invitation appears topical the more so that we can view the topic of whose legacy from the top of St. Andrew’s Hill.

Dvi Rusi appeared in print precisely as Ukraine’s possible involvement in the single economic space with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan was being sharply debated. I followed the debate closely, reading every article, then listening to and watching our politicians and lawmakers on the radio and television. I was aware of the amazing absence of the past in our present realities. There were two eternal damning question still to be answered: Who are the Ukrainians and what do they want? (Mykhailo Hrushevsky). We are still struggling to answer this, trying to integrate both ways, forgetting the lessons of history, about all those situations when our ancestors made agreements then and now, falling into traps or hoping to run on the razor blade of all kinds of diplomatic tricks, finally ending up on the losing side, sustaining heavy losses, suffering terrible defeats. This is precisely what happened after signing the Treaty of Pereyaslav (I am reminded of Volodymyr Horobets’s extremely interesting article carried by The Day, titled “The Day that Has Never Happened: Council of Pereyaslav in Myths and Reality”); also, about what happened to those national communists in the Soviet Union, in the 1920s-1930s — or take the dramatic story about the Ukrainian Church losing its independence in Klara Gudzyk’s feature. I wish all those politicians acting as signatories had read all of these newspaper articles.

Simultaneously, it is not worthwhile to focus on defeats. Lina Kostenko wrote her Berestechko novel, stressing that one had to overcome the awareness of defeat in one’s soul; ditto her article “Ukraine, Victim of, and Reason for, the Globalization of Disasters” contained in Dvi Rusi. After all, one wants to read more about attainments than defeats of our history. This would help rid ourselves of that Little Russia complex, of which Stanislav Kulchytsky wrote in an article for the newspaper Dzerkalo tyzhnia-Zerkalo nedeli, that the objective conditions of reviving it disappeared once Ukraine had proclaimed its national independence, adding that only so many subjective factors remained. If only the situation were that simple.

I was finishing reading Dvi Rusi, thinking that there couldn’t be too many books on history; they were all badly needed by Ukrainian society, including what we still know as “popular scholarly” publications. There are a great many thrilling topics to be found in Ukrainian history, these would be enough for The Day’s coverage lasting for many years. Meaning one could expect further books as a sequel to this successful project.

Time Will Lay All Things Bare

I remember when, as a graduate student, I brought my small article to a well-known professor who was the compiler of this collection. I was eager to be accepted among the authors. I was very nervous. I told him, “Here is the text of my article. Would you please look it through and tell me if you need it?” The wise and well-educated professor looked at me and said, “What do you mean if I need it?” My article was accepted and added to the text and sent to bed. For me, it was a good lesson in scholarly diplomacy.

Thus, casting aside all kinds of diplomacy (considering that we live at a period that cannot be accredited by any diplomacy), let us ask ourselves whether this society actually needs a book such as Dvi Rusi? Personally, I think we ought to answer in the affirmative. I also think that much will be said and written on the subject. But I need it because it offers an eloquent dialog relating to Ukrainian-Russian relations embracing hundreds of years.

Now that people are using history (especially Ukrainian history) as yet another commodity, doing so in a blatant, unforgivably, and consistently ignorant way, one sometimes feels like dropping the subject of historical experience. However, unless we practice this kind of inner dialog, we are doomed to learn about our past from sources that are not our own. Therefore, being able to cooperate with the Den’/The Day, seeing that the editors keep a steady historical column, one tending at times to become a genre of sorts (100 noted non-Ukrainian politicians, physicians, lovers, and so on) appears really important.

Dvi Rusi is a book which is also important because it can provide for a constructive Ukrainian-Russian intellectual dialog. Aldous Huxley noted that history is like a liver pat О ; it’s best not see how it’s prepared. I think that we must trace the Ukrainian-Russian relationship in the kitchen. And I think that this books offers precisely such an opportunity. Tempus omnia revelat is the Latin for time laying everything bare. It’s my favorite proverb and I think it could be a good epigraph for this book.

I would like to congratulate Larysa Ivshyna and her editorial team on the publication. I think all of them have put their hearts into the job, so the book be published this year, marking the Year of Russia in Ukraine. I also think that few here and in Russia realize that this year will signify its actual contents for all of us. The Day’s editor-in-chief told me, even as they were working on the book’s concept, that she knew and could see precisely who would need it. Read her foreword and you will know what I mean.

I know it’s against protocol to voice one’s critical remarks when greeting one on publishing something new and noteworthy. Yet I will take the liberty of violating that protocol. I think that Dvi Rus’s typography could do without all that black-and-white mournful design and illustrations.

However, we all know that such offhand remarks do not generally influence those in a position to pass judgment on such fundamental works. I agree with all those praising the new book and I can only add that its organizers and authors deserve every praise.