That distant event (the 300th anniversary of Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s military and political action falls on November by the Gregorian calendar) was not a momentous affair: its extremely complicated dramaturgy had a long repercussion. It was so long that the name of Ivan Mazepa still remains a thorn in the side of politicians (in Ukraine and Russia alike) as well as of the part of our society that is not overburdened with historical knowledge. I bet my bottom dollar that for 99 percent of the passers-by in downtown Kyiv the name of Mazepa is first of all associated with the Battle of Poltava and Peter I. As a matter of fact, Mazepa held the office of hetman for more than 20 years, by no means the worst years in the history of Ukraine. At least in terms of culture, education, and religion. What do the ordinary Ukrainian people know about this? And will there be a time in the nearest future, when the Ukrainians’ mass awareness, still full of stereotypes, will respond to the “voice of science crying in the wilderness?”
Naturally, there are more and more active scholarly attempts to assess the events in Ukrainian lands at the turn of the 18th century (the ample proof of this is, particularly, the international scholarly conference “Ivan Mazepa and his Time: History, Culture, National Memory” held in mid-October, 2008, in Kyiv and Poltava, as well as numerous press publications), but it will cost so much effort to make the historical facts of 1708-1709, the logic of events and the motives of the behavior of that-time politicians and senior Cossack officers clearer not only for a narrow circle of academics!
The most effective way to achieve the result is to combine the potential of scholarly and civic institutions and the mass media with that of the state. When it comes to historical dates, which I will tentatively call “Mazepian,” a serious impetus to work, including the spread of knowledge, could be given by the President of Ukraine’s Decree “On Marking the 300th Anniversary of the Events Related to the Military and Political Action of Hetman Ivan Mazepa and the Formation of a Ukrainian-Swedish Alliance” dated October 9, 2007. In pursuance of this decree, the Cabinet resolved on April 2, 2008, to set up an organizational committee with Vice-Premier Ivan Vasiunyk at the head and duly approved a plan of actions. Now that eight months have passed it is time to sum up some preliminary results.
I will only dwell on the “Poltava part” because it is Poltava that will, for quite obvious reasons, be attracting overall attention in the middle of the next year.
The governmental plan of actions calls for doing repairs and restoration at the state historical and cultural preserve “Battle of Poltava Field,” establishing a museum of Ukrainian Cossacks on its basis, erecting monuments to Mazepa and Charles XII in Kyiv and Poltava, restoring the Battle-of-Poltava-time redoubts, putting up obelisks, and even issuing the commemorative coin “300 Years of the Battle of Poltava” and a postage stamp series.
After the plan had been approved, the organizing committee headed by Vasiunyk instructed the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to form a task force which was given a week — until May 31, 2008, — to draw up the concept and plan of marking the 300th anniversary of the events related to Ivan Mazepa’s military and political demarche and the formation of a Ukrainian-Swedish alliance. The idea was to work out an enhanced and detailed tentative plan which was then to be approved at the organizing committee’s session in Poltava.
The task force with me at the head managed to meet the deadline in drawing up the necessary documents and submitting them to the Cabinet of Ministers. To do so, we had to immediately travel to Poltava, meet representatives of the municipal and regional administrations and experts, discuss various suggestions, and draft the final documents. The submitted documents were perused by the deputy chairman of the organizing committee, Minister of Culture and Tourism V. Vovkun, who made some additional proposals. The overall impression was that the governmental organizing committee with Vasiunyk at the head would convene in Poltava on June 12 to finally discuss and approve the draft concept and plan to mark the 300th anniversary of the “Mazepian” events.
Remember the date: June 12. I am writing this article on the first day of December — THE SESSION HAS NOT YET BEEN HELD. On June 12, when the task force that drew up the projects was half-way to Poltava, near Pyriatyn, we were told by cell phone that the session was being postponed. It was postponed five more times (!) thereafter. The last time it happened was on September 23. The ostensible reason for this was... a heavy rainfall in Poltava.
Between June 12 and September 23, I was received by Vasiunyk who assured me that the away session would be held “the next week.” When this date also went by the board, I sent a letter to both Vasiunyk and Vovkun. I tried to persuade them that decisions were to be made and that time was against us. Feet-dragging will mean non-compliance with the presidential decree, and the state will be losing face. After all, one must help the Poltava municipal and regional authorities because they set up local organizing committees long ago, which are awaiting governmental assistance.
Nothing has happened. The organizing committee with Vice-Premier Ivan Vasiunyk at the head is not functioning. It last sat on May 19. As for the task force, it worked exclusively on its own enthusiasm - nobody sent anybody on a business trip, no transport was furnished to go to Poltava. To crown it all, the international scholarly conference “Ivan Mazepa and his Time: History, Culture and National Memory,” participated by academics from seven countries, was held without governmental support (let us hope that governmental institutions will at least do something to publish the conference proceedings).
This brings us to an uncomfortable conclusion: the state does not care a fig about all these “Mazepian” jubilees - in spite of the presidential decree and the Cabinet instruction, the fulfillment of which is highly questionable.
What is the situation now, with seven months to go before the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, the date which has some clearly defined facets and which is soon going to be the focus of all “Mazepian” events? Let me mention a few key points.
1. The museum “Battle of Poltava Field.” Its current exposition clearly needs to be revised in the light of an updated concept because it still glorifies Peter I and the Russian arms. The newly-appointed director of the museum, Natalia Bilan, is aware of this, but she is only beginning to get the picture. There is a lot work to do. It is quite obvious that the situation requires drawing up a clear-cut concept and a thematic plan of the exposition, as well as proper funding from the local budget. And, no matter how hard Liudmyla Shendryk, deputy director for research, may assert that the question of re-exposition has been positively solved and the only problem is funding, there is a suspicion that changes may just boil down to the opening of a “Cossack room” which will look very much like a self-contained “museum in a museum.” What is urgently needed is additional streamlining of the museum’s integral concept and thematic plan, discussion at the resource committee’s session, and appropriate decisions of the City Executive Committee’s Culture Department. As for the financial support, it is up to City Council deputies because the museum is funded from the municipal coffers.
In any case, repairing the water-supply and sewerage communications, museum premises, the fire warning equipment, the installation of self-contained heating, etc., in 2005-2007 cost UAH 2,571,000 from the state budget and UAH 3,049,000 from the local budget. It is cozy and warm in the museum, and it lacks just a “little:” the exposition is hardly in line with the Ukrainian view of the 1708-1709 history, which the museum researchers can express quite well in speeches or in publications.
2. Establishing the Museum of Ukrainian Cossacks as part of the historical and cultural preserve “Battle of Poltava Field.” There is a clause to this effect in the governmental instruction of April 2, 2008. The only trouble is that the 2008 state budget envisioned a total UAH 9- million-worth subvention to the Poltava oblast budget not for construction but for erecting monuments to Ivan Mazepa and Charles XII, repairs and restoration of the historical and cultural preserve “Battle of Poltava Field.” The state had to divert and increase the subvention from 9 to 15 million: in this case the Ministry of Culture and Tourism supported the Poltava Oblast Administration by agreeing that the oblast’s Culture Department make use of the budgetary funds at its own discretion.
But did anybody seriously ask what kind of museum is in question? In my view, the idea of a museum of Ukrainian Cossacks on the field of the battle, which was a catastrophe for the Hetman State, could have been borne in a hot head inclined to improvisations. In that battle, Cossacks would brilliantly beat one another! (Taras Shevchenko only desperately sighed on this occasion: “if only they had been unanimous...”) So everything should have begun with the museum concept, not with the money. Add to this total absence of the exhibits to see. Or is it going to be a museum of bare walls?
The impression is that nobody consulted experts. It was not taken into account that Poltava has a splendid regional historical and ethnographic museum with an interesting “segment” of Cossack history in this area. Maybe, some of the “patriots” imagined that a museum of Cossacks on the Battle of Poltava field would be an alternative to the now existing “museum of Peter I?” But would it not be better to update precisely “the now existing one!?”
It is quite obvious that there will be no museum until the middle of 2009.
3. The village of Zhuky. Zhuky was home to the famous Cossack chronicler Samiylo Velychko, and this is a moment when we can really speak of glory. As long ago as 1994 a stone commemorative sign was put up in honor of Velychko in the place where there once had been a Kochubei’s church - and that is all so far. Meanwhile, Slovaks made a monument to their compatriot Daniel Krman (a chronicler who witnessed the Battle of Poltava), which is now standing next to the stone slab in the same place where there had been a church. Word has it in Poltava that the Museum of Cossacks - the one we have just talked about - will be built in Zhuky. I wish it would. In any case, Zhuky could really host an interesting pantheon of the three chroniclers: the Ukrainian Samiylo Velychko, the Slovak Daniel Krman, and the Swede Gustav Adlerfeld (this chronicler of Charles XII was killed in the Battle of Poltava, but his unique diary miraculously survived and was published in 1730 in Amsterdam. It was never printed in Ukraine).
But does the concept of the future (so far virtual) museum envision something of the kind? And again: is the state subvention being utilized effectively? The answer would be transparent if the organizing committee with Vasiunyk at the head were functioning.
4. Monuments to Ivan Mazepa and Charles XII. They are mentioned in the presidential decree and the Cabinet instruction of April 2, 2008, — and not only in connection with Poltava: the capital was also assigned a task like this. We must give credit to the Poltava Mayor Andrii Matkovsky and City Council deputies: on August 22, 2008, the City Council resolved to erect a monument to Hetman Mazepa in Poltava’s historical center, on Cathedral Square. I can well imagine a thorny path to this decision. Still, it was made and we can hope that things will go more smoothly as far as the monument is concerned. All the more so that, as we remember, a part of the state subvention was intended “for carrying out comprehensive work to erect monuments to Ivan Mazepa and Charles XII.”
The green light is on? Like hell it is. As The Day readers may know, on November 25 the Poltava Oblast Council suspended the allocation of funds for the erection of a monument to Mazepa, and it is now difficult to say how this story will continue.
5. Russia and the preserve “Battle of Poltava Field.” Whoever visits the preserve these days will easily see that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that really rules the roost here. When I say “rules the roost,” I mean the work being done. There was until recently a small 1909 building in front of the museum, where the first Museum of the Battle of Poltava was opened 100 years ago on the initiative of the local historian Ivan Pavlovsky. After [Russia’s ambassador] Viktor Chernomyrdin visited Poltava last summer and made a deal with the city authorities, the building was torn down to clear the way for a new, much better, copy now being built at a brisk pace. There will be an Orthodox school here (can you guess of what patriarchate?) as well as the Russian cultural center. In the very heart of the preserve! I am seriously afraid that the Russian cultural center on the Battle of Poltava field will be an ideological bastion of quite a definite direction - otherwise, why don’t they as for a downtown place?
The Russians have already funded the repairs and restoration of a mass grave of the Russian soldiers killed in 1709 - and it is good, of course. But who is going to put up a mound on the preserve’s territory in honor of the fallen Cossacks? So far there are two memorials to Swedish soldiers, the aforesaid mass grave, a majestic temple built by the Russian Empire in honor of the battle’s 200th anniversary, and a modest “home-spun” cross by the road, by which civic organizations once honored the memory of the killed Cossacks. Is it going to remain as it is? I cannot understand why Peter I’s redoubts are being repaired and restored, while nothing is being done to mark in some way the Ukrainian presence on the battlefield.
6. The status of the preserve. Although the preserve is called state-run, it is property of the city. Recently, by governmental consent, the preserve incorporated the nearby former military township. As far as I remember, it was somewhere here that the notorious (sic!) Museum of Ukrainian Cossacks was planned to be built. Now everything has sunk into uncertainty. A year ago the Poltava city authorities did not mind granting “Battle of Poltava Field” the status of a national historical and cultural preserve, but then they changed their mind. And it is only natural: who wants to be subordinated to governmental institutions if they bring about bedlam?
7. The Day of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava. It is the city organizing committee that cares about what will be going on in Poltava in early July 2009. When we were drawing up celebration concepts for the Organizing Committee with Vasiunyk at the head, we easily agreed with Poltava officials that the marking of the battle’s 300th anniversary would be based on the idea of honoring the memory of all those who laid down their lives. It would be also good to present a military and historical reconstruction of the events. And no “popular jubilation” at all. I think the official part will be in this very key. But what will follow it? I do not know. It seems to me it is still an open question even for Poltava people.
I have to say in conclusion that Kyiv is “ditching” Poltava. The state, in the person of the governmental Organizing Committee with Vice-Premier Ivan Vasiunyk at the head, is making a mess of the Poltava event. It is only beyond a shadow of a doubt that by June 2009 numismatists will have the coin “300 Years of the Battle of Poltava” and philatelists will have a series of postage stamps with the same caption. A good thing to stick to envelopes, though.
We will be sealing and mailing them.
But where to?
To the future?
Volodymyr Panchenko is a professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, member of the Organizing Committee to mark the 300th anniversary of the events related to the military and political action of Hetman Ivan Mazepa and the formation of a Ukrainian-Swedish alliance.
