Luminaries, prophets that gave their lives for the rebirth of national freedom and culture, are the calling card of any given country. Thus, English culture is symbolized by Sir William Shakespeare, German culture by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Russian culture by Aleksandr Pushkin, Polish culture by Adam Mickiewic. We, Ukrainians, also have a cultural figure we feel so very proud of and wholeheartedly revere: Taras Shevchenko. His physical presence (a copy of his Kobzar collection of verse was in practically every Ukrainian home during the hardest of ordeals) and, even more importantly, his spiritual presence in the people’s hearts has helped preserve the nation. Shevchenko’s unswerving drive for freedom inspired dissidents to stage rallies every year on May 22, the date when his remains were transferred from St. Petersburg to Kaniv, thus bringing closer Ukraine’s cherished independence. His presence in our life (if we are aware of it) imposes a tremendous responsibility. Of course, placing flowers at his grave looks nice and impressive, as are all those words of praise we hear on the Shevchenko anniversaries. But what is the status of that small part of Ukraine where he was born and which we are supposed to hold sacred? What about the villages of Moryntsi, Kerelivka, and Budyshchy? How are people faring there, especially those tending the Shevchenko memorials, doing so out of sincere dedication? Where do they find the spiritual strength and energy without which modern Ukrainians simply cannot exist? Where is the line drawn between sincere love of the Kobzar and subtle hypocrisy? This and other topics were broached at The Day’s round table with Ludmyla SHEVCHENKO, director of the state historical-cultural preserve “Shevchenko’s Homeland,” a very dedicated, patriotic, modest, and remarkably charming lady.
ALL ABSTRACT NOTIONS HAVE SPECIFIC MANIFESTATIONS
Our meeting is quite informal and our exchange of ideas is sincere, of course. We are honored to host such a distinguished guest. Ms. Ludmyla, would you please describe the status of the preserve?
Currently, Shevchenko’s Homeland (described by some as a place where “the land clings to the sky”) is made up of three villages that were part of Taras Shevchenko’s birth and childhood: Moryntsi, Kerelivka (also known as Kyrylivka), and Budyshchy. The preserve has existed for a decade, based on the literary-memorial museum at the home of Shevchenko’s parents in Kerelivka. It was there that Taras learned to walk and met people other than his dad and mom. Most importantly, it was there he learned about himself and the surrounding world. In Moryntsi, we have a replica of his home where he was born and the home of his grandfather, Yakym Boiko, on his mother’s side. Both homes stand close to each other, symbolizing the start of Taras’s life. He was born in Moryntsi, but the family had moved to Kerelivka before the boy was two years old. They constantly traveled from one village to the next. Finally, they bought Hryhory Kyryliuk’s home for 200 paper rubles and settled in Kerelivka. Taras lived there for 14 years. Budyshchy was part of the estate of the landlord, Paul Engelhardt, who owned the villages of Taras’s childhood. He was an army officer and would visit his estate in Naddniprianshchyna to rest. He would go on hunting sprees to replenish positive energy. And the place was so beautiful, especially in the vicinity of Budyshchy. Taras was 14 when the landlord made him a domestic servant from among his serfs. His life path would then traverse Warsaw, Wilno [currently Vilnius, capital of Lithuania], and St. Petersburg. He would visit Kerelivka three times in all.
We know that a year prior to his death, Taras Shevchenko wrote in his autobiography: “I was born in Kyrylivka.” Meaning that a kind of competition has been underway between Moryntsi and Kerelivka for many years. An old register of births in Moryntsi has it that a boy by the name of Taras was born to the family of Hryhory and Kateryna Shevchenko-Hrushivska. But there is also an entry dating from 1860. Taras Shevchenko visited his native land three times, in 1843, 1845, and in 1859, after exile. Here I have a book for children titled “The Cherry Orchard by My Home.” There are poems about his homeland: “I was Thirteen,” “My Village and My Heart Will Rest...” All abstract notions have specific manifestations. I remember Shevchenko’s letter to his brother, Mykyta. He wrote that, while in that gray St. Petersburg, his heart and thoughts remained in Kyrylivka. He ached to hear a nightingale, to see his brother and Kyrylivka. There is an invisible but quite tangible energy link between Shevchenko and his small homeland.
TEARDROP-LENGTH PERCEPTION
How did you get to look after the Shevchenko memorial places?
Nothing out of the ordinary. I was born in Shevchenkove (the village received the name in 1929). After finishing school, I was enrolled in Kyiv University, department of philology. At the time the university was the only one in Ukraine to bear the poet’s name. After graduation, I returned home and started working for the local museum. Then, a state preserve was founded. I have been in charge since 1995. Round table hosted by
We even have the precentor’s home where Taras learned to read and write. It dates from the second half of the 18th century. It was restored and it marks the village’s historical center. There is a mid-19th c. chumak’s home in Moryntsi [chumaks were Ukrainian waggoners delivering salt from the Crimea]. And the museum exposition includes a table and a bench from his parents’ home, his father’s gravestone, also articles that belonged to Taras’s elder brother Mykyta. Their father bequeathed the home and the plot to Mykyta, currently the site of the museum. Taras’s grandnephew, Kharytyn Prokopovych, was blind and worked as a caretaker. The place was made a memorial in 1929; the first visitors’ book dates from that year. An entry was made in 1932, reading, “A preserve should be made here.” A museum was opened in 1939. Taras Shevchenko’s brothers and sisters received letters of enfranchisement but no plots.
Was it in 1861 or earlier?
Varfolomiy Shevchenko, one of Taras’s relatives, spent quite some time trying to help the Shevchenkos (Taras would write about this in his letters). They could become free but without plots. They didn’t want it, but then the serfs were emancipated in 1861.
Is anything left of Engelhardt’s estate?
Yes, a summer cottage, servants’ premises (the estate manager’s home), and the wine cellar. Also, two oaks approximately 600 and 800 years old.
Did you notice people change somehow after visiting Moryntsi, Kerelivka, and Budyshchy?
Yes, I noticed that they became more genuine, if you know what I mean. Apart from these villages, there are two other places Taras Shevchenko held sacred. His mother’s and father’s graves. Actually, we all have such places where perception is at a teardrop’s length.
“DISCOVERING” SHEVCHENKO
Yes, but there are also very many people that have read something about Taras Shevchenko. However, after setting foot on that soil they have a different kind of perspective. Meaning that one ought to read about Shevchenko and visit his homeland.
Volodymyr Vynnychenko said that teaching one to love one’s neighbor is like teaching a fair- haired man to feel dark-haired from birth. Indeed, if you visit the poet’s places to discover something new, you will make this discovery. If you visit, knowing Shevchenko’s verse, you will discover that ravine, field, poplar, and that willow mournfully bent over a drinking well. Or take our orchards. They are the embodiment of manual work and philosophy. After all, the apple is the philosopher’s fruit. And it is the embodiment of beauty. Taras Shevchenko wrote about his father’s orchard: “I have seen good orchards in my time, yet those in Uman and St. Petersburg are not even worth being compared to my father’s. It is rich, dark, and quiet...” As a boy, he felt so comfortable there. His mother died when he was 9 and his father followed her when he was 11. Of course, his life was hard, yet the boy was capable of perceiving the grandeur of nature, perhaps owing this to his granddad Ivan, always by his side, reliable and strong like that oak in Budyshchy. He was also very good at telling stories and Taras absorbed everything like a sponge, eagerly soaking up positive energy.
You say that everybody must discover Taras Shevchenko for himself. What about you?
He cuts a remarkably many-sided figure. We are all working to sure I know everything about Taras Shevchenko. There is a very interesting researcher, Vasyl Kukharenko of Cherkasy. He wrote a paper titled “The Inscrutable Apostle.” Meaning that the more you study him and his creative heritage, the more new things you discover. Verily, what sustains a man in this world relies on tender feelings, love of one’s neighbor, nature, and true affection. It is also believed, however, that love is just a chemical reaction taking place in either of the cerebral hemispheres. Sad. It can’t be true. One thing is clear: talent can’t be explained using this schematic approach. I was born in Kyrylivka and I can feel this with special clarity. Leafing through the Kobzar, I can glimpse native environs in almost every rhymed line. To me, Taras Shevchenko is a people’s philosopher, an extremely valiant, outspoken, and straightforward personality, something one doesn’t find in most Ukrainians, for we are given to overstatements and crafty approaches. He always saw the crux of the matter and got to the gist. I believe that his focal work is “To the Dead, the Living, and Still Unborn.” It reflects Ukrainian history, has a number of psychological aspects, forecasts, and prophetic admonitions. Too bad we haven’t learned anything from it. We should have, for everything is there in black and white.
WE JUST CAN’T SEE OURSELVES AS UKRAINIANS
Suppose we broach a more prosaic yet nonetheless topical subject. What’s the status of your museum and visitors’ influx?
Taras Shevchenko’s Homeland is a spending unit — in other words, it is budget-sustained. We have 38 persons on payroll and 27 hectares on our balance sheet. Not much for a cultural preserve, yet it requires a lot of time and energy. The museum staff is made up of truly dedicated people. We are financed by the Cherkasy regional budget.
Is that what you call a national relic? We hear countless eulogies come every Shevchenko day, yet none of the humanitarian premiers have raised the matter of making it a national preserve, to be financed by the state budget.
Yes, but we don’t have the national status.
Precisely. Meaning that you must have it.
It’s a matter that has been considered upstairs for a year and we have been faced with all kinds of bureaucratic obstacles at the ministries of economy and culture.
Indeed. Do you know the biggest obstacle you’re faced with? We just can’t see ourselves as Ukrainians.
They also ask what genuine Shevchenko items do you have on display, do you have such and such certificates, and so on. We reply that what we have can’t fit into any museum: the sky, the land, the graves of our ancestors. We have that aura none of us can see. Regrettably, we are all very much on the materialistic side — well, we live in a material world and we have what enthusiasm we have. Also, we must have some kind of tangible incentive. In fact, we are paid the smallest wages you can find in Ukraine, yet we are thankful we are still paid.
By the way, how much is the manager of the preserve paid a month? And the rest of the staff?
The manager is paid 280 hryvnias [$53] and the staff 180 hryvnias [$34].
Graphic evidence of the official attitude to the national relic, isn’t it?
At present, we provide so-called paid services, meaning that we have a special bank account. We have earned UAH 12,000 this year and we spend this money only on what’s required for the museum.
Yes, and then some bureaucrats will come from the capital and start telling you that you did this and that wrong.
What budget appropriations we have are spent on payroll and energy supplies — coal in our case. It’s UAH 6,000 a year.
How much do you actually receive from the regional budget?
About 40%, the rest is covered by our own bank account. Now the main problem is water supply, to keep the whole museum complex ticking, for we have a number of outbuildings. People work there and they must have running water. Also, the roof on the Shevchenko parents’ home (the replica in Kerelivka) must be replaced. And the situation in Moryntsi is disastrous. Museum staff there practically work under the open sky for want of premises. And we need financial support, of course.
It takes reconsidering the approaches to the problems.
“SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK”
Also, one must adopt a comprehensive approach to a problem. For example, when handling a construction project, it is necessary to provide adequate working conditions for the staff. Imagine a museum worker walking around in valenki felt boots and a kozhukh sheepskin coat! Visitors won’t like this. In this sense, things material and spiritual must be balanced. In Ukraine, the notion of culture has become synonymous with that of a problem. In a word, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Needless to say, culture ranges from personal manners to civilization as a whole. People visiting Ukraine want to know our cultural standard and history in the first place. And we have made culture a minor issue. I am convinced that culture must rank first as a strategic guideline in a recently established national polity. The emphasis must be shifted.
Come to think of it, so many generations have dreamed of a free and independent Ukraine. Taras Shevchenko fought for that freedom; he couldn’t live otherwise. Now, miraculously, Ukraine has that freedom, but what are we doing to it?
We don’t know how to use it. There are statesmen and individuals capable of thinking strategically. I wish they all would hear me. We must pay attention to our culture in the first place.
We are fond of marking March 9, Shevchenko’s birthday, by placing flowers at the monument and saying words of praise. The way your preserve is financed leaves one speechless with outrage. Have you tried to change the situation in high offices?
You see, we are subordinated to the Ministry of Culture. They work out costs and tariff scales, so when a certain Ludmyla Shevchenko comes and tries to reason with ranking bureaucrats —
I think that Ludmyla has an absolute understanding of how the government machine should operate. Every decent and modest Ukrainian believes that people upstairs should understand — what? That’s the big question. We journalists realize that an answer to that question should be found downstairs. Journalists must pressure every such ranking bureaucrat, asking what have you personally done, what could you have accomplished, what are your priorities, driving him to the wall.
Very well said. If only they could respond the right way.
They aren’t likely to respond immediately, so one must put the heat on them and keep it that way, for they are post-Soviet people. We promise to publish your assessments. Also, we have a lot of funds and foundations, rather strong ethnic Ukrainian organizations. They have a different attitude, but they don’t know how exactly they can help us.
They must respond by making their stand clear in the first place. We are open for cooperation.
Are you in a position to receive donations?
Yes, we are.
Meaning you are not prohibited to earn money. Vasyl Poltavets said to the contrary.
Let me give you an example. My institution is a nonprofit, budget-sustained one. In other words, we draw up an estimate, submit a progress report and the state gives us what we have earned. And so we ask publishing companies to help us sell the Kobzar. Can you imagine the Taras Shevchenko Museum without this book? We cannot give copies as presents. We can have them published. Now try to picture someone publishing the Kobzar free. We have no right to sell copies because we are a nonprofit organization. We open a bookstore and pay 340 hryvnias so our visitors can leave the museum with a copy of the Kobzar. At the same time, all our funds are taxable. Is it profitable for me? We’ll keep that bookstore for a while and then we’ll have to close it.
In other words, you are not financed but are levied taxes.
Yes, and this automatically calls for a number of inspections.
“WE TOUCH ETERNITY”
The Day has repeatedly pointed out that our society needs a head shrinker. We must rid ourselves of the unhealthy desire to probe everything, everywhere, to check out every living being.
In this sense, the national policy is not just vague, it is hard to perceive. I hold staff meetings every Monday. We discuss our plans and prospects for the week. I keep telling them that we must be proud of what we’re doing, that it’s very important, that we are all lucky to work at a place which people perhaps dream of visiting at least once in lifetime. That we touch eternity here. All things are in a flux. Eventually we will be gone. Others will be in our place. But now we are honored to represent what was chosen by time. Yet every time we run into financial problems.
Larysa IVSHYNA: You have been in charge of the museum for almost seven years. A heavy burden for your delicate shoulders. I saw how it all started, how much energy and dedication you put in it. And I was deeply moved to see the sculptural composition “I Herded Lambs beyond the Village,” when I saw that boy that had left his parents’ home. Everything kept in such style, with such jealous care. And the things from the precentor’s home! I think that people like of this nation. By the way, have you been awarded a medal, diploma, maybe a prize?
I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but I hold the title “Merited Worker of Culture.” It was conferred in recognition of what I had accomplished of late. We have made considerable repairs and restoration, including the precentor’s home. The structure had sunk into the ground up to the windows and then ten Ukrainian commercial banks joined the National Bank in a large benevolent project. We have been able to restore everything thanks to Ukrrestavratsiya experts. There were 32 teams working in 1998-99, arriving from many Ukrainian regions, primarily from the Cherkasy oblast. Work started in October and the exposition opened in March. The house had been completely restored by May 22. I practically stayed out of home at the time, traveling from Kyiv to Cherkasy to Kerelivka to Moryntsi. Yet I had never lived a better life.
Great, a Merited Worker of Culture paid 280 hryvnias a month!
Right, I’m a girl without dowry and I can’t help it.
How many people visit your museum? How do they get there, I mean transport? Do you have any such statistics? What about the museum infrastructure?
If we tried to do everything after the European standard it would take a lot of money. We are visited by an average of 20-22 thousand persons a year. Not less and it can be more. More people visit in jubilee years, but we don’t have a hotel and there are no road signs. I was a deputy in the district council and I addressed a session, saying people visiting for the first time shouldn’t have any problems finding the way, we must have road signs. Later, on my way from Kyiv, I saw road signs reading Shevchenkove and Moryntsi, but in the wrong places. Of course, visitors must have a place to rest and be served meals — and I think they should be served traditional tasty Ukrainian dishes, and service must be good. And, of course, a filling station and a motel. All this must be done as a single comprehensive project; although we serve a lofty cultural cause, we must remember about earthly needs. A hotel must be reasonably priced but with adequate amenities: running water, heating, electricity, television, radio, and a newsstand with fresh issues. Like I said, there are road signs but they are misleading. Shevchenkove and Moryntsi each have a population of 4,000; 1,600 homesteads. I saw a road sign reading “Museum” the other day, an arrow pointing to a solid fence. Imagine? Yet formally the assignment has been carried out. Sometimes they tell me that all I care for is my preserve whereas they have so many problems to solve. But I want the Homeland Museum to be worthy of Taras Shevchenko, so everyone visiting it can tell it is the central cultural venue of Ukraine.
There is a modern resort in the vicinity of the Mickiewicz memorial in Poland, meant for writers. Does our Writers’ Union help you in any way?
I think that our writers and artists would visit if we had adequate conditions. At present, we have little by way of contact with our creative intelligentsia. They prefer to visit Kaniv, for it is much easier and convenient to access, so they can go place flowers at the grave and return to Kyiv quickly. Another problem is that we used to have a lending library and some copies of every print run were sent there. We don’t have it now, but a museum library is a very important component.
BEING UKRAINIAN: STILL RISKY?
We don’t use the best creations of other nations — I mean books and television programs and movies. At the same time, we are afraid to trace our own ethnic roots because we are still scared. Being Ukrainian is still risky. Our bureaucrats have learned to be cautious since Petro Shelest. Remember his book, Our Soviet Ukraine, and what happened afterward? He, a member of the Soviet Communist Party Politburo, was accused of nationalism because of the title alone. Unless we exert an active influence on the younger generation, we’ll eventually find ourselves in a Russian- speaking Ukraine, with vague memories about things Ukrainian.
I happened to read a translation of a science fiction short story recently. The plot is very much in the spirit of our times. A little girl is restless, she runs around and her mother keeps asking what’s up. The girl replies that aliens are going to invade the planet shortly. Her mother doesn’t take her seriously, of course. Finally, the girl comes running and tells her breathlessly that the attack is starting. Mom, I’ll see that you feel no pain, she says, because the aliens will kill all adults; they don’t need them. They aren’t even interested in children aged 14. They need younger ones and they are invading this world through their souls. Indeed, our children are growing up quite aggressive. A junior class teacher said at parliamentary hearings that she asked her pupils to draw things they considered most interesting. Almost everybody sketched vampires.
Something must be done about this. Why not hold children’s poetland and award prizes, considering that it was there he started discovering the surrounding world and his own creative self?
Shevchenko’s life cycle ended in what is now the Cherkasy oblast. He set off for the big world from that place, leaving his parents’ home. He wasn’t destined to live for long, yet he had accomplished a great deal in those 47 years. Kaniv and the hill of Chernecha Hora. Two places I think every Ukrainian should visit unless they hold Shevchenko as an abstract notion.
Incidentally, a lot of people were outraged by Oles Buzyna’s booklet, Taras Shevchenko the Werewolf, although some said why sacralize Shevchenko; don’t let’s play pious games and look ridiculously old-fashioned. What do you think?
The author wanted publicity and he got it. As for his booklet, it isn’t worth being considered. It holds no water, period.
Larysa IVSHYNA: That author wanted publicity at all costs, so Taras Shevchenko or Lesia Ukrayinka would be the price he was prepared to pay. It is true that he wanted to be in the limelight. If we give him room on our pages we’ll play into his hands, whether we like it or not. We have to set the right tone, a bit condescending, and characterize his phenomenon briefly and to the point, and never return to the subject. Our society often reminds me of a hedgehog lying topsy-turvy. Likewise, all the other peoples walk with their quills up and we walk around belly up. We can’t be that naХve.
SEEDS CAST IN DRY SOIL WON’T TAKE ROOT
Ms. Ludmyla, relying on your seven years of professional experience, do you think that we now have more people truly enlightened about Taras Shevchenko?
A new generation has grown in Ukraine over the past eleven years. These people are free from previous ideological dogmas and they show a fresh approach to Shevchenko’s creative legacy. I am aware of this intuitively. Even those dropping in at the museum on their way elsewhere listen to the guide attentively, they take a look around and realize that they really have something to feel proud about, that what they see is really the cornerstone of our national identity. To me, every visitor wishing to make a discovery for himself is a guest of honor. We do not focus on Shevchenko’s creativeness. The museum concept is to show that very cornerstone, that base from which emerged the Poet. After all, seeds cast in dry soil won’t take root. There must always be a basis. For Taras Shevchenko, it was his native land. And books. And the historic figures of Prince Sviatoslav, Bohdan Khmelnytsky (and all those other hetmans who studied at leading European universities, for they were people of keen intellect and broad world outlooks). Also, events in which Taras’s grandfather had taken part. Naturally, this foundation is a topic of our research. Along with folklore, ethnography, things that formed people’s lives at the time. We further illustrate Taras Shevchenko’s epoch, that atmosphere, and the Engelhardts. He was not a mere domestic servant; he looked at the pictures on the walls, listened to music. His taste was polished among the common folk, that powerful creative source.
Can people living in the three villages forming the cultural preserve read good literature?
Using an old clichО, we are kindling the flame of culture there. There is a village club and a village library. People keep donating books to the museum. Actually, every family has a good private library.
FREEZING CLASSROOMS IN SHEVCHENKO’S VILLAGES
Are the residents aware of some kind of special aura or maybe they have long grown accustomed to the environment?
I don’t want to sound idealistic or resort to exaggerations. I can’t say that the surroundings keep everyone inspired, for life is hard and people have to solve lots of problems on a daily basis. Employment is one such hardship. Agricultural production is actually at a standstill. It’s a very painful subject and Moryntsi is no exception. There are two schools, a grade school and a school of the arts. September 1 is traditionally the open house day at the museum and the children regard this as a very special occasion. I think that this is another way to cast those spiritual seeds in fertile soil. And whether they’ll take root depends on the individual. There is a Shevchenko portrait in every village home (nothing window-dressing about it!), decorated with a rushnyk hand-embroidered towel or without it, and of course a copy of the Kobzar. I also think that this is important. And we have quite a few intellectuals among the populace. And some construction work still has to be done at the grade school. Every year it produces future specialists for Ukraine, with about a dozen cum laude graduates that are automatically enrolled in Kyiv higher schools. At the same time the school hasn’t had adequate heating for some ten years and the students sit in cold dark classrooms.
We must launch another campaign, like we did in Chornukhy, Skovoroda’s native village where a we’ll pass the hat round for the school. To think that children can’t study in normal conditions in Shevchenko’s land!
The children sit in the classrooms in their coats and write without taking off their gloves. How can children be treated like that? Also, we constantly lack gasoline, so we have to knock on doors and ask for help.
Do you have a list of Taras Shevchenko’s inheritors at the museum?
We have the family trees of his brothers Mykyta and Yosyp, and sisters Yaryna and Kateryna. And we have a relative of the Shevchenkos, Mykola Lysenko, researching these family trees, building branches. Currently he has 20 pages ready, but he can’t publish them.
We’ll send our staff photographer, who will take pictures and interview the man. Let me tell you, Ludmyla, that we are proud of your performance under such adverse conditions. We understand that it’s all easier said than done. Yet if the people can endure, it means that they have a future. You plant a sapling and if you trim it the wrong way it will grow into a dwarfish monstrosity rather than a huge beautiful tree like a thousand-year-old oak. We, in turn, must launch public campaigns. We know that there aren’t many people capable of thinking things over and making the right decisions, but they must see each other so they can realize that they form a powerful force. There are millions of gifted and clever Ukrainians, yet what they see on their home screens testifies to the contrary. It makes them feel like foreigners in their own country. Which is wrong, of course.
I reread Yevhen Marchuk’s book Sociopolis, pencil in hand. He writes — and I agree one hundred percent — that Ukraine has passed certain evolutionary stages and things are not as bad as they seem; that building is easier than rebuilding now. What I mean, we’d be better off building things anew and entering Europe and the rest of the world, following a new normal road. At the same time, we must remain optimistic, aware of ourselves as Ukrainians living in Ukraine. Therefore, let’s be positively oriented. We are modern individuals, meaning that we must keep pace with the times and discover the world for ourselves not from frayed geography textbooks and faded illustrations. This may not sound topical for people living in the capital and having better opportunities. I’d love to take the whole museum staff on a trip to Poland, Bulgaria, or elsewhere, so we all could see and learn things.
Larysa Ivshyna: We will certainly support you as best we can. Is Ms. Ludmyla Shevchenko invited to various functions like the Shevchenko prize awarding ceremony? I don’t think so. Where is that line drawn between sincerity and hypocrisy? Personally I’m convinced that there is enough sincerity and that it will emerge triumphant in the end whereas hypocrisy will be shed like a snakeskin.
WE LACK CONCEIT IN THE BEST SENSE OF THE WORD
Do any MPs put in an appearance at Kerelivka?
Not yet, they must be too busy making themselves at home in the Verkhovna Rada, ditto the people’s deputy representing our constituency.
What’s your cherished dream? What would you like more than anything else?
I wish people finally realized that investing in a cultural project doesn’t mean wasting money. Bohdan Hubsky is one of those that do — I mean his project with Khmelnytsky’s attributes of power.
Yes, and here is another eloquent example. Lina Kostenko visited the editorial office not so long ago to donate her books to the library in Chornukhy.
I am convinced that we live in the Kostenko epoch. She is Ukraine’s number one figure. Look how popular she and her books are! People often quote her and wholeheartedly respect her. If only she could visit us. It would be a genius visiting a genius. In fact, everything I’ve said is not crying on one’s shoulder. Our situation is not hopeless, we are not downtrodden ignorant peasants. I would be the last person to imply any such thing. Of course, we have lots of problems with our culture and medicine. Such problems shouldn’t exist anywhere in Ukraine, least of all in Shevchenko’s land. Take Poland. Why is it in a better way? That country also has a tragic history, it has survived three partitions, yet the nation has remained solid. A Pole in the street never forgets to say please or excuse me, addressing you. Meaning that we must have pride in the best sense of the word, that’s a quicker way to becoming a European country.
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Editor’s Note: Those wishing to help the cultural preserve Shevchenko’s Homeland are welcome to send money orders to Account #255343000335, VOB #2970, t. Zvenihorodka, MFO354552. Registration Account #110203000132382.
