On Feb. 1, the Kyiv Children’s Academy of Arts held a meeting with the writer and culture expert Oxana Pachlovska, initiated by the academy’s rector, Mykhailo Chemberzhi. “Ukraine–Europe: Can the Two Meet?” was the subject of the lecture given before the fourth-year students and teachers of this educational establishment.
“What is Europe?” Oxana began. “First and foremost, it is a space of freedom and responsibility for this freedom. These categories have existed for several millennia, beginning from Old Greece. Europe is not merely a geographical notion — above all, it is a cultural one. And I should say that through the centuries European borders have undergone changes. The question of Europe and non-Europe has always existed there.
“Europe is also legal, intellectual, and creative space. It is also critical thinking, which consists in permanent organic ability to reformat oneself and reconsider own history. Samuel Huntington in his famous book Clash of Civilizations wrote that the division line between civilized and non-civilized world, where man is actually a slave to power, institutions, and situations goes along the Dnipro River. In other words, democracy cannot strike root on the territory of Orthodoxy and Islam.
“I should admit that Ukrainian Orthodoxy, as compared to its Russian version, has an absolutely different tradition. By the 18th century, until it was destroyed by the Russian church, it had an absolutely European anthropocentric dimension.
“As we can see, for centuries there has been an opposition between Europe and Eurasia. For the past five years, the relations between Russia and Ukraine have become more acute. In reality, it was the relations between Europe and Russia that have deteriorated, for the European choice is not typical of Russia, which accepts this tradition as eventuality of its collapse as a state. If Russia underwent democratic changes now and became an ideological, rather than economic, partner of Europe, the world would change.
“Europe is also a space of historical memory. Let us take the heroes of Kruty. For what kind of Ukraine did they die? For a European and democratic Ukraine. When the Bolsheviks were attacking the UNR, Volodymyr Vynnychenko appealed to the governments of the European countries with these words: ‘Unless you help us now, we will be destroyed, but you will, too, have a terrible totalitarian enemy as a neighbor.’
“There was a TV newscast recently that showed young people in Ternopil who spent days in prison cells in order to feel this date. I was terrified. Whose guilt is that our youth is going to cells to perceive the tragedy of the young people near Kruty? Why cannot they be free? They should say to themselves once and forever: ‘Yes, this was a tragic page of our history. We have mourned over it, and we remember about it. But we no longer live in the suburbs of a big cemetery (according to Vadym Skurativsky).’
“Memory should not be morally destructive or make anyone fall into depression. Memory should urge one to live. I wish you, young people, to overcome all the problems that make us feel remote from Europe. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were coming to Europe with a feeling that they were a stolen Europe and with a belief in their European cultural ground. This is the only way a civilizational choice can be made.”
Naturally, Pachlovska’s lecture raised many questions: about European prospects in view of the globalization processes, the implementation of the Bologna process in Ukraine, the evolution of Europeans’ attitude to Ukrainians since the Orange Revolution until now, and Pachlovska’s translations of Corrado Calabro’s poems. The people present were even interested in how it feels to be Lina Kostenko’s daughter. Pachlovska replied in such a thorough and sincere manner that her replies could provide the material for one more lecture. However, she has touched upon these topics in some way or another in her book Ave, Europa! and her publications and interviews carried by The Day.
