The next issue of the magazine Dukh i Litera [The Spirit and Letter] came off the presses recently. This massive edition published by the European Humanitarian Study Center of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University had over 500 pages, containing scholarly texts dealing with modern historical problems, particularly dissident movements in Ukraine and Poland, philosophies of history, culture, and science, religious studies, and the family, among other things. The Ukraine Today column offers very interesting interviews with Ivan Dziuba and Yevhen Sverstiuk. The Bibliography one contains extensive reviews on new books released by various publishers, dealing with the same subjects. Articles carried by this magazine would do justice to any academic organization. They are written by Ukrainian and foreign scholars, while some of the texts are synopsises of lectures read at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, at scientific conferences and in class. It contends that the mosaic pattern of its articles form an extensive, dynamic, controversial, and exciting panorama of modern scientific life in Ukraine and the rest of the world. It is a philosophy of life at the turn of the millennium (some scholars naively believe that chronology, as a system of temporal measurement adopted by historians, can influence the course of history).
Being confined to newspaper space, I will not dwell on any of the philosophic or historical opuses contained in the S&L issue, but will offer excerpts to share interesting information with the reader and encourage him to take a closer look at the magazine. Also, I would like to object to skeptics and all those shouting about the absence of serious editions and learned authors in Ukraine. Let me stress again that the following excerpts are a drop in the ocean of S&L issue No. 9-10.
Bernard Dupir writes in the section “The Family in Post-atheistic Societies” that “the first legislative code published by the new regime after the October 1917 revolution was the family code. Allowing free union [common law marriage], divorce, homosexual relations, and abortion, that code marked the beginning of a campaign aimed at systematically destroying the family, which Bukharin described as a ‘dangerous bulwark of all the vileness of the old regime.’”
Natalia Yakovenko (KMA Section): “The trilingual mode of literary writing at that period (17th c.) was without doubt a spectacular and singular phenomenon, because people writing in Polish (e.g., Meletiy Smotritsky or Sylvestr Kosiv), Slavonic (Zakhariy Kopystensky), or Latin (Ivan Dombrovsky or Yuri Nemyrych) continued to see the world through the eyes of their beloved Rus’ and the environment in which they had grown.”
Myroslav Popovych (Civil Society Section): “There is no hope that all dramas will be exhausted one of these days, and that mankind will return to the lost Golden Age in the form of a rediscovered Ithaca, or that it will build a ‘shining future,’ relying on the principles and dogmas set a priori as rules of ‘decent conduct’ in a society inhabited by civilized individuals. We have to solve our problems here and now.”
Several features are about the memorial plaque dedicated to two outstanding personalities: Archpriest Oleksandr Hlaholev, rector of Kyiv Theological Academy (originally the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), born 1871 and tortured to death in an NKVD dungeon in 1937, and his son Archpriest Oleksiy Hlaholev, proclaimed among the Righteous of the World.
Viacheslav Briukhovetsky: “Why are the Hlaholevs revered as righteous gentiles in Jerusalem and the rest of the world? In 1941, that family, risking their own lives, saved many families from death at Babyn Yar; in a way, that family saved Kyiv’s honor. Precisely when the whole world seemed to be caving in and no one, nothing could survive, the old saying, ‘A city cannot exist without a righteous man,’ still remembered in Ukraine, held true.”
Leonid Finberh (S&L co-editor): “Among other things, the past epoch was marked by all-embracing falsehood. Lies were written and told, in particular, about relations among people and nations. The emphasis was always on enmity. The rest was hushed up. Meanwhile, there many cases of understanding between rabbis and [Christian] priests who were at times the only intellectuals in many cities and towns. We were a decade late learning about the solidarity between Michoels and Kurbas, Petliura and Zhabotinsky. We couldn’t study the Righteous of the World’s life stories; it was forbidden.”
Kostiantyn Syhov (director, European Humanitarian Study Center): “‘Have no fear,’ this image says to everyone leaving the university and stepping into the big world.”
{Archpriest Oleksandr Hlaholev, rector of the theological academy, was a skilled theologian and erudite who knew 18 languages. Fearlessly he testified in favor of Beilis when that Jew stood a Black Hundred trial and actually saved his life. In 1905, according to Vadym Skurativsky, the Rt. Rev. Oleksandr, clad in a chasuble and carrying a cross, stepped in front of a pogrom-frenzied crowd and stopped it. He died at the Lukyanivka Penitentiary in 1937. His son Oleksiy helped Jews and Communists {sic} during the Nazi occupation.)
I must point out, however, that Ukrainian translations of writings by foreign scholars leave much to be desired. At times the syntax is incomprehensible, not to mention the losses in terms of the original style.
