The Kyiv Institute of Gender Studies presented Ukraine’s first Internet magazine Vydnokola [Horizons], specializing in professional discussion of, and conducting a scholarly discourse on gender problems. This scholarly journal (www.vidnokola.kiev.ua) is meant to inform its readers about and study issues arising from the development of gender parity and gender democracy in society as well as to analyze cultural phenomena within the context of the gender stereotypes permeating our society. One is ashamed to admit that a large portion of educated people (not to be mistaken for individuals with university diplomas) will ask with a straight man’s grin, “Gender? What do you mean?” The thing is that, save for a limited number of interest groups, practically nobody in Ukraine has broached the subject in a scholarly manner, habitually regarding it as just another whim of the bourgeoisie. Gender studies are upheld only in the developed democracies, mainly in Western Europe and North America where civil rights and obligations are not only on paper, and where the living standard makes such studies actually possible.
According to the institute, “Gender studies are a politically correct term introduced by scholars in the early 1980s, when they made the transition from a somewhat biased analysis of purely women’s experiences to an analysis of the gender system as such, as social and cultural relationships. Therefore, the researchers concentrate on both women (and constructions of femininity) and men (constructions of masculinity). The notion of gender is a sociocultural concept applied to distinguish between its cultural and biological structures.” After reading this formulation several times, one can form an approximate idea about the subject... Oksana Zabuzhko, Martha Bohachevska-Chomiak, Vira Aheyeva, Yevheniya Kononenko, Liudmyla Taran, et al.., took part in preparing the first issue of the Vydnokola. Bohachevska-Chomiak’s lead article, “Women and the Understanding of Eastern Europe” offers a general outline: “Women’s history lacks self-determination and a clearly formulated ideational framework as a prerequisite to such studies... The same is true of Eastern Europe: it lacks a consciousness and evaluation of itself.”
The presentation was hosted by the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine’s only institution of higher education that offers courses relating to gender topics. Vydnokola is financially supported by the International Renaissance Foundation. The event, however, did not gather a sizable audience, but the atmosphere was in its way quite entertaining. As the event was ceremoniously opened, Oksana Zabuzhko quoted from a Ukrainian literary classic: “We are also civilized people, Khymka...” Many insisted on calling the female founders of the project “she-patriarchs” and then “matriarchs,” finally agreeing on “founding matriarchs.” The chief editor Vira Aheyeva broached the subject of Ukrainian iconography, particularly the way three representatives of national literature – Marko Vovchok, Lesia Ukrainka, and Olha Kobylianska – are portrayed in Ukrainian textbooks. Using old propaganda clich О s, originally fragile and beautiful women are transformed into plump and stone-faced revolutionaries. Nor does the expression of Lesia Ukrainka on the largest denomination 200-hryvnia banknote differ much from the standard one worn by the invariably mustached celebrated figures of Ukrainian history...
The second half of the presentation was dedicated to the issuance of the second book of the Text+Context series launched by the Fakt Publishers. The first book is dedicated to Dante, his Divine Comedy and its Ukrainian echo. The second is about Lesia Ukrainka, her Forest Song (“To them my soul will speak...”) and its interpretations. The compilation was done by the noted literary critic and Kyiv-Mohyla Professor Vira Aheyeva, Ph.D. in philology. Apart from the poem and a supplement made up of Volyn folk tunes selected by Ukrainka for the work, a broad context is provided in keeping with the series concept, a fundamental monograph by the compiler, titled “The Unromantic Dual World of the Forest Song,” incorporating Lesia Ukrayinka’s private correspondence (mentioning the poem), and “Studies.” The epistolary part contains three letters, two addressed to Ahatanhel Krymsky and one to her mother Olena Kosach. Chapter “Studies” also consists of three works: V. Petrov’s “Forest Song,” P. Ponomariov’s “The Folk Sources of Lesia Ukrayinka’s Forest Song,” and I. Dzendzelivsky’s “The Vocabulary of Demonology in Lesia Ukrayinka’s Fairy Tale Drama Forest Song.” Put together, they provide for a quite comprehensive analysis of this drama in verse. However, certain critical remarks, concerning the “literacy” of this material seem in order. Thus, on page 172, there is an error distorting an idiomatic expression meaning “over centuries.” Even though it is borrowed from a text using archaic grammar, this mistake ought to have been corrected, the more so that the book is obviously meant to help teachers of Ukrainian literature better understand Forest Song and rid their students (mostly girls) of worn out cliches when taking entrance exams for universities with emphasis on the humanities, as one of the three composition topics invariably relates to Lesia Ukrainka in general or Forest Song in particular. Worse, on p. 202 Dzendzelivsky quotes, “...the sound of L in the Little Russian dialect becomes V...” Sound transfer is not the point, but the use of the word dialect – it is inadmissible, smacking of the notorious imperial circulars of the nineteenth century. The attempt to ascertain the etymology of mavka is interesting but weakened by dubious argumentation. Good thing that it mostly refers to rusalka, or mermaid, and that the author did not go so far as to associate it with the heathen Roman feast of rosalia, which later spread in the Balkans and then east.
Perhaps some optimism will be added by joking like Ivan Malkovych who promises to publish the world children’s blockbuster Harry Potter series. There are also characters called poterchata in Ukrayinka’s Forest Song. The resemblance is not only strangely homophonic, but also points to an undisguised conflict with the Christian tradition. Poterchata is a folk notion meaning children dying before baptism; Joan Rowling’s heroes are also far from being traditionally Anglican. However, we will not accuse the British author of plagiarism, because everything in this world is so closely intertwined.
