Just before the week-end, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy opened James Mace’s memorial room. Mace was a renowned political scientist, researcher of the Ukrainian Holodomor, and Den’s contributor.
The memorial study is not large, but it is pleasant. The first part is a journey through James’ childhood and adolescence, and contains many photos from this period. The second part is probably the most terrible. It contains regulations, reports of the US Congress Commission on the Holodomor, and photos. The third one looks like a study, with bookcases full of books, a table with a typewriter and computer in its center, and a chair.
I asked James’ widow Natalia Dziubenko-Mace about the story of this library.
“For me personally the launch of James’ library-archives is a logical event. I have fulfilled his last will, though it was hard for me to give up the books he loved so much and could not live without. They are dear to me too, as in their time they turned my consciousness upside down and broadened my worldview. This library has suffered a lot. Even in the US James never had a place to fit his entire archives and books. For decades he had to rent premises in a library. Later he would send them in separate packages to Ukraine. Almost every day I went to the post office, which became part of my daily routine. In a tiny apartment located near the last Troieshchyna bus stop, heaps of books were standing, lying, filling the space from floor to ceiling. Nearly each one of them contains a heroic or tragic biography. For example, there are the memoirs of Ivan Maistrenko, who in the time of ‘Ukrainization’ worked as an editor of Odesa’s Ukrainian-language paper — the most influential newspaper in Odesa. Today you will hardly find anything in Ukrainian in Odesa’s newsstands. To get the manuscript of this book, the Soviet special service organized an operation; the book was secretly photographed and brought to the Soviet Union. They tried to destroy it. Now I’m holding it in my hands, and tomorrow some thoughtful student or inquiring scholar will hold it, and wonder why the sphere of usage of the Ukrainian language has become so narrow in Ukraine, why our efforts are so weak compared to the statehood aspirations of the Executed Renaissance generation who defended the national values.”
What books constitute the library’s core?
“The library is versatile. It contains the first editions of America’s founders, books on the history of Indians — one of them was written by a close friend of his, who was sentenced to death by the Ku Klux Klan. There is a huge volume written by James’ grandfather. There are old editions from the 18th-19th centuries. However, the core of the library is made up by the books on genocide studies: publications of the founders of the theory of genocide and totalitarianism, UN documents... Of course, the bulk consists of documents and books on the history of the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Ukraine. They include the evidence of witnesses, researchers’ studies, heaps of documents. The present-day rulers call Mace the ‘Holodomor inventor,’ ‘creator of the Holodomor myth.’ You can sit, as James often called for, among the murdered, tortured by famine, Ukrainian peasants and draw conclusions of your own. It is up to everyone’s conscience what side they take.”
Does it mean that, having such a unique collection of books and documents, Mace planned a huge work?
“Absolutely. His cherished dream was to write a fundamental work on the history of Ukrainian Holodomor in English and Ukrainian. He told this to the Shevchenko Scientific Society during our trip to New York. I know its plan and chapters in details. He considered that the Holodomor was caused by many factors, such as economic circumstances, international isolation, voluntarily-implemented policy, and the philosophy professed by the ruling party and its leader Stalin.
“James had no time to write it. He died too soon. But what he has managed to accomplish allows other to continue the search of the truth. And this library-archive will help future researchers in doing so. As for its uniqueness, lots of high and good words can be told. But in fact its new life with its new host, the Kyiv-Mohyla National University, will begin after the loud opening ceremony, when its first visitor enters and takes a book or a document in his/her hands. Books speak only when everyone else is silent.”
I can feel from our conversation that you regret giving up the books. Why did you do this now? You said that the new powers have an ambiguous attitude, at best, towards James. There is even a plan to revoke the Law of Ukraine “On recognition of the Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian people,” on the adoption of which he so strongly insisted. Won’t the library be in danger, once this process unfolds?
“I have given it away as the fate of libraries deprived of their hosts is terrible. I still tremble when I recall the bags full of letters of genocide witnesses from all over Ukraine that I saw in Volodymyr Maniak’s apartment. Where are they? What is their destiny? Where is the archive and manuscripts of Oleksa Musienko? So many friends of mine, who possessed priceless archive materials and rare books, died. They hoped that their relatives would fulfill their last will, and give to the state what they valued most of all. But those spiritual treasures suddenly disappeared, they no longer shine. Therefore I was in a hurry to make sure that my husband’s library-archive would get into caring hands, that it would revive and live its own rich life.
“These days I have a mystical feeling that as the new year of studies started, James again went to teach to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and got stuck in his books. He will feel good in the new study. For the first time he has all his archives at hand. All the books are standing in one row, not in several ones. Let’s not call his study a museum. Of course, there are some of his personal possessions, but this is a living workplace. It took archivists several years to put in order and inventorize the first part of the archives. This is the most complicated work, as the experienced archivist Oleksandr Tsyhanenko acknowledged, and he has been doing this work his entire career. The premises are elegant and light, they have an appropriate temperature regime. There remains only one thing for me, to wait and worry, this time not for the destiny of the library, but the destiny of those to whom it was left.”
COMMENTARIES
Serhii KVIT, president of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy:
“This is quite a remarkable event for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Apart from being a renowned researcher of the Holodomor, James Mace was a famous scholar and a professor of our university, and a very good one: students liked him a lot. The manner of his work was innovative and informal and he has left a significant, humane trace on the university. This symbolical study will be a scientific center, making real contributions: it will be the center of the Holodomor studies. The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy has been running an immense publishing activity since the 1990s. It seems to me that our students alone have collected seven volumes of the so-called oral history of the Holodomor. This is the best way to honor Mace’s memory.”
Roman SERBYN, historian, professor at the Quebec University in Montreal (Canada):
“In my opinion, Ukraine has not ‘used James to the full,’ as a scholar. If Ukraine understood what kind of person was living here, it would immediately give him the possibility to work on Ukrainian history. It is good that he was working in ‘the shadows,’ but one could find other people, less qualified, to translate and edit his works. Ukraine has never been able to honor it scholars. I think there is also another problem: one should not make a monument, an icon or myth of James. He himself would not want this. Mace worked and achieved what he could with the documents he had. This center should not be a final, but a transition point for students, where they can enrich their knowledge, follow Mace’s example, and move on. I believe this will be the best way to honor Mace’s memory.”
Natalia SHULHA, executive director of the Ukrainian Scholarly Club:
“I am greatly rejoiced with this event. In 2006, when I brought the second part of the archive-collection, we started to speak about creating a research center based on this collection in five languages. Each monograph is dedicated to the history of Bolshevism, the Holodomor, and the Russian Empire. There is nothing of this kind in Ukraine or the entire post-Soviet space. Mace would buy every book that referred to his studies and interests. I guess having such a collection at the university is groundwork to start a real research of this interwar period, which unfortunately has not yet been studied by Ukraine’s institutions on a professional level without ideological bias. I am immensely proud that this has finally happened. We have waited for four years for it to happen. In my opinion this will also serve as an exhibit for those who want to come to see this collection. It is desirable that those researchers come not just from Ukraine, but also from Russia, Belarus and the whole world. This is a good place. Therefore, once the center manages to involve the researchers from the whole world, Mace’s dream will come true.”
TO THE POINT
This week-end a monument to the victims of the Holodomor and political repressions was ruined in Poltava region by some unknown persons. As reported by the representative of the PR department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Poltava oblast, some unknown persons knocked off the statuette of a mourning angel from the pedestal.
One can only hope that the guilty persons will be found and punished.
