On Jan.14. 2009, Den carried an article entitled “The Day of Vasyl” that informed the readers about the Donetsk student campaign and its objective. After that Den embarked on a broad-scale information project in support of this campaign. Over the past year this newspaper has published a variety of articles, readers’ comments, and its Web site welcomed visitors to append their signatures to an open letter addressed to the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. Although this initiative was never implemented formally, it was in the limelight with the media (let alone Web site visitors) and caused an interesting and fruitful public debate. In the first place, Vasyl Stus was brought to the forefront of public debate. Some of the readers found themselves curious about his poetry while others wanted to know more about his life, about morals, truth, and so on. Of course, unless you learn the truth about Vasyl Stus, any discussion of his creative legacy and the role he played in Ukrainian society will be a hot air session. As it was, this campaign revealed interesting trends on a national level; it showed that the Ukrainian public was interested in this poet and his ideas. In a broader sense, this campaign was proof that Ukrainians are indeed an enlightened nation — one is reminded of Shevchenko’s To The Dead, To The Living, And To Those Yet Unborn, My Countrymen All Who Live In Ukraine And Outside Ukraine… Also, the signatures appended to the open letter to the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine are dramatic proof of this public interest, considering that people wrote from all over Ukraine, from Russia, a number of European countries, and from the United States. These people vary in terms of education and occupation, ranging from intellectuals to cabbies, to soccer coaches. People who were total strangers turned out to be like-minded and received an opportunity to learn about each other by signing this letter. One is reminded of Benedict Anderson and his celebrated work Imagined Communities. He wrote that an imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on everyday face-to-face interaction between its members. A nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”
The big question is what image, what kind of communion?
Building a nation requires a special kind of commitment. Each of us watches the television every day/night, being fed the same kind of commercials. We go to the movie/drama theater and watch the same kind of movies and plays. Several days from now we will cast our ballots for the new president [Den carried this article on Jan. 14, 2010 — Ed.] and this will be our opportunity of getting specially involved, yet this doesn’t suffice to become aware of ourselves as a single nation, because nation requires emotional empathy rooted in a certain tradition and idea. The campaign for naming Donetsk National University after Vasyl Stus and the ensuing public debate made it possible for Ukrainians all over the world to become aware of their involvement in a cultural process, and of their personal responsibility for upholding the image of Vasyl Stus and his tradition. Personally I believe that this is what this campaign is all about; this is what makes it extremely important, regardless of the outcome.
Serhii Stukanov is a member of the Ostroh Club for Young People’s Free Intellectual Exchange
