Larysa Skoryk has always broken stereotypes, including her own. Every meeting with her shows her at a new angle as a politician, architect, and public figure. This time was no exception. Her visit to the editorial office proved that she has an inexhaustible creative potential. The Day once described her as a “little woman defending a big city.” Now she remains as creative as ever, but she remains a warrior. Above all, she is keenly aware of the genetic connection with her remote ancestors who could build things and defend them. What better quality in a young country just getting on its feet? One does not often hear metal notes from a lyrically-minded creative person assessing foreign or domestic policy, voicing fearless and logical views. In fact, she set her own standards as a lady in politics that has remained, as seen in the following interview.
TRADITIONS AND TABOOS
I thought I had to talk to you after visiting St. Basil’s Church designed by you. I had to see with my own eyes that bold combination of tradition and modern trends. I don’t think that anyone else here has dared this approach in religious architecture. I wanted to share my admiration and also tell you what I heard from Russian-speaking journalists that have nothing to do with the Greek Catholic Church. They said they had decided to go to that church regularly after first visiting it. Is this church evidence of passing some new inner stage? What has changed in your inner world over the past decade? Has your own system of values changed in any way?
Skoryk: I think I formulated my system of values much earlier. To begin with, I am positive that every epoch must remain true to itself. Any transition in the arts must take place at the right time, in its own way, not in any other, especially alien, way. All my life I have never imagined how one can steal something from a certain period of time; in other words, how one can keep repeating something without creating anything new and harmonious. One must live and create things harmoniously, behaving how one thinks necessary with regard to a given epoch. Thinking back, before perestroika, I’m sure that I behaved in a manner adequate to the times, in other words, I never just adapted to circumstances.
How would you describe the times now?
Skoryk: For many it has to be a period of soul-searching. Not for me, as I think that I have entered the times knowing myself only too well. It has always been important for me to know what I’ll never do in art, relations with other people, in society, and in my life in general. Life is much easier when you know that there are certain things you’ll never do, whatever happens.
Do you voice such things or keep them to yourself?
Skoryk: I could voice things I consider taboo for myself, but I don’t have to; I live with them. What can’t you do ever in your life? You can’t under any circumstances retreat from the principles that form your dignity. I take this for granted. You can lose everything in life except your honor and dignity. The same applies to the arts. That’s not arrogance. I think that dignity, roughly speaking, means that one mustn’t steal anything from anyone else. I’ve seen quite a few creative persons use things created by others. Naturally, one might feel inspired. It’s a necessity. There are traditions that need to be handed down over generations and centuries, yet every time they must emerge anew, modern, and never remain archaic. Tradition is something we continue, without taking anything away from anyone else; we just consider them, learn from them, and create something of our own.
I walked up to a woman selling embroidered serviettes (I wanted to buy Easter gifts) and she suddenly spoke to me in English. I realized that she took me for a foreigner. When I answered in Ukrainian she looked very surprised. I thought, oh God, what have we done to this country, considering that in the capital city you are taken for a foreigner if you show an interest in Ukrainian needlework (on that particular occasion I wore an old Lviv necklace). We are talking a period of soul-searching, but this searching seems to be taking too long.
Skoryk: Maybe it’s a period offering us an opportunity to return to ourselves. We have lost ourselves, forgot all about ourselves. We even ignore ourselves. One of the reasons is the lack of honor and dignity. I think that these qualities are inherent in intellectuals, individuals having the courage to say whatever they consider necessary, if this is really important and is a matter of principle. Individuals who have the courage to live abiding by their principles. Such principles are not merely a sign of originality, they must rely on something really serious. You feel responsible not only for yourself, but also for what is happening around you only when there’s that rumble of history behind you, when you have your innermost self, when you are not aware that you will come to be, yet are being prepared by previous generations, your ancestors and their culture. Betrayal is another taboo.
Whose messenger do you think you act as in Ukrainian history? Who do you see, thinking of those before you?
Skoryk: I can trace my ancestral line for five or six generations. If not physiologically then spiritually, I am connected with people that could defend the things they considered truly important — maybe protecting churches from being ruined, or people living nearby, or their native land from invaders. I must originate from a caste of warriors, my forefathers, people who didn’t just fight the enemy, but were also bound by a certain duty toward their society. That’s what I can sense. Although I am on the creative side, I think that one is inseparable from the other. If you can create things, you realize just how important and precious such things are. You must be constantly prepared to protect what has been created. Remember A Game of Pool at Half Past Ten where the father was an architect and his son a soldier. One builds things and the other has to destroy them. That’s a horrible dilemma. The old man does not till his dying day know that his monastery is already destroyed. Once again, I believe that a creative individual knows how important this is. That individual’s sense of dignity and the impossibility of turning traitor must always place that individual on a par with those that must protect things thus created. In fact, not only one’s creation, but also everything created by the grace of God, human talent, by the generations that a nation, culture, and the way of life of a given people must be jealously protected from oneself above all else.
THE MYSTIQUE OF ARCHITECTURE
In the first Ukrainian parliament you were constantly in the limelight with the media, with cameras always trained on you. Then you remained a number one female lawmaker. And then one could see you picket the mayor’s office, standing in the rain with a poster protesting that construction project by St. Sofia’s. You were part of a crowd left out of media coverage. Was returning to the masses easy?
Skoryk: Perfectly easy. I must say that I’ve never been interested in publicity. I’m a loner by nature. Hard to imagine, but I am a hermit. A cell, a drawing board, an easel, and that’s my lifestyle. And a sword hanging on the wall. Architecture is actually the only real thing in my life. I am for crystal-clear relationships among people, I want to communicate only with people who know exactly who they are and what they want. Being with such people brings me so much joy. Of course, I’m not alone, but I like solitude. I think that I was an architect first and became really aware of myself afterward. Even as a little girl, at a time when no one could even dream of building churches, I wanted to do precisely that. I wanted to build houses of God, even if for different denominations. I’ve made no secret of wishing to build a synagogue, a mosque, even a Buddhist temple. When I was told I could build a small Buddhist chapel on the road to Mt. Everest, I was dizzy with happiness (the project never became a reality, something went wrong, but the very fact was so very important). Things like that mark the peak of one’s architectural talent, of the mysticism of architecture. Indeed, architecture is mystical, and its enigma captured me from the outset of my gaining consciousness of myself. When the three of us little kids (a girl and a Polish boy named Griszek) finished playing war, I’d persuade them to build miniature churches, using pieces of brick, and we also made iconostases. We were three or four at the time. We would find a place in the bushes where nobody would bother us. I was the chief architect, so my choice of profession was clear even then. So architecture is the only real thing in my life, although everything outside my occupation is important to me. I love life in all its manifestations. For example, I felt good on my way to your office. Such interviews are also important for me, but there are the most important things and others that are necessary. Like politics. For me it was a duty to be carried out, I’d known all my life that I’d have to do it, that I would have to struggle against this and that and act in such-and-such a way. I had wanted to do it and thought, my like-minded brothers, we would do so many important things. And then I had to leave, shutting the door with a bang and saying sorry, I can’t go along with you, considering so many facts and actions. Also, I seem to get myself in trouble all the time. Now I’m fighting city hall. Can you picture a single practicing architect among those in market demand doing it? Now here I am up to my ears in that campaign.
Honestly, in Oleksandr Omelchenko’s place, I would offer you the post of chief city architect. You would be thus rid of your chief opponent and in a position to resolve aesthetic matters.
Skoryk: I’m a sober-minded person and battle-hardened enough to realize who can do what, considering one’s academic background and experience. Besides, I wouldn’t be a bureaucrat. Administration isn’t for me.
You mean you wouldn’t be chief architect?
Skoryk: There are no chief architects anywhere in the world. What kind of architect is one who has building nothing? On the other hand, a bureaucrat vested with all the bureaucratic powers has no right to practice architecture. This is clear.
Don’t you feel that many European things are profaned by some of Kyiv’s practicing architects? You must have read that interview with Serhiy Babushkin. I asked about Honchari and Kozhumiaky, and he replied that they would remain in the movie Za dvoma zaitsiamy. His assistants read the interview and wanted that particular statement left out, probably realizing how cynical it sounded. People sometimes don’t understand that freeing one’s history and revealing one’s identity is a European tradition.
Skoryk: That’s the point. Such people are marginal, so how would you expect me to work with them? Impossible. They should be simply called to account. We submitted proposals concerning Honchari and Kozhumiaky back in 1984. By the way, our proposals were received with understanding at the time. But then Ivan Saliy acted the way he did, setting up a fantastically expensive and clumsy infrastructure. After that he invited investors to step in, but none would even consider the possibility because of the costs. The prices are still high. When someone wanted to develop a neat and cozy artistic community there, with cabinetmaking shops, and asked for a plot he was charged a million dollars. Can you imagine? The entire three-story building (three floors is the limit there) wouldn’t cost half that. What I mean, however, is that our concept was something like a Kyiv Monmartre. The place had been originally inhabited by craftsmen and painters, people who made beautiful leather and other goods, supplying them to the Upper Town. There were neighborhoods inhabited by generations representing certain occupations, like family doctors. Those places ought to have been kept that way. Even now the locality could be used for an art center, not a European but a Ukrainian one, retaining the traditional Honchari and Kozhumiaky parameters. If only they could have craftsmen’s workshops there, as originally proposed, along with small homes and, of course, being open to the public, the whole thing would be a great asset for the tourist business. As it is, they are planning four- and five-story buildings on Borychiv Tik (a wonderful little street of exquisite old houses in Podil — Ed.). Can you imagine?
But you still don’t want to be chief architect.
Skoryk: It’s impossible. I would be willing to act as a chief consultant, an independent one, on a voluntary basis, but not under the current mayor.
POLITICIANS AND IDOLS
Are you still a maximalist? By the way, your proposal concerning the Ukrainian battalion in Kuwait was not exactly popular, was it?
Skoryk: Probably so, but I don’t worry about it. I’ve never made what I think a secret. That time I said why don’t you visit Iraq and ask those poor devils if they want to keep living that way. So it’s their internal affair? Meaning that what was happening under Stalin was also our internal affair? Was there anything we could have done at our domestic level at the time? Do you understand what you’re talking about?
I remember getting into a taxi and the driver telling me that war had started in Iraq. You know what I did? I made the sign of the cross and said, thank God. Because there are things that have to be done. One can’t stick one’s head in the sand and keep pretending that nothing is happening. Something terrible was happening. I was speechless, watching and hearing Yevhen Marchuk at the podium, arguing that the battalion had to be sent to Kuwait. All I could think at the time was, there, that’s what I’ve been thinking and talking about all the time.
They say that there are those who think about votes and others who think about the national interest.
Skoryk: That’s right. Watching the opposition vote against the proposal, I thought here, that’s what those state-builders are all about. Or take the political reform. There was so much talk about it, every day we heard about how badly we need a parliamentary republic.
What do we actually need, a presidential or a parliamentary republic?
Skoryk: I am firmly against a presidential republic as such, because I believe that it’s a sure way to create problems, especially in countries that really don’t have any experience in democracy, that have just stepped out of that past, which could have never shown even the first signs of democracy.
Concerning our parliament now, it’s no longer one to fit a parliamentary republic model.
Skoryk: It means that we must replace our parliament, but never on the proportional basis that the opposition so vociferously insists on. Such proportional elections, when you are shown five candidates and then the roster lists businessmen paying for the election campaign and God knows who else, would be just awful.
You mean the parliamentary reform should be carried out now?
Skoryk: Absolutely. Havrysh’s proportional representation proposal is what we should discuss and pass in parliament. Everyone should know who and what part of the electorate is going to vote for what, just as everybody should know everything about every candidate on the party lists.
Does this mean that the Ukrainians are unable to elect a president at this stage?
Skoryk: Yes, I think so.
So what is there to help our people?
Skoryk: Many things could be helpful if only our people wanted such help. First, we must stay away from idols. I am horrified even to think of the number of idols we have created of late, and I am even more horrified to picture any of them as our next president, with all those powers vested in him, especially now that they suddenly decide to keep all those powers — perhaps because each sees himself in that post and wants to keep them. This is understandable. But the people! Why don’t they use their heads? Why don’t they analyze things? One can’t be too punctual, saying I’ll hear something and then I’ll make my own conclusion. One must remember what those people said and did two years ago, what they proposed, and who they were.
THE ENVIRONMENT
Some wonder what would have happened if Russian President Yeltsin didn’t step down in 1999 but proceeded with the parliamentary reform, giving key posts to Berezovsky and Gusinsky. What do you think? Can we compare Russia and Ukraine, or our country is too different?
Skoryk: This is a subject worth being discussed. Russia is certainly specific, and no parallels can be drawn with Ukraine. One must bear in mind a lot of distinctions. We have learned much from Russian autocracy and we have certainly never benefited from it. Those lessons are still very much alive in our mind, although the Russians haven’t benefited either, as evidenced by what’s happening there. I am by no means an admirer of Putin.
Russia has shown a special game being played with Germany and France. A German politician complained about Ukraine: “I thought you were joining a United Europe, not the United States.”
Skoryk: Europe also includes Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, all of Eastern Europe which, after experiencing all the benefits of the Soviet empire, passed an unequivocal judgment on Iraq. Let’s face it. I understand what Germany is after. I understand that Putin’s oil and gas helped Schroeder very much, especially during the elections. Russia may be willing to continue helping him that way. France has problems with US influence; it believes that Moscow’s influence would be much easier to cope with. Well, that’s France’s business, although they’d be better off looking up history. I have great respect for the French sense of national dignity; they don’t want to take orders from anyone (I can only wish Ukraine were that way). But that has nothing to do with the subject. If they find common interests in an alliance opposing combat operations in Iraq (as though there were any other options), it’s the most paranoiac stand under the circumstances. They opposed Hussein’s regime and also opposed military action. Then why not suggest some alternative. That regime had existed for 23 years, meaning several generations exposed to its perils, horror, and purges. The more so that Iraq was accumulating arms at a frenzied pace. The Americans realized what was happening only in 1991 when Iraq attacked Kuwait. The Iraqi weapon systems were mostly obsolete, but chemical and bacteriological weapons were a different story (and it doesn’t take a soothsayer to understand that it had and still has them).
That’s the most sensitive issue now, considering that the Americans can’t find any evidence. Besides, people are influenced by counter-propaganda. Add here the rampant vandalism and looting.
Skoryk: Yes, but that looting wasn’t done by Americans, British or Australians; it was done by people that in the past 23 years have learned not to respect anything because no one was sure what would happen to him five minutes later: would he die on the gallows, be skinned alive, or whatever. The average person was nobody there.
How do you think Ukraine should act in the foreign and domestic political domains at present?
Skoryk: I said three years ago that something would stir inside this country when something changed outside. When I hear now that Ukraine should head for Europe together with Russia, I’m reminded of the Soviet past when you bought something at a store and had to pay for other stuff you didn’t need, but you had to. My question is, Why should we head there together? Because we want to emerge there with the bloody sin of Chechnya? Or with corruption on a much larger scale than in Ukraine? Or maybe with Russia’s “great technological attainments?” Why should this issue be raised in the first place? Does it mean that our politicians, said to be lobbying for Russian interests, understand nothing, being proposed a single economic space with Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan? If you will pardon my saying so, it would be an alliance of four cripples, for it would be underdeveloped countries that are supposed to integrate. Then what? They will form a chronically technologically backward space with production cycles forever scattered in different areas. It doesn’t make sense. When we say that the world is getting integrated, it means that weaker countries should integrate with stronger ones, so they can learn something. There’s no other choice.
You mean that a lot depends on changes outside Ukraine. If so, what changes could be expected after the war in Iraq?
Skoryk: I have since 1990 repeatedly said that Ukraine should have alternative energy sources. This is largely the basis of our statehood. Our support of the anti-Saddam alliance offers such opportunities, and we must make of the best of them. Every country does this. We aren’t going to rob Iraq or get its oil free, or cause it any other damage, are we? But if we can get in any way involved in those oil concessions.
On the other hand, I was amazed to hear Levko Lukyanenko say on Radio Liberty, when asked how he felt about events in Iraq, “I don’t like America turning into a world policemen.” What is this? I wish I could ask him right then and there, Levko Hryhorovych, have you forgotten to thank Reagan for getting you out of the prison camp, considering that you had been there since the 1950s and would never have got out otherwise?”
Gorbachev said in Moscow, “We won’t set such people free.” At the time you prayed for the US president and his democratic principles that made him press Gorbachev for releasing you. You would have stayed in that camp. Did you see America as a world policeman then? Also, how about tens and hundreds of thousands of people no worse than you, sir, and maybe better (I knew one of the victims, he was a brilliant intellectual) dying under Saddam Hussein’s regime? So where is your common sense, logic, or any consistent stand as a politician? Why make yourself look foolish?
I think that consistency is out of the question.
Skoryk: Of course it is. In fact, our whole opposition is nonsense. It’s all because of Independence Square. It’s a mirror reflection of our reality. I can’t but picture all our politicians now in opposition against its background.
Has it occurred to you that you and others like you stepping down have made room for all those incompetents?
Skoryk: Probably, the more so that such room was being made most actively.
What about the competition? Who is there to crowd out those politicians?
Skoryk: There is some kind of dialectic. We pass through different phases, but nothing will change unless we do something about it.
THE DAY’S REFERENCE
Larysa SKORYK, an architect, head of a training-creative studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture; director of the Larysa Skoryk Personal Architectural Workshop; deputy chairperson of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Monuments since 1997. Born October 4, 1939 in Lubicz, Poland. Her father, Pavlo Kuzma (1903-94), a schoolteacher; her mother Olha Stefaniya (1907-63), a schoolteacher. People’s Deputy of Ukraine (March 1990-April 1994). Author of projects for the Shevchenko Grove Park in Lviv (1966), Minsk Metro Station (Kyiv, 1980); renovation of downtown Ivano-Frankivsk (1983), Church of the Mother of God (Boryspil, 1989-92), Basilian Cloistered Order and Church (construction completed in 2000), etc.
