There is a long friendship between the Ostroh Academy and The Day. Half of the 16 years since the university’s revival were marked by a close cooperation with the newspaper. The first meeting of The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna with students of the Ostroh Academy was held in 2002. At that time the first book from The Day’s Library series Ukraina Incognita was presented in the historical educational establishment. According to the university’s authorities, The Day’s editor-in-chief is the university’s best information sponsor. The cooperation between the academy and the newspaper resulted in spiritual and material enrichment of the educational institution.
The year’s first meeting of Ivshyna with the university’s students is traditionally dedicated to Unity Day. This year was not an exception. But there was one peculiarity. For the first time The Day’s editor-in-chief appeared before students in her new capacity. If earlier she presented new books of The Day, brought interesting people to the academy, and advanced different initiatives, this time Ivshyna came in the capacity of a lecturer of the Ostroh Academy, having officially signed a job application for the position of lecturer. “The State of Ukrainian Journalism” was the topic of her first lecture. As the vice rector of the Ostroh Academy Perto Kraliuk pointed out, “this lecture will be interesting not only for students of the journalism department, but also for representatives of other specialties, because, possessing a huge work experience in journalism, Larysa Ivshyna will speak not only about the subject but also about the object of the course.”
The Day’s editor-in-chief asked questions right away: What can journalism be? What does our country need from journalists? How should citizens treat journalism? “There are no ready-made recipes for Ukrainian journalism,” continued Ivshyna. “Due to this I am sure that The Day can be an interesting research topic. [...] Because this newspaper created its own school and many full-fledged projects pertaining to a new, mature Ukrainian journalism, that did not previously exist.
“In 1997 The Day was created as a newspaper for the civic society. It took place when this phrase was hardly used at all. But back then, as now, I was sure that a lot of efforts were needed to create a fully developed civic society. The Day’s mail and contacts with our readers is one of the ways to find energy. We were persistently looking for our reader. We often joke that our readers can’t be found by laying on the ground — in both direct and figurative meanings. Thinking people, scattered in all spheres and different cities, could be gathered only by means of setting a high standard and giving a daily agenda that showed the readers: this is not some abstract theory but a part of life.
“The amount of printed mass media has been declining, and this is not only a requirement of the times. There is not enough money, and no willingness to do pay one’s dues. I suppose that for Ukrainian society the entire internetization of the press is premature: we have a big segment of society not covered by broadband access.
“The degradation of Ukrainian society in the last decade is to a great extent connected with journalism of low quality and a lack of conscientious fulfillment of journalists’ duties. Not only bad politicians are to blame for the situation, but also poor journalism, which could be a motor for civic society; instead, not only doesn’t it explain the state of affairs but even makes them more complicated.
“In journalism there is no place for people without serious preparation who are not knowledgeable in these issues. There are very few people who can quickly and reasonably face everyday challenges. The more people have accurate and adequate knowledge, the more we will feel as one people.”
At the end of the lecture, as well as during The Day’s meetings, students traditionally ask questions. For example, Alisa Hordiichuk (a third-year student of the Humanities Faculty at the Ostroh Academy), known to The Day’s readers due to her participation in the Summer School of Journalism, asked the editor-in-chief about her attitude toward censorship. “Censorship is a phenomenon of a non-democratic society. But there can be a situation when a democratic country is in a state of war — then it has to limit information. Certainly, no one has the right to set rules for mass media from one side. It’s an unnatural phenomenon. Generally, our people are unique because they learned to live in unnatural conditions. We live in conditions of defective intellectual existence. In Donetsk, with a population of a million people, with great possibilities, there are only two museums. It is known that culture makes people. Therefore efforts should be made to develop society so that people not only get information but are also surrounded by culture. Only when the government feels that people don’t like it, censorship appears. Censorship is a manifestation of weakness,” answered Ivshyna.
The second part of the meeting in the academy — the sitting of the Ostroh Club — was as always held in the form of a roundtable discussion. It was a sort of anniversary — for the fifth time students from different universities gathered in Ostroh before Unity Day. (It’s interesting that as five years ago it began snowing in Ostroh on The Day of our arrival there.) This year Oksana Tsiplitska and Oksana Kovaliova from the Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University joined the Ostroh Club.
“Ukraine’s Cultural Reintegration in Europe” (the topic of the roundtable discussion) is very topical in the current political conditions. Since after Viktor Yanukovych and his team came to power, Ukraine’s foreign policy orientation, despite the official neutrality, is directed to the East. Ukraine’s cultural integration is connected with it as well. However, Russia already showed its attitude to Ukrainian organizations, like the Ukrainian library in Russia. The Ukrainian government also demonstrated how it can defend Ukrainians in Russia.
The very topic of the Ostroh Club answers the question in advance: Where should Ukrainians go? At this, the roundtable discussed not integration but reintegration, that is a return to Europe’s cultural sphere. As the student of the Ostroh Academy Serhii Melnyk pointed out in his presentation: “Back in the times of Kyivan Rus’ Yaroslav the Wise was called Europe’s father-in-law, Anna Yaroslavna brought to Europe knowledge from the Ukrainian lands, the princes of Ostroh were some of the most influential and rich magnates in Europe, Bohdan Khmelnytsky showed a good example of the use of democratic principles: one can publish ten-volume editions with names of Ukrainians who played an extremely important role in Europe’s cultural achievements, and an even bigger role in its life.
“Unfortunately, the stay of the majority of Ukrainian lands under the Russian Empire and the stay of the whole of Ukraine under the Soviet Union launched a big blow on Ukraine’s preservation of things Ukrainian, that is European. So, today we are independent but we are sick. In the twenty years of independence we didn’t manage (even when Viktor Yushchenko was president) to reintegrate into the European cultural sphere. As Larysa Ivshyna said at the beginning of the meeting: ‘People who don’t have a cultural foundation are like rolling stones. Our people have too low self-esteem. All this is due to the [failure to embrace] our cultural heritage. One shouldn’t be sitting on the stove waiting for someone to gently remove you from there. People must feel cultural gravitation.’”
“What is the problem of returning to Europe?” Serhii Melnyk asks himself. “There is a short answer: it is in each of us. One should be ‘cured,’ and Ukrainian patriotic spirit, our glorious history and love of Ukraine, is the ‘medicine.’ Heart, imagination and mind — that is where culture is born.”
Before the end of the meeting the participants came to the conclusion that Ukrainian youth should first of all start with internal Ukrainian integration. The Ostroh Club started five years ago exactly with this idea. One can speak about the reintegration into the Europe’s cultural sphere only based on cultural unity and mutual understanding in Ukraine itself.
