Yurii Andrukhovych is a cosmopolitan. Ivano-Frankivsk is an oblast center located in western Ukraine, which is eclipsed by grander and showier Lviv. My conversation with Yurii Andrukhovych about Frankivsk is not aimed at making the city better known, but to grant a beautiful voice to the former city of Stanyslaviv, because no one else can describe it better.
I will stick to the standard form of this column’s first question. So, how did you end up in the city where you are living right now?
“In my case, it is the simplest thing. I was born here. In general, as far as I can remember, the generation before me also came from Frankivsk, that is, Stanyslaviv. I can say for sure up to my great- grandfather. But it is a more complicated thing to say where he came from.”
You have been away from the city for long periods.
“In fact, in my youth I dreamed about running away, to head for the wide world, which meant Lviv for me. This was the city of my dreams, so I was extremely happy when I managed to enter a university there. I imagined the situation in the following way: I will never return home and I will fight to stay in Lviv. Nothing came of it because of a number of circumstances, mainly the Soviet bureaucracy that controlled people’s migrations with the help of registration, employment, conscription, and other things. At the age of 22 I suffered a fiasco because I had to return to the city that I had seemingly left for good.”
Apparently, the experience of returning was not emotionally pleasant for you.
“At the time it wasn’t. I had to rebuild my inner world and to start loving this original city out of necessity. It appeared that the matter was not very hopeless. I gradually started to discover it, but first I had to leave it and return in such a doomed way. It is less attractive if you take the whole of western Ukraine because it is located mid-way between Lviv and Chernivtsi, but Lviv and Chernivtsi are already swathed in legend, and Frankivsk is the youngest of these cities because it was founded in the late 17th century. It is some 30-40 years older than St. Petersburg: there are no other cities that are this young. It has not grown into at least a relative center of empire. It did not develop even into a conditional metropolis. It was founded with a certain provincial idea that has continued to dominate it. At first glance this city is nothing special. I had to find out how it could attract.”
When did you feel a change?
“It happened first because of my family, my domestic experiences: I came back with my wife and we lived under the same roof with my parents. She was pregnant and about to give birth. But first my grandmother died. She was a living witness of the past eras, and I was too young to ask her about everything and to pin everything down in a systematic way. All this took place in 1982. Grandma died literally the day before we became parents. This was a sort of serious, intimate change. And simultaneously on the external level my formation as a poet was becoming apparent. I was suddenly stricken with new verses after Lviv. I was under the influence of the Frankivsk scenery when I started to write them. Suddenly it appeared that this city, despite its ‘unattractiveness,’ is still full of its own mysteries. I started to write very well there, and the whole period starting from the moment I went into the army, was very complex, but at the same time, very good for me. And the presence of the city is in this sense very important. For the first time in my life I understood that Frankivsk is above all people, not just architecture. And since that moment I was lucky to meet people there. Before, I knew only relatives and old friends. But suddenly I started to encounter artists. I found such a rich bohemian life whose existence I had never guessed before. I mean that after one and a half years I returned from the army, and these local characters entered my life very quickly, and this became the main factor why I came to like this city and still like it a lot.”
I can’t avoid asking this question: which name is better — Ivano-Frankivsk or Stanyslaviv?
“Historical names are historical names. It was called Stanyslaviv after the son of the city’s founder, because it was born the same year when the founder, Potocki senior, began building his fortress here. And, indisputably, it had to remain this way according to historical justice. During the communist period the authorities decided that it was not fitting to call the city after the nobleman Potocki, a Polish magnate, who was the torturer of the Ukrainian people. The personality of Ivan Franko was dragged here somewhat by the ears: the city did not play any particular role in his life, and he visited it only four times, I think. True, he had some sort of dramatic love affair, one of the greatest in his life. He used to visit her here. But she didn’t live very long and died of tuberculosis. But this is not reason enough to name the city after him. Besides, its form is somewhat awkward, because the lexical variant of Ivano-Frankivsk, as they used to joke in Literaturnaia gazeta is sort of like ‘Antono-Chekhovsk.’ This is an anecdote, but it corresponds to the truth: they were afraid to call it simply Frankivsk or Franko because there was Franco in Spain, and it was important for the name to indicate that Franko is meant here. People have gotten accustomed to it now. A gradual change took place in my memory. I recall from my childhood that almost everyone said ‘Stanyslaviv,’ although the official name was already Ivano-Frankivsk. Today Stanyslaviv may appear in some rather burlesque, specific context. Everyone has become accustomed to the current name because the full name is rarely used in practice; they say ‘Frankivsk.’ Sometime in the late 1990s an entire new group of young people adopted a new form for themselves — Franyk — which I find very nice. Unfortunately, it will never be adopted, but this proves that the train has gone and everything has assimilated. ‘Stanyslaviv’ is popular in another sense: a cafe may be called ‘Stary Stanyslaviv’ (Old Stanyslaviv). It is floating somewhere like a myth. But I don’t think that there will be any official return to this name. By the way, a compromise project for both sides in one organism has been offered. The historical central part was supposed to be granted the status of a historical-cultural preserve and called Stanyslaviv, while Ivano-Frankivsk would have to remain the official name of the place. I think this would be a historically-based solution.”
You have already noted the similarities and differences between Frankivsk and other cities. How is it different?
“Here it is very to the point to mention the recent (several months ago) rating of Ukrainian oblast centers in Fokus magazine. They determined where the living standard is higher, based on a certain number of criteria. Ivano-Frankivsk won, topping the list as the best city to live in. I think that to a large extent the rating is made up of accidental things, but I can confirm that it is true to say that Ivano-Frankivsk is an extremely comfortable city in view of our circumstances. It is rather compact in its architectonics and rather safe in terms of ecology. In general, there is a friendly atmosphere. For example, I frankly cannot recall anyone being rude to me in Ivano-Frankivsk. It has preserved its very expressive provincial nature, although it is very poor in the cultural sense. There are theaters and a philharmonic, but I can say that nothing is taking place there. True, there is an interesting young audience that comes to the weekly poetry readings. From my point of view, I can put it this way: I like this city because I travel a lot. There is an optimal variant here, when I need to return, feel at home, and simply relax, and spend several weeks or months in a homey atmosphere. This is what distinguishes Ivano-Frankivsk from other big Ukrainian cities, where there is anything you want, but you cannot call them comfortable. So we have no particular advantage according to certain criteria of cultural life. But in general there is a nice, friendly atmosphere, which is probably due to the fact that Ivano-Frankivsk has little chance of becoming a megalopolis. There is also, in the good meaning, the friendliness of provincial people. They are grateful to you because you have come here: there is nothing interesting here, so why do you come here? If, for example, Kyivites come, the residents of Frankivsk will meet them in the morning at the train station, and when the time comes, they see them off up to the coaches, things like that.”
What are the particular features of the city landscape?
“It is flat: again, we have Lviv and Chernivtsi, which are hardly situated on hills, but they are hilly enough. So, it’s flat; but the landscape is characterized by the significant presence of a strong railway junction. In Stanyslaviv, significance was added by the fact that the railway was built in the 19th century, and the new city was built around it, which is now part of the old city. There are two small rivers that turn the city into a peninsula: that’s a luxury for this type of oblast center. They interflow in the city’s suburbs and define its western and eastern borders. This is a significant factor because you can drink the tap water here. As for the architectural component, the image of the city is dominated by buildings dating to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which we used to call Austrian buildings, plus the buildings that were constructed in the 1930s under Poland. Again, these are Polish buildings, a version of the famous German Bauhaus school. For example, I live in this type of building, which was constructed in 1935. These two components prevail.
“Several church buildings of the late Baroque era, which are still standing from the late 18th century, can serve as a sort of a trademark. And our City Hall is special. This is something with something. The city suffered a lot during the First World War. The original City Hall was destroyed, among other things. The avant-garde City Hall was built on the same site in the 1920s. To a large extent it was part of the new architecture of the 1920s. Both cubist and modernistic elements can be found there. This is something that I always want to show off. But today there is a very complex problem: the destruction of this landscape, which is linked to the building boom. Frankivsk has the second highest rate of construction after Kyiv. And the builders are going to the old city. They are building in the suburbs, but in the old city there are more of them than need to be. Since parts of the old ensemble are not protected by any laws because these houses are of no historic value, they were simply destroyed and continue to be destroyed, and six-, seven— and eight-storey buildings, which are not typical of our city, are being constructed in the center. Houses with no more than three stories are characteristic of the old city; four-storey buildings are rare; I cannot even recall those. And now there are seven— and eight-storey buildings. And there is no way to protect them. Formally, this is not destruction of architectural monuments. But if that landscape is disappearing, a new one will appear instead. Everything looks very chaotic so far.”
I hope your favorite places have been preserved?
“They are limited to the historic part. A significant part of the gray fortress wall has been preserved there, and a street located nearby, or rather a side street called Fortechny (Fortress Street). I recall times when it was simply neglected, overgrown with bushes and grass, a sort of small corridor in the very heart of the city, which was always empty of people. In reality this is a veinlet, a very thin artery linking the old city core with the district that has the historical name of Belveder, and where I spent my childhood. By the way, during the occupation years there was a ghetto here because all of Belveder was populated by Jews in the 1920-30s, so Jews from surrounding areas were brought there from 1941. In recent years plans have been drafted to turn Fortechny provulok into a beautiful street with a touristy and artistic atmosphere. There are supposed to be shops, cafes, and part of that fortress wall could be turned into a square set up for musicians or poets. This project was launched during the previous mayor’s tenure, and something is already happening there.”
What sort of people live in Frankivsk?
“I have already said a few things: they are traditionally aware that they live in an unpretentious city, so this creates a peculiar friendliness and hospitality. There is indisputably a kind of unique solidarity, local patriotism. This has been played up by such things as Hutsul coloring. It was imposed on the city (although it is no way the Hutsul region), but it has taken root in the mentality to a large extent, as well as the name ‘Frankivsk’. So the local cultural orientation bears this Hutsul-type ethnographic character. After all, this is a city from which you can see the Carpathians in the crystal-clear air on a sunny day. These are also people who have studied here, at one of the unique higher educational establishments, the Technical University of Oil and Gas and the important and large Medical Academy. An intelligentsia, aware of itself and its significance, was concentrated here. You could also say that the proletariat was not formed here without heavy industry. Today this is an ideal city for small and medium businesses. That structure corresponds very well to small shops and small cafes.”
So this is a city of merchants.
“Merchants and craftsmen, craftsmen in the sense this word had in the Middle Ages. We have even founded a holiday — Craftsman’s Day, when everyone, starting from confectioners and ending with engravers come to one of the central squares. You could put it this way: small businesses, crafts, cookery, and restaurant-cafe businesses.”
Does this stable bourgeois nature have any impact on the tolerance level? To what extent is Frankivsk a puritan city?
“Even if it is, it is significantly less so than Lviv. There is an appalling sanctimoniousness in Lviv. There is significantly less in Frankivsk because people here are less pretentious. Unpretentiousness also determines a sort of indulgence in the way people treat each other. There are also no rumors. There is practically no picking anybody to pieces, which is characteristic of Lviv. This is probably caused by the fact that there is a significantly smaller layer of native people whose families come from here. This city was populated to a large extent after the Second World War. Many new residents came here in the late 1950s and early 1960s because of certain improvements in the economy. And a kind of burger atmosphere has not formed here.”
What are some of the best things to do here?
“I would call it evening relaxation. According to an old custom, it used to be called “leading the goat,” when people moved from one establishment to another. They are all located in a very compact way, and everywhere you run into acquaintances or friends: a kind of kaleidoscope of faces, moods, and conversations. This is very important for me. There were times when I was staying in Germany or America and I painfully wanted to go to some ‘Ofitserska yidalnia’ (Officers’ Dining Room). It doesn’t exist anymore, but it was still around seven or eight years ago. For some reason I suddenly wanted to go there and be surrounded by such and such people and know that this is the third or fourth hangout along our way, but not the last one, and we will go on.”
Returning to mysteries: are there many in your city?
“I once wrote that the mystique of Ivano-Frankivsk is that there is no mystique. I am probably underestimating a bit. There are several mysterious things that I mention in Taiemnytsia (Mystery). These are people that disappear. To me, those who were born in the 19th century resemble ghosts. They were alive in the late 1960s and they were about 80 years old. They would appear at our house too; they visited my grandmother. They impressed me with their different nature. And I used to imagine terrible stories about each of them. But I might invent this about them, although there were several stories connected to them. Again, the word ‘mystique’ is too pompous here, but at least there used to be mystical moods.”
What things inspire you in Frankivsk?
“That’s hard to say. Most of all, I relax here. Only one-tenth of everything I have written is connected to Frankivsk. Here I have the necessary opportunity for relaxation, rethinking, and reinterpreting. Let’s not forget that since the 1990s a new category of artistic people has appeared here. Most of them have not reached anything higher than the level of Frankivsk, but they remain interesting personalities. There is interesting contact here, but I want to continue doing something with them in the future.”
What kind of gift would you give the city if you were close to omnipotence?
“Most of all I would do something material. I would give the city a huge club where my favorite musicians from the whole world would come. There is a very sensitive and intelligent public here that knows all this and is capable of listening, but it is limited because there is no place to organize all this, there are no places where one can perform. For example, Nino Katamadze’s concert is taking place in Lviv the day after tomorrow, and we are going to go there with a whole group. But we could welcome her here.”
To what living being would you compare Franyk?
“I divide cities generally into dog-like and cat-like ones. My city is somewhat undistinguished and unpretentious, so based on this type of character I would say that this is a dog, a mongrel, but with a good intellect and nice, gentle character.”
