Leonid Cherevatenko was recently elected chairman of the Kyiv organization of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. He has spent many years in literature, belonging to the shistdesiatnyky generation of the sixties, he was appointed head of the cinematography department of the Ministry of Culture. In this interview Mr. Cherevatenko discusses the Writers’ Union’s current status and modern Ukrainian authors. His emotional approach is further evidence of the pressing nature of the problems accumulating within the quadrangle of market-culture-state-creative-unions.
The Day: In what conditions do you think the Writers’ Union now is?
L.C.: The Writers’ Union and literature are in the same condition as society as a whole. The Union is a component part of this society, and there can be no cardinal difference from it. Every author knows in his very bones what this transition period is. I often see ill-fed and ill-clothed writers. We bury people weighing forty or so kilograms, who died from hunger. The 1992-96 period was especially trying. Our Ukrainian intelligentsia turned out to be the most vulnerable and least prepared stratum for the changes it had itself help bring about.
Another problem often debated by the print media, The Day included, is what the Writers’ Union is, whether in general it is needed, and whether it has a right to exist in our current historical circumstances. I am amazed to see that among those who now criticize, even spit on, this union, a great many people — and I remember this very well — who once made tremendous efforts to get in. I say this with a clear conscience. I never wrote what we called locomotives, verses eulogizing the Party and Lenin. And I think I lost much by not sharing the membership privileges or by not receiving any government awards. I entered the Writers’ Union in 1989, when I already had many books in print and I already saw that the Communist Writers’ Union had started to change fundamentally. Only after I felt the coming of the terrible spiritual cataclysms threatening not only literature but our entire spiritual life did I apply for membership.
I joined the Writers’ Union at the time of a terrible break in culture, when the thread of spirituality in our country had grown very thin. I knew we had to close ranks and defend it, along with film, the theater, all cultural spheres. I knew I had to defend Zerov, Pluzhnyk, and Olzhych, whose works I had collected, published, and promoted.
You know, today our journals publish very interesting works, real literature — penetrating and masterful — but the print run is very limited, 1,500-2,000 copies.
The Day: The works you mention are probably well-written only from the standpoint of literary technique. Yet when they find no response from society; their mastery, unfortunately, can be appreciated only by few. Aleksandr Blok said that art can forgive everything except betraying one’s own times.
L.C.: I consider several of our writers to be of truly world caliber, but few know them outside Ukraine. I think this unfair. Lina Kostenko is second to none, including Wislawa Szymborska, but the latter has the Polish state and Polish culture to rely on for support, both of which have asserted themselves in the world context. Not so in Ukraine.
The Day: Why can’t we represent Ukrainian art abroad?
L.C.: Because we still don’t have a real Ukrainian state. I am not so nationalistic to believe that only Ukrainians have a right to represent it. For me Moisei Fishbein, an excellent writer, is more Ukrainian than many of those beating their chest and waving flags swearing allegiance to Ukraine. Because he has talent.
The Day: I remember not long ago that Literaturna Ukrayna carried a material signed “Literary Ukrainians.” It claimed that, for example, Russian-language author Andriy Kurkov, often invited to attend various literary sojourns abroad, has no right to represent Ukraine there. Those “literary Ukrainians” try to bar access to writers who really work and whose names are known elsewhere in Europe. Of course, they want to be invited instead while concealing their own identities. What do you think should be done to revive Ukrainian literature?
L.C.: The state must help us more. I met with a group of bankers, and they looked me in the eyes and said they had no money. Then we walked out of the office and I saw that each had an expensive foreign car. If the state doesn’t help us writers who have done so much for Ukrainian independence, this democracy will go to ruin and totalitarianism will revive.
The Day: Sorry, but writers in the West have to make their names relying on their own resources. Naturally, the state must make laws to lower the taxes on printed matter and encourage patrons of literature. Yet demanding direct financial support from the state is an anachronism. I know that some writers in Ukraine have long since forgotten the way to the Writers’ Union. Their works are printed in Russia and they get access by placing their works in web-sites and negotiating contracts with publishers. After that their books are published in St. Petersburg or Moscow and copies are brought to Ukraine as Russian works.
L.C.: I haven’t seen a single work on the Internet matching Mikhail Bulgakov or Viktor Nekrasov. As for Andriy Kurkov’s popularity, I don’t understand it.
And then the Association of Ukrainian Literature appeared. Very strange. All of them had been members, then quit, allegedly because the Union was made up of only retrogrades and conservatives, so they founded the Association.
The Day: We have the freedom of public association, don’t we?
L.C.: But why are almost all who joined the Association, except for three founding members, still in the Writers’ Union? And most still pay dues. Could it perhaps be that they don’t want to lose the membership privileges? Maybe they will claim union property? The situation is being deliberately exacerbated. Certain forces treat the Writers’ Union as though it were a political party. In other words, they put up with it but only to the point where it poses them no threat. If they think they are being threatened they run the union down.
The Day: What are you going to do now that you are at the head of the union’s Kyiv organization?
L.C.: I will try to create here in our building an atmosphere that will itself draw creative people. Every day we organize interesting literary soirees, meetings, and concerts. We must unite all creative forces to counterpoise them to the external lack of culture and internal dissension. And the main task is lobbying, as they now say, the interests of writing at the state level, at least in Kyiv. I can say one thing clearly: there will be no revolution in the Writers’ Union of Ukraine.
PS: Why is modern literature in Ukraine no longer the shaper of our mind? Is the state to blame, as Mr. Cherevatenko believes, or the literati, including the Writers’ Union? Why do we not have mass Ukrainian literature as a phenomenon and why is the gap being filled by Russian printed matter, on the one hand? On the other, why do all those epochal Ukrainian literary works, of which their authors say so much, not appear in print? The Editors would be interested to hear your opinion. Please write.
