Back to Europe

The attributes of the glorious European past of the western Ukrainian city of Kamyanets-Podilsky are showcased in a unique museum housed in the City Hall building: the Museum of the Magdeburg Law and Self-Governance. According to historical sources, these premises used to house the magistrate, a local self-governance authority. The harmony of substance and form is thus unmistakable.

An ancient clock complete with bells is perched high up on the tower of City Hall. The dust of the centuries covers the original charter that granted the Magdeburg Law to Kamyanets-Podilsky, which was considered “second only to Lviv. This extraordinary event happened in 1374,” said museum director Liudmyla Stanislavska. She went on to recount how Kamyanets-Podilsky lived in that dim and distant past with its right to self-governance: “It had a court, council, burgomaster, and a representative government. That is, decisions were made in a collegial fashion. The community elected its representatives to the governing authority.” Representatives were elected on the basis of their professional merits: “From artisans and merchants to military men...Unfortunately, this practice did not survive to our days.”

Openly elected public servants of the time took an oath, promising “to demonstrate utmost justice in any matter that may be referred to me...without adding anything out of friendship or kinship, enmity or fear, or in return for gifts or promises.” This was followed by the date, month, and year when the oath of loyalty to the community was sworn, and the signature of the popularly elected official. Thousands of records from the Middle Ages have survived to this day in the form of museum exhibits, yet none of them contain a single fact that would suggest that this oath was ever broken. We proceed to learn that mudslinging was not practiced during election campaigns. Perhaps this was because the informational space was restricted to public opinion about those who were running for office. There was also no nepotism — a characteristic of a feudal society. “Unfortunately, you can’t say this about our epoch,” said a guest from Kyiv, who joined our discussion and went on to provide a detailed account of who is whose godfather, godmother, brother, father-in-law, or nephew among today’s ranking Ukrainian officials.

The museum’s “custodians of the centuries” are not inclined to idealize the past eras. “Those who were running for public office were required to own property that was large enough,” said Anatoliy Skrypnyk, a research fellow with the museum. He admitted that this was practiced throughout Europe (Kamyanets- Podilsky kept pace with the whole continent), adding that the ground floor of the City Hall building housed the court chambers: “There were occasional breaches of the law, much like everywhere else and at all times.”

Roads were a big headache for the city fathers. Rainfall would ruin the cobblestone roads. Road maintenance placed the heaviest burden on the municipal coffers. “One time they went too far, and expenditures exceeded revenues, whereupon they were upbraided by the taxpayers, who ordered them to maintain a balanced budget,” said Anatoliy Skrypnyk, who continued his story about his distant predecessors, quoting from a document.

Merchants who traveled with their caravans from afar to Kamyanets-Podilsky left only good impressions of their trade journeys in the annals of history. “Statistics of those days suggest that exports exceeded imports. The city’s 16 artisan shops manufactured jewelry, clothing, footwear, and weapons. Although everything was shipped to foreign lands, alcoholic beverages dominated the exports. In one of his works Sitsinsky provides a colorful description of a traveling caravan laden with fish. Every city levied a toll on this caravan. Customs was also a major issue in the Middle Ages,” Mr. Skrypnyk said.

Merchants left their money in Kamyanets-Podilsky. Therefore, a logical continuation of the museum exposition is its “History of Money” section. “In developing the museum’s concept, I wanted to offer visitors information on Ukraine and this particular city within the European context,” explained the museum’s director, Liudmyla Stanislavska.

“Of special note is this masterpiece by an unknown Slavic artisan — a ring. It is an extraordinarily sophisticated and elaborate jewel,” said Liudmyla Stanislavska, pointing to this material proof of commodity exchange in the Scythian period. She proceeded to show coins from around the globe, which archeologists unearthed in these parts: “This one is the oldest in the collection: 5th century, B.C. Ancient Greece...This one comes all the way from the Arabian Desert.”

Europe should tip its hat to the ancient city. Its historical and cultural center is here, in Kamyanets-Podilsky. “Whenever a foreign visitor steps into the museum, he has an expression of arrogance on his face. Afterwards, he leaves the museum with a completely different facial expression. Here he gets food for thought and for drawing certain conclusions. Historical twists have produced various metamorphoses,” said the museum’s director, sharing her observations.

The museum staff has discovered what went on in this picturesque space. The hall over there hosted party meetings that decided leadership issues of the council of people’s deputies. In this hall people lined up for coupons for soap, matches, and scare literature in exchange for wastepaper. Here memories are still fresh of the ruble-coupons from the 20th century.

The curators have not overlooked present-day local self-governance either. A natural question arises: Has Kamyanets-Podilsky really confined its European attributes to a museum and laid the past to rest? Here is what a group of visitors said about this unique museum.

Volodymyr KOLESNYK, businessman:

“Now there’s all this talk of a single European currency. Meanwhile, this monetary unit circulated in ancient times all the way from Kamyanets-Podilsky to Constantinople. The Magdeburg Law came much later. We still haven’t unraveled all the mysteries of Karmeliuk’s Mountain. Maybe Kamyanets-Podilsky used to have a different name but it was integrated, to use a modern phrase, into world civilization.

“What can we see now? Euros are earned not by selling goods like before, but by the most enterprising representatives of the city, who are working for the benefit of foreign economies. The nation’s elite is scattered in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc. Everybody with the capability to work and think is there. If they don’t come back home, Kamyanets-Podilsky will not revive its past European glory.”

Ruslan HOLUBYTSKY, chairman of Studentske Bratstvo [Student Fellowship] Center:

“Perhaps Kamyanets-Podilsky has yet to become a European city. Many young people don’t have that kind of worldview yet. For them a bottle of beer and discos are all there is to life. They never think about the Ukrainian language or Kamyanets. They don’t respect their history. This is the unfortunate heritage of the communist epoch and the events of the 1990s. In those days our parents were not thinking about sacred things. Their only concern was to earn some money and feed their children. Everything in the city was bought and sold, beginning with the smallest vocational schools and ending with schools of higher learning. All the other spheres of life are also corrupt. But public consciousness is gradually changing.”

Valeriy KLYMENKO, chief of the organizing and monitoring department at the municipal executive committee:

“Over the past few years foreign investments in the city have increased nearly 2.8 times. The major investors come from Germany, Italy, Cyprus, and the US. They are mostly investing in the food industry, construction, transport, and machine building. In the new millennium the tourist influx to Kamyanets- Podilsky has increased by 2.5 times. The city is an attractive tourist and recreation area with a unique ensemble of historical buildings. It boasts 170 historical and cultural monuments. An investment fair held last May featured five proposals for the expansion of the tourist infrastructure. Kamyanets-Podilsky is returning to Europe.”