Ukraine’s first feminist

The Subcarpathian town of Bolekhiv was once known as the “Ruthenian Athens.” Located in the scenic Carpathian foothills, it attracted a number of noted personalities not only because here they could relax away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities and marvel at the Dovbush Cliffs, but also because that “Athenian” atmosphere was created in the hospitable homes of the Bolekhiv residents.

I wanted to visit Bolekhiv primarily because Ukraine’s first feminist Natalia Kobrynska had lived there. She was born on June 8, 1855, in Beleluia, but the major part of the life of this outstanding Galician woman was associated with Bolekhiv. In 2005 her fellow countrymen opened a memorial museum to mark the 150th anniversary of her birth and I wanted to visit it, too.

When I arrived in Bolekhiv, I was given the name of a man named Roman Skvorii, who for many decades had preserved the memories of this land and those who had been born, lived, and worked here. His life story deserves a separate article because, among other reasons, his life was a true reflection of the dramatic history of Galicia (Halychyna) in the 20th century. Skvorii’s real last name was Melnyk. In order to escape KGB persecution — the Soviet secret police kept the Melnyks under close surveillance because of the family’s contacts with the “forest” — the UPA — the little boy had to assume a different surname, which he kept for the rest of his life. He was able to tell his children the truth only in the early 1990s.

Skvorii founded the local history museum in Bolekhiv, where an exhibit dedicated to Natalia Kobrynska is on display. His booklet entitled Na bolekhivskykh vydnokolakh. Putivnyk po starozhytnostiakh (Bolekhiv Landscapes: A Guidebook to Antiquities) was published in 1991. After reading it, I learned a lot about the past of this area.

Skvorii’s daughter is the curator of the museum. Together with her I visited the Bolekhiv cemetery, which looks more like an open-air museum. Skvorii is buried next to Ivan Ozarkevych, Kobrynska’s brother. This was only just, considering that both these people were destined to carry out the difficult but noble mission of enlightenment. One did it in the 19th century and the other in the 20th.

A SEARCH FOR SELF AND THE FIRST TESTS

When Kobrynska (maiden name Ozarkevych) was 27 years old, she was widowed. Her husband Teofil Kobrynsky, a talented singer, musician, and folklorist, died when he was still a young man. This was a double blow for the young woman because Teofil was not only the master of the house but also a “sincere confidant” with whom she could share all her thoughts. Now she had no other choice than to leave Sniatyn, where they had spent five years as a happily married couple, and return to Bolekhiv.

Prior to this, Kobrynska’s life had been untroubled for a long time. The atmosphere in the home of her father Rev. Ivan Ozarkevych in every way fostered his children’s cultural development. In her Autobiography (1893) Kobrynska wrote that her views were largely formed by the books in her father’s library. Her first sporadic readings included Polish stories that shaped her “romantic salon taste,” followed by Shevchenko’s Kobzar, the stories of Kvitka-Osnovianenko, The Lives of the Saints, and the Polish art historian and philosopher Josef Kremer’s Listy z Krakowa (Letters from Cracow), which were filled with fantasy and legends. The young priest’s daughter read “everything she could get her hands on” until she reached positivistic literature, which wrought perceptual changes in her world outlook. Kobrynska recalled that the first work to cause these changes was Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, which she borrowed from a friend who was a priest. This book was followed by the works of such philosophers, historians, and naturalists as Joseph Ernest Renan, Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Ferdinand Lassalle, and the works of Turgenev, Gogol, Chernyshevsky, Belinsky, Dobroliubov, and Pisarev. Here one can perceive the indirect influence of Ivan Franko, who was a friend of one of Natalia’s brothers in Lviv.

When the 22-year-old Natalia married Teofil Kobrynsky, she believed that family life would not drag her into the rigmarole of daily routine and not become an obstacle to her cultural growth. She was an idealist, yet unlike others, she dreamed about the “reform of women’s ownership” and planned to establish a “certain corporation” of like-minded individuals. At times this caused ironic smiles among Sniatyn’s genteel society. She had to live a double life, sharing her most cherished ideas probably only with her husband and her cousin Sofia Okunevska, who lived with the Kobrynskys (she would eventually make a spectacular career for herself as a physician and scientist). Teofil once brought his wife the German edition of John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women. From then on, as Kobrynska wrote later, “Mill dominated all my thoughts,” which were focused on the “women’s question,” the state of society, and ways to correct it.

In 1860s Europe, the feminist movement gained prominence after the 1848 Spring of Nations that had swept away all those “old sacred ways” (embodied by the nests of gentry in Russia), opening the way to economic relations based on competition. Socialist ideas had become widespread among Europe’s intellectual circles. It was in this broad context that the problems of social and national emancipation were discussed in regard to the “women’s question.” Feminist ideas penetrated Halychyna in the 1870s, and the seeds were planted in very fertile soil. The “women’s question” was so acute here that a solution to the problem of the glaring discrimination between the genders had to be found.

SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

Shortly after her husband’s death Kobrynska went to Vienna, where she befriended some students from Halychyna, who were members of a society with the eloquent name of Sich. One of its leaders was the writer and public figure Ostap Terletsky, a good friend of Franko. He told Kobrynska that she should start writing stories. “About what? How?” she asked. Terletsky replied, “About what you keep talking about, and the way you talk about it.”

Kobrynska’s first story was called “Pani Shuminska” (Mrs. Shuminska), which was later changed to “Dukh chasu” (The Spirit of the Times). It was read during a Sich Society meeting, although the name of the author was not revealed. This is a dramatic story about an aging woman, who sees the established order of things crumbling before her very eyes. She is the wife of a Polish Roman Catholic priest, long accustomed to a way of life governed by age-old traditions. Everything must be in accordance with the way it was established a long time ago: sons must be raised to become priests; daughters will grow up and marry priests, and everybody will live orderly and prosperous lives. Mrs. Shuminska, however, fails to notice the way the “spirit of the times” — something she never comprehended — burst into her outwardly well-organized family life, breaking all those “age-old traditions” and filling her heart with trepidation. Suddenly, her children want to live in a different way that has nothing to do with their mother’s established idea. The parents and their children suddenly discover that they have an absolutely different understanding of values; hence the misunderstandings between the older and younger generations that gradually develop into unpleasant conflicts.

The success of Kobrynska’s first story boosted her confidence, and before long Terletsky had read her other work, “Zadlia kusnyka khliba” (For the Sake of a Piece of Bread), during a Sich meeting. The author received warm words of appreciation from Franko in Lviv. He wrote: “Do you realize that you have just written something the level of which has never been published in all our literature in Halychyna?” It was “never published” because her story dealt with the feminist question, a subject that was alien to Ukrainian writers of the time. Shortly afterward, Kobrynska met Franko for the time in Kolomyia in 1883, during a student assembly. They were peers from the same generation. Franko and his works helped awaken Kobrynska’s national self. While engaged in general cultural matters, for a long time she had believed that the “national struggle” was “an unjustified and unnecessary waste of time.” Later she wrote in her Autobiography that “Ivan Franko drew my attention to the real national interests. His Boryslav stories and others presented not only the sense of the working people but also local living conditions — nationality (narodnist) as a separate ethnographic group.” It was then that she adopted a concept that would become the defining principle of her activity: “The masses can be raised to [the level of] general culture and civilization only on national foundations.”

In 1884 Kobrynska returned from Vienna to Bolekhiv, where she immediately founded the Society of Ruthenian Women in Stanyslaviv. “This was supposed to be a type of women’s library combined with a publishing company,” she later explained. Assisted by several like-minded women, Kobrynska set about preparing a women’s almanac for publication.

THE FIRST GARLAND

The Ukrainian women’s almanac entitled Pershyi vinok (The First Garland) was published in Lviv in 1887. Its very publication was proof that the literary world was ceasing to be a sphere exclusively monopolized by men. Many women’s voices spoke on the pages of the almanac, including Hanna Barvinok, Dniprova Chaika, Uliana Kravchenko, Anna Pavlyk, Olena Pchilka (maiden name Drahomanova), Mykhailyna Roshkevych, Sofia Okunevska, Olha Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, and Liudmyla Starytska — these are just some of the names of all those women who took part in the publication of the almanac, having submitted their poems, short stories, ethnographic studies, and articles.

In fact, The First Garland came out thanks to the dedicated efforts and funds supplied by two women: the 32-year-old Natalia Kobrynska and 38-year-old Olena Pchilka. This pair of women symbolized the unity of the western and eastern lands of Ukraine. Of course, symbolism is not as important as the rapprochement between two individuals who had certain objectives in common, and who had joined efforts to reach them. Sooner or later this kind of publication would have had to emerge because it was born out of an objective need from within the women’s movement. Franko also wholeheartedly supported the idea to publish the almanac, both morally and by contributing his editorial efforts. This was not the only time that Franko would help “women’s” literature to appear in Halychyna.

As for the Kobrynska-Pchilka creative team, their collaboration began when the two women became friends during one of Pchilka’s trips abroad. This may have happened in Vienna or Zurich. When The First Garland was published, Pchilka’s literary career was just beginning. She submitted her “student” work, the short story “Tovaryshky” (Girlriends) to the almanac, and the story is clearly autobiographical. The plot focuses on the author’s alter ego Liuba Kalynovska, who leaves her provincial town, easily identified as Drahomanov’s Hadiach, to go study in Switzerland. Using the device of black-and-white contrasts, which was germane to Ukraine’s prose-writing of the 1880s, Pchilka depicts the clash of two life programs. One is altruistic and populist (Liuba Kalynovska), and the other is egotistical and narrowly pragmatic (Raisa Brahova). Of course, a love story plays a major role in both cases. The different ways in which Liuba and Raisa see their ideals in life are clearly reflected.

The pathos and moral conflicts caused by the emergence of new ideas and “new people” in Pchilka’s story are similar to Kobrynska’s story “The Spirit of the Times” (also published in The First Garland). Both authors sought to portray an atmosphere in which the “new woman” proclaims herself. She is building a new system of value orientations in the course of strenuous internal work. Among the important components of this system are self-awareness, readiness to revolt against routine realities and unfavorable circumstances (in order to protect one’s self), and a search to discover a civic-minded individual in oneself.

Interestingly, the quest for self- assertion of the feminist heroines created by Kobrynska and Pchilka is accompanied by an active awakening of their national awareness, and this has a certain effect on the life programs of both women.

In 1887, after the publication of The First Garland, Kobrynska went to Switzerland to study at the University of Zurich. Like before, her public activities focused on the emancipation of women. Proof of this is her three collections of works entitled Nasha dolia (Our Fate), which Kobrynska published later.

SISTERS AND BROTHERS

In 1899 Kobrynska first visited Naddniprianshchyna, the Dnipro region, which was separated from western Ukraine by a state border. Kyiv was hosting a convention of archaeologists (Kobrynska would refer to it as a “convention of Ukrainians”), which afforded her the opportunity to stay in the homes of Mykhailo Starytsky, Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, and Olena Pchilka, and to make a trip to Chernihiv, where Borys Hrinchenko and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky were living.

There was a sequel to these encounters. After returning home, Kobrynska wrote letters to her old and new friends. She also wrote an interesting memoir of Nechui-Levytsky, recalling their meeting. It contains an important passage in which she admits that she had been greatly impressed by his works when she was a young girl. She sent him some of her stories to which he responded favorably, particularly “Jadzia and Katrusia,” the ending of which she rewrote, heeding the Ukrainian classic’s advice (“I’m not one of those who are fond of listening...” Kobrynska proudly declared.

While in Kyiv, Kobrynska visited the grand old man of Ukrainian letters, who resided “in a low parterre house” (the building, which stood on today’s Pushkinska Street, did not survive the ravages of time). She was given tea and then they started discussing “Ruthenian literature.” Nechui-Levytsky, who was working on his translation of the Gospels, was destined to complete Panteleimon Kulish’s mission. Kobrynska’s recollections contain several interesting observations concerning Nechui-Levytsky’s prose, particularly his descriptions of nature, which she unexpectedly compares to Richard Wagner’s music.

Kobrynska held Kulish in great esteem. “I would be happy to have any part in elevating Kulish’s glory. He was truly a man of extraordinary merit and talent; what makes him even dearer to me is that he sincerely supported my endeavors when I was suffering through periods of misunderstandings with our community,” she wrote in a letter to Hrinchenko (March 27, 1901). The final words of this admission — about Kulish, who helped her when she was at loggerheads with both the conservative Galician milieu and her former fellow thinkers — deserve a separate article. Perhaps this is the context of the episode that was researched by Academician Mykhailo Vozniak in his article “Kobrynska, ‘Free Love,’ and the Radicals” (see Ukrainske literaturoznavstvo, no. 10, Lviv, 1970, pp. 110-18).

In 1893 Kobrynska launched a polemic with the Galician radicals (i.e., socialists) on the pages of the journal Zoria, criticizing them for their treatment of the “women’s question.” She believed that the radicals had simplified and vulgarized the problem by transferring it from the social to the moral plane, and that they interpreted “free love” in the sense of “fallen individuals” and “men’s playthings.” Kobrynska primarily emphasized women’s “economic independence from men” and the possibility for women to realize themselves “in scholarship and work.” This led to a polemical clash between the opponents.

Judging by Kobrynska’s correspondence, she felt more at home in the Dnipro region than in Galicia. “Ukraine has always supported me when I found myself deserted by my own people,” she wrote to Hrinchenko after returning to Bolekhiv from Kyiv and Chernihiv.

TWILIGHT YEARS

At the turn of the 19th century Kobrynska was paying greater attention to modernist literature. “I am not stepping from the path of realism. Earlier I kept focusing on life circumstances, like all realists. Now I am increasingly inclined to emphasize the manifestations of the soul, surpassing the limits of known psychology,” she writes in a letter to Hrinchenko, dated 1901. Here is a characteristic fact: Kobrynska sent her article on Henrik Ibsen to Nechui-Levytsky, who had frequently urged her to “portray the character types in our society.” She warns him: “I know that you don’t like him.” But she sent the letter anyway. Perhaps she hoped that Nechui-Levytsky would understand her interest in the “new trends” that were connected to the change in the social vector (“circumstances,” “correct observation of life”) to the psychological one (“the soul” and “impressions”).

Here too Kobrynska’s keen sensitivity to the new trends came to the fore. She was greatly interested in Henrik Ibsen and his shocking play A Doll’s House; Knut Hamsun with his unmatched psychological nuances; and August Strindberg with his masterful portrayals of psychological anomalies. (Kobrynska wrote articles about Strindberg and Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, which included biographies and lists of works, for the Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk [Literary Scientific Herald]). Naturally, her interest in these writers could not have failed to leave an impact on her creativity. Proof of this is found in her modernist “novelettes” of the late 19th and early 20th century and her prose writings dating to the First World War (“The Horse,” “The Abandoned One,” The Candle Is Burning,” “The Cripple,” “At the Cemetery,” and “Brothers.”)

The horrible daily travails of the First World War became part of Kobrynska’s life in Bolekhiv. In 1915 she was arrested on charges of spying for Russia. The outcome could have been fatal if not for the help of Andrii Chaikovsky, her lawyer and a writer.

After that she lived for another five years. She died in her home in Bolekhiv in 1920. Her detailed biography remains to be written. There is little data on the author’s final years, although there is enough material for biographers, including at least 500 letters written by Kobrynska, which are preserved in various private archives. Only a few dozen of them have ever appeared in print.

Kobrynska’s house in Bolekhiv is no longer standing; there is just a single old photograph of it on display in her museum. On the site of her house is a stone with an inscription. But the house of the Rev. Ozarkevych is still standing. Next to it is a small ramshackle structure, where Natalia Kobrynska and Olha Kobylianska used to hold their private conversations. This reminds me of the truism that no events take place without consequences — just as those private conversations had theirs. Kobylianska dedicated her first feminist story “Liudyna” (The Human Being, 1894) to Kobrynska, her older friend with whom she had discussed so many topics in that “Ruthenian Athens” tucked away in the Carpathian foothills.

B.Volodymyr PANCHENKO is a professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy