“It is long past time that we should start having opinions of our own”

WE ARE TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN THIS COUNTRY”

“For our indecisiveness in the 1990s, 2000, 2005, and 2014, we will pay for a very long time yet with lives of our soldiers and civilians in eastern Ukraine. Many people say: ‘It would have been better to let Viktor Yanukovych stay in power, since there would have been no war then.’ Unfortunately, these people do not realize that we all are to blame for everything happening in this country.” When writing these lines in her review of the book A Case without a Statute of Limitations a few weeks ago, Vira Chopko, a research fellow at the Viacheslav Lypynsky Memorial Museum in Zaturtsi, could not, of course, predict how much of personal pain would common Ukrainian indecisiveness bring her very soon. On another occasion and in other circumstances, not only she, but other employees of the Lypynsky Museum as well would have come to the opening ceremony of Den’s Days at Lesia Ukrainka Eastern European University. The Lypynsky Museum in Zaturtsi was one of the first sights to get publicized on this newspaper’s history website in the tour section. The museum often uses in its work texts from the newspaper itself and its book publications, joining forces with the village library as they go about educating people.

However, Chopko’s husband was killed in a mortar attack at the Ukrainian positions near Mariinka on March 25. After over a year of honorable service with the Ukrainian army, he was to be demobilized in a few hours. Such are the ways of Ukrainian reality which intervenes in people’s plans uninvited.

LARYSA IVSHYNA: “THE PHOTO EXHIBITION SHOWS HOW MUCH PAIN THE COUNTRY IS GOING THROUGH, BUT ALSO HOW MANY HEROES IT HAS”

Nonetheless, it was the understanding of the current Ukrainian reality and search for a light at the end of the tunnel that brought so many people of all ages, professions, every level of erudition and curiosity to the presentation of Den’s Days in Lutsk. Accidentally, and independently of anyone’s will, the presentation of Den’s new books and Volynians’ meeting with its editor-in-chief Ivshyna occurred on the day when Lutsk paid its last respects to the 30th soldier from that city to die during this undeclared war. Also, books for school libraries of Lutsk and Lutsk raion were sponsored by the “Volyn-2014” charitable foundation, established in the year when the war came to our region as well, and Ihor Palytsia’s foundation “Tilky Razom” (“Only Together”), which already disbursed millions of hryvnias to help Ukrainian soldiers and IDPs. And even the phrase uttered by someone in the numerous crowd at the counter with Den’s books was very telling: “It depicts the pre-war Ukraine, people have completely different expressions on these pictures.” It was said of the photo almanac Living History.

All those who shared their impressions of the photo exhibition first spoke of the tears brought by what they had seen. “We have already experienced all that, but Den’s photo record will offer invaluable data for future historians,” rector of Lesia Ukrainka Eastern European University Professor Ihor Kotsan said at the opening of the photo exhibition. “The least of our hopes is that people will begin, even if only after a lot of stress, to seek answers to questions that have long been facing the country, begin to understand how important it is to know and use its history. The photo exhibition shows how much pain the country is going through, but also how many heroes it has,” said Den’s editor-in-chief Ivshyna.

“I often think what a pity it is that few people read Den and its books, and Lypynsky too, after all,” Vitalii Kushnir, director of the Viacheslav Lypynsky Memorial Museum in Zaturtsi, said bitterly. “Had they read them, they would have received an answer on how we are to build our own state and civil society. Since the very beginning of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, we have found ourselves in that shoddy situation where a great occasion for building civil society was wasted, I mean that moment when people were full of patriotism, and a lot could have been changed in Ukraine due to it. I am afraid that no election will change anything in our lives, the only hope is to change the electoral system. Back in his time, Lypynsky saw the lumpen layer, the passive part of society as a danger, but believed that we should work to awaken it. Den’s two-decade-long effort in this direction sometimes reminds me of Sisyphean task... Still, I see that Den’s books are already freely available in our village library in Zaturtsi, and people do read them! So, I admire the perseverance of our compatriot Ivshyna and the team she leads. You truly enjoy divine help in your difficult work.”

“UKRAINIAN JOURNALISTS ARE MOSTLY INDIFFERENT TO INJURIES OF THEIR PEOPLE”

Veteran of Volyn journalism Vasyl Fedchuk has not missed a single meeting with Ivshyna in Lutsk, has read Den for 17 years and is, so to speak, our volunteer propagandist and agitator. However, to this year’s meeting, Fedchuk, unusually, came with a letter addressed to him by... Nadia Savchenko. He said he could not help but answer Den’s appeal when the newspaper published the address for people to send letters of support for her. He composed his letter directly at the post office, and was very sorry for not sending the letter as registered mail. He did not expect any response, but the effort of Den’s journalists who themselves (and alone!) went to the Presidential Administration building calling for freedom for Savchenko caused him to manifest his human and journalistic solidarity. Unfortunately, this is an exception since Ukrainian journalists are mostly indifferent to injuries of their people.

He will donate Savchenko’s response to the museum of the Volyn State Broadcasting Company at some point, perhaps, as it is the company in which Fedchuk worked for decades as the chief editor of Volyn radio. For now, he makes the letter available to everyone who does not believe in Den’s messages, which are, in his words, “objective and fair”: they state that we need to learn our own history, tell what this history was and is like, and say that build-up of civil society and statehood depends on people themselves.

IVSHYNA: “WE STIMULATE THINKING RATHER THAN TELL SWEET THINGS TO THE PUBLIC”

“Den: 20 Years of Quality Journalism” was the theme of this year’s meeting between editor-in-chief Ivshyna and Volyn students. But, of course, the meeting attracted, as usual, many Volynians who are long past college age. At such meetings, according to our old friend Fedchuk, people get information which they then ponder, evaluate, share with others, and find like-minded people.

“We did not sit in offices, but, perhaps of necessity, came to various audiences; it was perhaps born of despair, but people are able to act wisely when they have no way out,” Ivshyna told those present. “The society should have seen in advance the danger signals and not let it develop into the situation where we lose territory while forests and infrastructure are being destroyed. Den’s 20-year-old strategy is to stimulate thinking rather than tell sweet things to the public.”

This time, her audience included Den’s journalists Ivan Kapsamun and Valentyn Torba, authors of books published in the “Contemporary History for Dummies” series, which was published by Den past year and is almost totally sold out: A Case without a Statute of Limitations and I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk. The latter book can be read as a fascinating detective novel, if not for the fact that it depicts very tragic events for Ukraine, which changed the world and the life, for instance, for the Chopko family in Zaturtsi, far from Luhansk... Meanwhile, Ivshyna described A Case… as required reading for everyone, as it helps one to understand the processes that have been taking place here for 25 years. They resulted in another book published by Den, entitled Catastrophe and Triumph. The Stories of Ukrainian Heroes. Den was the first print media to start, from the very beginning of the so-called anti-terrorist operation, covering the heroism and courage of Ukrainian soldiers, the heroic feats of those who fell on their Ukrainian land.

“How can it be that this triptych is not discussed in the journalistic community?” Ivshyna asked a rhetorical question, for the answer is obvious, but why is Ukraine’s journalistic community so divided?

Here are a few themes of the talk with Den’s editor-in-chief which was moderated by Anna Levchuk, associate professor and vice-rector of the university. These themes were also discussed by the audience. Why and who kept the Ukrainian society for decades, so to speak, in a state of barbarism and how most Ukrainian journalists had a hand in it. Why Den spent years raising the issue of our need for another system of values, and how a detachment of Ukrainian journalism from civil society came to be. Why journalism was unable to defend itself, and so can offer no help to the society in its present state. On the all-Russian congress of teachers of history, change of Kyivan Rus’ to Ancient Russian state in Russian textbooks, and how it threatens Ukraine. On the fact (which will be totally new for many people) that Ukraine is not Russia, and Russia is not Rus’. And on the need for Ukrainian universities to “set filters” so that students understand where the history of their own ends and foreign history starts, and thus, so to speak, start to have opinions of their own, and the need for autonomous historical memory policy and much more.

 Den’s photo exhibition in Lutsk is housed by the library of Lesia Ukrainka Eastern European University (30A Vynnychenka Str.) and open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. till April 26, closed on weekends. Admission is free.