Ukraine has European experience. Volodymyr BOIKO

Volodymyr Boiko is a Ukrainian historian, resident of Chernihiv. He is also a regular contributor to Den/The Day and its standing expert. It was thanks to his dedicated scholarly effort that our readers learned more about the Magdeburg Rights conferred on Ukraine and this country’s self-government tradition. Mr. Boiko recently visited the editors and shared his interesting publication projects.

He is interested in a literary project entitled “European City” which has been underway in Chernihiv oblast for the past several years and which, hopefully, will be placed on a national basis. It is the result of cooperation between Chernihiv’s Civil Servants Training Center, European Information Center at the Chernihiv Regional Library, Vidrodzhennia Foundation, and Siversky Regional Study Institute. Seven booklets have been published as part of the project with concise stories about the European tradition in Chernihiv oblast, upheld in the towns of Novhorod-Siversky, Semenivka, Korop, Nizhyn, Chernihiv, and Kozelets. Each edition has “European City” on the front cover. Liudmyla Chabak, Serhii Leliavko, and Volodymyr Boiko are working on the series.

Volodymyr Boiko also brought one of two heavy files of articles by Serhii Yefremov dating back to the Ukrainian Revolution. He believes these unique works will appear in print in the near future.

Early in March 1917, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, instructed by the Provisional Government, formed a “Special Board on the Reform of Local Government and Administration. It included seven commissions, one of which dealt with the city reform. On April 9 a new elections bill was adopted by the Board’s general meeting. That same day the Provisional Government passed a resolution making it a law. It was published by the Vestnik vremennogo pravitelstva (The Provisional Government’s Messenger) on April 16, 20, and on May 4. In other words, the first attempt to hold democratic elections and transfer actual powers to local governments in the former Russian empire, including those in Dnipro Ukraine, was made 95 years ago.

Larysa IVSHYNA: “Ukrainian history was created not only in big cities, but also in towns, even villages. Take, for example, Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Subotiv. The Magdeburg rights made Ukraine part of would-be European Union.”

Volodymyr BOIKO: “That’s right, it was a uniform legal, education, political, and economic space.”

L.I.: “Even if those ‘upstairs’ aren’t willing to join the European Union (because of its control and restrictions recognized by all as the rules of the game) apparently many realize that Ukraine must return to Europe.

V.B.: “Yes, and this understanding should be proliferated. There is the literary project ‘European City’ in Chernihiv oblast. Back at the turn of the 1970s, the multivolume ‘History of the Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR’ appeared in print. Much has changed since then, including in terms of ideology and censorship. Lots of new data became available, previously kept away from the public eye. A number of works on local history have been published. It is high time we returned to the history of the cities and villages of Ukraine from another point of view, free of Soviet ideology. We plan to gradually write about the towns and villages in Chernihiv oblast and publish booklets that will be easy to read, with the emphasis on what make these localities European.

“Chernihiv oblast totals 42 towns and villages. We’ve published seven books describing the history of various such localities. This took a couple of years. At this rate describing all such areas in Chernihiv oblast will take 9-10 years. A long period of time, but quite realistic. Ideally, it would be necessary to publish such booklets about all Ukraine; also, prepare a new concept of the history of cities and villages of Ukraine.”

L.I.: “It is amazing to see one change one’s self-assessment, for example when reassessing the history of Semenivka in the European context. What about your authors?”

V.B.: “Mostly historians. For example, the authors of the book about Kozelets are our university lecturer Liubov Shara and Tamara Chumak, her former student who is now a schoolteacher in Kozelets. The book about Novhorod-Siversky is by Borys Domotsky, member of the regional council, former school principal and journalist (he continues to teach and is working on local history books). The book about Semenivka was written by Mayor Oleksandr Bychkov and Serhii Huzovaty, head of the Semenivka Regional State Administration.”

L.I.: “There are many interesting events in Ukraine, but we mostly watch and hear stories about disasters and accidents, nothing about a mayor writing a book about his city. What’s the print run?”

V.B.: “ Five hundred copies. We gave 150 copies to the regional [oblast] library, so all district [raion] libraries will receive copies, and sent 150 copies to the Library of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. They promised to send copies to all oblasts. Our higher educational establishments will also receive copies, free of charge. In other words, such publications don’t pay the authors.”

L.I.: “These authors and others like them are the basis of a civil society.”

V.B.: “After we started working on the first book, there were doubts about the European city formula: what kind of European city could be seen in Sosnytsia, considering the lamentable condition of its roads and utilities? For most Ukrainians ‘European’ means a certain standard of infrastructure and service. I said this formula could be a positive provocation.

“What makes these cities and towns European? They used to have self-government (I mean the Magdeburg rights, their simplified versions, the Cossack State, and zemstvo [a form of local government that was instituted during the liberal reforms under Alexander II of Russia]) which is the fundamental factor of the European tradition. In these books we show how these cities and towns evolved, how their residents solved their problems developed; we remind of residents who were the pride of them. Some of them are known in Europe and the world: Oleksandr Dovzhenko; Zino (Henri) Davidoff of Novhorod-Siversky, the founder of the tobacco company and cigar brand. Novhorod is usually associated with [Russia’s Novgorod] and the author of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. We placed emphasis on other historic figures like False Dmitri I, his campaign, the populace’s response to it; Lazar Baranovych, and brilliant graduates of the men’s gymnasium [high school].

“Working on the book about Sosnytsia, we remembered Marko Poltoratsky, soloist with the Italian Opera, kobza-player Pavlo Kulyk, ethnographer specialist Yurii Vynohradsky, and of course Oleksandr Dovzhenko. We had doubts about mentioning the Cheka officer, Bliumkin (assumed to be born in Sosnytsia) and finally decided to leave out this dark character, possibly the prototype of Stirlitz, the main hero of the Soviet blockbuster series Seventeen Minutes of Spring.”

L.I.: “We have always emphasized that the Magdeburg rights were conferred practically on the boundary between Ukraine and Russia. In a recent RTR talk show Dmitry Kiseliov and Nikolay Svanidze discussed the parallels between the Orange Revolution and the Russia’s protest rallies. It is important to understand what criteria the Russian historians and intellectuals are using. We can watch and hear them claiming on all channels that Ukraine is part of their thousand-year-old civilizational project. It seems to me that this assumption is more dangerous than Ukraine’s semicolonial status as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with its language and cultural restrictions. At the time, our civilizational project wasn’t acknowledged as one ordered ‘upstairs’ [in Moscow]. We were fed that story about ‘three in the crib’ [i.e., Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians allegedly being of the same origin]. I don’t believe that this sinister plot will ever be carried out. Ukrainian national identity has proved its survivability on more than one occasion. One of our readers wrote that loving Ukraine is a bad business; that one has to pay for it. Who do you think can be a positive Ukrainian hero for Russia? Does Ukraine have this hero?”

V.B.: “It does. Bohdan Khmelnytsky.”

L.I.: “Apparently, they adopt only a part of his image. The historian, Volodymyr Serhiichuk, told The Day recently that Bohdan was livid after learning that his envoys had been refused ambassadorial accommodations in Wilno [currently Vilnius], considering that he received and accommodated every envoy in Chyhyryn. That was the first warning sign and then the stuff hit the fan and the situation has basically remained the same. Of course, Ukrainians today have no way to become truly European and reaffirm their national identity, yet, given human rights and liberties, charismatic individuals stand a real chance, despite the monstrous information policy. Your ‘European City’ is important. If and when a community realizes that it is part of Europe, everyone will want to be there and adopt a different lifestyle.”

V.B.: “Our next book will be about Varva, a township. The chairperson of the council is a schoolteacher, author of a number of works on local history, so we thought she would be the best author of this book. She told us that she had campaigned for her post under the motto ‘Varva is a European Town!’ She said many had thought it was ridiculous, but then she won the campaign. Local governance in Ukraine rates a separate newspaper article… Here is an example. The chairman of a town council complains that he was a fool to run for the post, that he had been in business, doing well enough, and then suddenly found himself elected; that his wife showed him the door because he had to spent most of the time as chairman; that he was now accused of corruption and had to visit the local public prosecutor’s office to be interviewed; that he had to visit the head of the regional state administration to receive instructions; that he had to walk over the township to see that garbage be properly collected – and pick it and dump it himself – because the local utilities were practically nonexistent.”

L.I.: “It’s true that we pay more attention to what’s happening ‘upstairs’ than to what’s going on ‘downstairs.’ Local administrators often have to solve difficult problems that, unfortunately, are ignored by the media. We must seek our elite not only ‘upstairs,’ but among the people, among those who preserve their dignity and know how to live in this world.”

L.I.: “We know that you have a collection of Serhii Yefremov’s articles dating back to the 1917-21 Ukrainian Revolution.”

V.B.: “I do and it is the last part of his creative legacy that has never appeared in print.”

L.I.: “What was your first impression after reading them?”

V.B.: “I had only read his diaries, so his articles impressed me with their quantity. His articles practically appeared in every issue of the newspaper Nova Rada (he was its editor-in-chief). We were amazed by the names he mentioned. Those dated to various periods and were proof of the man’s encyclopedic knowledge… He was principled and tolerant at the same time. He opposed [the Central Rada’s] First ‘Universal’ [Manifesto], not because he opposed Ukraine’s autonomy, but because he regarded it as a rash decision and he substantiated his attitude.

“Yefremov worked for the General Secretariat for a short while, then called it quits: this wasn’t up his alley. He preferred journalism and public activity. This is probably why one could describe him as an embodiment of public conscience. He never distanced himself from important events and debates, and he maintained a critical attitude to all of them.

“The Ukrainophobic newspaper Kievlianin was closed on several occasions. On the first one, in 1917, Yefremov responded vehemently, protesting the closure, saying it ran against the freedom of the press, all Weltanschauung differences notwithstanding. He disliked all those ‘upstairs,’ including the Central Rada, let alone the Bolsheviks… His attitude to local government was somewhat different… He believed that grade school, local authorities could contribute to the solidity of a nation-state… His Nova Rada came off the presses even when the Bolshevik troops were in Kyiv (late January-early February 1918)… after the Central Rada returned, when the Hetman State was established (which he hated and lashed out at), even after the Directorate. Denikin officers finally closed his periodical. Yefremov re-opened it under the new title: Promin (The Light Beam). This periodical was still active while Kyiv remained the capital city of the Ukrainian National Republic in May 1920. In a word, this man was singularly perseverant and consistent, most likely because he felt it was his civic duty.”

Compiled by Maria TOMAK, The Day