Mykola LUKIV : “Thick journals have not disappeared”

My parents used to subscribe to several literary and semi-popular journals, such as Dzvin, Dnipro, Pamiatky Ukrainy, the UNESCO Courier, Vitchyzna , and Nauka i suspilstvo . Although they had nothing to do with the liberal arts, they needed publications that hid a lot of free thinking between the lines, and they would swap them, like novels, with their friends. We still keep the most interesting clippings at home.

Nowadays, very few people subscribe to periodicals, many of which are published once every two months or on a quarterly basis.

In the following interview Mykola LUKIV, poet and editor-in-chief of the journal Dnipro , which this year is celebrating its 82nd anniversary, talks about the state of journal publishing in Ukraine. During the Soviet era, this was the only literary journal that published the writings of the great Ukrainian film director Alexander Dovzhenko. In the 1960s, the period of the Khrushchev thaw, this journal helped a generation of authors, such as Borys Oliinyk, Ivan Drach, Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Yevhen Hutsalo, and Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, take their first steps in literature. It was one of the first to uncover the literary heritage of many forgotten poets and prose writers, including those who had been repressed or banned by the Soviet regime.

Getting ready for the interview, I stopped by several kiosks to ask for some thick journals. The vendors told me they have forgotten when they last sold one.

Where have all the thick journals gone?

“They have not gone anywhere. They are still being published, but they come out in double issues and in a much smaller or miniscule print run. For example, the circulation of Dnipro , which is one of the oldest Ukrainian literary journals, is now 1,000 copies, but it used to be over 80,000. The 1,000 copies of our journal are purchased through individual subscriptions, so it is next to impossible to buy our thick journal at a kiosk. Readers come to the editorial offices to pick up their copy.”

How much is a copy of Dnipro, and what does a one-year subscription cost?

“A single copy costs nine hryvnias, although the real cost is 22 or 23. In other words, we have to find an additional 13 or 14 hryvnias to pay for every copy of our journal. A subscription costs around 65 or 70 hryvnias.

“Our editorial offices are in dire financial straits. I need to find 20,000 hryvnias somewhere to publish each issue of Dnipro : I have to pay the taxes, rent, printing costs, and staff salaries. The journal does not receive state funding.

“It is not the case that literary publications have exhausted themselves. Society needs them. We have plenty of material to print. Editorial boards have amassed materials that could now be helping promote the national idea. But today it is not the notorious ideological censorship of the old days but financial and economic constraints: we have materials for publication but no funds.

“It is pointless to expect that print runs will increase in the nearest future. Our traditional subscribers — artists, scholars, doctors, teachers, students, and schoolchildren — are usually hard up. Libraries, too, find it impossible to subscribe to journals because there are no budgetary funds for literary journals, except perhaps for central and oblast-level libraries.

“This raises a logical question: who is to blame and what is to be done? Obviously, we are all to blame because we don’t know how to protect our interests in market- economy conditions. But the blame also lies with those to whom we once entrusted our destiny. Certain paradoxes emerged. A few years ago the list of publications that were promised government support included Ranok and Start , which had ceased to come out by that time.

This ‘knowledge’ of things in the sphere of Ukrainian periodicals on the part of certain officials does not inspire any optimism. When the Hebrew sages were asked ‘What is to be done?”’ they answered: ‘Do!’

So how do you manage to survive?

“In 1992, after the well-known events in Ukraine’s sociopolitical life, Dnipro had no premises, paper, or money. But we still had commitments to our subscribers. The editorial board had to start a new life. So for the past 17 years we have been overcoming difficulties.

“A few years ago we founded the Library of The Dnipro Journal. The books that we published, including The Garden of Gethsemane, A Person Runs at the Edge of a Precipice , and Tiger Hunters by Ivan Bahriany, Volyn by Ulas Samchuk, the poetry collection To an Unknown Soldier by Oleh Olzhych, Ukraine’s Vocation and The Cossacks in Muscovy by Yurii Lypa,

An Army without a State by Taras Bulba-Borovets, the political writings of Andrii Melnyk and Ivan Koshelivets, and others, brought in considerable revenues. The Ukrainian Word , a four-volume reader of Ukrainian literature and 20th-century literary criticism edited by Prof. Vasyl Yaremenko, a member of our journal’s editorial board, and his American colleague Yevhen Fedorenko, came out in a print run of 600,000 copies and was distributed to all university and school libraries. Thanks to our sales revenue, we were able to lead a normal life for some time. We also enlisted the support of sponsors who, over time, became our founders. Among them are the Ukrainian Culture Foundation headed by Borys Oliinyk, the B and K Charitable Foundation to Promote Research, Education, and Culture, and the Motor Sich Company.

“What else? I have visited almost all our top officials, and I know those corridors very well. Ex- president Leonid Kuchma received me twice, and I saw ex-prime minister Viktor Yanukovych several times. The current government seems to be with us in moral and psychological terms, but like before there is no concrete help, although we acquired up-to-date office equipment during Anatolii Kinakh’s premiership. The Verkhovna Rada still has not discussed the long-promised law on the promotion of periodicals.”

Ivan Malkovych once said that when he took up publishing he stopped writing poems. How do you, a poet, find being a manager?

“On the one hand, it is not so easy for me to be a manager because it takes a lot of energy. But on the other, I have become very attached to Dnipro . I am also the host of a radio program called ‘A Sunday Gift from Mykola Lukiv.’ Some TV companies have asked me to do a similar program on television. All this can be done as long as there is a great desire.

“I have published about 30 books. Right now I am preparing Two in a Boat , a collection of intimate lyric poems. Of course, it is not so easy for me to write now as it was in my youth. For example, I wrote my first book, which was printed in 1973, in a student dormitory room that I shared with four people. I think you were once a student and know what a student’s life is like: never-ending parties and debates. Still, the hullabaloo never bothered me.

“If you compare what I wrote before and after 1991, I wrote much more in the early 1990s, but I think I am writing in a more interesting way now. Mykola Lukiv is mostly known as a poet and songwriter, but very few people are familiar with my civic and philosophical poems that I have written in the past few years.”

Word has it that none other than Andrii Malyshko gave his blessing to you as a poet.

“Yes. The all-Ukrainian competition called ‘The Bard’s Wreath’ was held on the occasion of Taras Shevchenko’s 150th birth anniversary. At the time I was in the sixth or seventh grade, and I submitted my poems in both Ukrainian and Russian. I was a bilingual poet at the time. And they honored me by publishing a selection of my poems in the newspaper

Zirka , with a brief foreword by Andrii Malyshko. This was the first time we “met.” Some time later we met in a classroom at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, where I was studying journalism. I remember mustering all my courage to tell Malyshko that I was the one about whom he had once written. He liked my audacity. He himself was bold, tough, active, and uncompromising. I asked if I could show him my new poems and when he agreed, I went to his house. Malyshko leafed through my poems, chose one, and said it would be printed in a popular literary publication, but the rest could be thrown out. The poet kept his promise: my poem was published. He told me I might make a good songwriter.”

Are your songs suitable for FM-radio stations?

“You rarely hear them on FM radio, where Ukrainian songs are rarely played. I have the impression that in independent Ukraine there is a deliberate attack, sometimes covert and sometimes cynically brazen and overt, on all things Ukrainian, the concrete bearers and manifestations of which are literature and art.

“Songs set to my lyrics are usually broadcast by all three programs of Ukrainian Radio, regional and district radio companies, and, oddly enough, even abroad. Some colleagues of mine once came back from Hurghada, where they had vacationed on the Red Sea coast. They said that in a small local restaurant frequented by Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and Slovaks, they heard among the recordings of Polish and Russian music my song ‘A Cherry Tree Grows in Mama’s Garden’ sung by Anatolii Horchynsky. Another time, a good friend of mine, who was visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, found the text of my song ‘Come Home as Often as You Can’ inserted in a crevice in the wall. It happens that over time the authors of the music and lyrics of a song are forgotten, but the song itself lives on and is eventually considered a folk song.”

What is your radio show about?

“It is about new names and interesting events in literature and pop music. For example, I prepared two programs on the monument to Petro Kalnyshevsky, the last hetman of the Zaporozhian Sich, which was erected on the Solovky Islands. A lot of listeners send letters to the station.”

What do they write?

“Most often they ask where they can find Ukrainian books and CDs. Interestingly, most of the letters come from eastern Ukraine, where so many people miss the Ukrainian word. They often invite me to give a poetry recital in a certain district or town. I have already visited Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Vinnytsia, and Kyiv oblasts. To tell the truth, people in the provinces have long been thirsty for this kind of live contact. They are always asking meaningful and topical questions, and you can’t dissemble when you are standing in front of them. Every day television is foisting an alien lifestyle on us. Meanwhile, we have a lot of literary and artistic personalities that people love and want to see on their screens. There are countless documentary films and recordings of artistic soirees gathering dust in the archives of the First National TV Channel. There is a hope, however, that the channel’s new management will change the situation.

“I also advise my fellow writers to go deep into Ukraine. But they often say that people don’t read books in district centers and villages. This is not surprising, since district and village bookstores have been turned into bars and snack bars. Books are published with a limited print run and obviously not reaching villages in Ivano-Frankivsk or Kharkiv oblasts. I am firmly convinced that one must find the time to visit people because this produces results.”

You are the contemporary of many famous Ukrainian writers and poets. Whom do you consider great? What contemporary poets and prose writers do you consider the most interesting?

“I can use the word ‘great’ to describe Lina Kostenko, Oles Honchar, Mykola Rudenko, Borys Oliinyk, and Mykola Vinhranovsky.

“Among our contemporary young poets I would single out Pavlo Volvach; Oksana Dunska, a radio journalist from Vinnytsia oblast; and Olena Tkachuk, a student from Khmelnytsky oblast. In prose, too, women are the trend-setters, for instance, Oksana Saiko from Lviv.

“This land is full of talented individuals. We had to live through so many calamities in the 20th century alone! The Holodomor, the two world wars, ideological terror, Chornobyl...But the Ukrainian land continues to beget talented people. So I believe that one day we will live in a developed rule-of-law state. This may be something metaphysical and linked to my faith, which is very far from formal logic. But I still believe!”