Staying away from the dangerous line

Let us remind that the Holodomor of 1932-33 had caused millions of deaths in rural areas on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (the territory of modern Ukraine, excluding the seven western oblasts, Crimea, and Southern Bessarabia, which were not part of the USSR at the time) and Kuban, which was mostly populated by Ukrainians. For decades, the mass murder of people with man-made famine was not only hushed up by the Soviet authorities, but was forbidden to mention it at all. This can be compared to the Povolzhye famine in 1921-22 and the famine during the Siege of Leningrad, which were extensively described in the Soviet mass media and historical literature.

Nowadays, 24 countries officially recognized the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian parliament named and in 2006 officially recognized the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people. According to the demographic research expertise, the total death toll of the Holodomor is 3,941,000 people. Also, the investigation determined that the loss from the unborn was equal to 6,122,000 people.

The Day asked art historian and vice president of the Lviv Academy of Arts Roman YATSIV to talk about the extent this terrible and tragic topic is covered by the fine arts.

“Today, layers of those artistic themes are revealed, which were covered by the artists in various periods from the 1930s to the present, and especially those periods when a lot of artistic phenomena were banned,” says professor Yatsiv. “It is hard to systematize such huge amount of work, but even now some Holodomor-themed phenomena are very distinctively disclosed.

“Artists from Lviv and the diaspora brought up this topic back in the 1930s. This tragedy is reflected the most vividly in satirical graphics of a few Lviv periodicals. For example, in the satirical and humor weekly Mosquito and in bimonthly Millstones (a lot of poignantly relevant and appropriate works by Edvard Kozak and Roman Chornii were printed, covering these themes on the basis of news about the Soviet Ukraine which was published in the Galician press). Sometimes these themes found a great artistic response, it was very quick, because the genre of satiric graphics involves rapid reaction to events. By the way, this might be a topic for a separate conversation someday, because there is a number of works created by Edvard Kozak, which can be considered a series, since he systematically responded to the terrible news and was very creative in every specific case when representing political reasons of that phenomenon.

“The works that appeared a bit later and were a reaction to the Holodomor and other cases of repressions of Ukrainians should also be mentioned. A work by Petro Andrusiv from Lviv oblast, a large-format canvas Golgotha of Ukraine, was such a summarizing work loaded with allegorical meaning. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during the bombing of Warsaw. Undoubtedly, it is one of the most outstanding program works in the history of Ukrainian art, inspired by the famine of 1933. But the author sees this tragedy as a more large-scale historical sign in a symbolic scene of Ukraine’s crucifixion. The allegorical knot with a cross, a heap of bodies, stormy skies, birds of prey. The level of dramatic tension of the modeled situation clearly shows that no reassuring motifs should be searched for in the painting. It looks as if this atmosphere of stuffiness, perhaps even mysticism, has been borrowed from Goya’s Los Caprichos. A reproduction of this work of very poor quality has been preserved, and one can only see how deeply and emotionally this problem was interpreted by this artist, who never went back to that theme again.

“Also, a very strong Russian and Ukrainian artist Vasyl Masiutyn resorted to the topic of the Holodomor in 1933-34. At that time, the artist lived in Berlin, where he was a successful illustrator and a master of applied graphics. He was close to Ukrainian circles, and to the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin in particular. Masiutyn created a series of post cards, which were supposed to be used for fundraising to support the starving in Ukraine. Unfortunately, none of these cards were preserved, but there are a few documented proofs that they served their purpose well.

“A very strong graphics artist Victor Cymbal, who was born in Cherkasy oblast, created allegorical composition on the Holodomor. He worked in Argentina in the 1940s-1950s and made several satirical series on the Holodomor repressions in Ukraine. But his most important work is The Year 1933. A colored reproduction of this painting has been used in Bohdan Horyn’s book, who wrote a monograph on Cymbal.

“Talented graphics by former Kharkiv-based artist Vira Drazhevska could also be classified as memories of this tragedy in the history of Ukraine. She was a witness of those events, a wife of the executed boichukist artist Vasyl Sedliar (monumental artist, illustrator of Kobzar), and Ivan Padalka’s student. A series of drawings by Drazhevska, her vivid emotional impressions were reproduced in the women’s magazine Our Life, which is still published in the United States.”

The tragedy of the Holodomor with millions of lives lost is striking. Why do you think Ukrainian artistic environment of the 1930s did not react and respond to it?

“Because it was suppressed and compromised by various ideological regulations back then. In addition, everyone knows about the details of the physical elimination of a whole generation (I am talking about the so-called ‘executed Renaissance’). And other artists and writers had to either flee to the intellectual underground, or agree to cooperate with the regime. It was fear, of course, and it is hard to judge people who were forced to make a compromise. But some artists, who left the Soviet Ukraine at the beginning of the World War II and joined the diaspora, turned to the Holodomor-inspired themes every now and then. The other thing is that not every artist had such civic courage and strength. A lot of talented artists who lived in the Soviet Ukraine at the time of the Holodomor and witnessed the tragedy either did not dare to come back to that theme (they were afraid that the Kremlin will find them even in the faraway diaspora), or did not have a strong artistic motivation for these works to be noticed.”

Do modern artists address the theme of the Holodomor?

“Yes, they do. Though I find it hard to name any who were capable of delivering a high artistic level of this theme’s visualization. Perhaps, the works created in the 1960s-1970s should be mentioned in this context, which are considered a kind of artistic paraphrases of this topic in art, and were interpreted by the outstanding Lviv artist Yevhen Lysyk. These are works on the level of quest, on the level of graphic compositions of allegorical meaning. Lysyk, as a theater artist who thought in global philosophical terms while interpreting prominent world masterpieces of opera and ballet art, also addressed the theme of the Holodomor. His graphic drawings are impressive and possess enormous artistic power.

“In general, a lot of artists have addressed this theme during the 20 years after the declaration of independence. I should mention Valerii Franchuk, who received the Shevchenko Award for his series ‘Bells of Memory Set into Motion,’ dedicated to the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine.

“It is hard for me now to determine more or less important works of other artists that relate to this topic. For the most part, they belong to the graphic genre, presented as illustrations and paraphrases to books, dedicated to the theme. But when it comes to important allegorical compositions... Perhaps, only in sculpture, in monuments in Kyiv and other places in eastern oblasts, related to this tragedy.”

How important it is to bring the information about those events, in particular, through demonstration of paintings about the Holodomor to the young who know nothing about the tortures that Ukrainians had to face 80 years ago?

“It is obvious that the public historical memory is a very important factor of not only education, but cultivation of human dignity. I am not saying that in this way Ukrainians must create hysteria or take revenge for the past. But since the modern world is often irresponsible in many situations, the humankind must be reminded that it is possible to forget oneself and come close to a very dangerous line. Sublime art is capable of deep penetration into human consciousness and it can remind of humanity and dignity. That is why the theme of the Holodomor is one of the most dramatic ones not only for Ukrainians, but for the whole humankind. Just like the Holocaust. That is why it is our duty for the memory of those innocent people who were starved and for the generations to come. We must be reasonable in our actions as well as our thoughts.”