#72_1-8

NOVEMBER 23, 2017 ISSUE No. 72 (1124) 

Tel.: +38(044) 303-96-19, 

fax: +38(044) 303-94-20 

е-mail: time@day.kiev.ua; 

http://www.day.kiev.ua 

Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day 


Volodymyr VIATROVYCH 

on national memory 

“It is a set of common visions 

of the past, and it turns 

a community into a nation” 

Continued on page 4 

REUTERS photo 

There will be 

no Jamaica coalition 

Expert: “This means a period 

of uncertainty and probably 

weakening of Chancellor 

Angela Merkel’s position” 

CHARACTERS 

OF DIGNITY 

Continued on page 5 

Families of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes 

talked to The Day about people of the Maidan 

Continued on page 2

2 

No.72 NOVEMBER 23, 2017 

DAY AFTER DAY 

WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA 

By Anastasia RUDENKO, The Day 

Maidan occurred under extreme 

circumstances when people had to take 

the fate of the country in their own 

hands. It was like a fever, a sign that the 

“The 

body was fighting the disease,” Larysa 

Ivshyna wrote in the preface to the photo album 

People of the Maidan. A Chronicle, which was 

published by this newspaper in 2014. Of course, this 

phenomenon still needs fresh reflection. Has our 

society found answers to questions about the causes 

of what happened four years ago? Or is it, on the 

contrary, approaching the coming anniversary of the 

Revolution of Dignity in a disoriented condition once 

again? We are still sorely lacking a holistic vision of 

the future and, ultimately, a recognition that while 

Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown, achieving a 

genuine regime change has turned out to be a much 

harder task. 

However, the fact remains that the Euromaidan 

brought new Ukrainian faces and characters to 

the forefront of Ukrainian and world history. 

These are people who started speaking boldly, with 

full voice about the choice of the path and our novel 

way of experiencing freedom, responsibility, selfsacrifice, 

and self-organization. On the eve of the 

Day of Dignity and Freedom, The Day had a conversation 

with the head of the Family of the Heavenly 

Hundred Heroes NGO Volodymyr Bondarchuk, 

and also asked relatives of the fallen Roman Senyk 

and Yevhen Kotliar what kind of people were they, 

the ones who made the ultimate sacrifice to give 

Ukraine a chance to change. 

● “MY FATHER JUST COULD NOT STAY 

ON THE SIDELINES” 

Mr. Bondarchuk, you assumed the burden of responsibility 

by coming to lead the Family of the 

Heavenly Hundred Heroes NGO. It has united the majority 

of families who lost their relatives during the 

Maidan. Your father died there as well. To start our 

conversation, I would like to ask you about him: what 

kind of a person was he? 

“He was extraordinary. My father was a physics 

teacher at Starokostiantyniv City Gymnasium, 

Khmelnytskyi oblast. However, the children called 

him ‘the teacher of everything in the world.’ He loved 

children greatly, introduced many innovative practices 

in his teaching, and educated several winners 

of the science competitions. On the one hand, he devoted 

a lot of time to his school, but at the same time 

he was always an active citizen, took part in the community 

life of his hometown and Ukraine. He was a 

party to almost all major civic protests, including the 

Orange Revolution, the Tax Maidan, the Language 

Maidan, chaired the city branch of the Svoboda party, 

was a Cossack, and had unquenchable interest for 

history. In the first days after the assault on students 

in Kyiv, he just could not stay on the sidelines, as 

many of his former students went on to study in the 

capital. Together with my mother, he became one of 

the leaders of the Maidan in the city of Starokostiantyniv. 

On December 2, 2013, he delivered a speech 

urging people to go to Kyiv and went there himself. 

He repeatedly kept watch there, spent weekends doing 

it, took time off work, including at his own expense. 

He came back again on February 16, and already 

on the 18th, he learned that the Palace of Liberty 

(then the October Palace) was taken by the 

regime forces, which had long been the base of the 

Khmelnytskyi Svoboda Hundred, and that several 

lads from Starokostiantyniv were hurt during a 

peaceful procession to the Verkhovna Rada. And he 

just could not stay on the sidelines, so he set out for 

Kyiv very early on February 19. That evening, we 

agreed to meet in Independence Square at 10:30 a.m. 

on February 20. Next morning, I went to work to ask 

for some time off, and on connecting to Internet, saw 

that a massacre was taking place... I immediately went 

to the square, phoned my father every half hour, but 

he no longer answered the phone... When I ran into 

the Maidan camp and re-dialed father’s number 

again, I got an answer. It was a lieutenant colonel of 

the police who said that my father was dead. I initially 

did not believe it. I ran to the police station, where I 

was told that the ambulance with the body had already 

left for the morgue. Identification was delayed and 

took place only in the evening. On the fifth day after 

the killing or thereabouts, I saw a video record in the 

media which showed my father’s body being carried 

away... After that, I started my personal investigation, 

I began to look for photos, videos, witnesses on 

social networks. I have already collected a lot of extremely 

important evidence with the help of other victims’ 

relatives. I remember how I first came to the 

Prosecutor General’s Office three months after the 

‘black Thursday.’ At that point, they had effectively 

no evidence linked to the death of my father, apart 

from an investigator’s crime scene report compiled 

in the location established by looking for the place 

where people had glued my father’s photo. It was 

wrongly identified, in fact.” 

● “PUNISHING THE PERPETRATORS 

REMAINS OUR PRINCIPAL 

OBJECTIVE” 

Why are hearings of this case so troubled? 

“Speaking of such cases in general, we were faced 

at the end of 2016 and earlier this year with delays in 

court hearings on various pretexts, like the change of 

jurisdiction in the courts, when cases were not sent 

from one court to another for months, and then returned 

again to the court in which hearings had begun 

in the first place, judges being challenged and recusing 

themselves, court hearings being scheduled once 

a month and even less frequently, postponing hearings 

very frequently and without good cause. One can describe 

it as effective judicial sabotage. And it is crime 

victims who come from the provinces who become 

hostages of this situation, first and foremost, because 

it negatively affects their ability to attend hearings, 

since most of their appearances come to nothing. On 

the other hand, in my opinion, the same strategy is being 

employed by the accused’s defense teams, as they 

play for time in various ways and fail to appear at court 

hearings. Speaking about the events of February 20, 

when the massacre took place, now five defendants are 

in the dock. The investigation has been completed, and 

the case has been in court for almost two and a half 

years. The case is really huge. It includes 187 volumes, 

and representatives of 48 dead as well as 80 wounded 

victims have to testify. There are hundreds of witnesses 

and 500 GB of video evidence which the court needs 

to examine. The second point is technical support. The 

court asked for a re-examination of bullets, but to 

make it possible, the government needs to purchase 

an expensive microscope created on the basis of the 

latest technology. The government provided six million 

hryvnias for this purchase, but the Ministry of 

Internal Affairs (MIA) for some reason sent this microscope 

not to the Kharkiv Institute, which was 

tasked by the court with the examination, but to another 

one in Kyiv. And now the government has again 

provided funds, a tender procedure is in progress, and 

the microscope will finally get to Kharkiv. In addition, 

the court has ruled to repeat investigative experiments 

in all episodes. Consequently, due to the scale of the 

case, resistance on part of the defense and obstacles 

on the part of the MIA, the trial is unfolding at a 

snail’s pace. Even so, this trial is the best we have seen 

in terms of upholding the rule of law during the proceedings. 

It is so because in other cases, court proceedings 

generally did not begin at all for a long time. 

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the judicial system 

is still unreformed and unpurged, such developments 

are taking place. Punishing the perpetrators remains 

our principal objective.” 

● “BY ESTABLISHING THESE AWARDS, 

WE ARE REALIZING THE DREAMS OF 

THE HEAVENLY HUNDRED HEROES” 

What tasks have you set yourselves for the next 

year? 

“For us, the most important task is to remind the 

society of the values of the Maidan, to tell people how 

cheerful and courageous were our heroes, to speak 


Characters of Dignity 

Families of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes talked 

to The Day about people of the Maidan 

about their faith in Ukraine, love for people, and devotion. 

This is probably especially important in our 

time. Therefore, in order to commemorate the memory 

of the heroes, we founded the Awards of the Heavenly 

Hundred Heroes Platform. Later, with the support 

of the Renaissance Foundation, we created awards honoring 

the youngest heroes. For instance, we, in partnership 

with the Shared Opportunities NGO, created 

a competition of initiatives that promote sports for disabled 

people in memory of the young Paralympic athlete 

Dmytro Maksymov. He was a Paralympian and 

Deaflympian, took a serious interest in judo. On February 

18, he protected other people with his own body, 

and had his hand torn off by a grenade. To honor other 

hero, Bohdan Solchanyk, we, together with the Cambridge 

Community of Ukraine, created a travel grant 

that helps young researchers who want to participate 

in academic conferences in Oxford or Cambridge. The 

first of those who represented this country at conferences 

in the UK thanks to this grant are already 

ready to implement the ideas of the British educational 

system here. A big charity event will be held in December 

to fund the grant. In honor of the youngest of 

the heroes, Nazar Voitovych, who was fond of art, we, 

with the support of the Congress of Culture Activists 

NGO, founded an artistic residence in his native village 

in Ternopil Region in which young artists from 

all over the world will work. The creation of such a venue 

gave an impetus for the development of the village, 

it has had a road built to it, but the project of such, in 

fact, world-class level needs a lot of attention, first of 

all, from businesspeople of Ternopil Region. We need 

media support to find partners, including in the 

cities where the heroes lived, to create awards honoring 

all of them. We would very much like to establish more 

awards before February 2019, when the fifth anniversary 

of the Revolution of Dignity will be celebrated. 

Therefore, please send us your thoughts and 

suggestions via the Facebook page of the Family of the 

Heavenly Hundred Heroes.” 

● “ROMAN’S EXAMPLE ‘ELEVATED’ OUR 

ENTIRE FAMILY” 

Lesia LYSAK, the sister of the Hero of Ukraine 

Roman Senyk: 

“My brother was a Man with a capital letter. Always 

in a hurry to live and do good, he was able of truly 

enjoying life as well. He took no offense to anything 

and tried to do good not only for himself. At the same 

time, he never expected reciprocity, never asked: ‘Why 

should I do this?’ I will never forget his phone calls 

when he was on the Maidan. Roman always called late 

in the evening, when he started his watch guarding the 

Maidan, and said: ‘Get up, stop sleeping. Are you sleeping 

again? Listen how we are singing the anthem of 

Ukraine. Listen how we are crying: ‘Glory to Ukraine! 

Glory to heroes!’ I remember how he proudly said: ‘I 

have been entrusted with a national flag, and I am not 

going anywhere without it.’ Early on the last day, when 

I finally reached him by phone, he proudly said: ‘I have 

got my first combat injury.’ I was so scared, I was 

shocked, but he was proud to defend his nation and justice. 

And whenever I scolded him, told him it was dangerous 

and he needed to go home, he replied: ‘There 

are children here. I have to be here.’ 

“He was always that way. When he was just 

eight years old, he saved a girl from drowning as he 

pulled her out of icy water. We, children, were going 

downhill on sledges, and there was a river a little 

distance away. And one of the girls got strongly 

pushed and fell into the river. There were a lot 

of older children among us, but everyone was 

frightened and confused, we screamed or ran home. 

Meanwhile, Roman evaluated the situation at once, 

calculated the flow’s direction, caught the girl and 

pulled her out. I only remembered this case from my 

childhood when I was carrying Roman’s body home 

from Kyiv. 

“In 1989, when Ukraine was just entering the 

struggle for independence, he was the first resident 

of our village to raise a Ukrainian flag. At that time 

it was still dangerous. He was then summoned to the 

police station for questioning, they asked him who 

had given him such a task, and where he had got the 

flag. But he did not repent and believed that he had 

done the right thing. Then he became a soldier, 

served as a peacekeeper in Yugoslavia during their 

first tour of duty. He went there because he believed 

that he had to be there. He was the flag-bearer there 

as well. He brought a photo from there which shows 

him supposedly standing on guard with an assault 

rifle in his hands, and a large rose covering the rifle 

from above... He was a true peacekeeper. Now 

that Roman is in heaven, we pray for all the soldiers 

who defend our land. We understand how hard it is 

to resolve to go and serve in the Ukrainian Armed 

Forces (UAF) now, and those who have done so are 

true heroes. Our family has assumed a certain responsibility 

for the defense of Ukraine, my son has 

completed his service and has just returned from 

eastern regions. Meanwhile, my husband, who had 

been in retirement for 10 years, returned to the UAF 

last year. I am sure that the Maidan has awakened 

our people. Maybe not all of them, but people have 

realized that one should not keep silent anymore. It 

has become clear that in order to gain a better future 

for our children and this country, we must fight and 

work hard. I would like to call on Ukrainians – stop 

idling at home, act, build up your own state, for nobody 

will give it to us as a gift.” 

● “THOSE WHO CAME TO THE MAIDAN 

BELONGED TO A NEW GENERATION” 

Mykola KOTLIAR, the father of the Hero Yevhen 

Kotliar, Kharkiv: 

“Yevhen graduated from the Institute of Radioelectronics, 

later mastered the difficult job of 

industrial climber. When the city authorities, motivated 

by their business interests and not bothering 

with any permits or public hearings whatsoever, 

started cutting down trees in the center of 

Kharkiv, he was one of the first to come and protect 

the park. Almost four years before the start of 

the Maidan, we witnessed several weeks of running 

fights with thugs hired by the authorities. The 

force ratio was too unequal, one of the extreme 

techniques was to fasten oneself to the top of a tree 

in the hope that they would not cut it down then... 

However, many media published photos which 

show how a cutdown tree falls with Yevhen still on 

it. He miraculously survived, but was back there 

the next morning. Despite being the camp commandant 

and one of the founders of the Green 

Front, he never sought a leadership position or a 

platform for speaking, he simply always tried to do 

what he thought he needed to do. 

“We have a lot of people eagerly criticizing the 

current state of affairs and discussing politics in 

their kitchens. Similarly, most people blamed 

Yanukovych’s regime for their woes, but were 

afraid to go and protest, to do something on their 

own, change something. Those who came to the 

Maidan were courageous enough to do all these 

things, as they belonged to a new generation. The 

heroes of the Heavenly Hundred proved by their 

actions that they were prepared to do anything to 

change the fate of Ukraine. Facebook has preserved 

his reply to an acquaintance after the assault 

on students: ‘You can, of course, keep sitting 

down and watching your mind-numbing TV, but I 

have already bought a ticket to Kyiv!’ He spent on 

the barricades almost his entire time there, and 

when, after arriving for a brief respite in Kharkiv, 

he saw the news on the morning of February 18, he 

immediately called his Kyiv friends: ‘I am ashamed 

that I am not there. I will come!’ And he arrived on 

the Maidan that evening. He simply could not stay 

on the sidelines, and this is the shared quality of 

the Heavenly Hundred and all those who overcame 

fear and laziness and came to the Maidan. These 

people are Ukraine’s hope for a better future. 

“Kharkiv has changed a lot after the Maidan. 

Many people have become civilian volunteers, the 

Ukrainian creative community has become more 

active. I would very much like to see more places 

in Kharkiv where people would feel free, as the 

Maidan protesters dreamed they would. This city 

has a huge potential to become the ‘driver’ of the 

national progress. We, the heroes’ family members, 

live by faith in the bright future for all of 

Ukraine.”


DAY AFTER DAY No.72 NOVEMBER 23, 2017 3 

By Mykola SIRUK 

Global: Israeli-Ukrainian 

Innovation Day,” held as part of 

Jerusalem Days in Kyiv, helped 

Ukrainians understand to some 

“Going 

degree the secret of Israel’s success in 

this sphere. Opening the forum, the Ambassador of 

Israel to Ukraine Eliav Belotsercovsky said that the 

event was meant to share the two countries’ know-how 

in innovating. According to the ambassador, Ukraine 

and Israel have a great potential for cooperation in the 

field of science and technology, but its realization is 

a challenge. One of the problems, says Belotsercovsky, 

is that “your country was focused on energy, industry, 

agriculture while human resources remained 

neglected. Our experience revealed the importance of 

human resources. If you ignore them, you will have 

trouble developing.” 

● THE ECOSYSTEM OF INNOVATION 

Following that, leading Israeli experts talked in 

excellent English for six hours on end about what 

makes the Israeli innovation ecosystem so successful 

and how it helps create start opportunities for 

exploring new markets, how women inspire one another 

to work in this sphere, how innovations affect 

education, and how the latter lays foundations for 

further innovations. 

Roy Munin, co-founder of Made in JLM, a nonprofit 

organization, shared his experience of creating 

an ecosystem of innovation in Jerusalem. According 

to him, this NGO focuses on uniting entrepreneurs, 

startups, R&D centers, research institutes, 

service providers, and investors in Jerusalem. He told 

that they started with changing the outward perception 

of the city, which used to have a depressive 

air, and created Jerusalem’s positive image. 

And only after that more and more companies 

started to come to Jerusalem, while government began 

to allocate grants for innovation. Munin mentioned 

that government will always control everything and 

usually fails, because it is important that the authorities 

took a proper place. “This is only possible if 

local or central authorities realize that they are part 

of a large ecosystem including other players, who can 

do things better,” said he. 

Probably the most important thing in Munin’s 

opinion is instilling a cooperation culture among numerous 

players, including businesses, researchers, government 

officials, universities, service providers. 

Ad all those links matter in the process of creating an 

innovation ecosystem. 

However, success is unattainable if society is 

strange to the psychology of accepting the other’s suc- 

“Failures are a great honor 

and should not be feared” 

How Israel managed to advance in innovation and startups 

cess and understanding how cool it is to cooperate with 

such people and do something better. In other words, 

Israelis managed to get rid of jealousy because of the 

other’s success. 

Tom Bar Av, director of marketing and ecosystem 

at MassChallenge, the world’s biggest startup 

accelerator, emphasized another moment: in Israel, 

you do not take a failure as a disaster. According 

to him, this country even holds FuckDay, 

or losers’ day in other words, when people share their 

experiences. A businessman will not always become 

successful at once. A failure can become a stimulus 

to keep trying and in the end create a successful 

business. 

Speaking on the role of state in supporting 

the ecosystem of startups, Av said that it need 

not necessarily provide financial support. It can be 

a lower rent for office areas for startups, or removal 

of obstacles to starting a business. 

Av told that a smallish ecosystem of innovations 

could be created in two weeks, but you have to realize 

that you are running a marathon, not a sprint. 

● WOMEN AND INNOVATION 

“We did not become a startup nation overnight. 

What helped was our entrepreneurial culture. Failures 

are a great honor and should not be feared. Someone 

could fail three or four times and still build a successful 

company,” says Naama Zalzman-Dror (29), director of 

business development at Vertex Ventures. 

Inbar Weiss (35), director of a civil organization 

TheNewSpirit founded in Jerusalem in 2003, remarked 

that smart cities start with social innovations. 

She says that many creative people bring ideas that 

change a city’s reality, which is conducive to high technology. 

She went on to say that such a high concentration 

of innovation in Jerusalem might be accounted for the 

fact that it is a totally insane city, where all sorts of 

conflicts happen almost on a daily basis. “The existence 

of different cultures forces you to co-exist in a different 

way, and this brings forth wonderful innovations. We 

are working to unite young people and urge them to 

go in for things which inspire them, so that they did 

not feel lonely in the city and wanted change. That is 

what we are creating platforms for innovation for,” 

said Weiss. 

She emphasized that TheNewSpirit takes part in 

the development of professional communities which 

seek to change Jerusalem’s reality. According to her, 

different communities promote the development of creative 

economy, local businesses, and innovation in 

Jerusalem. 

Speaking on the role of women and innovation, 

Weiss noted that in Israel, the private sector is not 

oriented towards the weaker sex. “Women are more industrious 

and efficient than men. They can multitask.” 

Zalzman-Dror emphasized that running a household 

is more complicated then setting a startup. 

“Motherhood is entrepreneurship,” she said. “The more 

women are involved in innovation, the braver they become, 

and the world will become more complete.” 

● INNOVATION IN EDUCATION 

Teachers in the system of education are conservative, 

and that is why entrepreneurship has to be 

“elicited” from them. This is the opinion of Lilac 

Wasserman from Mifras Educational Entrepreneurship 

Incubator which is working to improve the system 

of education via the development of initiatives, 

entrepreneurs, and the culture of entrepreneurship. 

She believes innovation and entrepreneurship underlie 

the development of the state system of education and 

take account of the challenges it faces. Meanwhile she 

emphasizes that changes or reforms in the system of 

education are impossible from the top downwards, they 

have to come from below and mean a change of thinking 

and perception. 

“From kindergarten to school to university, we 

have a perception of the world the way it is, while an 

entrepreneur perceives it differently: they believe it is 

up to them to change reality,” emphasizes Wasserman. 

She sees the way out in teachers becoming innovatorswho 

teachthe children to express themselvesemotionally, 

and most importantly, to dream. This is exactly 

what one very young teacher did at a primary/secondary 

school she was eager to change. And if there are lots of 

such teachers, we will have a new system of education, 

says Wasserman. She told that a program to introduce 

a project-teaching process has been implemented at Israeli 

schools. At first, this program was privately 

funded, and now state is involved as well. 

The program envisages a selection of 30 school 

principals who have a potential to implement innovations 

at schools. “We train them in a special sixmonth 

course, after which they take another six 

months to prepare a curriculum which we adapt to a 

certain school. We ask the principal what their 

dream is and what is the goal they would like to 

achieve in six months, which challenges and needs the 

community faces, and what is the community’s ambition. 

During the next six months we find an innovative 

solution to fulfill the dream. Upon completing 

the first year, the principal has a business plan. 

It is an agenda of measures necessary to make the 

school innovative. Then we work on the budget, and 

if the necessary funds are granted by the ministry of 

education or any other foundation, in two years you 

get a different school, which becomes an incubator 

for educators,” explains Wasserman. 

She adduced an example of implementing an innovative 

solution: decreasing the level of violence and 

at the same time raising performance at a very complicated 

Jewish-Arabic school in southern Israel. She 

said that 20 various solutions to stop violence had been 

analyzed and a dynamic pattern of education was chosen. 

Science suggests that the more students move 

around, the less they are prone to violence. Instead of 

45 minutes, a class for 40 students lasted 15 minutes, 

and the rest of the time they studied math, physics, and 

language in motion. Of course, the teachers had to 

change the system and structure of material presentation. 

But in the end violence at that school decreased, 

and student progress grew considerably. 

She went on to say that although leadership is easily 

accepted in Israeli culture, their incubator tries to 

teach educators and students the culture of entrepreneurship. 

However, it is not easy, and the reason 

is that changing a mindset is challenging. 

And so it is, indeed. Yet we might say that Israelis 

quite agree with Socrates’ reasoning who said: “The 

secret to change is to focus all your energy, not on 

fighting the old, but on building the new.” 

By Mykola SIRUK 

Late in the evening of November 20, the Japanese 

Embassy in Ukraine hosted a ceremony of 

opening the office of the Japan International 

Cooperation Agency (JICA), Ukraine’s key 

strategic partner in the field of large-scale 

infrastructure projects. 

Speaking at the ceremony, Shigeki Sumi, Ambassador 

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan 

to Kyiv, emphasized that both the Japanese and the 

Ukrainians had been working for and looking forward 

to this event. 

The Japanese ambassador announced that visa 

treatment of Ukrainians would be liberalized on 

January 1, 2018. “We in Japan will be welcoming as 

many tourists and businesspeople as possible.” He also 

said that a very interesting event – a ceremonial closure 

of the Year of Japan in Ukraine – would take 

place on Sofiivska Square on December 22. 

● UKRAINE AND JAPAN TO SHARE 

COMMON EXPERIENCE AND VALUES 

JICA Vice President Kazuhiko Koshikawa stressed 

in his speech that his visit to Ukraine was of paramount 

importance. 

“It is because I can see very many similarities between 

the two nations. After World War Two, in 1945, 

Japan lay devastated and people were in despair. 

However, thanks to aid, particularly from the World 

Bank, the nation managed to rebuild their country. In 

spite of difficult relations with the neighboring countries, 

Japan maintained peace and stability owing to 

successful diplomacy. 

“Although Ukraine gained independence in 1991, 

it also found itself in dire straits. Yet it continues to 

make every effort to develop and prosper. This is why 

I feel that Ukraine and Japan share common experience 

and values,” Mr. Koshikawa said. 

He said that the JICA is the world’s largest bilateral 

aid agency that contributes to the development of 

many countries by way of technical assistance, low-interest 

loans, and grants. In his words, the JICA has rendered 

assistance worth about 20 billion US dollars in 

liabilities and loans, 1.7-2 billion dollars in technical assistance, 

and 1 billion dollars in grants, in past few years. 

“Historic day” 

The JICA works in more than 150 countries and 

regions and has almost 100 offices all over the world. 

“In Ukraine, the JICA will carry out projects in three 

priority fields: economic stabilization support, living 

environment improvement, and integration and promotion 

management,” Mr. Koshikawa said. 

In his words, in response to the Ukrainian government’s 

request, the JICA has rendered financial aid 

to reconstruct Boryspil International Airport and modernize 

the Bortnychi aeration station. Besides, 530 

Japanese specialists and experts will be invited to 

Ukraine, and more than 750 Ukrainian officials will 

be sent to Japan for advanced studies. 

Mr. Koshikawa expressed a hope that the new 

JICA office in Kyiv would cooperate closely with the 

The Japan International Cooperation 

Agency opens its office in Kyiv 

Ukrainian government, international agencies, and 

private companies, contribute to increasing confidence 

between Ukraine and Japan, and support Ukraine’s efforts 

in socioeconomic development and improvement 

of the people’s wellbeing. 

● “SHAPING RELATIONS BY MEANS 

OF A REAL INSTRUMENT” 

Stepan Kubiv, First Vice Prime Minister and 

Minister for Economic Development and Trade of 

Ukraine, pointed out in his Ukrainian-language 

speech that he was pleased to meet the JICA management 

for a second time on this historic day which would 

intensify the relations between Ukraine and Japan in 

practical terms. He also expressed gratitude to the go- 

Photo courtesy of the author 

vernment of Japan, the ambassador and his team, and 

the JICA vice president for their concerted efforts to 

stabilize and preserve peace in Ukraine over the past 

three years. 

“The government of your country has been pursuing 

a most consistent policy of sanctions against Russia, 

the aggressor, in the past three years. The improved 

economic relations are based on the highquality 

work the two countries have done in the years 

of independence, especially in the past three years,” 

Mr. Kubiv emphasized. 

“Shaping relations by means of such a real instrument 

as JICA office will pave the way for new opportunities, 

innovation-, investment-, and modernization-related 

projects,” he continued. “We are negotiating 

long-term cheap and competitive loans 

which are very effective for the revitalization of 

Ukraine’s economy. These 10-to-30-year loans, which 

bear an up to 1.5-percent interest rate, is precisely 

what the Ukrainian economy needs today, taking into 

account the realities and hostilities in eastern 

Ukraine.” 

● “THE OPENING OF THE JICA OFFICE 

SHOWS OUR INVESTORS THAT IT IS 

PROFITABLE TO INVEST IN UKRAINE” 

Hennadii Zubko, Minister for Regional Development, 

Civil Construction, Housing and Public Utilities 

of Ukraine, began his speech in English but then 

switched to Ukrainian. He recalled, quite aptly, 

that Japan carried out a decentralization reform in 

1947, which gave a powerful impetus to the country’s 

regional development. In his view, the opening of the 

JICA office three months after the visit of this organization’s 

president is not only an economic, but 

also a political step. “Now we have Mr. Takaaki 

Kawano, the first chief of this office, and several important 

cutting-edge projects – from building bridges 

to processing solid wastes. From the angle of technology, 

the project of Bortnychi aeration station reconstruction 

is one of the best in the world,” 

Mr. Zubko emphasized. 

In his opinion, these projects and the opening 

of the JICA office show other investors that it is profitable 

to invest in Ukraine if they are prepared to work 

with our country today. 

Read more on our website

4 


TOPIC OF THE DAY 


By Ihor SIUNDIUKOV, 

Roman GRYVINSKYI, The Day 

Volodymyr VIATROVYCH, 

director of the National 

Institute of Remembrance, is 

a “highly demanded” public 

personality – especially now 

that national and historical memory is 

an object of deep societal concern. 

Therefore, the meeting of Mr. Viatrovych 

with Den’s journalists was a 

natural and long-awaited thing. We 

wanted our conversation with Mr. Viatrovych 

to be a dialog of equal and likeminded 

entities – our newspaper as a 

Ukraine-centered publication that pays 

close attention to history and the 

Ukrainian Institute of National 

Remembrance as a public administration 

body that pursues the governmental 

policy in this extremely sensitive 

field. We are comrades-in-arms, 

for we have a common goal – to consolidate 

the state-oriented historical 

world-view of the Ukrainian nation 

There are a lot of subjects to discuss 

with Mr. Viatrovych. It is the ongoing 

process of decommunization 

and the related problems, interrelation 

between decommunization and 

decolonization as well as between the 

foundations of national memory and 

the practical policy in this sphere, 

and, naturally, a complex of problems 

that have resulted in the aggravation 

of our relations with our Western 

neighbor Poland and the utmost 

politicization of history by our partners 

in Warsaw. Mr. Viatrovych’s 

conclusion is clear: there is no alternative 

to a dialog. 

● “A LARGE NUMBER OF OUR 

PEOPLE HAVE NOT READ 

THE HISTORY OF UKRAINE 

AT ALL” 

We consider the Institute of National 

Remembrance our ally and 

comrade-in-arms in a very important 

cause. Performing governmental 

functions to some extent, the newspaper 

Den has been trying to show in the 

past 20 years that we are not 25 years 

old, that Ukraine is a country with a 

thousand-year-long history. A wellknown 

book series is aimed precisely 

at this. Since our missions are symmetrical 

and intersecting, I’d like to 

ask you to tell us briefly what your institute, 

an element of the executive 

branch of power, is doing in this direction 

“First of all, I want to note that 

much of the national memory-related 

work in the 25 years of independence 

has been done through civic efforts because 

the Institute of National Remembrance 

had not existed as such before 

2007 and it did not in fact perform 

its functions in 2010-13 (the 

Yanukovych era). It is important that 

the newspaper Den was carrying out 

an educational mission in this field, 

for its publications spread information 

about Ukrainian history. The 

Holodomor is perhaps one of the most 

important subjects the newspaper has 

been repeatedly broaching. Undoubtedly, 

the books published as a supplement 

to your newspaper have also 

played an essential role 

“Since 2014, when I began to chair 

the Institute of National Remembrance, 

I have seen my mission as not 

to replace all the public initiatives but 

to complement and coordinate them. 

To do so, it was extremely important 

to grant the Institute of National Remembrance 

the status of a central executive 

power body so that it could 

serve as an operator of public initiatives. 

We are trying to support the 

public initiatives aimed at informing 

about the country’s difficult history 

in the early-to-mid 20th century. I 

mean conferences, exhibits, museum 

expositions and debates, presentation 

of films. We are working in this direction 

in close cooperation with the public. 

Our job is to cooperate with educational 

bodies (Ministry of Education) 

Volodymyr VIATROVYCH 

on national memory 

“It is a set of common visions of the past, 

and it turns a community into a nation” 

to improve the existing school history 

curriculum. There are some serious 

achievements in this field – we managed 

to seriously update the history 

curriculum and resolve a lot of problems 

the previous minister Tabachnyk 

artificially created in this 

sphere. The second field is adult education. 

Most of the Ukrainians are 

the people who did not go to Ukrainian 

schools and were born well before 

the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence. 

This is why a very large 

number of our people have not read 

the history of Ukraine at all. It was in 

fact not taught in the Soviet era, and 

our mission is to tell these adult people 

– by way of exhibits and discussions 

– about the moot points of 

Ukrainian history. Otherwise, this 

quite wide sphere of ignorance in 

Ukrainian society will turn into a 

field for manipulations.” 

There is such thing as historical 

memory – it is a field of historical research, 

and a thing known as national 

memory policy – it is, to some extent, 

a political notion. What do you 

think is the difference here and how 

do these things correlate? 

“Firstly, I want to speak of national, 

not historical, memory. National 

memory is a set of common visions 

of the past which turns a certain 

community into a nation. It does not 

mean that all representatives of this 

national community must share the 

same idea of history – there are, of 

course, discussions. But the basic 

things and visions must be common to 

everybody. For me, a nation is a minimum 

of the common visions of the 

past and a desire to live together in the 

future. As for the national memory 

policy, it means purposeful measures 

aimed at restoring what we call national 

memory. Why is the national 

memory policy necessary? Because the 

policy pursued in the communist era 

(Ukraine is a glaring example) was 

aimed at wiping out national memory, 

its bearers and sources, and rewriting 

narratives. To restore national memory, 

the state must make efforts – this 

is what the word ‘policy’ means here.” 

● “SUFFICIENTLY FAST 

REFORMS WERE ALWAYS 

SUCCESSFUL” 

There is rather a sore subject in 

the focus of public attention. It is de- 

Communization. Do you have an impression 

that decommunization is 

sometimes carried out with old Soviet-style 

methods, without being sufficiently 

explained to the public? Why 

must a certain monument or a plaque 

be put up or, on the contrary, be torn 

down as a rudiment of the past? 

“In my view, decommunization is 

a large-scale societal reform which 

should be regarded as one of the important 

preconditions for transforming 

Ukraine into a normal democratic 

state. For sufficiently fast reforms 

were always successful. It is always 

too painful for society to undergo 

lengthy reforms, especially in the 

matters that touch on mentality and 

societal imagination. This is why, 

drawing up the law, we set out rather 

short periods of time. It was to take 

six months to discuss the new names 

of cities and villages. These time limits 

were exceeded in some cases, but 

still we did it on time. I think decommunization 

was 99.9-percent successful 

just because it was done quickly, 

energetically, and was supported by 

the public 

“In Ukraine, and still more so 

abroad, particularly in Poland, the Institute 

of National Remembrance is 

being demonized as a powerful organization. 

But, in reality, we have 

39 employees based in Kyiv – we have 


no well-ramified structures in the regions. 

We are unable to pull off such a 

large-scale operation without community 

support. The latter enabled us to 

receive the necessary information and 

exert pressure on saboteurs in local 

self-government bodies. We did it 

thanks to this. We can say that decommunization 

was successful not only 

because 987 names of cities and villages 

and almost 52,000 names of 

streets were changed, but also because 

representatives of the public took part 

in discussing the new names. Decommunization 

was one of the largestscale 

public debates on history in 

Ukraine in the past 25 years. Local 

communities were free to decide on 

the new name. Obviously, there may 

have been some ill-considered decisions 

at the local level. But I cannot recall 

any scandalous incidents when the 

attempts of local government bodies 

to simulate decommunization were 

successful. There were attempts of 

this kind in what was then Dnipropetrovsk, 

when there was a proposal 

to leave the name intact, interpreting 

it as one in honor of St. Peter the 

Apostle. This attempt was not 

crowned with success, and the city 

was renamed. There was also an attempt 

to rename Komsomolsk as… 

Komsomolsk – this time in honor of 

young socially active Cossacks, not 

the Yong Communist League. It also 

failed 

“As for streets, even in Kyiv there 

are a few streets left that are still to be 

renamed, and we will pressure Kyiv 

councilors into doing so at last. We 

cannot treat seriously the recent complaints 

of some Kyiv Council members 

that they are fed up with renaming.” 

Are there any Lenin statues left 

in Ukraine? 

“I think there may be some left on 

the territory of factories and in some 

villages. We must do this work to the 

end. I am sure there are none of them 

left in the cities. But the capital is lagging 

behind – there are a few undismantled 

monuments left. One of the 

most notable ones is the monument to 

Shchors on Shevchenko Boulevard. It 

must be relocated. Although it is part 

of the national cultural heritage and 

must be preserved, it still should be 

taken out of the public view. Preparations 

are already being made to move 

it to the Exhibition Center.” 

There is a proposal to establish a 

museum of Soviet-era totalitarian architecture. 

Do you support this idea? 

“I do. This kind of museum is already 

being established on the territory 

of the former Exhibition of National 

Economic Achievements.” 

Like in Lithuania.. 

“In Lithuania, Hungary, and some 

other post-Communist countries.” 

● “SPEAKING OF 

DECOLONIZATION, 

THERE ARE PRACTICALLY 

NO EXAMPLES FROM 

THE HISTORY OF OTHER 

COUNTRIES” 

Mr. Viatrovych, you have often 

said that decommunization should be 

followed by decolonization. This is 

one more point, where our viewpoints 

coincide – we have always been writing 

about the need of decolonization. 

What is it supposed to be like? What 

is your vision? 

“Firstly, decommunization is also 

a question of public awareness. The 

point is that removing symbols in 

names or monuments is only the first 

step. We must continue our informational 

and educative work – explain 

why these symbols were removed, why 

that regime was criminal, what crimes 

it committed. As for decolonization, I 

will say it has already been launched 

to some extent in Ukraine. It is a 

byproduct of decommunization because 

the Ukrainians have at last felt 

themselves masters of their own land, 

they are proud of having the right to 

rename toponyms after the persons 

they choose, and have begun to rename 

even the toponyms that are not 

subject to the law on de-Communization. 

Let me give you an example in 

Kyiv: Suvorov and Kutuzov streets 

have nothing to do with the law on decommunization, 

but the Kyiv community 

supported renaming them. As a 

result, we have totally different 

streets named, particularly, after 

Ukrainian National Republic military 

servicemen and figures of the 1917-21 

national liberation movement. We can 

see similar processes, when decommunization 

triggers decolonization, all 

over Ukraine. This question is always 

raised during our debates. A few 

weeks ago it was proposed at a parliamentary 

committee meeting that a 

special law on decolonization is to be 

adopted. I am not prepared to say now 

if we will be drawing up a law like this. 

I can’t imagine it so far. Whenever we 

speak of decommunization, we can refer 

to certain examples and analogues 

in Eastern European countries, we 

have the example of denazification in 

postwar Germany, and, accordingly, 

these analogues allowed us to draw up 

this law quickly and adequately. As 

for decolonization, there are in fact no 

examples.” 

As for imperial symbols, they are 

present in the West too – for example, 

in Hungary and Poland 

“I am also taking a skeptical and 

negative attitude to sentimental 

things about the Austro-Hungarian 

Empire. I don’t understand the initiative, 

now being discussed in Chernivtsi, 

about putting up a monument to, 

so to speak, ‘grandmother Austria.’ I 

think these sentiments about alien 

empires are rather dangerous because 

they water down Ukrainian national 

identity. I equally reject monuments 

to Catherine II and Francis Joseph in


TOPIC OF THE DAY No.72 NOVEMBER 23, 2017 5 

Ukraine, even though Francis Joseph 

was allegedly more pro-Ukrainian 

than Catherine II.” 

● “IT IS NOW THAT THE 

FOUNDATION OF NORMAL 

PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN 

UKRAINE AND POLAND IS 

BEING LAID” 

We must also broach such a widely 

discussed topic as Ukrainian-Polish 

relations. The Khlibnia gallery at 

St. Sophia of Kyiv recently hosted the 

exhibit “The Great War and Poland: 

1915-18.” A historian from the Institute 

of Polish History spoke. He unequivocally 

characterized Pilsudski 

as a great Polish national hero, the 

father of Polish independence. He did 

it in a peremptory tone, leaving no 

space for doubt. Then he said a 

strange phrase that the Second Polish 

Republic was a modern-type democratic 

state with secure borders. I am 

sorry, but history vividly showed the 

“democracy” of that state and the 

“security” of its borders. The problem 

is that when it comes to relations between 

Ukraine and Poland, neither of 

the sides has the right to dictate to 

the other what national heroes it 

must venerate. We do not protest, for 

example, against the Poles considering 

Pilsudski this kind of hero, although 

he relentlessly suppressed the 

Ukrainian national movement in the 

1920s-1930s. It is a question of sovereignty 

in the national memory policy. 

On the other hand, we cannot forget 

Taras Shevchenko’s words: “And you 

boast because we once / Brought 

Poland to destruction... / It is true, 

yes, Poland fell, / But in her fall she 

crushed you.” In other words, 

Ukraine is inseparably tied up with 

Poland. What are we to do with due 

account of this problem? 

“Oddly enough, it seems to me 

that it is now, in a crisis situation, 

that the foundation of normal partnership 

between Ukraine and Poland 

is being laid. For true cooperation is 

only possible between equal partners. 

But if talking about ‘partnership’ is 

only a ruse to foist a viewpoint, these 

relations will always be short-lived 

and will not promote trust. Today, 

when Ukraine is defending its view of 

its own history in heated arguments, 

we are, at the same time, changing 

Poland’s overall attitude to Ukraine. 

I am sure that, despite the harshness 

of Polish politicians’ current statements, 

this situation will have a positive 

end. Our Polish neighbors will become 

aware of dealing with a state 

that honors and is prepared to defend 

its past and has a clear idea of sovereignty, 

national memory, and history. 

This kind of Poland can be a reliable 

partner of Ukraine. I am convinced 

that the ongoing period of excessive 

politicization of history and ‘historization’ 

of politics in Poland (when today’s 

politics is linked to interpretations 

of the past) will pass off.” 

● “A PROFESSIONAL 

APPROACH IS 

INSTRUMENTAL 

IN RESOLVING 

ANY PROBLEMS” 

To what extent adequate do you 

think the reaction of Ukraine to the 

conflict was and what tactics should 

we use further on? Should we make a 

counterstatement to each Polish 

statement or, on the contrary, calmly 

pursue our course, trying not to aggravate 

the conflict? Do you think it 

is normal that you are in fact the only 

statesman who is defending the position 

of Ukraine in this matter? 

“Taking into account that the debate 

is on the matters within my competence, 

I think it is absolutely normal 

that I’ve emerged as the main 

spokesman. If it were about energy or 

security, I would obviously have never 

intervened. A professional approach 

is instrumental in resolving any problems. 

It is very surprising that the 

main spokesman on the Polish side is 

the foreign minister who is speaking 

about history more than about the 

present day and resembles a history 

teacher rather than a minister of foreign 

affairs. It is surprising that 

even the president of the neighboring 

state deems it necessary to comment 

on these matters 

“The problem is that, unfortunately, 

our country has been often 

showing our Western and Eastern 

neighbors in the past 20 years that interpretation 

of history is not an important 

question and can be a pawn in 

broader political games. Regrettably, 

the Ukrainians themselves taught 

their neighbors not to reckon with 

our views of history. Today, somewhat 

unexpectedly for themselves, 

they are forced to reckon with the 

Ukrainian voice. I think that if we always 

stand our ground, we will finally 

change the neighboring countries’ 

views on Ukraine in general and 

Ukrainian history in particular. I 

hope we will reach after all a situation 

when we will ‘agree to disagree’ 

on certain historical events and figures 

and will respect differences in 

our views. You gave a very good example 

of Jozef Pilsudski who is a national 

hero for the Poles and the 

founding father of Poland, but, at 

the same time, he is not the one the 

Ukrainians can venerate as a hero.” 

We could recently watch alarming 

signals during the independence 

march in Warsaw, where there was 

the following slogan among the other: 

“Let us not forget Lwow and Wilno.” 

Some observers interpret such calls 

as marginal, but the Polish opposition 

has urged the interior minister to 

resign. There were almost 50,000 participants 

in the march. Do you think 

it is serious? 

“Unfortunately, it is serious. We 

can see that claims to Lviv, Vilnius, 

and the so-called Kresy [borderlands. 

– Ed.] occur not only in the discourse 

of marginal groups, but also in 

the statements of more respectable political 

forces that are often linked to 

major Polish politicians. I think the 

public demonstration of these slogans, 

all the more so on Poland’s Independence 

Day, became possible, to a considerable 

extent, due to excessive 

politicization of history by Polish 

politicians who are striving to deny 

the Ukrainians the right to have their 

own visions of history.” 

● “UKRAINE IS NOT PREPARED 

TODAY TO ALLOW 

ANYBODY TO IMPOSE 

THEIR VISION OF THE PAST 

ON IT” 

Do you think the reason is that 

they consider us weak? 

“I think the reason is that 

Ukraine has looked weak in the past 

20 years and the Ukrainians allowed 

others to impose their vision of history 

on them. At the same time, it 

greatly surprises me that the Polish 

leadership is so much cut off from reality 

– they obviously lack experts 

who could explain to them that today’s 

Ukraine, the post-Maidan 

Ukraine, radically differs from the 

Ukraine of yesterday. Ukraine is not 

prepared today to allow anybody to 

impose their visions of the past on it – 

particularly, because we have a very 

fresh experience of such attempts on 

the part of Russia.” 

There is an opinion that weakness 

of the Ukrainian position in this and 

other conflicts with Poland is caused 

by, among other things, the fact that 

Polish researchers have managed to 

gather a much larger amount of materials 

in the past few decades. Do 

you, the head of a state-run institution, 

feel adequate support from the 

academic community? Are Ukrainian 

historians putting up a united front 

in this conflict? 

“Indeed, Ukrainian historiography 

is weaker today than that of 

Poland – at least because Polish historiography 

has never been destroyed, 

even under communism. When history 

was being rewritten for the sake of 

ideology, emphasis was put on, above 

all, the 20th century, while the older 

history of Poland was in fact left intact. 

After the fall of communism, 

historiography in Poland had far better 

initial opportunities than in 

Ukraine. Let me remind you that some 

major history schools were liquidated 

in Ukraine and many bearers of historical 

knowledge were destroyed 

physically. Many archives were closed 

or eliminated, as was a great deal of 

literature. In the 1990s, we had to 

start almost from scratch. But we also 

have some advantages. In spite of 

everything, history is not excessively 

politicized in Ukraine, as it is in 

Poland. Heated professional debates 

on various issues, including World 

War Two, are possible in Ukraine, 

whereas in Poland there is less and 

less place for discussions as well as an 

ever-increasing governmental diktat 

about certain historical issues.” 

● “POSITIONING ONESELF AS 

A VICTIM OF HISTORY HAS 

BEEN A CHARACTERISTIC 

FEATURE OF POLISH 

MENTALITY SINCE ANCIENT 

TIMES” 

In spite of this, do you think there 

still are the successors of Jerzy 

Giedroyc and Jacek Kuron in Poland? 

“Undoubtedly, such people do exist, 

but, unfortunately, they usually 

represent civil society and intellectual 

circles and have rather a limited impact 

on the sociopolitical situation in 

the country. The vast majority of 

those in power are people of rightwing 

populist views who closely follow 

the moods of the ‘street political beau 

monde’ which is guided by emotions 

rather than reason.” 

Tellingly, the ruling party’s rating 

is not falling 

“It is not falling, it is even growing. 

It’s quite unexpected because an 

election is usually followed by a year of 

some disappointment. Obviously, Polish 

politicians are playing very skillfully 

on societal moods, especially 

when it comes to history. Immersion 

into history is much more typical of 

Polish, rather than Ukrainian, society. 

The Ukrainians show much less interest 

in history. On the one hand, it is 

bad because, as a result, we know it 

less. On the other hand, this may be 

somewhat positive, taking into account 

that historical questions are now 

an integral part of politics in today’s 

Poland. Polish politicians managed to 

tempt society with simple answers to 

complicated historical questions. 

There was a demand in Polish society 

for feeling as a victim of history to 

whom everything is allowed. Positioning 

oneself as a victim of history has 

been a characteristic feature of Polish 

mentality since ancient times.” 

Do you share the opinion that, in 

spite of the aforesaid, there is no alternative 

to a dialog and mutual understanding 

based on mutual respect? 

“There is no alternative indeed to 

a dialog and cooperation, for a refusal 

to do so can only prompt the aggressive 

eastern neighbor to swallow up 

both countries. It is sad that we are 

having problems today with the Polish 

force that ran for power under the slogan 

of a threat from Russia. But now 

that this threat is real, they pretend 

not to notice it and are simulating a 

threat on the part of Ukraine. But I 

am convinced that it is a temporary 

thing. Poland is a country with an ancient 

culture and long-established 

democratic traditions, and it will 

manage to ‘outgrow’ this leadership 

and cultivate the forces that will be 

ready to hold out their hand to 

Ukrainians.” 

There will be no Jamaica coalition 

Expert: “This means a period of uncertainty and probably 

weakening of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s position” 

By Natalia PUSHKARUK, The Day 

Mykola SIRUK, 

Late on November 19, leader of 

the Free Democratic Party 

(FDP) Christian Lindner 

announced that his political 

force was quitting the talks on 

forming a new ruling coalition that 

lasted for almost a month. It had 

been expected that the so-called 

Jamaica coalition would include the 

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 

and the Christian Social Union 

(CSU), as well as the Green Party 

and the FDP. 

The party’s leadership explained 

on Twitter that the political force “is 

unable to assume responsibility for 

the spirit of the documents of the 

coalition talks,” that they had been 

forced to “abandon their basic principles,” 

so they decided not to fail 

their voters by supporting the political 

course they do not believe in, reports 

the DW. “It is better not to 

govern than to govern wrongly,” 

said Lindner. 

Meanwhile, German Chancellor 

and head of the CDU party Angela 

Merkel expressed regret that the negotiators 

“could not come to a mutual 

agreement,” and in particular on 

the issue of migration. The head of 

the CSU party Horst Seehofer said 

that the agreement “had been in 

reach,” and the head of the Green 

Party Cem Ozdemir said that the 

coalition had been possible “in the 

presence of goodwill.” 

Politico believes that a new election 

in the country is highly likely. 

The BBC reports that the collapse of 

the negotiations left “Angela Merkel 

facing her biggest challenge in 

12 years as chancellor.” “Ms. Merkel 

must now fight for political survival. 

The leader who for so many 

people has represented stability now 

is fast becoming a symbol of crisis in 

the heart of Europe,” writes BBC 

News’ correspondent in Berlin Jenny 

Hill. 

REUTERS photo 

● “UKRAINE’S FORMULA 

THAT ‘GERMANY IS 

MERKEL’ IS LOSING QUITE 

A BIT OF ITS RELEVANCE” 

Aliona HETMANCHUK, director 

of the New Europe Center: 

“The collapse of the coalition 

talks means that the risk of a new 

election for the Bundestag is very 

high. There is still an option to 

create a minority government, but 

Merkel has strongly opposed the creation 

of such a government. It remains 

to be hoped that under the influence 

of the factor of a new election, 

her stance will be somewhat 

modified in this regard. 

“The grand coalition with the 

Social Democrats is a highly uncertain 

prospect as well: they are unanimously 

reaffirming their unwillingness 

to join the coalition, and 

some representatives of the Social 

Democratic Party have already declared 

their readiness to run in a new 

election. 

“There is nothing good for 

Ukraine in these developments in 

Germany. Another election is unlikely 

to end with an outcome which 

would be any better for our partnership 

with Germany. 

“In general, any still available 

scenario means a period of uncertainty 

and probably weakening of 

Chancellor Merkel’s position. Even 

during the coalition talks, Merkel 

had to act as a moderator instead of 

defending the position of her political 

force. In addition, Merkel’s position 

in her own party is unstable. 

There is even concern that Merkel 

may fail to get re-elected as the 

head of the party. This once again 

emphasizes the need for Ukraine 

to intensify communication with 

various political actors in Germany. 

Ukraine’s formula that ‘Germany is 

Merkel’ is losing quite a bit of its 

relevance.”

6 


SOCIE T Y 


By Maria PROKOPENKO, photos 

by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day 

On the phone, Bobby Horton 

sings about how “away from 

Mississippi’s vale / With 

my ol’ hat there for a sail / I 

crossed upon a cotton bale / 

To Rose of Alabama.” Oleksandr 

Ostapenko, who is also away from the 

Mississippi, but wears a stylish top hat, 

is dancing to this music. The day is 

breaking. Instead of roosters, we have 

crows cawing, it is raining, but the 

mood is surprisingly festive. 

● THE MISSION IS TO TRACK 

THE HERO 

My search for Ostapenko was like 

something out of a detective story. It 

turned out to be a daunting task, 

though he is quite famous. The first 

story about Ostapenko was aired by the 

UT-1 TV channel back in 1994, when 

he worked as a minibus driver. He also 

became a character of the book by Halyna 

Iv Take Me Back to Japan and appeared 

in movies and commercials. 

At first, me and my photographer 

used a picture from Facebook to determine 

where the famous janitor 

works, and it turned out to be Lesi 

Ukrainky Boulevard. One morning, 

when, as it seemed to us, janitors were 

still at work, we came there. However, 

Ostapenko had already left, as he 

comes to work really early. Still, every 

local knows him, so we had no problem 

getting his home address. We brazenly 

called the intercom, but nobody answered. 

Then we found out what housing 

cooperative he worked for, and 

looked for his contacts. We monitored 

reports about the janitor on the Internet, 

wrote to many people, and finally 

got Ostapenko’s phone number. He 

answered immediately and invited us 

to visit him at 6:30 a.m. We arrived. 

We came to keep watch at the entrance 

when it was still dark, waiting 

for the hero. He came with a bouquet 

of roses, jokes, poems and, of course, 

in a tailcoat. 

● “I TOOK A JOB AS JANITOR 

BECAUSE I WAS TIRED 

OF DISORDER” 

Having presented flowers to us, 

Ostapenko went to fetch a broom to finish 

cleaning fallen leaves. The broom 

is also special, twice as big as usual. 

“They say that it is for show. It is not, 

I need it because with it, it is twice as 

quick to clean,” the man asserted. “Also, 

such a broom is needed in order not 

to splash mud on my trousers. Besides, 

it is more fun since it gives more muscle 

load. I do a work-out through labor 

therapy, and then do pull-ups. As they 

say, the broom has transformed me into 

man [a pun on Friedrich Engels’s 

thesis that labor had transformed ape 

into man. – Ed.].” 

Ostapenko worked for 12 years as a 

minibus driver previously. People 

waited specifically for his bus 

No. 45 + 22 to do the trip with a driver 

in a butterfly tie, who joked and treated 

them to candies. This unusual image 

was not just for entertainment. “I put 

on a white tailcoat and walked around 

the garage at night in that attire, because 

there was no lighting there. People 

called me ‘the doctor,’ but I did not 

care, let it be so,” the man recalled. 

Before driving a minibus, he held 

jobs as a firefighter, a frogman, a 

turner, and an actor. When asked 

what profession was his favorite, 

Ostapenko replied: “To serve people! 

The main thing is to do people good.” 

The man became a janitor because he 

was tired of injustice and bureaucratism. 

“It happened once that five apartments 

were robbed, and two locks broken in this 

section. The police only collected evidence,” 

Ostapenko told us. “I was going 

to fetch water once and saw two people 

exiting through a first storey window. 

One ran with a backpack, I gave chase to 

another and raised hue and cry. We 

caught them. It occurred at 5:30 p.m. on 

December 13. The police arrived in 

40 minutes. The apartment owner gave 

“What is my favorite profession? 

To serve people!” 

The Day spent a morning with the most famous 

janitor of Ukraine Oleksandr Ostapenko 

“GET UP AT DAWN AND TIDY UP YOUR PLANET.” AT HALF PAST SIX OLEKSANDR OSTAPENKO CLEANS THE YARD OF THE 

HOUSE HE LIVES IN, POURS COLD WATER OVER HIMSELF, AND IMMEDIATELY GOES TO ANOTHER PLACE TO WORK 

me 200 hryvnias as remuneration, everything 

stolen was delivered back to the 

apartment, but she had to compile the 

list of stolen property herself at the police 

station. Also, bureaucratism. That 

is why I became a janitor, as I was tired 

of disorder.” 

● THE WARDROBE 

When the courtyard was cleaned up, 

Ostapenko suggested we look at his “arsenal” 

of butterfly ties. He took out a box 

containing about two dozen such accessories, 

including butterfly ties made of 

polyester, brocade, and lurex. “You will 

not find a fabric with lurex in Ukraine. 

They sent me it in a bag,” the janitor explained. 

He sews butterfly ties himself. 

However, he had to order his first 

tailcoat, and then received a few more 

as gifts. Recently, Ostapenko became 

the hero of the show Surprise, Surprise! 

on the STB TV channel, and was presented 

with a yellow tailcoat there. Also, 

the janitor owns blue, green, and 

red jackets, trousers with stripes of different 

colors, and a cowboy suit. 

Ostapenko said he owned about 40 suits 

all told. The man approaches his attire 

seriously, searches for special buttons 

for the tailcoats, while the waistcoat 

which he wore during our conversation 

is a copy of the French model. 

Ostapenko cares for his clothes 

collection himself. “I wash shirt cuffs 

and collar first with soap and then 

with the Avtomaster paste. Then I put 

them in water mixed with detergent 

so that they soak there for about two 

hours. Then, it is necessary to rinse 

them well in water and hang them out 

to dry. It gets drained, dries, and then 

I do ironing. I have two ironing boards 

and two irons, a regular and a vertical 

one,” he described his care of clothes. 

● “THIS IS NOT FOR SHOW. 

I JUST WORK TO MAKE 

KYIV BEAUTIFUL” 

Having finished cleaning the 

yard, Ostapenko replaced his tailcoat 

with a white robe and went to the next 

courtyard with a large plastic barrel 

for an outdoor shower. The man has 

been doing cold conditioning for many 

years, as evidenced by a video of him 

bathing in the Dnipro in winter. But 

for the moment, he limited it to an 

artesian well. He fetched water from 

there and immediately poured it on 

himself. 

“It is 5 degrees Celsius now, and it 

is warm! When I served in the Air 

Force in Uzyn, we had to work when it 

was 40 degrees below zero. And still, 

one got used to it,” Ostapenko shared 

with us. “The main thing is to show a 

good example. For instance, I neither 

drink nor smoke. I get cold showers 

and swing my broom.” 

We went with the janitor to the 

well and back, he was greeted by other 

janitors and residents of adjacent 

buildings. He knows everyone here, 

including cats and dogs. 

“Ostapenko is our neighbor. We 

have known him for a very, very long 

time. He is a unique person! A very 

smart man! He knows a thing about 

working. When he worked as a driver, 

people waited specifically for his 

minibus, because his work makes people 

rejoice. And he performs his work 

very well. Meanwhile, housing cooperatives 

do nothing,” we heard from 

a local resident as she was passing by 

with a coffee in hand. 

Doctor Natalia was hurrying to 

work, but still stopped to tell us a few 

words about Ostapenko: “I have 

known him for a long time. He is a 

hard-working man. Tidy and polite. 

Very positive. I am already used to his 

image. Everyone has their own hobby. 

The main thing is what kind of man he 

is, and not what his image is.” 

However, not everyone is so positive 

about him. Sometimes Ostapenko 

is accused of being a showman. “I do 

not look like a trickster. It is just that 

I stick to thinking positively. Artists 

put on acts, do it for money, but I do 

it to benefit people,” the janitor reflected. 

“This is not for show. I just 

make Kyiv beautiful.” 

● “WE SHOULD WORK ON 

ATTRACTING TOURISTS 

DAILY” 

Ostapenko put a garland of butterfly 

ties on the street once, which 

stretched from one intersection to another. 

It got removed. “I think they 

took it away for dry-cleaning,” the 

janitor smiles. “We need to decorate 

the streets. See, Prague has 6 million 

tourists arriving every year, and 

Tokyo has 24 million. We must attract 

tourists somehow, show them something 

every day. At my workplace, I 

clean and attract attention with my 

appearance. Right now, I am cleaning 

while wearing a tailcoat. Maybe I will 

endure like that until the winter sets 

in – 5 or 10 degrees below zero can 

still be tolerated.” 

Journalists like Ostapenko and 

regularly come to him on pilgrimages 

of sorts. We, too, talked to him 

together with our TV colleagues. The 

man is used to such attention, the 

media do not distract him from important 

everyday matters. After all, 

he is bringing up three grandchildren 

as well. “It is hard,” the janitor 

admitted. “The main thing in educating 

children is the acquisition of 

knowledge, physical and psychological 

preparation. Nobody likes competition. 

I do not have any competitors, 

and one needs to enter such a business 

where there is no competition. 

My grandchildren will have another 

profession, they will not be janitors. 

We will choose something.” 

Seeing that we were already cold, 

Oleksandr advised us to do sports. 

“You do not have dumbbells, you 

say? Then get them. Do pull-ups. 

Run and swim. Make 200 sit-ups! 

People need to train, to get blood 

flowing,” the man smiled and took 

off the top hat to wave us farewell. 

“And now I have to leave for another 

area to make some money. They are 

waiting for me.”


SOCIE T Y No.72 NOVEMBER 23, 2017 7 

LOVE AS SPECIAL NEED 

By Liubov YAKYMCHUK 

He turned up holding a copy of Vesti whose 

front page carried his photo and a 

sensational headline, “Poroshenko’s Friend 

High and Dry.” “What a disgusting 

manipulation,” says Roman Kysliak. “Why 

would anyone want to do something like that? Am I 

Poroshenko’s friend? Or am I a tramp? You aren’t 

going to do anything of this kind, will you? I am being 

used for scoops. Why?” I promise to Kysliak that I will 

do my best to render his story without manipulating 

the facts, and will expound what worries him. 

Many have heard of Roman Kysliak. When the 

war broke out, he evacuated 75 persons from the 

parts of Donetsk where hostilities were raging. Soon 

he, too, was forced to leave. But he got a name in the 

media not due to the people he had rescued. What 

made him famous was a nasty incident in Lviv, 

where a waiter turned him away because he did not 

realize that this particular visitor had cerebral palsy. 

He just thought the guest looked “suspicious.” 

To draw public attention to people with special 

needs, First Lady Maryna Poroshenko invited Kysliak 

for a cup of coffee in Kyiv, which triggered a 

flashmob #coffeewithfriend. When news spread 

that Kysliak is now in Kyiv instead of Lviv, and that 

he no longer has a car which used to be his means to 

earn a living, many fumed at the first lady for abandoning 

Kysliak. “I do not want to criticize Maryna, 

she has nothing to do with it,” says Kysliak. “She only 

invited me over for coffee.” He has been looking 

for a job since last summer, and so far to no avail. 

“I would like to bring the national idea into focus. 

I want Ukraine to be a country where no one 

starves or is homeless, everyone must have food and 

home. This is my special feature,” shares Kysliak. 

“Personally I cannot get any help. The current labor 

code will not allow to employ me, it has to be revised. 

Not only me, we all suffer.” He tears off the tip of a 

sugar stick and spills the sugar on the table. I help 

him put some sugar into his tea. “It took me a long 

while to find my calling. I have two university diplomas. 

I looked at myself soberly and gauged my 

chances. In particular, I was aware I would never be 

able to become a journalist or psychologist although 

this is what I studied to be. And I found my calling as 

a driver. Back in Donetsk, I took a loan from a bank 

to buy a car, and step by step I paid it back. 

“When the war began, I went to the Euromaidan in 

Donetsk. Later Euromaidan was dubbed Prayer Maidan. 

It remained actually the same Euromaidan but the 

new name was supposed to keep us out of trouble. Gradually, 

when war made things nastier, it turned into a 

volunteer movement. Most of us chose to do something 

concrete. Serhii was the mastermind behind the Prayer 

Maidan.” Kysliak is referring to a Protestant pastor 

who, in February 2014 together with the Council of 

Churches, organized a street marathon Prayer for 

Ukraine. They set up a tent on Constitution Square and 

held services there. “So, Serhii asked me what I could 

do. And I said I could drive a car, so he suggested I evacuate 

people, and I got down to it. 


Roman KYSLIAK: 

“I would rather everyone 

in Ukraine had home 

and food. This is my 

special feature” 

“It was 2014, and the bridges were already torn 

down. We could use side roads running across fields. 

This was quite a challenge. I evacuated 75 persons. 

After I had left, my father kept getting people out 

for another year. I was forced to leave, because I had 

a gun pointed at my head in July. It was in 

Shakhtarsk. Some Russian aimed the gun at me. I 

guess he was Russian because he spoke with an accent 

you never hear in Ukraine. 

“I came to Shakhtarsk to pick up an old man who 

needed to be evacuated to a safer place. I drove 

across fields and saw gas stations burn along the 

road. It was very hot and the smoke was stifling. 

Shakhtarsk looked like a site from a Fellini movie. 

Trenches, soldiers running, war, the steppe in black 

and white. I drove to the local hospital. They asked 

me in Russian: ‘What are you doing here? Who are 

you?’ ‘I came to pick an old gentleman.’ ‘Which old 

gentlemen?’ They searched me and found a leaflet 

with the text of Our Father. They said, ‘You are a 

saboteur! Are you afraid?’ And then they put a pistol 

against the side of my head. To which I said as 

goofy as I could: ‘I don’t know, God took my fear 

away!’ I was not afraid, I was terrified. The guy 

shoots upwards into the sky and asks, ‘What about 

this?’ Then I realized that if I said something wrong, 

he would shoot me. Then he commanded the soldiers, 

‘Throw him into the car.’ They pushed me onto the 

back seat and sat in front. Windows down, guns poking 

out of the windows, and off we went. We were 

followed by a bus carrying old people to Donetsk. 

These armed guys were a sort of convoy, and I was 

sitting at the back. I heard them talking: ‘Don’t you 

find we made a better mess of Shakhtarsk than of 

Chechnya?’ ‘See that hill? I dumped corpses there. 

Man, does it stink!’ They kept showing off. These 

guys were my age. They asked me: ‘What does that 

sign say?’ ‘Thank you for keeping the roadside 

clean,’ translated I. Our people from Luhansk or 

Donetsk understand Ukrainian, but those two were 

not local, they were from Russia. They even said 

pointing at our spoil tips: ‘Look what funny hills 

they have here.’ 

“As they held me at gunpoint, they took all of my 

papers, driver’s license, cell phone and said, ‘Take 

him captive.’ On the way, I tried to persuade them 

that their behavior did not agree with military code 

of conduct, and that I was no saboteur. We arrived 

in Donetsk, they gave me my belongings back and 

told me to get out of there. They gave me my money, 

papers, and car back. I had had two cell phones. One, 

a better model, but no balance, I got back. The other 

was worse but still a certain amount on the account, 

and that one they took. 

“The next day some other guys from the so-called 

DNR came and looked for me at our Prayer Maidan. 

By that time I had already left and was on my way to 

Lviv. 

“The railroad station in Donetsk was already 

closed down, so I had to travel via Mariupol, where I 

was invited by Olena Kulyhina. She told my story at a 

convent in Lviv, and that convent, Miles Jesu, accepted 

me. They are Greek Catholic. I had no idea 

which way to turn, and I was scared. When I arrived, 

they put me up in a nice room in a detached house in 

the monastery courtyard. They gave me a washing 

machine. It was a very comfortable place to live. Even 

my parents came to visit me, and the monks bought a 

bunk bed so they could stay over in my room. 

“The convent was a temporary shelter, yet I 

stayed there for three years. Once I rode with a customer 

in my taxi, and he told about himself. He was 

in the development business and built residential villages 

around Kyiv. He said, ‘Roman, do you want me 

to build a house for you? Sell your car, persuade 

your parents to move here, and come over. The village 

is called Tarasivka.’ At that time there were 

hostilities and shooting at the place where my parents 

lived, and I thought that was a way to rescue 

them. And I agreed, although I had a job in Lviv. 

First as a taxi driver, and then as an employee for 

Global Development. 

“Now I have a shell home in Tarasivka. We are 

waiting to sell the house in Makiivka, but no one will 

buy. I want to be with my Mom and Dad. I am hysterical: 

they are getting older. In these three years, 

I have learned to take care of myself. I have adapted, 

and now I am taking care of my parents. I want a 

miracle. My friend used to live in Pervomaisk near 

Luhansk, and he would not move out. Yet when a human 

head rolled into his backyard, he left within 

24 hours. But to move my parents, we have to sell 

their house. 

“I came to Kyiv in the summer intending to 

adapt before it gets cold and snowy. I dreamed of 

finding a job as a driver, but I cannot. Now I have a 

temporary place to live. When I looked for a room, I 

turned to monasteries but they took me for a junky 

everywhere. People want no problems. They are very 

scared and they do not trust others. Work or housing 

is not a problem in itself. They bring you no happiness. 

Love and trust do. There cannot be a relationship 

without trust. 

“I come home at nine every evening. I take an underpass 

and see a family that sleeps outside. Where 

is our love? It scares me. Where are our controlling 

authorities? Why do they only control those who 

have debts for public utility services? They do make 

checks on me, a displaced person, to see if I have not 

left for Donetsk. If they do not find me in, they 

freeze my pension. Why don’t they check what I eat, 

how I live, where I shower, where I wash my clothes? 

Why is it no one’s concern? 

“ 

In Ukraine, there is shortage of 

love. When we have love, we 

will have no problems. Only 

God can make it happen. 

“I cannot cook, I have problem slicing vegetables, 

so normally I need to eat at a diner. Meals alone 

cost me three thousand a month. I am not picky, I 

just want to survive. People mistake me for a drug 

addict. I am not sick, I am just different. People with 

disabilities need a lot more than others. Their living 

costs are higher. 

“I had lived comfortably with Mom and Dad for 

35 years, they had taken care of me. And then the 

war broke out and I was forced to leave… No one defended 

Luhansk or Donetsk, but we get words like 

separatist hurled at us.” 

This meeting leaves me somewhat puzzled, 

even though I heard nothing unexpected. The story 

of an IDP with special needs. There must be 

hundreds like him out there. Frankly, not all of 

them are that courageous, not all of them can 

think that clearly. After all, like all human beings. 

And if you were to ask me what kind of special 

needs these people have, my answer would be 

“love and trust.”

8 


TIMEO U T 


By Maria CHADIUK, The Day 

had done long ago 

what I only wait for some 

Ukrainian writer to do. I 

mean someone daring to 

“Conrad 

tell the whole world 

something about the whole world 

without limiting oneself in any way 

because of the fact that one is Ukrainian, 

but without rejecting the fact that one’s 

worldview has a Ukrainian focus either. 

Conrad represents expansion in the best 

sense of that word, when a tree’s roots 

and crown are completely different, but 

inseparable from each other,” noted 

Taras Prokhasko, the first winner of the 

Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary 

Prize. 

One can hope that the Ukrainian 

writer will not have to wait for a long 

time. After all, the Polish Institute 

regularly honors Ukrainian prose writers 

who, besides their consistency in 

pursuing their creative careers and innovating 

with the form, are also special 

due to their efforts to go beyond 

stereotypes and send a universal message. 

This year’s award ceremony was a 

major anniversary event, for although 

only the sixth winner was chosen, the 

decade has passed since the foundation 

of the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary 

Prize (it is awarded once every two 

years). Another feature of the 2017 

Award is it coinciding with the 160th anniversary 

of Conrad’s birth. 

● “I AM GLAD TO SEE US 

GROWING TOGETHER” 

The award ceremony was opened by 

Jan Pieklo, Ambassador Extraordinary 

and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of 

Poland to Ukraine. He congratulated the 

guests and nominees, wishing: “Enjoy 

your writing!” 

The nominees of this year’s prize 

were Liubko Deresh, Kateryna Kalytko, 

and Iryna Tsilyk. Since the rules of the 

contest for the prize say that nominees 

should be proposed by cultural institutions, 

publishers or private individuals, 

they were the first to speak. 

In particular, the candidacy of 

Deresh was proposed by Anetta Antonenko. 

It was her publishing house that 

released the novels of the writer, both the 

first and the tenth ones. She shared her 

thoughts on creative ups and downs of 

the author, noting: “The prose of Deresh 

has changed a lot during these 15 years. 

He targeted young people, adolescents 

By Vadym LUBCHAK, The Day 

While on an assignment 

in eastern Ukraine, 

Den/The Day’s reporters 

presented a copy 

of The Crown, or Heritage 

of the Rus’ Kingdom, which is 

the latest book publication of our 

newspaper, to the Ambassador 

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary 

of the United Kingdom to Ukraine, 

Judith Gough. Right now the 

Ambassador is on a working visit to 

Kramatorsk, which is part of her 

ongoing trip to Donetsk oblast. “I 

know books from Den’s Library 

series and am very grateful for this 

new one! It is important that Den 

writes about history, and the theme 

of the monarchy is really important 

and in need of new reflection in 

once, and today it is serious adult prose.” 

This is not surprising, because Deresh 

wrote his first novel The Cult at 18. In 

turn, the writer thanked all those present 

and wished success to other nominees, 

stressing: “I am glad to see us growing 

together.” 

● “TO KEEP AN EYE 

ON BERDYCHIV” 

As was mentioned at the ceremony, 

Kalytko brings to the literature three 

things –mistake (an understanding 

that we are often mistaken), reality, 

and solidarity. Meanwhile, the author 

admitted herself that Conrad was a 

special person for her: “When I began 

to write prose, I wanted to be like Conrad 

when I grow up. After all, opening 

the borders, talking about things that 

are supposedly distant but are in fact 

those that lead us forward, it all seems 

to me to be among the main tasks of literature.” 

The candidacy of the third nominee 

Tsilyk was proposed by Oksana 

Zabuzhko, who called her the queen of 

the most difficult genre, meaning short 

stories. She drew attention to Tsilyk’s 

Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day 

KATERYNA KALYTKO BECAME THE SIXTH WINNER OF THE JOSEPH CONRAD KORZENIOWSKI LITERARY PRIZE 

“One literature for all” 

The winner of the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski 

Literary Prize has been announced 

Judith Gough has received... The Crown 

Photo by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day 

ability to write, like Valerian Pidmohylnyi 

put it, “about people,” stressed 

her talent for showing the Other without 

prejudice. That is why, in her opinion, 

there are so many children among 

characters of the nominee’s works, as 

it is precisely they who have this clear, 

open outlook. And it is these features 

that are now very much needed for the 

Ukrainian-Polish dialog. 

Zabuzhko also mentioned her family 

sentiment for Conrad (her maternal 

ancestors had some links with Berdychiv, 

where the Polish author was 

born). The writer stressed that Berdy- 

Den’s latest book has 

been added to the library 

of the Ambassador 

Extraordinary and 

Plenipotentiary 

of the United Kingdom 

to Ukraine 

Ukraine,” Gough emphasized. She 

remarked that she was going on a 

six-hour road trip, so she would 

definitely read The Crown. The 

Ambassador paid special attention to 

the book’s section “What Attracts 

Ukrainians in Britain,” which dealt 

with the need to maintain traditions, 

customs, and laws. “This is an 

urgent topic for reflection,” the 

diplomat said. Gough has long been 

a member of the symbolic readers’ 

club of Den’s books, since she keeps 

several of our publications, in 

particular English-language ones, in 

her library. 

chiv is a city that gave classical writers 

to three literatures: Joseph Conrad, 

Vasily Grossman, who is underestimated 

in the Russian literature, and 

Vsevolod Nestaiko. Thus, she called on 

the Polish Institute to keep an eye on 

Berdychiv, to which Pieklo replied: 

“We do.” 

Tsilyk thanked her supporters 

for putting their trust in her and 

added: “Perhaps I will be accused of 

unjustified optimism once again, but 

I am terribly pleased to observe what 

is happening now with Ukrainian literature. 

I have a feeling that there is 

a lot of fresh air, new energy in it. 

We see how new publishing houses, 

names, authors, books, which we can 

be proud of, are rapidly making an 

impact.” 

Bohdan Zadura, who is a member 

of the jury of the prize, Polish writer 

and literary critic, agreed with this 

opinion. It was his speech that became 

the culmination of the evening. 

The writer skillfully kept the intrigue 

alive, from time to time defusing 

the audience’s tense wait with 

jokes. In particular, he commented 

on the proposal to represent the jury 

of the prize as follows: “I once said 

that despite the fact that I am the 

oldest of them [he is 72 years old. – 

Author], they have no one else who 

can perform this job.” 

● “PEOPLE OF CULTURE WILL 

ALWAYS BE ABLE TO 

OVERCOME ANY POLITICAL 

MISUNDERSTANDINGS” 

At last, the envelope with the 

winner’s name was opened. The hall 

exploded with applause for Kalytko. 

She became the sixth winner of the 

Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary 

Prize. The writer thanked 

everyone, including other nominees, 

and commented: “I am very grateful 

for the fact that we have one literature 

for all that we build as we can. 

And it turns out, it seems to me, to 

be not that bad.” 

She also recalled some tense moments 

in the Polish-Ukrainian relations 

that happened already during 

Ukraine’s independence, and the fact 

that some members of the public even 

called on the nominees to reject the 

prize. However, she emphasized 

Poland’s important role for the Ukrainian 

discourse and new Europe. “It 

seems to me that people of culture will 

always be able to overcome any political 

misunderstandings. They are able to 

explain what is hurting people, to say 

what was not spoken about enough. 

That is why we need literature,” Kalytko 

asserted. 

● BOOK DIPLOMACY 

Indeed, literature is a powerful 

source of soft power. Its role is especially 

important for Ukraine. When 

Ukrainians had no state of their own, 

books were both a platform for the development 

of our culture and ambassadors 

of Ukrainian identity to other 

countries, in which these books could 

be translated. So the books became 

diplomats of sorts who conducted 

their own dialogue or polylogue, 

which was much broader than the political 

one. 

The Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski 

Literary Prize supports this non-political 

dialogue of cultures, which can 

become a quality alternative in a rather 

difficult time for Ukraine. Most likely, 

it is only by emphasizing shared features 

and respecting differences that 

we will be able to develop effective 

communication. This is exactly what 

the Polish Institute and the Joseph 

Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize 

have been doing for 10 years. 

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