#48_1-8

8
No.48 SEPTEMBER 27, 2018
TIMEO U T
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day
“Pavlo Skoropadsky
is to a large extent
a symbol of our
contradictions”
Oxana PACHLOVSKA speaks
about forecasts offered by books
of Den’s Library series and opines
why there is a colossal demand for
knowledge of Ukraine in Europe
Continued from page 1 ➤
“Lesson Two: Everyone knows about
the advantage of taking a position of
strength. We must take this position from
within and keep strengthening it.
“Lesson Three: After taking and upgrading
this position of strength, we can
make further moves and use external
factors.
“Your book about Hetman Skoropadsky
certainly addresses our society, although
I wouldn’t count on our politicians
– they’re too busy with the coming
election campaign. I believe that this
book will interest college/university lecturers,
students, schoolteachers, and
their students. I do hope that it will have
the desired civic effect. This book contains
features written by our top-notch authors.
I was happy to meet with Ihor
Siundiukov, Petro Kraliuk, Ihor Smeshko,
Yurii Tereshchenko, and others who had
helped it appear in print. It is an excellent
analysis of Hetman Skoropadsky’s epoch.
I appreciate Editor-in-Chief Larysa Ivshyna’s
Foreword. It offers the main points
By Vadym RYZHKOV, The Day, Dnipro
The largest book festival of Uk raine,
which is held in Lviv, has
turned 25. That forum has already
become a significant cultural event
not only for this country, but also
for the whole of Eastern Europe. To mark
the anniversary, President Petro Poro -
shenko visited Lviv recently. Let us recall
that the launch of a new book, entitled
Ave: The Centennial of Pavlo Skoro pad -
sky’s Hetmanate and published in Den’s
Library series, was featured as an event
of this year’s Publishers’ Forum in Lviv.
Meanwhile, Dnipro is finishing
preparations for the opening of its own
cultural forum – the new Book Space International
Book Festival. The program
of this event includes book fairs, launches
of literary novelties, poetry readings,
exhibitions, lectures, and musical performances
which will take place at several
venues in the city center. Also, there
will be opportunities to communicate
with authors from around the world. All
this awaits visitors to the Book Space festival
at the end of the month, namely on
September 28-30.
“We strive to popularize reading, to
instill love for books. We set up book
crossing locations and donate books to
state administrations and schools
throughout the region, which has already
become a good tradition that began with
the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration
(RSA) itself,” advisor to the
head of the Dnipropetrovsk RSA Yurii
Holyk remarked. “Now, we are organizing
the first book fest in Dnipro. We want
to do something larger than similar
events in other cities of Ukraine, it should
be not just an exhibition and sale, but a
platform for communication as well.”
According to the organizers, approximately
60 publishers and 80 authors
from Ukraine, France, Poland, Denmark,
A nation-state-building impulse
Den launches a book commemorating Pavlo Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate
for our progress. It is about the gap between
those and our times, the importance
of filling this gap; it is about our destiny,
national identity, the nationwide lumpenproletariat
campaign [under the Soviets
– Ed.], the so-called Ukraine-Rome
Road, a link between civilization and
barbarism. We each of us must decide
which road we have to embark upon.
“Ms. Ivshyna writes that Hetman
Skoropadsky was a nation-statebuilding
impulse and compares him
with Baron Mannerheim, the father of
Finnish national independence. She accurately
notes that there is an abyss between
the Ukrainian elite and the man in
the street, and broaches other important
issues, including Viacheslav Lypynsky
and Fedir Lyzohub. There are historic
figures we have to figure out. There are
In just a few days!
Dnipro is preparing for the
opening of a new book festival
many parallels to be drawn between
past and current realities in Ukraine.
Our older generation has to establish contact
with the younger one. We must explain
to our young people all those complicated
processes and encourage them
to read such books.
“I’m convinced that the book about
Hetman Skoropadsky is among the best
to have appeared in print, and that it will
help our education process. As a university
lecturer, I promise to make every
effort to have it included in our college/university
curricula. Doubtlessly,
this book is another significant accomplishment
on the part of Den. It is another
victory won by all of us who want
to learn the truth about ourselves.
By Dmytro PLAKHTA, The Day
Dnipropetrovsk RSA building, in the
building itself, and next to it in the Rocket
Park and the Heroes Public Garden.
The music stage will be located in the garden
of the Museum of Ukrainian Painting.
Each festival day will end with concerts
to be held there, which will be performed
by DZ’OB and Quarpa bands and
participants of Mariana Savka’s V Sadu
(“In the Orchard”) jazz project. The festival
is organized by the Dnipropetrovsk
RSA and the Cultural Capital program of
the Dnipro City Council. The Book Space
event will last for three days, the entrance
to the festival will be free.
The very first day of the forum will
see the launch of books from Den’s Library
series. In particular, we will launch
our newest book, entitled Ave: The Centennial
of Pavlo Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate.
Den/The Day’s editor-in-chief
Larysa Ivshyna and the authors who contributed
their essays to the collection will
present it to the reading public and the
culture community.
the US, Germany and other countries will
attend the Book Space festival. The expected
guests include businessman and
writer Garik Korogodsky, writers Oksana
Zabuzhko and Irena Karpa, and satiric poet
Orlusha. Historian and Harvard University
professor Serhii Plokhii will come
from the US, while historian and writer
Andre Roche will arrive from France.
“We will have children’s, military, poetry,
historical, educational programs.
Most Ukrainian and foreign guests will
take part in the core program called
‘Transformations,’ which will involve
various discussions, book launches, and
film screenings,” art director of the festival
Viktoriia Narizhna told us. “We will
set up lounge areas and food courts. One
will be able to spend the whole day at the
festival communicating and reading interesting
books.”
Space International Book Festival is im-
■ The detailed program of the Book
Books will be available for sale at pressive in its scale. It has been pub lished on
book exhibitions to be held in the adult a dedicated page on the Facebook social network
and at https://bookspacefest.com/
and children’s areas. The festival will
take place at several locations: near the Home/Program.
Photo courtesy of the Book Space International Book Festival’s organizers
By Mariia PROKOPENKO, The Day
On the eve of the book Ave:
The Centennial of Pavlo
Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate
being launched at the
Publishers’ Forum in Lviv,
The Day asked Oxana Pachlovska, who
is a writer, culturologist, professor at
the La Sapienza University of Rome, as
well as our contributor and friend, to tell
us about her expectations from that
event. We also asked Pachlovska, who
lives and works in Italy and received the
Shevchenko Prize for her collection of
essays Ave, Europa! in 2010, whether
Ukraine was becoming better
understood in Europe.
Professor, you have long contributed
to our publications, also with
texts that appeared in the books of
Den’s Library series. What are your expectations
of Ave: The Centennial of
Pavlo Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate? How
important is this topic, in your opinion?
“Ave: The Centennial of Pavlo Skoropadsky’s
Hetmanate covers not just
one theme, but many. And among them,
the most important one, in my opinion,
is the quality of statesmanship and also
the historical responsibility of anyone
who ever dares to be a politician – today,
in the past, and always. I mean responsibility
not as a rhetorical figure, but as
that dangerous dimension where a decision
of one person, a document signed
by them may determine the fates of millions,
as those warm waves of human life
turn into rivers of blood. Skoropadsky
is to a large extent a symbol of Ukrainian
contradictions, a personification of
contrasts which have accompanied
Ukrainian state-building efforts for
centuries. It is therefore even more important
to study Skoropadsky not only
as a figure of the past, but also as an
Archive of events, concepts, and decisions
which offer forecasts that must be
re-read in a new way every time.
“Actually, I want to emphasize the
FORECASTING value of Den’s Library
books. Cultural journalism itself is an
extremely effective instrument of interpretation
that links scholarship with
society, takes scholarship from its ivory
towers into various perception spaces,
and implants academic knowledge into
the living matter of public consciousness.
It is during this period that I
want to mention two Den’s books, which
Larysa Ivshyna deliberately and systematically
conceived and prepared for
publication: Return to Tsarhorod (2015)
and My Sister Sofia... (2016). Today, as
Ukraine is waiting for the Tomos granting
autocephaly, we need to recall these
books which speak about the Ukrainian
Orthodoxy as part of the European civilization,
and books about the possibility
of the Orthodoxy existing in the coordinates
of the European culture in
general. It was a great work done in advance
of today’s milestone event – the
‘return’ of Ukraine to Tsarhorod/Constantinople,
the restoration of the Rome-
Constantinople civilizational axis, the
collapse of the ‘Third-Roman’ parody of
Rome, and the revival of Kyiv as one
of the centers of the global Christianity.”
Today, we Ukrainians are trying
to understand ourselves, our history,
rediscover its lost layers even
harder than before. Are we becoming
better understood in Europe? In
this context, we would also like to
learn what is the current level of interest
in Ukrainian studies? Is working
in this area a challenge?
“Are we becoming better understood
in Europe? This is another
field of eternal Ukrainian paradoxes.
The answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’
On the one hand, there is a colossal
demand for knowledge of Ukraine in
Europe today, made even more urgent
by the shortages of specialists,
sources, institutions which are now
felt stronger than ever. Russia’s assault
on Ukraine is taking place under
conditions of a major crisis afflicting
the democratic system. These
two events are so closely linked that
history has literally pushed Ukraine
into the forefront of Europe’s struggle
to renew democracy and rediscover
itself. Now, not only the future
eastern border of the EU, but also the
many categories and meanings that
are being created today in the intellectual
field, where a new identity of
Europe is emerging, depend on
Ukraine’s movement westwards.
“On the other hand, the potential
and pressure of anti-European forces
has increased enormously in this
same Europe. Their power and influence
are increasingly felt in the
field of information. This information
is deliberately doctored so as to
convince the average European that
some kind of incomprehensible and
uninteresting ‘civil war’ is going on
in faraway Ukraine.
“On the other hand, Ukraine itself
often displays the ineffectiveness
of diplomatic, cultural, and information
institutions that should counteract
these trends. Or, more precisely,
these institutions are, to use
an Italian saying, ‘the skin of a leopard’:
some of them work, others do
not, while some pretend to work. Information,
complete with its dangers
and fakes, manipulations and simulacrums,
is a neuralgic ganglion of
the modern world. Great risks lie
here for Ukraine, and the political
awareness of these risks in the corridors
of power is dramatically low
and inadequate overall.
“So, interest in Ukrainian studies
is increasing, but it constantly
faces new challenges while the old
ones have not yet been overcome.
Therefore, working in this area is
both a daily challenge and a challenge
going into the future. However, nobody
promised Ukraine an easy journey
home, to Europe, in the days of
a modern barbarian invasion. We
need to make this journey. With
dignity. Clearly realizing the harsh
realities. Firmly choosing our route.”
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