COMMENTARY: International Congress of Ukrainian Studies held against the odds (10/06/96)

COMMENTARY

International Congress of Ukrainian Studies held against the odds

by Yaroslav Bilinsky

CONCLUSION

The second day of the International Congress of Ukrainian Studies, August 27, was marked by at least two organizational disasters. The big plenary session started 45 minutes late, with the speakers having to struggle with an imperfect microphone. Then the congress broke up into presentation and discussion sections by discipline, without most of the participants having any clear idea where their assigned rooms were. (A floor plan, a sine qua non at American professional meetings, was never provided.) The smaller rooms were indeed somewhere in the rabbit warren of the Law School, but exactly where? Yours truly, who was scheduled to give his paper within half an hour of the end of the plenary session and the posting of the room assignments in the main lobby, wandered all the way to the left, only to be told by helpful Law School personnel that he should have walked all the way to the right.

Nor was the printed program strictly adhered to. A linguistic panel was broken up for some 40 minutes, because the majority of its participants and its chair decided to consolidate it with a panel featuring Prof. George Shevelov, who immediately apologized for having left his reading glasses in New York. Insofar as he could be heard at all (he spoke softly, as usual, in a large room with open windows, without a functioning microphone), Prof. Shevelov's remarks were brilliant - and unusually brief. After a few questions to Prof. Shevelov, the second linguistic panel returned to its previously assigned room and to its program.

In general, colleagues from Canada and the U.S. complained that several Ukrainian Ukrainians pre-empted the paper presentation and discussion by formally registering their papers to get onto the official program and then not showing up at all, without any explanation. The universally respected Canadian Church historian Prof. Bohdan Bociurkiw, who has just retired from Carleton University and who participated in the congress despite his illness, was quite outspoken on this. Personally, he profited from the "no-shows": they had an excellent discussion in his session on the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

As in any professional conference, some papers were better than others. But I noticed in several sessions what appears to be a Ukrainian-Ukrainian scholarly style, a kind of "slide rule effect, by seniority." The first speakers presented their papers in full, even though they were already in the process of publication. The following scheduled speakers got the remainder of the assigned time or were transferred to hastily arranged follow-up sessions in another room, at a time, which conflicted with other previously scheduled panels on subjects of related interest. As a rule, discussion from the floor was not allowed, for lack of time and/or organization. But enough of what to some may appear to be organizational minutiae.

* * *

In the lobby of the Law School there were many stands with books on all things Ukrainian, a standard feature at scholarly meetings, and in the Kharkiv Opera Theater lobby there were numerous tables with all kinds of souvenirs.

Adventuresome colleagues raved about the quality of the special performances of Ivan Franko's "Stolen Fortune" on August 26 and, above all, of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" on August 27. "Mikado" had been adapted to reflect the conditions in today's Ukraine: the music was traditional, but the lyrics were up-to-the-minute satirical. With a minimum of effort, participating scholars could have a good time, which is another indicator of a successful congress.

On August 28, the second to last day of the congress, there was another unpleasantness, which, fortunately, was cleared up by the end of the day. Rumors began to circulate that there would be a small reception in honor of the foreign participants, hosted by Oleh Diomin, acting chairman of the Kharkiv Oblast Council. Allegedly only 200 persons had been invited, which would have excluded part of the foreign and all of the Ukrainian scholars. Two hours before the reception the rumors proved false: the reception would be held in the big hall of the Kharkiv Military University (Kharkiv's West Point?), and all foreign guests and a sprinkling of scholars from Ukraine were to participate.

The reception turned out to be on a really grand scale: live orchestra, sumptuous fare, plenty of drinks of all kinds, including Ukrainian champagne, uncorked by very attentive and professional waiters, some of whom wore military uniforms. I had a good conversation with the president (rektor) of Kharkiv University, Dr. Vasyl Svich, a physicist, and, above all, my neighbor to the right, Dr. Olha Muromtseva, department chairman for Ukrainian studies at the Kharkiv Pedagogical University and a fellow paper-giver at the congress. (Later I was approached for a longer conversation by Dr. Olga Alexandrova, the Russian-born expert on Ukrainian foreign policy at the German Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies in Cologne.) Kharkiv did itself proud as a center of education, science, and, yes, a bastion of the old military-industrial complex.

I introduced myself to the commanding officer of the Military University and immediate host, Lt. Gen. Volodymyr Borysovych Tolubko. He wore civilian clothes, spoke concisely, quietly, and very much to the point. Yes, he is a relation (a nephew) to the Tolubko who was Soviet marshal of strategic rocket forces. I noted for myself that four years ago nuclear disarmers in Washington persuaded themselves that, unlike the Russians, Ukrainians were incompetent in nuclear armaments. Lt. Gen. Tolubko, a second-generation Ukrainian missile officer, really could have given our disarmers the lie, if they had not already decided not to be confused by the facts.

At the reception it was also announced that Academician Isaievych had been re-elected president of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies.

The closing session of the congress on August 29 was followed by a four-hour bus excursion to Skovorodynivka, the estate in Kharkiv Oblast on which the greatest Ukrainian philosopher, Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722-1794), tutored the squire's family and whoever else sought out his counsel. Our reception was both cordial and officious, with welcoming school children singing songs, a sumptuous feast of fried corn, apples, honey, cherry and plum pyrizhky, ham and pork, washed down with fruit compote, soft drinks, and, for the hardier souls, vodka. The first IAUS vice-president, Oleksa Mishanych, and the estate's director exchanged speeches and ceremonial souvenirs.

Then we quickly boarded our six buses and were driven back fast to our hotels in Kharkiv, with a police escort, to catch the already waiting buses to the train station. The police escort was not only a flattery but a real necessity: the roads are narrow and somewhat crowded with motorists who like to take risks (on the way to the estate, we saw a minor accident, fortunately not involving our own buses, but a regular suburban bus).

On the way to Skovorodynivka, we talked to Svitlana of Ukrainian TV Channel 2, who accompanied us with her strapping camera operator. Svitlana, an ethnic Ukrainian born in the countryside who speaks 10 times better Ukrainian than me, allows that she finds it easier to think in Russian, the language she had acquired in the city of Kharkiv.

This really made me think. At the congress, I had bluntly declared that Ukraine needed to follow the example of Israel, which had introduced ancient Hebrew as the only real state language and was also using it as a robust means for building the Israeli nation. Then I caught myself speaking Russian (one of my Russian-language teachers at Harvard was Prof. Shevelov) to many good citizens of Kharkiv and Kyiv but, thank goodness, not to anybody in Lviv (in Lviv, Ukrainian is the language of officials, taxi drivers and trolleybus conductors, waiters - of all and everybody). Preaching Ukrainian but not practicing it all the time, gave me an insight into the psychology of those Ukrainian Ukrainians who urge everybody to go slow on linguistic changes, who counsel evolution rather than revolution toward Ukrainian becoming the state language de facto, not merely de jure. Perhaps, unlike the Israelis and the Galician Ukrainians, they are too "soft," but who am I to cast the first stone?

* * *

On the lighter side, we also began talking about good and bad food habits in Ukraine and the United States. Among Kharkiv housewives, "Clinton's legs" - as grown in the coops of Arkansas and marketed by Tyson and others - were gaining increasing acceptance. It occurred to me that here was another potential bloc of "women for Clinton." Too bad that the congress was held only two short months before the U.S. presidential election of 1996.

* * *

Unfortunately, I cannot help sounding one last sour note from the very last day of the congress. I got talking to a local Kharkiv Ukrainian, a retired military officer and former subordinate of Lt. Gen. Tolubko. He called Tolubko an excellent commanding officer and, unlike his better known uncle, a true Ukrainian patriot. Among other things, Lt. Gen. Tolubko ordered his cadets lined up in parade formation when the memorial plaque or, more correctly, a small monument to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was dedicated in Kharkiv's Youth Park. I stared at ex-Maj. Mykhailo F. Kubakh. A memorial plaque dedicated to the UPA here in Kharkiv? Yes, it is in the park, together with a tall wooden cross honoring the victims of the terror-famine of 1932-1933 and the "must-see" grave of Mykola Khvyliovy. The park is within 10 minutes' walk from the Law School, and he showed me on a map how to get there.

I was both dumbfounded and somewhat angry that three important monuments in the vicinity of the congress site had been kept from its participants, and set out to photograph them for myself and for the wife of a Canadian colleague, the daughter of the chief of staff of the UPA. I could not find them with the information reluctantly supplied by an elder of the Moscow Patriarchate Church in the park, but our Kharkiv patriot came to the rescue in a car lent by a local Ukrainian newspaper editor and pointed out to me all three monuments that are half-hidden in the park. The cross honoring the victims of the terror-famine was defaced by a barely visible swastika, for which our Kharkiv patriot apologized profusely.

A success after all

Yes, the congress had been a great success in that over 600 scholars with, possibly, the sole exception of Prof. Orest Subtelny, were given an opportunity to have their say when they wanted to and also to see themselves in print. (Already during the congress, printed proceedings, including either the full papers or their abstracts, were distributed by disciplines, such as history, linguistics, etc.).

Yes, the congress organizers succeeded in safely and comfortably transporting its participants from and back to Kyiv, which is no mean feat in somewhat crime-prone contemporary Ukraine. (The work was quietly done by Kyiv political scientist Oleksander Petrovsky of the Republican Association of Ukrainian Studies.) The participants were assigned and transported to more or less comfortable hotels, and, after a rocky registration and an involuntary exploration of the Law School's fascinatingly incremental architecture, the congress did get off to a good start.

On the other hand, in the United States, in Kyiv and in Kharkiv the rumor mill, or what Dr. Muromtseva of Kharkiv gently referred to as OBS (odna baba skazala - as one old woman told another) was working full tilt to make the congress a failure. Greater publicity, including this contribution, should make OBS less effective in the future, but the question still persists: Why was it so virulent, from beginning to the very end?

Paradoxically, while the authorities of seemingly provincial Kharkiv came through with flying colors (witness the splendid farewell reception at the Military University and the well-planned and well-executed excursion to the Skovoroda estate), the congress's top organizers did not do full justice to the cultural attractions of their host city. At least two churches should have been visited on foot, not just glimpsed from the bus; the Shevchenko monument in Kharkiv was definitely worth seeing; and so was the architectural complex of the 1930s called the Derzhprom, which withstood all the vicissitudes of World War II. Last not least, why not pay a brief collective visit to the grave of Mykola Khvyliovy, the cross dedicated to the victims of the terror-famine and the memorial plaque honoring the soldiers of the UPA - all of which were within comfortable walking distance from the Law School?

But considering everything, the congress was a great success. The next International Congress of Ukrainian Studies will probably take place in Odesa in 1999. Some academic ladies have already declared Odesa as being much too hot during the summer. But one must never underestimate the resiliency of Ukrainian specialists from Australia to Japan. In three years the cry will sound: To Odesa! And away they will go - only south this time.

Yaroslav Bilinsky is professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware.

PART I