Antonovych Foundation honors two historians and literary editor (09/22/02)

Antonovych Foundation honors two historians and literary editor

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - The International Foundation of Omelan and Tetiana Antonovych announced the laureates of its 21st annual awards for literary and scholarly achievement on August 17 at the newly remodeled Vasyl Stefanyk Scientific Library in Lviv.

Historians Yurii Shapoval and Yaroslav Isaievych won the 2002 prizes in the scholarly category, while Hryhorii Huseinov, little-known outside Ukraine, was presented the award for literary achievement.

Past laureates include the eminent Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, who died in a Soviet concentration camp in 1985, writer Vasyl Barka and Ivan Dzyuba, the writer and literary critic.

Dr. Shapoval, an internationally recognized expert on the Soviet secret police, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and director of the Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies, has combed Kyiv and Moscow archives for years and written extensively on the dark world of the Soviet intelligence agencies, including agencies that have gone under the various alphabet-soup acronyms, such as KGB, NKVD, CheKa, MVD and GPU.

He was recognized for his complete body of work, including "The Person and the System," published in 1994; "Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the GPU-NKVD," which was produced in 1996; as well as "Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s-1940s: Unknown Documents from the Archives of the Special Services," published in 2000 in two tomes.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Dr. Shapoval went out of his way to criticize the political elites for their approach to Ukrainian history.

"Today's political nomenklatura if not consciously, at least half-consciously, has chosen historical amnesia regarding the artificially written history of the Soviet era," explained Dr. Shapoval.

He noted that little accent is made on the fact that of the 32 million people who suffered under Soviet rule, fully 10 million were Ukrainians. Yet, as he noted, there is no official state memorial at the site of mass burials of victims of the Stalin terror of 1937-1938 in the Bykyvnia Forest outside of Kyiv. Neither is there a memorial in Vinnytsia, where another Soviet mass murder occurred.

"Today there are plans to celebrate the birthday of Volodymyr Scherbytsky and to commemorate the Pereiaslav Agreement - nonsense. It makes me wonder whether what I have done has affected anything," said Dr. Shapoval, ending his presentation on a down note.

Mr. Antonovych, 88, the father of the awards, then presented the other prize for scholarly excellence to Dr. Isaievych for his contribution to research on the development of book publishing in Ukraine.

Prof. Isaievich, the director of the Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His published works include, "The First Printer, Ivan Fedorov, and the Beginning of Printing in Ukraine," (1975); and "Ukrainian Book Publishing: Its Wellspring, Development and Problems;" (2001).

In his address to the 100 or so friends and supporters on hand at the Stefanyk Library, Dr. Isaievych also raised the issue of the commemoration of the Pereiaslav Agreement, signed in 1654 between Kozak Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of Russia.

"In some way, to commemorate the event is an affront to the fact of Ukrainian independence," said Prof. Isaievych.

The last laureate, Hryhorii Huseinov, was recognized for the Ukrainian-language literary magazine, Kurier KryvBas, which he has published and edited in his hometown of Kryvyi Rih since 1994.

National Deputy Mykola Zhulynskyi, a member of the jury that decided on the winners, gave particular praise to Mr. Huseinov, who has published extensively in Ukraine and is the author of a five-valume book of literary works called "Hospodni Zerna" (God's Seeds).

"He has supported Ukrainianism, Ukrainian themes and literature in an atmosphere not very conducive to the development of things Ukrainian," explained Dr. Zhulynskyi, referring to the very Russified character of the Kryvyi Rih region of southern Ukraine that Mr. Huseinov calls home.

Mr. Dzyuba, the writer and former Antonovych laureate who along with Marta Bohachevska-Chomiak, an academic from the United States and currently director of the U.S. Fulbright Program for Ukraine, rounded out the judging panel, also covered Mr. Huseinov with superlatives.

"He is a Ukrainian marvel from the steppe," explained Mr. Dzyuba. "He has told us about the south of which we know too little. He has shown us how much of the truly Ukrainian is contained there."

The Antonovych Awards have been presented annually since 1981 for outstanding work in the separate categories of scholarly and literary works. Early on the presentations took place in New York and Washington. After 1990 Omelan and Tetiana Antonovych made the presentations in Kyiv. This is the first year the awards ceremony took place in Lviv. Dr. Tetiana Antonovych died this past year.

The Antonovyches, he a lawyer and she a physician and a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, developed the eponymous awards to further Ukrainian literary and scholarly development.

"It simply happened. We had certain savings and wanted to do something for Ukraine," explained Mr. Antonovych. "The idea came from my heart and my wife's heart."

In addition to the Antonovych awards, the International Foundation of Omelan and Tetiana Antonovych has donated to various projects in Ukraine. The nearly completed renovation of the Vasyl Stefanyk Scientific Library, a giant Greek-Revival building with giant columns in the heart of Lviv, along with the development of the Antonovych Reading Room inside, are only the latest.

Mr. Antonovych also recently completed a memorial to the Fighters for Ukrainian Freedom in his hometown of Dolyniv, located in the Lviv Oblast. A An ethnographic museum dedicated to Boykos is also nearing completion.

All told, Mr. Antonovych said his foundation has handed out about $250,000 in prize money over the last 21 years, while spending another quarter-million dollars in associated costs. He noted that about $500,000 has gone towards other projects in Ukraine.

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