PERSPECTIVES: My friend, George Kalbouss (03/07/04)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

My friend, George Kalbouss

Dr. George Kalbouss had been teaching "Russian Culture" at the Ohio State University (OSU) for more than 25 years when word came in 1996 that the university would close the Slavic Studies Department. That's when George called me and introduced himself. I had been his daughter's boss in Rep. Mary Rose Oakar's office in the 1980s, he said. Christina suggested he call me. As director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, I was involved in Ukrainian scholarship and by extension, Slavic Studies. Maybe, with some of my political experience, I could help.

I proceeded to call my own political guru, Taras Szmagala Sr., who had been chief of staff to Ohio's Sen. Bob Taft. The three of us met at a café at Cleveland's West Side Market and George explained what was going on: OSU's president figured that after the demise of the Soviet Union, Slavic studies had become irrelevant; closing the department would save money.

For George, the issue wasn't money. His children were on their own, he had no major debts and was eligible for retirement. In fact, having served in the Army and Reserves for 31 years, he already had a military pension. Eliminating the department wouldn't hurt him personally. But dammit! Why was Slavic studies always first on the chopping block? He wasn't going to take it.

A lot of political efforts begin with a letter-writing campaign. So Mr. Szmagala and I sat down and drafted letters on Ukrainian Museum-Archives letterhead to state representatives and senators in Columbus with last names like Suhodolnik, Zaleski, Kucinich, Vukovich and Matelski, along with Irish, African American, Italian and other friends who represented places like Slavic Village in Cleveland and Poland, Ohio.

Why would OSU want to close down the Slavic studies department, we asked? Slavic immigration helped to build Ohio. Millions of our citizens trace their heritage to Central and Eastern Europe. Besides, based on enrollment, scholarship and community service, the department more than justified its existence.

Recognizing a hot issue when they saw it, the reps and senators got on the phone to OSU's president inquiring why, indeed, he wanted to close the Slavic studies department. The Lorain City Council even passed a resolution. To make a long story short, the university reconsidered, and today the department is still providing wonderful instruction and generating sound scholarship. Academics, artists and intellectuals from Central and Eastern Europe routinely visit Columbus, enriching Ohio and the nation.

So the story has a happy ending - only in this case it was just the beginning. As professor of OSU's "Russian Culture" course, George Kalbouss has an enormous following. Since 1973, when he first launched the course, he's taught 20,000 students from every corner of Ohio, all across America and countries around the world.

After our coffee, Messrs. Kalbouss, Szmagala and I visited the Ukrainian Museum nearby. There George saw literature, documents and artifacts that define a culture related to but totally separate from the one he'd been teaching for the past quarter century: his father's culture, as it turned out. Born in Poltava, George's father fled the Communist catastrophe and settled in New York, where he met and married a schoolteacher who had fled her native Russia about the same time. Growing up on the East Side, their son, George, learned to love Russian culture - a love he continued to pursue at Columbia University and New York University, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Russian studies before settling in Columbus.

Confronted by the wealth of materials at the Ukrainian Museum in Cleveland at the same time that OSU's Slavic Studies program was on the brink, George had an epiphany, one that unfolded over time. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not make Slavic studies less relevant. Instead, the balance had shifted. Countries and cultures that had been stifled by the weight of Russian and later Soviet imperialism had emerged with sufficient strength to topple an empire.

And at the center of it all was Ukraine. There, vast historical tides swept the steppes long before the birth of Christ, continuing into the 20th century with Lenin's utopia and Hitler's Third Reich. And so the man who had started OSU's "Russian Culture" course, inaugurated Slavic 245 "Introduction to Ukrainian History and Culture" and asked me to co-teach. I accepted. We call it the "George & Andy Show."

Tapping into the enormous resources of Cleveland's Ukrainian Museum and using state-of-the-art audio-visual technology, we throw images of Scythian gold, Kyiv's architecture, the flag and trident, Shevchenko's drawings, etc. onto a screen to illustrate the ebbs and flows of Ukrainian history and how they fit into the destiny of surrounding empires that first rose, then fell. We use Slavko Nowytski's film about the Famine, music from the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, pysanky at Eastertime and postage stamps from the UMA collection. The class has been very successful: over the past five years, class size has ranged from 40 to 60 students.

George is now retired, but he's not resting. Not only is he head of the Midwest Slavic Association, but as professor emeritus at OSU, he's carrying a heavy teaching load, including a fascinating course on East European immigration and, of course, his beloved course in "Russian Culture."

George Kalbouss is a man of extraordinary wit, affability and knowledge. He's also resourceful and tough. Eliminate a department he's dedicated his life to? He'll find a way to save it. Start up a new program because it's time has come? He'll talk to the people who can make it happen.

Recently, commenting in The Ukrainian Weekly about the newly established Ukrainian program at his alma mater Columbia, George wondered why the Ukrainian community should have to raise a million dollars before such a richly endowed university would consent to teach their culture. The Russian community never had to meet a similar challenge. Having taught both Russian and Ukrainian culture, he argued that both subjects are justified on their merits. Humbly, he offered an alternative model. How about using university revenues, including student tuition, to support a course that students are willing to take anyway?

As for the "George & Andy Show," our course in "Ukrainian Culture" opens for the sixth season at OSU on March 30. George is a guy who not only gets it, he does something about it. I'm proud to call him my friend.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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