Turning the pages back... March 15, 1998 (03/14/04)

Turning the pages back...

March 15, 1998

Six years ago, The Weekly reported on a special program held by the Embassy of Ukraine to the United States and the Ukrainian American community to honor the memory of Ivan Svitlychnyi, the literary historian, critic and poet who was at the center of the 1960s "Shestydesiatnyky" national revival movement in Ukraine.

Our Washington correspondent, Yaro Bihun, filed a report on the event. Leading the remembrance was Ukrainian Ambassador Yuri Shcherbak,who focused on the meaning and importance of the movement of the young writers and artists of that period who came to be known as the Shestydesiatnyky and of Mr. Svitlychnyi's role in it. Ivan Svitlychnyi's sister, Nadia Svitlychna, recalled the human, personal side of her brother and his circle of friends.

The evening was unique in that it did not coincide with any anniversary or particular date relating to the poet, who died in 1992, noted Mr. Bihun. "And it is fitting that we need not frame our love and respect for Ivan Svitlychnyi in the context of an anniversary," Ambassador Shcherbak said. "In today's murky, politicized atmosphere, without faith and direction, we have a spiritual need to connect with the source of our rebirth and yearn for a symbol of faith, morality and selflessness."

Svitlychnyi was arrested in 1965, during the KGB's first wave of arrests of the Shestydesiatnyky, and again in January 1972, during the massive crackdown against the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and five years of exile. Ambassador Shcherbak said that, even by Soviet standards, Svitlychnyi's trial and conviction were dubious. He was punished not for anything he did, but simply for being a leading Ukrainian intellectual, the "soul" and hub of the Shestydesiatnyky in Kyiv.

"It was the Shestydesiatnyky who laid the groundwork for the rebirth of Ukraine that came in the 1980s and 1990s," continued the ambassador. "Without them, the historic break that followed would have been impossible."

Source: " 'Soul of Shestydesiatnyky' Ivan Svitlychnyi remembered in D.C.," by Yaro Bihun. The Ukrainian Weekly, March 15, 1998, Vol. LXVI, No. 11.

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