Tykhon Leshchuk marks 80th birthday at Lviv's ethnography museum

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - He is the author of more than 1,000 literary works, and the painter of more than 50 oil canvases, many depicting romantic Lviv landscapes.

At 80 years old, he is also a respected professor at Lviv Polytechnic University, teaching German and Latin.

Tykhon Leshchuk is a living symbol of the city of Lviv and the Halychyna experience, as reflected in his own biography: an idyllic Catholic childhood; adolescence ruined by war; imprisonment in Siberia; life under Soviet communism and then freedom under Ukrainian independence.

As with many of his generation, the hardships and trials only solidified Prof. Leshchuk's devout Catholic faith, inspiring him to prolific academic, literary and artistic accomplishments.

Colleagues, family and friends gathered at the Museum of Ethnography and Folk Craft on Lviv's Freedom Boulevard on May 26 to honor the 80th birthday of a man with "God's gift of such young spirit, memory and energy, that is worthy of admiration," in the words of Volodymyr Zadorozhnyi, chair of Lviv Polytechnic's Foreign Languages Department.

On display were Mr. Leshchuk's oil paintings, including depictions of his native village of Rava Ruska in the Lviv Oblast, the nearby historic town of Belz, the Zakarpatia landscape, the Kuril Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk and the cliffs outside Meshkhed, Iran, where he once lived and studied.

"I believe that everyone has a talent," Mr. Leshchuk said at the ceremony. "But not everyone realizes that talent, and in that there's misfortune."

In her salutation to Mr. Leshchuk, the department's chair of Germanic languages Myroslava Vesna wished for him to continue "giving everyone a part of himself, and shine like the light of a multi-faceted crystal," quoting the words of Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko.

"We knew he was a good scholar, and had fundamental knowledge in many spheres like linguistics, literary criticism and translation," Ms. Vesna said.

"But in that he also has delicate strings of his heart, which are played out on the canvas, he has given us an understanding of just how deep his soul is. It is impossible to recognize its depths."

Prof. Leshchuk is the son of Osyp and Olha Leshchuk, the former a Ukrainian Catholic priest who led the Rava Ruska parish prior to the Second World War.

His dreamlike childhood spent in Rava Ruska and the neighboring towns of Belz and Sokal, where he graduated gymnasium, made a deep impression that lasted his whole life.

"We were a priest's family, so we had everything and everyone loved us," Prof. Leshchuk said.

"Everyone went to church on Sundays and the synagogue on Saturdays. All those traditions were very strong and everyone was tolerant of each other. It was total democracy at that time. Belz was a small town at the time, and music played day and night."

In 1945, Prof. Leshchuk studied at Lviv Theological Academy, the same year the Bolsheviks had shut it down.

An 18-year-old student at the time, Prof. Leshchuk was captured and deported to the Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean to serve in the Soviet Army.

His father refused to renounce his Ukrainian Catholic faith and was forced to work the mines of Donetsk.

Every day, NKVD officers visited Father Leshchuk and pressured him to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.

"If I did this, I would be an unhappy man for the rest of my life," Father Leshchuk wrote to Tykhon. "Because when we were ordained, we knew exactly where we went, we were faithful to our Church, and we couldn't just 'change' it."

Father Leshchuk was injured in a mine collapse, and sent to Poltava, where he faced torture by starvation.

While laboring in the Kuril Islands in 1949, Prof. Leshchuk received a letter from the Soviet government informing him his father had died in the Poltava camps, without providing any reason.

"He wrote that his stomach hurt so much," Prof. Leshchuk said of the letters he received from his father. "Not there in Russia, but here in eastern Ukraine. Just imagine what a paradox that is. I was on the islands and I could not do anything."

Being plucked from Lviv to live in wild, sparsely inhabited islands bordering the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean was a life-changing experience, Prof. Leshchuk said.

"I was sheltered from the world," he said. "I arrived there, and it was a whole new world."

For most of six years, Prof. Leshchuk awoke at 5 a.m. every morning and spent the day laboring.

It was then that Prof. Leshchuk began writing. The exotic islands inspired him to pen science fiction stories.

"Everyone was scared, whoever they were," Prof. Leshchuk said. "We didn't know if a volcano would erupt tomorrow, or if an earthquake would happen and nothing would remain at all. Meanwhile, tsunamis were flooding our island."

Prof. Leshchuk was allowed to return to Lviv in 1950, and the next year, he entered Franko State University to study foreign languages, and earned his degree in German philology.

After graduating, the Soviet authorities sent Prof. Leshchuk to a remote Volyn Oblast village to teach German.

Soon he was promoted to the Lviv affiliate of the Kharkiv Library Institute, and joined the foreign language department of Lviv Polytechnic University in 1958.

Prof. Leshchuk said he was allowed to teach at the university, despite his father having been a Ukrainian Catholic priest.

"There was a change in the system when Lavrentiy Beria came to power," Prof. Leshchuk said. "He created an upheaval in the Soviet Union, and local people got leadership positions."

"I came to work and they asked me, 'What language do you teach?' Nothing else was asked. Before, they asked where you were from and who your father was. So if there were repressed people in your family, such a person could not be hired. And now everything had changed."

In 1970, Prof. Leshchuk defended his candidate's thesis, and in 1975, the university's Higher Attestation Commission awarded Prof. Leshchuk the title of docent, a ranking recognized in the U.S. as assistant professor.

During these years, Prof. Leshchuk studied and performed extensive research on linguistics, particularly lexicography.

He also built his prolific bibliography, writing hundreds of philological, historical, pedagogical and ethnographic works, performed extensive translations, and pursued his talent for poetry and prose.

Prof. Leshchuk is currently recognized as Ukraine's most prolific living author, having written more than 1,000 works.

In 2004 the academic council of Lviv Polytechnic University awarded Prof. Leshchuk the title of professor, the only one in its foreign languages department.

Never lacking energy, Prof. Leshchuk is just as active in Lviv's academic and civic life as at any point in his life.

"I ask God for His help and strength in everything I do," said Prof. Leshchuk, revealing the source of his seemingly boundless energy.

He plans to defend his doctorate of science dissertation in Kyiv in 2007, and still teaches courses on the German and Latin languages at Lviv Polytechnic.

"The students love him and respect him because he gives his soul and knowledge to them," Mr. Zadorozhnyi said. "He talks to them during breaks, forgetting that he has to go home. The Ukrainian land is rich for such people, but there aren't as many as we'd like to have."

He continues to actively engage in documenting the Lviv Oblast's history and ethnography.

In December 2005 he attended the first academic conference in Belz, the historic city near the Ukrainian-Polish border.

He visited the city of Halych this year to investigate its castles.

Writing remains his passion, having recently conceived the words to the first school anthem for Lviv Polytechnic University.

His downtown Lviv apartment is full of folders with book manuscripts that have yet to be published, ranging from his science fiction fantasies to academic theses.

He is currently trying to publish an extensive academic work, Scientific Terminology: Theory and Practice, a complex research on many languages that argues, among many points, that every national language was intellectualized with terminology in the pursuit of scientific progress.

So what's the secret to living a long and healthy life?

"Do you think I can tell you?" Prof. Leshchuk said, lifting his hands in puzzlement. "I'm trying to find the answer myself. I don't have a ready answer ..."

He suspects his athletic youth, as well as the genes he shares with relatives that lived to be 90 years old, played a role, not to mention one particularly critical factor.

"Every summer, my father brought a few carts loaded with carrots," Prof. Leshchuk said. "He unloaded it, and we children had to eat them. So that's one thing that was very important."

* * *

The following are poems written by Tykhon Leshchuk, selected from his collection, "Vesna Na Svitanku" (Spring at Dawn), published by the Ukrainian Academy of Publishing in Lviv in 2005.

The Dreamy Little River

The little river cuddled up to the old village,
It gathered the tears from my heart,
The stony bank dreams amidst kisses,
And the little river left a silver spark for me.

A whole world of paintings, an endless glow,
The most tender of strings yearn towards creation,
Colorful dreams sing along the path,
Eternity the moment plaited together delicately.

The prayers whisper, ask not the person,
An unfathomable mystery - rest for a minute.
A tender glance conceals, the night lied down to rest,
The fog hastens to cover the earth.

Dreamy little river, mournful little star,
Is it not difficult for you, dearest mother, darling?
Although the world has grown weary, drowns in distress.
You sing a song to life, to freedom.

You Are a Man

When the night will fall,
And tranquil stars extinguish,
And darkness will cover the eyes,
Embrace all open spaces,

Remember forever,
Do not lose hope, faith,
For you are a man -
The Lord's image in full measure.

When Your country is in a haze,
The atom lays waste to the soul,
In the city, the village
The air, the sea, the land.

Do not fall into despair,
Do not complain about your fate,
Stand up for life -
For truth, prosperity, freedom!

And even, when,
the sun's ray will vanish,
you fall in battle,
The heart's fire will not extinguish,

For you are a man,
You are the pre-image of God,
Forever stand for truth!
And God will help you.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 31, 2006, No. 53, Vol. LXXIV

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