POET VASYL STUS, A SOVIET DISSIDENT, DESERVED BETTER

18 March 2009

Yuriy Lukanov, Kyiv Post

           Under the pretense of local self-government, Donetsk authorities killed the initiative to                 rename a university in the late dissident’s honor.

The rector of Donetsk University, Volodymyr Shevchenko, was nearly stripped of his honorary title of Hero of Ukraine, the highest honor in the country. Opponents called for this to happen, but it didn’t, although the actual attempt is significant.

The whole scandal started after an initiative to name the university after its most famous alumnus, poet Vasyl Stus, who died in the camps during the Leonid Brezhnev era. But some people in the miners’ capital (as they often refer to Donetsk) saw the hand of Kyiv intruding into internal affairs of the university, and raised a hullabaloo.

It seemed quite right: All regions are shouting about the need to broaden the rights of local communities, while Kyiv does not bother to move a finger to reform local self-government.

So, it seemed that the local community itself decided to implement its rights, and the people of Donetsk made Kyiv realize that the central authorities should not stick their noses into other people’s businesses. But this is just what’s on the surface. In essence, this conflict runs much deeper than a trivial fight between government in Kyiv and the local government. One can even say this is a poetic metaphor that reflects what is currently happening in Ukraine.

One of the gloomy November days of 1989, with an eerie feeling, I was listening to my own voice on Voice of America radio station. The creepiness came because this was my very first report, which could have landed one in jail not long before then.

The report was about the reburial of Ukrainian dissidents in Kyiv who had died in Soviet Siberian political concentration camps. Nearly 10,000 people took to the street to walk these three heroes to the Baikove Cemetery in the capital. One of the dead was Vasyl Stus.

It was the first time masses of people had heard about this poet who was jailed and died for human rights activities. Russian writer Mikhail Kheifets, who was imprisoned with Stus and later published memoirs about him, wrote about the poet’s natural aristocratism. In his own words, the other prisoners respected Stus so much that the whole lot of them went on hunger strike when he was unfairly locked up in a punishment cell.

The author of these memoirs, who  now lives in Israel, learned Ukrainian specifically to read Vasyl’s poems, and spoke highly about his poetry. He pointed out that Stus was not a nationally limited writer. He translated a lot of world literature, particularly German poets like Rainer Maria Rilke. Stus knew German well, and – according to Kheifets -- knew Russian better than the Russians themselves.

But today, the media in Donetsk are running story after story quoting a few things out of Stus’ letters published in a multi-volume edition of his works, trying to prove that he was a nationalist and did not like Donbass, where he lived from age two to 25. So, the conclusion they offer is: You cannot name a university after this nationalistically limited writer and churlish poet.

These publications appeared after it came out that a group of students from Donetsk National University collected signatures to support the idea of renaming their educational institution after Stus, who had graduated from it.

They wrote a letter to Education Minister Ivan Vakarchuk because the procedure for renaming a university requires ministerial support. But, in the meantime, Donetsk was covered by a massive  wave of anti-Stus propaganda. Those who initiated the whole process were labeled “the hand of Kyiv.”

The university’s staff – much like in times of the U.S.S.R.– almost unanimously voted against the renaming (one staffer abstained). But today the unanimous vote can only mean pressure from the authorities -- in this case,   the local authorities.

In Donetsk, they openly talk about inferiority of the Ukrainian language and actively oppose the Ukrainian nationalism that is supposed to be personified by President Victor  Yushchenko. They say Donetsk has always spoken Russian. At the same time, they are not perturbed by the fact that many famous penmen came from Donbass. One example is the classic of Ukrainian literature, Volodymyr Sosyura; another is Ivan Dzyuba, author of a book about Russification of Ukraine. After the book was published, Dzyuba was arrested by representatives of Soviet special services.

Of course, the residents of Donetsk have a right to their own point of view and can express it and defend it. The whole concept of local self-government is based on making decisions in your own home, to your own liking. Of course, the regions of Ukraine aspire to finally have more freedom from the center and more power.

In the time of the liberal government of President Victor Yushchenko, they use the slightest of opportunities to demonstrate their will. At the same time, the local communities are failing to notice that -- freed from the dictate of Kyiv -- they end up under the dictate of local leaders. The latter often turn the craving to demonstrate their own power and independence into an end in itself. They turn the whole process into absurdity. It raises a natural suspicion that the local leaders need more power to create a local dictatorship.

The controversy over Stus in Donetsk is revealing. The badly educated leaders have no understanding of the scale of what is going on. One day, Ukrainians will ask one another: “Who is Victor Yanukovych?” Historians will tell them: “He used to be a political leader who came into the limelight at the time when Stus’ poetry flourished, when his poems started to sell more and more.”

They will say the same about other leaders, not just the ones from Donetsk And the delegation of powers to local communities will have nothing to do with it.