No 3(VIII)/2013 Price 19 PLN (w tym 5% VAT) 10 EUR 12 USD 7 GBP ISSN: 2083-7372 quarterly July-September www.neweasterneurope.eu Why Culture Matters Leonidas Donskis, Janusz Makuch, Géza Kovács

Katyń: The Baltic States: A Portrait of A Painful 25 Years after the Janusz Case Singing Revolution Korczak Ireneusz Andres Kasekamp Kamiński Jonathan Bousfield Paweł Śpiewak

Books & Reviews: Ben Judah, Leslie Woodhead, Anton Ponizovsky, Jerzy Pilch, & József Faragó

Is Armenia Jerzy Pomianowski a Strategic Satellite of Russia? On the European Endowment for Ilgar Gurbanov Democracy

Also in the issue:

Stalin’s Shadows ISSN 2083-7372 A Crisis of Feminity in Russian Religious Diplomacy Obama’s Missing Presence Kazakhstan’s Demographic Mess

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Więcej informacji na stronie http://qr.miastoliteratury.pl The Art of Difficult Dialogue

Leonidas donskis

The art of dialogue is always difficult. The ability to listen and hear is accompanied by a sincere wish to check one’s own premises and to examine one’s own life. An unexamined life is not worth living, while an unlived life is not worth examining.

I have recently had the privilege of launching a new book conjointly written with one of the greatest thinkers of our times – Zygmunt Bauman. The book Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity is a high point of my life. Such an opportunity can occur only once in a lifetime. For this, I am immensely grateful to Zygmunt Bauman – a major influence, a great inspiration, and a beloved friend. This book is a dialogue on the possibility of a rediscovery of the sense of belonging as a viable alternative to fragmentation, atomisation, and the resulting loss of sensitivity. It is also a dialogue on the new ethical perspective as the only way out of the trap and multiple threats posed by adiaphorisation of present humanity and its moral imagination. This book of warning also serves as a reminder of the art of life and the life of art, as it is shaped as an epistolary theoretical dialogue between friends. Elaborating on my thoughts, wrapping up, and summing up my hints and questions into a coherent form of discourse, Zygmunt Bauman, in this book, sounds as intimately and friendly as a Renaissance humanist addressing his fellow humanist elsewhere – be this an allusion to Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam, or Thomas More and Peter Giles, or Thomas More and Raphael Hythloday. Such a form allows us to work out a sociological and philosophical dialogue on the sad piece of news contrary to Utopia – namely, that, as I put it in one of my aphorisms penned as a variation on Milan Kundera: globalisation is the last failed hope that, somewhere, there still exists a land where one can escape and find happiness. Or the last failed hope that, somewhere, there still exists a land different 8 Opinion and Analysis Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue

from yours in terms of being able to oppose the sense of meaninglessness, the loss of criteria, and, ultimately, moral blindness and the loss of sensitivity.

Dialogue: Always difficult and unpredictable

The art of dialogue is always difficult. Dialogue, if properly understood, is an art of listening to and hearing each other, instead of simply exchanging two mutually opposing and exclusive discourses, or even worse, disconnected monologues. It was obvious for Plato that simple truths and truisms do not need a dialogue. It is only when you do not know where you would end up with the trajectory of your own or someone else’s thought that you can engage in a real dialogue. The ability to listen and hear is accompanied by a sincere wish, if not theoretical or even existential urge, to check one’s own premises and to examine one’s own life. An unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates or Plato would have had it. Or an unlived life is not worth examining, as I would add myself. Dialogue does not signify the necessity to prevail over your opponent at whatever cost. Instead, it appears as our capacity to arrest our aggressive and agonistic wish to prevail and dominate at the expense of someone else’s dignity, not to mention the truth itself. Renaissance writers and thinkers knew it so well when they emphasised empathy as a crucial element of the art of dialogue. For how can we understand our opponent without accepting – at least temporarily – his or her premises and vocabulary, and then critically examining and rethinking our own concepts and points of departure? Dialogue appears as an exciting venture and as a difficult art in Thomas More’s Utopia where all references to Plato/Socrates are of little help for the narrator in his attempt to understand the fictitious Portuguese sailor Raphael Hythloday’s incredible story. I can only reiterate this obvious truth: the art of dialogue is always difficult. Was it easy for Martin Luther to address Erasmus of Rotterdam in their famous correspondence on Christianity and its fate in Europe? Was it easy for Erasmus to respond to the rebellious German monk who split the Church on the grounds of his fierce opposition to earthly and political, rather than deeply religious, as Erasmus thought, problems of the Church? Or was it easy for Martin Luther to engage in an intense correspondence with Erasmus’s close friend Thomas More? Is the art of European dialogue a fantasy? Is European culture a fantasy? Is it more or less so than European politics? These are the questions that cross my mind over and over again when I try to think of how to reverse the ongoing tragedy of the European Union – namely, its silent and slow demise, which is a fact of reality, to my dismay. European culture sometimes is dismissed as a fantasy or fiction inasmuch as it is argued that there Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue Opinion and Analysis 9

is no such a phenomenon as an all-embracing and all-encompassing European culture. Is this assumption correct? No, it is profoundly wrong, misplaced, and misguided. Only those who are out of touch with the cultural history of Europe can claim Europe to have never been an entity deeply permeated by a unifying and controlling principle, be it the legacy of classical antiquity and Judeo-Christian spiritual trajectories, or be it the value-and-idea system that revolves around liberty and equality, these two heralds and promises of modernity. Pyotr Chaadayev’s Philosophical Letters appear as a profound intellectual testimony to this truth. The Russian philosopher wrote with pain that his country never experienced the great dramas of modernity; nor did it have an historic opportunity to be moulded by the greatest historical-cultural epochs of Europe, such as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Baroque, or the Enlightenment. As Chaadayev argued, Russia had none of these. Therefore, European history did not speak to Russia the language of its great cravings for liberty, emancipation of the human soul, and individual self-fulfilment. For Europe is more than merely an economic and political reality, according to Chaadayev. It is an idea, a religion, a dream, and a trajectory of the soul. In fact, modernity and freedom appear to Russia as something alien, imposed, emulated, or otherwise adopted from without; yet in Europe they became part of the psychology 10 Opinion and Analysis Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue

and even physiology of human individuals. Europe is inconceivable without a certain modern faith, which has become brother to liberty, instead of a tool of oppression. Such were the ideas for which poor Pyotr Chaadayev was pronounced a madman and confined to house arrest. Today they are on the agenda of every mediocre mainstream politician, instead of shaping a dissenting theory of an intellectual naysayer.

Culture of openness and dialogue

That European culture of openness and dialogue is a fantasy can claim only those who have never understood the fact that the foundations for the art of portrait in England were laid by a Fleming, Sir Anthony van Dyck; that the Flemish Primitives greatly influenced their peers in Venice and elsewhere in Italy; that Caravaggio was behind not only Rembrandt but the group of Caravaggisti in Utrecht as well; that Baroque music was an interplay of Italian, German and French genius (think about Bach vis-à-vis Vivaldi or Italian opera composers vis-à-vis Handel); that the greatest Elizabethan dramatists in England were under the spell of Spanish literature coming from the political foe, the country they hated as a political archrival. The dialectic of politics and culture is just as much about Europe as is the dialectic of war and peace. For me, the very symbol of Europe is the great Flemish Primitive Hugo van der Goes’ work of genius, The Triptych of Tommaso Portinari, which hangs at Dialogue is the art of listening the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. The to and hearing each other head of the Medici bank branch in Bruges, instead of simply exchanging Tommaso Portinari, was a patron of Hugo disconnected monologues. van der Goes; his family also supported a German-born genius of Bruges, Hans Memling. This economic, political, aesthetic, mental and existential knot of Italian, Dutch, Flemish, French, and German genius from the Middle Ages onward reveals what I would call the “Soul of Europe”. Europe starts where we fail to classify and categorise a human individual. Europe emerged repeatedly where the philosopher of dialogue par excellence Martin Buber, born in Vienna, who had his Austrian and German upbringing, and who spent much of his time in Lviv, adopted Eastern European sensibilities by committing himself to Hassidic tales and by converting spiritually to Ostjuden, that is, Eastern European Jews at who German Jews used to look down on as regrettable people. Europe emerges where we adopt a common destiny, and a silent and joint dedication to our history and political legacy. Ironically, we fail to see that the only sphere where Europe as our common home became a fact of life, rather than a manifestation of wishful thinking, is education Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue Opinion and Analysis 11 and culture. The future of Europe is unthinkable without the art of translation. It was with sound reason that Milan Kundera made a joke about the role of the work of interpreters in the European Parliament clearly suggesting that it is far more important for the future of the EU than the labour of members of the EP. We will inexorably fail in our EU policies if we keep relegating literature, culture, and the art of translation – that is, the crucial instruments of dialogue – to the margins of European life. If there is a chance that the EU can survive the 21st century as a club of democratic nations or even as a federal state able to blaze the trail to other nations seeking the rule of law and democracy, it will occur only on the condition that we give justice to education and culture. Most importantly, intellectual and cultural dialogue always serves as an anticipation of more just and coherent politics – suffice to mention utopias, dystopias, social criticism in the form of humour, and similar forms of dissent, moral imagination and alternative, which are pivotal for politics. This is far from a detached and politically naive wish; in fact, this is a matter of fact. What is the role of a difficult dialogue in Polish-Lithuanian relations? The role is crucial, and the example of some of the most eminent Polish writers and culture personalities shows how culture can anticipate and pave the way for better politics. Ths is certainly the case with, first and foremost, Czesław Miłosz.

Searching for the Europe of Czesław Miłosz

The year 2011 was the year of Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004). The centenary of the greatest modern Polish poet allows us a glimpse of Central and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 21st century. An eminent and cosmopolitan, albeit deeply rooted in the Lithuanian and Polish historical and cultural sensibilities, European who felt at home in several European languages and cultures, and who spent much of his time in the United States, Miłosz anticipated the crucial dilemmas of European identity and memory which we started tackling immediately after the collapse of the former . The paradox of Miłosz is that it was through the fame of his eye-opening and captivating political essays on the mindset of the Eastern European intelligentsia, rather than his superb poetry and literary essays, that he became a central figure among Central and Eastern Europe’s émigrés in the US and all over the world. The Captive Mind came as a shock to the West. The same applies to Joseph Brodsky and other great Central and Eastern Europeans who captivated the West as public intellectuals and social critics, rather as brilliant writers or living classics of literature. 12 Opinion and Analysis Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue

He stripped much of Western Europe and the US of their political myopia and naiveté concerning the nature of the communist regime. He did so by showing that not only coercion and violent politics, but also the vanity and fear of Eastern European intellectuals played a pivotal role in the emergence of what Miłosz described, with the stroke of genius, as Ketman – the art to act in the public concealing one’s true political views or even religious and cultural identity. As the recently deceased British-American intellectual historian and public intellectual Tony Judt (1948-2010), who, among his other areas of competence, was knowledgeable of Central and Eastern Europe is more than merely an Europe’s intellectual dramas and history economic and political reality – of ideas, subtly noted reviewing Miłosz’s it is an idea, a dream, and The Captive Mind and commenting on the phenomenon of Ketman, “writing for a trajectory of the soul. the desk drawer becomes a sign of inner liberty,” which is a sad lot of an Eastern European intellectual frequently bound to choose between his country and his conscience. In the pivotal part of his perceptive review, Judt reveals fear of the indifference as a primary moving force behind mental acrobatics and immoral manoeuvring described by Miłosz as Ketman. Judt quotes from The Captive Mind: “Fear of the indifference with which the economic system of the West treats its artists and scholars is widespread among Eastern intellectuals. They say it is better to deal with an intelligent devil than with a good-natured idiot.” In fact, it is not infrequent in Central and Eastern Europe that culture precedes and shapes politics. In the case of Lithuania, it was through the words of two most eminent Polish men of letters, people of multiple identities, such as Miłosz himself and the Parisian Polish émigré Jerzy Giedroyc (1906-2000), a highly respected editor of a leading Polish-émigré literary-political journal, Kultura (1947-2000), that it became possible to confront some worn-out clichés concerning the clashes of memory that occurred between 20th century Lithuania and . From the Lithuanian side, Tomas Venclova, a Lithuanian poet and literary scholar, who also acts as Professor of Slavic Literature at Yale, was in the lead from the very beginning of the debate on Poland vis-à-vis Lithuania. In his essays and poetry, Venclova easily and naturally migrates between Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, and Jewish sensibilities bridging these cultures and identities. In this, Venclova remains unique among Lithuanian writers and thinkers. Born in Klaipeda and raised in Kaunas, Venclova, in his essays and poetry, comes to project his worldview onto Vilnius, a characteristically Central European city around whose poetic vision revolves the entire map of his thought. This is, perhaps, best revealed in A Dialogue about a City, a masterpiece of the epistolary genre Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue Opinion and Analysis 13 written by Venclova and Miłosz. Two perspectives on Vilnius, Lithuanian and Polish, not only complement one another; they reveal how human memory and sentiment work to re-enact history, bridging it with the present. A Dialogue about a City was written in the late 1970s, yet it took quite a while for both countries to put behind their mutual animosities, which was achieved nearly overnight when Poland and Lithuania signed, in 1994, a historic treaty of friendship and cooperation. It recognised Vilnius once and for all as the unquestionable capital of Lithuania. This cleared the air and paved the way for a friendship, a natural outcome of the centuries of a common state and shared culture. A happy combination of liberal patriotism, multiple and communicating identities, and the readiness to criticise one’s own country, instead of searching for the devil elsewhere and, first and foremost, in an opponent, best exemplified by Miłosz, still stands as his invitation to us to search for the Europe as an extended motherland, or the native Europe, to put it in his words. Local sensibility combined with sensitivity and attentiveness to other cultures and identities could become a clue to present dilemmas of the troubled European identity. We should search for the Europe of Czesław Miłosz, instead of returning to the hibernated and frozen dramas of memory and identity, which appear as the unholy legacy of the 20th century.

The treason of intellectuals?

On the Lithuanian side, Tomas Venclova appears as arguably the most eminent figure in the art of a difficult dialogue, especially in trying to restore historically formed relations between Lithuania and Poland. Venclova is regarded as one of the most accomplished and noted Lithuanian humanists in the world, and rightly so. An eminent Lithuanian poet, literary scholar and translator, Venclova had long acted as a conscious and dedicated dissident opposed to the entire project of the former Soviet Union with its crimes against humanity, severe human rights violations, brutal suppression of all fundamental rights and civil liberties, and violent politics. Having spent a good part of his life in Lithuania, he was exiled to the West in 1977 where he built his academic career, eventually becoming Professor of Slavic Literatures at Yale University. Far from a conservative nationalist, Venclova has always spoken out in favour of liberal values. This could be a clue to his deeply moving and sensitive essay on the tragedy of Lithuania, the Holocaust that claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Lithuanian Jews. The essay in question, The Jews and the Lithuanians written in the 1970s, revealed Tomas Venclova as the first Lithuanian writer who showed the real scope of the 14 Opinion and Analysis Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue

tragedy admitting the guilt and responsibility of those Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis and actively participated in the massacre of Lithuanian Jews. Deeply embedded in the best intellectual traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, his collection of essays, Forms of Hope, reads like a moral map of a great European public intellectual and political thinker. Not long ago, Venclova made a strong and effective comeback to the public domain of Lithuania publishing, in July 2010, an elegantly written and caustic essay It Suffocates Me Here. Wittily referring to the clash of the character Europe emerges where Strepsiades, a staunch defender of the ancient Greek tradition, and its challenger Socrates, both we adopt a common destiny depicted in Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds, and a joint dedication to our Venclova described some of the ongoing political history and political legacy. and moral debates in Lithuania as a backlash of parochialism and moral provincialism, and as a fear of modernity, applying harsh words and judging his country from a critical perspective. Without the shadow of a doubt, the essay became a landmark in the area of public debate. Small wonder that a dozen angry and noisy reactions to Venclova’s essay appeared over the following two months, as this piece of polemical writing dealt a blow to conservative and nationalistic writers of the country. The bitter response would not be long, though. Adding insult to injury, Venclova’s critics came to describe him as an arrogant and rootless cosmopolitan, whereas the opposing camp, the supporters of the aforementioned essay, implied that Venclova came up with a timely and principled call upon his country to take a close look at itself at the beginning of the 21st century to be able to rethink its past and present. Moreover, much in the spirit of Julien Benda’s manifesto on the intellectual’s responsibility, La trahison des clercs (The Treason of Intellectuals), Venclova’s essay became an attack against those who regard the nation-state as the end in itself, and who see the paramount mission of the intellectual in the defence of that nation-state at any price against the supposed evils of modernity and globalisation. To his credit, Venclova was correct in raising this issue, as the Lithuanian media has been peppered over the past months with a number of sceptical comments on the loss of Lithuanian identity and even independence after the country’s accession to the EU. More than that, some of the former political activists and heroes of Lithuania who fought for its independence in the national liberation movement Sąjūdis in the late 1980s, had gone so far as to suggest that the European Union is hardly any different from the Soviet Union, and that both these political formations were, and continue to be, the gravediggers of the European peoples and of their independence and liberty. Leonidas Donskis, The Art of Difficult Dialogue Opinion and Analysis 15

What can be said in this regard? No matter how critical or sceptical we could be of European bureaucracy or the new managerial class that ignore local sensibilities and cultural differences, such a comparison does not merit serious attention. Yet this new sort of rhetoric sent a clear message that part of the former political and intellectual elite of Lithuania found themselves deeply alienated from the new political reality of Europe. In ancient Athens, writes Venclova, Socrates died for his freedom of thought, doubt, and the right to question everything around. As we learn from Socrates, uncertainty is not the enemy of a wise man, and an unexamined life is not worth living – these pieces of perennial wisdom became an inescapable part of critical European thought. For Strepsiades and his modern followers, everything has to be certain and easily predictable. Therefore, one’s little garden becomes more important than universal humanity. Whatever the case, says Venclova, it is Strepsiades, rather than the greatest cultural hero of Western Europe and the patron saint of the art of dialogue Socrates, who is alive and well in present Lithuania. According to Venclova, to defend the pattern of identity and statehood of the 19th century, instead of modern moral and political sensibilities, is nothing other than a betrayal of the mission that intellectuals must carry. The question remains quite timely and serious: what is the pattern of identity that Lithuania and the two other Baltic states could maintain as a bridge between their precious cultural legacy and the world? In fact, an identity crisis is part of the search for identity. The Baltic states that surfaced to the world restoring their existence and securing their place in the political, mental and intellectual maps of the world, know it better than any other country or region on the globe. Whatever the case, dialogue – this happy combination of curiosity, courage and empathy – would be unthinkable nowadays without what Vytautas Kavolis, an émigré Lithuanian sociologist in the US, described as Miłosz-like pattern of identity – dedication to one’s language and culture combined with attentiveness and openness to other cultures and their sensitivities. Without this remarkable ability to reconcile fact and value bridging sensibilities, languages and cultures, the art of difficult dialogue does not exist.

Leonidas Donskis is a member of New Eastern Europe’s editorial board. He is also a member of the European Parliament from Lithuania. He is a philosopher, writer, political theorist, commentator and historian of ideas. His most recent book Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity, co-written with Zygmunt Bauman, is available from Polity Press. A Nation of

roMan kabachiy

The Cossack myth is the backbone of the Ukrainian nation. Over the centuries the myth has passed into history, but has recently seen a revival as Ukrainians seek to strengthen their nation and brand.

In the middle of the 17th century, French traveller and engineer Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan visited the territories of modern Ukraine. He is credited for creating one of the first maps of Ukraine in its entirety:A General Map of Ukraine. There are several known versions of this map, one of which was titled Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina (A General Depiction of the Empty Plains, commonly called Ukraine). Although the name “Ukraine” was used earlier, it was Beauplan’s cartographic work that popularised its usage in describing the lands between the Don and the San rivers (these two rivers limit Ukraine according to its present national anthem). Beauplan called Ukraine “the land of the Cossacks”. Apparently the Polish Crown treated it similarly, seeing no other distinction in Ukraine except for the Cossacks as a special social/military class. Therefore even today, Polish historiography refers to the war against the Polish Crown, under the command of , as “the Cossack rebellion”, seeing no other national or cultural grounds for these “rebellion”.

Ukrainian myth

In his work Description d’Ukranie we can find detailed descriptions of Cossack appearance, their customs and traditions. The fact that Beauplan lived in Ukraine for around 20 years gives a lot of weight to the authenticity of his descriptions. He described the Cossacks as “extremely strong, can easily overcome cold and heat, hunger and thirst, they do not become tired during war, they are brave and courageous and so daring that they do not value their lives”. The Cossacks are people who 150 History Roman Kabachiy, A Nation of Cossacks

escaped from the corvée (in Ukrainian panshchyna, referring to the taxes and fees imposed by the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth – editor’s note) to the wild steppes and founded their own settlements and social structures. These settlements became known as zymivnyky (from zyma, meaning winter), homesteads for two or three hosts (a was a unit or administrative division). The Zaporizhian Sich became the military organisation (there have been nine Sichs in different places throughout history – including in present-day Zaporizhia, Dnepropetrovsk and Kherson oblasts). Palankas – the territorial districts of the Zaporizian Sich, were the economic and administrative structures of the Cossacks. Apart from Ukrainian Cossacks, who were the most Western in the whole Cossack phenomenon, there were also unions of Russian Cossacks (Don, Orenburg, Terek and Transbaikal). The distinction between Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks was that despite their liberties and privileged status granted by the , the former still served the tsars and defended the southern borders of the Russian Empire. The Ukrainian Cossacks, on the other hand, defended Ukraine as well as themselves, although not necessarily the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of which Ukraine was then an integral part. Thus, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had to continuously renegotiate the cooperation with the Sich on various matters, including when Warsaw needed the support of Cossack troops in times of war. Eventually, in order not to torture themselves with negotiations with the Sich, the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth allowed the Cossacks to create divisions of registered settlements, the number of which was strictly regulated, and located not in the “wild steppe” but in the small towns of present-day Central Ukraine. At that time, this area was the eastern frontier. Paradoxically, this very decision, after the majority of the Sich were destroyed by Catherine the Great, later contributed to the conservation of the Cossack class in Central Ukraine, preserving their freedom as opposed to the serfs, as well as the formation of the new Ukrainian myth of the origin of the Cossacks. What was so special about the Cossacks that made them the heroes of almost half of all Ukrainian folk songs, enticed adult men Roman Kabachiy, A Nation of Cossacks History 151

“to join the Cossacks”, while boys were taught about the “Cossack” character and “being a Cossack” from childhood? Not only did the Cossacks defend Ukrainian settlements from Tatar raids and were skilful warriors, they also spoke several languages, had a strong musical tradition and some of them, the Kharakternyky, knew the basics of magic and hypnosis. And of course, they were unrivalled lovers and adulterers. The Cossack myth In the songs, the girls see the Cossacks off to war and ask to be taken them along. In war, a Cossack has was reinforced a sabre for his girl, a nosohriika pipe (a kind of tobacco in Ukrainian folk songs. pipe with a short cigarette holder; the word means “something that keeps the nose warm” – translator’s note) for his mother, and a black horse for his brother. The Cossacks treated peasants condescendingly, labelling them with the disrespectful nickname “grechkosii”. The songs refer to the Grechkosii as “lying on a stove bench” while the Cossack fight. In fact, in the 19th-century reality, the Cossacks differed very little from the peasants. The only difference being that the Cossacks maintained a free status, although both had the same occupations. Rostyslav Jendyk, the author of the Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies, suggests that Ukrainians are divided into two basic races – the dominating “Dinarics” (Adriatic type), and the partially “Nordics” (in north of the country on the border with Belarus). Thus, the Cossack ideal is easily recognisable in the “Dinarics”. Jendyk described Ukrainians in the following manner: “People of the Dinaric race are particularly known for their belligerency and courage. There is much evidence of this, from Sultanic chancelleries to Viennese generals, some trembling before the Zaporozhians; while others praised the Tyroleans of the East [the nickname of Ukrainians from Galicia – editor’s note] … bloody vengeance and vendetta has been maintained the longest among the ‘Dinarics’, and one can doubt whether it is irrevocable.”

Passing into history

The were disbanded by Russian troops in 1775, the remainders of the formations were resettled under the name of the Black Sea Cossack Host at Kuban, where the Cossacks became as loyal to the as the Russian Don or , although they remained Ukrainian-speaking. Thus, the Cossack myth in Ukraine passed into history. Of course, this myth had no room for the negative chapters of history, such as the slaughter of the population of the Belarusian city of Mogilev by Severyn Nalyvayko’s rebels in 1595; or the 1654 ethnocide of Jews during the in 1648-1654, and the Haidamak rebellion in 1768. The greatest admirer and myth-creator of the Cossacks, attributed as being one of the founders of the Ukrainian nation, was the great poet Taras Shevchenko (1814- 152 History Roman Kabachiy, A Nation of Cossacks

1861). In Shevchenko’s time, the word “Ukrainian” did not exist (the origination of this term is ascribed to the Galician Poles). Instead, Shevchenko, when using the word Ukraine, referred to its inhabitants as “our people”, “fellow countrymen” and “Cossacks”, using these words as synonyms. In his poem To the Poles, a quote from which adorns the monument to Shevchenko in Warsaw opens with the verse “As we were the Cossacks”. Appealing to “friend-brother” Pole, Shevchenko writes: “So give thy hand to the Cossack / And give thy clear heart!” The fact of the existence of the Cossack nation was obvious to Shevchenko. Some of Shevchenko’s works were turned Ukrainian folk tales and songs into folk songs, cropping up in dozens of of Cossack origin posed a direct versions, with their performers unsuspecting of the fact that their author was none other threat to the Soviet mythology. than “Father Taras”. For instance, he cleverly weaves together a song performed by a Kobzar (or bard) at the city market in his poem Haydamaky. The song is about the failure of the Cossacks at Berestechko in 1651. If you hear a Kuban Cossack singing this song and ask about the author, you will get a surprised stare – as it is so proficiently written in a folk style. The author of the poem asks the battlefield at Berestechko why it changed from green to black. The field replies that it turned black because of the blood shed for liberty; and inside a four-mile radius lay the corpses of Zaporozhians, with ravens pecking out their eyes. The field is also sure that it “will be green again”, but “you”, i.e. the Cossacks, would never. The loss of Cossack freedom and Cossack liberty is a common thread of many Ukrainian folk songs. One of the most popular lines in folks songs is: “And for about two hundred years a Cossack is in bondage.” This line can even be heard in a folk song reproduced in a modern rock version by the band, of the same name as Shevchenko’s poem, Haydamaky. At the time of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, when Ukraine attempted to revive its independence for the first time in a long period, military formations of the Ukrainian People’s Republic tried to affiliate themselves with the Cossack tradition. There were regiments named after Khmelnytsky, and famous Doroshenko and Polubotok. One of the regiments, which were quite successful in their fight against the Bolsheviks, was named “Black Zaporozhians”. Their clothes imitated the Cossacks, even though 150 years had passed since the Sich disappeared. The Sirozhupannyky (greycoats) regiment also had attire of Cossack origin.

Lost lifestyle and revival

Ukraine lost its war of independence in 1921. Its lands were divided between Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Soviet Union, which created the sham Roman Kabachiy, A Nation of Cossacks History 153

Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic. Through collectivisation, the Holodomor famine and the repression of Ukrainians, the Soviet authorities demonstrated that they were not willing to hear any reference to its previous national life. People’s choirs had to open their performances with songs about Stalin and Lenin, and only later perhaps a song about a Cossack or viburnum (a plant and one of the national symbols of Ukraine). The costumes for such choirs had to be primitive, in order to revolt against the intellectuals and city dwellers. Musical instruments that were alien to Ukrainians were introduced, with the kobza being replaced by the bandura. Wandering folk bards posed a direct danger to the Soviet authorities and mythology as they were the carriers of Ukraine’s historical memory. When they performed their ballads about the glorious Cossack past in the streets and squares, it was a denial of the communist “better tomorrow”. Thus, in 1934 the remaining Kobzars were shot during a specially organised congress in . They were replaced with girls playing the bandura, singing about love in stylised voices. A new Many Ukrainians see the term emerged among conscious Ukrainian attempt to connect with intellectuals: sharovarshchyna, referring to the the Cossack past as kitsch. victory of form over substance (the term is a reference to the wide Turkish-style pants worn by the Cossacks). Only the symbols, a primitive national costume à la Cossack and a girl in a plastic wreath with ribbons remained, but the lifestyle, namely the beliefs and faith, was lost. Some revival did occur with Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. Between September 1st-5th 1990, the first party in opposition to the communists, the People’s Movement of Ukraine, and the Shevchenko Association of , organised a massive celebration of the 500th anniversary of Ukrainian Cossacks. The festivities took place in the village of Kapulivka, where Ivan Sirko, one of the most famous of the Sich, was buried, and in the city of Zaporizhia, in the middle of which, on the river Dnieper, lies the island of Khortytsia, the cradle of the first Sich. About 500,000 participants gathered at the festivities – and Ukrainians again realised that they should not be afraid of the authorities. After these events, a Cossack revival took place, which moved in several directions. Many Cossack associations sprung up, which were often described with the Russian expression “disguised clowns”. These were funny assemblies with their own “otamans”, or generals, which awarded each other with orders and medals invented by themselves. The other movement took the form of paramilitary formations in Ukraine. These were pro-Russian Cossacks, with their main bases located in Crimea and Donbas. Their ideology is anti-Ukraine, anti-Muslim, anti-American and anti- NATO. They block Crimean Tatars from building new mosques, erect “memorial 154 History Roman Kabachiy, A Nation of Cossacks

crosses” without official approval, and protest against military training with Western countries (for example the Sea Breeze exercise jointly conducted with NATO). Their representatives fought in Abkhazia on the side of the Abkhazians against Georgia, and in Transnistria on the side of the Transnistrians against Moldovans. In fact, they are not Cossacks, they are “kazaki” (a Russian version of the word “Cossacks”, different from the Ukrainian word “kozaky” – translator’s note). Recently, Vitaly Khramov, one of the leaders of the Crimean Cossacks from Sobol, was deported from Ukraine to Russia. Connecting with the past

From the modern perspective, the most adequate and justified movement is that of Cossack education, aimed at building an individual who is sound both mentally and physically. The Ukrainian non-profit foundation “Spas” is involved in such activities. It organises outdoor camps for children (including girls), and gives lessons in both Cossack martial arts and the “hopak”, a famous Cossack dance style. Participants in the camps perform with weapons, five-metre-long whips, horseback riding and acrobatics. These camps can be viewed as a kind of scouting, but with a strong national element. Quite a number of modern Ukrainians treat the attempt to connect with the Cossack past and Cossack spirit as kitsch, with many seeing it as related to the policy of creating a primitive ethnic component and reducing it to sharovarshchyna, as was done during Soviet times. Today, however, associations with Cossacks are used to popularise Ukrainians as a people, creating a stronger Ukrainian nation and brand, and allowing it to distinguish itself in the world. Modern Kyiv artist Andriy Yermolenko considers the maiden wreathes worn by girls and oseledtsi, the typical male Cossack haircut, to be no worse than the Viking horns and braids worn by the Swedes and Danes. An interesting example of a modern imitation of Cossack-style was shown to the world by Ukrainian boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk at the London 2012 Olympics. Not only did he wear the characteristic “” hairstyle, but also danced the hopak after he won. Such examples demonstrate the promise “to show the enemies” that Ukrainians are “of the Cossack nation” is the reason why the reference to Cossacks is also in the Ukrainian national anthem – not to mention the Ukrainians from the all-male dancing group Kazaky, with their trademark of dancing on high heels.

Translated by Olena Shynkarenko

Roman Kabachiy is a Ukrainian historian and journalist based in Kyiv.

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