The National Culture of Ukraine

The story of Lt. Artem Melnyk is a story of two wars — that which he is fighting with a forward observation crew for artillery liaison and the one within himself about young Sergeant Dymtrus Ylchuk, a replacement drone operator, whom he first distrusts, learns to admire and then despises. Ylchuk makes like a hero too quickly, handles all the angles with confidence, stands up under unceasing shellfire and demands made on courage with competence until Melnyk at last can commend him. Oh leave, Melnyk meets the wealthy Ukrainian, Mrs. Honcharuk, and her privileged daughter, Angelique, but it is Ylchuk with whom Monique falls in love and his Ukrainian blood, which cannot surmount the fact of her is a powerful Russian, drives her to travel to Moscow. From then on hate controls Melnyk’s dealings with Ylchuk, forces them into a long odds assignment — of locating and directing fire on enemy tanks– drives him to a deadly vengeance when Ylchuk betrays his cowardice and treachery, and leaves him a maimed casualty. Solidly set in its war background, the television mini-series promises a violent climax for a strong, masculine story.

Characters

Lt. Artem Melnyk –

Sgt. Dymtrus Ylchuk –

Angelique Honcharuk –

Victoria Honcharuk –

Large Sarge –

Skinny Sarge –

The Major –

The General –

Madame Belyaev –

Original Draft – The Girl in Kherson

In the final year of the current Ukrainian/Russian War, units of the Ukrainian Army are knocking on the door of Donetsk, trying to dislodge the Russian soldiers from a captured city. 1st Lt. Artem Melnyk is in charge of an artillery observation unit that has just lost its communications sergeant. A truckload of fresh young soldiers arrives, one of whom, Sergeant Dymtrus Ylchuk admits to communications training and experience flying drones. Ylchuk is immediately appointed the unit’s communications sergeant by Melnyk.

Ylchuk is a lady’s man and a schemer, acquiring girlfriends, food, and other luxury items. Ylchuk is the son of a wealthy businessman in Kyiv; in order to avoid criminal charges of trying to bribe a member of the local Draft Board, Ylchuk has “volunteered” for combat duty in the war. Ylchuk does show bravery while rescuing a group of men trapped in a minefield and while defending a position from a Russian attack almost single-handedly. Ylchuk saved Melnyk’s life but still Melnyk has his reservations about the man.

The Colonel grants Melnyk leave in the riverside town of Kherson while he’s recovering from a bullet wound. While in the military hospital, Melnyk is attracted to Angelique Honcharuk. They go to dinner, and she explains she was born in Moscow, but has lived in Ukraine since she was a small child. Melnyk asks her to meet him in the same cafe the next week. He waits, but Angelique doesn’t show, and he walks out despondent, only to be asked to have a drink by an older American woman who has apparently been waiting for him. It is Angelique’s mother, who was checking him out. She takes him to her riverfront villa to join Angelique. The two spend a great deal of time together after that. One night he tells her he loves her, and Angelique finally reveals to him that she is afraid to get involved with a US soldier because her father is Vladimir Putin, and she has seen the general hate all Ukrainian soldiers seem to have for the Russian dictator/aggressor. Melnyk is confused and leaves, not sure about his feelings.

After a week of anguished consideration, Melnyk decides to put aside the prejudices he has had about Angelique’s parentage, and goes to see her. She and her mother are delighted to see Melnyk. Melnyk invites Angelique to go out on a date with him. They end up going to a smokey jazz cafe, where they are surprised to see Ylchuk play a fantastic jazz solo on a trumpet, to the acclaim of the entire French crowd. Ylchuk joins Melnyk and Angelique at their table, and Melnyk is left on the sidelines as Ylchuk and Angelique are immediately drawn to each other. Ylchuk and Angelique dance closely late into the night. After Melnyk takes Angelique home, she asks Melnyk to tell Ylchuk about her father being Russian President, Putin.

Back on surveillance duty of a town where the Russians have set up, Melnyk does so, and it doesn’t seem to bother Ylchuk. Then the Russians begin shelling their observation position. After three days of shelling, Melnyk suggests to Ylchuk that they should infiltrate the village on a covert mission to observe from a cell tower in the middle of town; Melnyk goes in to see the Colonel who says he’ll pass the idea on up to Headquarters.

The next weekend, Melnyk and Ylchuk return to Kherson to visit Angelique. Once again, Melnyk is forced to the sidelines as the handsome and smooth-talking Ylchuk takes over. Melnyk returns to his hotel room alone. Ylchuk and Angelique stay out most of the night. When Ylchuk returns to the hotel, he tells Melnyk he’s asked Angelique to marry him, and she has said yes. Melnyk is shattered, but he puts on a brave face. He tells Ylchuk about the paperwork he will need to fill out to get the army’s permission to marry. When they return to their unit, Ylchuk immediately asks for the marriage permission form. Two months pass, and Ylchuk still hasn’t received an answer from the army on his request to marry. On his way to report to the Colonel, while talking to Corporal Gida, Melnyk finds out that Ylchuk had indeed picked up the completed paperwork three weeks earlier. In fact, Ylchuk had told the corporal that the whole thing was a gag. Melnyk is furious when he hears this.

Ukrainian service members fire a shell from a M777 Howitzer at a front line, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kharkiv Region, Ukraine July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Thereafter, the Colonel tells Melnyk that Headquarters has approved the covert operation of Melnyk with Ylchuk as his drone operator. Melnyk asks for a few hours leave for both of them to take care of some personal matters in Kherson, to which the Colonel agrees.

Melnyk and Ylchuk go to the Honcharuk mansion, and Melnyk forces Ylchuk to admit to Angelique that Ylchuk is not going to marry her. Angelique runs away in tears. Ylchuk tries to explain himself to Melnyk (“it was a kick”), and Melnyk punches him. Melnyk then goes out to find Angelique. It turns out she had tried to drown herself, but she is saved by a fisherman.

Back at the Ukrainian Army base, Melnyk and Ylchuk prepare for their mission. Soon after leaving, Melnyk tells Ylchuk he is going to kill him. Ylchuk responds that threat “works both ways”.

On the mission, they encounter and kill a Russian soldier together. The duo establishes themselves at 2 a.m. in the cell tower, calls in, and reports their observations, especially that a hidden section of the village contains an enormous Russian artillery/ammo dump. Melnyk sends an order back to the base to begin a bombardment that will certainly destroy most of the Donetsk. They leave the tower, and are soon discovered by a Russian patrol. Ylchuk is shot by the Russians and dies after Melnyk drags him out of the line of fire, but Melnyk is pinned down. The Russian officers, panicking at the thought of Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk, order an immediate evacuation. Hearing this, Melnyk grabs the radio and tells the Ukrainian artillery to begin firing. Shells fall on the village and the ammo dump, and everything blows up.

The television mini-series ends with Melnyk relating how he was found under the rubble still alive by Ukrainian troops, and brought to a hospital, where his right arm was amputated. He had gotten two letters from Angelique. In one of them she says that she has learned that Ylchuk was killed. She also tells Melnyk that her mother has died. When Melnyk is finally released from the hospital after many months, he decides to go to Kherson to visit Angelique one last time before returning to work on a farm. He finds that she is now heading up a school for war orphans. She invites Melnyk to come into one of the classrooms. As a tribute to Melnyk and all the soldiers who fought to free Kherson, the children sing a song of appreciation. During the singing, Angelique and Melnyk look earnestly at each other.

All that we have said with regard to the ethnology of the Ukrainian people shows they are a people possessed of a many-sided individuality. If up to now it has been ignored in the West, it is because people there have been living under the somewhat hypnotic influence of the Russian Empire. European thought has been accustomed to bowing unquestionably to the suggestions and official tradition of Moscow and Petrograd. Now, the Ukrainians have the very legitimate pretension to present things as they really are.

Without a doubt, the civilization of the elite, thanks to the more favorable conditions, has realized during a century much more progress in Russia than in Ukraine, but also, without any doubt, the organic civilization of the people themselves, the ethnological culture, is much more advanced in Ukraine than in Russia. Whilst Moscovia, dwelling outside all civilizing influence for centuries, submitted to the sole influence of the Tartars, Ukraine preserved its relations with the civilized world: it was impressed by Byzantium, and then by all the Western civilization. In the seventeenth century, when she contracted a union with Moscovia, Ukraine had fewer illiterates than she has now, after two and a half centuries of Russian domination. And it was in this same century that the Muscovites endeavored to awake to the intellectual life, and it was to the Ukrainians, to the scholars of the Academy of Kiev, that they appealed for their education.

Centuries of oppression have hindered the progress of high culture in Ukraine, but this oppression has never abolished the efflorescence of the letters and sciences. If in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries writers used a conventional language written in a more or less archaic style, we see, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the litterateur employ the popular and living language of Ukraine, that of the poetic song and the legendary ballads of the country.

The father of the new Ukrainian literature was a citizen of Poltava, of the name of Kotliarevsky. His dramatic play, “Natalka Poltavka,” is still played on all the Ukrainian stages. His humorous and satiric adaptation of the “Eneide,” in which he put in the place of Trojans the Cossacks dispersed by Catherine II, had a tremendous reception.

After Kotliarevsky, a pleiade of poets and writers succeeded, among which dominated a veritable genius: Shevchenko. The latter has written some admirable lyrical poems: he has made the tragic and glorious past live again, and he has exalted the sentiment of the country. His influence on national and foreign literature has been immense.

Today Ukrainian literature abounds with poets, novelists, and dramatists. Among the contemporary writers, one distinguishes the fine figure of Ivan Franko, author of the prophetical poem of “Moses,” the delicate, aesthetic, and famous novelist, Kotzubinsky, the elegiac poet, Oles, and perhaps one of the most original and vivacious writers of the European East, Vinnichenko.

The Ukrainian literature is, with the exception of the Russian and Polish, the richest of the Slavonic literatures.

The Ukrainian theatre had, at the close of the nineteenth century, a great influence over national development. The Russian Censor unfortunately only authorized productions of a popular style, and sometimes historical plays. The plays of a more serious nature and translations were rigorously forbidden.

This oppression has caused the drama to be of a very original type. A talented group of artists has made the drama celebrated, by conjuring up the past, showing the life and the sadness of the people, and bringing to the fore the melancholy Ukrainian songs, and has kept alive the national sentiment.

Today, the Ukrainian drama is undergoing a transformation. To its repertoire are being added the best works of the European dramatic literature and also Ukrainian plays, the production of which was impossible under the old regime.

The music of the Ukrainians is well known to the Slavonic races. If the Ukrainians are proud of anything, it is their songs. The most illustrious of the Ukrainian composers is Liscenko, who has arranged the music of the greater part of the old songs and has written a great number of original works. Various causes have hindered the expansion of the musical genius of the Ukrainian people. But everything allows us to hope that the young school of musicians which has been formed in Kiev will achieve satisfactory results.

The historical studies and technical researches conducted by Ukrainian scholars take place at the present time with the object of disseminating knowledge of the ancient style of architecture and painting. Though each of these arts has evidently received inspiration from Byzantium, and then from the West, they are based on a national art that is notable in the numerous motifs of original ornamentation.

The best-known of the Ukrainian painters are the portrait-painter, Borovikovsky (commencement of nineteenth century), and the poet, Shevchenko. In 1917 a Ukrainian Academy of Plastic Arts has opened in Kiev, the importance of which has already been manifested.

The Ukrainian sciences, and above all those which touch the country itself, have developed constantly. In 1870 there existed at Kiev a Scientific Society which was an appendant to the Geographical Society of the Russian Empire, and which has published several remarkable works. But the former Society was closed on account of its national character. Publications in the Ukrainian language being rigorously forbidden, the Ukrainian scholars continued to publish in the Russian language the monthly review, “Kievskaia Starina,” devoted to the study of the native country, which commenced to appear in 1882 and lasted for twenty-five years.

(The most notable historians are Kostomanov, Antonovitch, Lasarevskv, Alexandra Efimenko, Hroushevsky, Vasilenko, Tomachivzski. The philologists Jitesky, Michalchuk, Smal-Stozky,, Krimsky, deserve to be cited. In ethnography and folklore, Dragomanov, Tchoubinsky, Th. Volkov, and Roudnitsky, have been remarkable for erudition and have been scholars of outstanding merit. Finally, among the critics and historians one must name Petrov, Ivan Franko, Serge Efremov, and the academician Peretz.)

In 1892, the Society “In Memory of Shevchenko,” of Lemberg, became a scientific society and published the first collection of his works. This Society had sections of history, philology, natural science, and mathematics. It possessed a museum, a library, a printing press, and a bookseller’s shop. It published hundreds of volumes comprising original works and documents relative to all the sciences. In 1906, after the first Russian revolution, the Ukrainian Scientific Society was founded in Kiev, which also had several sub-divisions, and published in the Ukrainian language a number of scientific works and a periodical “Ukrainia.”

At the University of Lemberg, about fifteen courses of lectures were taken in Ukrainian.

In 1905, in the Universities of Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa, courses in Ukrainian science were authorized, but it was not long before they were forbidden. After the Revolution of 1917, a Ukrainian University was inaugurated in Kiev, which, at the same time, worked with the old Russian University. In Kamenetz-Podolsk a national university was also inaugurated. In Poltava, the Faculty of Letters was opened, and in Kiev the Scientific Academy. In all the Russian Universities in Ukraine, Chairs were founded for the studies of the country.

One of the things in which Ukraine suffered most cruelly was the prohibition of national schools. It is only in Galicia and in the Bukovina that primary and secondary schools have existed for long, and, as a result; the inhabitants of these two districts have a much higher national culture and a more ardent patriotism than the dwellers in the Eastern regions of Ukraine.

But two years of revolution have rendered possible the re-organization of public instruction all through the country. Owing to the zealous activity of the Ministry of Public Instruction in Kiev, and of all the “intellectuals,” national primary schools have been instituted all over Ukraine. The organization of secondary schools is slower. The Ukrainian language, history, and literature, however, are taught everywhere, and already there exist more than a hundred high schools (gymnasia) that are solely Ukrainian.

In 1905 were created, under the title of “Prosvita,” societies for the development of the instruction of the people. But the police persecuted them without cessation, and they were frequently closed. Today, Ukraine possesses some hundreds of these societies, often founded by the peasants themselves. In this manner, the national instruction of the Ukrainian people has been realized.

The Ukraine Press, which has been for some decades totally forbidden, at the present time is flourishing. Besides the daily papers, there exist reviews, various periodicals, and all kinds of special publications (pedagogical, co-operative, agricultural, medical, etc.). In spite of much technical difficulty, the printing of books during the Revolution attained importance that it had never had till then. But, considerable as the number of printed books of these last years may be, they have been scarce enough to satisfy the demands of the people.

The Ukrainian intelligentsia, while taking part in the political contests, have shown an extraordinary zeal in the development of national culture and for the instruction of the people, of which they understand the supreme necessity.