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USSR. Soon after, the USSR as we knew it ceased to exist. The students joined the democratic movement, some of the veterans formed a defense league that accompanied the Ukrainian Jews who went to Moscow to attend the first modern Jewish congress. They were activists in the election campaign for the semidemo- cratic Parliament that was elected in 1991. But their enthusiasm abated after three years. They were no longer very vocal among the history students at Kiev University in the fall of 1992. The time for protest had passed. My students, showing a wisdom that belied their knowledge of history, felt that they needed to study before they could act effectively. For many decades the West, and especially the USA, had been the golden dream of the young, not so much the model as the idol about which they dreamed. My students at Kiev University simply wanted to hear first-hand what an American university looks like, what the students learn, how they live. My suggestion that they try to apply to an American school met with the same whimsical skepticism as my exhortation to run for school office. That was in the history department, one of the more conservative ones in the school. The jour nalism students, who had to fight for entrance into the school rather than coast on parental influence, looked for ways to get into an exchange or training program as soon as they began working. One heartening story was about a young woman from Chernihiv, a city of churches on the slopes of the Desna river, which went into eclipse in the Stalin years. Few foreigners visited, but with per estroika a number of American businessmen ventured there. Olena Prokopovych, a high school graduate who had learned English largely on her own, translated for the group. Her English was so good, and her desire to study so pronounced, that one of the businessmen sug gested she apply to an American college. Prokopovych, now in her third year at Williams College, has begun a summer program through which other Ukrainian stu dents can learn how to apply for financial help and admission to American schools. The program enables her to spend summers in Ukraine, closer to her beloved Desna. Even as I was complaining of the level of education in Ukraine, laughing at some of the old-style party approaches among the administrative personnel of the university, I had a much broader public forum than any we have in the United States. Invitations came pouring in to speak at gatherings, to take part in panel discus sions on radio and television, to address audiences from the Carpathian mountains to the Black Sea coast, to meet with farmers of the north and with faculty in the southwest. The audiences were responsive, alert, keen to learn and to pose questions. Like the university stu dents, they wanted to know the curriculum of the high schools, the way in which we raised our children. They wondered if I had been discriminated against because of my immigrant status. Where did I learn so much about the history of Russia? Who taught me the history of Ukraine? Is there government support of religion in the United States? Did our government know about the gulags? Will there be a Nuremberg trial for the Soviet functionaries? Or, better yet, let bygones be bygones, show us how to run the economy efficiently and we’ll manage with the functionaries on our own. One of the first trips I took was sponsored by a waste management concern, a new type of business in this part of the world. Two directors and two staff members were to travel from Kiev to the southwestern city of Ivano-Frankivsk, a gateway to the Carpathian mountains. Until two years ago it was the regional cen ter for the missile system of the former USSR, and off limits to foreigners. It had also been the site of the first public meeting of Ukrainian women back in 1884, a topic on which I had written extensively. Moreover, it was home — after Siberian exile — of one of the fore most painters of contemporary Ukraine, Opanas Zaly- vakha. Zalyvakha had been a close friend of the poet Vasyl Stus, who died in a Siberian prison, much of his deeply philosophical poetry lost. (The search for Stus’s grave, as well as his reburial in Kiev in 1989, was a dem onstration that the Soviet regime was no longer mor bidly feared.) One of the waste company executives had risked all in being a pallbearer at the reburial of Stus. Now, his firm was combining business with culture and bringing an evening of Stus’s poetry to one of the major factories of Ivano-Frankivsk. Zalyvakha, the painter, would reminisce about Stus; Dmytro Stus, the son, would read his father’s poetry; Olia Bohomolets, a bal lad singer and the granddaughter of a scientist accused by Stalin of treason, would sing a few of her composi tions. As an American who had been interviewed on radio about Stus’s poetry, I was to be included. The train ride took eighteen hours. On arrival, we were greeted at the Ivano-Frankivsk train station with cameras, microphones, banners, and a group of child ren singing and declaiming poetry written for the occa sion. The children braved intrusive train announcements and sang about a female crane returning to the ruined native nest while other cranes basked in comfort in America. Stus Junior was treated to similar touching verse. I looked at the children. The oldest could not have been more than nine; their parents had been raised under the Soviets, and the woman who drilled them in the paeans she wrote had spent time in Siberia. It was as if there had been no Soviets. I was back to the nine teenth century. It could even be Britain, with declaiming and singing and greeting, with flowers, and expressions of hope. On another trip, the legacy of the past, the unarticu lated guilt of survivors, was vividly highlighted. A group of writers and I traveled to Baturyn, a little village off the beaten track and the seat of the leader of the Cossacks, 22 ’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИПЕНЬ-СЕРПЕНЬ 1994 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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