KHARKIV, Ukraine – An ironic portrait of nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, drawn in the style of a Soviet New Year postcard, with bottles of champagne, Christmas trees and toys, hangs on a wall in the Yermilov Center exhibition hall in Kharkiv. The legend on the picture wishes Bandera a “Happy birthday” and a “Happy New Year” – Bandera was born on Jan. 1.
The portrait by a Lviv artist is one of many western Ukraine-themed paintings on display at the Pohran Cult – Galicia Cult cultural forum. The festival of around 80 events, exhibitions, performances, movie screenings, poem readings and lectures, running from Oct. 2-18, aims to introduce eastern Ukrainians to modern western-Ukrainian culture.
The event’s other aim is to challenge common stereotypes held about the west in the east, and vice versa. For instance, while some western Ukrainians consider Bandera a hero, eastern ones often think of him as a Nazi collaborator.
This is the third annual forum of this kind – the first two brought works by Donbas artists to Kyiv in 2014, and to Lviv in 2015.
This year, the forum traveled to Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million citizens some 35 kilometers from the Russian border and 570 kilometers away from Kyiv. The previous event in Lviv brought in some 10,000 visitors, while the Kharkiv forum looks set to attract even more.
Cultural exchange
The organizer of the forum, Olga Sahaidak, one of the owners of the Korners auction house in Kyiv, said that despite the “significantly different mentality and culture,” the east and west of the country urgently need to get to know each other better. She said Lviv and Kharkiv were cities with similarities, such as locals crossing the border to work in a neighboring country, and both were religious areas – although of different denominations.
“We believe that having a lot of distinct regions is actually one of Ukraine’s virtues – one that we should be proud of and learn about,” Sahaidak said.
EuroMaidan Revolution and the war in eastern Ukraine triggered Sahaidak, who has never been to Donetsk or Luhansk, to realize that she didn’t really know her own country. With Donetsk and Luhansk now under the control of Kremlin-backed armed separatists, she’s unlikely to visit them any time soon.
“How can we appreciate any of the regions, or suggest cutting away the Donbas or Zakarpattia, if we have never seen them, and have no personal connections there?” Sahaidak asked.
She said that according to internal tourism polls, no more than 10 percent of eastern citizens have visited Ukraine’s western oblasts, while only around 4 percent of the people in Galicia, or western Ukraine, have ever been to Kharkiv, Donetsk, or Luhansk.
To illustrate her point, Sahaidak said that seven out of the 10 artists displaying their works in the exhibition hall in Kharkiv were visiting this city for the first time.
“They’d never been any farther than Kyiv,” she said, adding that the artists had greatly enjoyed their visit to the east.
Visiting the exhibition with friends, a Kharkiv retiree Nataliya Velykohatko looked attentively at the patriotic pictures, and found it “an outspoken exhibition.” Velykohatko is originally from Budyonnovsk, a city in Stavropol Krai in Russia, but she moved to Kharkiv 50 years ago to study architecture and settled down in the city after graduation.
Apart from going to Truskavets, a resort city at the foot of Carpathian Mountains in Lviv Oblast, she has never visited western Ukraine. However, she said that she understands the “western mentality” very well.
While the art exhibition was primarily focused on Galicia, it was not only Lviv artists taking part in the cultural forum – artists from Poland, Austria, Israel, Belgium, and the Czech Republic had also come to Kharkiv, displaying their works and getting to know Ukraine. For instance, a play titled “My Granddad Was Digging, My Dad Was Digging, But I Won’t” featured five actors from different cities – two from Kharkiv, one from Kherson, one from Lviv, and one from Warsaw.
The actor from Warsaw, Lukasz Wojcicki, said at the performance that he had made his first visit to Ukraine several months ago – for a rehearsal. Before that, he thought that Ukraine was “a scary place of gangsters,” he said.
He added that he had always associated Ukraine with a dilapidated old bicycle he once owned – a model popular in Soviet times named “Ukraina.”
Breaking stereotypes
Besides promoting a cultural exchange, Pohran Cult – Galicia Cult aims to break common stereotypes in both the east and the west.
Sahaidak recalls that visitors to the Donbas Cult forum in Lviv, which featured art pieces from eastern Ukraine, had an image of people from the Donbas as being drunkards and pro-Russian working-class people, for whom soldiers from western Ukraine were fighting and dying. After the exhibition and discussion at the forum, there was a shift in attitudes, she said.
Stereotypes about people from the west of Ukraine are common among Kharkiv residents too. The city’s historic closeness to Russia has fostered an image of western Ukrainians all being nationalists and radical militants.
Scientist Iryna Kazak, who was visiting the forum just after having returned from a trip to Lviv, said she faced such cultural stereotypes every day when communicating with co-workers, salespeople, and other locals.
“The Banderivets people (followers of Stepan Bandera, commonly used to refer to patriotic, nationalist western Ukrainians) are bad, while anything that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and everything Russia says is considered right,” Kazak said of the views of some Kharkiv citizens.
Such stereotypes are rooted in Russian propaganda spread in eastern Ukraine since the beginning of Soviet times. There, citizens tended to believe the version of history written by the Communist Party. Kazak said that when she asks locals in Kharkiv whether they have read the history of Ukraine’s struggle for independence, including Bandera’s biography, they say “No, and we don’t want to.”
But with the growth of internal tourism following the EuroMaidan Revolution, awareness about Galicia’s true history has gradually increased in the east. Easterners who travel to western Ukraine to see nature, also hear about the history of this area from tour guides, she said.
“It’s very hard to bring them round, but we have to, even though they don’t want this,” said Kazak.
The Kyiv Post picked several events to visit during the Pohran Cult – Galicia Cult forum in Kharkiv on the weekend of Oct. 15-16. All the events have a free admission.
Animation movie “Fantastic country.” Oct. 15. 5 p.m. Lacan bar (74 Pushkinska St.)
One-person-show “London.” Oct. 15. 7 p.m. Art Area DK (13 Chernyshevska St.)
Outdoor music show by Hych Orchestra band. Oct. 16. 3 p.m. In front of Kharkiv National Theater of Mykola Lysenko (25 Sumska St.)
Documental feature film “The living fire.” Oct. 16. 6 p.m. Studio 42 (1 Konstytutsii Sq., 7th entrance, second floor)
