Odesa’s virtual treasury

A unique collection, based on materials from Odesa (most of them are dated from the 19th and early 20th centuries), shatters the myth that Southern Palmira is non-Ukrainian. Taras Maksymiuk is a renowned collector and regional ethnographer, he is First Deputy of the Odesa Department of the Ukrainian Culture Foundation, honorary member of the National Union of Regional Ethnographers of Ukraine and Odesa Association of Collectors. The versatility and eclectic nature of Maksymiuk’s collection has made possible the creation of the Ukrainian Museum-Exhibit Center of Cultural Studies, Tarasiv Dim (Taras’ Home). It includes such theme units as Kobzar’s Odesa, History of Ukrainian Book-Publishing in Odesa, the Ukrainian Dictionary in 19th and 20th Centuries, the Ukrainian Postcard’s Centenary, the Fascinating World of the Ukrainian Pysanka. Among the items are entire collections like Amvrosii Zhdakha’s Museum, Mykhailo Zhuk’s Museum; archival materials from the Brotherhood of Tarasovs (the first Ukrainian underground student organization), based on Vitalii Borovyk’s private archives. The rare documents include materials that reveal the activity of Odesa’s Old Community, Prosvita, the Ukrainian Club, and the Ukrainian House organizations.

This year marks 50 years since The Day you linked your life to Odesa. The expression “Odesa’s residents are made, not born” is quite appropriate in your case. What was it that made you, a marine engineer, become attracted to collecting?

“In 1960 I was enrolled in the Odesa Construction Intitute. I became truly enthusiatic about collecting back in 1956, when I visited an excavation site in Veselinove as a part of an archeological group, and later in Olvia. At the same time I bought the first item in my collection, the book Archeological Materials of North Black Sea Region, published in Moscow.

“In Odesa I became interested in the work of marine painter Rufin Sudkovsky. I had been taught drawing at the institute, and the head of the department was a noted graphic artist Oleksandr Postel (student of Vladimir Zauze and Teofil Fraierman). I visited museums, especially those of arts and archeology, the opera house, and found myself in the milieu of Odesa historians and archaeologists. Soon after that I became a member of the Odesa Archeology Association. Incidentally, apart from the Odesa residents, the Hermitage’s head Mikhail Artamonov, an expert in the Scythian arts and renowned sculptor-paleontologist Mikhail Gerasimov were members of this union. In 1961, the second convention of this association took place. It was attended by the cream of the then Soviet archeological science. A volume of the convention materials was published, where Odesa archeologists positioned themselves as the followers of the cause undertaken by the Odesa Association of History and Antiquity. It was in this Museum of Archeology that I met my future wife, archeologist Emma Hansova, whom I owe much, not just personally, but professionally as well. In 1963, she acquainted me with the Morozov couple. It is specifically thanks to poet Valentyn Morozov that I switched my orientation from antiquity to Ukrainian studies, including collecting of pysankas and samples of folk arts. At the time I started to exchange the books on antiquity for Ukrainian publications.”

They say you had a teacher in Mykolaiv who played a crucial role in your interest for archeology, history, and finally collecting.

“Feodosii Kaminsky headed on his own initiative the Mykolaiv Historical-Archeological Museum (and spent 24 years in exile because of this). He did not teach me at school, but it was he who distinguished me from among several teenagers and started to correspond with us. He always treated us like adults. He was a bright personality, one of the members of Mykolaiv’s Prosvita that acted as Mykola Arkas was still alive. He was a personal acquaintance of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Dmytro Yavornytsky, Lesia Ukrainka (she collected samples of Ukrainian folklore in the south). Incidentally, the writer presented Kaminsky with a bandura. During the First World War he visited a seriously ill Ivan Franko in Halychyna, being an officer of the Brusilov Army. Kaminsky was arrested in the so-called process of the Union for Liberation of Ukraine. I must say that he never spoke Ukrainian with me, in spite of his love for everything Ukrainian. It is sad to realize that having gone through wars and camps, Kaminsky was killed by robbers at the age of 90 in his own apartment.”

You are known not only as a collector, but also as a researcher and active promoter of your own collection. When did it see the light for the first time?

“It happened when I was working in the Illichivsk Sea Trade Port. In the end of 1968, thanks to the initiative of Avhusta Taradash an exhibit of Ukrainian pysanka was organized for the first time in Ukraine since 1930, in the Odesa Museum of Archeology. At the time I had some 500 items, philologist Petro Markushevsky had 700 at the least, and Valentyn Morozov — several hundred. It was then that on the invitation of noted journalist Nelli Kharchenko (she now resides in Germany) I took part in the program dedicated to this event and spoke Ukrainian there.”

Odesa is famous for its collectors, including Oleksandr Bleshchunov, who created his own municipal museum, Anatolii Drozdovsky, and Serhii Lutsyk, and many highly specialized collectors.

“Incidentally, Serhii Lutsyk is an extraordinary personality and my third teacher. There is an expression, ‘History is an exact science, unlike math.’ Lutsyk taught me to treat history as a technical discipline: keep to accuracy in dates, references etc. In Soviet times I was annoyed by the Ukrainian historical publications because, unlike those in Moscow, they lacked name indexes. Our scholars were banned from doing this.

“Owing to Lutsyk, Odesa became my final place of residence, I began to attend the House of Scholars, where Odesyka and bibliophile societies were operating. All pictures and belongings of Mykhailo Zhuk that I have in my possession, I got via Lutsyk. In my time I used to communicate with the artist’s sons. I bought the picture Black and White from one of them. Lutsyk and I wrote a review for the first album dedicated to the outstanding Ukrainian graphic artist (which contained lots of mistakes). It was approximately 1987-88.”

The residents of Odesa remember the exhibit of Mykhailo Zhuk’s picture, known for featuring the young seminarist and future poet Pavlo Tychyna, that you organized in the Odesa Museum of Arts. Where is the picture now?

“The work Black and White was created by Zhuk in Chernihiv in 1912-14, when he started to lecture in the local seminary after graduation from the Krakow Academy of Arts. After a tour in the US, it went for temporary keeping to the National Museum of Arts in Kyiv.”

Where did you find the rarities of your collection?

“Odesa is a unique city in many respects, first of all it is a strong intellectual center. Paradoxically, I must say that in the past Odesa never had the unfavorable attitude to things Ukrainian that we see today. Previously, Odesa residents had a higher level of intelligence, they did not accept pressure on the whole, therefore they treated the suppressed Ukrainian culture favorably, in defiance to the official position.

“It was specifically during my Illichivsk period that I became an active collector. Practically all my prizes and 13th salaries went for this. Of course, I bought pysanky in the Carpathian or Transcarpathian regions. We went to that region with our friends on Easter. One could buy a lot of things in Odesa in the Starokinny Market, for example, various paraphernalia (like UNR currency, or that of German occupants), and literature on Ukrainian studies — in second-hand bookshops. In this I was assisted by Russians, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, nobody betrayed me. Noted scholars were among my suppliers: some of them sold books, others gave them as presents, the third category — bartered for something. The linguist Artem Mosckalenko, renowned historian Samson Kovbasiuk, student of Prof. Mykhailo Slabchenko (who in turn was a student of Ivan Linnychenko, a pupil of Volodymyr Antonovych), stood out among them. He was saved by a miracle in the times of repression. In such a way the chain of the Kyiv historical school was not broken. My benefactors include the former co-worker of Stepova Ukraina Museum Moisei Sinitsyn, the Mechnikov ONU bibliographer Viktor Feldman, as well as Anatolii Bachynsky, Andrii Nezvidsky and many other distinguished scholars. I bought from Prof. Kovbasiuk nearly all works by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and from Artem Moskalenko — the last three-volume pubication The History of the New Sich and the Last Zaporizky Kish by Apollon Skalkovsky. I also have in my collection the rare Lviv edition of Tetraevangelion dated 1636, the first illustrated publication in Ukraine.”

Recently the Art-Center (on the basis of your collection) launched an exhibit dedicated to the centenary of the Ukrainian Club that appeared after the closure of Odesa’s Prosvita. Is it not time to find Ukrainian Culture Center based on your collection? There used to be the Stepova Ukraina Museum, at Hohol Str. 15, in Odesa in the 1920s.

“Stepova Ukraina is a separate topic. In 1931 the museum counted 1,903 items. In comparison, the Odesa Museum of Jewish Culture had over 18,000 items. After the notorious process of the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine the Stepova Ukraina Museum was reorganized. Today the things that have been preserved provide the groundwork of the department in the Odesa Museum of Local Lore. For the first time I broached the question on allotment of premises for my collection for the future museum complex back in the 1990s, appealing to Odesa’s Mayor Leonid Cherneha. I was proposed to find myself a suitable house in the city. The area needed was 200-300 sq. meters. I found such premises, but they needed repairs; then I found the building scheme, but nothing came of it. In 1997, during the first term of Eduard Hurvits as the city’s mayor, I appealed with the same petition, but the result was the same. I won’t mention the details, but today I am working in this direction in cooperation with civic organizations, and have prepared my third appeal. Everything ‘resumes its normal course,’ so to say.

“At the moment present-day documents and artworks, specifically, the ads published in Odesa for various political parties are getting in my way — unfortunately, our Museum of History and Local Lore is involved in various activities. I have in my possession a collection of works by sculptor Mykola Stepanov from the former private collection of Ivan Fedorkov. I have all issues of the Ukrainske slovo newspaper except for the first one. I also have the whole collection of the Gerald of the Odesa Photography Society (1912-16) etc. The unit of Odesa’s Ukrainian Studies has been supplemented by the collection of Mykola Kair’s verses (1943), published during the Romanian occupation. Even the Odesa National Library does not have any. The history of Odesa and Odesa region does not end, it is being created from day to day. One of my latest acquisitions is the collection of rushnyks, shirts, and earthenware from the Kodyma region.”