Who was Ivan Franko? We are learning the truth. Are we prepared to face it?

Beating the alarm seems a bit premature, as there are more than two years before Ivan Franko’s 150th anniversary, meaning there is ample time to do many things. Organizing committees have been set up at various levels to arrange for the festivities. There is also a presidential edict making sure the date will not be overlooked. Still, the situation with Ivan Franko, a singular Ukrainian cultural figure, leaves one ill at ease. A closer look shows that the attitude toward Ivan Franko is a mirror reflection of the overall situation in Ukraine, the way its national values and people that have done so much for the assertion of the national spirit are treated.

Suppose we start with something more prosaic and material, a small house on a quiet Lviv street. This author visited it to interview Roman Horak, director of the Ivan Franko Memorial Museum, one of the best experts on the subject, one of those — perhaps the only one — that have been knocking on countless government office doors, begging for help. The museum premises are in a dreadful condition and, unless urgent measures are taken, the structure will collapse.

Mr. Horak, from what we know, Ivan Franko spent half his life paying the mortgage.

Horak: Ivan Franko bought a house in a very unhealthy neighborhood, with a brickyard located nearby and dumping its waste right there. But he had no choice. It was the only site he could afford — even then he wouldn’t have purchased it but for Ukrainian high school students who thought it was a shame for the Franko family to have to move from one apartment to the next. His 25th creative anniversary was marked in 1898 and his pupils passed the hat around to buy him a present. Two years before, an anniversary of Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of With Fire and Sword, had been celebrated and he had received a mansion as a present, bought by his followers. Ivan Franko was happy to buy that small parcel.

What money was left after the purchase was spent on erecting a wall to prevent a landslide and laying a deep foundation. And then Ivan Franko ran out of money, so he had to take a bank loan for a term of more than 37 years, on rather harsh terms and conditions. Every mortgage payment was strictly scheduled per annum, so all stories about his getting the house after the collapse of Austria-Hungary have nothing to do with the reality. No banks collapsed and his liabilities were transferred to other entities, so the last payment was made by his son Taras.

The museum opened in 1940 (the house was nationalized after the family received about one hundred thousand rubles worth of compensation), but documents show that no major repair was done, except some cosmetic touches. When the Germans came the house was put up for sale and purchased by Bayer, manager of the Odeon Works. He made the first major repair. Nothing to do with a memorial museum, though, although the structure was improved in some ways. Herr Bayer installed a gas pipe and an electricity line. Ivan Franko had to make do with oil lamps and firewood, so that only one stove in the dining room remained hot in winter, where his children did their homework, and the temperature in the bedrooms would stay lukewarm.

They said I couldn’t go upstairs. I remember you had an exposition there. Why?

Horak: A bomb exploded right in front of the house during World War II, tearing off the roof, smashing the windows, and damaging the walls. Later the damage was camouflaged, but without any provision for the memorial complex. We all know the kind of roof it had during Franko’s lifetime. It could be replaced with a similar one, but they made a new one and someone came up with a stupid approach. Originally there were wooden floors, now they placed cement slabs and fastened them with wire. Naturally, the ceiling sagged with time, so we are now threatened by it caving in and we can’t use the second floor. We had to remove all the furniture and exposition. Now we are faced with electricity problems and a fire threat. The walls are bursting at the seams, the sewage system is destroyed, there are leaks at the foundation level. The whole structure is actually afloat. What subsidies we get are enough to patch up the holes, but we need a series of major repairs.

We read in the press now and then that certain political parties express concern over the status of your museum.

Horak: Everyone’s trying to capitalize on Ukrainian national values these days. Some keep talking, others are doing something. We have a people’s deputy by the name of Ihor Shurma living a couple of buildings from this place, so he is doing his best to help the museum. Over the past decade we haven’t been paid [from any official budgets] to purchase new items to add to our display. You know what this means? We can’t buy literature. Ihor Shurma paid his own money for prints by Mauritius Gottlieb, Ivan Franko’s schoolmate and the first publisher of his works, so that now we have about forty such items on display. He also presented us with a PC, on behalf of the United Social Democrats, knowing we badly needed a museum card index database.

Every year we organize Frankivski toloky volunteer campaigns to clean up the museum premises. Every time I ask all of Lviv’s thirty-two political organizations — or how many we have — to join in, addressing them on local radio stations, writing letters. And the result? No one turns up except Ihor Shurma and his team. These people arrive and actually take up rakes, brooms, and brushes, painting the trees, doing all kinds of manual jobs. They also bring heaps of useful materials and tools like tar and rakes with them. After Ihor Shurma started visiting the museum like that, other parties began shouting about him trying to privatize the museum. I might point out as well that the local SDPU(o) never signed a cooperation agreement with us.

We had cooperation when Rukh people visited, among them Kostenko; we were promised many things and we waited for support. None came except statements carried by the media. We have asked many [individuals and organizations] for help; I have stressed that I am prepared to cooperate with communists and nationalists; after all, they represent different political parties but remain members of our society.

I visited Lviv University’s library yesterday and found Ivan Franko’s Perekhresni Stezhky [The Crossroads, 1900]. Nothing else. I didn’t find a single postgraduate majoring in journalism and working on a thesis dealing with Franko’s journalistic legacy, although we know that Franko wrote for, and was published by, practically all reputable European publications. True, I found several postgraduates at the philology department, but the impression was that few if any were interested in broaching the subject. A full uncensored collection of his works has never appeared in print (it would amount to 80 volumes). The one printed in the 1980s has 50 volumes. Newspapers in Halychyna quote from a number of authors, never from Ivan Franko.

Horak: We have to take a closer look at Ivan Franko. He was opposed to whatever social formations they had at the time — and I suspect he would be opposed to the current one in Ukraine. He said that all talk about state construction and independence was sheer verbiage unless filled with a specific idea. An ordinary Ukrainian peasant didn’t care who was to blame for his being underfed or dying of starvation, whether it was a Ukrainian patriot or foreign landlord. A very meaningful statement that needs little to be added. He also said that Ukrainian independence would make no sense unless desired by every communal member. Our freedom was a lucky chance we have failed to put to use. I am ashamed to walk to the museum past the Polish consulate every day, because I have a feeling that everybody has emigrated from Ukraine — I mean all those people standing in lines to get Polish entry visas; lines so long they would at times reach the museum which is 200 meters from the consulate.

Reading his works, many people can see themselves. He wrote 110 years ago, “How dare you ask to save your life / Worth naught, where millions of other, better lives were lost?” Also, “Why do we have so many renegades, / Why don’t they fear their treason?/ Why don’t we rally under our colors?/ Why do we feel ashamed to work on our soil? / Why do we feel content to toil as slaves in foreign lands?”

Ivan Franko was a markedly complex person and we are only beginning to see him for what he really was. Regrettably, by this we I mean a chosen few. Who reads Franko before turning in these days? Rather, we debate whether we did right to banish his Boryslav Laughs from the grade school curriculum simply because he championed socialist ideas in that poem. I find such notions ridiculous.

Ivan Franko was a full- fledged Galician, yet his fellow countrymen could not forgive him many things, including his marrying a woman from the east, considering that a number of Galician ladies would have been happy to marry him; they could not forgive his references to Galician provincialism, Halychyna being self-isolated, and local ways sometimes hard to understand...

Horak: Oh, I know what you mean. It’s a painful issue for me. I thought the name of Ivan Franko, who had gone through all those parties, would serve to unite the people... Franko was socialist-minded at first, he even wrote a program for a socialist party, challenging those of Engels and Brooks. He translated Das Kapital in 1878, but then abandoned all such efforts, entering a different phase. It was then he wrote “This is not the time to serve the Muscovite or the Pole...” which became a patriotic anthem. Here one finds a totally different viewpoint. In 1898, he stepped aside and said, “All we see in our parties are the selfish goals of their leaders, so [it is not worth] dealing with any of them...” He did not want to get his hands dirty, he distanced himself from all of them, so he could work for his people, raising the Ukrainian cultural standard. He wanted to make world cultural attainments accessible to the Ukrainian people. It should be noted, however, that Franko mostly worked as a translator. See those shelves? The first one contains more translations from 18 languages and fewer original works. He was a brilliant translator. I attended a conference recently. They compared different versions of [Goethe’s] Faust. Ivan Franko’s was recognized as the most accurate and skillful. He was 24 at the time and he managed to convey the original’s rhythm, emphasis, even the number of vowels and consonants in every line.

He was also a great economist and historian. All subsequent papers dealing with feudalism relied on his findings. He was the first politician to form a parliamentary party, the Radical one, with its own program, charter, and being in a position to claim a faction in parliament. With him, everything was brilliantly envisaged and worked out, proceeding from the constitutional rights existing in the [Austro-Hungarian] Empire.

His minimum program was aimed at transforming Halychyna into an autonomous republic to serve as the basis of an independent Ukrainian state. Of course, elections had to be duly arranged. Every village would elect a deputy and he would join the electoral process. In addition, there were to be five curiae. Franko wanted every curia to put forward a Ukrainian candidate to champion Ukrainian autonomy in the Austrian-Hungarian Parliament. Imagine what happened afterward. Ivan Franko was scared to leave his house, he was bullied so. Of course, they did not let him win the elections. After all, the ambassador was a very important person at the time; he was funded by the state and enjoyed a number of privileges. Naturally, the competition for the ambassadorial mandate was severe. At the time everybody knew what to say, that they were all for Ukraine, that the issue of a Ukrainian state would be raised in parliament, that they would make every effort to defend the rights of the downtrodden Ukrainian people. But once they got the ambassadorial mandate, they forgot all their promises. No Ukrainian candidates could compete in the next parliamentary elections...

What do you think is especially important to know about Ivan Franko at this stage?

Horak: Studying the sources, trying to determine what caused something or other to happen, and how Ivan Franko actually responded to that; learning more about his environment. One ought to pay more attention to newspapers and other documents dating from that period, so as to understand the actual situation, whether or not he was right when he responded to certain things the way he did. Now is the time for teaching things. Some are fond of saying that Ivan Franko ought to have done this and that. I’ve heard some reports on the subject. Horrible! Imagine a postgraduate still wet behind his ears, saying that Franko took the wrong stand with regard to the Young Muse (there was a poetic group acting under the name at the time), as he was resolutely against it. I heard another one determined to make Ivan Franko mincemeat, referring to his verse, saying [it was bad] because he knew what he was talking about. How terribly biased these people are! Normally, critics are supposed to allow all sides to voice their views, so they can keep the whole thing objective. Here it appears mandatory to take only one stand, and now they are taking the stand against Ivan Franko.

Let me tell you something. Countless bucketfuls of dirt have been hurled at our Ukrainian writers by Buzyna, et al. Ivan Franko has not been among the targets (perhaps because he is too impressive a figure), but I’d rather keep my fingers crossed. Now and then they lash out at him, broaching subjects like Ivan Franko and his women, claiming he was immoral. At one time they even came out with a list of women he allegedly slept with. Now, again, we hear about Ivan Franko falling in love not three but a dozen times; about his suffering from syphilis. There are billions of syphilitic cases, yet none has turned out a genius.

After Ivan Franko’s death, some 224 foreign periodicals carried obituaries...

Horak: He was the first professional Ukrainian journalist. In fact, he was paid royalties from subscribers’ money. There were five hundred subscribers, now figure out how much it cost to run a newspaper, pay the proofreaders and authors. Ivan Franko wrote for all the European newspapers. What does writing for a European-caliber periodical actually mean? It means thorough research (let alone having a perfect command of the language), showing a broad outlook, and making every story interesting for the European public. And he had to live on what he earned that way. He worked like a slave, receiving token money in return. Read stories about Franko written by contemporaries; you’ll learn about the conditions in which he had to live and work. A stork with a broken wing walking round the room, a toad and a turtle on the floor, children running around and shouting, his wife talking to someone. And he sits through all this, working, with heaps of paper, proofs, and manuscripts on his desk. He could work, concentrating on a subject, becoming oblivious to whatever was happening around him. After his hands were paralyzed he was desperate to think that he had accomplished so little. His doctors said he had six months, then he was told he could live another three years. He died after eight painful years.

Now picture a man doing translations with both hands paralyzed. He had a phenomenal memory and he dictated to his secretary. He wrote about Shevchenko without consulting his Kobzar and now we hear voices accusing Franko of misquoting some of his rhymed lines. [Even when he could use his hands and feet] he had no lamp and no boots to put on to walk to the post office and get his mail. Of course, he could think better of becoming a principled socialist (whether or not he was rates a separate story); he could act like so many others, bowing and scraping, holding an official post. He could act like so many of his friends. But he would not because he could not, driven by God knows what.

Picture an A-straight student of the high school of Drohobych and Lviv University. While in his first year, the Jewish community of Drohobych took care of his scholarship, worth 210 zlotys [a month], courtesy of the Glawinski Foundation (considering that a cow cost 80 zlotys at the time). Ivan Franko cared little for money and was eager to give all he had for a book he was particularly interested in. His wife would tearfully complain that their children were dressed in rags while he would think nothing of giving all their money to the journal Zhyttia i Slovo [Life and Word]. He would starve, but would scrape up enough to have his books published. Incidentally, he was told at one time that he stood a fair chance of becoming a member of the Austro-Hungarian cabinet (remember, he was a brilliant economist). Instead, he was brought to his home village under police escort, as a regular vagabond. Imagine how he felt being driven there, with the people expecting him to become somebody, after receiving his high school and university education with honors. His stepfather met him and told him, tearfully, son, you have to know better than knock your head against a brick wall; how about becoming a monk?

He wanted to be a Ukrainian university teacher. Another vain dream. They allowed him to deliver a lecture, on a probation basis, and he spoke about Shevchenko’s Naimychka [Hired Woman]. After the lecture, the students surrounded him and tossed him up and cheered him. Who would want to have a professor with this kind of popularity? Also, considering that all Polish professors on the teaching staff were supposed to be three times superior to their Ukrainian counterparts. Prof. Jagicz, his doctorate coordinator, praised him and at the same time stabbed him in the back whenever he could. In 1904, when the Russian Empire annulled the Valuyev Circular and Ems ukase restrictions on use of Ukrainian, Moscow also wanted to have a better image on the international arena, so it was decided to confer academician degrees on a number of distinguished Ukrainians. The name of Ivan Franko was at the top of the list. But then it was a matter of bureaucratic procedure to seek Dr. Jagicz’s advice, his being in charge of Ivan Franko’s doctorate, also considering his post as the Austro-Hungarian emperor’s Slavic advisor. In the end, the Russian Academy of Sciences received a letter reading, “In case you are interested in having elements in the Russian Empire, as well as in White Russia, propagating the idea of independence, you should certainly allow Ivan Franko access.” Personally, I regard this as the best reference. Needless to say, he was never allowed access. In fact, he was barred access to the Russian Empire ad infinitum. The magazines he edited were not read there. He would mostly work as a proofreader and would start editing later. However, we must thank Franko for learning names such as Panas Myrny, Nechui-Levytsky, Lesia Ukrayinka, Olena Pchilka. Can you give me the name of a Ukrainian author, however patriotic-minded, who would be willing to sit up nights, copying 200 pages for someone like Samiylenko (alias Syvenky), then formatting and handing over the book? Yet this happened more than once.

Ivan Franko could not find jobs with Ukrainian editions, so he spent ten years working for the Polish newspaper Kurier Lwowski. He wrote about Ukraine for Polish readers who were loath to see a single Ukrainian newspaper. His best works are associated with this Polish periodical, including features about many Ukrainian girls being annually transported and sold to brothels in India, Turkey, and North America. In fact, Ivan Franko was the first to raise the issue, coming out with an article titled “For Your Hearth.” He had spent months attending resonant court hearings, then writing about the existing morals. What he did is best described as researching and then meticulously defending the interests of his people. He wrote for foreign periodicals and enlarged on painful Ukrainian problems. His articles and features allowed people elsewhere in the world to learn more about Ukraine. Had he come from a nation other than Ukraine, he would have won international acclaim. As it is, we seem determined to keep silent on Ivan Franko, because we still do not know him. This lack of knowledge does not make us look any better, anywhere in the world.