"Architecture is dead, but people are not" - an interview with Odesa poet Stanislav Stryzheniuk

This conversation focuses on Odesa in the 1970s, with its underground exhibitions, censorship, and fear of speaking Ukrainian. The 95-year-old poet Stanislav Stryzheniuk recalls writers' apartments, closed artistic circles, and summonses to party offices. He still asks uncomfortable questions about monuments to be removed and renaming. A former head of the Department of Culture, he remembers the exchange of theaters with Lviv and friendship with Odesa artists such as Mykhailo Bozhii, Alla Krykun, Hennadii Harmyder, and the Kryzhevsky family, as well as meetings and conversations with classics such as Lina Kostenko, Pavlo Tychyna, Oles Honchar, Maksym Rylskyi, and Borys Nechera. In his words, Odesa appears not as an architecture but as a living organism-a city of people, stories, and losses, where poetry was a way to survive and not betray oneself.

Watch the video version of the interview on Intent's YouTube channel.

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How would you describe the Odesa literary school of the 1970s for a modern reader? What, in your opinion, is the greatest treasure that we should preserve from that time?

I can't estimate how much it is needed today, but I remember, first of all, the books by writers who lived in Odesa at that time. And the first one I will mention is Borys Necherda, with whom we were friends. For some time, we even lived in shifts in the same apartment on Pirogovska Street, in the writer's house where I got a place to live. Later, I was given a completely different apartment on Frantsuzsky Boulevard when I moved from the Department of Culture to the position of editor-in-chief of the Odesa Film Studio.

Boris was a wonderful man, he loved music. Once he bought a trembita in the Carpathians and brought it to Odesa. Sometimes, when the sun went down, he would go out on his fifth-floor balcony and start blowing it. Once, he was even considered for the party bureau of the writers' organization because of this. Opinions were divided. Some said it was good that he was playing. It wakes up the neighbor who always falls asleep at the typewriter in creative inspiration. Others, on the contrary, were kept awake. These were, of course, jokes, but the discussion did take place.

Stanislav Stryzheniuk. SCREENSHOT: YouTube by Intent

Because Odesa is a special city. It is said that a city is not architecture, because architecture, although eternal, is dead. The city is people. People are the living history of every era. This is what is most important for writers, and this is what we have to protect.

At that time, Odesa had a literary scene where writers worked in Ukrainian and Russian. How did they coexist?

You know, I can't talk about competition. When Russification was rampant, I studied at an Odesa school where there was no Ukrainian history or Ukrainian language. Just imagine: it was a specialized secondary school of the Air Force.

I wanted to go into space, so I ended up there. Cosmonaut Dobrovolsky, who later died, studied in a parallel company. I was in the second platoon. At school parties, we invited female students, especially from school No. 3 on the former Tolstoy Street. By the way, Leo Tolstoy was in Odesa only once, when he went to the Crimea for the war, and it was there that he wrote his Sevastopol Stories. Then suddenly Tolstoy Street was renamed. When I was the head of the regional department of culture, we erected a stone monument to Tolstoy on the square named after him. It still stands there today-I was driving by recently. Although now, perhaps, we will have to take it down (in fact, we need to take down completely different objects, for example, the cannon near the Odesa City Hall), because now the street is named after Kira Muratova.

But let me return to the question and emphasize that there could be no competition between the languages. There were only four of us writers who wrote in Ukrainian. I will name them all. Yevhen Bondarenko headed the Odesa branch of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. Volodymyr Hetman-he spoke exclusively Ukrainian in everyday life, even on the street. And everyone looked back at him because he greeted and spoke only Ukrainian. There was also Ivan Dramaturg, who wrote plays in Ukrainian. And I am a writer who started out in Ukrainian and still speaks it.

However, there were many poets at the school who tried to write in Russian. At dances, they would invite schoolgirls and read their poems to them. And I sat in the audience and kept silent because I wrote in Ukrainian and just couldn't show my face. It was somehow embarrassing.

This has its deep roots in Odesa. Later, when we were organizing a museum at the film studio, I learned that in the 20s and 30s, they specifically tracked which of the studio's employees spoke Ukrainian at home. And then these people were arrested and imprisoned. This is the real, very tragic story of forced Russification.

Poets and artists in those days communicated closely. Can you recall any memorable evenings together? What was the atmosphere of such meetings?

You know, we met with underground artists in our studios, and it was not like an official event. There were newspapers, such as Vechirnia Odesa, Komsomolske Plemy, and Chornomorskie Novyny, but no one ever wrote about these meetings. Apparently, they were supposed to be known only in one place-on Bebel Street, in the KGB.

I was working at the Odesa Film Studio as an editor-in-chief, but I was fired. I was summoned to Moscow, to the gray cardinal from the Politburo, Suslov. Only two members of the Politburo were sitting in a semi-dark office. They asked: "Why do you have people drinking vodka on your screens?" I replied: "We can cut out this footage, it's only one and a half meters of film. But you can't cut out life with scissors along with this evil." Then Suslov told me an amazing thing: "But we get films from Turkmenistan where people drink tea or just water from the river." I was surprised and replied: "Turkmen drink tea because the Koran forbids them to drink alcohol." It was scary. They immediately told me: "Go away". And I realized that the call to Odesa was about to be made. And so it happened. I flew home, and the next day I was summoned to the regional committee bureau. The bureau unanimously "recommended" that I be removed from my position, although I was not appointed to this position at all. The political situation was extremely difficult: the fight against drunkenness had begun, and they began to look for those guilty of "propaganda." Despite the fact that I could buy a bottle of Stolichnaya in any supermarket in America, in Odesa I could only get it with a huge overpayment in the restaurants of the Londonsky or Krasny hotels. They fought against drunkenness by cutting down vineyards and looking for those who allegedly promoted this drunkenness.

Stanislav Savovych, at the anniversary of the artist Alla Krykun, who is considered a part of the Odesa underground, you greeted her by getting down on one knee. Please tell us about your friendship with her.

You know, Alla Krykun was always in touch with my wife Tanya, and we used to go to her studio near the Vorontsov Palace all the time. At that time she lived with the artist Kovalenko. At her invitation, we looked at his works.

And artists, you know, are special people. Take Mykhailo Bozhiy, for example. When he painted the painting My Thoughts, My Thoughts and received the Shevchenko Prize for it, he suddenly invited me to a separate viewing of another of his works-I think it was called A Sensual Moment. He had painted it and hadn't shown it to any of the other artists. And then he invited me, put my back to the door, blindfolded me, and, holding my hand, led me straight into the studio. He turned on the light and took off the blindfold. That was the first time I saw this painting. It was beautiful. I don't know where it is now - in some museum, in a private collection, or maybe with one of Mykhailo Bozhiy's relatives. But I was the first to look at it and probably said something nice. After that we went to my parents' house on the Bug River, where his son Slavko painted my house. The same house that is dear to me because once, after the surrender of Sevastopol, Field Marshal Manstein stayed there. The same one who commanded a group of armies in the Korsun-Shevchenko offensive.

You can see how many historical facts are begging to be put on paper-even if you write a memoir.

You talked to Hennadii Harmyder, a well-known graphic artist and painter in Odesa, a master bookplate maker. Did you participate in any art projects together?

Hennadii Harmyder was our poetic point. We always left the Writers' Union at 5 Belinskoho Street and immediately went to his studio. He designed my book.

I had very close ties with artists. For example, Hryhorii Kryzhevskyi, who painted my portrait. I sat in his studio in silence, because I had no right to even blink an eye while he was working. He also painted a portrait of Volodymyr Ivanovych, a Ukrainian satirist, and a portrait of Igor Nevierov.

The Odesa Literary Museum has materials about Pavlo Tychyna. After his death, you took part in a memorial evening organized by the Odesa Writers' Union. What was your personal attitude toward the poet and his work?

It turns out that Pavlo Hryhorovych, when he was in his early twenties, came to Odesa with a chapel. He sang very well in the church choir and wrote poetry. He was an extremely powerful spiritual person.

I once received a letter from Kyiv from Pavlo Hryhorovych. He sent me his autographed book. It is very interesting that the editor of that edition was Valentyn Bychko, a famous Ukrainian poet. And he used this edition to insert poems that could not have been published as a separate book. There were lines that were considered nationalistic at the time: "How he fell from his horse and onto the white snow. Glory!" (a poem from 1919 that became the unofficial anthem of the UPR Army - ed.)

When I received the book, I read the autograph: "To the glorious youngest of the young, Stanislav Stryzheniuk, from Pavlo Tychyna." You know, this inscription itself is priceless. Later I presented this book to the Literary Museum. I was lucky: I met Pavlo Hryhorovych and talked to him personally. He had an assistant, Stanislav Telniuk (by the way, his daughters are now good at singing at concerts). At that time, Telniuk was composing his famous poem "Skovoroda". In parallel with the official theme of "the party leads," Tychyna was writing a book about the prominent philosopher Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda.

Stanislav Stryzheniuk. SCREENSHOT: YouTube Intent

After receiving that book, I became almost a friend of Pavlo Hryhorovych. I remember how Vasyl Zemlyak and I went for a walk after one of the plenums or congresses of writers and invited Tychyna to a restaurant to sit down and write. But he was very fond of his mother and wife, so he refused and walked down Khreshchatyk to his house-he lived opposite the Ukraina Hotel on Shevchenko Boulevard.

I was also very well acquainted with Oles Honchar, with whom we traveled to border outposts in southern Ukraine. Oles Terentyevich was very interesting to watch. He loved to talk to border guards and wondered how it was that in the Soviet Union friendship between peoples was supposedly in the forefront, but the order was the same as in the tsarist era. Latvians and Lithuanians defended our border, and Ukrainians defended the Far East. Our people were not allowed to defend their own republic. When we were on the Kinburn Spit, Honchar spoke with great respect for the Latvian and Estonian border guards because they received newspapers in their native language. You see, these are very revealing things. And here in Ukraine, almost no one subscribed to literary periodicals in Ukrainian.

Maksym Rylsky is known for his attention to young authors. By the way, he highly valued your friend Borys Necherda. Did you feel his support or did he have any influence on your development as a poet?

I visited the Holosiivskyi forest many times, where Maksym Rylskyi's dacha was located. He used to gather poets there once a week, always on Fridays. And once I also visited him.

When I came to Kyiv, I often found myself attending presidium meetings chaired by Oles Honchar. Pavlo Zahrebelnyi, Oleksandr Korniychuk, Maksym Rylsky, and Volodymyr Sosiura were always sitting there. Do you understand what kind of areopagus it was? And so I would enter the room because the secretary knew me, and Honchar would tell her: "Let him in, let him come in." I would come in, and they would all stand up. I'm a young kid, and all the classics would get up because I came in. It meant that they believed in me. And you can never let such faith down.

You talked to the poet Mykola Bazhan. He was an editor, like you, at the Odesa Studio in the 20s and 30s, and he determined its development. What features of his personality do you remember most?

I remember one thing the most. The fact is that Oleksandr Dovzhenko worked at the Odesa Film Studio. It was there that he shot one of his most famous films, The Courier's Bag.

And when Dovzhenko wrote the script for Ukraine on Fire in 1943, Stalin reacted extremely negatively to it. He said that it was a "nationalist film." He said that we were at war with Hitler, with fascism, and Dovzhenko was showing only Ukrainians. He organized a discussion of this work at the Politburo.

And do you know who was invited? Mykola Bazhan, Oleksandr Korniychuk, and Maksym Rylsky. And what struck me the most was that none of these luminaries spoke in defense of the script at that meeting. None of them said a word. That is why I have many doubts about the veracity of these people's works. It was impossible to fall so low in front of the leader of nations.

Stanislav Stryzheniuk. SCREENSHOT: YouTube Intent

Lina Kostenko, like you, belongs to the generation that shaped the new face of Ukrainian poetry in the 1960s. Did you know each other personally?

Lina Kostenko graduated from the Moscow Literary Institute, the same institute I graduated from. However, she is a year older than I. After graduation, she married Jerzy Pachlowski, moved to Poland with him, and gave birth to a daughter. Oksana Pakhlevska is now a recognized expert on Ukraine in Rome. She translated works that I once worked on.

One day, on Lina Vasylivna's birthday, I decided to call her in Kyiv, and we had a long talk. She is very fond of the sea. You know, when I read her poem "A Seagull on an Ice Flood," it seems to me that she simply cannot live without the sea. In Kyiv, she probably only goes to the Kyiv Sea, to the Dnipro, but she felt the real element in Gdansk. It was there that this beautiful poem was born.

Lina Kostenko is a classic. I told her this personally and I will say it again. I have read her novel in verse, Marusya Churai, several times. As for her prose... "Notes of a Ukrainian Hermit" are real sketches of modern life. She watches television, sees how much nonsense is sometimes said on it, and seems to be taking notes on it all. It's very interesting to read this - you feel the time in this way. We can study space now, but it is very difficult to look into time and space at the same time. This is the task of poetry, and it accomplishes it effortlessly.

Why do you think Odesa became one of the centers of art? What distinguished Odesa artists and writers from those in Kyiv or Lviv?

I used to be the head of the regional department of culture during the years when an interesting exchange took place: we transferred the operetta from Lviv to Odesa, and in return Lviv received the Soviet Army Theater. In other words, we gave Lviv residents a Russian theater and took the operetta for ourselves. At that time, Vodyanyi, Krupnyk, and Ostrovsky were still young. So I'll remind you once again: a city is people.

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