Voinarenko Ostap.From the Hetmanate Era: Memoirs of an Emigré from 1918.Detroit, 1950

“When Hetman Pavlo was alive, / All was well; / There were horses, a cow, / And a full barn.”

Ostap Voynarenko. From the Hetmanate era: memoirs of an eyewitness from 1918.

Detroit, Michigan: published by the Women’s Division of the Ukrainian Hetmanate Organization, [1950]. — 30, [2] pp.: portrait. — Printed by the America Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1950.

Published in a sturdy cream-colored paper cover, with the author’s name and title printed in red-brown ink; the pamphlet is saddle-stitched with two metal staples. The cover has darkened evenly, with small foxing spots scattered across the front and light surface wear in the upper right corner; brown spots appear in the lower left corner of the back cover. The staples have oxidized, leaving rust marks around them on the center spread (pp. 16–17). The text block shows natural yellowing, with occasional foxing spots on the last blank page; the text is clean, with no losses. A pencil mark “-25.” appears on the back cover. Condition: good.

The book is of historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest.

INFORMATION

The memoirs are dedicated to the “bright memory” of Pavlo Skoropadsky, who died from wounds in April 1945, and are written as a response: in the “Introductory Word,” the author sounds an alarm that, amid postwar wandering in Europe, those who destroyed the Hetmanate are once again being glorified, and calls upon the still-living witnesses—Dmytro Doroshenko, Longin Tsehielsky, Serhii Shemet, and Atanas Andriyevsky—to speak out. The central scene of the book is the solemn opening of the Ukrainian State University in Kyiv in the autumn of 1918: a prayer service officiated by Archpriest Vasyl Lypkovsky, later Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church; the Hetman accompanied by mounted guards; the diploma presented to Rector Prof. T. Sushytskyi, and Skoropadsky’s speech to the professors and students, quoted from Doroshenko’s “History of Ukraine 1917–1923.” The text concludes with the folk ditty “In the Directory’s carriages, the territory is under the carriages” and a poem by Spyriridon Cherkasenko.

Ostap Voynarenko was a public figure and memoirist, an eyewitness to and participant in the events of 1917–1920: a delegate from Slobozhanshchyna to the First Ukrainian Congress, a member of the Main Administration of Prosvita, and an official in the Ministry of National Education under the UNR and the Hetmanate. In exile, he lived in North America; in 1966, he published another account—“On the Independence of the U. N. R.” (Winnipeg; Los Angeles).

The pamphlet was published by the Women’s Division of the Ukrainian Hetmanate Organization in Detroit and printed by the America Press in Philadelphia—the same press that published the Ukrainian newspaper of the same name. The year appears only on the verso of the title page, in the printer’s line, so bibliographers list the publication as [1950]. Before the text is a full-page portrait of the Hetman in an oval frame with the inscription “His Excellency Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky” and the family coat of arms at the bottom. The “Introductory Word” contains a glaring typographical error: the author refers to himself as a participant in the events “from the years 1917–1820.”