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Despite oppression, choirmaster Levko Dovhovych fights to maintain
national rites for Ukrainians residing in Slovakia. He is known for his
Malanka festivals in Kosice
By Anna Kozmina
Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Kyiv, Ukraine
Jan 10, 2003
As a young musician, Levko Dovhovych was convicted of Ukrainian nationalism.
Under the harsh rule of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, that accusation could
easily have earned him a death sentence. But the court, having considered
his age, sentenced Dovhovych to 10 years at hard labor instead.
Dovhovych was 14 years old.
Music would later become Dovhovych's key weapon, both in the Siberian
camps and the emigration that followed. Today, the 67-year-old choirmaster
and conductor lives in Kosice, Slovakia, and spearheads a drive to preserve
a sense of national identity for the thousands of Ukrainians scattered
around Europe.
"The national cause is in the first place for me," he said. "Friends often
call me a fanatic."
Dovhovych is the head of the European Congress of Ukrainians, and deputy
head of the World Congress of Ukrainians. But that's not what has earned him
recognition.
Among Ukrainian ex-pats in Slovakia and abroad, he is better known for his
deputy head of the World Congress of Ukrainians. But that's not what has
earned him recognition.
Among Ukrainian ex-pats in Slovakia and abroad, he is better known for his
Malanka festivals in Kosice. Malanka, also known as the Old New Year, is
marked on Jan. 13, the Orthodox St. Melania's Day. The celebration includes
dress-up shows, caroling and a holiday dinner consisting of 12 dishes.
The first attempt to hold a Malanka festival took place in Kosice in 1968,
but was immediately banned by local authorities. In 1990, Dovhovych and his
wife Olena re-established the celebration.
Their Malanka celebration has attracted as many as 750 Ukrainians every year
since. Guests come from as far as Belgium, Germany and England to listen to
the concert, eat traditional food and mingle.
"It is the year's merriest celebration," said Zoreslava Koval from Munich.
"It's so wonderful to be with other Ukrainians, take part in the rituals
that we do not observe in daily life, but that are deep in our heart from
our ancestors."
"They tell me in Lviv, in London 'Levko, come make such a great Malanka
for us as well!'" bragged Dovhovych.
Dovhovych has experience in organizing parties. In 1955, he was among
the prisoners who organized the celebration of Epiphany in a Siberian labor
camp.
Priests served a liturgy, and more than 200 people took the communion, he
said. Though the celebration was a clear violation of prison rules, the
guards wouldn't stop them, he said.
"They were afraid of us," said Dovhovych, laughing. "We were those
'nationalist bandits' capable of anything."
Dovhovych was born in Uzhgorod, then part of Czechoslovakia, in 1935.
When Western Ukraine was annexed into the Soviet Union after World
War II, his father, a priest, was forced to flee to Czechoslovakia by agents
of the KGB's predecessor, the NKVD.
"It was a terrible time," recalls Klara Baloh, a Dovhovych friend and
Uzhgorod musician. "We used to live in a civilized, God-fearing state. The
new system seemed completely barbarian to us."
Several years afterwards, Dovho- vych was accused of siding with an
anti-Soviet organization and of betraying the Soviet Union.
"It was a farce, a way of psychological pressure on the people," recalls
Dovhovych.
He spent his youth in Siberian coal mines, where he met a number of
prominent musicians among the political prisoners.
Dovhovych's fellow inmates included Stepan Chornenky, a soloist at the Lviv
Opera and a tenor at Italy's famous La Scala Theater, Leonid Ischenko, the
chief conductor of the Odessa Opera and Leo Kalmit, the director of Estonia'
s National Theater. The masters taught Dovhovych how to conduct, and how
to become a choirmaster.
"I was learning to live in the gulags," he said.
In 1957, Dovhovych was rehabilitated. Soon after returning home, he moved
to Czechoslovakia and found his family. There, he organized his first
Ukrainian youth ensemble, called Vesna (spring), and later several choirs
and
a Ukrainian drama theater.
But Dovhovych's enthusiasm soon attracted the attention of the local
authorities in socialist Czechoslovakia, who accused him of promoting the
spirit of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" among the local youth. Dovhovych
was forced to leave his choirs and engage in construction work instead. For
15 years, he worked as a foreman.
In 1985, Dovhovych was allowed to organize a Ukrainian choir. "I was told:
'You want a Ukrainian choir - okay. But we promise that you will have lots
of trouble with it."
Undaunted, Dovhovych founded a mixed choir called Karpaty, consisting of
ethnic Ukrainians. Karpaty, which celebrated its 17th anniversary this fall,
performed more than 220 concerts.
Helena Lichko and her husband Andry have been singing in Karpaty from the
day it was founded.
"When we found out that there was a Ukrainian choir, we became extremely
excited," Lichko said. "We craved to have something of our own, of our
culture."
Some 280 villages inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians have existed in what is now
Slovakia since the days of Kyivan Rus.
In many of those villages, Dovhovych has helped establish amateur choirs and
developed an education program for children's choirs.
Dovhovych also inspired families in Slovakia's Ukrainian-dominated Presov
region to celebrate the Shevchenko Days in March - poetry readings in honor
of Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko.
Most guests at Dovhovych's Malanka celebration these days speak poor
Ukrainian and include few young people.
"Our national minority is becoming extinct," said Dovhovych. "Soon we will
disappear."
In the 1960's, there were 272 Ukrainian schools in Slovakia. Now, there are
only eight. Fewer people identify themselves as Ukrainians in census, and
more youth intermarry.
Dovhovych said he has no illusions of halting what he calls the natural
course of events. What he is planning to do is to continue his choir's tours
and staging Malanka celebrations in Kosice.
"Yes, we are dying, and let the world know about it," he said. "But at least
we are dying with a song."
The Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, January 10, 2003
Photograph with the article: by Anna Kozmina
Choirmaster and conductor Levko Dovhovych and his wife, Olena, at a Malanka
celebration in Kosice, Slovakia last year. Hundreds of ethnic Ukrainians
from throughout Europe attend Malanka festivals that Dovhovych organizes.
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