"The Far Eastern Odyssey of Ivan Svit" by Olga Khomenko — Doctor of Philosophy, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Adjunct Professor kmbs — tells a complex story about the Ukrainian diaspora in the Far East. Ukrainian immigrants on the Green Wedge and in Manchuria (up to a million people) organized their Ukraine, which they missed, which they longed for, created it as they remembered and aspired to. And all this in the context of the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Revolution of 1917, postwar reconstruction.
When Homer's Odyssey arose, there was a unique story about the same remarkable journey: a multi-level quest, the reward of which is to return home. Ivan Khomenko's odyssey was Ivan Svit. He did not have to return to Ukraine now. His work and history are returning home. The journey is over the story of her continues. As if in a successful pun of the moderator of the presentation, journalist and media expert Andriy Kulikov, the World Odyssey continues.
There is a legend among orientalists about the lost manuscript of Ivan Svit: it is as if Svit wrote more than a thousand pages that would make up the three-volume "History of Ukrainians in Asia." The archives of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York contain the second, apparently, part of this work, devoted to the Ukrainian diaspora in the Far East. This text was deciphered, commented on, and returned to circulation by Olga Khomenko. The question of whether those thousand pages of Ivan Svit's History were and where they can be kept remains open.
Well-known historian Serhiy Plohiy (who joined the presentation online) congratulated the author and her readers on the publication of the book. Serhiy Plohiy stressed that Ukraine is positively focused on presenting itself in the World, mainly about Europe or the United States. At the same time, the colossal history of relations between Ukraine and Asia remains unnoticed by historians and political scientists. Expertise is being formed on this issue, which is becoming a way to overcome our provincialism: "The history of Ivan Svit is the history of the Ukrainian presence in the Far East, which is now finally becoming public property and is an important stage of our self-awareness."
Ivan Svit, journalist, publicist, historian — said Olga Khomenko — belongs to the people who are described in the business space in the categories of adaptive leadership: "Be able to act in difficult situations without compromising their interests and principles."
Ivan Svit (his real name is Svitlanov) comes from the Kharkiv family. He graduated from the seminary and studied physics at Kharkiv University. In 1918 he moved to the Far East, from where he planned to emigrate to the United States. The stay in the Far East was a milestone in forming the political identity of the World. At that time, Ukrainian interests were also actively articulated there (according to Benedict Anderson). Ukraine was imagined outside the "mainland" country, such as the work of, say, the All-Ukrainian Congress in Khabarovsk in 1918. The World is actively involved in the processes. From 1932, already in Harbin, he published the Manchurian Herald. The newspaper was published in Ukrainian, Russian, English and had Japanese headlines / titles (Ivan Svit did not know Japanese).
The doctrine of harmonious coexistence of five nations operated in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, and Ukrainians represented the Slavic nation. "In fact," said the author of Ivan Svit's Far Eastern Odyssey, "Svit was a self-proclaimed Ukrainian consul." He helped more than two hundred Ukrainians travel to Argentina via Shanghai in 1941, who then left, only they survived.
Questionnaires of those saved by the World in 1941 are one of the sources of Khomenko's research. Olga Khomenko worked at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University and in the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences archives. She received documents on the history of Ukrainian-Japanese diplomacy, which Ivan Svit brought to the United States, including personal files of Ukrainian representatives. A committee in Shanghai.
The story of Ivan Svit is about saving one Ukrainian community. In the story of Olga Khomenko — about saving this community from oblivion.
Vasyl Zorya, a well-known international journalist present at the presentation, summed up an exciting conversation about Ivan Svit's Far Eastern Odyssey: "If I were asked what is the biggest problem for Ukrainians, I would say: worldview. If a person has a narrow worldview, he can not stay nation. Most of us are convinced that Ukraine is at the center of the European universe, and we all have a business to deal with — this is our urban, provincial vision. The World lives with its problems, and we are just one of its problems. To understand one's place in the World is what Ivan Svit and Olga Khomenko do. "
