Back during the days of Glasnost and Perestroika, my parents finally got permission to bring over one of our cousins from Ukraine on a tourist visa. Although the political climate had changed and we were grateful that the Iron Curtain and Ukraine had opened up somewhat, few then had any idea that in the matter of just a few more years, the USSR would cease to exist.
My cousin hailed from a town not too far from Dnipropetrovsk, an area that was Russified, Sovietized, collectivized and traumatized throughout the better part of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, she was one of those that had not succumbed to either the ideological or pragmatic attraction of Communism, and she harboured a fierce spirit of Ukrainian nationalism that we found somewhat curious, though quite impressive.
In the month that she spent with us, she drove us relentlessly to show and explain to her everything about Canada, its people, its economy, its society and political system. She absorbed everything ferociously, and in the end was satisfied that all her skepticism about what she had been fed all her life by the Communist system was justified. It had all been one big lie. One particularly poignant moment was when, at some Ukrainian event, she heard the Ukrainian national anthem – Shche Ne Vmerla Ukrayina (Ukraine Has not Died Yet) for the first time. To her it was a particularly emotional and poignant moment.
Later that evening she had me write down the words and sing it to her several times until she could repeat it herself. She was determined to smuggle the words back to Ukraine and teach it to her fellow peers, who also had never heard it, as it was banned and vigorously suppressed when the Soviets took over Ukraine after the Revolution. When she asked me about the anthem’s history, I was somewhat embarrassed to tell her, that though I had it perfectly memorized from countless repetition, I actually knew very little about its origins.
I subsequently did some research and learned the interesting details regarding its provenance. The original lyrics were penned by a Ukrainian poet from Kyiv by the name of Pavlo Chubynsky in 1862. The story goes that at a party once, Pavlo heard some Serbian students then attending Kyiv University sing a patriotic Serbian song. He liked the theme so much that he composed the words to Shche Ne Vmerla that same evening and sang it to the music of the Serbian song. Some speculate that he based the first sentence on the similar patriotic song then popular with Polish nationalists which started out with the words Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła (Poland Is Not Yet Lost) which ultimately became the Polish National Anthem. The lyrics were published and became quite popular throughout Ukraine. The Tsarist authorities were not pleased, needless to say, and for his troubles, Chubynsky was exiled to Siberia.
In 1864, a Western Ukrainian priest and composer by the name of Mykhailo Verbytsky discovered the poem and set it to the music that we recognize today. The words and music were first performed live in 1864 at the Ukraine Theatre in Lviv.
In 1917, subsequent to the Bolshevik Revolution, the newly formed Ukrainian Republic adopted the words and music as Ukraine’s official national anthem. When the Republic was crushed by the Red Army and Soviet rule imposed, the anthem was officially banned, and remained so until 1991 when Ukraine once again gained her freedom and independence. In January of 1992 Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted the music as Ukraine’s national anthem. Interestingly enough though, this did not include the original lyrics, and for the next twelve years, amid much debate, the anthem was officially without words. It was not until 2003 that a law was passed adopting the first verse and chorus from Chubynsky’s poem as part of the anthem. Aside from stripping out three of the original four verses and deleting half of the original chorus, the new law also made a minor change to the first line of the anthem. It went from Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina, ni slava ni volia (Ukraine has not died yet, nor her glory nor her freedom) to Shche ne vmerla Ukrayiny, i slava i volia (Ukraine's glory has not yet died, nor her freedom).
I had always thought that that first line about Ukraine not being dead yet a little morbid and depressing, so I was not displeased with the change. Nonetheless, every time I sing the anthem nowadays, I usually still get tripped up and sing the original words that have been so permanently etched into my brain. Ironically, it is now the original words of the anthem that refuse to die.
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