You're reading: ‘Secret Diary of Symon Petliura’ makes rounds in United States

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Ukrainian film about Symon Petliura, who led Ukraine’s first attempt at modern statehood, is touring the U.S. and Canada, with its director, Oles Yanchuk, saying his movie about political upheaval and war 100 years ago mirrors present turmoil in Ukraine and perhaps provides some warnings.

Petliura, who lived from 1879 to 1926, emerged as an energetic and brave military commander as Ukrainians in the Russian Empire declared independence in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that ushered in Soviet rule over Ukraine until 1991.

Ukrainians from the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire declared their own western republic and Petliura emerged as the leader when both parts united in 1918 as the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

The fledgling country was battered by larger Bolshevik armies and “White” anti-communist forces, both of whom refused to recognize Ukraine as a country.

Poland — switching between playing friend or foe — coveted much of Ukraine’s western territories.

Ukraine’s political leaders often enmeshed themselves in fighting among themselves, further weakening their country even as its external enemies moved in for the kill. Some of Petliura’s important colleagues in government argued that Ukraine didn’t need an army and could achieve its aims through diplomacy.

By the early 1920s, the republic could no longer defend itself and many of its politicians and thousands of its soldiers fled the country. Petliura led a government in exile based in Paris. In 1926 an assassin sent by the Soviet government shot dead Petliura in broad daylight on a street in the French capital.

There were many witnesses to the murder but the assassin, a Russian Jew, was acquitted in a controversial trial after claiming he was avenging the deaths of Jews killed in pogroms in Ukraine. The fact that Petliura had forbidden pogroms and executed one of its main proponents, did not influence the verdict.

The director spoke with the Kyiv Post about his film following its screening at a packed Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 22.

Long gestation period

Yanchuk said he first raised the idea of a film about Petliura 10 years ago and script writing began six years ago. He said it took so long “because we wanted to conduct research using a multitude of sources. Information in historical archives is usually concrete but it lacks the emotion and other qualities that should be in a film drama. So it was necessary to devise a dramatic structure and a certain flow of events for the film script and you can’t do that very quickly.”

Yanchuk wrote the script for The secret Diary of Simon Petliura with Mykhaylo Shayevich and Oleksandr Schevchenko.

Yanchuk and Shayevich have collaborated on some of the director’s previous films about Ukrainian history such as “Holod ’33” about the Holodomor,”Assassination” about the 1959 KGB murder of nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in Munich, Germany, and “The Undefeated” about Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known as UPA, leader Roman Shukhevych.

Many of those films were funded by the Ukrainian diaspora in America and the new film was also partly financed by the largest U.S. diaspora organization, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

Film director Oles Yanchuk (L) shakes hands with Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington, Valeriy Chaly.

Yanchuk and Shayevich traveled to Paris to examine documents at a Petliura archive there and also found transcripts of the trial of his assassin so that the court proceedings, an important part of the film, are portrayed very accurately.

The three reworked the script relentlessly until the director settled on the ninth version.

Dramatic license

Yanchuk admitted that it wasn’t certain that Petliura ever kept the diary that features in the movie’s title and said that the idea of its existence was a bit of dramatic license.

“In his youth Petliura was a journalist and he wrote well,” explained Yanchuk, “so he could have kept a diary. But during World War two the Germans took some of Petliura’s archives to Berlin and at the end of the war the Soviets found them and took them to Moscow. So there might have been a diary. Or perhaps not. But the notion of a diary was a dramatic device that enabled us to move between different periods covered by the film from 1917 to 1927.”

The film was premiered in Kyiv Sept. 4 and has been shown all over Ukraine to good reviews, according to Yanchuk, and is set for commercial success. Eventually a version of the two-hour movie will be edited for television to be screened in several episodes.

He explained he liked working on films with historical subjects “because they have a longer life than other types of film. People like history and that’s the case all over the world. For instance statistics about Hollywood show that the top films have historical themes.”

Yanchuk said that Ukrainians are interested to discover their country’s history: “During Soviet times, much of our history was stifled, distorted or turned into Soviet propaganda. That left a lot of blank spots and to fill those in using films is extremely interesting for me and I can see audiences want to learn what really happened in Ukrainian history too.”

He also attributes his fascination for history to his mother’s infectious enthusiasm for the subject she taught as a schoolteacher. “My father taught Ukrainian literature and language. So you can say my interest in these subjects is almost genetic.”

Petliura relevant today

Yanchuk believes Petliura is relevant today: “Some events happening in Ukraine’s contemporary political life bring to mind what happened a century ago. History moves like a sort of spiral where some things are repeated. Therefore, I’d say that this film provides a warning for all Ukrainians if we want to keep our independence, which has now lasted 27 years, especially in light of the tense situation in the east.”

Yanchuk said he was struck by the fact that Petliura led a Ukrainian government in exile and his followers fully expected that they would return and liberate Ukraine. The assassination of Petliura, he said, was intended to kill the hope to continue the fight.

Film industry more than just a business

Yanchuk was appointed head of the Dovzhenko Studios, where he had spent almost his entire professional life, in 2014. After the fall of the USSR, Yanchuk said, most funding ceased for the previously well-financed industry and the dozen films and 20 TV series pumped out annually at the Dovzhenko studios during its heyday, diminished to a trickle.

He said the studios were hard-hard-pressed just to preserve the large number of buildings sprawling over 17 hectares, technical equipment, a collection of 100,000 costumes, furniture, some one thousand weapons, and to keep in working order scores of historic motor vehicles ranging from tanks to classic cars, and to maintain countless other props.

He said he had attempted to woo foreign film-makers to Ukraine, where costs are much lower than in the West, but they were worried about the war.

Without government money the studios cannot afford to refurbish buildings and film lots or buy new equipment to replace outdated and dilapidated equipment.

The director said the Dovzhenko Studios represent a center of excellence training future generations of Ukrainian directors, screenwriters, actors, camera operators and other technical experts. Its costs were far more than those required by independent film-makers who competed for scarce government grants.

Yanchuk said the Kremlin has poured money lavishly into the Russian film industry because it understands its importance, especially at a time of war.

He said: “You can’t just measure investment in money terms. Films are a powerful force in shaping a person’s view of the world and themselves and instilling pride about their country. Therefore, I think that regardless of current tough economic times, it is vital to create conditions for Ukrainian film-makers to be able to make many more films.”