Knowledge is Power

This impressive statue sits comfortably in front of the Lugansk Oblast Public Library. Who is it?

We were on our book-buying spree for the Partnership grant and decided to visit the library. I wanted to see the “Windows on America” collection and meet its director. “Windows on America” is a U.S. Embassy project to give American classics along with video and computer equipment to Oblast-wide (comparable to counties) libraries throughout Ukraine. It's a great resource in all 26 oblast libraries and Crimea.

I used the "Windows on America" collection at the oblast library in Chernigov when I was in training; the PCV there at the time, the incomparable John Guy LaPlante, held his English Club meetings there. Barb Weiser and I used the collection to do literature and discussion seminars that were fascinating and fun. Also, my work group cluster asked one of the English club members, a bright and beautiful young woman, to serve as a translator for our community project on Chernigov tourism, and she was so good and so impressed the Peace Corps folks who attended the meeting at the City Hall that she nows works for PC headquarters in Kiev! Sometimes you never know how a small thing leads to a big thing. The ripple effect of good works.

I tried to sneak the Starobilsk Library in for a "Windows on America" collection, by the way, even though it is not an oblast library. I wrote earnest letters and made the case that our library serves some 30 small villages in far-eastern Ukraine, a rural area underserved by grant-makers and especially in need of books, to no avail. I keep trying. The fact that the US Embassy turned us down, on the other hand, led to our books project to start our own English-language collection. Where there's a will, there's a way!

The Lugansk public library is in a large nondescript building. Its collections are huge compared to Starobilsk’s. It is computerized, offers internet access, some public programming, and has an electronic card catalogue. It retains the old card catalogue in case something goes wrong with the computer, which I understand, but it also belies a lack of faith in the new technology.

The old card catalogues bring back many wonderful memories of when I worked in libraries in college and graduate school. It's rare to find them, with the old Dewey decimal system, in American libraries now, another relic of the past. They are common here in Ukraine.

I've been riffing here a bit because my Ukrainian adventure holds so many interesting experiences, and one thing leads to another.

But my big question remains: Who does the statue in front of the Lugansk Library portray? Does it represent a real person? A Ukrainian writer? A poet? Maxim Gorky, who the library is named after? I know it’s not Taras Shevchenko, the beloved Ukrainian writer whose statue stands in front of Lugansk Shevchenko University.

In the absence of facts, I've made up a story: The monumental statue in front of the Lugansk library is a brave warrior, an Everyman warrior, in the Soviet-hero, Socialist-realism style of the 1930s. He has put aside his shield and arms, and is reverently holding a manuscript, maybe a scroll, maybe a literary masterpiece. He has searched for peace all his life, and he finally found it, in books, in literature. A warrior and a scholar. And so this awesome statue embodies a sacred adage, a universal truth: "Knowledge is Power.” For now, and maybe forever, this will do for the name of the Lugansk library statue.