"I would also like to say that there were extremely great difficulties with the publication of these Transcarpathian songs. Because at that time, the Soviet system did not recognize... the whole policy was aimed at the equalization of the whole nation, and what about dialects, let alone Ukrainian, and in different dialects. And when he prepared the collection for publication, no publishing house wanted to accept it, demanding that he translate the songs and lyrics into a literary language. And what good is a song if it doesn't have that authentic language? We even have an excerpt of a letter in which Maksym Rylsky appealed to the publishing house in support of his father to have it published. But no. He was rejected in Kyiv. But fortunately, during one of the conferences (at that time there were All-Ukrainian and All-Union conferences). My father, speaking at a conference, met a publisher in Moscow who agreed to publish Ukrainian songs from Zakarpattia in Moscow, but along with the authentic text, there had to be a text in Russian. And my father agreed to this because the authentic Ukrainian text was preserved. And so his first book was published in Moscow in 1968. It was followed by further research, and since my father published a lot in scientific journals, and as Mykola Mushynka, who is an academician of the National Academy of Sciences... he was very supportive of my father and published his works in various scientific journals in Slovakia (where he lived), he said, speaking at a conference dedicated to my father's memory five years ago, that "Hoshovsky has 14 works published in the Soviet Union, and 74 works outside the Soviet Union. That is, his works, his writings, were published in Slovak, Czech, Bulgarian, and English magazines-different European and even American magazines. He was better known internationally than here in Ukraine."
We began to revive it. This revival began even before independence, in the late 80s. I have a younger son, he was studying at the Small Academy of Sciences at the time... Sviatoslav, who was headed or supervised by Ihor Yuhnovsky, and he formed a group of capable young men who are patriots, who are smart. And they began to prepare them to become Plast members. They had a very interesting experience, because they were given lectures on the history of Ukraine, literature, the history of Plast, and various sports skills, physical training, and so on. My son Sviatoslav, who was in the first cohort of Plast members ordained by Volodymyr Sterniuk of blessed memory, was initiated into Plast. At that time, the first Plast members were being initiated. It was the hut of the Forest Devils, and they are still around, by the way, all together, these forest devils. Well, their paths developed differently, but that Plast laid the foundation for them. And I, as the head of the education department, contributed to it, I was happy that there were educators. We immediately sent them to schools to recruit groups to teach children. When the communists were driven out in the early 90s, it happened in one day in our Zaliznychnyi district. I got a call from the head of the district administration, he was then called the head of the executive committee, and he said: "Lyudmyla Volodymyrivna, tomorrow your education department should be in the building where the Zaliznychna Communist Party used to be. (They had a room on Vyhovsky Street, such beautiful offices, and we were now on Sheptytskoho Street, in such an old building-it was the education department, inspectors, accounting, medical office-all together.) And so we had to move there within one day, to relocate. The communists were fleeing, even throwing everything out of the window to get out as quickly as possible. And so we arrived, and I, as the head of the education department, sat in the office of the first secretary of the district party committee.... And the old building we occupied was already won back by me, I went and asked for it to be given to Plast. The Plast home was created there, and by the way, the Plast home is still located there, in this building, where the education department used to be."
"And I set a goal for myself - I saw what I had to change. First of all, it was easy for me because Iryna Kalynets headed the regional department. It was also a great support. And she, like me, had no experience of working in leadership positions in state institutions... As for education, we understood well (I am personally convinced that education should be in the family), in the Soviet Union education was a school policy. But the family should receive help from the school. Especially since the independent state was formed, there seemed to be a gap in education. And we began to build this educational process on Christian principles. And this program on Christian ethics, which was introduced by the Lviv region, then jointly adopted by the Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi regions, was started without having ready-made approved programs, and we began to experiment and conduct them at school. We realized that only on the basis of Christian morality can we raise a worthy generation of people of an independent state. And I believe that what we are seeing now, during the war, this number of volunteers, people who want to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Ukraine, is also the result of this education, this change of orientation from communist ideals to Christian moral and ethical values."
I grew wings, it seemed to me that I could do anything. Even the Pravda newspaper, a Moscow-based newspaper, wrote about me at the time: "In Lviv, the head of the school, a holder of the Makarenko Order, was fired, and a representative of the Rukh without the appropriate skills, or as they wrote, a non-partisan, headed the education department... But it seemed to me that I could do everything, that I would destroy everything. And you know, those years were so happy, so good, because there was great support from the deputy corps. And this is extremely important - when everything you want to do is supported by deputies. Because everything had to be approved, whether it was a development program or a budget or something else. Back then, people who came out of the Ukrainian Language Society or the Rukh, who saw that education was the foundation of the new state, and they supported education, became deputies. When I came with some proposals, I was not criticized. I felt this difference when I later, in the 2000s, became a deputy of the Regional Council, where inter-party struggles began, and since I was not from that faction, they put a spoke in my wheel, but I am not talking about politics, I am talking about education! Back in the 90s, there was a lot of support from the deputies."
I didn't speak at the rallies - there was a chairman, I was his deputy, the school principal who headed the regional party organization - he spoke at the rallies, and I was his deputy, and since I had experience in such bureaucratic work, I was mainly involved in the development of the party in those structures. I worked with the district branches, advised them, provided assistance, and so on... and I was offered... we came to Kyiv, and there was a procedure when the lists were drawn up, it was still a proportional system, and the lists were drawn up for the city council, the regional council. They were approved in Kyiv, and so I arrived with those lists, and the All-Ukrainian Political Council was meeting there... And I remember so well how they read our list, and the chairman gave a description of each person, and I gave a description of some of them. And there was only one woman on our list. That is, we were given a remark. The head explains that men are the most active there, and so on. And I don't remember who, I think it was Turchynov, who was head of Yulia Tymoshenko's headquarters at the time, said: "Here's Kozak!" (I wanted to hide under the table) "She's an honored worker, she's this-why didn't you include her in the lists?" Well, I was included. Well, in principle, I was already burned out. Because in 2002, when I resigned from the post of head, I ran for the City Council, and I lost, and this was my second loss. And I wanted to join the Education Commission as a deputy and continue to do something. So when I was included in that list, I immediately said: "Only on the condition that I will work in the education commission."
Liudmyla Volodymyrivna Kozak (from the Hoshovski family), was born on June 14, 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. She has been a citizen of Ukraine since 1991. Her father was a famous scientist with a world name, Volodymyr Hoshovskyi, a musicologist and folklorist, who was the first to introduce cybernetic methods for the analysis of musical works, was a role model for his daughter all his life. The Hoshovski family, and later the family of Liudmila Volodymyrivna, nurtured and preserved Ukrainian, Czech and Christian traditions. She graduated from Lviv secondary school № 28 in 1965. And in 1972, she graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Ivan Franko Lviv State University, evening department, majoring in radio physics (in parallel with her studies, she worked at the radio physics department, where she met her future husband, Mykhailo Kozak. The family had two sons, Yaroslav and Sviatoslav.) Liudmyla Volodymyrivna chose the path of teaching and was working as a physics teacher for about 20 years (first at Lviv secondary school №65 (1973-1978), and from 1978 to 1990 at Lviv secondary school №15). From 1990 to 2002, she was the head of the education department of the Zaliznychnyi District Executive Committee of the Lviv City Council. In 2002 she had to retire. In 1997 Liudmyla Volodymyrivna was awarded the honorary title “Merited Education Worker of Ukraine”. Since 2002, he has been actively engaged in public and political work. In 2002-2004 she was the coordinator of educational programs at the “Law and Democracy” foundation. Since 2004, a member of the party “Batkivshchyna”, adviser to the chairman of the Lviv regional organization of the “Batkivshchyna”, works as the head of the department of organizational and party work, since 2005 - in the position of deputy chairman of the Lviv regional organization of “Batkivshchyna”.
From 2006 to 2010, she was a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, chairman of the permanent commission on education and science. She devoted her professional life to the development of a new concept of education in a young democratic state and to the development of leadership in education. Lives in Lviv, retired.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
