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Haptic & Hue
Ukraine's Revolutionary Act of Embroidery: How Identity Survives in Stitches
00:43:26
As the war in the Ukraine brutally shows, few people have had as hard a struggle down the centuries to maintain their identity as Ukrainians. For hundreds of years, they have been occupied and subjugated by one power after another, the Ottomans, the...
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- [00:20]
Jo Andrews
Nearly 80 years ago, at the end of the Second World War, a little girl called Lubov Volynets fled West with her parents after they had endured Russian occupation, Nazi invasion, and had then seen the Russians advance again across their country. They and a number of other Ukrainian families ended up in a displaced persons camp in Germany.
- [00:50]
Lubov Volynets
And they all decided, well, you know, we survived. Let's go and have our. Our photographs taken. What they did, whatever they had, whatever embroidery, whatever textile they had, they would exchange and dress in it and take photographs only in the Ukrainian outfit or some part of an outfit. And you know that later when you think about it, they wanted to take the photographs to show that they survived. But how did that they survived as Ukrainians, not just any regular person. It was so important for them to do that first photograph of their heritage.
- [01:32]
Jo Andrews
That photograph of Lubov's parents is an extraordinary one. It's black and white, so we can't see the colours. These were refugees who had just fled with what they could carry. And yet her mother and father of are beautifully dressed in incredibly detailed shirts. Lubov says her mother embroidered every stitch of the costumes. Welcome to the start of the sixth season of Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. My name is Jo Andrews and I'm a hand weaver interested in what cloth tells us about ourselves and our societies. Often the stories and information that textiles give us are ignored and we lose a whole dimension of human experience. This episode is about how powerful to textiles and stitch can be as markers of identity. Clothes don't just cover us, they tell us who we are and what we believe in. For many of us, the folk costumes of old are charming reminders of how our forebears might have lived. But for Ukrainians and for Ukrainian immigrants around the world who are part of this story, their embroidered blouses are a living emblem of who they are, one that is central to their identity.
- [03:21]
Lubov Volynets
The end of the war, we ended up in a little town in Germany and a few other families. You know, we were just there and my mother was trying to look through what we lost, what we had. And all of a sudden she looked and she said that I grew and I don't have an embroidered shirt. And for her it was like a panic, like as if I wasn't a complete person because I didn't have the shirt. And so she called all these other few people who were with us and she said, I have to embroider her. She found a piece of cloth. The other ladies helped with the colored threads. She had enough designs in her head. So she quickly embroidered something. A German lady lent her the sewing machine. She made this shirt for me. And then she, like, everybody relaxed. And maybe at that time, when it was done, I maybe didn't feel it as. As deeply, but it did internalize in me and this is how I went along with it. It was such an important act. So that's the deep meaning, you know, that I grew up with.
- [04:40]
Jo Andrews
Lubov was 6 or 7 when this happened. She's in her 80s now, but it has never left her. She came to America when she was 10, straight from the displaced persons camp. And all her life, one way or another, she has been researching and teaching Ukrainian folk art, embroidery and culture for more than 40 years. She's been curator of the Ukrainian Museum and Library in Stamford, Connecticut, which houses an excellent collection of Ukrainian embroidery. Interestingly, this work is something that originated not with the elite, but with the rural poor. And Lubov believes this is partly why it became such a powerful symbol of Ukrainian identity.
- [05:38]
Lubov Volynets
I think primarily is because Ukrainians as a nation was subjugated by foreign powers for centuries, and the educated classes, small class as they were, were either destroyed or sided with the rulers. The majority of the people, the villagers, they were left on their own. You know, they had to do something for themselves with the rich tradition that they grew up with. They wanted to preserve it, to. To make a statement that they are different, this is the way we are. And so this idea of the identity, of your ethnic belonging was very important because you were not free. You had to make a statement somehow. You couldn't fight because there was no way of doing it unless you wanted to be killed and later on sent to the Gulag. But still, all of the populace wanted to make this statement, a political statement in what way? And the only way they knew. They put on their traditional outfit, especially the embroidered shirt. This was their way of making the statement, I am Ukrainian. And for that shirt, they were beaten, they were jailed, they were persecuted, but that didn't stop them, because this is the only thing they could hold on to, to preserve their identity as belonging to a Ukrainian nation. And this runs to this day. But now it's almost international. Many other non Ukrainians do the same to join with this idea of making a statement of our identity to the world.
- [07:31]
Jo Andrews
In Ukrainian embroidery, colour and form are. Are both important. There are over a hundred different stitches that combine with drawn threadwork and cutwork. There's some evidence that the origins of this go back thousands of years. Ukrainians are partly descended from the legendary Scythian horseman who founded an empire based on Crimea in. In the 7th to 4th century BCE. In one of Ukraine's national museums is a finely worked gold Scythian cup showing two men with what appears to be embroidered edging to their tunics. Lubov herself traces the meaning of the stitches and the emblems shown far back before the arrival of Christianity in Ukraine.
- [08:31]
Lubov Volynets
Because Ukrainians were an agrarian society, their whole life centered around the cyclical seasonal changes. They were close to nature, which followed through into the Christianity. They were in awe of the natural phenomena, and they knew the importance of the sun, especially in springtime. You know, if spring. Spring came late, the poor farmers had a hard time catching up and having a good harvest in time. Nature is very powerful, and it doesn't always follow the regularity that man would like. And so his awe and his fear that some irregularity might occur always was with him. And he wanted to protect himself against these. And he felt that if he applied all these symbols on items that he uses, that somehow, in some way, he would be protected. He would appease nature from its difficult type of changes that he cannot control. And he believed in that magical power. And he used symbols because the meaning was hidden. Only the initiates knew what it was, because then if it's not visible, if it's hidden in this stylization, then it has power, then it has significance. If it's very obvious, there's no magic about it.
- [10:09]
Jo Andrews
The most important cloth for Ukrainians was the ritual cloth with its tree of life design.
- [10:17]
Lubov Volynets
It's a long cloth, very two ends. It would have an embroidered design, and the more ancient one, it would have a tree of life design or goddess protectress. It could be woven or embroidered. We do the outline, but in each petal or in each branch, you fill it with different type of stuff, stitches, and it has that light and shadow effect. And the story is that peasantry saw the colorful embroidery of the elite because they had all different color silk threads, but the peasant had only a red thread, maybe a little bit of blue. So they wanted to have that in their embroidery. And by applying different stitches to fill in that thread, lotus or tulip or the branch, it gives you such a beautiful shadow and light effect that it looks almost colorful, rich. So those you had to know all these little stitches. And in addition, you had to have an artistic eye, how to apply it within, you know, that framework of that, because it had to have a special effect. Those cloths are beautiful, and they were created way back. We don't know how they looked in the pagan days. But we know that the pagan religion in Ukraine demanded to have religious services in forests, in groves. But before you could, you had to sanctify the place. And the way you sanctified it is you would hang ritual clothes on the branches of the tree, and then the head priest or whoever would start this liturgical service. And it was a really important protective cloth for Ukrainians. So in the pagan days, by the entrance door, they would have a special hook and would hang the ritual cloth so that when a stranger enters the home with evil intent, his eyes would fall on the cloth, the red design, and all of the evil intent would be caught into the cloth. And when he entered the home, the evil would not spread. This was the belief.
- [12:57]
Jo Andrews
This tradition, along with Ukrainian folk music, survived the arrival of Christianity. And the cloth gradually mutated into a long cloth to cover your icons with. But the church in Ukraine also played a role in keeping embroidery alive. The churches needed finely embroidered cloth, and they needed help from the poorest in society to provide that.
- [13:29]
Lubov Volynets
So usually nuns embroidered it in their monasteries, but very often they used talented serf girls to help them with their embroidery. And up until as late 19th century, they still had serf girls or talent. Later on, when serfdom was abolished, young girls helped the nuns embroider these beautiful vestments, which used silk and gold threads, gold embroidery, so that type of embroidery always existed.
- [14:06]
Jo Andrews
Serfdom was a form of subsistence farming or near slavery, in which the laborer was bound to a small parcel of land, generation after generation, and obliged to work it, even though it belonged to the feudal lord. In medieval times, it was prevalent all over Europe, but in Ukraine and Russia, it wasn't dismantled until 1861.
- [14:37]
Lubov Volynets
Once serfdom was abolished, the elite began to see that those semi slave people were human beings, that they are creative, that they're not just a working horse, but they also have something to say and produce and to give something positive to society. So this was like mid 19th century, this, this whole wave of interest into the folk creativity began and admiration rose. And then when the academic artists began, like Picasso, to be inspired by primitive art, by folk art, and to this day, most of those Ukrainian artists who were appropriated by Russia, saying that they're Russian, like Sonia Delaunay and Kandinsky in their memoirs, they all say it was the Ukrainian atmosphere, the Ukrainian village, the Ukrainian rituals, traditions that they grew up with or saw, even though they were educated, that influenced their thinking and their style and what they put into their work. It's an interesting Credit to the unschooled talented peasant artist.
- [16:01]
Jo Andrews
Lubov says that this sense of design and beauty contained in the embroidery became an innate characteristic of Ukrainians.
- [16:12]
Lubov Volynets
They had to beautify things around themselves. Their life was so hard. I mean, this was strict ruling of the seasonal changes of this cycle movement. If they didn't do the work within that time, it would be a disaster. So they had to uplift their school spirits somehow. And they needed something beautiful to. To create, to make life lighter. They wanted once in a while to feel above the hard work, above the constant pain or whatever. And. And they did it by decorating the home, the clothing, especially the clothing.
- [16:59]
Jo Andrews
The oldest samples of folk embroidery in Ukraine go back to the late 18th century. Before that, no one thought much about it. It was just something the peasants did. But then this great awakening took place and things changed.
- [17:17]
Lubov Volynets
And only in middle 19th century, when finally the eyes were open to the society that we have to salvage as much as, because everything will disappear. Scholars in Ukraine began to wander from village to village to collect items, to do interviews. And very often, which is very interesting, wealthy families in Ukraine, and very often, usually the women were interested in the clothing and in the decoration and began to collect and write about it. And the first collections of folk shirts or for folk textiles or the Easter eggs or whatever were done by wealthy land owner women. And that's how the museum started privately. And then usually at the end of their lives, they donated it to a national museum. What helped a lot is that the Tsarist Russian government liked to look up to Britain. What the British did, they wanted. And when they created the Royal Geographic Society, Russians did the same, but they had a lot of different ethnic groups. So the Russian Geographic Society is divided into Kazakh group and Turkoman and so on. And one was called southwestern group and southwest means Ukraine. And so there were enough Ukrainian scholars who were members of this group, and they were the travelers collecting, writing down and preserving and saving what was still available. Although saddened by the fact that they realized that much had been disappearing or destroyed because no one paid attention to it.
- [19:24]
Jo Andrews
At present, a different kind of destruction is going on. No one is sure what the current status of these textiles is. Ukraine has accused Russia of looting more than 30, 30 museums, calling it the biggest art theft since the Nazis in World War II. Amongst the items that are known to have been taken is beautiful Scythian goldwork from the Crimea. Other museums in areas not occupied by Russia have been bombed and burnt down. The focus, as ever, has been on art and the built environment and it's been hard to find out the status of the textile collections. The Ukrainians call this cultural annihilation, an attempt to destroy a sense of who they are. And it's been practiced against them for centuries. And it's something that their embroidery passed through the generations as living stones. Stitches is designed to resist. Here's Lubov again.
- [20:34]
Lubov Volynets
It's like learning to walk or learning to do personal chores. It was something natural. You were a certain age. My mother or any other mother would take a needle, a piece of sackcloth in the beginning, and start teaching the child the first stitches. Of course, not everyone took to it quickly. You always had rebels. But on the whole, every girl knew at least the basic literally and understood some of the motifs, some of the applications, some of the compositional arrangements. You had to show your ability, that you will make a good housekeeper, that you will take care of your family.
- [21:24]
Jo Andrews
And after you were married, Easter was the time when you went to church and showed off your new embroidery.
- [21:33]
Lubov Volynets
And people went looking. And naturally, you know how women are criticizing, oh, she didn't do it this well, or she didn't do a new one. You had to show, at least if you didn't do it for yourself, you had to do it for your children and your husband, to show off that you are a good housewife, that you manage to be creative and managed to do all of this in the winter months so that Easter Sunday you could show off. And the interesting that in Western Ukraine, they say ethnographers love to go on Easter to the different village churches, because then they saw that beauty and they could photograph or draw all of this novelty for them. It was beautiful. Western Ukraine, when it finally, after World War I, became under Polish rule, Polish scholars used to come. They loved to go to these villages to show because they understood the beauty, the creativity, and they appreciated it. Even while scholars would, you know, it's the politicians who do not. Right.
- [22:49]
Jo Andrews
Ukrainians managed against Russian opposition to preserve their embroidery as a living tradition, especially in remote country areas well into the 20th century, although often at great risk, especially if they included blue and yellow, Ukraine's national colours in their work. In the 1960s and 70s, one of the first signs of active dissent against Russian rule came from the students in the cities who began singing Ukrainian carols. These are pagan songs celebrating winter. They have nothing to do with Christianity, but they were banned anyway.
- [23:37]
Lubov Volynets
Winter soles are one of the oldest oral traditions that we inherited from the villages that preserved it. And the Communists forbade this caroling. And one of the first movement of dissent were young students, young professional journalists, artists. All of a sudden, around Christmas time would dress in costumes if they found in grandma's dowry test, and would go on the buses or on the subway and start singing carols. And they would very often be arrested, reprimanded. Some of them later on, naturally, were sent to the Gulag if they wrote poems here and died there. But this was one of the first open protests in the end of 60s and 70s, the beginning of the return of the Caroline tradition.
- [24:48]
Jo Andrews
I think the bravery of these young Ukrainians was incredible. And it confirms the power, power contained in simple songs and stitches. During the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of Ukrainians emigrated. They went east, west, north and south, and they ended up all over the world. Lubov says in her experience, all Ukrainian migrants took embroidery with them when they left.
- [25:19]
Lubov Volynets
It was like an important part of themselves. They needed that. It was that route that they didn't want to abandon because it was part of their identity. You know, the national consciousness was there and they needed that. Wherever they went to the foreign, they know they're going to adapt a different country, live in a different style, maybe, but they still wanted to keep this identity of their roots, of their ethnicity in some form. And they did it by taking and bringing with them some item, one or two or many, and preserving it, because that made them complete. And the children watching the grandparents, parents benefited from it because they developed that affinity where they came from, why they came and what they bring with them. Not money, not gold, not silver, but something much more tangible of their personal completeness as a human individual of certain ethnicity.
- [26:32]
Jo Andrews
One of the places Ukrainians settled was the province of Alberta in Canada. Today there are more than 300,000 people of Ukrainian descent in Alberta, including 30,000 who say Ukrainian is their mother tongue. Many of them came from the area around Bukovina and Galicia in western Ukraine. They first started arriving in Canada in the late 19th century in response to. To the offer of free or very cheap land in the prairie provinces.
- [27:10]
Lucy Heinz
And there was a focus on the Ukrainian population because they were farmers. They were used to the climate in terms of it was similar to northern Alberta. At the time. They were considered very hardy people. I mean, it brings to mind this archival photo that I have seen. Seen a photo that was taken here in Alberta, where obviously the farmer did not have any animals to pull the plow. And in this photo you see the farmer behind the plow and approximately 12 Ukrainian women pulling the plow in order to be able to sow seeds. So to me, that really represents sort of the hardiness of the farming community that came from Ukraine.
- [28:00]
Jo Andrews
That's Lucy Heinz, who's the acting curator of the life and leisure program at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. As well as their strength and energy, the Ukrainians brought their textiles with them.
- [28:17]
Lucy Heinz
A lot of table runners, placemats, a lot of killams, which we know them as rugs. But these were rugs that were placed on the walls of the houses, not as decoration, but to really keep the warmth in. Of course, at the time that they arrived in Alberta, we didn't have home heating or central heating. It was, you know, wood stove. The stove would stop heating usually in the middle of the night. And so the kilnums on the walls would help contain the warmth in the house. And many who came also, they started out in sod house, sod huts. And so this is just made out of dirt and half built in the ground. They're very small, they're cold and damp. So they brought what was going to.
- [29:07]
Jo Andrews
Keep them warm as well as practical textiles. These families brought with them the textiles of their Ukrainian heritage. Highly embroidered handspun, hand woven linen shirts and blouses handed down through their families. And the reason we know this is thanks to a farmer from Ontario. Peter Orchinsky's grandparents migrated to Canada from Ukraine in the early 20th century and he grew up in Ontario speaking Ukrainian, although his mother's family came from Alberta.
- [29:50]
Lucy Heinz
So we do know he went to Alberta for the first time in 1959, and then in the 60s, the 70s and the 80s and the early 90s, he was going to Alberta probably yearly. To him, Alberta was his Ukrainian home. It was the, the home of his heart, as he puts it, and where he felt amongst a huge population of Ukrainian people, where I get the impression that when he lived in Ontario, it wasn't sort of a block of a region where many Ukrainians lived. I think he just really felt at home here in Alberta and he felt like it was his Ukraine.
- [30:35]
Jo Andrews
Peter was a born collector and he started traveling from household to household in Alberta, talking to the older women who had textiles to show him and stories to tell him.
- [30:50]
Lucy Heinz
He became known in the area where the Ukrainian population were living at that time and they were living for the most part in close proximity to each other, although there were some that were in southern Alberta. But he focused mostly on the population just northeast of Edmonton because that's where his mother's family was from. So that was his initial connection and from there he would have been introduced to other people. That were not his relatives.
- [31:24]
Jo Andrews
Down the years, Peter Ushinsky collected over a third thousand items. Not all are textiles, but of those that are, nearly all were made in the Ukraine and have been carefully looked after for decades in Canada.
- [31:43]
Lucy Heinz
So I would say 98 to 99% of the textiles in this collection came from Ukraine. Just a small percentage were, were actually made in Canada, in Alberta. The earliest garment that was collected dates back to 1865, which I was totally surprised that people would have. And I believe that many of these garments, because they're very loose fitting, they're not tight fitting garments, they were passed down from one generation to the next to be worn at special occasions. And that's why some, some of these, we have quite a few garments that are from the 1800s.
- [32:26]
Jo Andrews
The amount of work that went into creating these shirts and blouses is immense, as they were handmade from start to finish.
- [32:37]
Lucy Heinz
The earlier ones from the 1800s are primarily hemp. They're very sturdy, very strong, also coarse, somewhat. It's not a refined hemp fabric. I mean, it's definitely homespun. And you know, it would take them a year to make a piece of hemp fabric from the growing of the crop and then the harvesting and redding of the fibers in order to be able to spin them. So then they had to spin the fibers into a yarn that they could weave. And so it was not quite as refined as machine spun hemp as we would see today.
- [33:20]
Jo Andrews
And they have a character and a quality all of their own, but it.
- [33:26]
Lucy Heinz
Gives you an idea of what life was like. You didn't have fast fashion. You didn't, you know, I mean, it wasn't always easy to. Or could one afford to always purchase beautiful clothing and especially anything like the Ukrainian shirts, whether men or women's shirts that are beautifully, beautifully embroidered. And I am an embroiderer, and it just boggles my mind the amount of time that it would take to make these garments. They're very special, and that's why people hold on to them for sure.
- [34:03]
Jo Andrews
These are pieces of clothing worn next to the skin, made by your mother, grandmother, or great grandmother. They contain the code of your culture and the badge of your region. They encapsulate your past and carry in their stitches the sense of what it means to be a Ukrainian into the future. They were certainly garments designed to last.
- [34:31]
Lucy Heinz
They are in very good condition. All of the items that we received, there are very few that are in poor condition. I think a big part of that is because the garments themselves were made for special occasions. So they were not worn as often. And perhaps the reason we don't have many of the very plain garments is because they were worn out. They were passed down because it takes so long to make these garments by hand. You know, they just didn't toss them out if there were holes. They were refashioned into smaller garments for children. So they were used up. Then they became a table runner. Start cutting them down and use all the good pieces as much as possible.
- [35:19]
Jo Andrews
The Olshinsky collection came to the museum nearly 20 years ago, and although it has been carefully stored since then, no work has been done on it. However, last year, Lucy started researching it. She was prompted by the war in Ukraine, but also by local residents with Ukrainian heritage who wanted to see and understand more about their culture.
- [35:47]
Lucy Heinz
And so that really gave me the sense that this is important to them. And these individuals are descendants of Ukrainian families that were the early settlers to Alberta. They felt they needed to feel now being connected and getting to know more about their culture was even more important now that these terrible things are happening in Ukraine. So I think it sort of elevated in everybody's minds, whether you were Ukrainian descendant or for us at the museum who has a Ukrainian collection that we want them to. I mean, we always care for everything that comes into the museum, but I think there is this urgency to ensure that it becomes accessible.
- [36:35]
Jo Andrews
One of the people who has been helping her do that is part of a new wave of Ukrainian settlers to Alberta. Dr. Taras Lopoul arrived in Edmonton with his family family on an emergency travel program shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022.
- [36:58]
Dr. Taras Lopoul
Even now, after February last 2022, in Alberta came about 30,000 new Ukrainian displaced persons. Now Ukrainian language is everywhere in Edmonton.
- [37:16]
Jo Andrews
And of course, like many other Ukrainians, Taras has cousins in Alberta who were there to help him. He's an associate professor at a Ukrainian university in the field of history and political science in Canada. He's been carrying out a project with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Studies called Making Home in Times of Peace and War. And he's been speaking to the new Ukrainian arrivals.
- [37:51]
Dr. Taras Lopoul
And I had about 50 the interviews, especially the Ukrainian women and mothers. There are kids who came from eastern Ukraine, northern Ukraine, but from not many, but from western Ukraine.
- [38:10]
Jo Andrews
And the question he asked them was, what did you bring with you to Canada that reminds you of the home you left in Ukraine?
- [38:21]
Dr. Taras Lopoul
And probably half of them said, me, one thing is embroidered T shirts for me, for kids, probably just one thing. Some of them that brought Ziki of her parents or grandparents even. I brought the key from my parents house in my native village. Yes, but it's a deeply feeling of existence and it's a sense to be involved in eternity. In eternity. Or so it's part of this community self identification and community identification.
- [39:02]
Jo Andrews
And this is one of the reminders that in times of hardship and war, textiles can acquire intense meaning, as they did for the British and European recipients of the wartime quilts made in Canada in the 1940s, a story that we told in episode 26 we don't know what has happened to the text and embroidery collections in museums in eastern and southern Ukraine. It will take a long time for us to find out. But we do know that because Ukrainians value their embroidery as such a deep part of their culture, they continue to carry the pieces and the knowledge of how to create them to every corner of the world. There are diaspora collections in many places, not just Canada, and these are important. They ensure that whatever happens in Ukraine and despite war and hardship, these are stitches, just like the music of the Ukrainian national anthem that can never be undone. Lubov Volonec came to America directly from the displaced persons camp when she was 10. Her parents woke her before dawn as they approached the American mainland.
- [40:50]
Lubov Volynets
And they woke us up like before 4 so we could see the Statue of Liberty. And so my mother asked me, what do you want to wear when you come on shore in American land? And I said, I want to wear my brave shirt. And it was not that somebody prompted. I don't know why, I said, but you know, it's just like part of you. It's natural, you know. And so I stepped on American soil in my dry, good shirt.
- [41:25]
Jo Andrews
Thanks to Lubov, Lucy and Taras for their time and knowledge of Ukraine and its textiles. Haptic and Hue is hosted by me, Joe Andrews and produced and edited by Bill Taylor. It's an independent production supported entirely by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund us via Buy Me a Coffee or by becoming a friend of Haptic and Hu. This keeps the podcast independent and free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you extra content every month with a separate podcast called Travels with Textiles hosted by Bill Taylor and me. You can find out more about this episode and see pictures of some of the embroidery we've been talking about@www.hapticandhue.com. we'll be back next month with an episode on a piece of clothing that has a good clean to be a universal garment. It's thousands of years old and yet it featured on the catwalks this year, beloved by high women, superheroes and witches on broomsticks. It was worn by the soldiers of the Roman army and hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Join us next time on the first Thursday of the month. And until then, thank you for listening and enjoy whatever making you are doing.