Oles Honchar (1918–1995)

The cathedral stands at one end of a Ukrainian manufacturing town. Originally built by the Cossacks hundreds of years ago, it has witnessed many historical events, most recently World War II. Now, in the 1960s, the cathedral stands as an empty reminder of the past since the communist government shut down religious worship. At the other end of town stands the steel factory where most of the citizens work under less-than-ideal conditions. The people of the town live their lives under the shadows of these two contrasting buildings: the factory which pollutes the air with microscopic particles of metal and illustrates the pride of the people in their ability to create a legacy forged in steel and the cathedral which enriches the souls of the people and stands as a silent reminder of the legacy and greatness of their past.

I liked this book. It was a bit difficult to read because of the significant cultural differences, but that’s to be expected. I really liked the contrast between the cathedral and the factory, the past and the present. Honchar addresses what it means to be human during a political regime that discourages individuality in favor of the group.
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This is a novel of the Ukraine. Oles Honchar wished to promote and preserve Ukrainian culture. The author’s previous books were well received but not this last. Here is an excerp from Wikipedia, “A sad fate was destined for the next Honchar's novel Sobor (Cathedral, 1968). In comparison with "Tronka" the novel is much more closer to the traditional realism with broadly distinct positive and negative characters. The struggle for the revival of spirituality, for the historical memory of people as the foundation of decency in relationships between people is situated in the epicenter of story. The prototype of the cathedral in the novel served the Novomoskovsk Holy-Trinity Cathedral (Dnipropetrovsk Region). The Dnipropetrovsk Region Communist Party leader Oleksiy Vatchenko recognized himself in the image of a negative character the soulless party member opportunist who deposited his father in a retirement home. Being a friend of Leonid Brezhnev, Vatchenko requested a ban on the novel. The novel was published only in magazines, while the already printed copies of the book were confiscated and the translation to the Russian language was suspended. Despite the attempts to protect the piece (articles of Mykola Bazhan and others) it was prohibited and the mentioning about it has ceased. The only thing that saved Honchar from further prosecutions was his position in the Writer's Union.”

I enjoyed this book, I found the story to be poetic in many ways. It was love story as well as a story of the Ukraine and of communism and the human spirit. As stated above, the characters were positive and negative. I thought there was a fair amount of philosophy in this work. Because of the censer of this book it can be found as a pdf file on -line and was published by the St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics in Philadelphia in 1989.… (más)