NONFICTION - Feb. 9, 1997

FROM THREE WORLDS: New Writing From Ukraine Edited by Ed Hogan (Glas/Zephyr Press: 282 pp., $12.95, paperback original). With a cry of Svoboda! (liberty), this volume pays tribute to the long endurance of the people of Ukraine, a land of 50 million north of the Black Sea, who fought efforts by Russian czars and then Soviet apparatchiks to smother their culture. Stories, poetry and artwork by 18 of Ukraine’s leading artists, anxious to present themselves to the world, suggest something more than just a routine literary collection: This volume is more like the calling card of a nation finally coming into its own.

An introductory essay by critic Solomea Pavlychko gives Western readers a necessary perspective on the struggles of writers there, underscoring just how important this volume is even in post-Soviet times: “Independence has had even less happy consequences . . . . Ukraine does not have a single paper mill within its borders.” A startlingly diverse range of voices speaks of the strains of coping with the Soviet past and the chaotic present.

Valery Shevchuk casts a satiric eye on a woman’s cuckolding of two men to get an addition built for her co-op apartment; Yevhen Pashkovsky weaves biblical passages into a haunting tale of lives broken by the 1932-1933 famine that killed millions in Eastern Ukraine; Oksana Zabuzkho’s poetry effervesces with the joys of inwardness--irony, sorrow, compassion and that aching sense of love that “turns bones into flutes.” All have their share here. Black-and-white photography by Tania D’Avignon shows a country still straddling its agrarian past and free-market future.

“From Three Worlds” is one more sparkling testimony to the riches of the Slavic world that are no longer hidden from Western eyes.