 From Cossack to Sumo By Volodymyr SENCHENKO |
Ukrainian Muscle Makes Its Mark
In terms of its folkloric traditions and its reality, Ukraine is a land of Herculean men.
Ukrainians have told tales of their gigantic countrymen for hundreds of years. Stories of men with phenomenal strength and almost superhuman abilities are the stuff of cultural legend. They are fairy tales evolved from snippets of fact, witnesses' accounts and storytellers' fancy.
The truth lies not far below the surface of the tales. We don't know whether the Ukrainian gene pool seems particularly prone to generating brawny men, or the physically challenging lives of farmers, miners and steelworkers necessitates physical strength. Science may yet provide an answer. Yet as a relatively small nation, Ukraine appears to have contributed more than its share of strongmen.
Don't blame Chernobyl. These are no latter-day mutants. Russian epics, passed down from the times of Kyivan Rus in the 11th and 12th centuries, mention a giant warrior hero named Illya Mouromets. Once believed to be only a mythical figure, Mouromets was a real person, buried in the caves of Kyiv's Pecherska Lavra.
Recent memory conjures the names of world-famous Ukrainian strongmen and fighters: Pysarenko, Koutsenko, Rigert, Piddoubny, Firtsak, Yankivsky and Zhabotynsky. All once were among the physically strongest men on the planet. Yet the brain/brawn ratio was not necessarily lopsided: Ivan Firtsak, for example, could speak 14 languages.
Wrestler Ivan Piddoubny is the strongest and the most famous of these giants. He was undefeated during his life, though suppressed by the Bolsheviks, who registered him as a Russian - spelling his name Poddoubny, rather than Piddoubny. His "political name change" remains uncorrected today: both his tomb and the international tournament named for him reflect the Russified spelling.
Ukrainian muscle continues to dominate today, from the boxing Klitschko brothers to the teams of men who have represented the country around the world in strongman competitions, most recently in Hawaii. One local competition is held annually in Krasenivka, a village in Piddoubny's native Cherkassy region.
Ivan Firtsak and Petro Yankivsky were other legendary giants. Firtsak came from Zakarpatya, while Yankivsky was born in Volyn. Leonid Zhabotynsky, who came from Zaporizhya, became famous after World War II, competing for the USSR.
Not all Ukrainian heroes are from Ukraine. Koki Tayho is a Sumo yokodzun (great master), and a Japanese national hero. His father, Markitan Boryshko, is Ukrainian and mother, Naya Kie, is Japanese. His parents met on Sakhalin Island before the war, but were parted in 1945 when the island was annexed by the USSR. Tayho's father was made to stay in the Soviet Union and served time in a Gulag penitentiary camp. His mother was returned to Japan. Tayho lived with his father until he was six years old, and never concealed his "Russian" heritage (all citizens of the USSR were regarded as Russians by the Japanese).
This summer, the 190 kilogram giant plans to visit his father's grave on Sakhalin and his father's former cottage in Roumovschyna, a village in Kharkiv region. He will also open a Sumo championship in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian culture honors physical labor. Children are raised to respect strong, enduring and resourceful people. Weightlifting is, for many, a game in a society that tells of men who could kill cattle with a blow from a fist, and who could literally take a bull by its horns and throw it to the ground. Ivan Firtsak lifted automobiles and carried them as amazed spectators looked on. Other men made a show of pulling a tractor or carrying a horse through brute strength. During an aviation exhibition in Kyiv, a team of men pulled the world's biggest aircraft, Antonov's An-225 Mriya, which weighs hundreds of tons.
Given their role models and an interest in sport and physical culture, it is not surprising that Ukrainian children, including girls, have a fascination with lifting weights and besting their own records and those of others. To an extent, they represent natural selection, the continuation of a genetic code that is centuries old and that is likely to run in Ukrainian blood for centuries to come.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
The Herodotus of Ukrainian History
Ukrainians Want A Country That Respects Them
Ukraine's Brain Drain
Chauvinistic Smoke A Few Words on Russia
A walk on the underside
Re-inventing Production: Military Giants Discover Consumer Goods
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