CIUS hosts launch of Bociurkiw's book during conference (11/10/96)

CIUS hosts launch of Bociurkiw's book during conference

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

EDMONTON - "This book is a miracle," said Dr. Serhiy Plokhy, director of the Church Studies Program of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, in describing Prof. Bohdan Bociurkiw's "The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950," at its book launch here during the CIUS's 20th anniversary conference on October 5.

In the summer of 1992, Prof. Bociurkiw literally rose from his hospital bed at the Ottawa Civic Hospital's Heart Institute, and fought off what was thought to be a terminal illness to complete work on his monograph.

Prof. Bociurkiw had actually completed a manuscript in 1989, but then decided to wait, sensing that major changes were afoot in the Soviet Union. "My intuition told me to wait," he told a packed room of well-wishers and scholars, "The collapse of the Soviet regime made it possible to access previously closed Communist Party and KGB documents. It was certainly worth waiting for."

In the summer of 1992, what got him up off the bed was his wife Vera's arrival with a package of KGB documents from the Lviv State Archives. "I asked the Almighty for a sabbatical to finish the book, and I regained enough strength to do it," he said.

The Carleton University political scientist then traveled to Ukraine and Russia six times, sifting through material held in archives in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Moscow.

Prof. Maxim Tarnawsky, director of the CIUS Press, the new book's publisher, called the volume "an erudite, scholarly work, but one that is accessible to the general public."