Introducing our new columnist (02/23/97)

Introducing our new columnist

Our new monthly columnist, Andrew Fedynsky, first came to broader public attention in 1955 with a brilliant recitation of a four-line poem in the first grade of Cleveland's Ridna Shkola. (His parents enjoyed it.) Years later, he came back to teach at the same School of Ukrainian Studies.

Mr. Fedynsky also became active in the Ukrainian human rights movement, translating dissident literature, editing and writing for Smoloskyp in Baltimore in the 1970s and '80s. In the summer of 1977, in an incident that gained widespread media coverage, he was arrested in Belgrade by Yugoslav authorities for holding a press conference about the Ukrainian Helsinki Group during the first Helsinki Follow-up Conference that was being held in that city. He also attended the Helsinki Conference in Madrid in 1980, the Summer Olympics in Montreal in 1976 and numerous human rights conferences on behalf of Ukrainian issues.

After a nine-year stint as a junior high school teacher in the Cleveland public school system in the 1970s, Mr. Fedynsky joined the staff of Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1978, and later joined the staff of Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) in 1981, where he became chief of staff. During his years on Capitol Hill, he worked with the organized Ukrainian community on every important issue, including the creation of the Famine Commission, the Myroslav Medvid case, Chornobyl and, after 1987, from Rep. Oakar's district office in Ohio, on the Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine and recognition of Ukraine's independence.

One of his memorable moments on Capitol Hill came at a 1985 reception sponsored by Speaker Tip O'Neill to welcome the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky. Mr. Fedynsky took the opportunity to upbraid Mr. Shcherbytsky on the treatment of dissidents and Russification.

Later when Mr. Fedynsky described the conversation to his mother, he said, "I told Shcherbytsky the same thing you used to tell me: Speak Ukrainian!"

"You told him that?" she asked.

"I sure did!" he replied.

"I'll pray for you," she replied.

Mr. Fedynsky, who also worked on many development projects in the Cleveland area and policy issues with the House Foreign Affairs and Banking Committees, now has his own consulting firm that represents clients on government-related issues. He is a member of the board of the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee and in 1996 was national co-chair of Ukrainian Americans for Clinton-Gore. In Cleveland he serves on the board of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and is director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives.

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