PERSPECTIVES: Ukraine's historic opportunity (02/23/97)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Ukraine's historic opportunity

For decades, Ukrainian Americans, Canadians and others wrote letters to the editor and political leaders reminding them that there is a country called Ukraine. Patiently, we would point out that the Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics including Ukraine and, no, we explained, Ukraine is not part of Russia. It's astonishing, therefore, to find independent Ukraine at the center of American foreign policy. Who would have thought: the United States and Ukraine in a strategic partnership?

It wasn't always that way. In December 1917 with the Russian Empire breaking up, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia sent his consul, Douglas Jenkins, to Kyiv to report on the political situation there. Mr. Jenkins was told not to do anything that would imply recognition of the Ukrainian Rada. He followed instructions precisely, not even paying a courtesy call on Ukrainian leaders, even after the January 22, 1918, declaration of independence.

Over the course of the next two years, as control over Kyiv changed hands countless times, and various armies and brigands criss-crossed the territory of Ukraine, the United States continued to watch and do nothing. Ukraine's bid to purchase surplus U.S. military equipment was turned down; the request for medicine to treat soldiers during the typhoid epidemic was similarly denied. As a final indignity, President Woodrow Wilson's staff at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 tossed the file with various appeals for an independent Ukraine into the furnace in the cellar at the Hotel Crillon in Paris.

We know, of course, what happened in the wake of American neglect: Ukraine was absorbed into the reconstituted Russian Empire - the Soviet Union - and history unfolded in all its horror: forced famine, mass executions, World War II, the Cold War, terror, Chornobyl, until finally in 1991, a new generation of Ukrainians declared their independence.

Would things have been different if the United States had extended its hand to Ukraine in 1918? Maybe, but that's not what happened. Today's leaders have to understand why events unfolded as they did three generations ago and, above all, appreciate that today Ukraine is a key factor in the post-Cold War strategic line-up, and seize that opportunity.

In 1918, Ukraine was a peasant nation, embroiled in revolution and tumbling toward anarchy. For centuries, Ukraine's territory had been partitioned, its population more than 90 percent illiterate with only a tiny middle class and a mere handful of professionals who could not hope to replace all the Russian and Austrian administrators who had run everything. Above all, there was no army. At the famous battle of Kruty, a week after Ukraine declared its independence in 1918, Capt. Honcharenko of the Sich Riflemen led 500 volunteers against 4,000 Bolsheviks. Consul Jenkins was not about to recommend that the United States recognize a government that could scrape together only 500 untrained students to defend its capital.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in August 1991, Ukraine was much better prepared. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, Ukraine's territory was largely consolidated. The Ukrainian SSR had a functioning government - totally subordinated to Moscow to be sure - but still staffed by native Ukrainian officials. The education level was high and illiteracy no longer existed, although censorship was ubiquitous ... And Ukraine had an army. Leonid Kravchuk, first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, will forever be remembered in history as the man who co-opted a million-man army without a shot being fired.

Above all, there was a legacy to build on: the events of 1918, the Great Famine of 1932-1933, the Great Terror, the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the dissidents, Chornobyl, the Millennium. When the anti-Gorbachev putsch fizzled in August 1991, the blue-and-yellow banners, the tridents and the national anthem all came out of the closet.

Today the United States, the world's only remaining superpower, has to provide the leadership to construct a new framework for global security and economic prosperity - "creating a new era," as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it in a recent New York Times article. The vocabulary that had described the previous era - Cold War, Iron Curtain, Free World, Captive Nations, Mutually Assured Destruction, Communist aggression, Western imperialism - that's all obsolete.

Those concepts defined the deadly competition between "East" and "West" that existed only because the Soviet empire was able to tap the resources of rich colonies like Ukraine. From its birth in 1917 to its demise in 1991, the Bolshevik vision was a nightmare of suffering and horror.

The United States and the West spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of lives to first contain and then defeat what truly was an "Evil Empire." Russia, the cradle of the Communist movement, is a country of enormous accomplishment, but it has yet to account for an appalling historical legacy. Within Russia today, serious political groupings continue to harbor a dangerous messianic and imperialist streak that must be confined if Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, indeed, all of Europe is to feel secure. For that to happen, Ukraine must be independent and prosperous. We've been arguing that for generations.

In the coming year the U.S. will be pondering NATO expansion and a new framework for Europe with an independent Ukraine at its geopolitical center. The Ukrainian American community must continue to let Washington know that we commend the policy that supports Ukraine's independence, its military security and economic prosperity, and we expect the U.S. to remain firm.

We should be just as forthright in communicating to Kyiv that we understand the difficulties Ukraine faces in moving from a command economy to a free market, from colonial status to independence; that we know the virtues of patience, but we also know that this narrow window of historic opportunity will close someday.

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