'Bay Area 1997' conference focuses on challenges facing Ukrainian Americans (01/18/98)

'Bay Area 1997' conference focuses on challenges facing Ukrainian Americans

by Maria Lewytzkyj

SAN FRANCISCO - "Bay Area 1997," a conference and ball organized by the Ukrainian Professionals of Northern California (UPNC) with the support of the Ukrainian Medical Association, took place at the Holiday Inn Union Square during the weekend of November 7, 1997. The two-day event hosted several outstanding guest speakers.

All local and visiting attendees and speakers were warmly welcomed at a Friday evening cocktail gathering at the home of the Makarewycz family. The home, with its beautiful collection of woodworks, provided the setting for Ukrainians of various backgrounds to make new acquaintances and see old friends.

To begin the conference on Saturday morning, Dr. Andrew Iwach, one of the leading organizers of the UPNC and an assistant clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California in San Francisco, underlined the group's mission: "to help develop a pro-active dialogue on the issues facing modern Ukraine." The UPNC, organized in 1993, is an organization of individuals who are interested in networking professionally and culturally to build a supporting Ukrainian community that looks at current challenges in Ukraine and among Ukrainian Americans.

Dr. Leonid Kamenetsky, a member of the Northern California Chapter of the Ukrainian Medical Association of North America (UMANA), then described his ongoing commitment to the restructuring of medical education in Ukraine.

The UMANA and the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine are part of a project headed by Dr. Volodymyr Kryzhanivsky of the UVA School of Medicine that involves delivery of Ukrainian-language educational materials every six months to 101 medical schools and centers in Ukraine. Dr. Kamenetsky confirmed that materials currently being used in Ukraine are written in Russian. As follow-up to the delivery of the Ukrainian-language texts, the project has set up a faculty exchange program between the University of Virginia and many of these medical centers.

Fund-raising efforts in the past two years have raised $10,500 from donors like UVA, General Electric, Merck, Medtronic, Merrell-Dow and others. Dr. Kamenetsky asked the community to support this project with personal donations.

Ukrainian presence at Harvard

Bay Area native Dr. Andrew Sorokowski, managing editor of the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies and editor/research associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) spoke next. An advocate of raising Ukrainian scholarship to world standards, and of introducing Ukrainian works in literature, history and other genres to Western scholars, he informed the audience about courses in Ukrainian studies at Harvard and the groundbreaking efforts of the Ukrainian Research Institute.

Dr. Sorokowski thoroughly explained the cooperative relationship between the separate Harvard entities, the Ukrainian studies program at Harvard and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The three chairs of Ukrainian studies, Roman Szporluk (Mykhailo S. Hrushevskyi Professor of Ukrainian History), Michael S. Flier (Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology) and George G. Grabowicz (Dmytro Cyzevskyi Professor of Ukrainian Literature), teach regular courses in Ukrainian studies, as well as other subjects. However, though the standing committee of Ukrainian studies works with the HURI, the HURI is not a teaching facility, Dr. Sorokowski clarified.

Regarding visiting scholars, Dr. Sorokowski remarked that they are "a recent feature at Harvard, which has taken off since Ukraine's independence, but the HURI couldn't possibly fund them." Visiting scholars find their own funding, and each year scholars from Italy, Germany, Ukraine and other countries choose Harvard because of the HURI.

Staff, students and scholars, through the efforts of the HURI, enjoy weekly lectures on a variety of topics, such as a recent lecture by architect Radoslav Zuk who spoke about "Indigenous Constants and Stylistic Variants in Ukrainian Architecture."

The Ukrainian Summer School's eight-week program has been organized by the HURI since 1971. Dr. Sorokowski expressed admiration for the program and noted that next summer's classes can be found on the Internet at http://www.sabre.org/huri.

Dr. Sorokowski added that the summer months also bring many Ukrainian professionals to the institute's three-day symposiums on "Ukraine Since Independence." Discussions on politics, demography, culture and economics have attracted attendees from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the U.S. government.

Key to the ongoing work of the HURI are its publishing activities and the library and information resources. According to Dr. Sorokowski, the HURI publishes books as part of its Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies. Dr. Sorokowski told the assembly of the recent publication of "Above and Beyond: From Soviet General to Ukrainian Statebuilder" written by General Kostiantyn P. Morozov, independent Ukraine's first minister of defense. The memoirs shed light on the actions taken by Gen. Morozov in his campaign for a solely Ukrainian army. "A Prayer for the Government" is an upcoming publication by Henry Abramson that adds new information regarding ethnic violence and relationships between Jews and Ukrainians during the revolutionary times of 1917-1920.

Dr. Sorokowski noted that the Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, initiated in the 1980s, serves to set the record straight regarding early east Slavic literature. "Much of the medieval or 17th century literature written in Ukraine was considered either Russian literature or some vaguely east Slavic literature," Dr. Sorokowski explained, "Few people have recognized this literature as having anything to do with Ukrainian." Through this publication series, scholars and others have this rediscovered literature available to them.

Another publication, the Harvard Ukrainian Studies, of which Dr. Sorokowski is managing editor, "looks to foster comparative as well as synthetic studies." Anyone can subscribe to this journal to read such interesting articles as one recently published that documented a conversation between Stalin and a delegation of Ukrainian writers in the February of 1929, only months before the government cracked down on the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

The largest Ukrainian collection of books outside of Eastern Europe is housed at Harvard, mostly in the Widener and Houghton libraries. Many rare books can be found among the collection.

"It was not so long ago," Dr. Sorokowski concluded, "that the very concept of Ukrainian studies was something that was not generally accepted either in the academic world, the press or the world in general. To speak of Ukrainian history, literature or language was considered a bit extreme, a reactionary political statement."

Keynote speaker from "Kontakt"

The keynote speaker, Jurij Klufas, shared the purpose of his Toronto-based Ukrainian weekly television program "Kontakt": "to connect various North American Ukrainian communities that currently act as islands with not enough synergy between them and to provide a window into Ukraine." Mr. Klufas resolutely stated that mainstream media do not cover Ukraine's news.

Mr. Klufas explained that in order for "Kontakt" to reach a community, three important steps of development must be implemented. First, the local community needs to establish an acceptable air time, which includes decisions on the program's reach and time slot, as well as the cost involved in providing this air time. The second and third stages are concerned with how the local community can contribute to the main show and production, and how local coverage will be organized. Mr. Klufas explained that, for example, New York air time for one hour runs between $3,000 to $6,000 on a weekly basis.

The San Francisco community was next treated to a demo tape of various feature segments - arts and entertainment, youth and children's segments - from past broadcasts. The viewers were impressed by the professional quality of the production and the obvious attempt to deconstruct some stereotypes of Ukrainian activities by introducing a modern group of hosts while still catering to tradition-seekers in Ukrainian communities everywhere.

Host Ola Szczuryk's interviews and host spots were done in perfect Ukrainian and she succeeded in steering the show well. The other show host, Michael Luchka, "Center Stage" host Michael Curry and "Youth Segment" host Adrian Tanchak also received a positive response from those assembled.

A "3-H Project"

The final speaker, Dr. John Elloway, focused on his work in uniting the Rotary Clubs in the Bay Area, all the Rotary Clubs in Ukraine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based in Atlanta, Ukraine's Ministry of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development in a "3-H Project" - Health, Hunger, Humanity - to improve the infrastructure of medical care in Ukraine.

Working with the Rotary Club's Polio Plus project, the stated goal of which is to eradicate polio worldwide by the year 2000, Dr. Elloway offered his services at Immunization Days in Ukraine. In September and October of 1996, 2.4 million children were immunized through the efforts of Dr. Elloway's Rotary District.

The 3-H Project was born during that visit, after a visiting Turkish Rotarian, Unal Ural, told Dr. Elloway that it was his duty to do a 3-H Project in Ukraine. Since then it has been through the personal efforts of Dr. Elloway and the project's supporters that the project has expanded to its current size and has a budget of more than $5 million.

The impetus for the 3-H Project can be found in a statement made by Ukraine's former minister of health, Dr. Yurii Spizhenko, who said that infectious diseases are the No. 1 health problem in Ukraine. That message was underlined at a seminar organized by the Ministry of Health where Dr. Elloway heard that there were 3,000 cases of rubella in Ukraine. When he asked how many of those cases were pregnant women, the vice minister of health could only say that information was not available.

After further research, Dr. Elloway said he was appalled by the lack of standards in data gathering and at the lack of data. The project's aims are to establish a center in Kyiv for teaching and for the analysis of infectious and contagious diseases, to set up a local area network (LAN) with computers in Kyiv and in all the oblasts, and to provide Internet access for communication, education and research.

The 3-H Project will receive a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales to the March performance of the Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra in the Bay Area.

Others interested in helping this project should contact Dr. Elloway at: telephone, (415) 892-3300; e-mail, elloway_john@msn.com

The conference ended with a documentary of a 1981 expedition to Mount Everest with Dr. James Morrissey, the doctor who accompanied this expedition, which included the famous Sir Edmund Hillary. The expedition was a first attempt to scale the east side of that peak.

Later that evening participants gathered for dinner and a dance, and to speak with the presenters who had made the "Bay Area 1997" conference a success.

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