EDITORIAL: Continuing the mission 65 years later (10/04/98)

EDITORIAL

Continuing the mission 65 years later

On October 6 The Ukrainian Weekly celebrates the 65th anniversary of its birth as a newspaper with a dual mission: to keep Ukrainian American youth involved in the Ukrainian community and to tell the world the truth about Ukraine.

The newspaper was the brainchild of Svoboda Editor-in-Chief Luke Myshuha, who had the foresight to see that new generations of Ukrainian Americans were being lost to the Ukrainian community because the generations born in this country were different from their immigrant parents. Therefore, he proposed to delegates at the 18th Convention of the Ukrainian National Association in 1933 that an English-language news forum written and edited exclusively by youth be established by the UNA.

The UNA also realized that an English-language publication would be essential in disseminating the truth about Ukraine and Ukrainians in English-speaking America and beyond. This was especially critical at a time when the world knew next to nothing about the famine raging in Soviet-dominated Ukraine, at a time when certain elements - enamored of the USSR, which they perceived as a great social experiment - denied that there was any famine even as millions were dying of starvation.

On October 6, 1933, Editor Myshuha's idea became reality. The Ukrainian Weekly rolled off the presses as a four-page tabloid-size newspaper. (For a description of the contents of that premiere issue, see "Turning the pages..." below.) During the years that followed, The Weekly always remembered the mission for which it was born.

At its most basic, the newspaper was a communications vehicle that kept new generations in touch with each other and with their Ukrainian heritage. But it was also a pioneer in propagating the idea that one did not have to speak, read and write Ukrainian to be Ukrainian, that what mattered most was what was in one's heart and mind. Thus, it preserved and sustained generations of Ukrainian Americans as influential members of our community.

The Weekly told the world about the plight of the freedom-loving Ukrainian nation: the Polish pacification campaign on western Ukrainian lands, demands for autonomy by Ukrainians in Czecho-Slovakia, the suffering of Ukrainians in Rumania. It gave the Ukrainian perspective at a time of world cataclysm, when Hitler revealed his designs on Ukraine and the Soviets invaded western Ukraine. It was the voice of Ukraine at a time when Ukraine could not speak for itself. In 1941, for example, it was The Weekly that outlined "Our Stand" - Ukrainians' opposition to both Hitler and Stalin. Later it bemoaned the outcome of the Yalta Conference as a disaster for Ukraine since the Ukrainian question had now become an "internal problem" of the USSR. For decades The Weekly wrote about the subjugation of Ukraine by the Soviet Union, and it provided information about the persecution of Ukrainian human and national rights activists. Finally, it reported first-hand the rebirth of Ukraine's independence in this decade. (It was in January 1991 that The Weekly opened the Kyiv Press Bureau, the first full-time Western news bureau in Ukraine, which now is the beat of staff editor Roman Woronowycz.)

On the community front, The Weekly reported on the work of various national umbrella organizations that united Ukrainians through the decades. It wrote about efforts to help war refugees and their arrival on these shores, which changed the face of the Ukrainian community here. In 1967 it covered the establishment of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians and later wrote extensively about the turmoil in our community in the United States when a fateful split occurred within the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. More recently, its headlines highlighted the Ukrainian diaspora's efforts to help Ukraine in any way possible, both prior to and after its declaration of independence in 1991.

And there were so many, many other significant stories and issues...

It seems like only yesterday that The Ukrainian Weekly celebrated its 60th anniversary. But that was five years ago! Since that anniversary celebration in 1993, The Weekly has tried to refocus on our communities here in North America while continuing coverage of newly independent Ukraine. Other developments since then include the following: In May 1995, we opened our Toronto Press Bureau and "installed" staff editor Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj as our chief Canadian correspondent. Our paper became available on newsstands in Kyiv in early 1995; next, we moved into cyberspace in July 1995, providing weekly excerpts of our top stories. In 1996 we traveled to Atlanta to cover Ukraine's debut at the Summer Olympics as an independent state; that same year we prepared two sets of special issues: one devoted to the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident and the other to the fifth anniversary of Ukraine's independence.

We created our own website, The Ukrainian Weekly Archive, originally unveiled on April 6 of this year with 3,300 articles - archival materials that have appeared in the paper since our founding in 1933. On August 21 of this year, The Ukrainian Weekly Archive moved to its own domain: www.ukrweekly.com. Now we've added a special section dedicated to the Great Famine of 1932-1933 (see story on page 11), and the grand total of articles on the Archive site has surpassed 4,000.

In short, during the past five years, thanks to our staff at the home office, first in Jersey City and then in Parsippany, N.J., and our two press bureaus, The Weekly has become even more visible on two continents and around the world. What remains the same is our commitment both to our communities in the United States and Canada, and to Ukraine, and this continues to be manifested on the pages of The Ukrainian Weekly.

We pride ourselves on the fact that we have been faithfully serving readers for 65 years by covering news and issues of concern to our community, and serving as a forum for the exchange of ideas and as a newspaper of record. We like to think of ourselves as participating in a dialogue with our readers. We are your newspaper, thus, we want to hear your ideas and publish articles about your community events.

During the course of six and a half decades our community and its members have undergone tremendous changes, and The Weekly has grown and matured with them. It has changed to meet the needs of new generations - all the while continuing to work for the Ukrainian commonweal.

Where do we see ourselves at 65 and beyond? Continuing as the voice of our community and as a purveyor of information about Ukraine and Ukrainians wherever they may be. As long as there's a Ukrainian community, The Ukrainian Weekly will have a raison d'être.

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