1998: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: Our diaspora: news at the UWC (12/27/98)

1998: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Our diaspora: news at the UWC

The Ukrainian World Congress held its seventh congress on December 2-6, and elected Askold Lozynskyj, head of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, as its president, after a six-month scramble to find candidates who would stand for the post.

Ukraine's ambassadors to the United Nations and Canada, respectively, Volodymyr Yelchenko and Volodymyr Khandogiy, addressed the congress, as did Saskatchewan's Premier Roy Romanow. Not only were delegates from Slovakia (Lev Dovhovych) and Russia (Oleksander Rudenko-Desniak) officially represented for the first time in the congress's history, they played a key role in focusing debate on relations between Western and Eastern diasporas, on the issue of "autocthonous" Ukrainians versus diaspora Ukrainians, and on the need for the government in Kyiv to take a stronger stand in defending the interests of Ukrainians abroad.

One discussion panel addressed issues of the diaspora's self-definition and the challenges it faces ("The Ukrainian Diaspora in the New Era," i.e., post independence) and another dealt with questions of "The Diaspora and Ukraine" (in terms of what forms of assistance should flow in which direction.)

Delegates' even-handed approach to questions of interaction with the "mother country," whether with regard to relations with the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council and its president, Ivan Drach (he attended the congress), or the government in Kyiv, suggested that the post-independence blush of euphoria is well off the rose.

Commemoration of the 1932-1933 famine was again seen as a crucial focus for work at both the local level and the international arena - efforts to prompt U.N. resolutions condemning the use of famine as an instrument of coercion and enshrining the right to food were considered.

Religious concerns were also central, at the UWC conclave, notably the disunity in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate's invasive presence there and its actions against the Kyivan Patriarchate's Archbishop Adrian.

The congress was again marked by the near total absence of young delegates, although the presidium chairman, Taras Pidzameckyj, was the most visible symbol of the inclusion of younger activists in positions of influence, and the incoming executive is relatively young.

Happily, internal UWC conflicts over the issue of relations with the UWCC appeared to have been sufficiently aired prior to the congress, and so the various recriminations aired during the year concerning a UWC delegation's attendance at a UWCC plenum in May did not surface in the proceedings.

At a presidium meeting on February 20-21, a strong majority in the UWC hierarchy had finally had enough of UWCC's inconsistent approach to by-laws, unwillingness to face questions of conflict of interest and the need to operate at arms length from the Ukrainian government, and half-hearted repudiations of the Ukraina Society's anti-diaspora past. It had resolved to discontinue formal meetings until these questions could be satisfactorily resolved.

An April 6 meeting of the UWC executive gave conditional approval for the delegation's trip to Kyiv, but this caused a rift in the world umbrella body by the time of the a plenary meeting of the UWC's secretariat on June 5-6.

At the congress in December, President-elect Lozynskyj said Mr. Drach had agreed to make a statement repudiating and renaming the Ukraina Society that was acceptable, and that this would serve as a point of departure for improved relations.

Around the world

Just as 1997 was ending, on December 31 at about 7 p.m., a 400-year- old church on long-term lease to the Ukrainian community in Tallinn, Estonia, since 1993, was destroyed by fire.
Ukrainians in Austria marked the 225th anniversary of their presence in that country with the issue of a stamp depicting Vienna's St. Barbara's Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.
In January, following seven years of hardship in the aftermath of the war in former Yugoslavia, Ukrainians began returning to Vukovar, Croatia, and the effort to reconstruct the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Christ the King was begun.
The Plast Ukrainian Youth Organization held its international jamboree in Manitoba from July 29 to August 6, with close to 700 members arriving from Canada, the U.S., Argentina, France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.
On September 17-19, the World Congress of Ukrainian Lawyers convened in Lviv, with jurists from North America and Europe participating, and issued a statement honoring the victims of the 1932-1933 Famine-Genocide and marking the tragedy's 65th anniversary.
The third congress of the League of Ukrainian Political Prisoners was held in Toronto on October 16-18 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center. At the gala banquet, remains of those who died in a Nazi concentration camps in Flossenburg were accepted by Ukraine's Consul General in Toronto Volodymyr Kyrychenko, for suitable interment in Ukraine.
The World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations celebrated its 50th anniversary in Jenkintown, Pa., with an address by Dr. Zoya Khyzhnyak of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, on October 25, and then, during the annual meetings of its executive in Toronto on October 30-November 1, with former Helsinki Monitoring Group member Iryna Senyk arriving for the gala banquet on October 31 after being chosen as one of the "World's 100 Heroines" by an international women's rights agency in Rochester, N.Y.
The European Congress of Ukrainians convened its third meeting of leaders of European national umbrella organizations in Kosice, Slovakia, on November 20-21. Representatives from Germany, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom met with observers from Bosnia, Croatia and the Czech Republic, and formally accepted applications for membership in the ECU from organizations based in Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia.
On November 27, Ukraine's prime minister, Valerii Pustovoitenko, lent a higher profile to the opening of a Ukrainian culture center in Moscow which is to "concern itself with the needs of the several million Ukrainians living and working in Russia."

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