INTERVIEW: Mykhailo Horyn speaks on future role of UWCC
by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau
The following is the conclusion of an edited interview with Mykhailo Horyn, who was elected president of the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council (UWCC) on May 20 in Kyiv. He succeeded Ivan Drach, who was UWCC president in the first eight years of its existence, during which time the organization was often criticized for its lack of effectiveness.
The interview was conducted on June 26 at the office of The Ukrainian Weekly's Kyiv Bureau.
CONCLUSION
Q: What are the future plans of the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council (UWCC), and what are your plans as its new president?
A: The Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, as the coordinating center for the Ukrainian world community, coordinates the work of organizations in Ukraine and outside its borders.
If you look at the by-laws of this organization, which is eight years old, the UWCC's assignment is to develop measures to strengthen an independent Ukrainian state, to preserve Ukrainian communities located beyond the country's borders, to aid those communities in the development of culture, education and science; to tighten contacts between the Ukrainian communities abroad and Ukraine; and to identify the role of the Ukrainian state in preserving the national identity of Ukrainian communities abroad, which means assisting the development of teachers for Ukrainian schools abroad, and that means developing contacts with Ukrainian youth organizations in foreign countries and determining their needs.
We cannot imagine preserving the world community of Ukrainians without the closest ties in these spheres - in education, science, community/politics - and with the youth in particular. A person born in Washington who has not been to Ukraine, has not seen the Dnipro [River], has not seen the Carpathian Mountains, has not seen the national shrines of Ukraine, will have a difficult time maintaining his Ukrainian self-identity beyond Ukraine's borders.
That is why we believe the initial stage of contacts between the Ukrainian communities and Ukraine is actually a preliminary course, part of a more extensive program of close contacts on all levels, which I have already mentioned. Without this the continued existence of a world community of Ukrainians is difficult to envision, in particular for that portion which exists outside the borders of Ukraine.
And, of course, I believe the experience of the Ukrainian communities abroad, especially those in the United States and Canada, shows that Ukrainian communities have survived there because they created a multi-faceted, intensive spiritual life. They developed educational, sports, recreational and scientific institutions, which raised the youth in a Ukrainian national spirit. We have the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, which is the best proof that Ukrainians, while part of the cultural, educational and scientific processes of the United States, have retained their own Ukrainian national autonomy. This is extremely important.
And if you ask me, as the newly elected head, how do you envision the development of the Ukrainian communities in the former Russian empire, I would tell you that we have no reason to invent anything. We need only to transfer the decades-long experience of that Ukrainian immigration - especially the one that came after World War II - to Siberia and central Russia, and form the types of structures that Ukrainians in the United States formed.
Maybe for you it is less important, but I think about what types of people arrived in the United States in 1946-1947. What did that new wave of Ukrainian immigration represent?
They were college students, high school graduates, escapees from the Muscovite onslaught, who did not have higher training, who did not even know the language. In the displaced persons camps they learned the language, they finished high school, and without any real education or training they went [to the United States and Canada], where they finished their degrees while working and succeeded in developing financial security, and where they made a huge investment in the development of Ukrainian culture.
If, in fact, the study of Ukrainian history has developed at all this did not happen in Ukraine. In Ukraine it was served up with a Communist/ Muscovite sauce. The objective study of Ukrainian history developed only [in North America]. Histories of Ukraine were published there. The idea for a Ukrainian encyclopedia, a unique work, developed there.
It turns out that when the Encyclopedia of Ukraine appeared it provoked the development of a Soviet version. Our leaders thought: How could the émigré community have their encyclopedia, and not we?
You were the initiators of a whole series of actions. The Ukrainian émigré community not only sustained itself, but to a certain extent it influenced decisions taken by our people, and even forced the Communist, anti-Ukrainian government to take measures that it did not want to.
The role of the Ukrainian immigration in preserving the Ukrainian national idea cannot be overstated. It simply cannot be overstated. It is a unique phenomenon.
Q: Then you are saying that in the Eastern diaspora, Russia and the Central Asian countries, you need to develop Ukrainian institutions - schools, theaters and the like?
A: I believe that our government, and that includes the president, notwithstanding that he recently honored me with a state award, pays too little attention to the Russian diaspora.
The Ukrainian situation in Russia is lamentable. In Moscow in 1966, when I was in the concentration camps, during which time the Days of Ukrainian Culture were being celebrated in Moscow, they said that 2 million Ukrainians lived there. Now they say that 700,000 Ukrainians live in Moscow. Others say that 200,000 live there.
Even if you take the smaller figure, it means that for 200,000 people there should be tens of Ukrainian language schools in Moscow. Today there is not one.
Russians know how to talk, and to cover their indecent matters with a fig leaf, but the anti-Ukrainian course of the Russian empire has not changed.
Today Ukraine supports 200,000 Russian-language schools, while in Russia there is not a single [Ukrainian-language school]. I believe that our government and the president and the Verkhovna Rada, for various reasons - and I include their global view in this, and not simply economic and political difficulties - has failed to pay attention to our brothers across the border, and this to a large extent affects the future fate of the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia. When there are no schools, the process of Russification moves more quickly; in the absence of educational and scientific institutions Russification moves much more rapidly.
That is why we will use all the means at our disposal to tell the government that it must turn towards the diaspora, especially the Eastern diaspora, and that when discussions with Russia take place in any manner, the issue of the diaspora cannot be left off the table - Ukrainian schools in Russia; the Ukrainian House of Culture in Russia, etc. We must talk about the fact that, and I don't have the details with me, there are more than 10 Russian-language theaters in Ukraine, not even mentioning community theater. Russians have every possibility in the world to develop their national culture. Ukrainians don't have any.
Looking at these types of relations, we can say that Ukraine insufficiently appraises its value as an independent country. When Viktor Chernomyrdin was here a year and a half or two years ago, the Russian community here asked him if he was going to discuss the question of the status of Russians in Ukraine. He replied that, of course, he would. It is indisputable that the situation of Ukrainians in Russia must be discussed with Moscow as well, but that is not happening.
I don't want to say that the country's leaders don't understand the authority of the diaspora, because the diaspora is not simply the Ukrainian communities, they are our eyes and our ears there in the better sense. No embassy is as capable of gathering information on the situation in the economy, the sciences, culture in the country as is the Ukrainian community, which has a full complement of academics and experts of the highest order.
That is, we can better measure the situation. But the diaspora has another important function - and the experience of the American diaspora show us this. The diaspora influences good relations. They can help form a positive image of Ukraine, for example in the United States, Canada, Australia and in other countries.
If we look at our diaspora as our extended embassy of national diplomacy, and that the assignment of the diaspora is to develop a positive picture of Ukraine where it lives, then I think that can only strengthen the diaspora and Ukraine.
I think of the Ukrainian diaspora as an integral part of the world community of Ukrainians, the center of which is the Ukrainian state without which it cannot live. A strong Ukrainian state strengthens the diaspora. With a weak Ukrainian state the diaspora has many difficulties.
I am telling you nothing new when I say that today there is a process of de-nationalization (assimilation) taking place in the diaspora. Educational and learning measures must be instituted that will maintain the diaspora as a key element in the Ukrainian nation-building process.
I will soon be making recommendations - we are currently developing the project - to initiate mass tourist excursions to Ukraine for Ukrainian youth, so that they will feel the soil on which the blood of their parents and grandparents was spilled, so that they can touch the citadels that protected Ukrainian lands, so that they smell the aroma of those lands.
I don't see any way to preserve the diaspora without developing very close contacts between the youth of Ukraine and the Ukrainian community abroad. That is why international youth congresses, contests between students for the best in a particular discipline, whether it is math or physics - a youth movement closely tied to the movement for Ukraine - are needed. We need a series of actions that would unite Ukrainians, make them feel they stand elbow to elbow and have a chance to touch the soil of Ukraine.
There is a large amount of work involved in coordinating this type of activity. The UWCC is not a command organization, we cannot tell people to do this or that. We can only support initiatives, we can recommend certain actions and we can utilize our resources to develop actions. There are certain national holidays that we could organize on an all-Ukrainian level. That's how I envision our work.
CONCLUSION
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 23, 2000, No. 30, Vol. LXVIII
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