NEWS AND VIEWS: In tribute to the late Anatol Kurdydyk, "a mere editor of the Ukrainian press" (09/02/01)

NEWS AND VIEWS

In tribute to the late Anatol Kurdydyk, "a mere editor of the Ukrainian press"

by R. L. Chomiak

"Anatol Kurdydyk, 95, longtime editor...," I read in The Ukrainian Weekly of July 15, had passed away.

He was that - longtime, and full-time, and he let nothing deter him in that quest, although his early years in journalism were full of deterrents.

I read about Mr. Kurdydyk's death in Kyiv, and I couldn't suppress a smirk, because in Ukraine today journalists whimper continually about how bad things are - this in their own country, which publishes 5,127 periodicals, of which 2,128 are newspapers and 2,296 are magazines, plus all kinds of periodic collections of scholarly articles, various bulletins, calendars and digests. (The figures are those of Ukraine's State Committee on Information Policy).

Mr. Kurdydyk began writing professionally in western Ukraine, then annexed by Poland, whose policy was to hinder Ukrainian publications in myriad ways, but primarily through taxation and censorship, with occasional jailings. Yet the newspapers, magazines, journals and books were published, bought and read thanks to the efforts of people like Anatol Kurdydyk (and their publishers who even made a profit, despite the taxes and a real police-state atmosphere for uppity Ukrainians).

Then came the Germans with their Third Reich. They allowed a limited number of Ukrainian publications, but the Propaganda Ministry supervisors gave strict instructions: these publications had to cater to maids, drivers, mechanics and cooks. No intellectual exercises, no philosophizing, no high culture, and certainly no straying from the Nazi party line.

Yet here, too, Mr. Kurdydyk and people like him found ways to get around the restrictions, writing and editing stuff that people of various social strata read eagerly.

Wherever he wrote - in publications edited by someone else or in those he edited - Mr. Kurdydyk always sought to engage his reader, to keep the reader's interest. And he really liked what he was doing. Everything interested him - from postage stamps to theater, from politics to icons - and he enjoyed sharing it with his readers in exciting and interesting ways.

Unlike many in today's independent Ukraine, people like Mr. Kurdydyk never had any doubt about who they were or where they were. There may have been white-and-red Polish flags overhead or huge red Nazi flags with swastikas in white circles on building facades, but they knew they were Ukrainians and in Ukraine; the absence of independence or self-rule to them was a temporary aberration. No time for tears or whimpering.

After World War II in Germany, with the infrastructure destroyed, Kurdydyk and people like him found ways to publish Ukrainian newspapers and Ukrainian books. In addition to finding a working print shop in the American zone of occupation it was also necessary to obtain permission from the U.S. military government to publish. A real estate lawyer from Omaha or a department store manager from Brooklyn in the uniform of U.S. Army captain or major wasn't really sure what these displaced persons in refugee camps were up to. His permission to publish wasn't always routine.

One of the Ukrainian newspapers Mr. Kurdydyk edited was set in Latin characters; the nearby print shop didn't have any Cyrillic fonts. But the paper came out with the authorization of the military authorities, and Ukrainian refugees bought it, and read it, and talked about it.

When he came to Toronto, Mr. Kurdydyk helped revive a newspaper that had an old linotype and an old press, but no staff or readers, and a name from 1920s and 1930s socialist activism: Ukrainskyi Robitnyk (Ukrainian Toiler). There was the new publisher, who also set type and ran the printing press, and Mr. Kurdydyk, who was the editor and writer. And they acquired a piece of modern equipment, a German Klischograf, that reproduced photographs directly on plastic plates for printing. Kurdydyk was as happy about this machine as a child with a new toy, because he could make his newspaper more interesting for the readers with photographs, without the cumbersome and expensive chemical process for making photo "cuts" then in use. Later, with more investment from slightly richer recent Ukrainian immigrants, Ukrainian Toiler became the flashier Vilne Slovo, also known as "Kurdydyk's paper."

Anatol Kurdydyk's journalism was infectious. He had a way of involving people as investors, as writers, as readers. I knew him in Lviv when I was a child and read his publications, because he was a close friend of my parents.

When we met again in Toronto and he learned that I wrote for Plast and school publications, he immediately suggested I write for him. It was in the 1950s, and I made the "big press," as the Hamilton, Ontario, correspondent - with useful guidance from Mr. Kurdydyk, my mentor.

A few years later, when I was in my senior year in college, Mr. Kurdydyk called me and asked me to come to Toronto. "Dragan and Halychyn are coming and I want you to meet them," he said. Anthony Dragan, editor-in-chief of Svoboda, and Dmytro Halychyn, president of the Ukrainian National Association, were on a business trip in Canada. Mr. Kurdydyk had learned that they also were looking for someone to work on The Ukrainian Weekly, and he thought it should be me. They came; we met; he talked me up. Later I applied for the job formally, and on July 5, 1960, I was working for The Weekly, my first full-time job, and for Svoboda in a pinch.

The obituary notice said Anatol Kurdydyk wanted to be remembered "as a mere editor of the Ukrainian press." He earned it - at times when Ukraine existed in his heart and in his head, but the Ukrainian press was hard copy.

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