Turning the pages back...

October 24, 1986

Sixteen years ago, 144 persons and organizations, including five senators, leaders of ethnic institutions and prominent journalists, endorsed a full-page ad recalling the failed attempted defection of a Ukrainian seaman who a year earlier had sought political asylum in the U.S. The advertisement appeared in the October 24, edition of The New York City Tribune and marked the first anniversary of Myroslav Medvid's bid for freedom.

Mr. Medvid jumped from a Soviet freighter, the Marshal Koniev, near New Orleans on October 24, 1985, and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum. Instead, he was taken back to the ship and subsequently returned to the Soviet Union. These actions were later the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The five senators who expressed their concern over the treatment of Mr. Medvid by the U.S. government were Jeremiah A. Denton (R-Ala.); Jesse A. Helms (R-N.C.); Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.); James A. McClure (R-Idaho); Steven D. Symms, (R-Idaho).

Among the other signatories to the 1986 advertisement, provided as a public service by The Tribune, were several Ukrainian organizations, including the Ukrainian National Association, Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Ukrainian American Bar Association, Ukrainian Medical Association of North America, as well as scholarly, youth, women's, political and professional organizations. Other signatories were Nadia Svitlychna of the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, former Soviet political prisoner Petro Grigorenko and Walter Polovchak, known as the youngest defector from the USSR.

In related news Chicago attorney Julian E. Kulas, a public member of the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he planned to bring up the Medvid case at the Helsinki Accords review conference that was to begin November 4, 1986, in Vienna. "I don't know how much we can help Medvid at this point," Mr. Kulas told The Tribune. "But even if we can't help him, perhaps we can prevent other occurrences of that nature (mishandled defections) from happening in the future."

Source: "Full-page advertisement recalls Myroslav Medvid's jump for freedom," The Ukrainian Weekly, November 9, 1986, Vol. LIV, No. 45.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 20, 2002, No. 42, Vol. LXX

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