FACES AND PLACES: Did Pavlychko really say that? (07/06/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Did Pavlychko really say that?

Yes he did. And more!

Dmytro Pavlychko, former Ukrainian Ambassador to Slovakia and Poland, opened the 22nd annual Conference on Ukrainian Subjects at the University of Illinois on June 16 with a riveting condemnation of Ukraine's present administration.

His most shocking claim involved Ukraine's former nuclear arsenal with which Mr. Pavlychko was once intimately involved. Strobe Talbott of the Clinton White House demanded that Ukraine turn over its warheads to Russia. When Mr. Pavlychko suggested they be turned over to the United States instead, Mr. Talbott told him that if Russia did not get them, he could expect Russian troops forcibly expropriating them while the United States looked the other way. Mr. Pavlychko traveled to the U.S. to appeal to Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for assistance, all to no avail. Russia needed to be accommodated.

I approached Mr. Pavlychko after his presentation to be certain I heard him correctly. He assured me I had.

Mr. Pavlychko had more to say. Thanks to the Kuchma regime, he insisted, 5 million Ukrainians have left Ukraine to find work on practically every continent on the face of the earth. President Kuchma doesn't care because Ukraine's new immigrants send money home, a fact that helps bolster the economy.

Mr. Kuchma and his cronies are out of touch with the Ukrainian people, Mr. Pavlychko contends. Thanks to the colonial mind-set of the president, his Cabinet, and many members of Parliament, the Russian language is regaining its former popularity.

The Russian press in Ukraine continues to offend Ukrainian sensibilities, and the administration does not react. Eighty percent of the books published in Ukraine are in Russian despite the fact that 70 percent of the population claims Ukrainian as their native language.

The recent census was a blatant attempt to incease by falsification the official number of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine in order to apply more pressure for the formal recognition of Russian as Ukraine's second formal language.

As Russian firms gobble up Ukrainian companies and form new financial enterprises, the aim is economic domination followed by Russian political control. Mr. Pavlychko predicted that by 2005, 70 percent of Ukraine's economy will be dependent on Russia. Amazingly, Ukraine can get oil at a lower price from Arab countries.

Opposition to the Kuchma Klan is weak because of personal ambitions. Rukh remains split. Yulia Tymoshenko is aloof and refuses to support Our Ukraine which, under Viktor Yushchenko, appears to be increasingly weak.

An excellent panel at the conference this year was chaired by Dr. Myroslav Labunka of Ukrainian Catholic University. Papers titled "Pariarchate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church: Actuality of the Question" (Labunka), "The Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine and the Diaspora" (the Rev. Roman O. Mirchuk) and "The Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Emigration and in Ukraine. Problems of Dialogue" (Oksana Khomchuk), were presented and followed by a heated discussion. Ms. Khomchuk later formally presented her new book, "Tserkva poza Tserkovnoiu Ohorozheiu."

Like other conferences sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Program at the University of Illinois - this year's theme was "Ukraine: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" - the conclave was not only informative but exciting as well, especially when scholars from Ukraine and the United States went head to head on topics such as "Higher Education in Ukraine" and "Relations between Ukraine and the Diaspora."

The Illinois conferences were initiated in 1982 by Prof. Dmytro Shtohryn. Since then, there have been 23 (22 annual) conferences on Ukrainian subjects at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, attended by 2,230 participants, involving 1,190 speakers and principal discussants from 24 countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, China (PRC), the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Kazakstan, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Over the years Ukraine has had speakers who hailed from Donetsk in the east to Uzhorod in the west. A total of 1,186 papers have been delivered thus far - 317 in English, 867 in Ukrainian, and two in Russian.

The principal organizer and chairman of all of the conferences is the indefatigable Dr. Shtohryn, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. He has been ably assisted by Raisa Bratkiw, president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Illinois.

A volume of selected papers edited by Drs. Taras Hunczak and Shtohryn, will come on the market in September to be followed by a second volume of papers, edited by Dr. Jaroslav Rozumnyj, scheduled for publication early in 2004.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com.

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