FACES AND PLACES: 1933: The worst of times, the best of times (10/05/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

1933: The worst of times, the best of times

Try to imagine Ukrainian American life in the United States in 1933, a time when the American economy was in free fall.

It was the height of the Great Depression. Unemployment in 1933 had reached 14 million; national income declined from $87.5 billion to $41.7 billion; manufacturing had dropped by 50 percent; those who were still working were earning as little as 5 cents an hour in saw mills and $2.39 for a 50-hour week in textile mills.

Capitalism was under attack by America's growing battalions of pro-Soviet academicians, journalists and writers. The American Communist Party had come out of hiding and was heralding the Soviet model as America's salvation. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had met with the notorious Walter Duranty, Moscow correspondent for The New York Times, for advice on how best to woo Joseph Stalin.

In Europe, meanwhile, Poland was sending "pacification expeditions" into Ukrainian regions of the country to crush Ukrainian economic and cultural institutions. Stalin was supervising a man-made famine in Ukraine that would kill 7 million men, women, children.

For Ukrainians everywhere, it was the worst of times. And yet, paradoxically, in some ways it was also the best of times, especially in the United States.

1933 was the year when the Ukrainian American community organized nationwide demonstrations protesting Stalin's man-made famine. November 19 was designated as a day of mourning around the theme "Save Ukraine from Death by Starvation."

1933 was the year the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine (known by its Ukrainian acronym as ODVU), a nationalist association affiliated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), came into its own as a counterweight to the growing popularity of Ukrainian Communist societies in America. Included under the ODVU umbrella were the Gold Cross, a women's organization, which held its first Nationalist Woman's Conference in 1933, and the Young Ukrainian Nationalists (MUN).

1933 was the year the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Chicago World's Fair was opened.

1933 was the year the Ukrainian Youth League of North America (UYL-NA) was created in Chicago during "Ukrainian Week" at the Chicago Fair. Eighty-five delegates representing Ukrainian youth clubs in 11 states and four Canadian provinces were present at the inauguration. 1933 was also the year the Ukrainian Professional Society of North America and Ukrainian Catholic Youth League (UCYL) were established in Chicago.

1933 was the year Dr. Luke Myshuha, a debonair intellectual and a Ukrainian visionary, became editor of Svoboda. Under Dr. Myshuha's leadership, Svoboda quietly became the leading Ukrainian nationalist newspaper in the free world. At the 1933 UNA convention in Detroit, it was Dr. Myshuha who suggested a UNA-sponsored English-language publication for American-born youth. These young people, he argued, will not be carbon copies of their parents because they live in a different world. The life of their parents is not a model. Every generation must develop its own Ukrainian identity.

The first issue of The Ukrainian Weekly appeared on October 6, 1933. On December 9, 1933, its editor, Stephen Shumeyko, wrote that the new-minded publication "must serve as a guide to our American Ukrainian youth by pointing out, in its own inimitable language and style, the road to the goal which is dear to all Ukrainians - a free and independent state of Ukraine." Today 70 years later, this UNA publication is still fulfilling this mission. Ukraine may be independent, but it's still not free of the Soviet and Russian mindset.

The Ukrainian Weekly became involved with American political life early on. On November 24, 1933, for example, a Ukrainian Weekly editorial responded to criticisms that opposing American foreign policy was somehow unpatriotic: "Ukrainians in America have found themselves at the present time in a rather unenviable position," Mr. Shumeyko wrote. "For at the time when the United States has recognized Soviet Russia, the Ukrainians in America, although loyal American citizens, are forced to wage an unremitting campaign of protests against the Soviets for their barbarism, having caused, by means of a deliberately fostered famine in Ukraine, the death of millions of Ukrainian lives during the past year ... we look dubiously upon the value of any benefits which America may obtain from having official relations with a government which has shown its inability to provide for its subjects even the most ordinary necessities of life, and which has shown itself capable of the most barbaric cruelty, as evidenced by its reign of terror and the present Bolshevik-fostered famine in Ukraine."

The Ukrainian Weekly's crusade against Soviet crimes and imperialistic intentions continued all through the 1930s, a period of time that journalist Eugene Lyons labeled "The Red Decade." America's recognition of the Soviet Union permitted Moscow to develop a well-orchestrated, extremely efficient espionage network in the United States that eventually infiltrated all segments of our government, including the White House. Soviet disinformation, channeled through a number of influential American newspapers and journals such as The New York Times, The Nation and the New Republic, blinded the American public to the menace that the Soviet Union presented. Even today there are revisionist American academics who argue that the Soviet Union was never really a threat.

As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of The Ukrainian Weekly and other organizations founded in 1933, it is well to reflect on the reasons for their longevity. After all, the UYL-NA, MUN and the Ukrainian Professionals of North America are no longer around. The UCYL has been renamed the League of Ukrainian Catholics and remains relatively inactive. Why is it, we might ask, that some organizations declined or disappeared, while The Ukrainian Weekly survived and flourished?

The answer, of course, is visionary and determined leadership: leadership by past UNA presidents who, despite occasional economic down cycles, never lost their commitment to this important institution; leadership by the editors beginning with Stephen Shumeyko and ending with Roma Hadzewycz.

It's not easy being the editor of The Ukrainian Weekly. People are quick to criticize but rarely send bouquets. So how about it? How about sending a big "Mnohaya Lita" to Roma and her staff.

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

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