PERSPECTIVES: Valentyn Moroz - 25 years later (01/25/04)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Valentyn Moroz - 25 years later

Lest we forget, April 27 this year will be 25 years since Valentyn Moroz was released from a Soviet prison. After a decade-long campaign on his behalf, based on boundless idealism but little expectation that it would actually succeed, the Ukrainian diaspora was thrilled and more than a bit stunned.

With vast armies and nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union looked like it would last a thousand years. Police dogs and border guards kept hundreds of millions of people confined behind barbed wire and massive walls. Huge transmitters labored to jam short-wave radio. Internally, government censors screened every word, every image, even musical notes. Agents and informers monitored the most casual of conversations and everyone knew that any room anywhere could be bugged.

A tiny corps of so-called "dissidents" challenged this mighty monolith by simply speaking their minds. A few of them became quite prominent: Russians Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky; and Jews - "Refusniks" who merely sought the right to leave the Soviet paradise: Anatoly Shcharansky, Alexander Ginzburg, Ida Nudel.

Ukrainian political prisoners like Mr. Moroz were less known. They were invariably viewed as being outside the mainstream, dangerous even, campaigning as they did for the right to cultural and national expression - as Mr. Moroz put it, for the "spiritual rebirth" of the Ukrainian people. In a state utterly dominated by Moscow, this smacked of separatism, which indeed it was. But that should not have been a problem: the Soviet Constitution had a secession clause, only it didn't work in the real world. Lawyer Lev Lukianenko was sentenced to death in 1959 for advocating its implementation.

With an eye on Moscow, American policymakers, largely in the executive branch, viewed "the Ukraine" as an integral part of "Russia." Defending Ukrainian dissidents was "interference in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union" and was therefore taboo.

Arrested in 1965, released, then re-arrested in 1970 for aggressively condemning the Soviet police state with all its censorship, arbitrary arrests and routine cruelty, historian Valentyn Moroz took on larger-than-life dimensions, becoming the symbol of implacable resistance. In this, he performed admirably.

On July 1, 1974, at Vladimir Prison, he declared a hunger strike. Quickly, this became big news in the Ukrainian diaspora and Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Vatican Radio, BBC, etc. then broadcast it back into Soviet Ukraine. As luck would have it, young people in the West were just beginning their summer vacations. Before long, grass-roots committees began organizing solidarity hunger strikes, contacting the local press and elected officials, asking them to publicize Mr. Moroz's cause. A great many did.

The Ukrainian Weekly from nearly 30 years ago has a lot of familiar names of people who participated in the Moroz campaign. Then-SUSTA student leader Eugene Iwanciw organized a 48-hour hunger strike in front of the Ford White House. The head of the TUSM student group, Askold Lozynsky, organized a five-day vigil at the United Nations in New York. Andriy Bandera, Andriy Semotiuk and others held a hunger vigil in front of the Canadian Parliament in Ottowa. My fellow Clevelanders Yuriy Deychakiwsky, Liza Jasevych (now Paschyn), Andre Michniak, Steve Kmiotek and others boldly camped out in front of the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

Yura Deychakiwsky still chuckles at the memory of Russian Embassy staffers waving ice cream cones at his nose, hoping to entice him to break his fast. Seventeen years old at the time, Yura held firm for one week until a doctor advised him to stop. Andre Michniak maintained his vigil for nearly three weeks. Mr. Moroz, who was ultimately force-fed, kept his for 145 days. In the end, the KGB yielded and eased the conditions under which he was held, defusing the issue, at least for a while.

Then, five years later, in a spectacular exchange of five political prisoners for two Soviet spies, Mr. Moroz was released, giving Ukrainian Americans a huge victory, one that turned out to be critical for America as well.

In the post-World War II era, the United States and the Western alliance expended enormous resources on defense, intelligence, propaganda confronting Lenin's inhuman system, but for some reason, policy-makers avoided the nationality issue despite ethnic Americans pushing a "Captive Nations" agenda. As the pundits explained, the Soviets considered that overly "provocative" and a "threat to their vital interests."

Taking his cue from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, President Gerald Ford downplayed the Soviet human rights issue and instead conducted a foreign policy based on international stability maintained by balance of power politics. Challenging that stance in the 1976 election campaign, President Ford's Democratic opponent Jimmy Carter turned foreign policy to his advantage, with many Ukrainian Americans supporting him. Upon his election, The Ukrainian Weekly hailed "the long-awaited exodus of Dr. Kissinger" and looked hopefully to a "rearrangement of priorities."

Those hopes were realized when President Carter named Zbigniew Brzezinski his national security advisor. A Polish American, Dr. Brzezinski understood the multi-national makeup of the Soviet Union and, in contrast to his predecessors, refused to concede permanent Russian domination of Eastern Europe. Negotiating the exchange of dissidents for spies in 1978-1979, Dr. Brzezinski insisted that Mr. Moroz be part of the deal. For the first time, American diplomats dealing with the Soviet Union put the Ukrainian national issue on the table and won.

Once freed, Mr. Moroz lost his allure as a symbol and slipped into obscurity. Other forces stepped up - the Helsinki groups, Poland's Solidarity, Ukraine's Rukh, Lithuania's Sajudis - setting in motion the dynamic that eventually cleaved the Soviet Union along the national fault lines that Dr. Brzezinski had instinctively recognized, which others with different philosophies toward Russia either failed to see or declined to consider.

Looking back from a quarter century's perspective, the idealism that motivated support for Valentyn Moroz and other Soviet Bloc national dissidents paid enormous dividends. Today, the world is different and better. That said, the intertwined issue of America's relationship with Ukraine, with Russia and the three countries with each other, is still in play. Always will be. And yes, presidential elections still matter - both Ukraine and America will have one in 2004. No need to go on hunger strike. Just choose wisely.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: fedynsky@stratos.net.

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