FACES AND PLACES: New Ukraine, new diaspora? (03/06/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

New Ukraine, new diaspora?

No sooner was Viktor Yushchenko inaugurated as president of Ukraine, than a group of commentators have emerged to hammer home the shortcomings of the diaspora and the need to re-invent it.

Some of the criticism centered around my selection as a representative of the Ukrainian American community to accompany former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the inauguration of Ukraine's new president. Others should have accompanied Secretary Powell, went the argument, preferably even Democrats who worked assiduously against President George W. Bush's re-election.

In a Kyiv Post editorial titled "Why Kuropas?" Chief Editor Andrey Slivka, was horrified that I believe that "Jews bear a share of responsibility for Soviet crimes against the Ukrainian nation," and that I have acted as a "prominent defender" of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, even though Mr. Demjanjuk was acquitted by the Israeli Supreme Court.

After reviewing my 50-year record of volunteer community involvement, this Kyiv Post editor labeled me a "caricature, the sort of right-wing throwback for whom FDR is eternally selling out to the communists, the enemies of Ukraine are eternally slandering the glorious Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and morally degraded Russian-speaking contemporary Ukrainians are eternally failing the rock-ribbed, god-fearing [sic] values the U.S. diaspora supposedly represents."

I'm sure there are people in our community who believe Franklin D. Roosevelt stood up to Stalin and saved Eastern Europe for democracy. There are probably others who believe that the exploits of OUN were not "glorious." Some Ukrainians in North America probably see no cause for concern that members of the Verkhovna Rada, ignoring the fact that Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian, communicate in Russian on principle, refusing to speak Ukrainian even though they can. I'm certain that we "rock-ribbed, God-fearing" diasporans are strangers to someone like Mr. Slivka, a former resident of New York City that no Ukrainian of consequence remembers as a community activist. People who have worked in the community have earned the right to criticize. But Mr. Slivka? What are his credentials?

Mr. Slivka is upset with the efforts of Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCLA) to curtail the Canadian sale of a wine produced in Ukraine whose label features a photo of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. He defends the winery, Massandra, described as a "fine old Tsarist winery," and the label, which he says is "an instantly recognizable classic." He opines that the winery may have chosen to use the photo because it thought it was "at once flattering and soothing North American customers with a picture that (or so they assumed) is at once heroic and comfortingly nostaglic."

"If diasporans aren't helping their ancestral country, they should stay clear of it," he writes. "The sensitivities of the diaspora, and its symbolic gestures, are not more important than Massandra's aspirations. Nor do diaspora Ukrainians have a monopoly on proper understandings of history and politics and Ukrainian identity. It's possible, in other words, that if a major native Ukrainian enterprise thinks a photo of the Big Three is just fine, then diaspora Ukrainians should rethink their opinion of it and be less offended."

Really? Money before principle - right, Mr. Slivka? Only someone who is totally oblivious to diaspora concerns could pen such an abhorrent assertion.

I and others have responded to Mr. Slivka's editorial and commentary, but to my knowledge the responses have not been published.

Another recent apostle of diaspora reform is Bishop Paul Peter Jessep, who is the episcopal vicar of Colombia and Venezuela in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Sobornopravna Church of North and South America. He completed his religious studies at the Bangor Theological Seminary, which was established, interestingly enough, to train ministers for the United Church of Christ.

"The Ukrainian diaspora must be reborn or at least reformed," the good Vladyka wrote in an op-ed piece on the Brama website on February 11. "There must be leadership from a new generation." He informs us that in the past he's argued that the diaspora must be better equipped at getting out a coherent, sustained message to the Western media as to what it means to be Ukrainian." What have the Ukrainian National Association, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and The Ukrainian Weekly been doing all of these years?

Jed Sunden, publisher of the Kyiv Post, writes in a commentary in that newspaper that he believes the diaspora can play a positive role in Ukraine, with one caveat, however. No politics. He wants Katya Chumachenko Yushchenko, herself a product of the diaspora, to serve as the continental bridge. How? By working with Ukrainian cultural and educational institutions in North America - museums, Harvard, Columbia, the Ukrainian Institute of America - attending social and cultural events, and steering Ukrainian money to hospitals and schools in Ukraine. No role for Ukraine's first lady with the media, Congress, the State Department or even the White House is mentioned. Interesting.

What does all of this mean? Is it an honest attempt by friends of Ukraine to be helpful in bringing their Ukraine and our Ukraine together? The language in which their musings is framed suggests otherwise. Is it a ploy to be noticed by those who need a Ukrainian life? Perhaps. Or is it all part of an attempt to sweep the past under the rug? There are Ukrainians who would prefer to forget history and the role the diaspora played in keeping it alive. There are former Soviet officials in Ukraine today who are war criminals who participated in mass murders. I'm sure that the "let's move on and forget the past approach" is very much to their liking.

Over the years our community has had many "reformers" who arrived on the scene, attempted to remake the community into their own image at our expense, and then, after their 15 minutes of fame had expired, melted into the background, predicting we would be sorry for not heeding their wisdom. Somehow, we survived. And so we shall again.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: kuropas@comcast.net.

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