LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (03/06/05)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Let's clean up our house now

Dear Editor:

I would like to return to the question of what I consider to be anti-Jewish themes in Myron Kuropas's columns in The Ukrainian Weekly. Several printed responses to my original letter of December 12, 2004, have suggested that my motivation in criticizing Dr. Kuropas was "political correctness." Of course, this questioning of my motives is just a polemical device. Still, let me share what is driving my interventions: I hate to see my community laboring under a moral and intellectual handicap.

The terror in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the Famine of 1932-1933 had nothing to do with Jews. I recommend educated Ukrainians to read some of the scholarly literature on these subjects, like Hiroaki Kuromiya's "Freedom and Terror in the Donbas" or Terry Martin's "Affirmative Action Empire" or Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow." They would see that historians concentrate on other factors and have almost nothing to say about Jews or Jewish issues.

Were Jews "over-represented" in the Soviet apparatus in the 1930s, as Dr. Kuropas and his defender Bohdan Vitvitsky (December 19, 2004) and others argue? Absolutely, and that's not a troubling admission. Why Drs. Kuropas and Vitvitsky harp on it, however, is troubling. There's an ugly history in Ukrainian wartime journalism of identifying Jews and Bolsheviks to justify German policy toward Jews. This journalism grossly misrepresented the facts and used highly intemperate language. This is a history that has never been confronted, and the myths generated in that era continue to cloud the judgment of some community leaders.

Jews were also "over-represented" among physicians in Ukraine throughout the 20th century. Is this also an important fact? Why are some facts of importance to Drs. Kuropas and Vitvitsky and others not? The selection of facts is of crucial importance, as Andrew Sorokowski has so cogently argued (January 23). In spite of what Dr. Vitvitsky wrote in reply to me, the "truth" can definitely be "anti"-something. Both Dr. Vitvitsky and Leo Iwaskiw (January 23) are disturbed when a Jewish journalist strings together out-of-context facts about the mistreatment of Jews by Ukrainians. They are right to be disturbed, because the procedure is bad - one-sided "truths" can add up to a generalized falsehood.

Furthermore, this whole keeping of national scorecards - what the Russians, Poles, Jews, etc. did to the Ukrainians - is such a discredited and restricting mode of thought, that we should really make an effort to abandon it altogether. It is a mental fixture of the 1930s and 1940s that needs to be thrown out.

When Dr. Vitvitsky instructs me that "Leon Trotsky ... was Jewish" and so was Lazar Kaganovich, is this anti-Semitic? These are indeed just statements of facts, but statements are not made in a vacuum - they are part of a larger discourse. I know the historical context for these kinds of remarks by Ukrainians, and that historical context is not one to be proud of. Yet, Dr. Vitvitsky almost denies that there is such a thing as Ukrainian anti-Semitism, not only in his response to my letter, but also in the article he wrote on "Anti-Semitism" in The Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

I am not the only one troubled by Dr. Kuropas's writing on Jews. It has been a matter of public controversy.

Those Ukrainians in North America who are grinding an axe against the Jews should rethink both their views and what benefit they bring to our community. Do we really want to continue to nurture anti-Jewish feelings in our environment, or do we want to follow President Viktor Yushchenko's lead in Ukraine and purge ourselves of anti-Semitism and xenophobia?

I am afraid that if we don't clean our house now, it will be impossible to hide the stink.

John-Paul Himka
Edmonton

Orange Revolution is unique in history

Dear Editor:

In the article "Orange: the color for all seasons" by Andrew Fedynsky (December 26, 2004), the author brings up in one of his paragraphs the uprising of 1648. I quote: "...In 1648, an obscure Kozak captain, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, set out to redress a personal wrong. To his astonishment, an army of farmer-warriors rose up from their fields and villages. It became a revolution. Can we see shadows of that era - this time peaceful ones - in the spontaneous uprising of young people who gathered in Kyiv's Independence Square...?"

From historical and socio-political aspects, the two revolutions have little in common. In 1648, at the time of the Kozak-peasant bloody revolution, or uprising, most of Ukraine belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, or republic, with the Polish king mostly as titular sovereign, but ruled by the Polish gentry (shlachta) who exploited the population of Ukraine and kept it in bondage. I will not go further into the history of this initially amorphous uprising, which is still a subject for critical studies and analysis by historians.

The Orange Revolution, on the other hand, happened in independent Ukraine, albeit ruled by an autocratic president and his oligarchic clique (like in Russia), and the Ukrainian people demonstrated and demanded democratic values and the rule of law.

The Orange Revolution is unique as it was not only well-organized and without any incident of violence or bloodshed, but it was admired by all of us and the Western world for its youthful, exhilarating and exuberant ambiance, where young and old were seen with happy faces in spite of the cold winter weather, with flowers, music, songs and dancing, and its energizing orange color.

The Orange Revolution also showed the world that Ukraine has a sophisticated civil society that can only be admired and/or envied by its neighbors.

The name "Orange Revolution" has earned its place, and it is already being used in the political lexicon.

Dr. Myroslaw Burbelo
Westerly, R.I.

The Ukrainian Weekly welcomes letters to the editor and commentaries on a variety of topics of concern to the Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian communities. Opinions expressed by columnists, commentators and letter-writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either The Weekly editorial staff or its publisher, the Ukrainian National Association.

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