PERSPECTIVES: August at Soyuzivka (08/27/06)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

August at Soyuzivka

It was really hot with temperatures in the 90s at Soyuzivka during this first week of August. A breeze off the Catskills in the distance and a cool drink from the Tiki Bar close by, brought relief. My wife and I caught up with relatives who shared the week with us, while our kids played tennis with their cousins, splashed in the swimming pool or the waterfall half a mile up-stream. In the evening they made crafts, played cards and board games, watched TV and then complained about having to go to bed so early. The toddlers amongst us hid behind their mothers, cautiously eying unfamiliar aunts and uncles before finally rewarding us with a smile or a hug.

With the exception of the extreme heat, which gripped us too, we were aware of, but comfortably distant from, national and world events. News junkie that I am, I picked up The New York Times every morning to read up on wars, politics, the dismal box scores of my beloved Cleveland Indians and, of course, the struggle in Kyiv to form a government.

I can't tell you when I first visited Soyuzivka or how many times I've come here. The first firm memory I have is from August 1969 when my friend Andy Hruszkewycz and I stopped there on the way to New England and Canada. Leaving, we followed radio directives on how to avoid traffic piling up at a place called Woodstock. We missed the festival but had a great time otherwise.

In 1976 I was at Soyuzivka twice - for the Fourth of July when Anya Dydyk and others put on an unforgettable variety show with a spoof on Ukrainians at the American Revolution; and two months later, for Labor Day Weekend with several fellow activists who had taken part a few weeks earlier in the campaign at the Montreal Olympics for Ukraine's right to participate in the games.

Since then, I've been to half a dozen weddings at Soyuzivka, some conferences and for the past 15-20 years, for a week in August. In many ways, Soyuzivka hasn't changed - the view from the Veselka Terrace to the wooded mountains remains sublime. The Trembita Lounge has a better TV, but that's it. You can still get varenyky and kovbasa with sauerkraut at the snack bar, but the fare has been upgraded to accommodate the sophisticated palate of today's kids: mozzarella sticks, onion rings, pizza and Gatorade. Dinner is vastly improved: we had duck, salmon, steak, lobster tail, yummy soups and crisp salads. Our waitress was a charming young woman from Kyiv, studying telecommunications. Rooms are air-conditioned; one even has a hot tub. If you have a wireless connection, you can log onto the Internet. Our room this year at Karpaty had a lovely porch, where I sipped coffee and read the paper. Chemny, the gentle, patient Collie, alas, is no more.

The big news this year, besides the heat, was Fidel Castro's health and the exchange of rockets and bombs between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, with civilians on both sides caught in between. The war in Iraq was relegated to the inside pages of the newspaper. It seems like yesterday, though it's been two years, since my fellow Ukrainian Weekly columnist, Myron Kuropas, and I sat comfortably at poolside, debating the wisdom of that war. Now, with 1,700 more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed since then, America is stuck with no good options: a daily catastrophe if we stay; a strategic disaster if we leave. At poolside this year, my wife's cousin - a former Marine - spoke of the courage and sacrifice of another cousin in his mid-40s who was called up from the Marine Corps Reserve and is now in Iraq.

I read a couple of books, including Milena Rudnycka's 1958 Ukrainian-language "Western Ukraine under the Bolsheviks," describing Soviet policies after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, which they enforced with appalling brutality. I pointed out to my son, tapping away on a laptop computer every morning for a paper on European history, that the massacres at the prison in Lviv took place just blocks from where his grandfather worked for the newspaper Dilo. He and a relative handful of others had the foresight and good fortune to flee in the nick of time, and that's how we became Americans.

I also read Askold Krushelnycky's "An Orange Revolution: A Personal Journey through Ukrainian History," where he weaves his own family's agonizing story into the complex tapestry of Ukraine's past, culminating with Viktor Yushchenko's election as president and Ukraine's affirmation of democracy. Published earlier this year, it's already been overtaken by events. Understandably, several of the older folks were shaken by developments in Kyiv. How, they asked, could President Yushchenko have accepted Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister? Why didn't he block that?

Referring to Ms. Rudnycka's book about the enormities the Soviets imposed on Ukraine, I noted that Mr. Yushchenko - thank God - does not have the political tools his predecessors had: mass arrests, executions and censorship. Instead, forced by electoral and constitutional realities, the two Viktors arrived at a political accommodation, with Yulia Tymoshenko remaining on the outside, leading the opposition. And isn't this what the Orange Revolution was all about - respecting the will of the electorate, compromising if necessary and waiting for the next election to settle political differences?

On the final evening of my 30th, 40th or 50th trip to Soyuzivka, and no longer the late-night reveler I once was, I went to bed to the sound of guitars wailing in the distance from the Tiki Bar and fell asleep contemplating another era when young people partied at Woodstock and the Veselka Terrace, while their contemporaries fought in Vietnam. Now, as another generation rocks on, I pray for the soldiers and civilians embroiled in devastation in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and ask God to grant leaders the wisdom and the courage to make the right decisions.

How ironic that, in the midst of a world unraveling, Ukraine should stand out as a bright spot with citizens and leaders who've learned from the past and are now working peacefully together - no matter how reluctantly - for a better future. I pray, as another summer winds down, that that may continue and someday provide a model for the rest of the world to follow.

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

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