The Ukrainian Burden

By Volodymyr Kish

A number of events over the past month really brought home to me the burden one carries in being Ukrainian.  It started when I watched a video recording of last year’s Holodomor commemoration here in Oshawa, Ont. in whose organization I was heavily involved.  Shortly thereafter, I did a screening of a Ukrainian public television “docudrama” on Taras Shevchenko’s life to this same city’s Ukrainian Seniors Club.  Lastly, a week ago I saw the movie Neskoreniy (The Undefeated), a dramatization of the life of Roman Shukhevich, the leader of the underground Ukrainian Insurgent Army, more commonly known as the UPA, during and after the Second World War.  As most of you will recognize, tragedy is the common theme that runs through all three films and the historical events they portray.

The Holodomor, of course, represents the utmost extreme of tragedy – some ten million innocent people killed and a whole economic social class cruelly wiped out.  Shevchenko’s tragedy was obviously more personal, though to all Ukrainians who have lived since, it is just as moving.  Orphaned at a young age and spending most of his life exiled from the land, the people and the culture he so loved, he became the symbolic embodiment of countless millions of other Ukrainians who were separated from their country and their people by war and circumstance.  And lastly, the story of Roman Shukhevich is also the story of hundreds of thousands and indeed millions of Ukrainians who throughout the centuries fought against hopeless odds to make Ukraine a free and independent nation.

Ukrainian history is an endless cycle of tragedies, and the psychological and emotional cumulative weight of all those tragedies is sometimes hard to bear.  For people of my generation, growing up Ukrainian was growing up with the depressing knowledge that despite seven hundred years of almost ceaseless oppression, rebellion, fighting and suffering, Ukraine was still shackled to the whims and exploitation of one of its many imperialistic neighbours.  Following the devastating invasions of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century, Ukraine, with the exception of a few brief intervals, was ruthlessly suppressed and controlled successively by the Mongols, the Tatars and Turks, the Poles, the Russians, and finally the Communist Russian successors to the Tsarist emperors.  Their rule was harsh; harsher still was the effort by the Russians in particular to commit what is now known as cultural genocide.  They wanted to eliminate the Ukrainian language and culture entirely.  As one Russian imperial minister famously said during the Nineteenth Century - “The Ukrainian language did not exist, it does not exist and it will not exist”. 

Sadly, most of the world until recently knew very little about Ukrainian history or the Ukrainian people. Well into the Twentieth Century, Ukrainians immigrating to Canada were mistakenly viewed as Russians, Poles or even Austrians.  I can remember when I was a kid growing up being called a Polak, a Bohunk, or various other unflattering terms relating to my ethnic roots.  Most people did not recognize us a distinct nationality and largely bought into the Soviet propaganda that sought to demean Ukrainians and denigrate our past.

It is perhaps no wonder that so many second and later generations of Ukrainians born in Canada assimilated so quickly into the mainstream, leaving their Ukrainian language and identity far behind.  It was not easy being Ukrainian then.  I should add that to many it still is something better left behind, as witness the many thousands of Ukrainians that have come to Canada after Ukraine’s recent independence.  Although some have become active in Ukrainian organizational life in Canada, many more desire nothing more than to forget their origins and assimilate quickly into the economic and cultural Canadian middle class.  Being Ukrainian simply is too much of a burden to many of them.

One would think that now that Ukraine has become independent, that the burden would be a little easier.  Sadly, Ukraine’s current existence as an independent state is still quite precarious.  Its Muscovite neighbours are increasingly engaging in not quite so subtle efforts aimed at recapturing their most precious colony.  A vulnerable Ukraine has sought security by courting Europe and NATO, however those parties, not wanting to aggravate a newly belligerent and petroleum rich Russia, are not exactly rushing to Ukraine’s side with open arms.  Coupled with political anarchy and corruption in its internal affairs, Ukraine faces great dangers as it seeks to solidify its independence.  The burden seems to grow heavier with each passing year.

I guess all this would be quite depressing except for the fact that now, like throughout history, there is no shortage of “die-hard” Ukrainians that will not be cowed by bullying neighbours or circumstances however dire.  We will not submit.  We will not give up.  We will continue to struggle whatever the odds, and eventually we will win.  Some of the most evil, powerful and ruthless people that the world has seen in the past seven hundred years have tried and failed to eradicate Ukraine and Ukrainians.  The current crop of would-be conquerors will not succeed either, because as the Ukrainian anthem says so eloquently – “we are of Kozak stock!”