Fading Fraternals

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

The fraternal movement was once an integral part of Ukrainian community life in America.

Fraternal insurance society creation in the U.S. peaked during the late 19^th Century. Groups with common interests came together to establish mutual aid societies for the benefit of their members. Initially called “burial societies” because the early benefits were primarily for funeral expenses, they eventually evolved into full blown insurance companies.

America’s first immigrants from Ukraine called themselves Rusyns. Most were illiterate males who came to work in the hard anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania. They laboured long, back-breaking hours in notoriously unsafe mines. Many Rusyns died in these mines.

The first Rusyn fraternal society, today called the Greek Catholic Union (GCU), was founded in 1892 by Uhro-Rusyn priests in the U.S. who were Hungarian in ethno-cultural commitment, Greek Catholic in spiritual orientation. The GCU later played a pivotal role in helping to create the Province of Ruthenia in the newly established Czechoslovak Republic at the conclusion of World War I.

The second Rusyn fraternal society, the Ruskyi Narodni Soyuz, (RNS) known as the Ukrainian National Association (UNA) since 1915, was founded in 1894 in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, by Rusyn priests from Halychyna. They were also Greek Catholic in spiritual orientation, but Ukrainian in political commitment. The RNS, especially its organ-newspaper publication, Svoboda, played a significant role in the Ukrainianization of some 40% of the original Rusyn immigrants to America.

Svoboda began writing about Canadian Rusyns as early as 1895. Dr. Josef Oleskow, the Halychan Ukrainian who opened Canada to Rusyn-Ukrainians, visited the Svoboda home office in 1897. He convinced Svoboda editor Father Nestor Dmytriw to move to Canada. Fr. Dmytriw arrived in Winnipeg on April 4, 1897, where, to his delight, he found a document from Ukraine’s Cardinal Sembratovych empowering him to serve the Rusyn faithful in Canada. The first Rusyn-Ukrainian liturgy on Canadian soil was celebrated in Terebowla, Manitoba, where Fr. Dmytriw also created a parish. A year later, after creating parishes in Stuartburn, Manitoba, and Edna, Alberta, Father Dmytriw returned to America.

The original aims of the RNS were: “to help the ailing and pay benefits after death; establish reading rooms and adult evening schools; to promote enlightenment among our people with the help of inexpensive publications as is being done in the old country; to insist that Rusyns become American citizens; to organize political clubs and to take an active part in elections; and to defend our people against sharks, crooks, and operators.”

The arrival of Bishop Soter Ortynsky in 1907 was welcomed by Rusyn Catholics in America and the UNA executive immediately made him an honorary member. By the 1910 convention, the bishop was a regular branch delegate and chair of the convention by-laws committee. When the committee proposed to change the name of the Ruskyi Narodnyi Soyuz to the Hreko-Katholitskiy Narodni Soiuz, the resolution passed by a vote of 218 to 69 despite vociferous objections. Calling themselves “progressives”, delegates from fourteen RNS branches walked out of the convention. Another convention was held and a “new” RNS was established. Meanwhile, the original RNS executive was informed by legal counsel that the name change violated dictates in the original constitution and was therefore null and void. Bishop Ortynsky was not dismayed by the reversal. He helped establish another fraternal which came to be called the Providence Association of Ruthenian (later Ukrainian) Catholics. Thus, in a matter of two years, America went from one Rusyn fraternal to three.

So how goes our fraternal movement at the end of 2012? The “new” RNS changed its name to the Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association (UWA) in 1918. It had its own press and for a time published Forum magazine, edited by Andrew Gregorovich. In 2009, after talks for reunification with the UNA collapsed, the UWA, ironically, merged with the Providence Association. The Providence Association, alive and well, celebrated its 100^th anniversary this year. It still publishes the bi-lingual weekly America but Forum is no more.

Fiercely nationalistic, the UNA is also alive and well. It reached a peak membership of 89,119 in 1974 during the presidency of Joseph Lesawyer. Since then, membership has dwindled. Today, the UNA publishes the newspapers Svoboda in Ukrainian and, since 1933, The Ukrainian Weekly in English. The UNA also owns Soyuzivka, a popular summer resort in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.

Although American fraternals like the Knights of Columbus appear to be thriving, the last two Ukrainian-American fraternals are fading, their influence in the community dwindling. Another era in Ukrainian American history is slowly coming to an end.

Myron B. Kuropas was UNA national vice-president from 1978 to 1990. His father was national vice-president from 1961-1970. His son, Stephen, served as national vice-president from 1998-2002. Myron is the author of Ukrainian American Citadel: The First Hundred Years of the Ukrainian National Association.