“Party Crashers”

 By Dr. Myron Kuropas

 In his Noviy Shliakh commentary titled “Stuck in the Past”, my friend Volodymyr Kish reviewed the October 31 meeting of the Ukrainian Journalists of North America, writing: “Unfortunately, most of the discussion soon turned to a re-hash of some of the historical concerns that have dominated so much of the diaspora’s time...the Demjanjuk problem, the historical animosity between Ukrainians and Jews, the rewriting of history by the current Yanukovych regime, etc., etc.” 

Accepting the fact that these are “serious issues”, Mr. Kish believes “that we seem to devote an inordinate amount of time trying to rectify historical wrongs and virtually no time on building what one astute audience member called a ‘vision of the future’ for Ukrainians both in Ukraine and here in the diaspora.”  

I believe most Ukrainians here do have a vision for Ukraine’s future. We all want a nation predicated on the rule of law and inhabited by a people who love their country, and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that we do in North America. The problem with this vision is that there are those who wish to either deny or denigrate it.

In the forefront are the leaders of present-day Russia.  They believe that Ukrainians are really “Little Russians” whose language is a quaint Russian dialect.  Ukraine, therefore, should return to Mother Russia.  Moscow realizes Ukraine won’t “return” tomorrow.  What is needed today, therefore, is a president like Viktor Yanukovych who will move Ukraine eastward, slowly and imperceptibly. Moscow also knows that Ukrainians who live in Western Ukraine will resist. These “benighted” ones will never change, but their children might, especially if they are taught from history texts that question a separate Ukrainian identity.  Such textbooks are being written in Ukraine now, in present time. This is an outrage and our community must respond forcibly, now.

Did our community anticipate such developments?  No.  Russians are back in our face without our permission.  Once again Moscow is crashing our party. Are there Russians living in Ukraine who accept a separate Ukrainian identity, a separate Ukrainian state?  Of course.  I’m not writing about them.

Another small group of uninvited party crashers are the Jews, not all Jews, not even most Jews, but some Jews, the Jewish nomenklatura, who believe that only Jews have suffered genocide. Jews are the world’s universal victims. Ukrainians are the world’s perpetual anti-Semites.  The latest example of this type of thinking were the reports by Post Media in which Prime Minister Harper was criticized for exaggerating Ukraine’s Holodomor death toll and for visiting a prison-museum in Lviv which featured atrocities committed by the Soviets and Nazis in Lviv but, ignored, the Post Media account concluded, the “beating, humiliations and murder of Jews in Lviv by Ukrainians.”  It was an unsolicited cheap shot. Never mind that Mr. Harper visited Babyn Yar while in Ukraine, his failure to condemn Ukrainians was unacceptable for this Jewish news outlet.  One could add that Mr. Harper also failed to condemn Jews for welcoming the Soviets into Lviv in 1939, and for helping them hunt for, and identify OUN members who were later murdered by the NKVD in that very prison.

I have enumerated the many Jewish denigrations of Ukrainians in another publication - as well as the many fruitless efforts of Ukrainians both in Canada and the United States to come to some kind of mutual understanding with Jews - so I won’t go there now. I should mention, however, that I was co-chair of a Ukrainian Jewish dialogue group in Chicago for some 20 years. We had some great moments, but the end-result was nula; we agreed to disagree, bringing us back to square one.  Does this make me an expert on North American Jews? No. But my experience as well as a familiarity with the Jewish press does provide me with some understanding of the Jewish establishment’s agenda which, in my opinion, does not include improved relations with Ukrainians.  Can we ignore the Jews?  I wish.

Mr. Kish is correct when he writes that Ukrainians spend too much time dwelling on the past.  Unfortunately, we have little choice.  The “uninvited” keep pushing through our door and hanging black crèpe on our walls.