LETTER TO THE EDITOR (12/17/00)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Transliteration: it's not "vsio ravno"

Dear Editor:

Your November 26 issue contains Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky's excellent speech concerning Ukrainians' respect for our language. Commenting on the ease with which too many Ukrainians accept Russification, Dr. Vitvitsky hits the nail on the head when he points out how "we allowed ourselves to internalize the inferiority complex that the Russians have been feeding us for decades reaching into centuries."

This certainly explains, as Dr. Vitvitsky so vividly illustrates, why we accept the Russification of our language by "those who for centuries have tried to make us disappear ... who for centuries have treated us with contempt, ... who murdered millions of our countrymen, ... who even to this day deny that we are a nation, ... who lied to us about our history, who our heroes really were, who we really were."

That same issue of The Ukrainian Weekly contains stories and pictures of Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Kostyantyn Gryshchenko. In the ambassador's surname the Russian "G" replacing the Ukrainian "H." Apparently, it is "vsio ravno" as Dr. Vitvitsky notes in his brilliant focus on the voluntary Russification of our language.

Leo Iwaskiw
Philadelphia, Pa.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Weekly spells the ambassador's last name in accordance with his expressly stated wishes.

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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