1992: A LOOK BACK: Doings in the diaspora (12/27/92)

1992: A LOOK BACK

Doings in the diaspora

The Ukrainian diaspora began the year with jubilation, marking the 74th anniversary of the January 22, 1918, proclamation of Ukraine's independence while still buoyed by the success of the December 1, 1991, referendum on the country's newly re-established independent statehood. Everywhere celebrations of the January anniversary took on an entirely new meaning and significance.

In New Haven, Conn., for example, the blue-and-yellow flag of free Ukraine was raised for the 39th time since the city became the first in the U.S. to annually display that banner each January 22. Later in the year, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the August 24, 1991, proclamation of an independent Ukrainian state, city officials presented the original flag used in 1954 at the first flag-raising ceremony to Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, Viktor Batiuk. In exchange, the ambassador presented the city with a new flag from independent Ukraine.

The euphoria over newly regained independence was soon tempered, however, by the realization that after the proclamation of independence would have to come a protracted period of nation-building. The diaspora helped the fledgling state as it could (see sections on aid to Ukraine, the United States, and Canada).

Among the simple ways that each and every Ukrainian around the world could help was by contributing to the "$1 Fund for Ukraine" established by the World Council of Ukrainian Social Services which is affiliated with the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. The reasoning behind the fund: every Ukrainian living in the diaspora communities of North America, Australia and Western Europe could afford to contribute $1 per month to this fund aimed at helping provide diverse social services in Ukraine. By year's end, we could report that a network of social service groups had been formed throughout Ukraine and that individual branches in Ukraine were being paired with social service and other organizations of the diaspora to facilitate tighter contacts and more direct assistance. And, the World Council of Ukrainian Social Services noted that it is planning to promote similar social service organizations in Eastern Europe and South America to assist Ukrainian communities in Poland, Romania, the Czech and Slovak republics, the former Yugoslavia, Brazil, Argentina, etc.

The World Congress of Free Ukrainians, too, found that it had to focus more attention on these communities, especially as Ukrainian communities in Eastern Europe began to get involved in the worldwide body and to establish contacts with their brethren in the West.

The situation was particularly acute in the territories once part of the federal state of Yugoslavia, as that country disintegrated and its many ethnic groups found themselves in the middle of a civil war. The 50,000 Ukrainian residents of the region were among the nationalities victimized by Serbs and Croatians. Hundreds were killed, thousands were terrorized and driven from their homes. In August it was reported that in Bosnia alone more than 500 Ukrainians had been killed and that the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Prjnavor had been destroyed. A "Ukrainians in Bosnia Relief Fund" was established in June in Canada, based at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ottawa. Later in the year, in November, the Ukrainian Central Refugee Organization in Austria issued a plea for help for Ukrainian refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina who had escaped to that country. The organization's letter was accompanied by a heart-rending letter from a Ukrainian community activist in Bosnia. "Two hundred Ukrainian families live in an oasis of extinction. They cannot help themselves. They can only be rescued by their brethren who live in the free world. We ask for help to emigrate to Australia, or Canada, or anywhere," he wrote.

There were other developments in the diaspora as well.

The World Forum of Ukrainians brought representatives of Ukrainian diaspora communities to Kiev on August 21-24 for presentations by representatives of the 10-million strong diaspora of the East and West, and, of course, of the 52 million people of Ukraine. The forum issued a manifesto of unity in support of Ukraine's independent statehood and created a worldwide coordinating body for Ukrainian communities.

The forum was held in conjunction with the first anniversary celebrations of the Ukrainian Parliament's adoption of the Act of Declaration of Ukraine's Independence on August 24, 1991. During the same period, the Ukrainian National Republic's government in exile, headed by Mykola Plawiuk, presented its charter, i.e. its mandate to represent the interests of the Ukrainian nation, to the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk. The ceremony took place on August 22, during a special session of Ukraine's Supreme Council held at the Ukraina Palace with the participation of numerous guests from the Ukrainian diaspora.

Plast, the scouting-based Ukrainian youth organization, marked the 80th anniversary of its founding in Lviv in 1911 with a two-week international jamboree in upstate New York at the Vovcha Tropa campsite, as well as specialized camps held in various venues throughout the Northeast, from the Catskills of New York state to Lake Ontario in Canada. The jamboree brought together more than 650 youths, 100 counselors and countless guests from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, Australia, Great Britain, Brazil and Ukraine, where Plast had been renewed in 1990.

In the United States and Canada, Ukrainian community leaders had to ponder the results of recent censuses taken in both countries which showed the changing faces of the Ukrainian "hromadas" there. In the U.S., statistics pointed to a migration of Ukrainians from previous centers of community life, as well as an increase in the number of Ukrainians in the country as a whole. The population growth, from 730,056 in 1980 to 740,803 in 1990, is probably due to a small increase in immigration as well as to increased ethnic awareness due to events in the former Soviet Union. In Canada, statistics showed a population and cultural decline between the censuses of 1986 and 1991. In Metro Toronto, for example, the number of persons listing Ukrainian as their native language declined by 15.5 percent.

As the year drew to a close, it was clear to all observers and community activists that, with the independence of Ukraine, the relationship between the homeland and the diaspora had changed and, as a result, there was a need to reassess priorities and address pressing issues both there and here.

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