LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (01/24/93)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Emphasis on keeping "the door open"

Dear Editor:

We, the Junior Class of Graduating Class of 1994, at Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic High School in Hamtramck (Detroit), Michigan, would like to express our thoughts about your article in reference to our school, "Doors May soon Slam Shut on Another Ukrainian American High School," which appeared in the November 15, 1992, The Ukrainian Weekly.

We appreciate the publicity and would like to thank our alumnus, Roman Woronowycz, for his excellent article. However, we would like to point out that the title was quite misleading. Our school is very small and is having difficulty in maintaining enrollment, but everyone, beginning with our Pastor, the Very Rev. Father Maxim Kobasuk, the school faculty, concerned parents, and the students themselves, are doing everything possible to "keep the doors open."

Because the majority of Immaculate Conception High School's students live in the suburbs and must drive quite a distance to get to school, strong consideration is being given to relocate to the suburbs. One other hurdle is that the small enrollment keeps our school financially strapped. But again, fund-raisers are held often. Just recently a phone-a-thon was held and close to $50,000 was raised. Unfortunately, more is needed, and we would like to reach out to the Ukrainian community in the diaspora to help support our school financially in this time of need. As you can see, everything is being done to keep the school open. So please don't "slam the doors shut" on us yet.

Peter Maziak
Hamtramck, Mich.

The writer is vice-president of the class of 1994 at Immaculate Conception High School.

Community must open press bureau

Dear Editor:

Continuous vicious media attacks on Ukraine, its history, and its policies, have gotten to such a stage that the Ukrainian American community must take immediate steps to address them. Recent letters to The Weekly from Laryssa Fontana and Marta Pereyma hit the proverbial nail on the head in their call to a consistent, professionally run, 24-hour-a-day press bureau. Such an organization would be responsible for tracking wire services, holding news briefings, meeting with reporters, developing and nurturing relationships with the top newsmaking echelon worldwide, and making certain that accurate information is dispersed before we turn the pages of our newspapers and journals to find slanderous diatribes on editorial pages and in feature articles.

Television news broadcasts and motion pictures touching on events where Ukraine might be mentioned should be constantly tracked and reviewed for accuracy. As they say here in the West, we must "head them off at the pass."

The bottom line for this organization would be consistency and professionalism. We can no longer afford a one-man operation in this field. I realize that a few Ukrainian information bureaus do exist, but they do not seem to be consistent, nor do they have a large enough personnel to handle the many fronts from which Ukrainians are attacked. Part of this organization should consist of people involved in a strict media watch with sufficient knowledge for immediate rebuttal.

Not only would such a press bureau handle the dispersal of current information, but we need to monitor and take on the universities and colleges whose history and so-called "Slavic" departments spew out distorted versions of Ukraine's history as part of their Russian history curriculum. We should also make a list of authors, historians, political scientists, former reporters who worked for the American press in Moscow (who have become instant experts on Ukraine and write best sellers in which Ukrainians are lumped with Russians), etc., who have written works showing Ukraine in an incorrect historical perspective.

Stephen Budiansky, Abraham Brumberg, W. Bruce Lincoln, Jerry Hough, Stephen Cohen, Thomas M. Nichols, Hedrick Smith, our good Librarian of Congress James Billington, and other "experts," had to learn their Ukrainian "history" from Russophile sources to be so consistently out-of-line in their presentations. As an alumna of UCLA, I recall my constant battles with professors of Russian history and their "interpretations" of Ukrainian history.

Grab any newspaper you wish and note that not a day goes by without some "enterprising" reporter blasting the daylights out of Ukraine. Have we become the willing current "whipping boy?" Is it open season on Ukrainians?

If we don't get on the ball and create a news bureau, and we find inaccurate or unacceptable references to Ukrainian events and historical figures, then we have no one else to blame but ourselves. Let's get off our duffs, people!

Christina Milburn
Richland Wash.

Congratulations on Budiansky coverage

Dear Editor:

I just received the December 13, 1992 edition of The Ukrainian Weekly and was delighted to see the cover article regarding the protest against the article in the November 30, 1992, edition of U.S. News & World Report.

I also wrote a letter to the editor of U.S. News & World Report explaining my disenchantment with the article by Stephen Budiansky. It is a bit lengthy and I do not expect that they should publish it, but I felt it covered what needed to be said.

Continue your good work with The Weekly.

Thomas A. Coleman
Sayville. N.Y.

Thanks for piece on school's future

Dear Editor:

The students of Immaculate Conception High School would like to thank you for a stirring article concerning the future of our school. We are proud of our school; the only negative feelings are brought up by parents whose children don't even come here. We have one of the highest graduating rates in the state. Our teachers are highly qualified and dedicated. Many of them have taught at I.C. for over 20 years. Because of the somewhat small population, we have one of the best student-teacher ratios.

The future of our school depends on next year's student population. Your article might shake up the Ukrainian community in Detroit, and more people might see that the only way to better our school is to send their sons and daughters here.

Stefan Strychar
Hamtramck, Mich.

4-H Clubs could assist Ukraine

Dear Editor:

Collectivization has left Ukraine virtually bereft of people interested or trained in operating family farms, a major problem as the nation begins the monumental task of land reform.

Apparently, few of our Ukrainian relatives want to take back and farm former family holdings. Many relatives now living in urban centers have forgotten how to farm, or are not interested in returning to the land. And certainly stories about decades of brutality and poverty in kolhosps (collective farms) are not inspiring youngsters to consider agricultural careers.

Yet it is young people that Ukraine must systematically prepare to enter private farming. Hopefully, young people can be attracted to learning practical farming, management and marketing skills, all based on personal initiative and responsibility.

4-H Clubs in the U.S. offer an excellent and flexible model for training the next generation of Ukrainian farmers. These clubs serve boys and girls, age 9 to 19. Volunteer leaders provide routine guidance with additional support from skilled farmers, veterinarians and other experts at periodic workshops and clinics.

Club members can choose from various projects, such as raising cattle, sheep, swine and poultry, and growing vegetables and small fruits. They learn how to keep financial records for their projects, upgrade product quality by competing at shows and fairs, and sell what they produce - basic skills for successful private farming.

In starting such a movement, Ukraine can get help, including advice and training manuals, from U.S. 4-H officials. Ideally, Ukraine's first 4-H Clubs should be local, as the American clubs were before they were sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That would give young farmers time to stand apart from "central control" influences as they learn how to make independent management decisions based on local conditions and needs.

The 4-H movement would benefit from regular consultations with Zelenyi Svit (Green World) and similar groups. Environmentalists can be counted upon to uphold ecological standards for farming with less dependence on chemicals and more on crop rotation, mechanical cultivation and biological controls. Perhaps Ukraine's emerging private agriculture can avoid the factory-like "stand and deliver" policies that in America led to abandoned family farms, eroded topsoil and polluted groundwater.

The Ukrainian National Association and concerned American donors can play a key role in launching a 4-H Club movement. The UNA could serve as trustee for contributions collected here, then transferred to foundation committees in Ukraine to buy pure-bred livestock for approved club members. The club member agrees to either give the committee the first female offspring from his project, or return his animal's original purchase price.

Perhaps the first 4-H Clubs should be organized in Galicia, the historic seedbed of Ukrainian cooperatives and self-help organizations. People there and in the nearby Carpathians could draw upon these traditions to exploit the inherent flexibility of 4-H projects. For example, potato projects could be expanded into multi-crop vegetable gardens to supply local town markets. Sheep projects could be expanded to produce milk for bryndzia cheese, and sheepskins for embroidered Hutsul jackets. Such ventures can grow and stimulate local rural economies.

Our timely assistance is vital in helping Ukraine rebuild its agriculture. The well-being of any nation rests on granaries and the farmers who work to fill them.

Russell Paul Kaniuka
Farmington Falls, Maine

The writer is the former editor of Agricultural Research magazine.

Pope abuses Ukrainian Church

Dear Editor:

Bishop Isidore Borecky must be commended for his defense of the rights of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church against continuing abuses by the pope. The tradition and the authentic law of the Ukrainian Church clearly states that the Synod elects, not nominates, its bishops after the death of a bishop.

For several years, the pope has persistently insisted that Bishop Borecky step down and be replaced by another of the pope's personal choice. This is in defiance of the ancient tradition and authentic laws of the Ukrainian Church, a position taken since the beginning of his reign some 14 years ago. It abuses the rights of a sister Church which is of equal status as an entity with the Roman Catholic Church, having its own history, liturgy, theology and spirituality from the time of St. Andrew. Its connection to the Roman See is eucharistic.

Who benefits and who loses as a result of the pope's abuses? The losses are all on the side of Ukraine, its Church and its people. The pope's actions create a destabilization in all three of those areas, in particular, fragmentation of the Ukrainian Church. "Divide and rule" has been the pope's motto concerning the Ukrainian Church, and that carries over into the political realm of the young Ukrainian nation.

The gains are all on the side of the pope and Ukraine's enemies. The destabilization gives usurper Filaret in Kyyiv and Patriarch Alexei in Moscow more openings for their machinations regarding the Ukrainian Church.

What is so painful is that the person heading the largest Christian denomination in the world values his political clout at the expense of the rights of a sister Church that has given millions of lives for the faith just within the last few decades. Not only does the pope not acknowledge them, he continues to abuse the rights of those courageous bishops and priests who have emerged from the catacombs in Ukraine.

Antonina Matkowski
Philadelphia

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