The Nineties: Ukraine's independence and Weekly's expansion (10/10/93)

ANNIVERSARY REVIEW

The Nineties: Ukraine's independence and Weekly's expansion

During the 1990s, The Weekly has become the principal source of news from Ukraine, thanks to the existence of the UNA Press Bureau staffed by Weekly editors. The bureau became reality in January 1991 when Marta Kolomayets arrived in the Ukrainian capital. Her arrival was the culmination of a resolution passed at the 1990 UNA Convention that urged the Supreme Executive Committee to open a news bureau in Kyyiv and/or Lviv. Later, the Kyyiv bureau was staffed by Chrystyna Lapychak and Khristina Lew.

As interest in Ukraine grew, so did the number of subscribers, and in 1991 The Weekly's circulation topped 10,000. The amount of news increased as well, and getting all the news to fit on the pages of the 16-page Weekly proved to be a challenge. Ultimately, in December of 1991, our publisher, the Ukrainian National Association, purchased an additional unit for the press, thus providing The Weekly with the capability of printing 20- and 24-page issues. The number of such expanded issues increased as events in Ukraine progressed.

And, the news from Ukraine was to put it simply, unthinkable. Sovereignty was proclaimed in July 1990, and independence followed on August 24, 1991. Independent statehood was resoundingly confirmed by a 90-percent-plus vote in the plebiscite of December 1, 1991.

The Weekly covered the activity of the Popular Movement of Ukraine, or Rukh, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, which soon became the Ukrainian Republican Party, and the many other new parties that arose in Ukraine as democracy was gaining ground. The activities of previously banned Churches, the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, including the arrivals in Ukraine of their respective primates, Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky and Metropolitan Mstyslav, also were covered in much detail. Other news reports dealt with the revelation of "blank spots" in history, such as the Great Famine of 1932-1933, and other Stalinist atrocities, many of whose victims were found to be buried in mass graves throughout the country. And then there was Chornobyl - the continuing stories of its mammoth fallout and its effect on the populace of Ukraine.

The infamous visit to Ukraine by President George Bush, during which he delivered his notorious "Chicken Kiev" speech was the subject of much news and analysis on the pages of The Weekly. Of course, The Weekly continued to defend the interests of the Ukrainian nation as it called on the U.S. to promptly recognize Ukraine's independence, to stop seeing Ukraine through the prism of Moscow, and to provide a fair share of foreign aid to the non-Russian states that exist on the territory once part of the huge Soviet empire.

The growing pains associated with a newly independent state were and are being covered on the pages of The Weekly. So, there is good news as well as bad from Ukraine. The good is exemplified by the International Olympic Committee's recognition of Ukraine and Ukraine's independent participation in international athletic events, as well as the emergence of Ukrainian sports stars known around the globe. The bad includes Ukraine's inflation run amok and its economic crisis, and the long-term stalemate between the president and the Parliament.

Outside of Ukraine, The Weekly focused on meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, various Chornobyl and medical relief efforts, and the myriad types of aid extended by the Ukrainian diaspora to Ukraine. There was information, a lot of it, on various assistance programs offered by the U.S. and Canada governments to Ukraine.

The strange case of John Demjanjuk continues to make headlines. And, the Vatican's continued machinations regarding the Ukrainian Catholic Church were touched upon (stay tuned). The centennials of Ukrainian settlement in Canada and Brazil also were marked on the pages of The Weekly.

Not to be forgotten is the U.S. visit of President Leonid Kravchuk, newly elected as Ukraine's chief executive, and all the subsequent visits by various Ukrainian government officials, including Defense Minister Kostyantyn Morozov and Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko. Next came news of the establishment of Ukraine's diplomatic representations throughout the world.

Diaspora activity during the first part of this decade appeared to be focused completely on Ukraine - sometimes to the detriment of Ukrainian community life here. But community news did continue to make headlines in The Ukrainian Weekly.

Incidentally, The Weekly conducted a poll of its readers to determine the popularity of its diverse features. The most popular and most widely read were any stories from or about Ukraine, be they from the Kyyiv Press Bureau or Newsbriefs compiled from multiple sources.

By the time a third of the decade was over, The Ukrainian Weekly had expanded the number of its pages, increased the size of its full time editorial staff to five, and had computerized its production, preparing the newspaper on the Macintosh computer system purchased by the UNA in early 1993. More and more often The Weekly was being cited as the primary source for news from Ukraine and its news reports are now indexed by Ethnic Newswatch, which is available to 250,000 subscribers through Nexis/Lexis. Its stories from Ukraine now appear in the Prague Post and the Budapest Sun, among other newspapers.

And what will the rest of the decade bring? We couldn't even venture a guess.

- Roma Hadzewycz

| Home Page |