THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION'S FIRST CENTURY
The history of the Ukrainian National Association is documented in a new book by Dr. Myron Kuropas, "Ukrainian Citadel: The First Hundred Years of The Ukrainian National Association," to be published by The University of Toronto Press. In this special 12-page pullout section of The Weekly, prepared on the occasion of our publisher's centennial, we offer excerpts from Dr. Kuropas' pre-publication manuscript, reprinted with permission from the author. (Please note that the Ukrainian National Association (UNA) was known as the Ruskyi Narodnyi Soyuz (RNS) for the first 20 years of its existence.)
The 1940s
During the 1940s America's Communist front intensified the defamation campaign against the Ukrainian National Association... Realizing that truth and justice were on their side UNA leaders took on the enemy head to head.
...The UNA attempted to counter detractors of the Ukrainian cause with the truth. A number of scholarly publications were financed by the UNA along with lectures at Columbia University. ... And the UNA financed the first and perhaps most significant English-language scholarly publication, a one-volume condensation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's multi-volume history of Ukraine published by Yale University Press.
The UNA played an important role in the formation of a national congress of Ukrainian Americans which was held on May 24, 1940 in Washington, D.C. The political platform reiterated Ukraine's historical right to independence emphasizing the "merciless oppression" of Ukrainians by Poland's policy of colonization and pacification and the genocidal starvation liquidation and imprisonment of Ukrainians by Bolsheviks. The statement ended with the rejection of all totalitarian ideologies such as Bolshevism and Nazism...
During the 1941 convention in Harrisburg, Pa. Supreme President Nicholas Murashko told the delegates: "We believe that they (our brothers and sisters in Ukraine) will break the chains that bind them; the day is near when the Ukrainian people will be free of any oppression ...Ukrainian Americans will live to see the day when the bright rays of hope and faith in the great future of a free and democratic Ukraine will reach our shores from Kyyiv."
UNA members also took part in the U.S. war effort during the second world war with thousands fighting in the U.S. military... Perhaps the greatest achievement of the UNA during the 1940s was the campaign to save Ukrainian displaced persons in Europe. The UNA helped establish finance and lead the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee (UUARC) in its monumental task of providing relief and protection for Ukrainian refugees...
Illustrations Published:
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 20, 1994, No. 8, Vol. LXII
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