LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (02/18/96)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

More on Puluj's pioneering work

Dear Editor:

In your column "Turning the pages back..." (January 28), an excellent concise biography of Ivan Puluj, the prominent Ukrainian physicist and electromechanical pioneer, was presented.

The 1995 centennial celebration of the discovery of the X-ray saw publication of many historical articles that described events occurring at the time of Wilhelm K. Roentgen's discovery (1895). One of the more interesting articles was the description of the circumstances of the first clinical X-ray made in America on February 3, 1896, at Dartmouth College. It was an X-ray of a fractured wrist of a 14-year-old. It was taken in the Department of Physics using a Puluj tube made by Stoehre of Leipzig and numbered "1147" in the manufacturer's catalogue.

It was well known at that time that, "In the early 1880s Prof. Johann Puluj of the University of Vienna devised a type of Crookes tube which was splendidly adapted for the production of X-ray..." The equipment, including Puluj's tube, is on permanent display in the Fairchild Science Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. (Spiegel, Peter. "The first Clinical X-Ray Made in America - 100 Years." The American Journal of Roentgenrology, Vol. 164, 241-243, January 1995).

Unfortunately, Puluj's cathode tube suffered a less happy fate in his homeland. Puluj's X-rays, original cathode tubes and scientific notes were donated by his widow, Katherine Puluj, to the museum of the Ukrainian Medical Association in Lviv, where they remained until 1941. At the time of the German occupation, the archives were transferred to the care of the Barvinsky family.

During the Stalinist oppression in western Ukraine, from 1945 to 1949, the Barvinsky family was in part liquidated, with the survivors deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Puluj's archives and tubes were confiscated by the NKVD. Their fate is unknown. (Hnatyshak, Romana E. "Ivan Puluj - Great Son of the Ukrainian Nation." The Ukrainian Journal of Radiology, Vol. 3, 60-61, January 1993).

Adrian Baranetsky, M.D.
Short Hills, N.J.

The writer is secretary of Friends of Radiology in Ukraine, Inc.

The Kyyiv-Kyiv matter continues

Dear Editor:

Congratulations on another great year-ender!

I sincerely wish that the "Kyyiv-Kyiv" issue was, as you write, "finally resolved" (December 31, 1995). Unfortunately, that's not quite the case.

In cartographic/geographic terms, the only official decision adopted by Ukraine's Board on Geographic Names has been that "Kiev" is no longer acceptable.

The decision adopted by the Legal Terminology Committee, chaired by Justice Minister Serhiy Holovaty, technically applies only to legal documents: contracts, treaties, official translations of state documents, etc. "Kyiv" may be more attractive for some (and more economical for The Weekly), but it does not have the general authority and legitimacy needed to definitely settle the issue. Nonetheless, there is always the possibility that Ukraine's national cartographic and geographic authorities will simply recognize the Legal Terminology Committee's decision as a fait accompli and give their consent as well.

And just to set the record straight (in case there actually are people who are following all of these developments), it wasn't the Ukrainian Mapping Agency that influenced National Geographic to adopt the "Kyyiv" spelling, but the United States' very own U.S. Board on Geographical Names (USBGN).

Back in 1991, following the restoration of Ukrainian independence, in the absence of any information from Ukraine, they decided to officially implement the transliteration system they always had on file for Ukrainian, but had never used in print since official Soviet cartography was Russian only. In accordance with USBGN practice, every letter must be transliterated so that, in this specific case, every Latin letter can be transliterated back into a Cyrillic (Ukrainian) character - hence the infamous double "y."

Once the USBGN and National Geographic publications had already appeared, cartographic authorities in Kyiv at the Ukrainian Mapping Agency lobbied other U.S. publishers (Rand McNally, Hammond, etc.) to have them drop the "Kiev," "Lvov," etc. spellings in favor of more authentically Ukrainians spellings. In the absence of an officially approved transliteration system, the USBGN system was deemed "acceptable," albeit for a transitional period.

Petro Matiaszek
Kyyiv-Kyiv-?

The writer was the Ukrainian Mapping Agency's U.S. representative in 1992-1994.

Writers improperly credit Bill Clinton

Dear Editor:

I was astounded by the "Letter to the Editor" from Andrew Fedynsky and Julian Kulas (January 28) regarding President Clinton and Ukraine. Many of the statements in the letter are just not true. Let me recount the facts, all substantiated by U.S. government documents, of the past three years.

1993:

President Clinton submitted a Fiscal Year 1994 Foreign Assistance Bill requesting $2.5 billion for Russia and not a penny for Ukraine.
In March, Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma was to visit Washington at the invitation of Rep. E. de la Garza (D-Texas), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. According to The New York Times, the White House issued the order that no one in the administration was to meet with the Ukrainian premier. He canceled his trip.
In July, Nick Burns, the president's national security advisor for the NIS, stated at a public White House meeting that there will not be a single dime of assistance for Ukraine.
In July, Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) proposed, at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations, an amendment requiring that Ukraine receive a per capita share of assistance based on population. By the time the proposal reached the full committee, the Clinton administration strong-armed Sen. Wofford into retreating from his own amendment.
In September, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earmarked (mandated) $300 million of assistance for Ukraine in the foreign assistance appropriations bill. While the Senate passed the bill, the Democrats on the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, at the prodding of the Clinton administration, refused to accept the amendment. It was watered down from a requirement to a recommendation.
The Clinton administration submitted to the Congress a proposal to close Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. A fierce battle, which ended the following year, resulted in the survival of the two radios, albeit with a 70 percent reduction in their budget. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) led the charge to destroy the radios, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) led the effort to save them.

1994:

President Clinton submitted a Fiscal Year 1995 Foreign Assistance Bill requesting $900 million for the NIS, of which Ukraine was to receive $115 million.
Early in the year, at a Washington meeting with President Leonid Kravchuk, President Clinton committed $700 million of fiscal year 1994 assistance to Ukraine. In documents submitted to the Congress two months later, the Clinton administration stated that it intended to give Ukraine only $166 million of assistance in fiscal year 1994 funds.
In July, Sen. McConnell earmarked $150 million for Ukraine. While the Senate passed the bill, the Democrats on the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, at the urging of the Clinton administration, refused to accept the amendment. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Subcommittee, stated that if the Senate insisted on the earmark for Ukraine, there would be no bill, i.e., the president was prepared to veto it. The House then rejected the motion to accept the amendment on a strict party-line vote with Republicans supporting the earmark and the Democrats opposing it. The wording was, again, watered down from a mandate to a recommendation. (A number of subcommittee Democrats later told Tamara Gallo, the director of the UCCA Washington Office, and me that they opposed the amendment solely due to tremendous pressure from the White House.)
The administration refused to elevate the November visit of President Kuchma to that of a "state visit" until Republican and Democratic members of Congress brought significant pressure to bear on the administration.

1995:

President Clinton submitted a Fiscal Year 1996 Foreign Assistance Bill requesting $788 million for the NIS, of which Ukraine was to receive $160 million.
At the G-7 meeting in Winnipeg in 1994, President Clinton committed the U.S. to providing $200 million in debt relief for Ukraine. In April, the president offered Ukraine $130 million of credit for six months and only to buy U.S. products that Ukraine stated it did not need. Pressure from Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.) and Sen. McConnell resulted in the credit being extended to 18 months. The administration refused to increase the amount. (Japan, Canada and the European Community met their commitments to Ukraine in full.)
In September, Sen. McConnell earmarked $225 million for Ukraine, though the Congress reduced the total amount for the NIS significantly. The administration opposed the amendment but, faced with a united Republican-controlled Congress, was unable to defeat or modify the amendment.
During Senate consideration of the Appropriations Bill for the State Department, Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) offered an amendment to effectively eliminate Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. The Senate adopted the amendment.
After three years of the Clinton administration, Ukraine ranks 10th out of 12 NIS countries in per capita U.S. assistance, according to a recent State Department report. That report shows that Tajikistan, an avowedly Communist country, received two and a half times the per capita assistance that Ukraine received; Turkmenistan, more than three times; Moldova, more than three and half times. Had Congress not been involved in the process, the record of the administration would have been even worse.

This year Ukraine will be the third largest recipient of U.S. aid due to the years of dedication and bipartisan efforts of Sens. McConnell, Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Robert Dole (R-Kansas), former Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), Reps. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), David Bonior (D-Mich.) and Bob Livingston (R-La.), and other members of Congress. This success was achieved in spite of the Clinton administration's opposition to assistance for Ukraine.

While referencing the Central and East European Coalition's (CEEC) letter to Speaker Newt Gingrich, Messrs. Fedynsky and Kulas fail to mention that the CEEC has sent many similar letters to President Clinton, one as recently as January 26. The "highly regarded" CEEC, in its yearlong effort to arrange a meeting between the president or vice-president and ethnic leaders, was repeatedly rebuffed by the White House. The CEEC, of which I am a founding member, has also concluded that the administration, in a continuing misguided effort to placate Boris Yeltsin, is dragging its feet on NATO expansion.

The misrepresentations in the letter of Messrs. Fedynsky and Kulas are serious because by crediting President Clinton for acts which he, in fact, opposed, they are not acknowledging those members of Congress who are truly responsible for U.S. foreign assistance to Ukraine. Our community has a right and a need to know the truth so that, on Election Day, we can thank our friends, be they Democrats or Republicans, with our vote. The key to an effective community is honest, objective information and not distorted, partisan tracts.

Eugene M. Iwanciw
Arlington, Va.

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