INTERVIEW: The Helsinki Commission on its 20th anniversary
Orest Deychakiwsky is a staff adviser with the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe whose areas of responsibility include Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and Hungary. On the Helsinki Commission staff for nearly 15 years, he has served on U.S. delegations to over a dozen CSCE/OSCE meetings; part of his responsibilities at these meetings included liaison with non-governmental organizations. Mr. Deychakiwsky has been an international observer of elections in Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria, and he also coordinates the intern program at the commission.
In his role as a Helsinki Commission staffer, he is well-known to scores of Ukrainian community leaders, especially those active in the human and national rights arena during the 1980s.
The two-part interview below was conducted with Roma Hadzewycz.
CONCLUSION
Q: The Helsinki Commission recently held a hearing on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident, a hearing that was quite significant for a number of reasons...
A: Yes, testifying were Ambassador Yuri Shcherbak, Belarusian Ambassador Serguei Martynov, Alex Kuzma of Chornobyl Challenge '96 and Murray Feshbach of Georgetown University, whom you may have caught on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago discussing the appalling health situation in Russia. By the way, the hearing was the first time a Ukrainian ambassador to the United States testified before Congress. Before that, only then-Ambassador to the U.N. Hennadiy Udovenko, now the foreign minister, had testified before the commission. That was in January 1992, and that was actually the first appearance of an official of the Ukrainian government before Congress. By the way, all of our commission hearings are published and disseminated, and the recent Chornobyl hearing should be published before the end of the summer.
In addition to the Chornobyl hearing, Congressman Smith, our commission chairman, introduced the recent Chornobyl resolution that passed the House by a resounding 404-0 vote. New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, also a Helsinki commissioner, introduced a companion resolution which passed the Senate a day after it was introduced. Such speedy passage doesn't occur too often, but it didn't hurt to have the resolution co-sponsored by senators such as Bob Dole and Jesse Helms. We're also doing other things to build on these Chornobyl efforts, working with Ukrainian American organizations such as the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund.
One of the values, by the way, of having senators and House members as commissioners is that some of them serve on important committees, such as appropriations, where they have been able to support funding or initiate projects for Ukraine or for matters relating to Ukraine.
Q: And what about the role of Ukraine itself in the over-all OSCE process?
A: Well, Ukraine's entry into the OSCE in January 1992 - shortly after independence - paralleled the significant changes in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), or, as it has been known from January 1995, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). From 1975 through around 1991, the OSCE/CSCE was less structured - basically, it was the 35 countries that had signed the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 meeting periodically to discuss and debate various issues concerning security, human rights, economic cooperation, with the aim of advancing security and cooperation. This was not an easy process, to put it mildly, given Soviet and East European intransigence on issues such as human rights.
During those years, Ukraine, as part of the Soviet Union, had no formal role in the CSCE process. The only time attention was paid to Ukraine was in the context of the United States and Canada (and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries), raising human-rights issues pertaining to Ukraine. In fact, the first time Ukraine was discussed separately in a substantive manner by a Soviet delegation to a CSCE meeting was at a national minorities meeting in Geneva in July 1991. Borys Tarasiuk - now Ukraine's liaison ambassador to NATO and the Benelux and former deputy foreign minister - delivered the speech. I recall telling him right after that his speech had been the first devoted exclusively to Ukraine by a member of a Soviet delegation at a CSCE conference, and he was surprised. His surprise was understandable, given that previously he had worked within a U.N. context where Ukraine was, after all, a separate entity, at least formally.
In the early 1990s, roughly coinciding with the entry of Ukraine and many other newly independent countries into the OSCE - there are now 55 member states vs. 35 - the OSCE became more institutionalized, with the creation of a Secretariat and various permanent structures that had not existed earlier. I would say that Ukraine is fairly active and engaged in the OSCE. It certainly values the OSCE as an institution, not to mention valuing OSCE principles, especially those pertaining to territorial integrity, inviolability of borders and sovereign equality - for obvious reasons. I suspect Ukraine will become even more active and engaged in the OSCE once its resources permit it to. Right now, to fully fill every delegation to every OSCE function is very difficult for financially strapped Ukraine, and Ukraine is certainly not unique in this respect. I should also mention that there has been an OSCE Mission to Ukraine since 1994 that has worked to help reduce tensions with the Crimea. There are strong indications that the mission will be winding up its work by the end of the year, assuming the situation in the Crimea continues to stabilize.
Q: What can you tell us about commission relations with the Ukrainian American community since its inception? And more recently, about relations with the Ukrainian government, especially the Ukrainian Embassy?
A: Relations with the community generally have been quite positive. Well, I've been with the commission for nearly 15 years, so I can speak with a bit more authority about that period of time, although I understand that relations were warm during the first five years as well. I think an important thing to remember is that from 1976 until 1991, the Helsinki Commission was one of the key vehicles for Ukrainian Americans to express their concerns about developments in Ukraine.
In fact, if I can add parenthetically, the commission was the first governmental entity to remove the infamous article "the" in front of Ukraine, and if you look at our publications dating back to the 70s, you will see that this is the case - I believe that this is due to the efforts of Myron Kuropas who for a while during that time served on then-Commission Co-Chairman Bob Dole's staff.
Whether it was on individual political prisoners, the denial of the whole range of human rights in Ukraine, Russification, the ban on the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, or whatever, it was the commission that took these concerns and made sure they were raised within Congress and the executive branch. Most important, these issues - often because commission staffers served as members of U.S. delegations to these meetings - were raised at international diplomatic fora, at numerous meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which at that time included the Soviet Union.
So the Soviets had to sit there and listen to the United States, and, to a lesser extent Canada and Western Europe, criticize them for their violations of the Helsinki Final Act, including in Ukraine. They also had to hear it in direct, bilateral meetings. Suffice it to say that the Soviets, and other Warsaw Pact governments, were not too fond of the commission.
There were many groups with which we have worked over the years. In the '80s especially, we had especially strong contacts with the World Congress of Free Ukrainians and Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine, as well as with UCCA's Washington-based UNIS and, of course, the Washington UNA Office, the closing of which last year I still consider to be extremely unfortunate and shortsighted.
Also, there were and are many individual dedicated Ukrainian American activists with whom we worked. I remember during one effort the commission initiated, I believe it was a letter-writing campaign from Congress to Gorbachev asking him to legalize the Ukrainian Catholic Church, being pleasantly surprised at the number of calls I was getting from individual Ukrainians in areas not populated by Ukrainians, telling me that they knew and had good contacts with their individual Congressmen and could help secure his or her signature on the letter.
Unfortunately, I think this kind of thing has declined. I do not sense much political involvement among Ukrainian Americans for a variety of reasons, among them, some of the activists are more directly involved with Ukraine itself, partly because of the general decline of the Ukrainian American community.
Also, I must say, that although Ukrainian Americans, in terms of lobbying efforts to promote issues near and dear to them, have ranked fairly high in comparison to some East European ethnic groups, I always felt, and still feel, that they have not come close to realizing their potential as a political force. Especially in the past, and especially among the older, more established organizations, too much of their political energy has been spent on silly infighting, and too little understanding the importance of having an effective voice in Washington. In fact, one of the things that has always amazed me is this lack of understanding, even among some of those in leadership positions in the community.
On the other hand, there are individuals who do understand the importance of an organized presence in Washington - not only for the purpose of supporting U.S. government assistance to Ukraine, but, even more importantly, to ensure that Washington maintains its commitment to an independent, stable, democratic Ukraine and encourages positive developments there.
Q: Having worked in Washington for a while, how would you assess the foreign policy community's attitudes toward Ukraine? How have they changed?
A: They've changed dramatically. Independence obviously made a big difference in terms of Ukraine appearing on the foreign policy community's radar screen. And I would argue that another watershed, in terms of actual, more visible support for Ukrainian independence, was the January 1994 trilateral agreement, when Ukraine agreed to give up its nukes in return for compensation and security assurances.
The support was there earlier in some circles, including in Congress, but it was undoubtedly strengthened afterwards. Don't forget, too, that a month earlier, in December 1993, you had the Russian Duma elections and the rise of the red-brown forces, and that, I think, woke a few people up in our foreign policy establishment in terms of their recognizing that a reconstituted Russian/Soviet empire is most assuredly not in U.S. interests, and that an independent Ukraine is the principal barrier to the re-creation of such an empire. In other words, there has been a growing, if somewhat belated, recognition that supporting Ukrainian aspirations is in our national interest.
The good news is that the current policy of supporting Ukraine seems to have wide resonance - within both the executive and legislative branches, among both Republicans and Democrats, Washington think-tanks and, yes, even much of the news media. The support, I believe, is wide, but I'm not sure how deep it is, especially for the long-term. So, there is a continuing need for an active Ukrainian American presence in Washington and for continuing interaction, official and unofficial, between the United States and Ukraine.
But there is no question as to the growing interest in Ukraine. When in the 1980s our commission was one of the lone wolves crying in the wilderness in the sense that we were among the few with an active interest in Ukraine, now there are many governmental and non-governmental organizations paying attention to or actively involved with Ukraine.
In fact, to illustrate the point: most visiting Ukrainian officials or exchangees who come to the United States these days don't even interact with the Ukrainian American community. I would say that of meetings, or roundtables, or conferences that I have attended within the last two years here in Washington where the featured speakers were Ukrainian officials or political leaders or prominent personalities, very few were sponsored by a Ukrainian American group or addressed an exclusively Ukrainian American audience. Many events take place at prestigious and influential institutions that are involved with Ukraine in one way or another, such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Carnegie Endowment, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Heritage Foundation and others.
And this is a good thing. It promotes interaction between Ukrainians and important foreign policy actors and testifies to the growing interest in Ukraine - to the fact, if you will, that Ukraine has made it on the Washington foreign policy scene. Also, as a practical matter, now there are so many official or semi-official Ukrainian visitors that it would simply overwhelm the resources of the Ukrainian American community to manage them all.
Much of all this, of course, is driven by the fact that Ukraine is one of the top U.S. recipients of foreign assistance and this, almost by definition, promotes greater interaction. Also, very importantly, having an active official Ukrainian presence - i.e., the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington - facilitates many contacts and increases U.S. knowledge of and interest in Ukraine.
All of what I have mentioned, of course, is contingent on one critical factor. U.S. support for Ukraine depends, first and foremost, on what happens in Ukraine itself. Viewed from a historical perspective, Ukraine has a window of opportunity as it has never before witnessed, certainly not in the last few centuries - a relatively weak Russia, relatively strong support from the West, and the experience, however rocky, of already having had five years of independence.
If Ukraine, God-forbid, begins to take actions that erode its own independence and democracy - say, moving toward the Russian orbit in a Belarus-like manner, serious backsliding on economic and democratic reforms, etc - then the Western goodwill that has been steadily building over the last few years can easily begin to dissipate. At the present moment it doesn't look as if this will happen. We all hope and pray that it won't, but the harsh reality is that Ukraine's independence has not yet passed the point of irreversibility. Ukraine's fate depends not only on external factors, but, most importantly, on internal ones - on Ukraine's own collective political will to maintain and strengthen its independence.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 1996, No. 27, Vol. LXIV
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