INTERVIEW: Dmytro Cipywnyk on the viability of the Ukrainian World Congress
Ukrainian World Congress President Dr. Dmytro Cipywnyk was in Toronto recently for the plenary meetings of its presidium and to celebrate the international umbrella body's 30th anniversary.
Dr. Cipywnyk was a member of the official Canadian delegation to Ukraine led by Minister of External Affairs Barbara McDougall in 1991, and also travelled to Kyiv with Governor General Roman Hnatyshyn in 1992.
Since his election as UWC president, Dr. Cipywnyk has marked each anniversary of Ukraine's independence in Kyiv, as an official representative of the diaspora, and has met frequently with the leadership and representatives of the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council (UWCC).
Given the extensive travelling the UWC president has done, and continues to do, it was perhaps fitting that the interview, conducted on June 3 by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj, took place at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.
CONCLUSION
Q: During the recent plenary meetings some people objected that the UWC was going blindly to the Second All-World Forum of Ukrainians, and that the UWC was not adequately prepared.
A: I disagree. For over a year we've had considerable debate on this issue and everyone who intends to go has been thoroughly sensitized. All of us agree that it's time to be much more assertive.
In terms of dealing with the UWCC, we've agreed that we will say, "Look, here are the conditions you have to meet in order to secure our continued participation in the organization. If you don't what's the point?"
One matter has irked me in particular: I'm sick and tired of going through [UWCC President Ivan] Drach. Although he is putatively the advisor to the Ukrainian president [Leonid Kuchma] on diaspora affairs, I have no idea what advice Mr. Kuchma has been given, because Mr. Drach never consulted us in compiling his reports. I think it's high time that we dealt with the president directly.
Q: Has the Kuchma government been trying to draw the UWC into some form of direct partnership?
A: No. Some of the confusion in this area has arisen because in February, President Kuchma formally struck an organizational committee to set the agenda for this year's forum, headed by [Vice Prime Minister] Vasyl Durdynets.
The list includes all sorts of heavy hitters and Drach claims it took 18 months to get people to agree to be on it. Well, it seems that this effort sapped the energy of everyone involved in the project, because I'm on this list, [Ukrainian Congress Committee of America President] Askold Lozynskyj's on the list, [Ukrainian Canadian Congress President] Oleh Romaniw is on the list, but we still haven't been contacted.
Q: That committee was also a concern for UWC Vice-President Oleh Romanyshyn wasn't it?
A: Yes it was, because there continues to be considerable confusion as to the UWCC's status as a non-governmental organization. How can it be an NGO if the government funds its meetings and helps set its agenda?
Q: What do you hope will happen at the second forum?
A: I hope that it will be a step beyond the first one. Kyiv was filled with a very interesting, charming and buoyant atmosphere in August 1992. People were ready to do anything, "lay down their souls and bodies," as it goes in the national anthem.
When the dust cleared everybody had to assess what could be done with all that energy. Well, I'm not so sure that it has been sustained. They've created this massive organizational committee, headed by a government minister, but we have yet to see anything come out of it.
My hope is that this forum will simply be established as an opportunity for Ukrainians to come from around the world every five years and mark the progress achieved in Kyiv.
Q: Do you hope that it will result in a clear statement that the UWCC is an NGO, with a clear and approved set of by-laws, to which the UWC belongs?
A: No, because that's not what the forum is about. It's supposed to be an entirely separate event. Of course, people are not sure what the relationship between the UWCC and the forum is. [UWC General Secretary Yaroslav] Sokolyk thinks he knows.
I'm not sure what it is, because I'm not sure to what extent they are related, because we don't get reports from the UWCC on the subject. Drach and [UWCC General Secretary Mykhailo] Slaboshpytsky are our only contacts.
Q: Within the UWC, opposition to further contacts with the UWCC and to attending the forum is based on this confusion - people say it's deliberate, in order to subsume diaspora organizations and use them.
A: That may well be so, and that's what we will have to find out this August. That's exactly why we should go - to see how things play out on the ground in Kyiv.
Q: What do you fear might happen?
A: I fear that the agenda we intend to hammer out with UWCC leaders a week prior to the forum will be set aside and the proceedings will degenerate into a series of speeches by Drach and others and that nothing practical will get done.
If it does happen, I'll simply walk out. Our contingent will walk out. We've told them as much. There's no point in travelling to Ukraine to listen to speeches they could just as easily have faxed over to us.
I also don't think the Eastern diaspora will be willing to sit idly by and listen to speeches while their interests and concerns are ignored.
Q: Would you say the UWCC has a poor record in dealing with the Eastern diaspora?
A: Most definitely. Ironically, they see Ukrainians in Russia as a "gimme diaspora." But that's not entirely so. Just listen to this fellow [Union of Ukrainians of Russia representative Vasyl] Kolomatskyi. [At the UWC's plenary meetings] he said, "Don't give us money, come visit and lend us support by engaging a public debate on crucial issues such as national minority identity and education."
Mr. Kolomatskyi pointed out that by letting Russians know about the UWC and the way it works will secure the position of Ukrainians in Russia. They will be presented with Ukrainians who are Canadian citizens, or U.S. citizens, who work for the benefit of the U.S. or Canada, and whose concern for Ukraine is in no way in conflict with their primary allegiance.
Q: Could you comment on the role of the Ukraina Society on Ukraine's relations with the diaspora?
A: As far as I know, it's minimal. They also have an odd practice of drawing up lists of supposed members that even includes me in some capacity. Since Drach is head of both the Ukraina Society and the UWCC, the UWC has written to him an a couple of occasions to get him to present a clear differentiation between the UWCC and the Ukraina Society, but we haven't yet gotten a reply.
As far as I'm aware, the Ukraina Society is mainly in the business of conducting tours, but because of its history, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was still being used as a front for intelligence-gathering operations. They're part of the landscape, but it doesn't mean that we have to deal with them.
The tragedy of Drach is his inability to decide what he's going to be involved in, and an unwillingness to realize that his credibility is compromised along the way. For years, we at the UWC have been trying to make clear to him and the UWCC that there are matters of government we won't get involved with.
For example, among the many projects the UWCC has drawn up is something called a Strategic Military Institute. [Mr. Drach's] bunch at the UWCC don't trust the government's official bodies in military affairs, so they want to set up an alternative think-tank of some sort. They dropped it in together with all manner of social assistance and humanitarian aid projects they know we are willing to support, and then try to make us accept it all as a block, and assume major responsibility for gathering funding.
For us, it's a clear conflict of interest - why would we become involved in the formation of another state's military policy? For Drach, it's just politics. I tell Drach that this is entirely Ukraine's internal concern and the diaspora simply cannot get mixed up in it, and he'll reply: "Listen, my good man. You are Ukrainians, we are Ukrainians; Canada is free, Ukraine is free. Why can't you just agree to this?"
We always seem to have to put things in the starkest terms. As I once said to him: "Look, if Ukraine goes to war and they call me up, I'm not going. I'm a Canadian citizen." Sometimes you don't even know if that's enough.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 27, 1997, No. 30, Vol. LXV
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