LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (03/15/98)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Another comment on UNFA name

Dear Editor:

I hope you will grant this octogenarian one more chance to comment, this time on the UNA auditors' report, as published in The Weekly on February 15.

The auditors are to be commended for their forthright report: telling it like it is, giving credit where it was deserved and spelling out the negative aspects where they exist. The $1 million loss in Canada is a concern. Other fraternals are experiencing losses on their investments in Canada as well. The losses at Soyuzivka, despite the obvious good management at the UNA resort, show how costly is this type of service to members.

My letter to the editor, however, was prompted by point No. 7 in the report, which concerns the merger of three fraternals, the UNA, the Ukrainian Fraternal Association and the Ukrainian National Aid Association of America. In that paragraph, the auditors refer to unprecedented corporate mergers and suggest that there is no need for concern about the "future name of the merged fraternals" since corporate mergers do not use that as a criterion. I suggest that the authors are not good cooks, otherwise they would know you do not mix "horokh z kapustoiu" (peas and cabbage).

The mergers of our fraternals encompass hundreds of branches and thousands of members, not our executive boards and supreme councils, or Svoboda and Narodna Volia (the newspapers of the UNA and UFA, respectively).

There was a reason for organizing each of these fraternals in the early part of this century. There also were reasons that members joined one or the other "soyuz." Many of the differences have since disappeared. However, there is pride in the accomplishments of each fraternal: decades of good deeds during the Depression and two world wars, thousands of scholarships, etc. Consequently, no member should feel his fraternal is being taken over and that the past history of his "soyuz" is lost. If that happens, many of the benefits of the merger will be lost.

My past stand on this matter is well known; that the previously approved name for our merged "soyuzes" should be adopted: Ukrainian National Fraternal Association. This takes into consideration the feelings of all members. It is hoped that delegates to the UNA convention will follow the lead of the UNA's Executive Committee, General Assembly and Auditing Committee, and vote for a merger in that form. If that happens, the UFA convention will follow suit, and all our members and the Ukrainian community will benefit.

Joseph Charyna
Coconut Creek, Fla.

Account in "Dirt" reflects reality

Dear Editor:

In reading The Ukrainian Weekly (February 15), I came upon a very interesting story titled, "Dirt (A Tragedy)" by Vadym Semenko. The story is written from Ukraine as a fictional account based on numerous stories about the atmosphere and life in Ukraine today. It certainly connects for me with a lot of things my cousin shared with me concerning his experiences in visiting Ukraine in recent years.

Recently, Steve Forbes wrote on "The Moral Basis of a Free Society" in the Heritage Foundation's magazine, Policy Review, The Journal of American Citizenship. I note this article as an antidote to the tragedy portrayed in "Dirt," to present the continuous struggle that must take place in the free society of the U.S.A. and now in Ukraine in order to preserve them through moral order. Ukrainians need to understand that in order to establish, preserve, endure and persevere in a democratic society there is a price to be paid: sacrifice and dedicated leadership in a moral order that is based on God's commandments.

George Washington said in his farewell speech that for a country to be strong it must be a moral one: for it to be moral, he said essentially, it must not hamper religious practice.

God bless you in your journalistic efforts for Ukraine.

Joseph Jackson
Murray Hill, N.J.

Ukrainian names and transliteration

Dear Editor:

Recently The Weekly published a list of Nagano-bound Olympic competitors from Ukraine correctly transliterating their names from Ukrainian into English. Among the figure skaters listed properly were "Viacheslav Zahorodniuk" and "Dmytro Dmytrenko."

During the figure skating events broadcast on TV, Ukrainians were listed as "Vyacheslav Zagorodniuk" and "Dmitri Dmitrenko," a transliteration from Russian and not from Ukrainian. Transliterations of names from Russian were used during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta as well.

In independent Ukraine there is no directive from Moscow on how to correctly transliterate. Nowadays that decision is made in Kyiv by the Ukrainian Olympic Committee. These people apparently consider the Ukrainian language unworthy of transliteration into English and consider the Russian language to be superior to Ukrainian. Such views were held by Vissarion Bielinsky, a Russian literary figure who criticized Taras Shevchenko for writing in Ukrainian instead of Russian and considered the Ukrainian language suitable for peasants only and not for literary writings.

It is amazing that the Ukrainian letter "£" - which sounds like the English letter "g" - is avoided in Ukraine as much as possible, yet nonetheless appears so often in English transliterations of the Ukrainian letter """ as "g" because it was transliterated through Russian.

It could be concluded that members of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee have no self-respect, only an inferiority complex. How long will it take for the Ukrainian government to accept the Ukrainian language as equal to other languages and worthy of transliteration into English? How long will their inferiority complex last? How can a nation that does not have self-respect demand respect from others?

Some Ukrainians might think that correctly transliterating Ukrainian names into English is of no importance or that yet another criticism of Ukraine is unfair. But what is the difficulty that impedes the proper transliteration from Ukrainian into English of the names of Olympic participants? Probably unwillingness, ignorance, lack of self-respect and an inferiority complex. These factors might also destroy the nation.

Andrij D. Solczanyk
Media, Pa.