INTERVIEW: Ukrainian World Congress President Askold Lozynskyj

The interview below with Ukrainian World Congress President Askold Lozynskyj was conducted by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj at the UWC's headquarters in Toronto following the diaspora umbrella body's most recent presidium meeting.

Q: On their face, your travels to the Ukrainian communities in Russia, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan broke new ground in terms of the reach of the Ukrainian World Congress. How would you assess them?

A: It was all very interesting. Overall, the Ukrainian communities in the three countries I visited are vibrant, some are experiencing economic malaise, but in terms of national consciousness and cultural well-being, they have considerable vitality.

They're all very different, however. In Kazakstan, active members of the community are essentially descendants of former gulag inmates, prisoners, exiles of concentration camps - essentially people who came from western Ukraine. Their national awareness is at the highest level of the three, but they are very poor.

In Uzbekistan, they don't speak Ukrainian at all. They resettled there for myriad reasons, including economic. They are significantly better off because the country has gold. In the case of the Ukrainian central organization's president, Stanislav Mantsurov-Kovryhenko, he was brought there as an orphan, taken along by those retreating from the Nazi advance in 1941. When Ukraine became independent, he started searching for his roots and discovered that his real surname was Ukrainian.

Russia is a potpourri of different characters. There are those who went there because it was convenient or they were following their ambition, moving to the capital. Then you have a large population in the Urals, Ekaterinburg, Zelenyi Klyn.

Q: To what extent is their situation comparable to Ukrainians in the Baltic countries - that they're taken for Russians, or even try to act like Russians?

A: Particularly in Uzbekistan there is tremendous animosity towards Russians from the indigenous population, so to compensate for past discrimination all "Russians," or Slavs, are being removed from various posts and replaced by Uzbeks.

By extension, Ukrainians are suffering in this regard, but those with whom I spoke don't mind, because they manage to leave on good terms. They don't feel discriminated against. I was surprised how much praise they extended to President Islam Karimov, who is essentially a dictator.

Q: It wasn't of the "all hail our leader, whoever he may be now" variety?

A: No, I thought it was genuine. We met with Uzbek government officials, they gave a party in my name. The contacts that have developed between the Ukrainian community and the government are very good and at the highest level.

Uzbek government officials appeared at the eighth anniversary of Ukrainian independence and participated in the program. Uzbek artists also took part, singing Ukrainian songs. One of the leading sculptors in Uzbekistan is a Ukrainian. There is a tremendous amount of good feeling between the two people.

When I returned to North America, I met with a member of the Uzbek community in New York, and have spoken to officials at the Uzbek Consulate. The GUUAM Concept [the alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova] appears to be quite attractive to them.

Turning to Kazakstan, there are different issues. Kazaks find themselves a minority in their own country. There are actually more ethnic Russians than Kazaks, many of whom have been scattered in other countries, and the government is making an effort to repatriate them.

Ukrainians are fourth on the list behind Germans in terms of ethnic background, and by and large they are treated well. They were also positive about the president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who also happens to be considered a thug in the West, but they impressed upon me that Asian cultural approaches to democracy are different.

In Kazakstan, there is one umbrella organization, the Association of Ukrainians of Kazakstan, chaired by Mykhailo Parypsa from Pavlodar. The various constituent groups fight among each other constantly - it appears they've brought over the political splits that existed in western Ukraine.

The community is scattered among four cities: Almaty, the former capital; Astana, the current capital; Karaganda; and Pavlodar. They recently erected a monument with the assistance of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America to commemorate the women who led an uprising in the Kingir concentration camp in the early 1950s

In Russia, the biggest problem is that it seems Ukrainians have absorbed the prevailing Great Russian mentality that Slavs are all brothers with Russians as elders. Most Ukrainians, particularly those in Moscow, would rather not rock the boat.

In my opinion, that's why the situation [over the expropriated Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral] in Noginsk happened. The Russian Orthodox Church was simply sure that neither the Ukrainian government nor the local Ukrainian community would react very strongly. They haven't; most of the noise was made by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP).

It seems that some moves have been made to placate the UOC-KP now, as they have been assigned some new buildings, some converted army barracks, but the cathedral remains in the hands of the Moscow Patriarchate. The matter is still pending, and we at the UWC intend to make an issue of it.

I had the opportunity to meet a renowned veteran Russian dissident, Gleb Yakunin. I went in thinking that perhaps the Ukrainians had over-reacted, making a mountain out of a molehill, but Mr. Yakunin set me straight.

He said, and I quote: "The greatest weapon that Russian imperialists have is the Russian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate." He told me that the government continually hides behind the ostensible separation between Church and state.

Since following up on this issue took up most of my time, unfortunately I wasn't able to travel out to the provinces. Moscow is entirely different from the rest of Russia, a different world altogether. I met with people from the outlying regions, and they're in much greater economic need. With 75 percent of the country's wealth concentrated in the capital, that leaves 25 percent for 11 time zones. Unfortunately, 95 percent of the Ukrainian community in Russia lives outside the capital.

Q: There has been a recent movement to push "foreign elements" out of Moscow. Have Ukrainians fallen prey to that?

A: As far as I know, many former Ukrainian residents were moved out by the Soviet regime, to the gulag. Others left to work in regions such as the Tiumen Oblast. Otherwise, I'd say that recently the Ukrainian community in the Russian capital has been stable. From what I was told, the "OVIR" [Office of Visas and Registration] and registration programs have not been used against Ukrainians.

Q: Turning to some internal UWC business, the Commission on Human and Civil Rights has been reorganized by Prof. Jurij Darewych, but one member of the presidium queried whether his plan of action was substantially different from that proposed by its former chair, Christina Isajiw and, by extension, why a greater effort was not made to keep her on board. Would you care to comment?

A: I'm very pleased with Prof. Darewych, he's very organized, he has very concrete ideas as to how to proceed. The team he has assembled to work on the various projects he has delineated are people I know to be very positive, people with ideas, people who are ready to work.

I agree with Prof. Darewych's proposals regarding the budget [asking for a $25,000 allocation]. The CHCR has to have a working budget if it is to be taken seriously.

For all their enthusiasm, I think that certain people the CHCR has attracted need to tone down their rhetoric. You can't deal with human and civil rights issues without a professional and responsible manner.

For example, and this is for the record [the representative of the Union of Ukrainians in Russia at the UWC] Mr. Vasyl Kolomatsky needs to be more objective in his analyses. His report on the protest held in Moscow against the Chechnya invasion was problematic.

Frankly, I'm not sure if this is an issue in which the CHCR should involve itself. I'm not displeased that Moscow is embroiled in the Caucasus - it means it has fewer resources to devote to disrupting matters in Ukraine, but I think we should stick to the issues that concern Ukrainians directly.

The principal issue for us at the UWC is the absolute right of Ukrainians to practice their religion in a manner they see fit. Consequently, there has to be room for an official presence of the UOC - KP. It's blatant discrimination if there isn't a single Ukrainian Orthodox church in the entirety of Russia.

Q: To what extent is Prof. Darewych's presentation in October different from that of Ms. Isajiw in May?

A: Substantially. It is certainly a matter of debate whether we need $17,000 for a paid employee for the CHCR without submitting a plan of action with specific projects in mind. Prof. Darewych indicated that the CHCR will concern itself with the rights of Ukrainians in Russia, surrounding the confiscation of church properties in Noginsk and the general issue of religious freedom, and the rights of Ukrainians in Poland over the issue of acknowledgment of the wrongs done during the Akcja Wisla in the 1940s.

He actually broke the expenses down in a very transparent fashion: so much for Internet connections, so much for preparation of documents, and so on, arriving at a total of about $20,000 to $25,000 Canadian.

In my opinion, this amount is not egregious. Secondly, even if the UWC doesn't have sufficient monies in its present budget, I am confident that the Ukrainian community out there is interested in addressing these two issues and will be quite willing to provide the funds necessary to address them in a professional and responsible manner.

I expressed my confidence that this amount could be easily raised at the meeting of the presidium and provided an assurance that I would personally involve myself in the campaign to raise these funds.

Q: What happened to you on that increasingly notorious day in May in Kyiv and why have you been so reluctant to go on the record about it?

A: I have no comment for the record. It's bad enough that a story appeared about the incident in the Novoye Russkoye Slovo.

Well all right. I'll tell you that I was picked up by some people with guns, and I was driven around Kyiv, and they attempted to intimidate me. They did not hurt me, and they let me go. Period.

It would appear that, that is, they tried to give the impression that they were members of the militia, but I can't tell you if they were, because I never saw any badges on them. All I saw were the guns.

It would have been very opportune for anyone who dislikes [President Leonid] Kuchma to have me believe that this was done in order to provoke me into criticizing Kuchma for something he did not do.

Q: OK, so it's a provocation, and we can't say one way or another. It's bad enough that it happened to you as an individual, a person of good will who wants to broaden ties with Ukraine. But it also happened to you as the president of the UWC, the representative of the diaspora. It's as if the president of the World Jewish Congress came to Israel, was kidnapped and driven around Jerusalem for a day, and nobody heard about it.

A: It's a little different. And unfortunately, this is Ukraine today. It's the "Wild East." It doesn't mean the president of Ukraine, or his administration, is responsible for it.

Look, today, thugs are in control of Ukraine. Given that the country is a wild environment, the rule of law doesn't apply. Filing a protest, which under normal circumstances would be beneficial to preclude something similar happening in the future, doesn't apply here.

In essence, it brings public attention to something that: a) may later hurt me; or b) may put certain people who are not responsible for the incident in disrepute.

Q: Short of making allegations about who was behind it, did you report the incident to authorities in Ukraine?

A: Certainly. This was brought to the attention of the president. This was brought to the attention of the Consulate in New York, and brought to the attention of the Embassy in Washington. It was not brought to the attention of the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv.

Q: Why not? It also happened to you as a U.S. citizen.

A: I certainly don't want to bring it to his attention. The U.S. Embassy would have used this as a prima facie case of what is going on in Ukraine and this could lead to suggestions that the U.S. is throwing away its money on Ukraine.

Q: But shouldn't Ukraine worry about that?

A: Maybe so, but I'm not going to feed any fire. My job is to help Ukraine. I don't think it would be helpful if I blew this incident out of proportion and allowed it to become the cause of a U.S. government decision to end assistance to Ukraine.

Q: In the long run, couldn't it prove helpful? It seems that Ukraine is refusing to face certain things that it desperately needs to address. If not, it will continue its slide towards the kind of society that obtains in Russia, minus the massive wealth from resources.

A: But that's exactly my concern. If Ukraine does not manage to keep a sufficient number of friends in the West, then it will gravitate towards the East. And that's the worst possible scenario.

If we do anything that might cause the U.S. to be shortsighted, then, in my opinion, we're doing the wrong thing.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 12, 1999, No. 50, Vol. LXVII

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