2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The academic world: looking back, and ahead

Endowments, special programs, memorial lectures and scholarly publications on the Internet were some of the hallmarks of the year in the world of academia. Below are some of the highlights of 2001, academically speaking.

Anniversaries

• The Ukrainian Free University this year marked its 80th anniversary. As noted by Dr. Thomas E. Bird, deputy chair of the department of European Literatures at Queens College, City University of New York, and honorary professor at St. Clement Pope Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome, on whom the UFU conferred an honorary Ph.D. in recognition of lifetime commitment to teaching and scholarship, "Arguably the most significant contribution of the scholars associated with this institution has been their preservation of the idea of independent Ukrainian scholarship and the transmission of those achievements to the wider world of learning. They have worked, in a paraphrase of Katherine Mansfield, 'not to make us clever for another time, but to make us wise for all time."

"The future of the Ukrainian nation is directly related to the degree of national self-awareness found among her people. National self-consciousness is the surest barrier against absorption of the country's sovereignty by another state. As the world monitors the evolution of civil society activities in Ukraine, the role of the Ukrainian Free University will be increasingly recognized as a signal factor in that process," Dr. Bird said.

The Ukrainian Free University (UFU) officially inaugurated its 80th jubilee celebrations, on January 17 with a commemorative liturgy in the intention of founders and deceased UFU faculty members, and a convocation with a concert.

The ceremonies featured an opening address by Rector Leonid Rudnytzky, and addresses by the university deans, Roland Pietsch, who spoke on the significance of Ukrainian studies, and Reinhart Heydenreuter, who spoke on the early history of the UFU. Prof. Wolodymyr Kosyk presented Dr. Oleksandra Kysilevska-Tkach, who was awarded a medal for outstanding service to the university.

• 2001 marked the 25th year since the founding of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS). A series of commemorative events and lectures for the 2001-2002 academic year began with panel discussion on "The Current State and Future of Ukrainian Studies," which took place on October 14. Panelists included Dr. Andreas Kappeler, professor and director of the Institute of East European History, University of Vienna; Dr. Frank Sysyn, director of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research, University of Alberta; and Dr. Oleh Ilnytzkyj, professor in the department of modern languages and cultural studies, University of Alberta. Dr. Zenon Kohut, director of CIUS, University of Alberta, served as moderator of the event.

Dr. Kohut opened the proceedings by saying that the CIUS was founded in 1976, in part to respond to three dangers: Soviet policies aimed at suppressing Ukrainian culture; indifferent and sometimes hostile attitudes on the part of Canadian political and academic elites; strong assimilatory pressures on the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Since then, CIUS has promoted Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian studies and has served as a resource center for Ukrainian-language and bilingual education. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence increased the tasks, complexities and scope of CIUS's work, as the institute is now heavily involved in Ukraine and many North American academics and government figures seek knowledge on Ukraine through CIUS publications and consultations with CIUS-based scholars.

Firsts

• Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his Ukrainian counterpart, Leonid Kuchma, on October 6 attended the inauguration of the European College of Polish and Ukrainian Universities in Lublin, eastern Poland. The founding declaration stated that the college was founded to help create a strategic partnership between Poland and Ukraine.

Speaking at the inauguration, both presidents stressed that the college is the first step toward the establishment of a Polish-Ukrainian university.

"Educational institutions are able to build bridges of reconciliation. Both science, as well as culture and arts were, are, and will be stronger, more powerful than borders, visas and passports," Mr. Kwasniewski said in Lublin.

"For centuries, Lublin was a place where cultures of the West and the East came together, so the education of a younger generation here in the spirit of tolerance and respect for others and democratic principles will promote the rapprochement of both nations that are on the road toward a unifying Europe," Mr. Kuchma noted.

Eighty-six Ukrainian, two Belarusian and 16 Polish post-graduate students (who will be working toward their doctorates) were matriculated into the college on September 6. The college was set up by three Lublin-based universities: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Catholic University, and the Central and Eastern European Institute: as well as three Ukrainian ones: the Kyiv-based Taras Shevchenko University, the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the Lviv-based Ivan Franko National University.

• The Church Studies Program at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies on November 2 hosted two important events honoring the memory of Prof. Bohdan Bociurkiw: the official opening of the Bohdan Bociurkiw Memorial Library, which houses his library and archive, and the inauguration of the Bohdan Bociurkiw Memorial Lecture series. The lecture, on the topic "Ukraine's Foreign Policy: 10 Years after Independence," was delivered by Borys Tarasyuk, foreign affairs minister of Ukraine in 1998-2000.

Prof. Bociurkiw (1925-1998) was a prominent political scientist and a world-renowned specialist in the area of human rights, Soviet religious policy and the history of Ukrainian Churches.

• The November 4 issue of The Weekly reported on the first Ukrainian e-book. Students of Ukrainian have a valuable new aid for language learning - with a few clicks of a computer mouse, they can find the conjugation of hundreds of Ukrainian verbs in Andrij Hornjatkevyc's "530 Ukrainian Verbs" released by Ukrainian Multimedia, Interactive Learning and Digital Publishing at the University of Alberta.

The first full-fledged Ukrainian e-book is presented in a cross-platform PDF format and will run on virtually any Macintosh or Windows machine that supports Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater.

The verb publication holds over 560 pages in a file that is less than 2 megabytes in size.

• At year's end came two major announcements from The Encyclopedia of Ukraine project - one of the most important and far-reaching scholarly projects ever undertaken by Ukrainian scholars in the West. On November 30, the project celebrated two significant achievements: the publication of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine: Index and Errata - the final volume of the encyclopedia's book edition; and the official launch of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) project, which ventures to generate the most comprehensive source of information in the English language on Ukraine and Ukrainians and to make this information accessible to Internet users around the world.

The Encyclopedia of Ukraine evening took place at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation Gallery in Toronto and was organized as part of the celebrations of the 25h anniversary of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), which initiated the English-language encyclopedia project in 1977.

The index provides a guide to individuals, civic and political groups, and select places, institutions, and periodicals that are cited in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Its preparation represents the first major step in work to develop an Internet version of the encyclopedia.

The objective of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine project is to develop and continuously update and maintain a sophisticated and user-friendly Internet site containing the most comprehensive source of information in the English language on Ukraine, its history, people, geography, political economy, society, diaspora, and cultural and scientific heritage. The site will present tens of thousands of entries on a variety of subjects and include contributions from hundreds of leading specialists from around the world.

The IEU project will consist of two main stages of development. During stage 1 the initial IEU database of over 20,000 entries will be created; it will contain the articles published in the five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine. In Stage 2, a system for continuously updating and modernizing the database will be implemented.

• On November 14, the government of Saskatchewan released "A Progress Report on University Revitalization," an interim report card on the government's attempt to revitalize the province's universities with an eye to the current and future needs of the province. Under the heading "Meeting the Learning Needs of Society" the report lauds the initiative of St. Thomas More College through the creation of the Prairie Center for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage (PCUH) "as a link a between this province's Ukrainian community and academia by focusing on academic research, document collection and oral history." This important affirmation of the work of the PCUH by the provincial government demonstrates that, although only three years old, the Prairie Heritage Center has already made its mark on higher education in Saskatchewan.

Special projects, events

• On December 3 the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) sponsored a roundtable discussion on "Ten Years after Independence: Quo Vadis, Ukraine?" Panel participants included well-known scholars on contemporary Ukraine: Dr. Taras Kuzio, research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies, York University; Dr. David Marples, professor of history at the University of Alberta and director of the Stasiuk Programme for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at CIUS; and Dr. Roman Solchanyk, consultant at the Rand Corp. The panel moderator was Dr. Zenon Kohut, director of CIUS. The panel was organized as part of a series of special events celebrating the tenth year of Ukraine's independence and the 25th anniversary of CIUS.
  
  
• At the Ukrainian Canadian Program at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, research on various aspects of the history of Ukrainians in Canada during the interwar period has been continuing. In addition to assisting students at universities in Canada and abroad who are investigating a wide range of Ukrainian Canadian topics, the UCP has been actively encouraging greater cooperation between the Center for Ukrainian Canadian Studies at the University of Manitoba, the Prairie Center for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Folklore at the University of Alberta. In conjunction with the latter endeavor, the program successfully launched a periodic e-mail bulletin for students, scholars and others interested in the field, called Field Notes from Ukrainian Canada.
  
  
• Penn State University offered an eight-credit Summer Education Abroad Program in Ukraine for students at the sophomore level and beyond interested in focusing on Ukrainian language and culture. Classes, held on campus at Ivan Franko State University of Lviv, included courses in elementary and intermediate Ukrainian, "Readings in Ukrainian" and "Special Topics." Besides excursions in the city, there were trips to such sites as the resort of Truskavets in the Carpathian Mountains, the Olesko Castle Museum and Kyiv.
  
  
• The department of modern languages and cultural studies at the University of Alberta announced a new travel-study course in Lviv called "Ukrainian Through its Living Culture" that was offered for the first time during the summer of 2001. The program is designed to enhance practical language skills through a direct experience of current life in Ukraine. It employed contemporary popular culture and media, taking maximum advantage of the urban Lviv environment to expand vocabulary and comprehension. "Ukrainian Through its Living Culture" was taught in Ukrainian and was open to Canadian as well as international students.

Endowments, fund-raising

• The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies was the beneficiary of a new endowment created specifically to help finance the work of the Ukrainian Canadian Program, established by William and Justine Fedeyko of St. Albert, Alberta.

The Fedeyko Family Endowment Fund will generate additional funds for the Ukrainian Canadian Program to sponsor scholarly research, host conferences, facilitate publishing and engage in community outreach activities.

Jars Balan, the administrative coordinator for the UCP, underscored the importance of the Fedeykos' donation, as well as its symbolic significance: "At a time of chronic underfunding of post-secondary education by all levels of government, it is crucial that Ukrainian Canadian studies develop other resources to supplement the limited monies that are available from public sources. It is fitting that Mr. and Mrs. Fedeyko, who are descendants of Ukrainian pioneers, should pay tribute to the ground-breaking spirit of their ancestors by starting an endowment that will be dedicated to preserving their memory."

• Early this year The Weekly noted that a recognition luncheon was held December 15, 2000, at Penn State Univeristy in State College, Pa., in tribute to Alex and Helen Woskob, natives of Ukraine who became successful real estate developers in the United States. The couple's most recent gift to the university was $1.5 million to create the Woskob Family Chair in International Agriculture.

The distinguished faculty member who will be appointed to the Woskob Chair will focus on creating partnerships in Ukraine for student and faculty exchanges, and for collaborative research on improving the production and marketing of agricultural commodities.

"Helen and Alex Woskob generously have invested their time, expertise and resources to benefit Penn State and the State College community," said Robert D. Steele, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences. "This endowed chair will enhance the education of countless students here and abroad, create knowledge to help Ukraine and other countries to better feed their people, and foster international goodwill and understanding."

The Woskobs have a long history of support for higher education. In 1992 they established the Ukrainian Agricultural Exchange Program, enabling collaboration between the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy. They have been involved in the university's Ukrainian studies program and have served on the advisory board of the Center for Ukrainian Agriculture.

• In February, The Weekly reported that the Prairie Center for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage at St. Thomas More College had embarked on a five-year fund-raising campaign to endow various academic programs and community-based initiatives.

Commenting on the initial response of the community to the campaign, Don Gorsalitz, head of development at STM, said, "I am impressed by the high level of support and commitment from various individuals in the community. If this continues, we can well expect to meet and exceed our target of $1.25 million." Some of the PCUH's current programs are an oral history project, archives project, and artist/writer-in-residence program along with various upcoming conferences and exhibitions.

The Prairie Center for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage builds on the 50-year history of Ukrainian studies at the University of Saskatchewan by bringing together partner institutions, agencies and individuals who are committed to preserving, documenting and celebrating the legacy of Ukrainian Canadians as nation-builders.

Awards

• Erast Huculak, who immigrated to Canada from Ukraine in the late 1940s, was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Alberta on June 11, in recognition of his philanthropic efforts. He founded and headed the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund. He led the Canadian Association for the Development of Ukraine, promoting democratization and reform; purchased the building for the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada and donated it to the Ukrainian government; and served as an advisor to President Leonid Kuchma. In order to deepen the public's understanding of Ukraine, Mr. Huculak has contributed funds for the publication of numerous books on history. He also donated a large sum of money to create the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography at the University of Alberta, which has become one of the leading Ukrainian ethnography programs in the world.
  
  
• Dr. Jaroslav Rozumnyj, senior scholar with the department of German and Slavic studies at the University of Manitoba, was selected as an Osvita Foundation honoree for the year 2001. A distinguished scholar, widely known in Canada and abroad, Dr. Rozumnyj was recognized for his contributions to the field of Slavic studies, as well as his work on behalf of the Ukrainian community. His teaching career began at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, where he set up the Ukrainian and Russian program in the department of modern languages (1960-1963). He has since held appointments at Western Michigan University, and, since 1964, at the University of Manitoba. In 1976-1989 he was chairman of the department of Slavic studies at the University of Manitoba, where he rebuilt and expanded the department's program to become the largest in North America. After retiring from the University of Manitoba in 1995, he served as dean of the faculty of philosophy at the Ukrainian Free University, and was named an honorary professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.

Dr. Rozumnyj's special field of interest is Ukrainian language and literature. As a longtime supporter of Ukrainian language education, Dr. Rozumnyj has worked to educate a generation of Ukrainian language teachers and scholars. The testimonial banquet was held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on November 22.

In Ukraine

• Profs. Ihor D. Pasichnyk and Natalia Lominska, rector and vice-rector, respectively, of the National University of Ostroh Academy visitied various U.S. cities to meet local Ukrainian Americans in the Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and New York/New Jersey areas. Other stops are in the planning stage. The Ostroh professors focused on the topic "Educating Future Patriotic Leaders in a Democratic Ukraine."

"Imagine, if you will, an Oxford in Ukraine," The Weekly wrote. "That's the vision of the National University of Ostroh Academy, located in the historic small town of Ostroh, in the Rivne Oblast of Ukraine. In 10 years, university officials hope, Ostroh Academy - which this year marks the 425th anniversary of its founding - will be the Ukrainian Oxford, and Ostroh will be an internationally renowned academic town much like the English town it sees as its model."

Dr. Pasichnyk and Prof. Lominska both underlined that Ostroh accepts only the top students from all parts of Ukraine and that its educational program is geared not only toward academic excellence but toward producing patriotic adults who will assume leadership positions in diverse fields of endeavor in Ukraine.

Records of Ostroh date back to 1100; during the 16th and 17th centuries this small town in Ukraine was famous as a political, cultural and educational center.

There in 1576, under the patronage of Prince Vasyl Kostiantynovych Ostrozsky, the first institution of higher education in Eastern Europe was established: the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.

By decree of President Leonid Kravchuk on April 12, 1994, the Ostroh High Collegium was established as the successor to the illustrious academy. Two years later, President Leonid Kuchma issued another decree that renamed the institution the Ostroh Academy. Successive presidential decrees proclaimed the institution a university and a national university.

Ostroh Academy's rector and vice-rector explained that one of their goals is to create a stable endowment fund based on hard currency. To be called the International Fund for the Rebirth of Ostroh Academy, its long-term goal is $1 million. During their tour of Ukrainian American communities Dr. Pasichnyk and Prof. Lominska succeeded in raising $20,000.

• At Kyiv's International Management Institute (IMI-Kyiv), Director General Bohdan Budzan in a July interview with The Weekly underlined that IMI-Kyiv graduates have the necessary knowledge, contemporary vision of the world, a sense of their own mission in this world, self-confidence and the readiness to bear responsibility for their companies. "Having already educated 820 M.B.A. students, and with a current enrollment of 266 students, we are slowly educating Ukraine's business elite," he said. "Of our graduates 95 percent remain in Ukraine, 40 percent of whom are already top managers. They are already in all of Ukraine's major cities."

Dr. Budzan noted that IMI-Kyiv has raised roughly half a million U.S. dollars, constructed a building frame with roof and windows, and received City Council approval for a 50-year land lease. Most importantly, he said, the Free Enterprise Foundation for Eastern Europe (FEFEE) was established, which is a tax-exempt U.S. foundation able to raise funds. This foundation will be able to support the immediate completion of IMI-Kyiv's construction.

Memorial lectures

• When Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, it was believed by some that the young country would quickly manage to shed the negative political and economic legacies of Soviet rule and begin to integrate more closely with the West, especially with the European Union (EU). Events of the past 10 years have shown, however, that Ukraine has largely failed to reorganize its economy and political system, while Western countries, especially those of the EU, have not developed comprehensive and steadfast policies to encourage Ukraine's eventual integration into European economic, political and security structures.

These were some of the main conclusions reached by Dr. Oleksander Pavliuk, director of the Kyiv center of the EastWest Institute, who delivered this year's Shevchenko lecture, "A Challenging Decade: Ukraine and the West, 1991-2001," on March 8 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The annual Shevchenko Lecture is sponsored by the Ukrainian Professional and Business Club of Edmonton and organized by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS).

Dr. Pavliuk divided the decade into four distinctive periods that reflect the evolution of Western attitudes and policies toward Ukraine. The first, from 1991 to 1993, was a period of neglect, when the West's attention was focused largely on Russia, while Ukraine was viewed with skepticism and suspicion. Next came the period of support, 1995-1997, which was characterized by Ukraine's increasing cooperation with the West. This included both political and economic support. In 1998-1999 came a period of Western frustration, when optimism as to Ukraine's commitment to economic reform began to fade.

The fourth period of Ukraine's relations with the West may be characterized, according to Dr. Pavliuk, as the beginning of Western disengagement. Although assistance was promised to the Yuschenko government, Ukraine was essentially left alone to deal with its problems. "The lack of trust in Ukraine and a good portion of skepticism that had accumulated in Western capitals in previous years hit hardest the government that deserved it least and at the most inappropriate time," he concluded.

• In commemoration of the 140th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's death, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Prosvita-Lachine, and the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association of Montreal hosted a talk in Ukrainian by Prof. Jaroslav Rozumnyj on the subject of the use of the word "Moskal" in Shevchenko's poetry, and the subsequent commentaries on this word during the Soviet era which define it as "soldier" or "tsarist officer," but never "Russian" or "Muscovite." The lecture was held at the Ukrainian Youth Center in Montreal on March 16.

Based on newly available material about Shevchenko, Prof. Rozumnyj of the University of Manitoba advanced the thesis that Shevchenko's decision to use the word "Moskal" with its ethnic designation of "Muscovite" was a conscious political choice stemming out of the poet's anger at Russia's domination and oppression of Ukraine. He stated that in using the term "Moskal" the poet was reflecting the prevalent "anti-imperial attitude amongst the (under-privileged) Ukrainian population," as well as his own "anger and judgment about the conduct of Russians in Ukraine."

• Prof. Natalie Kononenko spoke on March 16 about the rituals of marriage, birth and death as they are practiced in the villages of central Ukraine today. A professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Virginia, and president of the Slavic and East European Folklore Association. Prof. Kononenko delivered the 15th annual Ivan Franko Memorial Lecture, co-sponsored by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa and the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association of Ottawa.

Prof. Kononenko described traditional rituals - the ones contained in published sources and in archival manuscripts. Then she explained how rituals were transformed in the Soviet era when religion was banned and paying homage to Lenin, the Communist Party and the Soviet state was mandatory. Lastly, she described contemporary rituals, using information from her own fieldwork.

This year marked the 15th anniversary of the Ivan Franko Memorial Lecture series, an annual public lecture by noted scholars in Ukrainian studies from Canada and abroad. Co-sponsored by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa and the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association (UCPBA) of Ottawa, the series has helped raise the profile of Ukrainian studies and raise awareness of Ukrainian matters in Canada's capital. Named after one of Ukraine's greatest creative minds, the lecture was instituted by the UCPBA and Carleton University in 1986 upon the initiative of Prof. Bohdan Bociurkiw and graduate student Ivan Jaworsky.

• "It is impossible to understand the history of the Soviet Union without acknowledging the role of Ukraine," said Andrea Graziosi, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples (Federico II). In fact, it is essential to recognize the central role played by Ukraine and Poland in the critical events of Europe in the 20th century. Prof. Graziosi spoke at Harvard University on April 2 at the invitation of the Ukrainian Research Institute to deliver the Vasyl and Maria Petryshyn Memorial Lecture.

In Ukraine the period 1917-1921 was characterized by a number of state-building efforts, and the region was not only a battleground, but also a site of competing ideologies. The upheaval in Ukraine, according to Prof. Graziosi, forced Lenin to think in national terms - thus the creation of a "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" as opposed to Ukraine becoming an autonomous part of an all-Russian federation.

Another period of Ukrainian state-building followed in the context of the Soviet Union, in which Marxism was used as a tool for building national states. That state-building was not allowed to develop beyond the 1920s; it was challenged by Stalin, who ultimately induced the horrendous famine of 1932-1933 to impose his will. The greatest modern catastrophe suffered by the Ukrainian people, the Great Famine of 1932-1933, deserves more attention from historians. "I am convinced that contemporary historians will not understand our century until they are able to internalize what happened in Ukraine in 1932-1933," said Dr. Graziosi.

• The Danylo H. Struk Memorial Lecture, the second in this series of annual lectures, was delivered by George Grabowicz, the Dmytro Cyzevskyi Professor of Ukrainian Literature at Harvard University, at the University of Toronto on May 11. His theme was "Taras Shevchenko as a National Poet. A Comparison with Pushkin and Mickiewicz."

Prof. Grabowicz expounded a theory that national poets are made, not born; they are made by themselves with the help of the national ethos, history and their social environment. The paths were similar for Ukraine's Shevchenko, Aleksandr Pushkin of Russia and Adam Mickiewicz of Poland, although history and social circumstances were different for each of these poets. Prof. Grabowicz maintained that Shevchenko, Pushkin and Mickiewicz painted themselves into national icons by the sheer force of their eloquence, commanding the reader to identify them with the national cause.

The causes were similar for all three poets. Pushkin had criticized the tightening grip of Russian autocracy upon society and its ruthless territorial expansion. Mickiewicz bemoaned the foreign occupation that befell Poland as the Third Partition of Poland was decreed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Shevchenko, in the true spirit of a freedom fighter, called for open rebellion against the political and social oppression by Russia in Ukraine.

• On November 8, 2001, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute hosted Dr. Sherman Garnet, who presented the second annual Zenovia Sochor Parry Memorial Lecture titled "The Geopolitics of Muddling Through." The dean of James Madison College at Michigan State University, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and author of "Keystone in the Arch: Ukraine in the New Political Geography of Central and Eastern Europe" (1997), Dr. Garnett argued that Ukraine is a state that has survived but not flourished. It is a country mired in transition. Dr. Garnett said he does not see a serious challenge to Ukrainian sovereignty today, yet there is a threat to its capacity to determine its own place in Europe. There is a structural resistance to the change Ukraine needs to better fit with Europe, and this is the worst time for Ukraine to present such an image to the West, to appear lost and muddling through, to retreat from grand ambitions of finally finding its place in Europe.

At the time when Ukraine looks lost and muddled, Dr. Garnett noted, Russia looks decisive and, in a way that it has not in a long time, pro-Western. A certain period of muddling through is something to be expected from a new country, like Ukraine, burdened with its Soviet past. However the internal trends and especially the politics of the last couple of years have not produced a solid status quo, they are more characteristic of a state in decline. The Annual Zenovia Sochor Parry Memorial Lecture Series was established at Harvard University by friends and family of the late scholar. Dr. Parry was a professor at Clark University, the significant and respected scholar in the field of Soviet and East European history and politics. From the early 1980s until her death in February 1998, she was a member of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

• On November 16, Dr. Oleh Wolowyna of Chapel Hill, N.C. delivered the 2001 Mohyla Lecture at St. Thomas More College. A demographer and statistician by training, Dr. Wolowyna provided a historical overview as well as current information on the participation of ethnic Ukrainian Canadians in the traditional and non-traditional churches.

Dr. Wolowyna noted the important role that assimilation and mortality has had on declining rates of participation of ethnic Ukrainians in both the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. Utilizing recently released Canada Census data, he described regional variations but underscored that the overall rate of decline has accelerated in the last decade. He noted in particular the trend whereby individuals of partial Ukrainian ancestry - some 650,000 - are not members of either the Ukrainian Catholic or Orthodox Churches and that in this regard the process of continuing assimilation will have serious future implications for both.

New research

• On November 20 Harvard University professor Dr. Terry Martin spoke at the University of Toronto's Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) on the topic "Stalin and the Ukraine Famine." The presentation, part of this year's annual commemoration of victims of the Soviet-engineered Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, was co-sponsored by the Peter Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine administered by CREES, the Toronto Branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Toronto office of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, with financial assistance provided by the Ukrainian Studies Fund at Harvard University.

Dr. Martin reported that he has found unequivocal evidence that Stalin was aware of existing famine conditions. He was also able to establish a clear linkage between the Famine and Stalin's personal view of Soviet nationalities policy. The scholar noted that he had sought to establish the precise moment when the nationalities factor came to play a leading role in these events and who or what brought about such an abrupt change in state policy. His research has led him to conclude that Stalin and his paranoid fear of "losing" Ukraine were the catalyst for the evolution of tragic events. Dr. Martin indicated that the new information regarding the role of Stalin and his closest collaborators provides the underpinnings for his forthcoming study regarding the causes of the Famine in Ukraine, which will be based on a greater level of detail and conceptualization about this tragedy.

• In the 1990s, the Kyiv historian Yuri Shapoval established himself as a leading authority on the history of Communist rule in Ukraine. He is the author or co-author of over 400 publications, most based on archival documents from Soviet secret police and Communist Party archives in Ukraine, which became widely available to scholars and researchers only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In spring 2001 Dr. Shapoval spent two and a half months in Canada at the invitation of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) to conduct further research and complete projects in his area of expertise. Funding for his research stay came from the Drs. Ivan and Myroslawa Iwanciw Endowment Fund administered by CIUS. Dr. Shapoval completed work on a manuscript on the long-term head of the secret police in Ukraine, Vsevolod Balytsky (1892-1937).

During his stay in Canada, Dr. Shapoval gave several lectures before academic and Ukrainian community audiences, including CIUS-sponsored lectures on "Current Historiography of Totalitarianism in Ukraine: Achievements and Problems" at the University of Alberta (March) and on "Archival Sources on Researching Bolshevik Political Terror in Ukraine, 1917-1956" at the University of Toronto (May).

In Ukraine, Dr. Shapoval heads the Center for Historical and Political Studies at the Institute of Political and Ethnonational Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

• Following a 10-month stay in Toronto, Dr. Oleksander Pavliuk, 2000/2001 John Kolasky Memorial Fellow, returned to Ukraine in late June. The John Kolasky Memorial Fellowship is awarded annually by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) to Ukrainian scholars and researchers to support scholarly research and related activities in Canada. Dr. Pavliuk worked on two research projects: Ukraine's current relations with the West and the diplomacy of the independent Ukrainian governments and their Central and Eastern European counterparts immediately following World War I.

Within the framework of the first project, Dr. Pavliuk wrote two essays while in Canada. The first, "Ukraine and the EU: The Risk of Being Excluded," was recently published as a chapter in the volume "Beyond EU Enlargement: The Agenda of Direct Neighborhood for Eastern Europe." In May he submitted the second essay, "Unfulfilling Partnership: Ukraine and the West, 1991-2001," for publication in the journal Survival. The first draft of this essay was distributed among policy-makers during the EU-US-Canada Policy Forum on Ukraine held in Washington, on April 2, and organized by the EastWest Institute.

Within the parameters of the second project, Dr. Pavliuk completed work on a large chapter on the diplomacy of the independent Ukrainian governments in 1917-1923 for a collective monograph on the history of Ukrainian diplomacy, which is to be published by the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences (Kyiv). He also completed a draft of an article on the international factor in the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1921, which he planed to submit to a Western academic journal.

Fellows

• Seven scholars from Ukraine, Poland and the United States were selected as the first recipients of the Eugene and Daymel Shklar Fellowships in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University and began their residency at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in the 2001-2002 academic year.

These scholars boast a wide range of academic experience and research interests in anthropology, history, political science and literature. They include: Laada Bilaniuk (department of anthropology, University of Washington); Oleksander Halenko (Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine); Aleksandra Hnatiuk (Center for Studies on the Classical Tradition, Warsaw University); Tamara Hundorova (Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine); Volodymyr Kravchenko (department of Ukrainian studies, Kharkiv State University); Volodymyr Kulyk (Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine); and Stephen Shulman (department of political science, Southern Illinois University).

Dr. Roman Szporluk, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, noted: "This is a most impressive group of scholars. All of us at the institute look forward to their arrival at Harvard University. I am sure that for every one of them the time spent here as Shklar Fellows will be a significant chapter in their intellectual biographies. I am also sure that by interacting with Institute associates and a broader Harvard community they will make us aware of the important work that is being done in the area of Ukrainian studies elsewhere in the world."

Conferences

• On March 10 the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America hosted the 21st annual scholarly conference dedicated to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national bard and the society's patron. The conference, held at the society's headquarters in New York City, was co-hosted by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. (UVAN), the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University.

Dr. Pavlo Hrytsenko of the Institute of Ukrainian Language at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine spoke on "The Language of Shevchenko in the Light of Dialectology," sharing with the audience his scholarly findings about the influence of dialects in Shevchenko's works. Far from being confined to the lexicon of central Ukraine, Shevchenko's language drew upon the riches of many Ukrainian dialects, including some from far-flung regions, such as the Carpathian area.

Dr. Volodymyr Karpynych of UVAN lectured on "Shevchenko and Goethe," noting that he has discovered some remarkable parallels between the poetry of Shevchenko and that of the great German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Dr. Larissa Zaleska Onyshkevych, president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America, closed the conference with remarks about the reasons Shevchenko has remained relevant to Ukrainians of all generations no matter where they happen to live.

• In conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's independence, the Shevchenko Scientific Society convened a scholarly conference designed to examine what role social sciences and humanities could play in the reinforcement of Ukrainian statehood. The conference, which was open to the public, took place on May 19 at the society's home in New York City. It was organized by Prof. Wsevolod Isajiw, a vice-chairman of the Social Sciences Section of the Society, in close collaboration with the section's chair, Prof. Marta B. Trofimenko. The scheduled speakers were Profs. Isajiw (University of Toronto), Yaroslav Bilinsky (University of Delaware) and Nadia Kokhan (Kyiv State University), as well as Elehia Natalia Skoczylas, a sociologist, political consultant and pollster with worldwide experience.
  
  
• The idea for an international scholarly conference on Ukrainian-Moldovan-Romanian relations was put forward by academics of the Iurii Fedkovych National University in Chernivtsi and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta.

The conference was held at the Fedkovych National University on May 16-17. Its chief organizers were the Fedkovych National University, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (which made the greatest financial contribution to the conference), the Chernivtsi regional government, and the Bukovynian Center of Political Science. The conference was co-organized by the Chernivtsi Oblast city councils, Stephen the Great University in Suceava and the Moldovan State University.

Featured in the first session of the conference, titled "Ukrainian-Romanian-Moldovan Relations in Pre-Modern Times," were controversial issues in Ukrainian, Moldovan and Romanian historiography.

The second session dealt with "The Era of National Rebirth: Reciprocal Influences and Their Projection onto the Historical Traditions of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova," while the third covered "The 20th Century in Romanian-Ukrainian Relations: Pitfalls of Historicism and Resources of Political Pragmatism."

The conference concluded with a plenary session that featured a presentation by Anton Buteiko and V. Kotyk of the (Ukrainian Embassy in Romania) titled "The Ethnopolitical Factor in Contemporary Ukrainian-Romanian-Moldovan Relations."

• The International Association of Ukrainian Studies (IAUS) announced that the Fifth World Congress of Ukrainian Studies will be held in Chernivtsi on August 26-29, 2002.

IAUS President Mykola Zhulynskyi, an academician who recently served as Ukraine's vice prime minister for cultural affairs, indicated that the forthcoming congress will be more multidisciplinary than its predecessors. To this end, the organizing committee has been working to identify new areas and disciplines in which Ukraine is studied in order to bring the congress to the attention of new practitioners.

Organizing committee member Yaroslav Hrytsak, a professor at Lviv's Ivan Franko University, pointed out: "There is a greater than ever need to bridge generations and national boundaries in Ukrainian studies. We expect this congress to allow new voices to be heard and new partnerships - even across oceans - to be forged."

The congress announcement read in part: "The very fact of Ukraine's independence has provided Ukrainianists with new perspectives in research. Today it becomes ever more evident that both the character and trajectory of Ukraine's post-Communist transformation - its successes and failures - are to a large extent dependent on the previous historical and cultural legacy of Ukraine. The present 'state of the nation' calls for a critical reassessment of this legacy - for a closer analysis of those elements that are presently responsible for structural benefits and/or constraints on the evolution of culture and society in Ukraine and that will continue to have a long-term impact on Ukraine's development. Of special interest is the multicultural character of this legacy, which has not yet been adequately integrated into Ukrainian studies."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 6, 2002, No. 1, Vol. LXX

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