A glimpse of the past
The Weekly on The Weekly
Below are excerpts of editorials that have appeared in past issues of The Ukrainian Weekly. The excerpts, one from each decade, offer a glimpse of how the newspaper saw itself, and its role, throughout its 70-year history.
CONCLUSION
Our campaign in the American press
April 7, 1962
Elsewhere in this issue of The Ukrainian Weekly there are samples of letters to the editors of various newspapers throughout the country, in which Ukrainian American readers expressed their approval or disapproval of articles and editorials concerning the Soviet Union and Ukraine. It has been our policy to register these voices as a matter of record, and also as an encouragement to our readers to continue this battle for truth and just information regarding Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
The work of disseminating truthful and unbiased information on Ukraine is exceedingly important and vital. This is why our youth should support all our English-language publications, inasmuch as they constitute a reliable source of knowledge on Ukraine.
The obligation of disseminating knowledge and information on Ukraine is vital to the successful termination of Ukraine's struggle for freedom. It is also vital for our own security as citizens of this great nation of ours and for its very survival. Therefore, in battling for the truth and against the distortions and falsifications with which the enemy of freedom has beclouded the Ukrainian problem, we are fighting for justice and freedom for people everywhere in the world.
The Weekly's 45th
October 1, 1978
While initially designed as a newspaper for Ukrainian American youth, The Weekly has since [its inception] not only continued to inform the younger generations of Ukrainian Americans, but those who were students 45 years ago, those who grew up with The Weekly, as well as non-Ukrainians.
With its articles, on Ukrainian life in America, translations of major Ukrainian-language works and reports of the human rights movement in Ukraine, The Weekly saved possibly three generations of Ukrainians from alienation. With the destruction of Ukrainianism by the Kremlin in Ukraine today, that task of keeping our people here aware of their spiritual heritage is of utmost importance.
All this progress would have been impossible without the support of our readers and assistance from Soyuz (the Ukrainian National Association]. As The Weekly draws closer to its 50th anniversary, it will continue to offer the best service to its readers, to our community and to our people in Ukraine.
Reflections at 50: what of tomorrow?
October 23, 1983
... It was a time of profound paradox. In Europe, the revolutionary ardor that sought to build a democratic world on the post-World War I ashes of the old order had waned in the face of economic chaos and social upheaval, and was replaced by its opposite - totalitarianism. While artists and physicists proclaimed that the laws of nature could only be seen in the context of relative probabilities instead of absolute certainties, dogmatic leaders - Mussolini, Stalin and, in 1933, Adolf Hitler - emerged and arrogantly claimed they could make order out of confusion because they had absolute knowledge. Appealing to fear and intolerance, they planned to erect eternal empires on the bones of innocent victims. Over 7 million Ukrainians died of starvation in the man-made famine of 1933. Millions more were to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and on the battlefields of Europe.
For Ukrainian Americans in the United States, it was a time of reassessment and change. A large first generation of Ukrainian Americans was growing up, faced with the difficult challenge of maintaining its ethnic identity while staking its share of the American dream. The Ukrainian American community had come a long way since the first immigrants had set foot on America's shore. Churches and fraternal associations - the UNA among them - had long been established, and the community now had the vigor and self-confidence to express its concerns and to show off its culture. It was becoming more political and more sophisticated. Ukrainians vociferously protested President Roosevelt's decision to diplomatically recognize the Soviet Union, and marched to call attention to the Great Famine that was ravaging their homeland. At the Chicago World's Fair of 1933, the Ukrainian Pavilion was a proud embodiment of Ukrainian heritage and resourcefulness, as it was the only exhibition not financed by government funds.
... The Ukrainian Weekly was born 50 years ago on October 6. It began as an English-language offshoot of Svoboda aimed, as outlined in its inaugural editorial, specifically at Ukrainian American youth. In those early years, its editor was keenly aware of the difficult balancing act confronting Ukrainian American young people who were caught between the lure of assimilation and the instinctive desire to maintain the culture of their parents. He knew that the future of the Ukrainian American community depended on its young people and the ability of the older generation of community leaders to make way for youth and entrust it with that future. Stephen Shumeyko, who became the first editor of the Weekly at age 25, was instrumental in the formation of the Ukrainian Youth League of North America, and maintained his interest in the problem of Ukrainian American youth his whole life.
Although The Weekly is no longer geared primarily for young adults, having grown into a wholly independent paper covering a broad range of community concerns, both domestic and international, it remains aware of the relevance of its founding principles and their underlying truisms. With a staff that averages 27 years of age, The Weekly remains committed to looking ahead to the future of the community.
But, as it was 50 years ago, the future is clouded with uncertainty. What is clear is that our community - here defined as an aggregate of institutions such as fraternal organizations, credit unions, civic, cultural and political groups - is facing a crisis of leadership. It is showing signs of age and attrition. Young people have not, in any appreciable way, stepped in to assume responsible roles in the community. ...
This is an old story. Fifty years ago, Stephen Shumeyko and his associates were confronted with a similar situation, and his response is as pertinent now as it was then. He felt that Ukrainian Americans could be just that, Ukrainians and Americans, and that serving the Ukrainian community need not impede integration into American society. In fact, he was convinced that Ukrainian Americans could only be effective community leaders if they were successful Americans and managed to work their way to influential positions in the non-Ukrainian world. In effect, he could see the uselessness of becoming a big fish in a little ghetto pond, and encouraged young people to aspire to bigger things as the best means of helping their Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian nation.
... If the Ukrainian community is to survive into the 21st century, it needs the input of today's young adults and their expertise. Someone has to take over the credit unions, the fraternal organizations, the cultural, civic and other groups. It is an inevitable part of ethnic community life that some young people will be irretrievably lost to the community. It is also true that our community's past and present political bickerings have alienated some young people, as has the reluctance of a generation of community leaders to step aside. But if young people feel that the community is worth salvaging, they will step in and make changes. If they don't, it will continue to flounder and then slowly disintegrate. What is needed is a commitment to the future. ...
Six decades
October 10, 1993
Born of the needs of a new generation of Ukrainian Americans and the mission of telling the world about the Great Famine in Ukraine that had already decimated the populace, The Ukrainian Weekly published its inaugural issue 60 years ago, on October 6, 1933.
... In its wisdom, the UNA decided to publish a special newspaper "dedicated to the needs and interests of young Americans of Ukrainian descent." And, it saw that this English-language newspaper, prepared by the young Stephen Shumeyko - truly a remarkable staff of one, would serve also as a source of information for non-Ukrainians on Ukraine and Ukrainians at a turning point in world history. An artificial famine was raging in Ukraine, the Roosevelt administration was preparing to grant diplomatic recognition to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Hitler had come to power in Germany. World cataclysm would soon follow. ...
Editor Shumeyko saw the new paper's role vis-a-vis Ukrainian American youths as "inculcat(ing) them with the idea that as Americans of Ukrainian descent they are duty-bound to help their kinsmen in foreign-occupied and oppressed Ukraine to win the national freedom for which they have been fighting and sacrificing for so many years."
He saw The Weekly as a newspaper of record. Thus, in the first year of the paper's existence he published documentation about the Great Famine of 1932-1933, and memoranda and protests regarding recognition of the USSR. During Mr. Shumeyko's tenure, and that of his successors, The Weekly has continued in that very important role.
Its accomplishments since 1933 are many. It told the world the truth about the famine when that truth was not being told, for one reason or another, by many a Western journalist. It gave subjugated Ukraine a voice. It defended Ukrainian displaced persons and refugees, and discussed the problems of their adjustment and acceptance by the Ukrainian American community. Like its sister publication, Svoboda, it became a crusader for the erection of a monument to Taras Shevchenko in Washington and for the establishment of three chairs of Ukrainian studies and a Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. It was The Weekly that published news of Ukrainian political prisoners in the Soviet Union and quite often was the first to run English-language translations of their appeals, memoranda and other human and national rights documents.
In 1983, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Great Famine - an event in history to which The Weekly, perhaps like no other entity in what used to be called the free world, is so firmly bound - it published a commemorative book and a special issue (tens of thousands of copies of which were distributed throughout the world). It was The Weekly also that pushed most forcefully for establishment of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine.
And, in the 1990s, it was The Weekly that reported first-hand the proclamation of Ukraine's sovereignty, the declaration of its independence, and the affirmation of that independence by an overwhelming 90 percent of voters in the December 1, 1991, referendum on the issue.
The Ukrainian Weekly now has served three generations. With its readers it has grown and matured. Today, it is no longer for youth only, but for all generations. It is for anyone, Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian alike, who is interested in Ukraine and Ukrainians, be he, or she, a scholar, politician, businessperson or journalist. ...
Sixty-eight
September 30, 2001
Sixty-eight. A serious age that indicates years of experience and work, achievement and maturity. That is the age of The Ukrainian Weekly come October 6.
From its inception The Ukrainian Weekly, like its older sister, Svoboda, has been a shining example of the community service provided by their publisher, the Ukrainian National Association. The papers never were a money-making venture, nor were they intended to be. There was no profit motive at work. It was, simply put, the UNA's way of giving back to the Ukrainian community - or, in insurance terms, fraternal benefits offered by a fraternal benefit life insurance company to its members and their community.
Writing in 1953, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of The Ukrainian Weekly, Stephen Shumeyko, its first editor, explained how the newspaper came to be:
"Necessity for it brought about a demand for it, and the demand was met by the immigrants. For a long time they desired that their growing American-born youth have an organ exclusively their own, through which they could meet, exchange their thoughts and ideas; acquaint themselves with their Ukrainian background and heritage; impress them with their duties and obligations as native Americans; help their kinsmen in enslaved Ukraine to free themselves ... Essentially that is what the leading Ukrainian-language daily in this country, the Svoboda, had been doing for the immigrants themselves all the while. ..."
Through the decades that mission continued and was expanded. Perhaps the most salient recent example of that expansion was the opening in January 1991 of our Kyiv Press Bureau, which enabled The Weekly to report first-hand on the rebirth of independent Ukraine. For more than a decade now our bureau has provided reliable and topical news direct from its source - unfiltered by other news providers; reports geared toward our community, our readers, our community's needs.
To quote Mr. Shumeyko once again, The Weekly also had what he labeled "organizational value" and he cited one reader who wrote: "The Ukrainian Weekly and Ukrainian American progress are well nigh synonymous." The illustrious editor may not have used the word "networking," but that's what he had in mind: using the newspaper as a networking tool, keeping our community connected and in touch.
Which brings us to today. The Ukrainian Weekly's mission has not vanished and its utility has not expired. ...
CONCLUSION
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 12, 2003, No. 41, Vol. LXXI
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