INTERVIEW: Askold Lozynskyj, president of the Ukrainian World Congress (CONCLUSION) (12/28/03)

INTERVIEW: Askold Lozynskyj, president of the Ukrainian World Congress

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Several months have passed since the 8th Ukrainian World Congress was held in mid-August, the first of its kind in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Weekly contacted New York-based attorney Askold Lozynskyj, who was recently elected to a second five-year term as the president of the UWC, with questions on a variety of topics regarding the UWC and its changing role as a representative body for diaspora Ukrainians throughout the world. The following is a conclusion of atelephone interview with Mr. Lozynskyj conducted on December 5.

CONCLUSION

Q: Do you feel that the UWC has a good representation on the ground in Eastern countries; a representation that could implement various grass-roots action campaigns? For example, protesting against The New York Times bureau in Moscow?

A: Not yet. I paid a lot of attention to communicating with people in Moscow because I felt that it would be important to have a demonstration in Moscow. There was a demonstration in Moscow on the Tuzla event, but I wasn't able to get the people in the community in Moscow excited about demonstrating against The New York Times office in Moscow.

I think it's a process of bringing them along. It's not an educational process. I don't think that in Moscow the Ukrainian community is used to demonstrating against the press. It's going to take a while, but I think that ultimately this issue with The New York Times and with the Pulitzer is clearly not over; it's got a long way to go. I think that in the future you will have a contingent of the Ukrainian community in Moscow demonstrating against The New York Times offices.

I can contact members of the Eastern diaspora and sometimes I will get results and other times I will not. It's a learning process; it's not so much organizational as it is acclimatization. They have to acclimate themselves to certain Western concepts - that civil disobedience, public displays of an individual's lack of consent, or the fact that you are not in accord is not something that will brand you a dissident in the former Soviet Union. In a lot of these countries the same mindset prevails and this freedom of expression, freedom of speech, is not something that is routine.

Q: Does the UWC have any future plans regarding the action to revoke Walter Duranty of his Pulitzer Prize? Is the Pulitzer Prize Board's recent decision not to revoke the award the end of the line, or is there still some future for revoking Mr. Duranty's prize?

A: No, I think that what we should do is take the Pulitzer Prize Board to task on their decision. I have familiarized myself with the 13 articles for which Walter Duranty received the Pulitzer and while they do not refer in any way to the Famine - because they were written in 1931 - they are absolutely outrageous articles. If the Pulitzer Prize Board is looking for clear and convincing evidence that he was distorting, that he was misrepresenting, I think we should retain a historian who would go step by step, line by line, and show that while the killings were taking place in the Soviet Union in 1931 Walter Duranty was writing articles which stated, for example, that people who do not wish to toe the Stalinist line are not killed; they merely become pariahs. That, with all due respect, is complete nonsense. They were killed. They were sent to exile. They were sent to Solovky and other camps where they were killed.

Duranty was nothing more than an apologist for Stalin. He's a very clever apologist because they are well-written articles, but I think that it's incumbent upon us to show the Pulitzer Prize Board that, clearly and convincingly, these articles were distortions. So I appreciate the fact that while the Famine of 1932-1933 is not going to get any more play, because that is the overriding concern and issue here, but nevertheless, I think it's important to show the Pulitzer Board that they were wrong and it's important symbolically for the Pulitzer to be revoked.

Q: The Ukrainian World Congress recently joined the United Nations Economic and Social Council as a non-governmental organization with a special consultative status. How is your organization active in ECOSOC and how do you envision your future involvement with ECOSOC?

A: We're just getting started. Fortunately, during the observances of the 70th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, we were able to use our position at ECOSOC to distribute a statement on the 70th anniversary of the Famine. We issued a much stronger statement [than the statement issued by Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations], but it wasn't signed by 26 countries. It was signed merely by the UWC and the World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations.

The UWC statement was circulated among 190 or so governments, the missions at the U.N., and some major non-governmental organizations. Were we not members of ECOSOC we would not have been able to do that. Now, particular attention is going to be paid to workers and migration issues dealing with Ukraine - worker's rights and migrant worker's rights in particular. And that's important for our communities; in particular in central Europe, Italy, Sweden and Portugal. Women's trafficking is also a very important issue.

We have a special commission called the UWC-U.N. council that is dealing with these issues and we're working in conjunction with the Ukrainian representation at the U.N., as well as with the World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations on these issues. But in particular we will be working during the upcoming year on migrant worker's issues, as well as on women trafficking at the U.N. We're also going to be working on AIDS issues; because AIDS is very much an epidemic in Ukraine now.

Q: Are there any concrete plans for any of these projects within the United Nations?

A: Well, there are conferences that are coming up and we're in a position for any U.N. conference that's going to be dealing with these issues - and we're entitled - to submit position papers, and we certainly will submit position papers so that the Ukrainian aspects of these issues are addressed. Unfortunately, in women's trafficking issues, I don't think that Ukraine has done an adequate job. In particular, considering what percentage of this problem is Ukrainian in the world, and we're going to be working much more actively in this regard.

Q: Is it true that all future UWC congresses will be held in Ukraine?

A: No, that's not true. The only thing I can pretty much tell you, this is a personal opinion, is that future congresses will not take place in Toronto or in New York City because it's financially impossible for there to be a representation of communities from the East.

Ukraine was chosen as the site for the eighth congress because of its geographic location, not because it's Ukraine. We were considering Poland, initially. And there were certain problems with Warsaw and so, as a result, we looked into the possibility of holding the congress in Kyiv. But, in the future, Poland may very well be the venue, for example Peremyshl, for the next congress.

Q: This year's congress venue was changed at the last minute. You had to put down a deposit for the original meeting venue. The last we heard the deposit was never refunded. Has the deposit been refunded?

A: Yes. We got the money back before the convention started.

Q: How is the UWC handling the issue of Russification in Ukraine, especially in terms of the Russification of Ukrainian schools, TV and radio?

A: Russification is happening primarily in Crimea. We raised these issues, for example, in our meeting with President Kuchma when he was here [New York City] during the U.N. General Assembly session this past year.

Russification now takes different forms. One of the most significant is the fact that, on the street, it's Russian products, Russian books; Russian newspapers and Russian language CDs and tapes are much more readily available. Also, a good portion of television and radio programming is in the Russian language.

Probably the single greatest factor of Russification in Ukraine is the Russian Orthodox Church. I had once given an interview and people asked me "What is worse, assimilation or Russification?" and I said that assimilation is worse and the reason for it is because there is very little that you can do about assimilation. You can fight it but, unfortunately, ultimately to some degree it's inevitable. In terms of Russification in Ukraine we don't think that the effort has been made by the Ukrainian government to combat the issue.

Another problem is that the first lady of Ukraine sees absolutely nothing wrong with belonging to a Church which is, for all intents and purposes, Russian. Let's look at the benefits that are heaped upon the Russian Orthodox Church - the so-called Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate. They were just recently given essentially all of the Kyivan Cave Monastery structures.

The argument that we do not wish to discriminate against religions is a ridiculous argument when you're transferring community property or state property to a Church which actually defies Ukrainian independence, because a number of the prelates of the Russian Orthodox Church have said that Ukraine should be united with Russia. That is tantamount to treason and nothing is being done in that regard. If the Ukrainian government consciously took a practical approach and said that the Ukrainian language is the state language, and we will enforce that provision on an everyday basis, at least in the workplace, everything would change.

Q: Is Ukraine slipping backward in that regard, or is there progress being made with regard to these issues?

A: There is progress being made, but the progress is so slow and there's just no excuse for it. The reason why it's so slow is because there's no effort; there is simply no effort. When many of Ukraine's diplomats meet they speak Russian among themselves. One can argue that when two Ukrainians meet in the United States they speak English, but that's an entirely different situation because there is absolutely no effort being made by these people. You can't force someone in their own homes to speak one language or another but you can certainly force a government official, during working hours, to speak Ukrainian. And if an effort was made in that regard then I think that significant changes would come about.

PART I

CONCLUSION

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