Book documents Soviet Ukraine's Cold War-era relations with Ukrainian Canadians (12/28/03)

Book documents Soviet Ukraine's Cold War-era relations with Ukrainian Canadians

by Jars Balan

EDMONTON - An important new book has been published in Kyiv reproducing documents from Ukrainian government archives detailing Cold War era relations between ministries and agencies of the Ukrainian SSR and Ukrainians in Canada.

Titled "Na Skryzhaliakh Istorii, (literally "On the Tablets of History"), the English title of the book is rendered as Facts of History: Archival Documents on Relations Between Ukraine and the Ukrainian-Canadian Community, late 1940s-1980s.

The hefty 870-page tome is the first installment in the series "Ukraine-Canada: History and Modern Times," an ambitious endeavor to issue several volumes of official material dating from the Soviet period and housed in Ukrainian state repositories.

"Facts of History" contains 266 documents from various government archives in Kyiv, all of which are reproduced in their original language (namely, Ukrainian or Russian), though introduced with Ukrainian-language headings and annotated with footnotes in Ukrainian.

Although the current usefulness of the texts will be limited to specialists knowledgeable in Ukrainian and Russian, the publication nevertheless represents a major addition to the primary sources available to scholars. It is hoped that records of general interest or value to Canadian historians will eventually be put out in English translation.

Documents in the collection include letters and delegation reports, diplomatic notes, briefing papers, intelligence profiles and memoranda covering a 50-year span in the turbulent and complex relationship between Ukraine and the Ukrainian Canadian community - "nationalist" as well as "progressive" organizations and individuals.

Conveniently indexed by both names of individuals and geographical references, the former reads like a who's who of figures and personalities on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. Among the Ukrainian Canadians cited in the texts are better- and lesser-known community activists and public figures such as: Peter Savaryn, George Ryga, John Kolasky, William Hawrelak, Bohdan Krawchenko, Manoly Lupul, William Kurelek, Wasyl Swystun, Paul Yuzyk, Lydia Palij, Mykola Koliankivsky, Eugene Dolny, Steve Juba, Walter Klymkiw, Zorianna Hrycenko (-Luhowy), William Harasym, Peter Prokopchak, Peter Krawchuk and many more. Figures from the dissident era include Leonid Plyushch, Valentyn Moroz, Irena Senyk and Danylo Shumuk.

On the Soviet side, Petro Shelest is cited nine times, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, three times, and Petro Tronko, 12 times. Writers Ivan Drach and Volodymyr Brovchenko are mentioned in four documents, while Taras Shevchenko is referred to in 18. John Diefenbaker and Pierre Elliot Trudeau have four and eight references, respectively, Joseph Stalin has four, and Nikita Khrushchev, six.

One of the more fascinating documents in the book is a 1948 letter from Khrushchev to Stalin in the matter of the Shevchenko monument donated by Soviet Ukrainians to their kinsmen in Canada and erected at Camp Palermo, north of Oakville, Ontario.

The compilation of "Facts of History" involved the cooperation of five institutions: the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; the Historic-Archive Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine; the Central State Archives of Ukraine's Public Organizations; the Central State Museum-Archives of Literature and the Arts of Ukraine; and the Central State Archives of Government Agencies of Ukraine. KGB archives were also accessed for some of the documents.

The project was initiated and financed by the Alberta Ukrainian Heritage Foundation of Edmonton, whose directors are to be congratulated for their foresight and determination in tackling such a daunting undertaking.

"Facts of History" is introduced by a bilingual (English and Ukrainian) overview of Ukrainian history in Canada written by Edmontonian, Marshal Nay, a native of Mundare, Alberta, with help from Walter Makowecki, originally from Lac Bellevue, Alberta, and Yuri Moskal, who was born in Val d'Or, Québec, but lived for many years in Soviet Ukraine.

Work on the project was a collaborative effort involving academicians and community activists on both sides of the Atlantic, with Kyiv-based historians Yuri Danyliuk and Oleh Bazhan doing much of the archival searching and retrieval of documents under the direction of Yuri Moskal and with invaluable assistance from Petro Tronko. The editorial collective included 13 additional readers who contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

The documents in "Na Sryzhaliakh istorii" embrace but a small fraction of the materials of Ukrainian Canadian interest scattered throughout national, oblast and local archives in Ukraine. Nevertheless, they provide a tantalizing glimpse into an often painful but compelling chapter in the history of both Ukraine and the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora.

Copies of the book will be donated to Ukrainian and Slavic studies departments at universities across Canada. The book can be purchased for $75 Canadian (includes postage and handling) from the Alberta Ukrainian Heritage Foundation, Suite 215, 12231A Fort Road, Edmonton, Alberta, T5B 4H2. For more information phone (780) 454-6111 or 434-7903.

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