LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (02/01/04)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Coulter's book deserves a read

Dear Editor:

In her recent book, "Treason," Ann Coulter paints quite a different picture of America in the 1930s and refers to The New York Times as the "unofficial newspaper of the former Soviet government."

Indeed, the present and past owners of The New York Times were Soviet apologists before, during and after the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1933. Moreover, these same gentlemen used their newspaper's influence and prestige to shelter and protect known Soviet agents at the highest offices of the United States government.

Why, then, would the Ukrainian diaspora ask such Soviet apologists to revoke Duranty's Soviet propaganda prize?

FDR ignored all of J. Edgar Hoover's warnings and placed Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, Dexter White and other known Soviet agents into prominent government positions to guide him in selling out Eastern Europe to "Uncle Joe."

FDR similarly ignored Stalin's Nazi-Soviet pact during which Hitler attacked Poland from the West, while Stalin attacked it from the East - passing all Jews under Bolshevism into waiting Nazi hands under this Pact. Curiously, however, not one peep from any American Jews seeing Nazi collaborators today.

For our younger misled generation, Ms. Coulter's book is mandatory reading (or at least the first 200 pages of it).

Andrew M. Senkowsky, D.D.S.
Van Etten, N.Y.

Emily's List has specific agenda

Dear Editor:

As a 15-year reader of The Ukrainian Weekly, I have been consistently impressed with the high journalistic standard to which The Weekly adheres. This week, however, I was very disappointed as I read the article "Ukrainian civic activists say U.S. program focusing on women was highly valuable" (January 4).

Such civil-society-building activities as those described in the article are of interest to me, as I am employed by an NGO working to improve the lives of those in the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, especially through health care, much of which is directed towards the needs of women. I am also acquainted with the varied interest groups that are involved in such activities and how in the name of helping women they are advocating a much more dubious, and in my opinion, harmful, means of achieving what in general is a most worthy goal.

About the visit of the Ukrainian delegation of women activists, the article states, "The majority of their program ... included such activities as ... meetings with experts on ... political action, such as Emily's List, which helps women attain elective office." To describe the goals of Emily's List in this way is either a serious act of obfuscation, or an incredibly naive way of describing what it is the Emily's List PAC is really about.

The Emily's List website (www.emilyslist.org) states: "Emily's List is the nation's largest grassroots political network, raising campaign contributions for pro-choice Democratic women candidates." Note that the group does not support women candidates in general, but only so-called "pro-choice," Democratic, women candidates. This essential point was omitted.

If this fact had been disclosed in the article, it might leave a different impression: that the price of women's empowerment in Ukraine is evidently, if they are to follow the U.S. model promoted by Emily's List - the wholehearted support and promotion of abortion on demand. It is an ongoing tragedy that abortion on demand is still a way of life in post-Soviet nations like Ukraine, but to exalt it as the guarantor of women's equality is an insult to women, most of all Ukrainian women.

I realize that today's Ukrainian American community is politically, and religiously, diverse, but since a majority of Ukrainian Americans claim at least a nominal affiliation with the Catholic or Orthodox Churches, the teaching of which is unambiguously opposed to abortion in all circumstances, the primary goal of such an organization as Emily's List should be disclosed in the name of honest journalism.

I would challenge a Catholic or Orthodox Christian Ukrainian American to justify his or her support of, or participation in, an exchange program that presents Ukrainian women with the type of advocacy model conducted by groups such as Emily's List.

Richard D. Custer
Washington

More on anniversary of Pereiaslav Treaty

Dear Editor:

We appreciate your editorial dealing with the 350th anniversary of the ill-fated Treaty of Pereiaslav and a partial account of how some scholars in the diaspora reacted to it.

We would like to supplement this information with the following. Since during the Soviet period no objective study on the subject was allowed, it was imperative that scholars in Ukraine undertake such research now. With detailed planning done earlier, it was in April 2002 that the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America announced a competition for scholarly monographs on "The Consequences of the Treaty of Pereiaslav." We received 14 proposals from historians. A jury of scholars awarded six grants to the authors of one joint and five individual proposals. The completed monographs were submitted by the end of 2002. (The grants for this project were from the Ivan and Elisabeth Chlopetsky Fund).

The authors of the group project then proceeded to publish their work (in Ukrainian) under the title "The 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav: Historiography and Analyses." The publication was sponsored jointly by several institutions (and was published by Smoloskyp), with funds provided by the Shevchenko Scientific Society (U.S.A.) and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The international conference which recently took place in Kyiv (January 14-16) and dealt with the treaty was funded by Shevchenko Scientific Society (U.S.A.). Our representative, Prof. Taras Hunczak, attended the conference and gave a public report on January 24 at the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Larissa Onyshkevych, Ph.D.
New York

The letter-writer is president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (U.S.A.).

| Home Page |