America Hails Shevchenko (06/27/04)

ARAS SHEVCHENKO IN WASHINGTON: 1964-2004

Taras Shevchenko Memorial Book, June 27, 1964

America Hails Shevchenko

By Lev E. Dobriansky

"We honor him for his rich contribution to the culture not only of Ukraine, which he loved so well and described so eloquently, but of the world. His work is a noble part of our historical heritage.

- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

These inspiring and well-founded words of our late President were expressed in March 1961. They epitomize the greatness of Taras Shevchenko and the immortality of his works not only for the people of Ukraine but for humanity at large. The historical heritage, of which the poet's accomplishments are indeed a noble part, is the precious heritage of freedom, of man's relentless fight for personal liberty and national independence. In this critical period of world history the people of the United States hail Shevchenko both as a cultural giant and one of Europe's earliest freedom fighters against the dark and barbaric forces of traditional Russian imperiocolonialism which today is masked by deceptive ideologic communism.

June 27, 1964, will be a day long remembered in the annals of American history. For the first time in the capital of any Free World nation, the unveiling of a statue in honor of Ukraine's poet laureate signalizes the forging of bonds of freedom between our country and the 45 million Ukrainian nation, as well as all the captive nations in Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere. The Shevchenko statue is singularly dedicated to the liberation, freedom and independence of all captive nations. In truth, Washington is not only the capital of these United States but also of the Free World. To crystallize the complete meaning and importance of Shevchenko, no more fitting environment of freedom and liberty can accommodate Shevchenko's statue than the spiritually rich soil of Washington.

As an everlasting symbol of world freedom, the Shevchenko monument is thus properly and compatibly situated. In this free environment it will constantly emphasize the universal spirit and substance of Shevchenko's thoughts in behalf of freedom in all of its dimensions. It will brilliantly reflect the true character and stature of the nationalist revolutionary and patriot himself. It will preserve without blemishes and distortions of any kind the majestic message of Shevchenko's writings toward the final liberation of all nations from the cancerous domination of imperialist Moscow. In short, the natural, spiritual habitat of Shevchenko today is Washington, which in every essential respect can and does claim him as its own. In colonialist Moscow, any fabricated tribute to him is sheer mockery; in captive Kiev, it is an exercise in national frustration and suppression.

Clearly, then, what does Shevchenko mean to us Americans? Why on this 150th anniversary of his birth do we pay national tribute to the poet's humanism and universal idealism? How does one perceptively assess the significance of this national hero and patriot of a distant land to the interests of the United States and the Free World? What can we Americans look forward to in the long period beyond June 27?

These and other meaningful questions have been raised frequently as countless of our fellow citizens have become enamored with Shevchenko, his life, his writings and his enduring message. To answer them succinctly here, let us first look into the background of events leading to the Shevchenko statue; then we can easily observe the meaning of Shevchenko to America; and lastly, Shevchenko as a promise for the future can be readily determined.

The Story of the Monument

For a complete and detailed story of the legislation providing for the erection of the Shevchenko statue, the reader might well consult the Congressional Record of January 23, 1961, "Ukrainian Independence Day," pp. 1133-1135. It was quite appropriate for this story to be told on such an occasion. The legislative history of the monument will undoubtedly fascinate many researchers of the future. However, the highlights of this history should be recounted for any understanding of why America today meets Shevchenko.

The idea of a Shevchenko monument in Washington was often expressed in the decade of the '50s by numerous knowledgeable individuals and groups who sought to honor the poet with maximum effect. In many localities this had been concretely displayed in a variety of forms, including statues. For example, Prof. Roman Smal-Stocki, president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, urged the idea for the forthcoming Shevchenko Centennial as far back as 1955. Also, the 24th Convention of the Ukrainian National Association passed a resolution on this project in May 1958. In Canada, preparations had already been under way for a Shevchenko monument, which was unveiled in Winnipeg in July 1961, the year of the Shevchenko Centennial. On the national level in the United States this idea of a statue had to be integrated into a broader idea of national recognition and purpose that would poignantly project the universal stature and functional symbolism of Shevchenko.

It was with this comprehensive idea in mind that this writer authored a laconic and yet elastic resolution providing for the erection of the poet's statue in the Nation's capital. On March 17, 1959, the Honorable Alvin M. Bentley of Michigan sponsored the resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the measure became known as H.J. Res. 311. Soon, thereafter, the entire project for its successful passage was initiated by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, a nation-wide organization representing two and a half million Americans of Ukrainian ancestry.

Action on the joint resolution was not really taken until a year later. Soon after its introduction, the Honorable Omar Burleson of Texas, chairman of the House Administration Committee, indicated the desirability of holding hearings on the measure and referred it to the Honorable Paul C. Jones, chairman of the Subcommittee on Library and Memorials. The procedure of receiving reports and recommendations from the Department of the Interior and the Commission of Fine Arts consumed so much time that the hearing was necessarily delayed until the second session of the 86th Congress.

On March 31, 1960, the hearing took place, and testimonies were submitted by representatives of various interested organizations. [An excellent and very persuasive testimony was presented by Mr. Mykola Lebed, president of Prolog, and Secretary General of the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council. - L.D.] As pointed out in an article by this writer on "Public Law 86-749 and the Shevchenko Centennial" (The Ukrainian Quarterly, Autumn 1960, New York) the testimonies presented all the essential arguments in favor of the resolution, and their convincing character laid the grounds for speedy committee approval. Shevchenko's affinity to our own George Washington, the cultural and political prowess of his poetry and prose, his historical position as a powerful advocate of freedom in the very period of our own Abraham Lincoln, Poland's Mickiewicz, Hungary's Kossuth, Italy's Mazzini and other freedom fighters, the idolization of Shevchenko by every patriotic Ukrainian down to this day, the tradition of freedom he represents in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the crucial importance of his works for the eventual liberation of all the captive nations in the present Soviet Russian Empire, the need to throw Moscow off balance in its calculated attempt to distort and disfigure the Ukrainian national hero - these and many other substantial arguments were advanced for the passage of H.J. Res. 311.

As a matter of fact, this writer viewed the passage of this measure as the first implementation of the Captive Nations Week Resolution which Congress passed the preceding year, and we all know how the ideologic contents of that resolution frightened the Russian dictator Khrushchev. So deeply impressed were the legislators by the data and reasons given that the publication of a short biographical documentary on Shevchenko was strongly recommended. With the aim of benefiting as many citizens as possible, the Honorable John Lesinski of Michigan introduced House Resolution 524, calling for the official publication of the documentary.

Two months later, on June 1, the House Administration Committee approved both H.J. Res. 311 and H. Res. 524 and ordered favorable reports on both to the House of Representatives. The authorization for the biography was passed first, and on June 24 the House passed H.J. Res. 311 without any objection. In the foreword of the documentary biography "Europe's Freedom Fighter, Taras Shevchenko 1814-1861" (House of Representatives, Document No. 445, 1960) the names of all legislators who were instrumental in this important legislation are listed. Among them are the present Speaker of the House, the Honorable John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and also President Lyndon B. Johnson, then Senator from Texas and the Majority Leader.

It took another two months before the Senate passed the measure. The national conventions of the two Parties necessitated a recess in Congress, and time was gained for a thorough staff examination of the approved House resolution by the Senate Rules Committee. In the meantime, popular reaction to the documentary biography was salutary and beneficial. When Congress reconvened, a climate of full understanding had developed for a favorable reception of the measure. Thus, on August 29 the Senate Rules Committee reported out favorably H.J. Res. 311, and two days later, on August 31, the Senate voted for it without objection.

President Eisenhower signed the resolution into law on September 13, 1960. On the basis of this law the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America immediately proceeded to establish the Shevchenko Memorial Committee which would devote itself exclusively to plans and operations aimed at the erection of the statue. Furthermore, the law precipitated considerable discussion here and abroad. Although there were various press reports on the legislation in the course of its passage through Congress, the law now became an object of deep and curious interest to our press. Lengthy articles of a favorable nature soon appeared in the Washington Evening Star, the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago Sunday Tribune, the Pittsburgh Family Magazine, and numerous other organs in the country. The Shevchenko symbolism had caught on.

The reaction from the Soviet Union was what we had anticipated. This act by our Government spoiled the propaganda plans of colonialist Moscow and captive Kiev, who were intent upon disfiguring Shevchenko as a mere social reformer, a "democratic revolutionary," and a precursor of the October Russian Revolution. The purity of a national symbol and spiritual force was to be polluted with familiar contaminative elements of Russian propaganda; the national heroism of Shevchenko was to be prostituted by the objectives of these detractors. Congress' action was like a bombshell in the Soviet Russian Empire. One need only read the vituperative absurdities about the work of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists," "real American business cynicism" and a host of other mythical entities in the Sovietskaya Kultura, Kommunist, Literaturna Gazeta, and many other publications. Taking both the Captive Nations Week Resolution and the Shevchenko Memorial Resolution, the evidence on how to pulverize Soviet Russian psychopolitical maneuvers is indeed overwhelming.

Once the law came into being, the rest was a technical implementation of the intent and spirit of Public Law 86-749. The Shevchenko Memorial Committee, under the able administration of its executive director, Mr. Joseph Lesawyer, launched plans for the building of the statue speedily and smoothly. In the span of a year and a half, over a quarter of a million dollars were collected for the purpose. Also, a jury of prominent American sculptors, architects and artists was established to select from seventeen different projects the proposed statue plan, which was that submitted by the Canadian sculptor Leo Mol. Another Canadian, the architect Radoslav Zuk, was selected to produce the architecture for the site at P and 22 Streets, N.W., Washington, D. C. By the end of 1962, both the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission substantially approved the project as recommended by the Department of the Interior and the Shevchenko Memorial Committee.

Uppermost in the minds of the statue's sponsors has been the community about the Shevchenko site. From the very start, priority was given to criteria of beauty, restfulness and utility. The statue and its surrounding architecture may well be viewed as an enhancement of the already existing qualities of the immediate environment. The Shevchenko Park is in truth a park of freedom and culture.

The Meaning of Shevchenko to America

In a way it is no accident that the Shevchenko statue stands in close proximity to the Church of the Pilgrims. One truly reinforces the other to give the entire area an atmosphere of value and sanctity to man's most precious right and God-given endowment - freedom. We all know and treasure the history of our early pilgrims and their courageous search for liberty, freedom and genuine human happiness. With greatness of soul, rectitude of will and intellectual certitude they laid the earliest foundations of this powerful Nation of ours. Significantly and as though by act of providence, Shevchenko stands side by side with the Church of the Pilgrims, both symbolically radiating these ultimate and highest attributes of our temporal existence.

This fact in itself concretely conveys the meaning of Shevchenko to America. This crowning fact represents a complete circuit in modern history. The pilgrims came to these shores to find freedom from the then oppressive institutions of Western Europe; they planted the seeds of liberal free existence here, the very existence we breathe and cherish today. To delve into this rich history is to look inward and to count our blessings. The symbol of Shevchenko, however, causes us Americans to look outward in this divided contemporary world toward the tremendous and challenging work that remains in bringing freedom to the nations of Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

In short, the Shevchenko statue is a living symbol of our national determination to share the fruits of freedom with the captive nation of Ukraine and, in the universalist spirit of Shevchenko's historic message, with the peoples of all the captive nations. No other statue in the capital of the Free World bears this specific meaning and purpose. The Shevchenko statue is, of course, intimately related to the Washington monument, inasmuch as the poet revered the founding father of our Nation. With unique compatibility it is also related to our Declaration of Independence and our Great Tradition of national freedom and personal liberty. Over a hundred years ago this tradition rubbed off on Shevchenko and through him on all generations of Ukrainians and other subjugated peoples down to the very present. It is this supreme truth that Moscow and its colonial puppets seeks to submerge. It is this supreme truth that the Shevchenko statue monumentalizes for eternity.

Without exaggeration, we are today the global pilgrims of freedom. Our men and women are scattered around the globe in defense of freedom and in search for its expansion. Shevchenko in America is a key to the success of this ceaseless search. He symbolizes the global pilgrim, sowing the seeds of liberation and permanent freedom in Eastern Europe and nurturing infinite hope and faith in the souls of millions who are held captive under Soviet Russian domination. His statuary presence here is a fixed reminder to millions of our own citizens that we have a moral and political responsibility toward the captive people of Ukraine and all other captive nations both within and outside the USSR. As the Statue of Liberty in New York bids all migrants welcome into the Land of Liberty, so the Shevchenko statue in Washington inspires faith in all captives in their destiny with freedom.

There are many other aspects of the meaning of Shevchenko to America. The unprecedented groundbreaking ceremonies on the Shevchenko site in September 1963 brought out in elaborate form the many fertile dimensions of the poet's life and works for American interests. These can be found in the book titled "Shevchenko, A Monument to the Liberation, Freedom, and Independence of All Captive Nations." (U.S. GPO, Washington, 1964) In our country, as elsewhere, there will always be pockets of blind ignorance and even cesspools of prejudice for Moscow and its puppets to wallow in. This widely distributed book was published to fumigate these few cesspools, and the results have been exceedingly beneficial to the interests of our country. The reader will find this book quite illuminating and instructive.

A Bridge To The Future

In his address on May 24, 1964, at the dedication of the George C. Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia, President Johnson declared: "We will continue to build bridges across the gulf which has divided us from Eastern Europe. They will be bridges of increased trade, of ideas, of visitors and of humanitarian aid." It will require more than these bridges to defeat and eliminate the menace of Soviet Russian imperio-colonialism. However, as an idea and a dynamic symbolism, Shevchenko fits the President's prescription perfectly as a bridge into Eastern Europe, truly as a bridge to our own future relations with the Soviet Russian Empire, which in its primary form masquerades today as the USSR.

Contrary to popular impressions, the erection of Shevchenko's statue in Washington is not the end, the omega, of American effort to broaden and deepen our outlook toward the Soviet Russian Empire. lt is only the beginning, the alpha, of such concentrated effort. The monument does not point to the past, to a hundred and more years ago; it points primarily and exclusively to the future.

The whole significance of the Shevchenko statue is futural. Through all that it symbolizes - the continuum of freedom, long-standing spiritual affinity with our own revolutionary tradition, a humanism that rebelled against anti-Semitism, serfdom, Russian institutional barbarism and the degradation of women, and the powerful ideas of national independence and self-determination of peoples - the statue will be a beacon for further Free World enlightenment regarding the Soviet Russian prison house of nations, which is called the USSR. Through Shevchenko, millions will deepen their knowledge about the largest captive non-Russian nation in Europe, Ukraine itself, and by this knowledge their appreciative awareness of all other captive nations in the USSR will be intensified.

Not only will this bridge to the future serve this prime educational purpose, it will also guide us functionally in an unwavering concentration on the root cause of all the major problems bearing on war and peace in the world. And that cause is Soviet Russian imperio-colonialism, operating and interminably functioning behind the deceptive mask of world communism. Those who grasp and understand the revolutionary patriotism of Shevchenko - which partakes of the same spiritual substance as our American patriotic idealism - are under no illusions about peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Russian Empire. The heavy price of our myopic policy with its omissions and errors today in not asserting this idealism throughout the captive world will most assuredly be borne tomorrow. The list of captive nations beginning in 1918 is a long one, and an ever-growing one. It is to reverse this disastrous trend that the dynamic idealism and real symbolism of Shevchenko point to the most powerful force for freedom in Eastern Europe and Asia, that of patriotic nationalism.

The summit of cynicism was reached in the Kremlin this past March when the Russian dictator Khrushchev received a Shevchenko award. The supreme irony, not to say mockery, of this event can be gauged by Khrushchev's indelible reputation as the hangman of Ukraine. It is like conferring a medal of Washington on Hitler. One need only read "The Crimes of Khrushchev," Part 2 (Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. Congress, 1959) to realize the depths to whichthe Soviet Russian totalitarians and their colonial puppets will go to distort the character and image of history's great personages. The names of Lincoln, Jefferson and scores of others have also been twisted to suit their propaganda purposes.

Shevchenko's statue in Washington mirrors with resplendent effect such lies and distortions on the part of colonialist Moscow and its colonial puppets. It stands as a monument of truth and a beacon of strength and enlightenment for American cold war victory over the reactionary forces of traditional Russian imperialism, which today seeks to legitimize itself under the ideologic cover of communism and under the pretense of monolithic Soviet power.

My colleague Dr. Roman Smal-Stocki of Marquette University has written a fascinating book "Shevchenko Meets America" (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1964). For background material it should be read by all. It goes a long way to explain why on June 27, 1964, finally, America meets Shevchenko. And beyond this date the two will never part as the global pilgrims diffuse the power of freedom in the remaining empires in the world.

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