COMMENTARY: Today and yesterday: the statue of Shevchenko in Washington (07/11/04)

COMMENTARY

Today and yesterday: the statue of Shevchenko in Washington

by Natalia Gawdiak

WASHINGTON - Washington in the summer is not usually a place you want to be. Forty years ago, when thousands of Ukrainian Americans converged on Washington to witness the unveiling of the statue of the bard of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, we were proud to be there and suffered the oppressive heat. Finally, we thought, Americans will know "who we are."

Forty years later, Shevchenko's statue looks the same, but everything else has changed.

Americans and the world now know "who we are" - unfortunately not because of this statue - but because of a place called Chornobyl. (Most Americans still know it as "Chernobyl," but that's another story.) Americans now know that in 1991 Ukraine emerged from its Soviet chrysalis, not exactly as a butterfly, but at least as a separate entity, eventually adopting its own, non-Soviet Constitution to prove it. And most recently, they may remember Ukraine has contributed troops to the greater good of protecting Iraq (or is it Iraqi oil, I forget).

Another thing that changed from 40 years ago was the weather. Saturday, June 26, marked Ukraine's Constitution Day and oddly enough, in Washington, the weather was "balmy," not a word usually found in summer weather reports here. Still the "heat" was on. This being a political town, the heat was actually the pressure exerted by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America on other Ukrainian American organizations to prove that we have a "unified" community. The idea is that having a unified community makes us stronger - as in let's all unite and cooperate, we'll do it my way.

Some brilliant soul came up with the idea that celebrating the day a statue was unveiled was a good way to show this unity. If you did not cooperate, then it was like trying to answer the question When did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Jones?" If you are not with us, you must be against us. Tellingly, this call for unity elicited only about 400 participants (50 of whom were there as performing choral members), and quite a number of these seemed more content to stand under the shade trees in the rear and chat during much of the proceedings.

Of course, the problem with the kind of "unity" preached by certain elements in the community is that it contradicts the democratic value of diversity of opinion. The community's second coming to the bard was supposed to have been a feel-good day (why there was a panakhyda was a big mystery), so it was with obvious non-delight that the wise and measured words of Metropolitan Stefan Soroka of Philadelphia were received by certain highly placed persons in attendance. The plain fact of the matter is that today's Ukraine is not the Ukraine that Shevchenko had in mind, a place whose many problems were catalogued by the metropolitan.

And, for those who keep dragging out that hackneyed metaphor that one should not criticize poor little Ukraine because it is only a "teenager," they should remember that 1) the criticism is not aimed at Ukraine per se but at the country's criminal elements, many of whom are in the administration, and 2) that teenagers don't generally behead people or arrange fatal automobile-truck "accidents" with such alarming regularity (witness the heartbreaking existence of that other statue to a dead hero - Vyacheslav Chornovil in Lviv).

Instead of wasting money on this rather meaningless outdoor event, the community could have put its resources towards any number of important concrete goals: supporting the struggle against media repression and corruption in Ukraine, contributing to the needs of Ukraine's many orphans; working towards the goal of incorporating accurate information about Ukraine's history in the textbooks used in secondary schools and college curricula, both here and in Ukraine; to name but a very few.

The goal of the original statue was to raise consciousness about Ukraine. The purpose of Saturday's event should have been the start-up of a new campaign to raise money for some of the above-mentioned important causes, instead of the end goal being merely a 15-more-minutes-of-fame photo-op for certain egos.

Natalia Gawdiak identifies herself as a Ukrainianized Irish American. An occasional contributor to The Weekly, she is a retired research and information analyst at the Law Library of the Library of Congress.

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