EDITORIAL: The Weekly at 71 (10/03/04)

EDITORIAL

The Weekly at 71

Next week this newspaper will mark the 71st anniversary of its birth - the publication of its first issue dated October 6, 1933. With the first appearance of The Ukrainian Weekly, the Ukrainian National Association took the tremendously significant step of publishing an English-language newspaper to serve new generations of Ukrainians in America, as well as a newspaper that could tell the Ukrainian story to the world around them.

It is noteworthy that The Weekly, born at the time the Great Famine, or Holodomor, was raging in Ukraine, took upon itself the goal of informing the world about that genocide of our people. Already in its first issue a Weekly headline reported: "Ukrainians Protest Deliberate Starvation of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks." The story informed readers: "A series of mass meetings are being held by the Ukrainians throughout America and Canada, protesting against the barbaric attempts of the Bolshevik regime to deliberately starve out and depopulate the Ukrainian people in Ukraine."

"The purpose of this intentional starvation by the Bolsheviks is to forever quell the Ukrainian struggle for freedom," The Weekly wrote. The story went on to report that "over 5 million Ukrainians have died during the past year from starvation" and that the "Bolsheviks are trying to screen this deliberate starving by declaring that poor crops are responsible for this great famine."

In a front-page editorial in its issue of November 17, 1933, the Weekly wrote that "the Ukrainian nation, which besides being thoroughly economically and culturally exploited by its oppressors, is also being physically destroyed by Moscow by means of the present day Moscow's deliberately fostered famine in Ukraine, which has taken such a terrible toll of Ukrainian lives."

We cannot say how many articles about the Famine have been written in The Weekly during the course of more than seven decades. But we can state with certainty that the Famine-Genocide has always been in the forefront of our attention. The Weekly has published documentation of the Famine taking place in Ukraine, publicized our community's protests about the decades-long cover-up of the Famine, released an informative book about the Famine on its solemn 50th anniversary, stood in the forefront of efforts to secure creation of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, pushed for the revocation of Walter Duranty's ill-gotten Pulitzer, and reported new scholarly findings about the Famine, its causes, consequences and perpetrators.

Today, 71 years later, in many ways, we are still fighting the same battle. The most recent evidence of that battle is the Famine-Genocide resolution, Senate Resolution 202, introduced in July of last year by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), which remains stalled in the Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). The Weekly has been supporting this resolution since its introduction, and it has been urging its readers to voice their demand that it be passed by the Senate.

Why do we continue to push this matter? Because S. Res. 202 puts the U.S. Senate on record as characterizing the Famine of 1932-1933 as an act of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Because the Famine-Genocide and The Ukrainian Weekly are inextricably linked by history and, as long as this paper lives, it will continue to tell the story of Ukraine and to promote the Ukrainian cause.

At age 71, The Ukrainian Weekly is still in its prime because new generations of editors have taken up the mantle of their illustrious predecessors. And so, the vision of The Weekly's founders endures and the work of The Weekly continues.

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