2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: The noteworthy: people and events (01/16/05)

2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The noteworthy: people and events

Our "Year in Review" section is divided into various distinct categories. However, there are plenty of notable stories that can never quite fit into any of those categories. The following are noteworthy events, listed in the order in which they reported, cited by The Weekly in 2004:

Canadian Ukrainian Myroslaw Tracz of Winnipeg received the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal (CPSM) in a private ceremony in January for his work as an elections officer in Kosovo. From February to April 1999, Mr. Tracz helped set the conditions for peaceful, successful democratic elections in a part of the world that had been for too long unfamiliar with democratic procedures. The award was presented by Dr. Ray Pagtakham, minster of western economic diversification and member of Parliament for Winnipeg North-St. Paul. The CPSM was established by the Queen in 1988, following the award of that year's Nobel Peace Prize to all peacekeepers, to specifically honor Canadians sent abroad in United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Author Victor Malarek completed an eye-opening book on the trafficking of women for the sex trade titled, "The Natashas - The new Global Sex Trade." Within two weeks, a second printing of the book by Viking Press in Canada was needed due to the high demand. Arcade Publishing, based in New York City, purchased U.S. rights to the book. Mr. Malarek and numerous TV and radio appearances, as well as speaking engagements, to raise awareness of the tragedy of the sex trade. The author donated proceeds from the Toronto book launch to establish a fund for Help Us Help the Children's "Anti-Trafficking Initiative."
Australian-born actor and movie producer Mel Gibson made headlines worldwide with his highly successful movie on Christ's crucifixion, "The Passion of the Christ." The movie stirred up much controversy, as did a comment made by Mr. Gibson during an interview with Peggy Noonan for the March issue of Reader's Digest. In that interview, the movie producer acknowledged the tragedy that was the Holocaust, and went on to state that other genocides also must not be forgotten. Mr. Gibson explained how "several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933 [during the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide], and that "during the last century some 20 million people died in the Soviet Union." For acknowledging these other acts of genocide and, in some people's eyes, downplaying the importance of the Holocaust, Mr. Gibson was condemned by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
In February The Ukrainian Weekly reported on how 33-year-old Ternopil-born electromechanical engineer Vasyl Kapeniak fulfilled a dream of his - to start a TV channel dedicated to Ukrainian happenings in sports, culture and current events. A 1992 immigrant from Ukraine, Mr. Kapeniak was upset by the lack of Ukrainian programming coming into America and the lack of press freedom in Ukraine, so he decided to take action and create a website, www.ukrainatv.com, that would fill the gap.
The United Ukrainian American Relief Committee was blessed with an award of $600,000 from the estate of Sylvia Blake of the Detriot area. Ms. Blake, born to Ukrainian parents, spent 35 years teaching. However, after her retirement she became fascinated by the stock market and did very well, with an estate worth about $1 million at the time of her death in 2000. She got in touch with her Ukrainian roots after visiting Soviet Ukraine in 1971. The UUARC decided to focus its efforts on more remote, underdeveloped parts of Ukraine that were in desperate need of even basic medications and medical equipment. The first $100,000 was invested in ambulances for 14 county hospitals from Kharkiv to Ivano-Frankivsk, crucial to remote villages that are often many kilometers from anything resembling a medical facility.
The American Egg Board chose Ukrainian American Ruth Olienyk Radebaugh to design an egg to represent the state of North Dakota. All 50 states were to submit one egg that would be exhibited at the White House in April. Dividing the egg into four panels, Ms. Radebaugh filled in each panel with a symbol of North Dakota: a map of the state; a buffalo, an eagle and wheat stalks; a wild rose; and the explorers Lewis and Clark.
Ukrainian Canadian Bohdanna Zwonok summitted Mount Kilimanjaro - Africa's highest peak at 19,340 feet - in mid-February to raise money and awareness for victims of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. Ms. Zwonok and a Canadian climbing friend, Vivan Elferink, planned to raise $19,340, one dollar for each vertical foot, for various rehabilitation programs, medical clinics and equipment, as well as orphanages and summer camps in Ukraine. The money was to be donated to two charities, the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund and the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund.
Across the Potomac River from Washington, is the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial, a series of panels listing the names of all known journalists who were killed in the line of duty since 1812. This year 53 new names were added the the 1,475 already present, making 2003 the deadliest year for journalists since World War II. Among the 53 names was that of 35-year-old Reuters television cameraman Taras Protsyuk, who was one of 20 journalists killed during the war in Iraq last year. Two journalists were belatedly recognized and honored during the ceremony, including 30-year-old Gareth Jones, a Welsh freelance journalist who reported the truth about the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine. His stories appeared in the London Evening Standard and other newspapers. In 1935 Jones was killed by Chinese bandits while reporting in the Far East.
Volodymyr Starosolsky - Ukrainian lawyer, sociologist, and civil and political leader - was honored with a plaque at his old home on 14 Copernicus St. in Lviv, where he lived and worked from 1905 through 1918. The Shevchenko Scientific Society, to which Mr. Starosolsky belonged to since 1923, led the effort to install a plaque commemorating the leading Ukrainian figure, who was arrested by the Soviets in 1939, sentenced to hard labor and died in Siberia in 1942. Mr. Starosolsky's deeds included being the first president of the paramilitary Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and acting as a defense lawyer for Ukrainians arrested by the authorities for opposing the Polish occupation of western Ukrainian lands.
In June a plaque commemorating Mykola Dosinchuk-Chorny (1918-1999) was unveiled at the building on Lviv's Market Square where he lived in the 1930s. After joining the insurgency fighting the Soviets, Mr. Dosinchuk-Chorny was forced to flee to America after World War II, where he took up the cause of promoting Ukraine's cultural heritage. From his home in New York City, he began a life-long pursuit of promoting Ukraine's national instrument, the bandura. In 1973 he established the New York School of Bandura, and in 1981 began publishing a quarterly called Bandura Magazine. He toured extensively through the Western hemisphere and Europe to promote the instrument, frequently meeting with other bandura instructors or personally delivering banduras to eager students.
In March 2000 Captain Dmytron Biriukovich and his schooner Batkivschyna left Kyiv with a simple mission: to raise the world's awareness of Ukraine, its culture, history and people. As of August 2004, The storm-battered schooner (believed to have been lost on several occasions) had sailed through the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic to North America, down to the Panama Canal, across the Pacific to Hawaii and New Zealand, and was docked in Sydney, seeking a crew and funds for repair. Up to then the captain had relied heavily on the generosity of Ukrainians in the countries he visited for financial support, but Mr. Biriukovich still needed approximately $100,000 to repair his schooner and complete the Discover Ukraine Project.
Burke's Peerage, a British research group of ancestry and aristocracy, claimed that in every U.S. presidential race, the candidate with more blood ties to European royalty has won the race to the White House. At the conclusion of their research, they predicted the Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry would triumph. According to Harold Brooks-Baker, the director of Burke's Peerage, Sen. Kerry had more royal blood than George W. Bush, being able to claim as relatives such figures as Richard the Lionhearted, Ivan the Terrible, and the shahs of Iran. Interestingly enough, Sen. Kerry is also related to Henry I of France and his wife, Anna Yaroslavna, the daughter of Kyivan-Rus' ruler Yaroslav Mudryi (the Wise). Nonetheless, Sen. Kerry lost the election, breaking a presidential election trend of over 220 years.
In the world of philately, an unusual joint Ukrainian-Estonian issue showing the "Rout From the Varangians to the Greeks" won the prestigious Heorhiy Narbut prize for 2003, breaking a six-year trend of souvenir sheets winning first place. The Narbut prize is sponsored by the Ukrainian Philatelic and Numismatic Society (UPNS), a U.S.-based group recognized as the premier philatelic art award in Ukraine. Ingert Kuzych, the man behind The Weekly's "Focus on Philately" column, established the Narbut prize in 1993 and is currently the chair of UPNS.
Ukrainians again were prominently featured on a list of Central and Eastern Europe's 50 richest persons. Wprost, a Polish weekly magazine, had five Ukrainians on the list, with the richest Ukrainian being Rynat Akhmetov, who doubled his capital in 2004 to $3.5 billion, putting him sixth on the list of 50. Viktor Pinchuk, a national deputy and President Kuchma's son-in-law, ranked 10th with $2.5 billion. Other Ukrainians included Ihor Kolomoiskii, the major stockholder of Privat Group (12th with $2.2 billion), Serhey Taruta, the co-owner of the Industrial Union of Donbas (15th with $1.9 billion) and Oleksander Yaroslavskyi ranked 27th with $850 million.
The second presidential debate between candidates Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych was rebroadcast with a voice-over translation by the American network C-SPAN several days after the live broadcast in Ukraine on December 20.
According to Accuracy in Media (AIM), "The New York Times' refusal to return a Pulitzer Prize awarded to a Times correspondent, Walter Duranty, whose dispatches lied about the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian famine" was one of the top underreported/buried stories of 2004. Out of a list of 20 items, the Duranty scandal was rated No. 10.
Time Magazine named opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko among "People who Mattered 2004" - a lisiting of individuals who are runner-ups to the "Person of the Year" award. Mr. Yushchenko got a two-page photograph and a paragraph mention in the magazine.
The Polish weekly magazine Wprost named Viktor Yushchenko Man of the Year 2004. Wprost's chief editor, Marek Mrol, wrote a congratulatory letter to Mr. Yushchenko on December 23, adressing him as "Mr. President" three days before the third round of voting in Ukraine's presidential election. Mr. Yushchenko received the honor for "making the largest impact on our reality ..., for reviving the civil movement for democracy ..., and for reminding Poles about the energy and enthusiasm of the times of the Solidarity movement." Wprost is Poland's most popular opinion weekly magazine, with a readership of around 2.5 million per month.
Every year the Associated Press lists the top 10 stories of the year, as ranked by the world's journalists. Ukraine's presidential election was ranked ninth, with the citation reading: "Ukraine's Supreme Court ordered a new presidential election after tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest fraud in a November run-off won by Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The drama intensified amid revelations that the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned."
The Financial Times on December 24 wrote that it could not choose the FT Person of the Year because "no politician this year has had what it takes to capture the title." Nonetheless, the London-based newspaper listed what it called its top "outliers." Among them were U.S. President George W. Bush, who the Financial Times said is the "best outlier," scoring the maximum 100 points in terms of his "country's importance," and second best in terms of "leader's personality." Another "high outlier" was Viktor Yushchenko, who FT noted "is as yet only potential, although he is a favorite to win Ukraine's election on Sunday" [December 26]. FT noted that Mr. Yushchenko's "perseverance through electoral fraud, intimidation and poisoning to gain the chance of a re-run vote puts him near to the top of the personality axis, somewhat offsetting his country's modest importance."

| Home Page |