FACES AND PLACES: The Ignatieff imbroglio (12/11/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

The Ignatieff imbroglio

Canada's Liberal Party has run into a bit of a swamp, eh?

First there was the corruption scandal around Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government in which certain members of the government were accused of raking in kick-backs and giving some $85 million in government advertising and other contracts to Liberal-friendly firms for little or no work.

Then, on November 28, a parliamentary no-confidence vote forced Mr. Martin, to call for new national elections.

And now, only days after the surprise retirement of Liberal MP Jean Augustine, we have the sudden candidacy of political neophyte Michael Ignatieff as the Liberal candidate for Parliament in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Ontario). Ukrainian Canadian voters are outraged both by the backroom manner by which his unopposed candidacy came to be, and Dr. Ignatieff himself.

Two qualified Ukrainian Canadians were apparently blocked from submitting their nomination documents for the same seat. According to a press release issued by the Etobicoke-Lakeshore Riding Association, Marc Shwec and Ron Chyczij prepared and submitted the required candidate forms - including police and credit checks, as well as required signatures of support - only to discover that the office of Liberal Party Headquarters in Toronto was locked before the 5 p.m. filing deadline. Liberal Party staffers could be seen through the second-story windows but refused to respond to repeated door knocks. "I hammered the door so loud I thought I was going to break either my wrist the door," Mr. Chyczij said.

Ron Chyczij holds an M.B.A. and is the president of the Etobicoke-Lakeshore Riding Association. Marc Shwec, fluent in both English and French, is an engineer with an M.B.A. and has been active in community affairs.

The second reason for outrage among Ukrainian Canadians is Mr. Ignatieff himself. In a "Faces and Places" column on January 29, 1995, I wrote that on March 27, 1994, Mr. Ignatieff, a Canadian born of Russian parents, hosted a PBS program titled "Blood and Belonging." To me, the entire program, devoted to Dr. Ignatieff's visit to Ukraine, was anti-Ukrainian.

Dr. Ignatieff interviewed Vladimir, a Russian coal miner, who complained that Ukrainian nationalism is making life difficult because his children "have to learn Ukrainian in schools." Dr. Ignatieff then took his viewers to the Crimea, where he heard more moaning and groaning about the "tyranny" of Ukrainian nationalism upon the recently returned Tatar population. In Lviv, where Ukrainian nationalism is the strongest, Mr. Ignatieff emphasized that while Ukrainians and Russians in eastern Ukraine fought side by side to rid their homeland of the Nazis, western Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis and "some even collaborated with them."

Mr. Ignatieff's PBS appearance came on the heels of his book "Blood and Belonging" in which he wrote: "Isn't nationalism just an exercise in kitsch, in fervent emotional insecurity? Especially so in Ukraine. It has been part of Russia for centuries ... Into this inauthentic void steams nationalist emotionalism striving to convince them [the Ukrainians] that there always was a Ukrainian nation; that it has been suppressed for centuries, that it has at last found its freedom and so on. The reality is different."

Ukraine, for Dr. Ignatieff, remains a mystery. "I have reasons to take Ukraine seriously indeed," he wrote. "But to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots, nasty anti-Semites."

Mr. Ignatieff's antipathy toward Ukrainians appears to be lifelong. "From my childhood in Canada," he wrote, "I remember expatriate Ukrainian nationalists demonstrating in the snow outside ballet performances by the Bolshoi in Toronto. 'Free the captive nations!' they chanted. In 1960, they seemed strange and pathetic, chanting in the snow, haranguing people who just wanted to see ballet and to hell with politics, They seemed fanatical, too, unreasonable. Hadn't they looked at a map? How did they ever think Ukraine could ever be free."

Dr. Ignatieff is definitely an intellectual, a left-wing intellectual, but an intellectual nonetheless. He is often described as "a noted Canadian scholar and novelist." In 2003 Maclean's magazine named Dr. Ignatieff "Canada's Sexiest Cerebral Man." The grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, the last minister of education to Tsar Nicholas II, he holds a Ph.D. in history from Harvard and has taught at the University of British Columbia. He held a senior research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, for six years, and is married to the vivacious Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna Zshohar. Just in time for his parliamentary run, it was announced in August that Dr. Ignatieff was to be the Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto. Small wonder that many in the Liberal Party are salivating about his candidacy and touting him as prime minister material.

Thrilled with his uncontested Liberal Party nomination, Dr. Ignatieff responded to Ukrainian protests with a press statement. "I have a deep, personal affinity with the suffering of the Ukrainian people at the hands of Soviet Russia and a deep respect for the Ukrainian Canadian community," it read. No mention, of course, of tsarist oppression of Ukraine (probably too close to his own "blood and belonging" ties to tsarism) or to those geography-challenged pathetic "weirdos" who marched in the snow chanting something about Captive Nations.

Claiming that his words have been taken out of context and distorted, Dr. Ignatieff labeled Ukrainian Canadian complaints as a "transparent attempt to twist my writings with the objective of sowing strife in Liberal ranks on the eve of a campaign." He offered to meet with Ukrainian Canadian leaders "to share views on the Ukrainian experience and discuss my writing with them." Right.

As an American only vaguely familiar with Canadian politics, it seems to me that Ukrainian Canadians loyal to the ideals of the Liberal Party have been snookered. As Hollywood movie Indians used to say, "pale face speak with forked tongue."

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is [email protected].

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