Lviv conference focuses on new relationship between Ukraine and diaspora

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - The Ukrainian diaspora has a new role to play in post-Orange Ukraine, according to intellectuals attending the first academic conference hosted by the diaspora institute at Lviv Polytechnic University on March 8 - 10.

Much of the discussion at the conference, "Diaspora as a Factor in Strengthening the Ukrainian State in the International Community," centered on the idea that the diaspora's new focus is helping Ukraine and Ukrainians within their own countries, rather than directing efforts toward Ukraine.

"The work has gone in the direction of strengthening the nation beyond its geographical borders," said Iryna Kliuchkovska, director of the International Institute of Education, Cultural and Diaspora Ties, Ukraine's largest academic diaspora institution, which has existed for five years.

"Up until now, Ukraine had a negative image in the world. That's one of the tasks - strengthening its positive image. The actual function of those who live beyond Ukraine is changing."

More than 240 academics representing more than 20 countries attended the Lviv conference, including Mykhailo Horyn, chair of the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Hennadii Udovenko.

The perfect example of a diaspora community acting within its own borders to help Ukraine was the Ukrainian American drive to successfully repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, Mr. Kliuchkovska said.

The American diaspora's volunteer activities to support the Orange Revolution helped build the U.S. government's support and improved Ukraine's image.

Cultural deeds also are valuable, such as the monument erected in Sandarmokh, Russia, to commemorate the Ukrainian intelligentsia deported to the Karelia region.

The Orange Revolution forged an unprecedented relationship involving a Ukrainian government that is genuinely interested in helping its citizens living abroad, Ms. Kliuchkovska said. They number about 10 million, according to the Ukrainian government's latest statistics.

"Up until now, we had been taking," Ms. Kliuchkovska said. "We have been accepting what was saved. We accepted large material help from the diaspora in the beginning of establishing our country. The list is enormous. But a reverse process has to begin - Ukraine for the diaspora."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now created a Department of Relations with Ukrainians Abroad, which hadn't existed before, she said.

The institute has also helped perform surveys as part of the Ukrainian government's "Program to Support the Overseas Ukraine through 2010," an effort to determine the needs of Ukrainians in foreign countries.

During the conference there were serious discussions on defending the legal rights of these Ukrainians, she said.

"I am convinced that if our democratic forces hold together, the relations between Ukraine and its diaspora will reach a new level," she said.

The Fourth Wave of Ukrainian immigrants has created a new wave in academic study and research that was evident at the conference.

Maria Shved, chair of the teaching department at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, discussed how Italy's 400,000 Ukrainians work and live. Thousands of educated Ukrainian women take cleaning and baby-sitting jobs because the Italian government doesn't recognize Ukrainian-earned academic degrees, she said.

In spite of their hard lives, in which they work two or three jobs to support themselves and their families in Ukraine, these women are able to learn the Italian language and fit into society.

They also have established and teach in Ukrainian Sunday schools, she said.

Establishing Ukrainian schools abroad has become a major activity in serving the Ukrainian diaspora.

Vasyl Babenko, whose grandparents left Ukraine a century ago and settled in the Bashkortostan capital of Ufa in the Russian Federation, discussed rampant Ukrainophobia seen on Russian television.

"Ukrainians face a hostile environment in Russia," Mr. Babenko said, where they are stereotyped and ridiculed as thieves, drunkards and uneducated villagers.

Young Ukrainians are opting to assimilate and identify themselves as Russian because the Ukrainian identity is less prestigious and institutions such as Ukrainian Churches are discouraged, if not forbidden, in Russia.

About 55,000 Ukrainians live in Ufa and 701 students study Ukrainian language and literature in the republic's municipal schools, Mr. Babenko noted.

"If Ukrainians had a Church in Russia, Ukrainian consciousness would be better preserved," Mr. Babenko said. "The Orthodox Church is a tool of assimilation that actively works in Russia."

The diaspora in the Russian Federation, which has been estimated anywhere between 4 million and 10 million, is just starting to build the first Saturday and Sunday schools there.

Liudmyla Naidenko established a Sunday school in the Tatarstan Republic on her own.

With the Ukrainian diaspora currently undergoing trials in the Russian Federation, Lubomyr Luciuk gave a presentation that shed light on the difficult Ukrainian experience in Canada.

He recalled his childhood growing up in the largely English town of Kingston, Ontario, where he was beaten in his elementary school for crossing himself right-to-left instead of left-to-right.

His teachers insisted that Ukraine didn't exist, and his professors insisted there was no Holodomor and the Banderites were fascists.

During World War I, when the British Empire fought against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Canadian government interned more than 5,000 Ukrainians in Alberta because their passports indicated they were immigrants from Austria-Hungary.

These Ukrainians performed hard labor without pay, and remained imprisoned until 1920 because they were also accused of being Communists.

Nobody wanted to examine Canada's discriminatory treatment of Ukrainians, including the government, historians and the prisoners themselves.

"The problem was, and always will be, that they didn't know about us, or didn't want to know," Dr. Luciuk said. "And I recognized that our work had to change the world view of others and convince the world about Ukraine, because Ukraine was forgotten."

Six months ago, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin agreed to recognize and compensate the Ukrainian Canadian community $2.5 million to establish memorial plaques for the World War I internees and a possible $10 million to create a foundation.

Dr. Luciuk led the effort to remember Filip Konowal, a corporal with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War who was one of only 85 Canadians to ever earn the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration issued by the British Empire.

Four memorial plaques throughout Canada and one in France, where Mr. Konowal fought, were established in his honor.

Mr. Luciuk also spearheaded an effort to send more than 25,000 postcards to President Viktor Yushchenko demanding that the Ukrainian government create a commission to investigate Soviet war crimes. "There hasn't been a response to this day," he said.

Diaspora Ukrainians continue to help Ukraine build an independent nation, but Dr. Luciuk asked the audience what he considered a more important question: "Will you help us in the diaspora?"

Volodymyr Serhiichuk, director of the Ukrainian Studies Center at Shevchenko State University in Kyiv, addressed the problem of Ukrainian researchers researching the diaspora and political immigrations.

Academic research into the diaspora offers many possibilities, and it's simply a matter of finding the information stored in foreign countries, he said.

Also available in Kyiv are NKVD documents, many of which were removed from European cities such as Munich and Prague after the second world war. "The NKVD removed its materials on Ukrainian immigrant circles in Bulgaria, for instance, or anywhere the Red Army was in 1944 and 1945," Dr. Serhiichuk explained.

"All these materials wound up in Ukraine, and thank God they're saved. But Ukraine needs to turn its attention to these massive, unresearched troves of information that have been preserved in the West," he said.

Many research materials can be found in a few prolific Western institutions. For example, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York City contains much information on 20th century history, Dr. Serhiichuk said, and an enormous collection of Ukrainians' academic work is also located at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences archives in New York.

A massive amount of important materials on the Ukrainian freedom struggle is located in Canada's National Archives in Ottawa, where letters written by Symon Petliura are kept.

Valuable archives of Ukrainian history are situated also at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and churches and libraries in Winnipeg.

Family archives of the leaders in the Ukrainian freedom struggle also deserve examination, Dr. Serhiichuk continued, though many of them have disappeared because their assimilated children and grandchildren neglected to preserve them.

"Not all children save such an invaluable inheritance," he said. "They could have simply thrown it out, or donated to an American library, which could have placed it in storage where access is limited."

To better understand the political immigration, their documented memories and accounts demand collection and research, Dr. Serhiichuk said. "If we do this, we will be able to better understand and shed light on the history of the Ukrainian struggle for freedom."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided $6,000 to support this year's conference, Ms. Kliuchkovska said.

The next conference of the International Institute of Education, Culture and Diaspora Ties in 2008 will bear the theme "Ukrainians in the World's Civilization Processes," she said.

Never have activities examining the diaspora been so vibrant, as all three of Ukraine's academic diaspora institutions will host conferences this year.

On May 22 and 23, the Institute for Ukrainian Diaspora Research at the National University of Ostroh Academy in the Rivne Oblast will host its second diaspora conference, with the expectations that up to 100 academics will arrive. (The institute is a department of Ostroh Academy, which provides the necessary financing.)

The conference will cover a wide array of topics, ranging from archival foundations and collections in the diaspora to Ukrainian educational opportunities in the diaspora.

Anyone interested in attending can contact the institute at [email protected], or the institute's director, Alla Atamanenko, at [email protected].

The Center of Humanitarian Cooperation with the Ukrainian Diaspora at Hohol State Pedagogical University in Nizhyn will host its second annual academic conference on June 21-24.

Director Stanislav Ponomarevskyi said he expects scholars from at least a dozen different countries to discuss topics such as history, culture, religion and education in the Ukrainian diaspora.

His center has no operational budget, Mr. Ponomarevskyi said, and he's hoping the Canadian Embassy in Ukraine will support this year's conference.

Those interested in attending can contact the center at [email protected] or [email protected].

Either a government or private organization has to emerge to coordinate the work of all of Ukraine's diaspora efforts, Ms. Kliuchkovska said.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 16, 2006, No. 16, Vol. LXXIV

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