The Ukrainian Weekly (https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/author/andrew-fedynsky/page/4/)
We take electricity pretty much for granted. Lights, subways, movies, sound systems, the Internet, television, air conditioning, coffee makers, toasters – you name it; they all use it. So where does this miracle come from? Well, to state the obvious, from electric power plants. Have one go down for even an hour and people get upset.
CLEVELAND – The Maria Zankovetska Theater based in Lviv is one of Ukraine’s most distinguished and respected cultural institutions. Starting April 1 at the Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Stamford, Conn., and ending April 10 at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown, Pa., near Philadelphia, the group will be on tour presenting the classic Ukrainian operetta, “Natalka Poltavka.”
In between, the Zankovetska Theater will be in New York on April 2, Lindenhurst, N.Y., on April 3, Detroit on April 7, Chicago on April 8 and Cleveland on April 9. (See the ad in The Ukrainian Weekly for details or visit the website www.zankovetskaUSAtour2016.com.)
The Zankovetska Theater’s production of “Natalka Poltavka,” directed by Taras Shevchenko Prize laureate Fedir Stryhun, is based on the 1819 play by Ivan Kotliarevsky. A theatrical standard and one of the first literary works to use the modern Ukrainian language, it tells the story of star-crossed lovers in the Ukrainian countryside during a time of serfdom and Russian tsarist rule. “Natalka Poltavka” became a renowned operetta when Ukraine’s premier composer Mykola Lysenko in 1889 composed an overture, wrote orchestral accompaniments to the folk songs and dances in the original play, produced background music and transformed songs into arias.
I was in Paris the first time in 1966. In the half century since, I’ve been there at least a dozen times, but had never visited the grave of Symon Petliura. A journalist, politician and military leader, Petliura was one of the most consequential Ukrainians of the 20th century or any other era; that’s why the Soviets orchestrated his assassination in the center of Paris 90 years ago on May 26. Petliura (1879-1926) was a 19-year-old seminarian in Poltava when he joined Hromada, a secret society dedicated to Ukrainian self-determination. When his membership was discovered three years later, Petliura was expelled from the seminary even as he continued his activism, having already joined another revolutionary organization.
On April 22, 1945, U.S. Army troops blew up the huge stone swastika that loomed over Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg where the Nazis had staged their massive rallies. A week later, Adolph Hitler committed suicide in Berlin and a few days after that, World War II in Europe ended. Today, there’s not a single public statue to Hitler and the only swastikas are on lunatic websites or tattooed onto the chests of racist losers. Symbols are important. That’s why Germany has laws forbidding celebration of its Nazi past.
WASHINGTON – The Ukrainian Heritage Consortium of North America (UHCNA) held its fourth conference in Washington at the Library of Congress on September 18-20. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), chair of the Congressional Caucus on Ukraine and the conference’s keynote speaker, put the work of museums and cultural institutions into context. If you don’t know your past, it’s hard to craft a future, she underscored. Referring to her family’s roots in Ukraine, she offered accounts of her own startling discoveries of diaries, oral history projects and other valuable documentation. Rep. Kaptur commended the UHCNA participants for their work, emphasizing how important it is for Americans to collect and preserve the record of Ukrainian culture and immigration to America.
They described them as “degenerates, criminals and subversives who can never be assimilated into the United States but would breed their own particular brands of crime and subversion, making no worthwhile contribution to the United States.” Donald Trump? The Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives? Actually no. It’s a quote from the 1952 “Final Report of the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission,” citing arguments used to try to block post-World War II refugees from coming to America. I was one of those immigrants, coming ashore in 1948.
Historian Timothy Snyder, arguably today’s foremost expert on Ukraine, has a fascinating article in the July 21 issue of the New York Review of Books, “Edge of Europe, End of Europe,” where, among several others, he cites 1920s Ukrainian author, critic and cultural leader Mykola Khvyliovy and his relevance to today’s events. I first heard about Khvyliovy in Prof. Gregory Golembiowsky’s class in the early 1960s at “Ridna Shkola” Saturday School in Cleveland. World War II was still a recent memory; so was the Holodomor. Ukraine then seemed a hopeless cause, politically and nationally. The country’s borders were sealed, the population utterly cowed, Russification was rampant, prospects for liberation were zero.
Millions saw the Seinfeld TV episode where Kramer and Newman are on the subway playing Risk. For those uninitiated, Risk is a geopolitical board game for up to six players contending for global domination by assembling armies (colored tokens) and taking turns attacking their neighbors by casting dice. The game ends when one player controls the world. I played Risk a hundred times back in the 1970s, sharing beers, pizza, strategy, deal-making (and -breaking), laughs and camaraderie. Our parents presented my brother, Pete, and me with the game because Ukraine plays a prominent role on the map, stretching from the Black Sea to the Arctic, following the borders of Kyivan Rus’ a thousand years ago. In the Seinfeld episode, Kramer taunts Newman: “The Ukraine. You know what the Ukraine is? It’s a sitting duck; a road apple, Newman. The Ukraine is weak.
When Taras Shevchenko was a little boy in the early 1820s, his grandfather Ivan told him about the Haidamak Rebellion, which he had experienced when he himself had been a youth half a century before. There was no “military-revolutionary command,” no “political arm,” no press releases. Illiterate Ukrainians fed up with serfdom and national/ religious oppression seized whatever sharp object they had and, following leaders who felt they had nothing to lose, went on a rampage. And like many previous and subsequent uprisings in a centuries-long struggle, the Haidamak movement descended into political intrigue and widespread violence. A joint Russian-Polish military force put down the rebellion with horrendous cruelty – slashing, hanging and impaling captured rebels.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is into its second year, the latest in a centuries-long assault on Ukrainians’ very right to exist. Taras Shevchenko wrote about it nearly 200 years ago, a sad legacy he had learned from his grandfather, who heard it from even older Kozak ancestors. Now with the euphoria of Euro-Maidan fading, we have to yet again accept that, despite progress in the last 25 years, the struggle for Ukraine has been and remains long-term, a reality that defined much of my childhood and has consumed me as an adult, as it has so many others. Looking to the current U.S. political landscape, no one has supported Ukraine longer at a higher level than Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. I was a young staffer with Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar when Rep. Kaptur was elected in 1982 from Toledo, 90 miles west of the Cleveland district my boss represented.