Years ago, I wrote a column dedicated to fathers – including my own, of course, but also those who served as mentors and helped to shape the person I’ve become. Premier among them was Osyp Zinkewych, the founder and tireless engine who ran Smoloskyp for 60-plus years. Beyond question, he was the most brilliant person I’ve ever known and I’ve worked with several extraordinary people. Sadly, my friend, colleague and inspiration, Zinkewych, passed away September 18 at the age of 92.
I first met Zinkewych in 1974 following a presentation he made at a Cleveland-area college about the nascent dissident movement in Ukraine. Soviet Ukraine at the time was a totalitarian state. Every printed word, song, painting, public gathering, cinematic production – even cookbooks, children’s nursery rhymes, greeting cards and symphonic compositions – had to undergo censorship and get government approval. Informants at school and work monitored conversations; agents tested loyalty with provocative dialogue, turning in those who failed to denounce them; children were taught to inform on their parents. Punishment for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” was severe – 10 to 15 years in the Gulag.
I got a short glimpse of that ghastly society in 1970, when, fresh out of college, three of my friends and I visited Ukraine for 10 days, driving all the way to Kyiv in our Volkswagen microbus. Having experienced the police state which was Ukraine, I had a renewed appreciation for what it was to be an American.
And yet, given my upbringing, Ukraine was close to my heart and what Zinkewych said that evening in 1974 made a lot of sense, and I told him so.
“Who are you,” he asked, “and can we meet tomorrow?” And so I did, along with my brother Peter. Zinkewych proceeded to recruit us to his cause. Smoloskyp, he said, was a movement dedicated to supporting dissidents challenging the Soviet Empire, notwithstanding its iron rule and seemingly impenetrable walls. The dissidents in Ukraine, Russia, the Baltic states, the Caucasus, Poland and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain were a minuscule handful, Zinkewych said, so it was essential that we bring their writings to the West, publish them and amplify their voices with media attention and political support from city councils to Congress, the White House and capital cities around the world. And for that we need people.
I was 26 and adrift when I met Zinkewych. Less than two years prior to that, I was in a serious motorcycle accident in California; a doctor in the car behind me saved my life. Looking back, I realize that psychologically I had to justify being spared and Smoloskyp became the outlet. When Zinkewych asked me to ghostwrite an introduction to a book Smoloskyp was preparing, “Boomerang” by Valentyn Moroz, I readily agreed. That would be but the first of many projects and assignments that not only gave my life meaning, but would utterly change it.
I soon discovered I was far from the only person Zinkewych had recruited. Going back to his days as a courier in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a student in Paris after World War II and then an immigrant to America, he had developed a network of activists in key cities in North America – Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis, etc. He also had contacts in Vienna, London, Paris; in Argentina and Australia; even Bulgaria and Poland; and, of course, in Kyiv, Lviv and elsewhere in Ukraine. In due course, he inspired hundreds of young people to organize committees dedicated to defending Valentyn Moroz and other dissidents.
Zinkewych pointedly dismissed nationalist slogans about liberating Ukraine with weapon in hands as unrealistic and for the world in the 1970s meaningless. “We live in an era of events, Andriy,” he told me. Wherever there’s an event, we have to be there and demand that Ukraine be a part of it.
And sure enough, he found the people for that – the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968, Munich in ‘72, Montreal in ‘76, Lake Placid in ‘80, etc. He researched which Soviet athletes were Ukrainian, touted their accomplishments and proclaimed that Soviet Ukraine had the right to field its own Olympic team. I was in Montreal in 1976 and met a lot of fellow activists – young people like me, and older ones like Petro Wojtowycz from Baltimore. We gained widespread media attention and, we learned, the attention and approval of many Soviet Ukrainian athletes.
There was more. In 1980, Zinkewych sent a group to the World Conference on Women in Copenhagen to protest the arrests of women activists in Ukraine and elsewhere. In 1977, he sent my brother and good friend Andrew Hruszkewycz to Hawaii to the World Psychiatric Meeting where they successfully pushed for a resolution to condemn Soviet abuse of psychiatry. Etc., etc.
Zinkewych had a keen sense for the flow of history, putting him at odds with the diaspora “liberation movement,” their mindset stuck in the 1930s and ‘40s. In 1976, the United States and 34 other countries signed the Helsinki Accords recognizing post-World War II boundaries and political realities in Europe in exchange for Soviet acceptance of human rights. Diaspora nationalists rejected the accords as illegitimate because they effectively rewarded Moscow for its aggression – which was true. Zinkewych, for his part, saw Helsinki as an opportunity and embraced it. He promptly got in touch with Mykola Rudenko, head of the Writers Union in Soviet Ukraine and co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and set up the Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee in Washington as a counterpart organization.
In the spirit of Baskets Two and Three of the Helsinki Accords regarding human rights and personal exchanges, he clandestinely secured and published the founding memoranda of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, organized warm welcomes for touring groups from Ukraine and, above all, promoted the principal demand of the Kyiv-based group: that Soviet Ukraine, as a U.N. member, be included as an independent country in the Helsinki process. Ironically, both Ukrainian nationalists and the Kremlin, approaching the issue from ideologically divergent positions, opposed this demand, precisely what got Rudenko and fellow Ukrainian Helsinki Group member Oleksa Tykhy arrested.
In response, Zinkewych sent a group of us to Belgrade for the 1977 follow-up conference to stage a press conference denouncing the repression of Soviet Ukrainian citizens who were supporting the Helsinki process. Before I left for Yugoslavia with a suitcase full of documents, I met with Zinkewych at the airport hotel in Cleveland. The best outcome, he said, was for someone to get arrested. And that’s what happened. It became international news, whereupon Zinkewych set up a tour of cities to capitalize on the event and focus more light on the plight of Ukrainian dissidents. For me personally, the arrest opened the door to a Capitol Hill career.
I can go on and on about the exploits of Zinkewych, so please forgive me for breaking with the discipline of a half-page column and allow me to continue.
Osyp Zinkewych’s obituary describes him as a chemist and publisher. And yes: he supported his family working in a lab developing cleaning products. How American is that? But his primary focus was Ukraine. I often fielded his calls while he had idle time at work, waiting for some solution to come to completion. Invariably, the calls involved an emergency translation, a letter to Congress, a lecture at a university or a press release. Getting home to his basement office/library in Ellicott City, Md., he continued his work, calling people across area codes, time zones and continents, or at his typewriter. Often, he was on the road spreading the word and raising money for his exploits.
When Ukrainian independence came in 1991, Zinkewych and his wonderfully supportive wife, Nadia, moved to Kyiv and opened the Smoloskyp center in the Podil neighborhood. When I visited them in 1993, they greeted me with a bottle of champagne. I don’t remember whether I brought flowers – I hope so – but I do remember how Zinkewych, always charming and engaging, would stop for a bouquet whenever we visited a friend or benefactor.
Once in Ukraine, Zinkewych organized an annual literary competition for young authors. Over the past quarter century, hundreds saw their poetry and prose published for the first time. Smoloskyp also hosted thousands of creative young people at an annual seminar-conference in Irpin outside of Kyiv and, as Zinkewych had throughout his entire adult life, published books and periodicals.
The man’s productivity was staggering. Under his leadership, Smoloskyp published more than 500 books; some of those he wrote himself, many more he edited and hundreds he prepared of authors and topics banned in Soviet Ukraine – e.g., a five-volume set of Mykola Khvyliovy’s complete works from the 1920s and ’30s, the legacy of the Berezil Theater in Kyiv from the same era; essays, poetry and memoranda of dissidents from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He documented and published accounts of Ukrainian clergy murdered or repressed by the KGB, compiled an Encyclopedia of the Dissident Movement and established an archive to preserve their legacy. Less than a year ago, he published his diary notes. Friends tell me he was still working weeks before his passing.
I was privileged to have worked closely with Osyp Zinkewych for nearly two decades. I never saw him in a hurry, in a panic, on an ego trip. He was a humble man, utterly focused on his immediate goal – whatever that was – and ultimate mission: the independence of Ukraine. I saw him do grunt labor (carrying boxes) when that was needed; cutting and pasting columns with scissors and glue (before computers). He was confident talking to dissidents, congressmen, journalists, presidents of Ukraine and thousands of young people whose lives he touched, including mine.
At our first meeting, Zinkewcyh told Petro and me how essential it was to dispel the sense of hopelessness associated with confronting the Soviet Empire. We can prevail, he insisted, and with his characteristic optimism was confident the movement would succeed. Osyp Zinkewych’s life deserves a book; indeed, a movie. Ukraine is different, and better, because of him and the beautiful, productive life he led. May his memory be eternal!