Although I am a Chicago native, I was shocked to learn that the iconic Surma Book Store in New York City was soon to close. I first visited the famed Ukrainian emporium with my mom in 1939 during the World’s Fair. It was then that I met the elder Myron Surmach and tasted his famed honey. During the years that followed I visited fairly often. Myron Surmach Jr. was always pleased to feature publications I had authored. How great was that?
Surma may be dying, but the old neighborhood is not. The beautiful St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church and School remains as do The Ukrainian Museum and the Shevchenko Scientific Society building.
Philadelphia’s old Ukrainian neighborhood is in a state of flux. Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral is still there, of course, as is the convent. Franklin Street remains home to the Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics and to the Ukrainian American Citizens Association, founded in 1905. The new focal point of Ukrainian community life in Pennsylvania, however, is found in Jenkintown.
The fading of some Ukrainian American inner-city neighborhoods has been ongoing for years. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Detroit to attend UNA meetings at the Ukrainian American Center in the Ukrainian neighborhood. That’s gone. According to Dr. Alexander Lushnycky, a larger community center has recently been purchased in the area not far from St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, which still stands in the old neighborhood. Hamtramck, nestled next-door, hosts a separate Ukrainian community. Activity centers on the beautiful Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church. The hub of Ukrainian community life in Michigan, however, is now in Warren, where one finds St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church, a community center, a credit union, and “Ukrainian Village,” a residency for senior citizens, among other institutions.
Cleveland’s old Ukrainian neighborhood is enjoying a revitalization thanks to the efforts of the Szmagala family and Andrew Fedynsky, who have made the renovation and expansion of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives a community-wide endeavor. The old Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church is still there as well. A new Ukrainian neighborhood emerged many years ago in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland. St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, St. Pokrova Catholic Church and St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church are located here, along with two credit unions.
The most enduring Ukrainian American neighborhood is Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, formally established in 1905 when St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Parish was founded. Today, one can find three churches – St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, Ss. Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church; the three-story Selfreliance Ukrainian American Federal Credit Union building; two museums – The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and the Ukrainian National Museum; and three Ukrainian restaurants – Old Lviv, Shokolad and Trident, which opened this month.
Why are neighborhoods important? For many of us they are what sociologists Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus defined as one of the “mediating structures” that lie between the individual and the state. Like our family, parish and numerous voluntary organizations, mediating structures provide and reinforce our identity and sense of belonging. They are the strongest safeguards against an overreaching government. Totalitarian regimes despise alternative sources of identity. In the Soviet Union, for example, the government controlled all mediating structures beginning with the family. Commissars strictly controlled the church, labor unions, sports teams and so-called “voluntary organizations.” Even one’s nationality was supplanted by a new ideal: “The Soviet Man.”
American sociologists were not the first to recognize the value of mediating structures in preserving freedom. Edmund Burke, the father of political conservatism, called them “little platoons.” In his classic “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790), he observed that we begin our public affections in our families and then move on to our neighborhoods. Mr. Burke observed that “to love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.”
In his classic study, “Democracy in America” (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville argued that mediating structures combat such evils of democratic egalitarianism as individualism, which fosters democratic despotism and state tyranny.
In May of 1976 I had the honor of organizing a White House conference titled “Ethnicity and Neighborhood Revitalization.” Msgr. Geno Baroni presented the major paper arguing that federal urban development programs were a failure because they focused on cities. “Urban dwellers identify more with their neighborhoods rather than with their cities,” he argued. A black member of the panel suggested that talk of neighborhood smacked of “racism.”
Speaking to the participants in the Rose Garden at the conclusion of the conference, President Gerald Ford declared, “…a sense of neighborhood, a sense of belonging, of cultural identification is threatened. I can appreciate your deep concern for the future of institutions which you work so hard to maintain – the ethnic church, the school, the credit union, the fraternal lodge… I believe we can have a rebirth of individual freedom and protect the diverse heritage which gives so much strength and so much richness to our society. Working together we can achieve these goals.”
On June 30, 1976, the White House announced that formation of the “President’s Committee on Urban Develop-ment and Neighborhood Revitalization,” charged with the responsibility of developing an urban policy which “takes into account neighborhood diversity…” The committee, ostensibly headed by HUD Secretary Carla Hills, was never constituted because, as OMB director James T. Lynn later informed me, the $60 billion U.S. budget deficit didn’t allow for any new expenditures. Since 1976, America’s urban policy has remained the same. Neighborhoods aren’t even mentioned, let alone assisted in any way. The irony of all this is that poor but still viable black neighborhoods were bulldozed and their inhabitants stored in high-rises. They too were eventually demolished.
So, dear reader, if you live in or near a Ukrainian neighborhood, preserve and cherish it. It is part of your unique Ukrainian heritage.