"UKRAINE REPORT 2003"
"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

"In order to understand the full tragedy of what happened to Ukraine in the
twentieth century, one must first understand the height of their hopes and
only then the depth of their betrayal. In [Mykola] Khvyliovyi one can find
how he saw things starting to go wrong in the 1920s with its omnipresent
informers and OGPU, and his vision influenced even such implacable anti-
Communists as Dmytro Dontsov and Stepan Bandera. Khvyliovyi placed
the choice squarely: Ukraine in Europe or Little Russia." [article eleven]

"UKRAINE REPORT 2003," Number 114
U.S.-UKRAINE FOUNDATION (USUF)
www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS)
Washington, D.C., Kyiv, Ukraine, morganw@patriot.net
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2003

INDEX OF ARTICLES:

1. OPPOSITION LAWMAKER'S HOUSE SET ON FIRE AFTER
CRITICIZING PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
Associated Press Online; Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

2. UKRAINIAN JOURNALIST REPORTED FOUND HANGED
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 16 Dec 03
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

3. UKRAINE OPPOSITION SAYS EUROPEAN EXPERTS UNHAPPY
WITH PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM BILLS
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 16 Dec 03
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Dec 16, 2003

4.UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC LEADERS VISIT BOLSTERS CHURCH UNITY
Ukrainian community receives global message from recently elevated cardinal
By Joshua Hurwit, Staff Writer, Times Union
Albany, New York, Friday, December 12, 2003

5. UKRAINE CALLS ON EU TO START NEGOTIATING
FREE TRADE ZONE AGREEMENT
Interfax news agency, Moscow, Russia, 15 Dec 03

6. POLISH TEXTILE COMPANY LLP PLANS TO OPEN NEW
FIVE NEW STORES IN UKRAINE
Polish News Bulletin; Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

7. WORLD BANK GIVES US$250 MILLION LOAN TO UKRAINE
Associated Press Online; Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

8. JAPAN'S ISUZU CONSIDERING ASSEMBLING TRUCKS
IN UKRAINE, HAS BEEN PRODUCING BUSES IN UKRAINE
AFX Europe (Focus); Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

9. FRANCE HONORED THE MEMORY OF HOLODOMOR VICTIMS
Victims of the Genocidal Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933
By Klara GUDZYK, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec 16, 2003

10. SERGIY LEBID OF UKRAINE WINS THE CROSS-COUNTRY
RACE AGAIN FOR A PLACE AMONG LEGENDS
Most Prolific Winner of Medals In These Championships
By Doug Gillon, The Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, December 15, 2003

11. MORITURI TE SALUTANT, REMEMBERING MYKOLA KHVYLIOVYI
Born Dec 13, 1893, Put A Bullet Through His Head On May 13, 1933
By Prof. James MACE, Consultant to The Day
The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003

12. DEBATE DELAYS PRESERVATION OF UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX
CHURCH BUILT IN 1917 IN NORTH DAKOTA
By Richard Volesky, The Dickinson Press
Dickinson, North Dakota, Saturday, December 13, 2003
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
=========================================================
1. OPPOSITION LAWMAKER'S HOUSE SET ON FIRE AFTER
CRITICIZING PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

Associated Press Online; Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec 16, 2003

KYIV........A Ukrainian lawmaker's house was set on fire after he publicly
criticized constitutional amendments backed by President Leonid Kuchma _ in
what his party called an act of political terror against opposition leaders.

Yevhen Kyrylchuk of the right-wing Yulia Tymoshenko bloc, claimed
presidential supporters set his house and car ablaze early Tuesday morning
in the northwestern city of Lutsk because he convinced a public forum to
oppose proposed constitutional amendments that would have parliament choose
Ukraine's next president rather than voters, the party said in a statement.

Opposition leaders fear that having the president elected by the legislature
would make parliament vulnerable to pressure by tycoons and other powerful
figures eager to preserve the status quo.

Police said Kyrylchuk's house almost burned down but no one was injured. An
investigation was to determine the cause and cost of damages.

Some 1,000 people who attended the non-governmental forum pledged to oppose
the amendments after Kyrylchuk's speech, said Vasyl Vozniuk of the regional
government.

"Pressure is becoming one of key methods of political struggle against
opposition as the presidential elections approach," the Tymoshenko bloc said
in a statement.
The group appealed to prosecutors, police and security officials to
acknowledge "the beginning of political terror" in the country and find
those who allegedly ordered the attack.

Thousands of opposition supporters have rallied in recent weeks against
alleged intimidation and harassment that they claim is being fostered by
regional officials and pro-presidential forces.

Lawmakers could vote as early as next week on whether to approve the
constitutional amendments proposed by the pro-presidential majority in the
450-member parliament.

Ukrainians are scheduled to elect a new president next year when Kuchma's
second term ends. The current constitution prohibits him from running again.
(am/tv/bh) (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
=========================================================
2. UKRAINIAN JOURNALIST REPORTED FOUND HANGED

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 16 Dec 03
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Dec 16, 2003

Kiev, 16 December: The chairman of an independent regional union of
journalists, acting deputy editor-in-chief of the Kuryer newspaper and
reporter of the Vlasti.net web site, Volodymyr Karachevtsev, has perished in
Melitopol, Zaporizhzhya Region.

The web site Vlasti.net reported that the journalist died on Sunday, 14
December, "under strange circumstances". He was found hanged on the handle
of a fridge.

Forensic experts found that death was caused by mechanical asphyxia caused
by hanging. Police believe this was an accident, but they do not rule out
premeditated murder either.

"The editorial office is conducting an independent investigation, which has
already found contradictions between the law enforcers' interpretation of
Karachevtsev's death and the reality. We have a lot of questions. First, the
wife of the deceased said Volodymyr's death was not accidental. Second, it
is not clear how an adult and a regular officer could be hanged on a
fridge's handle," the newspaper said. (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
=========================================================
3. UKRAINE OPPOSITION SAYS EUROPEAN EXPERTS UNHAPPY
WITH PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM BILLS

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 16 Dec 03
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Dec 16, 2003

Kiev, 16 December: The deputy head of the parliamentary committee for legal
policy issues, Mykola Katerynchuk of the [centre-right opposition] Our
Ukraine faction, has said that experts from the European Commission For
Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) have made a number of remarks on
three bills that propose amendments to the Ukrainian constitution.

"The commission welcomes Ukraine's efforts to reform its system of state
administration, but the solutions proposed in the three bills do not achieve
this outcome, while introducing amendments to the constitution that are a
step backwards. It is necessary to continue work and discussion of these
drafts, and the Venice Commission remains at the disposal of the Ukrainian
authorities for further cooperation in issues of constitutional reform," the
experts' conclusions state, Our Ukraine's press service told
Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

The bills in question are 3207-1 (drafted by Anatoliy Matviyenko and Viktor
Musiyaka), 4105 (drafted by deputies and agreed with the presidential
administration) and 4180 (drafted by Stepan Havrysh and Rayisa Bohatyryova).

Summing up the commission's conclusions on the three bills, Katerynchuk said
that none of the systems of administration proposed by the authors of these
documents is ideal.

"Draft 3207-1 (Matviyenko-Musiyaka) proposes a number of changes that move
in the right direction towards granting additional powers to the Supreme
Council (parliament), but the provision on appointing members of the
government may lead to conflict between the branches of power. The
provisions on the status of deputies, on election of judges and on expanding
the powers of the prosecution service are problematic from the viewpoint of
European democracy," the experts said.

On bills 4105 and 4180, the members of the commission said: "The election of
the head of state in parliament could, in principle, contribute to the
creation of a parliamentary system of administration, but the European
experts could not understand why, in that case, these two drafts grant the
head of state greater powers than draft 3207-1, which preserves direct
presidential elections." The press service said that the foreign jurists
considered that neither the deputies' draft nor that of Havrysh-Bohatyryova
"would contribute to effective state administration".

Katerynchuk said: "The experts underlined that the present Supreme Council
[parliament] was elected in 2002 for a four year term, and the wilful
adoption by parliament of a decision on extending its own powers would
violate European standards of democracy." He also said they consider that
Leonid Kuchma was president of Ukraine in 1994-1999 "for sure". [The
Constitutional Court is considering a request from a number of parliament
deputies to clarify whether Kuchma's first presidential term should be
considered when counting the number of terms he has served, since the
current constitution was passed only in 1996.

The constitution bars anyone serving as president for more than two
consecutive terms.] "In addition, the Venice Commission representatives
pointed out to the authors of drafts 4180 and 4105 that they had neglected
to specify how the head of state should be elected - by secret ballot or
open vote," he said.

He also said that the current membership of the Constitutional Court is not
playing the role that it should and it would likely be dissolved in the near
future. "We are listening to the recommendations of the Venice Commission,
which suggests changing the formula for appointing judges, in such a way
that each candidate would be appointed not with a simple majority but a
special qualified majority that would be the result of a compromise between
representatives of the majority and minority," Katerynchuk said. (END)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
=========================================================
4. UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC LEADERS VISIT BOLSTERS CHURCH UNITY

By Joshua Hurwit, Staff Writer, Times Union,
Albany, New York, Friday, December 12, 2003

Watervliet, New York..........The spiritual leader of more than 5 million
Ukrainian Catholics delivered a message of unity on Thursday at St. Nicholas
Ukrainian Catholic Church, saying, "Today, we are a global church."

"We should not say our church is only for us. Let us be generous enough to
share it,'' Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, 70, told a standing-room-only audience,
which included Bishop Howard Hubbard, the head of the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Albany.

Hubbard joined Husar in a procession through the sanctuary to the altar,
before a service of songs and prayer.

Husar, who has a long white beard, wore a long flowing robe and held a
staff. Speaking first in Ukrainian and then in English, he said, ``We are
bringing into the world ... values of which this world has such a great
need.''

In October, Husar was among 31 cardinals appointed by Pope John Paul II.
His elevation was a sign of the Pope's aim to support Catholics in countries
where most Christians belong to the Eastern Orthodox church, despite
differences in tradition and culture. Ukrainian Catholic priests, for
example, may marry prior to ordination.

A professor of liturgy at The Catholic University of America said a ceremony
such as Thursday's in Watervliet is a symbol of stronger ties between
Eastern Rite Catholics and the Vatican, which have been divided since The
Great Schism of 1054.

"This helps to create bridges towards ecumenism," said Mark Morozowich,
who teaches liturgy at the Washington, D.C., school and is a friend of
Husar's.

In 1944, Husar fled Ukraine with his parents. Communists tried to destroy
his church, and the family ultimately sought refuge in the United States.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned to his homeland and has led a
resurgence of open worship.

He was invited to visit the Capital Region by Bishop Basil Losten of the
Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Stamford, Conn., which comprises New York
state. He will also preach in Yonkers and Hartford, Conn.

Watervliet has long had a sizable Ukrainian community and its pastor, the
Rev. Mikhail Myshchuk, studied under Husar in Ukraine. The St. Nicholas
church on Fourth Street has about 200 parishioners.

Parishioner Helen Koshykar, whose parents emigrated from Ukraine, said of
the cardinal's visit, "We feel special that he chose us." (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
WELCOME TO UKRAINE MAGAZINE IN ENGLISH
Issue Number Four for Year 2003 Just Issued. Best Magazine in English
http://www.artukraine.com/travel/wumagazine.htm
=========================================================
5. UKRAINE CALLS ON EU TO START NEGOTIATING
FREE TRADE ZONE AGREEMENT

Interfax news agency, Moscow, Russia, 15 Dec 03

Kiev, 15 December: Ukraine has invited the European Union to start
negotiating an agreement on a free trade zone which the country describes as
the best way of "meeting the challenges" of EU enlargement.

Considering the progress Ukraine has made towards acceding to the World
Trade Organization, Kiev is inviting Brussels to begin talks in earnest on
the agreement right away, the Ukrainian Ministry of Economics and European
Integration said in a press-release.

The statement followed the sixth meeting of the Ukrainian-EU committee last
week, at which a document was signed on possible changes in relations
between Ukraine and candidates for EU membership after May 1, 2004.
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
=========================================================
6. POLISH TEXTILE COMPANY LLP PLANS TO OPEN NEW
FIVE NEW STORES IN UKRAINE

Polish News Bulletin; Warsaw, Poland, Dec 16, 2003

The Gdansk-based textile company,LPP, is planning to open five new stores in
Ukraine. "Sales results have been better than expected," says Deputy CEO
Dariusz Pachla. In his opinion this is mainly due to weak competition on the
Ukrainian market.

Initially, LPP intended to open three outlets by the end of the year,
however there could be some delay. We depend on developers, says Pachla
pointing to the fact that two stores will be located in shopping centres and
one on a high street. According to plans, the first outlet will be opened in
L'viv and another two in Kiev at the end of January.

"It is worth investing in Ukraine as the needs are huge, but because of the
bureaucratic obstacles and other factors, many firms are too afraid to take
the risk," stresses Pachla. LPP already owns a network of 53 stores in
Poland and 15 stores abroad, which under the brand name "Reserved" sell
clothes designed by LPP. (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
=========================================================
7. WORLD BANK GIVES US$250 MILLION LOAN TO UKRAINE

Associated Press Online; Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec 16, 2003

Kyiv......The World Bank and Ukraine signed an agreement Tuesday for a
US$250 million loan to the cash-strapped ex-Soviet republic to support
government reforms.

Luca Barbone, the World Bank's regional director for Ukraine, Belarus and
Moldova, and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov signed the
deal, said Azarov's spokesman Vitaliy Lukianenko.

Ukraine will receive US$75 million directly, and the rest will be released
after Kiev has met certain legal and financial benchmarks. The loan is
repayable in 20 years.

The World Bank hailed several "key achievements" by Ukraine, including
timely payments of wages and pensions, better bank supervision, broader land
privatization and transparency. But Barbone stressed that much remains to be
done.

"Addressing systemic weaknesses in institutions and governance will remove
critical obstacles to growth and opportunity, public accountability and
social security," Barbone said in a statement.

The World Bank has provided nearly US$4 billion to Ukraine since 1992.
(am/tv/bh) (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
=========================================================
8. JAPAN'S ISUZU CONSIDERING ASSEMBLING TRUCKS
IN UKRAINE, HAS BEEN PRODUCING BUSES IN UKRAINE

AFX Europe (Focus); Dec 16, 2003

"We may export parts to Ukraine and assemble trucks there," said a spokesman
for Isuzu, adding that the plan is "still at a discussion phase."

He was commenting on an earlier report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun that
Isuzu will export parts for small- and mid-sized trucks to Ukraine early
next year and assemble the trucks to be sold under the Isuzu brand.

It would be the first production base to be created in the former Soviet
Union by a Japanese truck maker, the Nihon Keizai said.

Isuzu, 12.04 pct owned by General Motors Corp, aims to sell 1,000 trucks in
the first year, the newspaper said.

Isuzu has teamed up with the Ukrainian bus maker Holding Bogdan since 1999
for production and marketing of small buses.

Since 1999, the two firms have produced about 700 buses annually. This year
production has more than doubled to 1,500 buses to meet growing demand, the
Isuzu spokesman said.

If the truck production and sales operations go well, they may consider
building a joint venture to produce trucks and buses, the Nihon Keizai said.
shi-ih/mxs/bmm/rc (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
FOLK ART MAGAZINE: NARODNE MYSTETSTVO
http://www.artukraine.com/primitive/artmagazine.htm
A Great Magazine in Ukrainian....Excellent Ukrainian Magazine
=========================================================
9. FRANCE HONORED THE MEMORY OF HOLODOMOR VICTIMS
Victims of the Genocidal Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933

By Klara GUDZYK, The Day Weekly Digest
Kyiv, Ukraine, December 16, 2003

On November 23, the old famous Catholic cathedral, Notre Dame, Paris saw an
unusual service - a Byzantine (Eastern)-rite liturgy conducted by Bishop
Mykhailo Hrynchyshyn, Apostolic Exarch for Greek Catholic Ukrainians of
France, the Benelux and Switzerland. The service was dedicated to the 70th
anniversary of the manmade famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine.

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, head of the Episcopal Conference of France,
read out a sermon. France thus honored the memory of the innocent people who
fell victim to the criminal policies of Stalin's regime. Here come extracts
from the sermon of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger handed over to The Day by
the Embassy of France in Ukraine.

"Brethren and sisters! It seems astonishing to me that our Lord Jesus Christ
closely links the commandment of love - love for God and love for one's
neighbor - with the sacrament of sin atonement. The Gospel tells us that the
commandment of love for our neighbor can only be fulfilled by way of atoning
for our sins... I single out three lessons from the terrible history of the
1930s manmade famine in Ukraine.

"The first one is that we must ask ourselves, 'How could such a thing
happen? How can humans perpetrate such murders?' The answer is that such a
thing can occur when a human places himself in lieu of God and turns his own
will into that of God. The sinful error of the ideology that opted for this
kind of massacre was that, in its desire to kill the idea of God, it
succumbed to the idea of omnipotence and created idols for itself - not for
the good of humankind but for the intentions bereft of sympathy, respect,
and humanity. We, believers, know that, to get rid of idols and recognize
only the Single Creator and Redeemer, one must always struggle. This is the
first lesson we should remember.

"The second lesson is that criminal idolization goes hand in hand with lies,
an absolutely indispensable thing for it. The intention was to hide the
perpetrated murders, hide the heinous crime. So the only instrument of the
hapless victims, all those who 'clamor to heaven for protection,' is the
truth. The mammoth lies of Soviet authorities also found recipients in
Western countries. Let us remember that lies always go hand in hand with the
murder, with the desire to deprive one of his life. But lies, too,
relentlessly lead to death, to the murder of your neighbor or to sinful
suicide. To love God with all your might and not to stoop to idolization
means to work the truth and to live in truth. This is what we must do,
recalling this horrible event of our time.

"The third lesson of the Ukrainian manmade famine exposes human
faintheartedness. How come the people of good will, the well-informed
people, chose not to raise their voice? How come a huge number of people
were loath to say a word until they toppled the system that had committed
this crime? Who can explain why those who were supposed to protect the truth
were guided by their own petty interests instead of countering the murderous
idol-worshipping and the triumphant lies?

"We do believe that Christ took upon Himself the innumerable and
unfathomable human sufferings, while the Ukrainian peasants, who experienced
these, will find consolation in Christ. And let the admission of this
terrible crime help nations to embark on the path of love, truth and valor."
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER TEN
=========================================================
10. SERGIY LEBID OF UKRAINE WINS THE CROSS-COUNTRY
RACE AGAIN FOR A PLACE AMONG LEGENDS
Most Prolific Winner of Medals In These Championships

By Doug Gillon, The Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, December 15, 2003

EDINBURGH........With a record-shredding run which claimed the men's title
by 21 seconds, Sergiy Lebid carved a special niche in the annals of
cross-country running yesterday in Edinburgh. If Paula Radcliffe's victory
again taxed the lexicon of superlatives, the 28-year-old from Ukraine is
only marginally less of a legend himself.

A fourth victory from the only man to have contested all 10 editions of the
European Championships put him alongside Portugal's Paulo Guerra, also a
four-time winner, but Guerra was a spent force yesterday, finishing 29th.

It was Lebid's first outing this winter over the country, but having
prepared at altitude, he was confident, and translated that to an easy
victory over Juan de la Ossa (Spain), with Portugal's Eduardo Henriques, the
1999 runner-up, in third.

In doing so, Lebid became the most prolific winner of medals in these
championships. This was his third successive victory. He also won in 1998,
and he has bronze from 1997, plus silver from 2000.

"It got easier lap by lap, and was one of the easiest victories I have had,"
he said.

He and Guerra are the only European males to have stemmed the medal monopoly
by African-born males at the world championships since 1989, but Lebid said
last night that he believed he can now beat them all.

"I can beat the Kenyans, and I can win. However my preparations for the
world cross are often hampered by the bad weather in Ukraine . I'm planning
to run the long race at the worlds, the world indoor 3000m, and the 5000m at
the Olympic Games."

In a frantic team race, France claimed the title from Spain. They tied on 47
points, but the French had their fourth finisher home before their rivals.
Portugal were third with 65 and Great Britain seventh on 126.

Peter Riley was sixteenth, first Briton home, in the most disappointing race
of the day for the UK.

For the second successive year, the Rybakov twins, Yevgeniy and Anatoliy,
took gold and silver for Russia in the men's junior race. Both were given
the same time, and for the first time in the history of the championships,
there was a complete medal sweep as Aleksey Reunkov took third for Russia,
one second behind. His twin brother, Sergey, was also in the race but
finished 43rd......................................" (END)(ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER ELEVEN
=========================================================
11.MORITURI TE SALUTANT, REMEMBERING MYKOLA KHVYLIOVYI
Born Dec 13, 1893, Put A Bullet Through His Head On May 13, 1933

By Prof. James MACE, Consultant to The Day
The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec 16, 2003

On December 13, 1893, 110 years ago, Nikolai FitilÑv, who would make history

under the penname of Mykola Khvyliovyi, was born. Ukraine has never asked
many questions about where one came from, in this case of a writer of
clearly Russian origin, if only one wanted to traverse the road together
with Ukraine. Of the many tragedies Ukraine suffered in the terrible year of
1933, one of the greatest happened on May 13 of that year, when Mykola
Khvyliovyi put a bullet through his head, symbolically marking the end of
the period remembered as the rozstriliane vidrodzhennia, literally the
renaissance that was put in front of the firing squad.

The literary rebirth that accompanied the decade of Ukrainization (1923-
1933) was intimately bound up with a phenomenon, still poorly understood in
Ukraine, that of national communism, through which Ukrainian Communists
sought their own national road to socialism within the context of the early
Soviet Union. Both ended tragically in the whirlwind of the Holodomor
famine-genocide of 1932-33.

Khvyliovyi ended his life six months short of his fortieth birthday. It was
a terrible time, a time of death and destruction that only be described as
the murder of everything productive and creative in the Ukraine that had
hitherto existed in what was then the Ukrainian SSR. There is a phrase that
occurs over and over in the Ukrainian literature of the 1920s; morituri te
salutant, the ritual Latin phrase of the Roman gladiators, those who go to
their deaths salute you. Not only Khvyliovyi went to his death. Almost all
of the literary revival of his generation were either killed, repressed,
forced into emigration, or otherwise silenced.

Yet, one of the handful that survived, Yury Smolych, wrote over thirty years
ago that all of his generation recognized Khvyliovyi as their elder brother,
elder not in years but in talent. The Ukrainian Revolution produced a
situation reminiscent of Dickens' description of the French: the best of
times and the worst of times. Khvyliovyi led a generation that tried to
create a new world only to be offered up to the idol they had created.

The rozstriliane vidrodzhennia was a golden age for modern Ukrainian
literature and in general for what was called the Ukrainian cultural
process. Essentially what had happened was this: in 1923 at its Twelfth
Congress, the All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik) (VKP{b}) made a major
bid for non-Russian support by adopting a policy called indigenization
(korenizatsiya) by literally taking root in soil inhabited by non-Russian
peoples, and since the Ukrainians were by far the largest of those peoples
and their country the most important, the Ukrainian version of that policy,
known as Ukrainization, went farther and deeper, which is one reason why its
suppression cost the destruction of the hitherto existing Communist Party
cadres in Ukraine, the intelligentsia that had grown up loyal to the
national communist regime, and the millions of innocent villagers who were
starved to death in the Holodomor.

In any case, when the Communists in Ukraine were ordered to make themselves
more Ukrainian and support things Ukrainian, they did it in their typically
authoritarian bureaucratic fashion. People were literally ordered to learn
Ukrainian, and not a few resented it. Yet, a new generation of literary
lions produced a whole of constellation of new talents unprecedented and
still without equal brilliance in the entire firmament of the history of
Ukrainian literature. And no star shined brighter than that of Khvyliovyi,
who reigned as unchallenged king of the literary pride of lions that was
Ukrainian literature in the 1920s.

After eighty years we can only imagine the golden opportunity that they must
have felt in the very air they breathed. Their nation, suppressed for
centuries, suddenly confronted the modern world. Those who worked with
words were true pioneers who had to find the words to express, in a language
hitherto largely confined to the mundane life of the villager, the
subtleties of Einstein's theory of relativity and the ideas underlying their

efforts to build a new world in which their nation and language had got the
chance to take its rightful place.

The members of that generation asked and tried to answer questions as broad
as some god might when pondering what kind of world to create, for they felt
themselves engaged in creating a whole new cultural universe. How ought
Ukrainian culture to develop. In what direction? With what models to guide
it? What kind of culture should it be? The very fact that such questions
were asked can only begin to indicate the enthusiasm of those who felt
themselves to be creators of a new world.

Khvyliovyi himself is a joy to read. The late George Shevelov (Yury
ShevelÑov) mentioned how Khvyliovyi loved the smell of word, weaving them
into arabesques, ordering them in melancholic processions and arraying them
in dancing groups. He could be humorous as in his satire on a local
Proletsult group whose members were so militant that they imagined the
trains tooting ka-pay-bay-oo, the initials of the Communist Party
(bolshevik) of Ukraine, or tragic in exploring the tensions of his own
ambivalence toward the revolution that had promised and taken so much but
yielded so little of that promise, the theme of his "Ya (Romantyka)" and his
partially destroyed novel, Valdshnepy (The Woodsnipes).

A Party member and the most popular Soviet Ukrainian writer of his day,
Khvyliovyi took it upon himself to be the spokesman for his creative clan,
challenging the restrictions that writers always find so hateful and
enunciating their collective vision of a Ukrainian proletarian culture that
would be European and break with the tutelage of Russian culture. He defied
the restrictions he felt had been imposed by the traditions of Taras
Shevchenko, who had more than anyone defined what it means to be Ukrainian,
and of the Prosvita network of village self-improvement societies that
sought to bring Ukrainian culture to a peasant people, even if that
sometimes required watering it down to a level accessible to those the
village. His antidote to the lowering of the level of Ukrainian culture was
to assimilate the highest attainments of European culture without going
through the mediation of Russian culture that had so limited things
Ukrainian in the past and perhaps even today continues to do so.

Perhaps in a stratagem to find some ally to counter the dominance of Russian
culture in the Ukraine of his day, Khvyliovyi even articulated a novel
theory Ukrainian cultural messianism, based on the argument that Ukrainians
were in a unique position. On the one hand, they were a formerly colonial
people that had now been told they had achieved national liberation as part
of the Soviet Union and had their own national minorities, whose rights they
had to protect. On the other hand, they were a European nation able to
master all the attainments of European culture, which he recognized as the
highest attainments in all human history, the attainment of a West that was
now - and here he followed and modified Oswald Spengler - in decline caused
by its decadent capitalism and would inevitably be forced from center stage
by the youthful energy of the rising colonial peoples of the East.

As a European country armed with all the greatness of European cultural
history, Ukraine could then act as something of a transmission belt in
conveying this greatness to the East, thereby leading an Asiatic renaissance
of peoples united in the anti-imperialist struggle for world communism,
which he understood as social justice, albeit flawed in how it was being
carried out. This did not, Khvyliovyi argued, imply any disloyalty to the
Soviet Union, which he argued was a military and political union joined in
the defense of socialism against a hostile capitalist world. But, in his
view, this did not extend to culture, where Ukraine had its own unique and
historically progressive role to play.

This quite novel view did exactly win friends and influence people in
Moscow, where Yosip Stalin on April 26, 1926 wrote and sent a letter to
"Comrade Kaganovich and Other Members of the KP(b)U Central Committee
Politburo," denounced Khvyliovyi's views as representing the "dark side of
Ukrainization," views that could lead to a struggle against Russian culture
as such and "its highest attainment, Leninism." Having been denounced from
the very summit of political power in the Soviet Union, Khvyliovyi had to
admit that he had fallen prey to a national deviation, khvyliovism, but
protected by his own influential friends in Ukraine's Party establishment,
especially the Commissar of Education and self-proclaimed Commissar of the
National Question Mykola Skrypnyk, he continued to play a central role in
his nation's cultural process and continued to be the Soviet Ukrainian
writer with more readers than anybody else writing in Soviet Ukraine at the
time. A survey of book-lending institutions published as Kost Dovhan,
"Ukrainian Literature and the Mass Reader" (Ukrainska literatura i masovyi
chytach), Krytyka, 1928, No. 8, tells us so.

The fire in his literary output was put out about that very same time, when
as part of the orgy of officially orchestrated paranoia and forced orthodoxy
that accompanied a so-called Cultural Revolution imposed in connection with
the coming collectivization of agriculture and "liquidation of the kulaks as
a class," literature and culture were straightjacketed along with just about
everything else and everybody had to think and write pretty much the same
things. A year earlier he had been invited abroad by dissident members of
the Communist Party of Western Ukraine with the suggestion he serve as their
ideologist. He declined, and perhaps this was what made his untimely end
inevitable. Still he remained influential and was appointed to the
organizing committee for the Union of Soviet Writers that would be created
the year after his death.

According to an article by Arkady Liubchenko, secretary of Khvyliovyi's
Vaplite (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature) group of writers, in 1933,
in the midst of the terror in anti-Ukrainian terror associated with Pavel
Postyshev, Stalin's newly appointed satrap of the second Soviet republic,
Khvyliovyi was sent to the countryside and saw for himself all the horrors
of the Holodomor. He returned and tried to explain to his friends in the
Party that it was a mistake, only to discover that it was no mistake: the
manmade famine was a deliberate policy. And it was this realization that
cast the writer into the despair that led him to suicide.

His own letters, published only after Ukraine became independent, indicate
that he saw more and more the how the pattern of arrests of like-minded
Ukrainian writers was clearly directed at the destruction of everything he
had worked to create and develop. For whatever reason, and it was most
likely a combination of both, the writer committed suicide on May 13, 1933.
His romantic vitaism, his praise of life in all its romantic splendor, was
replaced by the straightjacket of socialist realism, the Soviet commandment
to portray life the way it ought to be in the eyes of the rulers, a way
those who were ruled over knew it could never become and was the exact
opposite of anything that existed in real life.

Khvyliovyi's works, so beloved by his countrymen, were banned, and it was
pretended that he and those like him had never existed or that everything
they had created had been somehow a bane concocted by the enemies of what
came to be known as real socialism. Thus, Ukrainian culture was cut off its
richest treasures, and only after independence could that treasure be
unearthed. The process of restoring that history, the continuity of the
process that was so violently halted in literature as in so much else,
continues in this postgenocidal society. It is part of a healing process
that will take no one knows how much time.

But at least the process of restoring what was taking away is taking place,
and remembering Mykola Khvyliovyi is a vital part of that process. His Tvory
(Works) published in two thick volumes by Dnipro Publishers in 1991 is must
reading for all who wish to understand the full meaning of what Ukraine
could have become and of what the world was denied in its being prevented
from so doing. The crime of genocide consists not only in the deaths of
millions but also in the deaths of those individuals who gave those millions
voice. The clearest and most resonant voice of Ukraine in the 1920s was that
of Mykola Khvyliovyi.

Real socialism actually began to come to an end at the end of the 1980s when
Ukrainian scholars like Mykola Zhulynsky first dared to seriously discuss
figures like Khvyliovyi in newspapers like Literaturna Ukrayina. Other
figures like Mykhailo Hrushevsky, not only Ukraine's greatest historian but
also president of the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917-1918, and Oleksandr
Shumsky, the tragic leader of the Borotbist Ukrainian
Socialist-Revolutionaries who left the Ukrainian cause for the Bolshevik
one, was arrested in 1933, and later, upon his release from the Gulag,
murdered on the personal orders of Stalin and his most trusted lieutenant,
Lazar Kaganovich.

In order to understand the full tragedy of what happened to Ukraine in the
twentieth century, one must first understand the height of their hopes and
only then the depth of their betrayal. In Khvyliovyi one can find how he saw
things starting to go wrong in the 1920s with its omnipresent informers and
OGPU, and his vision influenced even such implacable anti-Communists as
Dmytro Dontsov and Stepan Bandera. Khvyliovyi placed the choice squarely:
Ukraine in Europe or Little Russia.

Now on the 110th anniversary of his birth, it is worthwhile to reread him,
attempt to understand the tragedy of his life and times in the terrible
contrast of his vision of the beautiful commune just over the hill and the
reality of national matricide, starving millions, and the omnipresent
repression of any independent thought that might come from anywhere but
Moscow, enshrined in a 1934 Pravda editorial as the capital of the workers
of the whole world.

Moscow, of course, bears no blame for this - those who live there are for
the most part fine people - but those who ruled in its name bear much blame
as do those who so recently attacked the action of The Day and so many
others to light a candle for those who died before their time in the 1930s.
Not all of them were of the village. Mykola Khvyliovyi deserves a candle not
only in the window but a flame that burns eternally in our hearts.
(END)(ARTUIS)
=========================================================
UKRAINE REPORT 2003, No. 114: ARTICLE NUMBER TWELVE
=========================================================
12. DEBATE DELAYS PRESERVATION OF UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX
CHURCH BUILT IN 1917 IN NORTH DAKOTA

By Richard Volesky, The Dickinson Press
Dickinson, North Dakota, Saturday, December 13, 2003

BELFIELD, ND....Hopes of preserving a vacant Ukrainian Orthodox church
here remain tied up in a question of ownership.

Area residents, plus Preservation North Dakota, an organization based in
Buffalo, N.D., advanced the idea of repairing the 86-year-old church earlier
this year. The organization also had named the church as one of the state's
most endangered historical structures.

Membership in the Orthodox church dropped as the area's population declined.
Weekly worship services were last held in the building in the 1950s.

There were discussions this past spring that the church's exterior would be
painted and its roof would be repaired during the summer.

However, what has happened instead is a court case was filed, and a judge is
being asked to determine the building's legal owner.

"We'd like to proceed with the update of the church," said Sam Pasicznyk of
Dickinson, who brought the lawsuit along with Marie Makaruk, also of
Dickinson, and John Ktytor of Bismarck. "We'd like to see it preserved."

Pasicznyk, Makaruk and Kytyor are descendants of the church's original
members.

The defendants in the court case are Steven Palaniuk and George Struchynski,
both of Bismarck, and Mitchell Palaniuk of New Leipzig. They also are
descendants of the original parishioners.

Nick Namyniuk, who died in 1989, was the registered agent for church's
non-profit corporation.

Mitchell Palaniuk said they also want the church preserved. However, he
indicated he resented how others decided to "take over" the property. The
Palaniuk family holds the keys to the building, and has been covering the
cost of maintenance, such as mowing, over the years.

Mitchell Palaniuk directed further questions to his Bismarck attorney, Shane
Hanson.

Hanson, citing church meeting minutes, said that since the 1980s, the
Palaniuks and Struchynski have been the church's trustees.

But in 2001, the North Dakota Secretary of State's Office dissolved the
church's corporate status because the required annual reports were not being
filed. The trustees weren't aware of the lack of the reports, said Hanson.

Pasicznyk, Makaruk and Kytyor are the officers of a new corporation that was
created to replace the dissolved entity.

Earlier this year, a museum board was formed to oversee plans to repair the
building and to operate it as a museum. The board, which includes
descendants of church members and others, was created in order to raise
money and to collect a possible grant from Preservation North Dakota.

Pasiczynk's research shows the church board purchased the lots on which the
church is located from the Palaniuks in 1951.

Dickinson attorney Al Hardy, who represents the new church corporation,
argued that because of the dissolution, the title to the property is
defective. Therefore, the successor corporation is entitled to have the
title, he said in court papers.

No hearings have been set in the court case. Meanwhile, no grant money is
forthcoming. Dale Bentley, executive director of Preservation North Dakota,
said the ownership issue would have to be resolved first before there could
be a grant. (END) (ARTUIS)
=========================================================
. "UKRAINE REPORT 2003," No. 114: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2003
TWELVE ARTICLES
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