1_January 6, 2002 - The Ukrainian Weekly

42 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2002
No. 1
2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Andrew Nynka
U.N. Undersecretary-General Kenzo Oshima rings the peace bell at the United Nations on April 26 to mark the
15th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
Orthodox Church; Bohdan Khmelnytskyi; Josyf Slipyi
(1892-1984), Ukrainian Catholic patriarch and cardinal;
Ivan Franko; Leonid Kravchuk (1934- ), first president
of Ukraine after its modern independence; and Stefan
Bandera (1909-1959), nationalist, politician and ideologue
of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
• In October 1985, a Ukrainian sailor named
Myroslav Medvid dove off the Soviet freighter Marshal
Koniev in the port of New Orleans, seeking political
asylum in the United States. Although the United States
ultimately sent him back to the Soviet Union, the Rev.
Myroslav Medvid, ordained a priest of the Ukrainian
Greek-Catholic Church in 1990, returned to the United
States almost 16 years after his initial quest for asylum
on the invitation of the Ukrainian Congress Committee
of America (UCCA).
Mr. Medvid met on January 30 with Sen. Jesse
Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, who had supported his cause by
issuing a subpoena for Mr. Medvid to appear before the
Senate Agricultural Committee, which the senator then
chaired. He also met with former Pennsylvania Rep.
Dan Ritter, and visited the Ukrainian communities in
Philadelphia, Newark, New York, Chicago, Cleveland
and Buffalo, as well as the Ukrainian Catholic diocese
in Stamford, Conn.
• President George W. Bush nominated Paula J.
Dobriansky, an American of Ukrainian descent, for the
position of undersecretary of state for global affairs on
March 12. The Senate confirmed the nomination, putting
Ms. Dobriansky at the helm of the office that coordinates
U.S. foreign relations on a variety of global
issues, including democracy, human rights and labor;
environment, oceans and science; narcotics control and
law enforcement; population refugees and migration;
and women’s issues.
Later, President Bush also appointed Ms. Dobriansky
coordinator of Tibetan issues. The position was created
by Congress to promote dialogue between the Chinese
government in Beijing and the Dalai Lama, the exiled
Tibetan leader, and to protect Tibetan identity. The
Chinese government has long expressed displeasure
with the relationship between the United States and the
Dalai Lama.
• Nicholas Krawciw, major general, U.S. Army
(retired), was honored at the 2001 Leadership
Conference, held on October 19-21, with The
Washington Group Award for his efforts in promoting
closer U.S.-Ukraine military ties. Gen. Krawciw is currently
the president of the Dupuy Institute, a military
history research center in MacLean, Va., and a consultant
on Ukraine in the Office of the Assistant Secretary
of Defense, International Security Policy (OASD-ISP).
Over his 31 years of military service, Gen. Krawciw
saw diverse assignments, from combat in Vietnam to a
post as the senior U.S. observer and chief operations officer
with the United Nations Truce Supervision
Organization in and around Israel during the period of the
Yom Kippur War. He amassed a long list of decorations
over the years, including the Defense Distinguished
Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal,
three awards of the Silver Star, a Distinguished Flying
Cross, two Legion of Merit awards, four Bronze Stars
(two for valor), and a Purple Heart.
• Ukrainian American World War II Flight Nurse
Evelyn Kowalchuk was honored in Bedford, Va., at the
D-Day Memorial dedication on June 6, attended by
President George W. Bush. A native of Newark, N.J.,
U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Kowalchuk served 37
years ago in the 818th Medical Evac Transport
Squadron, logging numerous missions tending the
wounded as they were evacuated to English hospitals
from the beaches at Normandy.
Mrs. Kowalchuk said of the wounded soldiers they
picked up, “They were scared. They didn’t cry ... they
were just glad to be on an American plane. There was
this one time I let a young soldier, who was bleeding to
death, just rest his head in my lap while I sang him an
old Ukrainian lullaby. He just needed to feel that closeness.”
• In a commentary by Andrew Stuttaford published on
May 15, the National Review Online, reprinted with permission
in The Ukrainian Weekly, challenged The New
York Times to remove Walter Duranty from its honor roll
of Pulitzer Prize winners. Walter Duranty was a correspondent
for the Times who reported on the situation in
Stalin’s Soviet Union, praising the Stalinist regime and
denying the existence of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-
1933. While his work has been discredited and The New
York Times itself has acknowledged that Duranty’s writing
was “some of the worst reporting to appear in the
newspaper,” he remains on the annual list of Pulitzer
Prize winners published by the newspaper.
• Twenty-two-year-old Connecticut-born Joseph
Sywenkyj’s photographs of Chornobyl’s aftereffects
were prominently displayed at the United Nations 10th
Conference on “Health and the Environment” as an
emotional reminder of the world’s worst civilian nuclear
disaster.
The Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (CCRF) sent
Mr. Sywenkyj, a summer intern, to capture on film the
reality of the hospitals and orphanages affected by
Chornobyl. Said Mr. Sywenkyj, “No matter what their
condition, the minute I showed up it was something new
for them. Something interesting. I think it broke up the
monotony of their everyday routine. In general, most of
the people were flattered and really happy about it. They
felt as though someone was paying attention to them.”
• The tall ship Batkivschyna, a 90-foot schooner that
set sail from Kyiv in April 1999 and participated in Op
Sail 2000 in New London, Conn., spent the summer
touring the United States, visiting Chicago for a celebration
of Ukraine’s 10th anniversary of independence.
Along the way, the ship visited Hartford and New
Haven, Conn., and Albany and Utica, N.Y., and then
entered the Great Lakes, with stops at Rochester,
Buffalo, Cleveland Detroit, Bay City, Muskegon and
Milwaukee. The Batkivschyna’s mission is to raise
awareness of Ukraine and to raise funds for the
Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (CCRF). Capt.
Dmitrii Birioukovitch, his nephew, his wife, and his
crew will return to Ukraine after circumnavigating the
globe by 2004.
• In a solemn commemoration marking the 15th
anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, the
10th International Conference on Health and the
Environment dedicated April 26 to re-evaluating the
medical aftereffects and continuing illnesses that have
plagued Ukraine, Russia and Belarus due to the nuclear
fallout from Chornobyl. The session included government
employees, physicians and scientists in the fields
of nuclear energy, cancer research and pediatrics who
emphasized the health impact the Chornobyl nuclear
power plant catastrophe has had and will continue to
have for future generations.
• “Thousands of Roads,” an autobiographical account
of the life of Maria Savchyn Pyskir, who lived under the
pseudonym Marichka during World War II, was published
this year. The book tells the story of Marichka’s
involvement with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and her marriage to Orlan, an UPA leader. At one point,
Marichka was forced to jump out a window and abandon
her son to escape enemy capture. According to the
book, Marichka defiantly told KGB interrogators, “You
wish you had people who would dedicate themselves to
communism the way we dedicated ourselves to our
cause.”
• “Enough,” a children’s book by Marsha Forchuk
Skrypuch was released in March 2001 in the United
States. The book describes how a fictional girl rescues
Natalie Sluzar
Nicholas Krawciw, major general of the U.S. Army
(retired) was honored on October 20 with The
Washington Group Award for his efforts in promoting
U.S.-Ukraine military ties.