aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list/a] Open Letter from Representatives of Ukraine'sCreative Intelligentsia

[Robert DeLossa <radelo@earthlink.net>]

[from Roman Senkus <r.senkus@utoronto.ca>; Roman has forwarded a 
number of important news items about the forthcoming Ukrainian 
election. My apologies to those for whom this will be a double 
post.--RD]

>From:   "Jaroslav Rozumnyj" <rozumnyj@Ms.UManitoba.CA>
>To:     r.senkus@utoronto.ca
>Date:   Sun, 24 Oct 2004 13:50:30 -0500


An Open Letter from Representatives of Ukraine's Creative Intelligentsia

Dear fellow countrymen,

Most of us have no connection to politics. But today, when the fate 
of Ukraine (and the destinies of each one of us!) is being decided 
for many years into the future, we cannot, and indeed have no right, 
to remain silent.

Not so long ago we were certain that independence for Ukraine would 
mean not only the well-being of its citizens but also the burgeoning 
of culture and the formation of a society comprised of free and 
spiritually wealthy people. Unfortunately, reality has shattered our 
expectations.

The point is not just that the preponderant majority of Ukrainians 
still lives in poverty and lawlessness. Ukrainian literature, film, 
music performance, and everything that is loftily termed "culture" 
have also turned out to be completely without any rights. In this 
kind of state, the authorities do not have a single clue about the 
significance of culture in the life of the nation, for Russian pop 
entirely satisfies their spiritual quests.

However, the worst thing is that in the last while fear is once again 
creeping into people's souls. Today they are often afraid of speaking 
freely, in case they lose the very last things in their 
possessionwork and a piece of bread. Instead of a cozy European home 
with its attendant prosperous life and respect for the law, once 
again we are being offered Eurasian spaces with their eternal evils, 
barbarity, and despotism.

We realize that the road along which the current state leadership has 
been leading us is the road to nowhere. That is why we want changes 
and expect that the elections on October 31 will bring us these 
changes. Therefore, we absolutely reject the candidate proposed by 
the current government, which is promising us "continuity of the 
political course," and hence the spiraling growth of bureaucratic 
arbitrariness that goes unpunished and the progressive spiritual and 
moral decline of Ukraine.

Recently we acquired another piece of evidence indicating that Viktor 
Yanukovych's victory in the elections will be a national catastrophe 
for Ukraine. After promising to grant state status to the Russian 
language, the government's candidate in fact passed sentence on the 
Ukrainian language, which even in the circumstances of official 
"unilingualism" actually remains in the backyard, so to speak, 
squeezed out of the publishing, media, audio, and video markets in 
its own state. The Russian producer has almost complete sway over all 
these spheres, which are strategically important for national 
self-identity. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine what Ukraine 
will look like under conditions of official "bilingualism."

At risk is a thousand-year-old culture of a great European people, 
who struggled for centuries for their liberty, lived through wars and 
genocidal famines, mass repressions, and forced deportations. Still 
they managed to bestow on humanity Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Les 
Kurbas, Maksym Berezovsky and Mykola Lysenko, Solomia Krushelnytska 
and Ivan Franko, Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka. Today they want 
to ultimately divest us of the very underpinnings of a nation's 
identityits culture and history, its memory and dignity. Only a 
pitiful, semi-colonial Third World dictatorship will remain of 
Ukraine, a faceless marketplace for cheap labor and cannon fodder for 
use by the criminal authorities.

Therefore, today we have no right to give away a single Ukrainian 
vote to Yanukovych. Wishing a good, honorable life for ourselves, our 
children, and our grandchildren, we should, regardless of our 
political preferences, rally around Viktor Yushchenko, who is the 
only one today who has a chance to vanquish the candidate of the 
criminal government.

We believe in Ukraine's democratic European future. However, we can 
help to advance this prospect only if we take a conscious stand in 
the elections on October 31.


Oksana ZABUZHKO
Oleh SKRYPKA
Maksym STRIKHA
Dmytro PAVLYCHKO
Maria BURMAKA
Sviatoslav VAKARCHUK
Ivan MALKOVYCH (?)
Yevhen STANKOVYCH
Maria STEF'IUK (?)
Yuri ILLIENKO
Taras POLATAIKO
Maryna ROMANETS
Yarema POLATAIKO
Oleksa ROMANETS

Etc................This list is ongoing and cumulative.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Marta D. Olynyk