www.ukrweekly.com I Щ Published by the Ukrainian National Association Inc.. c. a frafrnat non-profit associitionj rainian Ш V Vol. LVI No. 34 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, AUGUST 21,1988 50 cents Exiled Armenian activist tiigliligiits Andriy Sverstiuk comes to U.S. movements for self-determination to visit ailing daughter, Hanna by Chrystyna N. Lapychak troops sent to quell the unrest. and Marta Kolomayets "There are only two options," said Mr. Airikian, who arrived in New York NEW YORK - Paruir Airikian, a from Europe on August 12. "Either they leader of the Armenian national rights (the authorities) will deport most movement expelled from the Soviet Armenians from this region ...or they Union in late July, shed light on the so- will be forced to decide this problem in a called democratization effort in relation positive way... if the population stays to Soviet nationalities policy in one of there and is not deported, the only his first U.S. interviews on August 15. choice they (Moscow) will have is to A veteran of Soviet labor camps and actually accept whatever their demands prisons, Mr. Airikian only last week are." completed a three-week odyssey that "It's impossible for Armenians in that started on July 21, when he was stripped region to accept" the status quo, "parti­ of his Soviet citizenship and forced cularly after (the violent riots of) onto a flight from Moscow to Addis Sumgait," said the activist, who was ar­ Ababa, Ethiopia. He was reportedly rested in late March for disclosing a list held there in a hotel by KGB agents for of Sumgait victims to Western cor­ four days as he protested his expulsion, respondents in Moscow. before he was freed and able to request During the interview, the activist com­ political asylum at the U.S. Embassy. pared and contrasted the nature of the The 39-year-old dissident said that various national movements in Arme­ the current national movements in nia, Georgia, the Baltic states and several Soviet republics, including his Ukraine. own Armenia, were in fact struggles for "At the time I was arrested I was well- democratic self-determination, and informed of the directions that are being could not be reduced as they have been by taken in the other republics," he said. "I Moscow to merely inter-ethnic conflict. especially had close associations with "The main operative word here is Ukrainians. democracy," said Mr. Airikian, the "We (the Armenian movement) had leader of the Armenian Union for Self agreed to cooperate with the Ukrai­ Determination, during an August 15 nians on general democratic and human interview at the Center for Democracy. rights issues: we agreed to cooperate on "There should be democratic ways of other questions, including cultural, na­ resolving" questions raised by various tional, ecological ... the only thing we iiill...............................^^ national groups," he said through an did not agree to cooperate on was a. ^Ш^^^^^^^Шш^ШШШШШШШШШШШШШ^^'і^^^^^і^:^^ interpreter. "What this means is if there movement to secede, an independence A wheelchair-bound Andriy Sverstiuk (center) is reunited with his wife, Maria are popular demands by the majority of movement. The Ukrainians felt they (left) and family friend, Nadia Svitlychna upon arrival in New York. people they should be met" by the were not ready for this. They believed by Chrystyna N. Lapychak daughter, Hanna, who came to the authorities. that the people were not ready for this. United States last month for medical He spoke specifically about a "They feel that they have problems that NEW YORK - Andriy Sverstiuk, treatment. resolution of the issue of the Nagorno- are more important, sucn as the the 30-year-old paralytic son of Ukrai­ Pan Am flight no. 31 from Moscow, Karabakh region, populated mostly by problem of language and of self- nian national rights activist Yevhen carrying the well-known Ukrainian Armenians but located in the Azeri determination," said Mr. Airikian, who Sverstiuk, arrived in New York on dissident's only son, landed at New republic. Demands by the region's co-founded the All-Union Committee August 14 to an emotional reunion with York's JFK International Airport at populace to secede from Azerbaidzhan (Continued on page 4) his wife, Maria and two-year-old 3:50 p.m. Mr. Sverstiuk, a physician, and join Armenia were refused by a was wheeled out on a wheelchair after Kremlin vote on July 18 and instead passing through customs and was were met with thousands of Soviet addresses greeted by a small entourage of well- wishers, including his 23-year-old spouse, two Ukrainian dissidents and a blank spots in western Ukraine's history handful of Ukrainian Americans. by Bohdan Nahaylo campaign against the Ukrainian na­ Mr. Sverstiuk received permission to tionalist resistance. He also calls for the travel to the United States last week In an outspoken article calling erection of monuments to the victims of following a plea by doctors at the for the removal of "blank spots" Stalin's man-made famine in Ukraine in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on in modern Ukrainian history, a poet 1932-33 and to the victims of Stalin's behalf of his desperately-ill daughter, from western Ukraine has boldly decimation of the Ukrainian cultural Hanna, who is undergoing a six-week touched on several subjects that were intelligentsia. program of radiation therapy for brain hitherto taboo. Mr. Bratun, a 61-year-old member of cancer at that facility. In a telegram sent Rostyslav Bratun, writing in the the Ukrainian Writers'Union and of the to Mr. Sverstiuk at the family's resi­ Ukrainian Komsomol daily Molod Communist Party, devotes his article to dence in Kiev, the hospital requested his Ukrainy, refers, among other things, to discussing "blank spots" in the history presence for moral and emotional the arrest of communists by the Soviet of western Ukraine. This region was support for his family for the duration authorities after the incorporation of formerly ruled by Austria-Hungary and of the toddler's treatment. western Ukraine into the Soviet Union then Poland, but in 1939, as a result of In April 1987, Mr. Sverstiuk fell intaai in 1939, the execution of political the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it passed construction site while taking a stroU prisoners in western Ukrainian jails at into Soviet hands. It has long been a with his wife in the historic Podol the outbreak of World War II, and the bastion of Ukrainian nationalism and district of Kiev, where there was much mass repressions in the region after the the stronghold of Ukrainian Catholi- construction and renovsition going on. Paruir Airikian war which accompanied that Soviet (Continued on page 2) (Continued on page 3) THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 1988 No. 34 What Mr. Bratun has to sav about the Ukrainian poet... post-war vears is я novel denartnrp He emphasizes that it is important not to GLASNOST DIARY: (Continued from page 1) forget how cruelly Innocent people were cism. dealt with in the name of combatting recording changes in the USSR The history of western Ukraine is a Ukrainian nationalism. particularly sensitive area right now for From his personal experience he pelago; soon afterward, he was arrested, two other reasons: the area was former­ recalls how in the second half of the Classic Solzhenitsyn formally accused of treason, stripped of ly under Poland and what occurred 1940s he came across freight cars his citizenship and forcibly deported to there form some of the blank spots in protected by rolls of wire. Inside were Expelled from the Soviet Union in the West, where he eventually settled in Soviet"Polish history; and next year will women and children from the Car­ 1974, for "anti-Soviet slander," Ale­ Vermont. see the 50th anniversary of the Soviet pathian foothills who were being de­ xander Solzhenitsyn was hailed last takeover of this region. ported and did not know why. week by a Moscow weekly as the author The urge to purge Mr. Bratun's account of what befell "Why, for what reason were entire of one of the great classics of Russian Ukraine under Soviet rule makes grim villages deported?" the poet asks. "Time literature. According to a librarian from the reading. The poet begins by describing passes," he adds, "but the pain and The classic, "One Day in the Life of Crimea region, public libraries in some what occurred when Soviet forces bitterness from injustice remains." Ivan Denisovich," was described as "an Soviet cities have been ordered to occupied western Ukraine in September Mr. Bratun also mentions the artifi­ outstanding event in [Soviet] literary, remove from their shelves all political 1939. The Soviet "liberators" imme­ cial famine in Ukraine which claimed moral and spiritual life," by Moscow and economic books written before diately made it clear that there were the lives of millions. He writes that one News. Although the book was banned 1985 (the year Mikhail Gorbachev certain questions concerning Stalinist of his first childhood memories is of in the Soviet Union, in recent years, it assumed his leadership role). repression in the USSR that should not western Ukrainian villagers collecting had been permitted publication in 1962 In a letter written to Izvestia, the to be asked. food to help their starving brothers as a result of the personal intervention librarian, I. Zavgorodnaya states: "So it The first to be arrested were across the border only to have their aid of Nikita Khrushchev, who wanted to turns out that, even as we open up the the local communists. Even some of the rejected. The poet wonders why so little encourage anti-Stalinist sentiment.