T he U krainian Review A quarterly journal devoted to the study of Ukraine Spring, 1992 THE UKRAINIAN REVIEW A Quarterly Journal devoted to the study of Ukraine EDITORIAL BOARD Slava Stetsko Roman Zwarycz Editor Associate Editor Prof. Nicholas L. Fr.-Chirovsky Borys Potapenko Assistant Editor Associate Editor Prof. Lev Shankovsky Dr. Oleh S. Romanyshyn Assistant Editor Associate. Editor Prof. Volodymyr Zarycky Stephen Oleskiw Assistant Editor Associate Editor Price: £5.00 or $10.00 a single copy, Annual Subscription: £20.00 or $40.00 Editorial correspondence should be sent to: The Editors, “The Ukrainian Review”, 200 Liverpool Road, London, N1 ILF. Subscriptions should be sent to: “The Ukrainian Review” (Administration), do Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, Ltd., 49 Linden Gardens, London, W2 4HG. Overseas representatives: USA: Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine, Inc., 136 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003. Canada: Ucrainica Research Institute, 83-85 Christie Street, Toronto,Ont. M6G 3B1. Printed, in Great Britain by the Ukrainian Publishers Limited 200 Liverpool Road, London, N1 ILF. Tel.: 071-007-626617 T h e U k r a in ia n R ev iew C ontents Editorial: A N ew W orld Order, or a Restructuring of the Old? 2 Politics Ex Oriente Lux Roman Zwarycz 3 W ill the Russian Eagle Turn into a Phoenix? Ihor Dlaboha 13 History “M y N eighbours Want to Kill M e . A Study of U kraine D uring the Interwar Period (Part 1) Peter E. Lycholat 18 Literature H er Excellency— A d r a m a t ic p o e m in f iv e a c t s Lesya Ukrainka Introductory Remarks ( E d .) ................................................................28 Act I ........................................................................................................31 Act I I ........................................................................................................43 NEWS FROM UKRAINE ................................................................ 55 DOCUMENTS & R E PO R T S ......................................................... 73 B O O K S ................................................................................................. 95 Published by The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain Ltd. Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine Inc. (U.S.A.) Ucrainica Research Institute (Canada) ISSN 0041-6029 EDITORIAL A New World Order, or a Restructuring of the Old? In recent months much has been said and written about the imminent emergence of a “new world order” that will purportedly lead to a more stable and peaceful system of international relations, in which any emerging conflicts can remain “regionalised” and subject to the control of the self-proclaimed forces of stability in the world. Peace and stability in the “old order” were primarily a function of a policy somewhat euphemistically referred to as “deterrence”, or what in effect amounted to nuclear blackmail (“mutually assured destruction” — MAD). The two leading co-architects of this old world order were the USA and theUSSR. Using their military advantage, both powers engaged in a division of the world into their respective “spheres of influence”, while casting the long and ominous shadow of the total nuclear Armageddon over all of humankind. Apparently, the present American administration would like to continue this policy, even though its former antagonist has collapsed under the weight of its own systemic internal contradictions and by the force of the various national-liberation struggles that had been unfolding long before glasnost. At one time, Moscow had deployed a considerable segment of its nuclear arsenal on the territories of the nations that it had subjugated over the years, particularly in Ukraine, in a seemingly successful attempt to manoeuvre NATO into targeting Western nuclear missiles on these territories. Consequently, the lands of Ukraine and the other subjugated nations were transformed into one vast nuclear laboratory, in which the engineers of the MAD policy were to conduct their diabolical experiments. As a result of Moscow’s irresponsible nuclear policy, Ukraine was victimised in what is the first major peacetime nuclear disaster, which the world now knows as — Chomobyl. Now the West is comforted in the knowledge that with the collapse of the USSR the nuclear arsenal of the now defunct Soviet Russian empire will remain in the hands of the government of the Russian Federation, itself a “mini-empire” in which numerous smaller non-Russian nations and national groups continue to languish in colonial bondage, and which has made belligerent overtures to Ukraine and other former vassal “republics”. The “new world order” that has been projected by President Bush apparently will still be a nuclear order, in which the two major military-nuclear powers will continue to partition the world into neo-colonial “spheres of influence” all in the name of “global peace and security”. This policy, in effect, amounts to an attempt to maintain as much of the status quo as can be salvaged, given the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its global network of “client states”. The only thing that will be new about this world order, the central mantelpiece of which will still be the atom bomb, as a “deterrent” to war, will be that this continuing process of global parcelling will now be conducted in a cooperative, rather than an antagonistic, fashioa Humankind will never be able to live in peace and harmony as long as it is subjected to the threat of nuclear annihilation. A vision of a genuinely new world order, however, based on the universal ideals of freedom and justice and liberated from Damocles’ nuclear Sword, was already projected, on an ideational plane, in the national-liberation struggles of Ukraine and the other formerly subjugated nations. The aim of this struggle was not only national independence and statehood, but to also liberate the world from a nuclear power that was set upon global domination. As of December 1, 1991 — the day that the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly voted in favour of national independence, thereby precipitating the USSR’s ultimate demise — this goal has been partially realised. Now it is time to fulfil the vision. Ukraine has already taken the lead by becoming the first nuclear power to begin dismantling its entire nuclear arsenal and striving to become a “nuclear-free zone”. The challenge for the rest of the nations of the world, both nuclear and non-nuclear alike, is to transform the entire world into one contiguous “nuclear-free zone”, which will allow all of freedom-loving humankind to begin living in a more sane, a more gentle, a genuinely harmonious and truly new world order. 3 Politics Ex O riente Lux By Roman Zwarycz The 20th century — what a paradox! On the one hand, this is a century that has witnessed the final liberation of nations and the individual; an epoch during which the empires of the world, including the last, albeit most sadistic, “prison house of nations” — the Russian communist empire — have all been dismantled, thereby allowing the processes of building a new, free and just, world order to enter their final, decisive stage of historical evolution. On the other hand — this is also a century that has brought upon all of humankind the most terrifying of nightmares: the atom bomb, which has forced humankind to come to grips with the very real possibility of total, irreversible extinction; the irrevocable elimination of human and all other forms of life from the face of the earth. What kind of evil joke is this? At a time when all of humanity can enjoy the fruits and graces of freedom and justice in genuinely free societies; in an era when we have learned how to talk to one another across the vast expanses of oceans, when we have acquired the ability to fly with impudence over those very same oceans, or even to the moon itself, at this very same time we have come to recognise the tangible reality of that which once was prophesied in the Bible: Armageddon ... the finality of absolute Death... The joyful optimism of unbounded expectations... has become intertwined with a foreboding pessimism of imminent doom. How did we get into such a seemingly inescapable, frightening predicament? How can we together escape from the futureless future to which we, as a race, all seem to be unalterably predestined? Is there any chance for humankind to build a genuinely just and free world order, one that would be delivered from under that damned nuclear Sword of Damocles? Where are we to search for that force that can bring salvation for all of humankind... for our common home, that we all call — Earth? In order to understand the menacing whirlpool in which we all seem to be caught, a short historical excursion into the past is in order — in search of the root causes of something that historians have already enshrined as — the Cold War.' Soon after the cessation of hostilities following the Second World War, instead of a reduction in military “power projection”, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable arms races in all of history. The competition involved two, hostile global camps: between the so-called Free World and that anti-world that had arisen behind the “Iron Curtain”. The competition was, indeed, global, inasmuch as the 4 THE UKRAINIAN REVIEW world was artificially divided into bi-polar, neo-colonial clusters of “spheres of influence” with their two respective centres: one in Moscow, and the other — in Washington. The imperialism of one of these two military superpowers manifested itself along traditional avenues in the form of the colonial exploitation of the nations that were subjugated by Moscow; but it also had that inherently Russian character that had not heretofore been seen in any of the historically European empires: a determined and total policy of repression and brutal Russification that was designed to destroy all vestiges of a national consciousness in the subjugated nations. A Russian way of life was forced upon these subjected peoples with the intent of completely disenfranchising them of not only all power, but of their culture, their history, their language and their unique “spirituality”.