In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we will be discussing The Battle for Ukrainian – A Comparative Perspective, edited by Michael S. Flier and Andrea Graziosi. The Battle for Ukrainian – A Comparative Perspective, published by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, outlines the difficult history of the Ukrainian language. In June 2014, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute organized a conference to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 1863 Valuev Circular, which repressed the use of Ukrainian in the Russian Empire. This volume is a compilation of the conference papers dealing with the linguistics, history, and politics of the Ukrainian language question. Little did the conference organizers know, but in the very same year of 2014, Russia would once again violate Ukraine’s right to exist by annexing Crimea and supporting an insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. In 2022, Russia would use Russian language rights as an excuse to invade Ukraine. In the “Introduction,” the editors provide an overview of the history of The Battle for Ukrainian. The Valuev Circular of 1863, and the more brutal Ems Decree of 1876, were the tools used by the Imperial Russian government to destroy Ukrainian language evolution. The Russian Ministry of […]
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Knyzhka Corner Book Review: Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament – A History
In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we will be discussing Yuri Kostenko’s book Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament – A History. Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament – A History, published by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, outlines the factors which led Ukraine to sign the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. This agreement denuclearized the country. It also questions whether this was the right decision for Ukraine’s future. Yuri Kostenko’s insider account will help readers understand the power dynamics involved with Ukraine’s fateful decision to give up its nuclear weapons in the mid-1990’s, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russian aggression. In 2014, twenty years after the Budapest Memorandum was signed, Russia annexed Crimea and supported an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The first Chapter, “An Infant in a Grownups’ Game,” outlines the influences which impacted Ukraine’s initial decision-making. In July 1990, as the Ukrainian parliament was drafting the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, Ivan Drach, the leader of Narodny Rukh, suggested that perhaps nuclear weapons should be banned on Ukrainian territory. This was a new and controversial idea. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was left with the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after the United States and Russia. Russia wanted […]
Continue readingKnyzhka Corner Book Review: Wretched Land by Mila Komarnisky
Wretched Land tells the epic story of Dmytro and Khrystina Verbitsky as they live through the horrors of early 20th century Ukraine. Their love for the land and their family of ten children keeps them together through wars, famine, invasions, and collectivization. Readers will experience, “An unforgettable journey into the heart and soul of a land and people built on pain, passion, and hope for a better future.” (book jacket) As the novel begins, it is 1907, and twenty-year old Dmytro finds out that his impoverished aristocrat father has committed suicide. His father owned an estate in Gorodne in the Kharkiv province of eastern Ukraine, but he lost everything because of his gambling and drinking. Dmytro is forced to sell-off all his assets, and is left with nothing. “The estate was not only a means of making a living; it was his pride and joy. What would become of him now? How would he survive such a disgrace? How could his father do this to him?” (p. 12) Before this tragedy, he was in love with Khrystina, the daughter of a wealthy peasant. He still wants to marry her, but has nothing to offer. Her father rejects Dmytro’s proposal, but […]
Continue readingKnyzhka Corner Book Review: The Stories Were Not Told
In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we will be discussing Sandra Semchuk’s book on the internment of Ukrainians in Canada, The Stories Were Not Told – Canada’s First World War Internment Camps. From 1914 to 1920, thousands of individuals who had immigrated to Canada from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany and the Ottoman Empire were unjustly imprisoned as enemy aliens. Many of them were Ukrainian. In The Stories Were Not Told – Canada’s First World War Internment Camps, Sandra Semchuk combines her exquisite photography with historical documents, cultural theory, and poignant personal testimony from internees and their descendants. Semchuk helps readers understand the social and emotional effects of these tragic events. In her Preface, Semchuk tells readers, “We are learning the important work of listening and speaking truthfully across cultures. Today’s fears for security in the world stir memories and experiences of racism, paranoia, and distrust of new immigrants.” (p. xxiv) The first chapter, “Learning from the Past,” examines the historical events: Ukrainian immigration to Canada in the early 1900s, the War Measures Act of August 19, 1914, and the call for the creation of internment camps for enemy aliens. Internment camps became a government sanctioned method to imprison those falsely […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: Hitler’s Basement
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing Ron Vossler’s memoir Hitler’s Basement. Much has been written about Nazi concentration camps, but little has been written about the Nazi massacres of Jews on Ukrainian soil, and the peasants who witnessed and participated in these horrific events. In Hitler’s Basement, Ron Vossler reveals the little known story of the Nazi murder of thousands of Jews in the region of Transnistria, a region of Ukraine currently bordered by eastern Moldova. Vossler’s relatives came from this area and were known as the Volksdeutsche, a German minority living outside Germany. His search for the truth about the events of these massacres, and the role of the Volksdeutsche is the core of this book. It is a story which reveals, “Rivers of red, a kingdom of death.” Ron Vossler was a literature professor in North Dakota when he became interested in the murders of Jews in the Transnistria area. His relatives came from this area of Ukraine. As a young person, he knew very little about these events because no one ever talked about them in North Dakota. However, the Volksdeutsche culture and history were very important in the community. As a […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: Book Review—The Sea Is Only Knee Deep
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, Myra Junyk reviews The Sea is Only Knee Deep, a two-volume memoir of a nuclear scientist who defected from the Soviet Union to Canada at the height of the Cold War. The Sea is Only Knee Deep is the true story of Paulina Zelitsky’s defection to Canada from the Soviet Union with her two young children in 1971. These two volumes explore many topics including: Stalin’s final years, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and the dangers of defecting. Paulina’s story begins in Cuba in 1968. She is part of the engineering team designing a top secret submarine base for Soviet nuclear submarines. “My predicament was dangerous and the possibility of defection much more so.” (Vol.1, p. 1) Zelitsky’s story does not shy away from the complex political realities of life in the Soviet Union. Beginning with her birth in 1945 in postwar Odessa, Zelitsky’s Jewish family is subjected to constant scrutiny by the KGB. Despite the death of her mother from Stalin’s imposed famine of 1946-1947, Paulina is an optimistic child who loves difficult tasks. Jokingly, adults tell her, “To you any sea is only knee deep.” This Odessan motto, which is the title of […]
Continue readingKnyzhka Corner Book Review: Starving Ukraine – The Holodomor and Canada’s Response
In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we will be discussing Serge Cipko’s ground-breaking book Starving Ukraine – The Holodomor and Canada’s Response. Starving Ukraine is a richly detailed history of Canada’s response to the Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933. By examining Canadian newspapers, contemporary letters, and government documents, Cipko paints a shocking picture of famine and death, and the Soviet government’s denials of these events. Cipko probes several important questions, “What was the nature of the coverage in the Ukrainian-language press in Canada? How did the pro-Soviet segment of the Ukrainian community respond to the stories about famine in the Soviet Union? What relief efforts existed among Ukrainians, Mennonites, and others in Canada? How did the Canadian government respond to petitions about the famine?” (p. xix) Canadians learned of the famine from a multitude of contradictory sources including newspaper articles, personal letters, political speeches, and organized events to protest this Soviet atrocity. Serge Cipko’s examination of Canada’s response to the famine begins with the Edmonton Journal’s commentary about a scarcity of wheat in Ukraine in early April 1932. This was the earliest reporting about the Holodomor in the mainstream Canadian press. However, in May the Toronto […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: In Broad Daylight
In this edition of Ukrainian-Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing In Broad Daylight – The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets by Father Patrick Desbois. In 2008, Father Patrick Desbois published The Holocaust by Bullets – A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. It described how Nazi mobile killing units, called the Einsatzgruppen, murdered more than a million people in Eastern Europe during World War II. His new book In Broad Daylight continues this gruesome narrative based on over 4000 interviews, as well as recently released Soviet archival materials. This new book explains how Jews were killed in broad daylight with the co-operation of their non-Jewish neighbors. “The way in which these crimes unfolded, from the predawn hours well into the night, remains little known to the general public. The goal of this book is to remedy that.” (p. xi) As a young priest, Desbois discovered that his grandfather witnessed mass murders of Jews at the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine border as a French prisoner during World War II. As a result, Desbois started searching for the mass graves of those killed by the Nazi mobile killing units called the […]
Continue readingBook Review: A Journey Through the Ukrainian_Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914, curated and written by Alti Rodal, the Co-Director of the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter. A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914 was originally a traveling exhibition shown in six venues in four Canadian cities (Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Montreal) between May and September 2015. Its 36 panels examined the history and interactions of these two peoples living side by side on Ukrainian lands. The panels featured texts, graphics, photographs, paintings, and maps, as well as short videos and recorded music. In 2018, Alti Rodal, the Co-director of the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter expanded on the exhibition’s narrative to explore the multi-dimensional relationships between Ukrainians and Jews inhabiting the lands of today’s Ukraine. In the Introduction, Rodal tells readers, “Our aim is to present an integrated narrative that looks at the experience of these two peoples together, in all its complexity – through periods of crisis and episodic violence, as well as long stretches of normal co-existence and multifaceted cross-cultural fertilization/cultural interaction.” (p. 7) The resulting book, A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914, was published in English […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: The Holocaust by Bullets
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing The Holocaust by Bullets – A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews by Father Patrick Desbois. In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois began to research the story of the Jews, Roma and other victims murdered in Eastern Europe during World War II by Nazi mobile killing units called the Einsatzgruppen. As the grandson of a World War II French prisoner held in the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine border, Desbois wanted to know more about his grandfather’s traumatic wartime experience. His findings are documented in the very insightful book, The Holocaust by Bullets. Father Patrick Desbois has devoted his life to researching the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism, and furthering relations between Catholics and Jews. The Holocaust by Bullets documents his very first efforts to uncover the truth about events in Ukraine during the years 1941-1944. Much has been written about Nazi concentration camps, but little has been written about the Nazi massacres of Jews on Ukrainian soil and the peasants who witnessed these horrific events. The first few chapters of this book describe his early life in France, his call to the priesthood, […]
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