The Ukrainian Diaspora
A problem which still remains to be considered is that of the role of the Ukrainian diaspora. The total number of people of Ukrainian descent in the countries of Western Europe, North and South America, and Australia amounts to about two million.
Ukrainian emigration has occurred in several waves, beginning in the 1890s with the economically caused movement overseas and ending with the post-World War II displaced persons, whose motivation was primarily political. Ukrainians in the diaspora are undergoing a gradual but inevitable assimilation to the host countries, and this process has advanced quite far among various generational and occupational groups. The retention of a national identity by Ukrainian emigrants and their descendants is strengthened by their conviction that conditions in Ukraine are abnormal and that their brethren there are suffering from oppression. This conviction places Ukrainians in the diaspora under a moral obligation and endows them with a feeling of historical mission: to work for the liberation of the homeland. To some extent, this commitment gives the entire Ukrainian diaspora the colouring of a political emigration, independently of the time and circumstances of each individual’s or his forefathers’ departure from Ukraine.It is well known that exile communities tend to perpetuate in a fossilized form attitudes and modes of thought which, because of changed conditions, have lapsed in the country of origin. Thus every political current, from the monarchist to the communist, which has been active in Ukraine over the past two or three generations still has its spokesmen within the Ukrainian diaspora. The politically most articulate segment are the post-World War II emigres. Besides maintaining their own institutions and organizations (including a “government-in-exile,” with headquarters in Munich, which claims to be the continuation of the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of the years 1917-21), they have also largely taken over the leadership of the older community organizations in the United States and Canada.
This preponderance of the “new” emigration contributes to keeping the bulk of the Ukrainian diaspora militantly anti-communist, save for small “progressive” (proSoviet) groups among the old-time settlers in North America.The Ukrainian diaspora lacks the numerical and financial strength to influence the policies of Western governments as a pressure group. Moreover, its political effectiveness is handicapped by the legacy of integral nationalism. The OUN factions continue to play a leading role in the life of the Ukrainian emigration. Although they have become more moderate over the years, their ingrained totalitarian mentality alienates them from the political climate of the Western democracies, as well as from the libertarian trends in contemporary Soviet Ukraine. This has also been the cause of their repeated political blundering: misunderstanding the defensive nature of the American containment policy; investing false hopes in the so-called liberation program during the Eisenhower-Dulles era; relying on right-wing extremist groups in the United States and West Germany; collaborating with Chinese nationalists in Taiwan; and misreading the character and goals of the current dissident movement in the Ukrainian SSR. The democratic groups of the diaspora have failed to establish a credible alternative policy of their own. As for the mass of ordinary Ukrainian emigrants, they are preoccupied with everyday cares, and for sentimental reasons often tend to trust those leaders who prove their “superpatriotism” by energetically waving the blue-and-yellow flag.
The above critical remarks do not mean that the Ukrainian diaspora ought to be written off as a political factor. On the contrary, it exercises an important function whose center of gravity, however, lies in a different sphere from the sterile and narcissistic posturing of the emigre politicians and professional community leaders. The significance of the diaspora is attested by the extreme vigilance with which the Soviet authorities watch everything that goes on among Ukrainians abroad.
The true function of the diaspora consists in the auxiliary but essential contribution which it is making to the evolution of the Ukrainian people in Ukraine. The very fact that free Ukrainian political thought and cultural life exist on foreign soil has had an invigorating effect on the intellectual climate in the Ukrainian SSR. The contemporary diaspora has not produced great individual political thinkers of the stature of Drahomanov or Lypynsky, but Ukrainian exiles are bringing out several respectable journals of opinion and literary magazines. Ukrainian scholarly organizations, institutions, and literary groups are active in Western Europe and North America. Emigre writers, artists, and scholars, among whom are men and women of distinction, have produced works which will retain a permanent place in Ukrainian cultural history. Because they are able freely to treat subjects and use approaches prohibited in the USSR, their productions complement and stimulate Soviet Ukrainian cultural processes, which have been forced into a Procrustean bed. Access to the works of the diaspora is, of course, extremely limited in Ukraine, but through various channels relevant, even if fragmentary, information is reaching interested circles. Members of the Soviet Ukrainian creative intelligentsia have eagerly availed themselves of every opportunity to establish relations with their compatriot colleagues abroad. To anyone who has taken part in such exchanges one thing is particularly striking: their almost overflowing emotional warmth, which strangely contrasts with official Soviet deprecation of the “bourgeois-nationalist rabble.” It is not rare to hear Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals express privately their respect and admiration for the very same emigre figures on whom the Soviet press heaps such scurrilous abuse. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the positive achievements of the emigration have been used by influential members of the intellectual community in the Ukrainian SSR as a lever in pressing for cultural concessions.
All the points touched upon in this paragraph pertain to the cultural sphere, but their cumulative political effect should be regarded as self-evident. Only a slight relaxation of conditions would be needed to begin an overt political dialogue between democratic intellectual elements of the emigration and the reformist stratum of the party and non-party Soviet Ukrainian intelligentsia. Such a possibility is alarming in the highest degree not only to the Soviet establishment, but to the emigre die-hards as well.One has, of course, to keep in mind that there are probably several million Soviet Ukrainian citizens who have relatives abroad. With the easing of correspondence and travel restrictions in the past decade, countless divided families have re-established direct contacts. Every year thousands OfUkrainians visit their relatives in the “old country.” In a society which for many years has been hermetically isolated from the outside world, such contacts cannot but act as a tonic. The Ukrainian people under Soviet rule are reassured by the awareness that their kinsmen in foreign lands think of them and wish to help them.
Last but not least, the role of the diaspora is that of a spiritual link between Ukraine and the outside world. The Soviet regime’s intention is to minimize individual and institutional communications between Ukrainian scientists, scholars, and other cultural workers with their counterparts in Western, democratic nations. Undoubtedly, it would prefer the world to forget the existence ofUkraine. Therefore, the responsibility for keeping the world informed about conditions in the Ukrainian SSR and the Ukrainian problem in general is incumbent on scholars of the diaspora. Theirs is an arduous task in view of the fact that, especially in Englishspeaking countries, knowledge of things Ukrainian has been, and largely still is, sorely inadequate. The difficulty is that the Western scholarly community’s understanding of eastern Slavdom is dominated by a centralist viewpoint derived from the intellectual traditions of imperial Russia.
Conditions have, however, improved somewhat in this respect over the past twenty years. It is possible to point to a number of solid recent works in English dealing with Ukraine, and it is no longer unusual to find Ukrainian topics treated in scholarly journals and at professional meetings. This change is due to the general growth of Slavic and East European studies and to the labours of scholars of Ukrainian descent, particularly those employed in American and Canadian universities and colleges. What has been accomplished so far is only a modest beginning. Vast stretches of Ukrainian history and culture are still unrepresented by a single monograph in English or any other Western language. But the academic community in the United States and Canada has at least become aware of the existence of Ukraine as a potential field of study. The centralist conceptual framework alluded to above has by no means been dislodged—such mental constructs are extremely ingrained and resistant to change—but it has become problematic. Information about Ukraine no longer comes exclusively from hostile sources. This may be considered an important positive step.
While these developments in the intellectual sphere have no impact on the current policies of the Western powers, their probable long-range political significance cannot be overlooked. To state the matter briefly: the scholarly and other cultural endeavours of the Ukrainian diaspora are an essential dimension of the Ukrainian people’s struggle for a better life and complete nationhood.