Emotional Fallout : Disaster in Ukraine Felt in Southland

To the Ukrainian Orthodox community, last week was Holy Week--time to read the Gospels and prepare sirnek , the rich Easter cheese cake. Parishioners marched around the sanctuary three times Friday before symbolically burying Christ. The Resurrection was celebrated in midnight services Saturday night.

Last week was also the week of the Chernobyl reactor disaster.

And the nuclear accident that showered Europe with radioactive fallout sent tremors of fear and uncertainty through Southern California’s small Ukrainian community, which has been experiencing a cultural renewal of sorts.

To some, the tragedy was just the latest calamity in the long unhappy history of a nation of 50 million people that has survived conquest, wars and a terrible famine caused by Stalin’s forced agricultural collectivization campaign of 1932 and 1933.

“The thing that runs through my mind is, Why are these people singled out for always being downtrodden? It is a terrible thing to say, but you keep wondering why the Lord up there is so unkind to this nation,” said Daria Chaikovsky, who runs the Ukrainian Art Center in Los Angeles.

“This should be a joyous time,” said Father Anatolj Sytnyk, priest at St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Silver Lake area. “Instead, the Ukrainian community is mourning the victims of the Chernobyl disaster and praying for the people in contaminated areas.”

At St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Echo Park area, Vera Hohol of Cudahy, who was 12 when she walked out of the Ukraine in 1945, lit a candle. “Maybe my relatives over there are dead,” she said.

John Kasler of Glendale thought of sending aid. “How can we help the Ukrainian people?” he said. “This is a big question.”

Many spent hours trying in vain to make transatlantic telephone calls to relatives in Kiev, Lvov or other Ukrainian cities. “The operator just cut them off very brusquely,” reported Walter Lesiuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Cultural Center on Melrose Avenue near St. Vladimir’s.

Most are angry at the lack of information coming from the Soviet government, which they distrust anyway.

Some, immersed in the customary soul-searching of Easter Week, wondered whether it was no accident that the reactor blew during the holiest days of the Ukrainian Orthodox calendar.

“Sunday is our Easter. Why? Why at this time?” asked Lily Malin, financial secretary of St. Vladimir’s.

In the wake of the accident, the Ukrainian community is suddenly finding itself at the center of attention.

Front Page News

“It put the name on the front page,” commented Nicolai Medvid, who is president of the Ukrainian-American Coordinating Committee, which provides liaison for 21 Southern Californian Ukrainian groups. He said he has received several dozen calls from non-Ukrainian acquaintances who want to talk about the Chernobyl disaster.

And at the Fedora restaurant in Tujunga, where diners can eat traditional Ukrainian delicacies such as veraniki, holopchi, and kulbasa, owner Nancy Propkopiy has noticed since the disaster that many non-Ukrainian customers are coming up and asking about the Ukraine.

There are about 1 million Ukrainians in the United States, most concentrated in the Northeast and perhaps 20,000 of Ukrainian stock dispersed throughout Southern California. The 1980 census listed 11,300 in Los Angeles County of Ukrainian ancestry, compared to 103,000 Russians.

It is a community with three churches (two Orthodox and one Catholic), a Saturday school to teach language and culture, the Fedora restaurant, dance groups, musicians, craftsmen, an arts center and political factions that argue whether reform or violent revolution is the best way to improve conditions in the Ukraine.

Community leaders report a resurgent sense of cultural identity and pride.

Memorial Observation

The most visible expression of this renewal will take place May 18 when a memorial plaque to victims of the forced collectivization famine--estimated at 7 million by non-Soviet sources--will be dedicated at the Los Angeles County Mall. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is billed as the main speaker.

“Up to now, we have never approached the county for public acknowledgment,” Medvid said. “We have been working on this for two years. Everybody said it is about time we did something.”

Medvid attributed the new activism to second- and third-generation Ukrainians, who are better educated than their parents and secure enough in their positions in American society to assert pride in their heritage.

Ukrainian art is the subject of a series of events at UCLA’s International Student Center that began Saturday with a reception for artists. Events include a dance workshop Tuesday, a film night Thursday and end with an open house Saturday.

Increased interest in Ukrainian culture shows up in less public ways, according to arts center director Chaikovsky. She said she has noticed that more and more people are coming to workshops on Ukrainian ceramic design, embroidery and the intricate patterns of the pysanka , the Ukrainian decorated Easter eggs.

An Educational Goal

Medvid and others want to take advantage of the interest in Ukrainian affairs caused by the Chernobyl reactor disaster to educate the American public.

Many in the community are proud of the region’s role as breadbasket of the Soviet Union and its history as the first center of Slavic culture during the ninth and tenth centuries.

But they speak bitterly of the Soviet subjugation of the independent Ukrainian government that briefly held power after World War I, the subsequent forced collectivization of the 1930s, the “Russification” campaigns--even of the Ukrainians Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko, who ruled the Soviet Union, but did little for the region, according to Ukrainians here.

“You know how your (own) countrymen could be worse than anyone else,” tartly observed Father Stephen Hallick, priest at St. Andrew’s.

“You know what really hurts is that we are considered second-class citizens. They call us ‘Little Russians.’ Originally, when the Tsars were developing Russia, they took our scholars from Kiev.”

A Linguistic Point

In this context, what may seem an obscure linguistic point looms large in the emigre community.

Many object to the way the word “the” is considered proper usage before “Ukraine” because, Hallick said, “it sectionalizes us. It makes us part of Russia, the southern part. We feel that it is not so.”

Ukrainians argue that their civilization is known for knightly gallantry and bravery and never suffered from the influence of the conquering Tartars, while the Muscovites were known as clever merchants.

Despite their critique of the way the Soviet government has handled the nuclear disaster in their homeland, most expatriates here had only sympathetic words for the situation.

“It’s a terrible thing; the Communists didn’t deserve it,” said Stephen Woytko, 73, president of St. Vladimir’s. “We don’t wish that to anyone.”