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Ukrainian women came together in the spirit of mutual responsibility for the existing reality, to act as cognizant co-creators of the Ukrainian future. However, a huge black shadow hovers over our happiness. Our Congress is being held during extremely uncertain times and in unusually difficult and tragic cir cumstances. I ask your forgiveness, dear sisters, that these words of greetings cannot be as joyous as they should be. We are celebrating this 50th jubilee of the Ukrainian women’s movement during unusually difficult times. Perhaps never in history were the Ukrainian people sub ject to such hardship, such hell of physical and moral torture and suffering. As a result of the failed struggle for independence, Ukrainian lands were parcelled be tween four countries. The more time passes since the last efforts to gain independence, the clearer we under stand and feel more poignantly the tragedy of the fact that we are stateless. We fully realize what it means to lack political sovereignty. It is not only economic exploi tation, but poverty, not only a foreign school, but the neglect of huge reserves of potential spiritual energy which slumber in our children, not only cultural distanc ing but spiritual mutilation. Statelessness promotes a subconscious feeling of inferiority in some and unbearable humiliation and shame in others. These are damages which relfect on the psyche of many future generations. These are for eign instigations, this is the breaking of the spirit, degrading of the character, this is our weakness and feeling of worthlessness leading to the most horrible forms of slavery and to the deepest moral debasement, all the way to national abandonment and treason. At a time when small nations, without a significant past and lacking large material and moral resources, became independent national units due to a political crisis, our people were unable to realize this highest form of self identification, were not able to form them selves into a state as an emanation of their political, social and cultural Strenght. However, this is not the end of the tragic circum stances of our Ukrainian people. The main, the largest, the most important part of our nation was not able to send representatives to celebrate this occasion. The events transpiring today in Soviet Ukraine transcend the vision of the sickest imagination. One word that describes the situation: is horror! The struggle there is not for power, not for social rights, not for indi vidual liberties, but for the most fundamental needs of human existence. We are witnessing how our ancient enemy — Moscow — began to deny us our very exist ence. Our foe takes away from us even the sources of survival which are available to the uncivilized citizens of the most devastatingly exploited colonies. We are the witnesses to the destruction of our people through fam ine, planned and executed as a means to squash all anti-Soviet moves, all independent currents and natio nalistic attempts of our people. We have been witness ing for many years the bolshevik destruction of all the inherent characteristics of our nation, its moral, cultural and economic values, as they attempt to destroy ancient Ukrainian ideals, our religion and beliefs, our historical and folk traditions, and forcefully replace them with forms of social and spiritual life foreign to the Ukrainian psyche. How many of our countrymen died in eastern Ukraine and in Kuban? 2, 5 or 10 million? As many as live west of the river Zbruch, maybe less or maybe more. No one knows. Imagine, sisters, imagine for a moment all of Halychyna, Volyn’, Bukovyna and Sub- Carpathia as one huge cemetery without a single living individual. Imagine that the entire population had died. Think about this situation for a moment and bring it to its logical conclusion. Think that in Ukraine, one by one like mowed grass, the future of our nation died, our children. Old people died, weakened by illness and deficiencies. Men in their prime tumbled like felled oaks. Only not as many women died. That is because mothers have a greater inner strength, and they need little to survive. During the famine in Eastern Ukraine they had the same unhappy privilege which women have during a war: to watch helplessly as those closest to them died. Imagine for one moment all the results of this famine, illness, epidemics, a weakening of an entire nation, think how the yet unborn children of parents who have been starved for years will look. Imagine the moral degradation of an individual whose only purpose is to find food to survive. Think about our homeland, this land of untold natural resources, this land of milk and honey, transformed into a wasteland. Eastern Ukraine, the source of our national culture and national ideals, a land which gave us Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka, Khmelnytsky and Mazepa, was transformed into a land where people lost their humanity, where the only method of protest, even for a communist, is suicide. These millions did not die on a battle field like heroes, like knights. They did not sacrifice their lives to an ideal. They expired on roads, by fences, bloated from hunger. Let us not say, sisters, that the enemy, those from Moscow, the Bolsheviks are responsible for this. No, this is our fault, our own fault that we have become par- alized on the crossroads of history. It is our fault that we did not know how to master our own fate. But most of all it is the fault of our leadership, the intelligentsia, who did not know how to force our people to sacrifice at the time when Ukraine’s future was being decided. These thoughts poison our souls, and the bloody prick of our conscience brings sleeplessness, while shame burns our faces. Under such conditions we are conducting the busi ness of our Congress. But that’s not the end. If you want to have the complete picture of our tragic circumstance, add to the statelessness and the physical annihilation of our people east of the river Zbruch, internal chaos due to the loss of our national energy which we utilize to 2 0 "НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 1992 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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