Skip to content
Call Us Today! 212-533-4646 | MON-FRI 12PM - 4PM (EST)
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
Search for:
About Us
Publications
FAQ
Annual Report 2023
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2021
Initiatives
Advocate
Educate
Cultivate
Care
News
Newsletters
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Join UNWLA
Become a Member
Volunteer With Us
Donate to UNWLA
Members Portal
Calendar
Shop to Support Ukraine
Search for:
Print
Print Page
Download
Download Page
Download Right Page
Open
1
2-3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-11
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20-21
22-23
24-25
26-27
28-29
30-31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40
Hope Lost and Mope Found: A Study in Black and Orange by Marta N. Zielyk Marta Zielyk holds the post of Senior Diplomatic Interpreter in the U.S. Department of State. All thoughts expressed in this article are her own and do not reflect the views of the U.S. government. I had lost all hope. It’s hard to admit, but there it is. For the first time in my life, somewhere around the middle of 2002, I finally lost hope that Ukraine would ever be the kind of country that I could be proud of, the kind of country that most of us in the diaspora had dreamed about. Okay, I thought, there are plenty of basket-case nations around the world. They don’t prosper, but they do survive. That too is an achievement, isn’t it? I resigned myself to continue working as the State Department’s diplo matic interpreter for the Ukrainian language, but started seriously thinking about expanding my skills into other areas. After all, what good is a person spe cializing in high level Ukrainian diplomatic interpret ing when opportunities to do exactly that become very few and far between? It was in this frame of mind that I decided to be an observer for the runoff round of the Ukrainian Presidential elections in November 2004.1 thought of it as my final obligation to the country, and, who knows, maybe one of my last opportunities to visit it as a State Department employee. Frankly, based on all the negative reports about the pre-election cam paign—voter intimidation, violation of press free doms, attempted vote rigging—I had no expectation of free and fair proceedings. If this election was to be a test of Ukraine’s commitment to democracy, then the country was failing miserably. As a result, I was quite detached while going about my duties of election observer in the rayon of Yavoriv in Lvivska oblast. I could have been observ ing in Uzbekistan or Indonesia or Moldova. To me, it didn’t matter. I was fair and balanced in my report ing, nothing more, nothing less. My actual observation experience on the day of November 21 was predictably uneventful. There were few instances of electoral irregularities or vio lence on the whole in Western Ukraine. Indeed, the only thing worth mentioning isn’t even an event; it was a feeling that came over me as I entered one of the polling stations on our list. It was a rather large station, with 2,500 registered voters, and was situated in a spacious town hall in the middle, of Yavoriv. When I walked in, I could have been walking into the auditorium of St. George Academy in New York City. The scene was so familiar because I had seen it thousands of times on 7th Street in New York City. The faces of the voters were the same faces I saw every day as I was growing up—those of my parents and grandparents, their friends, members of the Ukrainian diaspora. The people attached to those faces talked the same way and acted the same way: slightly courtly, very European, very Western Ukrainian. They even dressed the same. Many were coming straight from church services—it was, after all, Sunday afternoon—and their clothes were stylish and elegant to the extent that their economic circum stances would allow. The similarity even extended to the traditional way of dealing with guests. One of the ladies who was a member of the polling station commission carefully unwrapped a tall cake box, cut three huge pieces, and insisted that I and my two ob servation team members try some “delicious Yavoriv cake.” Visions of my grandmother pushing sweets at every opportunity instantly came to mind. After an almost sleepless night spent observ ing the actual vote tabulation in a little village on the outskirts of Yavoriv, I awoke the next morning, No vember 22, and joined my fellow observers for break fast in the Hotel Suputnyk outside of Lviv. As we were eating, the hotel staff turned the TV to 5 Kanal. What we saw made us drop our “mlyntsi” in shock. It was Viktor Yushchenko speaking to a large gathering of Ukrainians on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. He was talking about how the vote had been stolen. We watched in amazement as the camera panned over the gathering masses. One by one, the waiters arid waitresses, who had been serving breakfast until then, stopped what they were doing. Leaving the guests to fend for themselves, they gathered around the TV. Just as Yushchenko began to describe con crete instances of election violations—how many ballots were spoiled in such and such a district, how many ballots falsified in another district—the images on the television set were distorted by static. This is it, I thought to myself. Any minute now, the authori 16 “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 2005 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.
Page load link
Go to Top
1 
2-3 
4-5 
6-7 
8-9 
10-11 
12-13 
14-15 
16-17 
18-19 
20-21 
22-23 
24-25 
26-27 
28-29 
30-31 
32-33 
34-35 
36-37 
38-39 
40 
