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I too wrote letters. Two of those letters were sent to Senators Kennedy and Dole to protest their inaccurate use of “Russia” and “Russian” during the “Face Off’ radio broadcast. A third was sent to Barbara Walters after her interview with Dr. Gale. While I never heard back from Ms. Walters, each of the Senators wrote me a personal letter apologizing for the oversight. Senator Kennedy’s letter was curt; he acknowledged his error and assured me that “the plight of nationalists in all the Soviet republics” had concerned him since he was first elected to the Senate. Senator Dole’s letter was more detailed: On Tuesday, May 13, in a “Face Off’ radio broadcast, Senator Kennedy and I mistakenly referred to the people and area of Ukraine as Russian. I wish to thank you for taking the time to bring this to my attention. It has become an unfortunate American habit to use the term “Russian” to characterize all people and places with the USSR. This can be traced back to the time of the Czar and the Alaskan Land Purchase; at that time all of the land was called Russia. The United States’ intervention in the Russian Civil War reinforced the notion that everything in northern Asia is “Russian.” No insult was intended in my use of the terminology; the word “Russian” was chosen only for expediency because of the time limits of the “Face Off’ format. As an admirer of the cultural and social contributions Ukrainians have made in this country and in the USSR, I will try hard to be more sensitive to the need to accurately refer to Ukraine and its fine people. Neither letter was much of a consolation. Of the two, the letter from Senator Dole was the more frustrating as it highlighted the depth of American misunderstanding of Ukraine, Ukrainians, and their place in both the Russian Empire of the czars and the Soviet Empire of the communist era. Twenty years have passed since I received those telling letters. In those twenty years, Ukraine, like most of Easter Europe, has changed dramatically. And perhaps no other incident was as instrumental in provoking the changes in Ukraine as the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl. Many of those who joined the grassroots movement that swelled to become RUKH came to the United States under the political thaw under Gorbachev. Almost invariably, they cited Chornobyl as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. It was referred to as the “final blow,” “the ultimate act of genocide,” by RUKH leaders Mykhailo Horyn and Orest Vlokh and others. And it can be viewed as one of the most important catalysts that spawned the move toward autonomy. Chornobyl, in fact, became a symbol of something so horrific and tragic that it became a rallying cry for those who were working to bring about reform and restitution of long abandoned rights, freedoms, and privileges. Among these was the right to refuse to allow other nuclear reactors to be built on Ukrainian soil and the privilege of protecting Ukrainians from hazardous wastes and other pollutants that posed a danger to human lives. Five years after the Chornobyl disaster things changed dramatically. Journalists who had rarely bothered to acknowledge the existence of Ukraine began to discover that Ukraine existed, a sleeping giant that might be the key to the disintegration of the entire Soviet Union. Articles about Ukraine began to appear in The New York Times, the Washington Post , the Christian Science Monitor, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the spring of 1991, Times and Newsweek ran concurrent stories about plans to make Chornobyl a tourist attraction. Neither of the articles mentioned Russia; the writers accurately placed Chornobyl and its victims in Ukraine. The war over nomenclature seemed to have been won, but I wondered at the time at what cost and how little this victory mattered to those still living with Chornobyl’s legacy. It was only a few months later that the people of Ukraine voted for independence. — Tamara Stadnychenko Cornelison (Based on an article first published in ‘‘Our Life ”, April 1991) XXIXКонвенція СУА 11 www.unwla.org
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