Article

2004-12-27 Europe

Ukraine's New First Lady is a Chicago Girl

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Posted by Mike Sylwester 2004-12-27 11:34:52 AM|| || Front Page|| [7 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Interesting that she's Orthodox, not Catholic. The great left-lib MSM Meme du Jour regarding Ukraine has been the Schism Between Russian-Orthodox and Western-Catholic Ukrainians, with Yushchenko representing the "European" Catholic western-leaning faction.

Posted by lex 2004-12-27 2:54:45 PM|| 2004-12-27 2:54:45 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Interesting that she's Orthodox, not Catholic
Love knows no bounds. I believe Yushenko is Catholic. Also depending on where her parents lived originally...if it was Eastern or Central Ukraine, post WWI and the Red Army invasion, it was not very smart for Ukrainian land owners to be Catholic as well...like painting 2 targets on your body...
The great left-lib MSM Meme du Jour regarding Ukraine has been the Schism Between Russian-Orthodox and Western-Catholic Ukrainians
Actually I think the MSM is not too far off on this point. Western Ukraine is primarily Greek Catholic and progressive ( Lvov had its first university built in the 1770's) the people identify more closely with Western Europe. OTOH Eastern Ukraine is Greek Orthodox and identifies more closely with the Soviets even to this day.

Even Putin-lapdog, Yanukovych, tried to work the religious angle to his benefit, refering to himself as the "Orthodox" candidate, urging the Greek Orthodox Ukrainians to vote for him along religious lines. Here's a speech of lapdog delivered on 12/24/04:
http://risu.org.ua/eng/news/article;4098/
"Yanukovych Calls for Orthodox Support"

Here's a link that gives a bit of history of how the Ukrainian Catholic Church was repressed under the Soviets.
http://www.risu.org.ua/eng/about.ukraine/history/

The WSJ article was complimentary to the First Lady of the Ukraine, but I was a little annoyed to Fund introduce a negative idea whithout qualifying it:
Cynics may say that since Ukraine has never been a true democracy, reforming it will be impossible
It was not without trying that the Ukrainians have never had a democracy, but the West never bothered to back up their efforts to win independence from autocratic rulers...better known as our great ally, Russia...

Posted by joeblow 2004-12-27 4:14:46 PM|| 2004-12-27 4:14:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Uh oh-I sense a guilt complex being launched...incoming!

Although, of course it would have been good for us to support democracy wherever possible in the old Soviet Union--if the entire slew of previously "annexed" states had been set free outside of a Russian federation, what would Russia be today, and would its accountability/control of weapons have been even poorer?

Posted by Jules 187 2004-12-27 4:19:31 PM|| 2004-12-27 4:19:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was broken apart in the late 1940's, I believe, by the wholesale conversion of congregations in the United States and other Western Nations to unity with Rome, creating the Ukrainian Rite. They did this because of the close relationship that the orthodox bishops had with the Stalin government. The Uniate Church struggled within the Ukraine for many years.

The current nation has some Ukrainian Rite churches, some Ukrainian Orthodox churches and Russian Orthodax churches. As with so many of the nationalist churches, Orthodox or Uniate, in the old Communist bloc, most of the current arguement is over property and recovering old churches. The view of many is that the Uniate churches are carpetbaggers, and the recovered property correctly belongs to the Orthodox.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-12-27 4:24:46 PM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2004-12-27 4:24:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 The great left-lib MSM Meme du Jour regarding Ukraine has been the Schism Between Russian-Orthodox and Western-Catholic Ukrainians, with Yushchenko representing the "European" Catholic western-leaning faction.

I think that in the in the division between western and eastern Ukraine, language seems more important than religion, or atleast that's the impression I've been getting. Has there *really* been a focus on religion in the MSM?

And as for the "Schism" weren't you also talking about a schism, here, lex?

I've heard Yushchenko is Orthodox. Also in the religion split I think you also need to consider the division between the Ukrainian Orthodox church - Moscow Patriarchate (basically loyal to Kremlin, supporters of Yanukovych) and the Ukrainian Orthodox church - Kiev Patriarchate (in favour of Ukrainian independence)

I found some info about it here: http://www.cnewa.org/ecc-ukrainian-orth-patriar.htm

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2004-12-27 4:45:37 PM|| 2004-12-27 4:45:37 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Uh oh-I sense a guilt complex being launched...incoming!what would Russia be today, and would its accountability/control of weapons have been even poorer?
And we should feel guilty. We let down smart, hard working, religious peoples who shared many of the same values of our Western culture, unlike some cultures that we wring our hands about and intervene on their behalf only to have them stab us in the back after liberation{eg. the Muslims in Kosovo, Sunni in Iraq) These same Eastern bloc could have been strong allies AGAINST Russia during the Cold War period, and perhaps Russia would not have the geographical positioning or the $ or the smarts to build up nuclear arsenals in its "empire." Ironically, as it turns out, it's the very people we turned our backs on ie. Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs who stand by our side and not our erstwhile ally, Russia, when we need support in Iraq.

As for your comment about what would have become of Russia if the Eastern bloc countries were helped to secede - golly gee, like who cares? What is Russia now but a cesspool of Mafia corruption and an arms dealer to our worst enemies?

Posted by joeblow 2004-12-27 5:18:26 PM|| 2004-12-27 5:18:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 And we should feel guilty...

No, we shouldn't. We are no one's savior, no should we be. We do what we can and try not to resort to magical thinking.

As for "cesspools of Mafia corruption...", every one of former those Soviet states STILL has their share of the same, even though there are many many good people in those places with values similar to ours. I am well familiar with this argument, joeblow-a good friend of mine from Latvia feeds it to me regularly. Underneath it is a fantasy-that the US can and should devote 100% of energy money blood time friendship to 100% of the countries in the world 100% of the time and have a 100% success rate in getting rid of tyrants, poverty, sickness. It's a FANTASY.

We didn't seize an opportunity, perhaps that is true, but this hairshirt bit is useless. Step by step, what exactly would you have done differently in regards to Ukraine, and how might your steps have introduced additional problems for the US?

Posted by Jules 187 2004-12-27 5:30:50 PM|| 2004-12-27 5:30:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Postnote-if we were really servicing the Russians like you say, there would have been no reason to support the recasting of ballots in this second (legitimized) election.

Posted by Jules 187 2004-12-27 5:40:10 PM|| 2004-12-27 5:40:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 every one of former those Soviet states STILL has their share of the same
No sh*t, sherlock! And why do you think that is?

that the US can and should devote 100% of energy money blood time friendship to 100% of the countries in the world 100% of the time and have a 100% success rate in getting rid of tyrants, poverty, sickness. It's a FANTASY
I have no desire to send US troops around the world to "liberate" every nation under the sun.

But there were turning points/ strategic moments in history when the very least that the US could have done was SUPPORT Eastern bloc countries when they needed our support.

Think about about those shameful times when allied troops were nearby but we allowed the Soviet tanks to "mop up" after the Polish calvalry fought valiently against German panzers or when we turned over Slavic POW's captured by germany to Russia, and heard the rifle shots of the Soviets killing the POW's as soon as they got their hands on them. Think about when we turned a blind eye to Stalin systematically starving Ukrainian farmers:
At a recent conference at McGill University in Montreal, sponsored by Memorial, a leading Kiev research institute, the full extent of Soviet atrocities was exposed. Roman Krutsyk, the head of the institute, explained that newly discovered documents and archives show that about "50 million ethnic Ukrainians within the borders of the Soviet Union" were killed during the Bolshevik regime from 1917 to 1991.The most barbaric single event was the terror famine of 1932-33, in which Soviet dictator Josef Stalin systematically starved to death 10 million Ukrainian peasants in one of the greatest genocides of the 20th century. Mr. Krutsyk says evidence has emerged revealing Soviet authorities practiced large-scale ethnic cleansing, in which depopulated Ukrainian villages were resettled with ethnic Russians throughout Eastern and Southern Ukraine. This new information is only now beginning to seep into the Ukrainian public consciousness. It must also be widely disseminated in the West, where many liberal academics and journalists continue to downplay communist crimes. After having won the Cold War, the United States has for the most part turned its back on Ukraine.
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/kuhner.htm

But today we still do nothing to reveal the horrors perpetuated by Putin's "kin", the man whose soul is "revealed in his eyes" according to GWB. We hear lots about the Jewish Holocaust, the Albanian Holocaust, the Darfur Holocaust, the Rwandan Holocaust, but to say anything about the Ukrainian Holocaust would be rather off-putting to our close ally, Russia.

And btw, did you know that the Ukraine sent the 4th largest contingent of troops to Iraq? And of course you must remember that the Poles agreed to head the support troops from our smaller allied nations. How many troops did Somalia send? How many did Rwanda send? And what about Haiti or South Africa or Mexico? Didn't we help all these countries in the past?

Another time we could have helped but we didn't was in August, 1968 when the Soviets invaded the Czech Republic and removed Alexender Dubcek and government leaders from office. What what did the USA do? Well, our fearless Commie fighting President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, left for his Texas ranch on the day of the invasion, signalling to the Czechs that they were on their own. However, President Johnson had no qualms about sending many more thousands of GI's to Vietnam to fight against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, to help people who by and large despiesed us and who held next to zero common values with our nation.

In case you may have forgotten, {Johnson did)it was the Eastern European immigrants, not the Vietnamese, who immigrated to the US at the turn of the century and onward who worked for peanuts in US factories, US mines, US farms and made this nation affluent and who also fought in 2 world wars and whose sons fought in Vietnam wearing the US uniform. For some odd reason we think nothing of having sacrificed nearly 60,000 Americans to protect and/or liberate nations that had ever given us squat in return. In fact, I still hear conservatives like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh bemoaning the fact that we pulled out of Vietnam too soon - those poor Vietnamese and Cambodians. Sean, I suppose, would have liked us to sacrifice another 60,000 men on behalf of those 2 stellar allies, Vietnam and Cambodia, whose nationals had invested next to nothing up until that point in building America. Sean and Rush sy little about Eastern Europeans who have held out their hands - they'd even do their own fighting against the Soviets, with just a little help from the West.

So you ask what we could do differently in the past, I've given you but a few examples - and there are many many more- when we could have done things differently. And today if we teach in our schools and universitires about the brutalities inflicted on the Eastern European countries, made as big a deal about events like the Ukrainian Holocoaust, then perhaps Americans like you wouldn't have to ask why should we help the Eastern Bloc countries.

how might your steps have introduced additional problems for the US
Btw, if this country truly worried about intervening where it might cause "problems" for the USA, then we'd never help Israel.

Posted by joeblow 2004-12-27 9:07:57 PM|| 2004-12-27 9:07:57 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Americans like me forewent large incomes and cushy jobs to help the Baltics as a volunteer teacher-BTW. Your loyalty to eastern Europe is laudable, and whether you recognize it or not, is shared by me. But I know, from my personal interactions with eastern Europeans shortly after their declaration of independence from Russia, that well-grounded and well-intended advice offered was often not taken on how they could become stronger countries-mainly in my view, because it was in direct odds with their ingrained behavioral indoctrination from the Soviets and with advice that much admired western European countries gave.

Posted by jules 2 2004-12-27 10:33:24 PM|| 2004-12-27 10:33:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Your loyalty to eastern Europe is laudable, and whether you recognize it or not, is shared by me
I'm sorry, Jules, I misjudged you. A very dear family friend is a Czech who fought the Communists as a young paratrooper. Other family friends fled the Ukraine in the 1930's with only the shirts on their backs. So I have quite an emotional attachment to those countries, which IMO we let down at crucial times in history. Perhaps the people you met in the Baltics were a testimony to the effectiveness of Soviet brainwashing, given enough time. The Eastern Europeans I know absolutely loathe the Communists and if given the opportunity, would cheerfully spit on the "soulful" Putin, whom our President holds in such high regard.Barf. This Ukraine election is another important "moment" in time which I hope our nation will not ignore. Mr. Yushchenko needs all the political[and some short term foreign aid wouldn't hurt]support he can get to have Putin back off. There needs to be some major behind the scenes US/EU pressure brought to bear on Putin, to mind his p's and q's. The Russians need the Ukraine to run their oil pipelines through to the EU and the Ukraine needs to be able to buy 90% of their oil and gas from Russia at a reasonable price-simple business agreements with no strings attached would be all the relationship the the Ukraine needs to maintain with Russia.

Posted by joeblow 2004-12-27 11:13:37 PM|| 2004-12-27 11:13:37 PM|| Front Page Top

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