Posted by Bohdan Oryshkevich on March 21, 2000 at 12:38:23:
Dear Mr. Stetsyuk:
Where were you born? In which village and in which Oblast? How old are you? If you are over fifty that must have been two generations ago. The Ukrainian language disappears in the Diaspora within two generations. What are you doing for the Ukrainian language in your village?
I would like to point out that my memory is not short. You posted a message on this web site that Kyiv is a Russian city and that you advised a Mexican student to go to Lviv to go to learn Ukrainian. I will be glad to send it to you. If you are creating a fortress around yourself in Lviv, then you have only yourself to blame for the state of affairs in Ukraine.
Lvivites preach but I can tell you that New York City is filled with recently arrived Lvivites and other western Ukrainians who are asking for political asylum from an independent Ukraine. They all are Ukrainian speakers and criticize the Eastern Ukrainians for not being patriotic enough. I understand that there are thousands of such people in every area where Ukrainian settlements exist in North America and western Europe. Ukrainians from Halychyna are very quick to use the Ukrainian language to get their own ends, to look down upon their eastern neighbors, but not to build their own country.
I recently hosted a dinner for three students from Kerch, Dnipropetrovsk, and Lviv. It was the student from Lviv who went over to Russian and started ranting against Ukraine. He kept on stating how he was eager to dump his Ukrainian passport for an American one.
A student from Odesa who went back to Ukraine told me that much of Ukrainian sentiment is like a phantom limb. It has been cut off but you still feel the pain. This was a Russian speaker who read much in Ukrainian.
How do you put that limb back on after generations without killing the patient.
Bohdan Oryshkevich