Stuck in Time
Volodymyr Kish
As most of you know, I have been involved in the Ukrainian community for
a good chunk of my life. During that time,
the greatest frustration that I have faced, which continues to this day, is the
stubborn determination most Ukrainians have to resist what I call cultural evolution.
It seems regardless of generational or geographic
differences, most Ukrainians appear to be stuck in a perpetual time warp that leads
them to dogmatically resist any initiatives that would change their perceived notions
of what a “true” Ukrainian is, or what is acceptable in terms of politics, culture,
music, art or even history.
It is not hard to understand why such may be the case. For most of
When our immigrant forefathers came to Canada they carried with them a legacy
and concept of Ukrainian culture that had to be preserved and protected since Ukraine
itself continued to be victimized by oppressive regimes bent on linguistic and cultural
genocide. Unfortunately, that protective
instinct increasingly came into conflict with the desire by the younger generations
of Canadian-born Ukrainians to express their creative instincts. They were born
into a much more liberal society where change was viewed as a positive and even
necessary ideal. Their parents’ cultural
rigidity and demands for conformity to a political ideology and cultural perspective
that was foreign to them eventually resulted in most of them abandoning their Ukrainian
identity and community.
Even today, much of the same attitude persists in many of the older established
Ukrainian organizations. If you go to a Shevchenko
concert or an anniversary event commemorating some prominent Ukrainian hero in Ukrainian
history, you will see essentially the same program and hear the same words that
our grandparents would have heard seventy or eighty years ago at whatever Ukrainian
hall they went to. Ukrainian events tend
to be exercises in clichés.
In my time, whenever I have been asked to participate in such events, I have
often tried to be creative and inject something new in either form or content. Most of the time, such suggestions were treated
as something akin to heresy. Organizers of
such events simply were not open to doing anything novel or different. “That is not the way these things are done!” was
the common refrain. This would usually be
supplemented by comments to the effect that the older folks wouldn’t understand
or would be upset if things were done differently.
This tendency towards inflexibility becomes imbedded in the very structures
of our organizations and the way they do things. It has been the norm that the leadership of most
of our Ukrainian organizations remains static for decades. Diversity of opinion is discouraged in favour of
rigid ideology and conformity. There is minimal
effort made to recruit “new blood” or to implement “best practices”. For example, the national executives or boards
of most Ukrainian organizations often typically consist of dozens of people when
it has been conclusively demonstrated by corporate and academic research as well
as real world experience that such bodies are most effective and productive when
they contain at most nine or ten individuals.
In the past decade or so, we have seen some promising signs that things are
starting to change within the Ukrainian community. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian
National Federation have seen some welcome changes; modernization initiatives and
fresh new progressive thinkers come on the scene. They have made a good start at
re-invigorating their organizations, yet much remains to be done to pare away the
inertia and accumulated baggage that is holding us back as a community from realizing
our full potential in not only preserving but developing our culture and identity.
That will require determination, open minds
and a willingness to change and try new approaches in all that we do.