Author: Andrew Fedynsky

It was the worst job I ever had. And it paid well. I was a “test carrier” at J&L Steel Co. Our next door neighbor was a union shop steward, and he arranged for me to be hired. I already had a job lined up in an inner-city high school in September, but I welcomed...

The world lost a giant when Zbigniew Brzezinski died last month. America lost a statesman; Ukraine lost a friend. I first became aware of Dr. Brzezinski in the early 1970s, reading his commentaries in Newsweek. That was during the depths of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union – with a vast military, nuclear arms,...

I was a high school senior in 1964 when my guidance counselor gave me a pile of college catalogues: Cleveland State, Ohio State, Ohio U., Kenyon, Notre Dame… Notre Dame? I knew they had a great football team, but reading the catalogue I also discovered they had a sophomore studies program in Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck!...

At the end of February, Columbia University marked the centennial of the revolution that toppled the Russian Empire three years into the first world war with a conference, “Ukrainian Statehood 1917-1921: Institutions and Individuals.” (I was gratified to have been invited to participate.) In popular perception, and indeed among many (if not most) historians, what...

Early in November, Bishop Borys Gudziak spoke at the University of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute about Ukraine and its three democratic revolutions in the past quarter century. To explain why they were necessary, he outlined the country’s tragic 20th century history – wars, a genocidal famine, terror, mass emigration, enormous population losses, entrenched corruption. Based...

Our little girl was all of 3 years old when mixing English and Ukrainian she triumphantly announced, “Tato. Ya ye а woman! Mama i ya: my ye womans!” [Tato. I am a woman. Mama and I are womans.] I was astonished – she had just started pre-school and already she was a feminist. Where did...

In June, I wrote about the Trump campaign and its disturbing links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and disgraced Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Since then, lots of other articles have appeared on the same topic: “Putin’s Puppet,” Slate; “Hillary Clinton is Running Against Vladimir Putin,” The Atlantic; “Trump Campaign Guts GOP anti-Russia Stance on Ukraine,”...

CLEVELAND – America is the world’s oldest existing democracy, having held presidential elections every four years without interruption for the past 224 years. This year the Republican Party is holding its national convention in Cleveland on July 18-21. In the spirit of welcome, the Ukrainian Museum-Archives prepared an exhibit “Politics and Ukrainian-Americans,” with photographs, campaign...

CLEVELAND – The Costume Society of America (CSA) – a national organization involved in the study, education, collection, preservation, presentation and interpretation of dress and appearance in past, present, and future societies – held its annual meeting this year in Cleveland on May 24-29. One of the features of the CSA National Symposium is the...

Let me put it bluntly: If you care for Ukraine, you cannot vote for Donald Trump. If you care for America, you cannot vote for Trump. For Ukrainians and many others, Mr. Trump’s and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mutual admiration is utterly alarming, starting with his proposal to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Doing...

CLEVELAND –  Michael (Mykhailo) Pap passed away on April 1 at the age of 95.  He was a university professor and scholar at John Carroll University, a civic activist and political leader both in the Ukrainian diaspora and the city of Cleveland. Mykhailo Pap was born July 24, 1920, in the village of Sirma in...

Mama died 31 years ago. This past March 31 she would have been 100 years old. She was there when I was born and there for my brothers and me as we were growing up. Among my earliest memories of Mama is our bedtime ritual where she jokingly ordered in Polish: “Renze dogury!” I’d obediently...