Author: Andrew Sorokowski

“When we think of the [sic] Ukraine, we think of pogroms.” With some such words, I heard a BBC correspondent introduce an interviewee around 1990. Now it is true that history has traditionally focused on dramatic events like war or revolution. Thus, the popular image of Ukrainian history emphasized the massacres of Jews during the...

On February 12, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany reached an agreement in Minsk, Belarus, on a new ceasefire in Ukraine (The Ukrainian Weekly, February 15). The 13-point document replaces the Minsk agreement of September 5, 2014, which it resembles. Among other things, it calls for the removal of heavy weapons. The crucial...

It was stern grey November, and Vienna’s pillared palaces and government edifices could barely be discerned against the somber sky. The capital was dense with diplomats, journalists and human-rights activists from all over Europe and North America come to attend yet another international conference. Among them was a throng of diaspora Ukrainians and recent exiles,...

Do you collect Ukrainian folk art? Is your house crammed with Hutsul rugs, ceramic cups and saucers, vases, carved and inlaid wooden bowls and boxes, pysanky, embroidered shirts and pillows? Permit me, then, an indiscreet question. What will happen to it all when you die? Do you think your descendants will preserve it for eternity?...

PART II Ends and means Recognition (or creation) of a patriarchate was not the movement’s only goal. In accord with the Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarchal movement also sought to revive the Kyivan-Byzantine tradition and ecclesiastical culture. Thus, on the parish level it advocated the return of traditional liturgical practices such as...