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previous: Chapter 17 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Clarence Manning published by Bookman Associates New York, 1951 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 19

 p162  XVIII

The Displaced Persons

During World War II the democracies became familiar with the work of the governments-in-exile from the nations that were overrun by the Nazis. They were composed of outstanding statesmen who had been able to escape the hurricane that swept over their countries and they not only enjoyed the general esteem of the democratic governments but were the truest guide to the ideas of the people who were compelled to remain at home. They included all parties save the Communists, for these found their spiritual and actual home in Moscow and worked at cross purposes with all of their fellows. It was a sad day for the world when the democratic powers, fired by the hope of appeasing Stalin and securing a lasting peace, withdrew their support from these groups of men and transferred it to the Communist-dominated regimes.

During the years when Hitler and Stalin were actively co‑operating against democracy, these exiles and refugees had an important role not only in preserving to the world the ideals of their people but in voicing their hopes and aspirations. It is even truer in the case of Ukraine, for it is only among the displaced persons that we can hear the voice of the true Ukraine; it cannot come from that Communist organization which has been admitted to the United Nations as the trusted mouthpiece of the Russian Communist party.

 p163  It has been a tremendous and heartbreaking task to create amid the hardships of the refugee camps in Germany and Austria the organs which can speak for the thousands of displaced persons who found themselves on the western side of the Iron Curtain. It has been even harder to prove to the Western Allies that the refugees speak not only for themselves but for their people and to secure the financial means to spread their message.

From the moment of Allied victory and the formation of the refugee camps a certain amount of relief work was undertaken by the refugees themselves. It was on a small and disconnected scale. In the autumn of 1945, however, there was held in the American zone of Germany at Aschaffenburg a meeting of representatives of the various Ukrainian camps and this formed a Central Representation of the Ukrainian Emigration, under the leader­ship of Vasyl Mudry, a prominent statesman among the Ukrainians previously under Poland. This committee was given the right to speak for their countrymen and their work was completed by the formation in 1947 in the British zone of a Ukrainian Central Relief Committee. In 1945 was also formed the Ukrainian Central Relief Union in Austria.​1

These committees exercised a general supervision and guidance over all cultural work done among the displaced persons. In a strikingly short time an energetic and well-edited Ukrainian press sprang to life. The publication not only of newspapers but of school textbooks and of serious works of science and literature proceeded as rapidly as the means of financing them could be found. Ukrainian schools were set up and religious organizations flourished.

In 1945, before the approach of the Communists, the Ukrainian Free University which had existed in Prague since 1923 was transferred to Munich and despite great difficulties it began to do good work in training the younger Ukrainians and in enabling the older scholars to continue their scientific work.​2

This was by no means an isolated institution. In 1947 a  p164 Ukrainian Technical-Agricultural Institute was organized in Regensburg and in 1945 a Ukrainian Higher Economic School in Munich. The Ukrainian Free Academy of Science was started in Augsburg in 1945 under the leader­ship of Professor Dmytro Doroshenko. Then in 1947 the members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society who had survived the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Lviv came together at Munich and renewed the work of the society. In addition there was started throughout the camps a network of Ukrainian lower educational institutions.​3

We can add a large number of other organizations — a Society of Ukrainian Co‑operatives, a Society of Ukrainian Journalists, a Central Society of Ukrainian Students. There was hardly a field in which some grouping was not formed — at first largely confined to one of the Western zones of Germany or Austria but gradually spreading through the entire area, as the Western Powers came closer together in their appreciation of the real problem offered by the displaced persons and Soviet opposition to anything Western.

Similarly the MUR, the Artistic Ukrainian Movement, brought into its member­ship writers, artists of all kinds, actors and musicians. Exhibitions of Ukrainian art produced under its inspiration, performances of Ukrainian plays and concerts of Ukrainian music all combined to reveal to the Western Powers the range and quality of Ukrainian cultural achievements, even under difficulties.​4

All this organizational work together with the circumstances of their life has created a stronger sense of unity among Ukrainians of all areas and all walks of life. The displaced persons represent a good cross-section of Ukrainian culture and political life, all uprooted by the devastating tactics of two totalitarian powers. They have had the opportunity to compare their experiences, from the days of the Ukrainian National Republic, and to test their ideas against a background of military occupation and political oppression. Many have escaped from both German and Soviet concentration  p165 camps and perhaps more than ever before they are coming to understand both the advantages and the defects of Western democracy and to understand also the similarity of their problems to those of persons from other occupied lands.

It was more difficult to organize political life and to co-ordinate the views of the various refugees. There had been an abundance of political parties in the area under Polish rule but none had been allowed in Eastern Ukraine. Finally in 1946, thanks to the efforts of the representatives of the Ukrainians in North America, a Co‑ordinating Ukrainian Committee was organized to which most of the political parties, old and new, sent their delegates.

Once this was done, the trend toward unity was strengthened by the foundation in July, 1948, of an All-Ukrainian National Rada (Council) which is in a unique position to speak for Ukrainians of almost all political parties. At least eight of the leading Ukrainian groups took part in this meeting. They are the Ukrainian National Democratic Union, the Ukrainian National-Statehood Union, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workingmen's Party, the Ukrainian Socialist Radical Party, the Ukrainian Democratic Revolutionary Party, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Revolutionaries.​5

These parties embrace the entire gamut of Ukrainian political life with the exception of a few of the more extreme factions on the right and left and it is likely that some of these will join ultimately. The Rada includes veterans of the Ukrainian cause who have survived from World War I and those who have come into the movement at various times since then. It occupies exactly the same position as the various national committees which were organized in Great Britain, France and the United States during World War I and the various governments-in-exile from World War II.

Through this body which have drawn their member­ship from all classes of patriotic Ukrainian citizens, Ukraine can for the first time in years express her real feeling for democracy,  p166 her desire to take part among the self-governing and independent nations of the world and her undying opposition to the totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union. It is these men and women and not the representatives of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the United Nations who are the real spokesmen of the Ukrainians as a definite factor in the life and organization of civilized Europe.

This concentration of Ukrainian life in Germany and Austria is obviously but a passing phase. It would be impossible to build up a normal life for the mass of displaced persons under the conditions of overcrowding and ruin in Germany and Austria. Adequate means of productive livelihood do not exist. The acute sufferings are relieved by such organizations as the United Ukrainian Relief Committee, in the American zone, and the Canadian Ukrainian Relief Fund working in the British zone, but more and more the efforts of these organizations are turning to the pressing task of moving the Ukrainians out of the devastated regions.

The dream of some of the refugees that they might be transported in a body to renew their active Ukrainian life somewhere in the New World soon proved unrealistic. There was no nation that would welcome an organized mass of several hundred thousand people carrying on their own life. The task is, then, to move the Ukrainians individually or in small groups to new homes, not only in North America but in South America, Australia, Great Britain, France and Belgium.

This new dispersal of Ukrainians throughout the world has broken up the unity of many of their organizations but it has also given them the opportunity to broaden the scope of their activity and to interest ever-widening circles of the Western world in their cause. For example, the Shevchenko Scientific Society is now represented by an American branch in New York. Many distinguished Ukrainian scholars have found posts and opportunities for work in various institutions in the United States and Canada, although unfortunately too many are still unable to utilize their distinctive skills and knowledge.  p167 The best off are undoubtedly those who had been trained in scientific pursuits, for they have been able to fit themselves into the general reservoir of scientific men and have been hampered only by their lack of English. It should be far harder for men trained in the humanities and especially in Ukrainian subjects. Yet many of these in the course of time will be able to establish themselves satisfactorily.

It means a scattering of the already attenuated Ukrainian resources but the damage would be far greater except for the period of intense concentration that followed the World War. Men from all parts of Ukraine were able for the first time to get to know one another personally, compare notes, formulate their own ideas, and build up a real spirit of unity based on solid reality and not on the purely intellectual level. Whatever may be the future, Ukrainian society abroad is far more unified than it has ever been and we can confidently expect that the gains of the last years and the real renaissance of the Ukrainian spirit will not be lost.

The Author's Notes:

1 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p888.

2 U. F. U. Newsletter, Ukrainian Free University in Munich, I year, April, 1948, No. I.

3 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p890 ff.

4 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p892 f.

5 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p895 f.

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