Petro Jacyk was no romantic. In any case, he did his best not to look like one. He was strict, pragmatic, always extremely enthusiastic, hard to deal with, a ruthless and sharp-minded polemicist, and logician. In fact, epithets and metaphors are hardly necessary writing about a person you knew so well, loved, and revered. Every president or chairman of every conference, meeting, or gathering of ethnic Ukrainians anywhere in the United States or Canada would start by nervously scanning the audience, looking for a lean man with a proud face and gray hair. Well he should, for Jacyk was truly unpredictable. The thing was not that everybody was after his money. Jacyk was very independent; sizing up the situation with his internal computer, he knew precisely what was happening. And he spared no one in his statements and references. He always demanded action, which was a pain for the professional talkers (of which there are plenty in Mother Ukraine and beyond her borders). Jacyk was incredibly vulnerable in his sole obsession: Ukraine. What did it mean to him?
Jacyk’s filial love of Ukraine was his greatest joy, happiness, pain, and curse. He was not overly happy in his private life. In fact, he was a workaholic, and everything he ventured seemed doomed to success. Strangely, after all those eulogies about him as a great Ukrainian philanthropist, I still think that Jacyk saw the Ukrainian cause through a businessman’s eyes. Not in the sense that he wanted to make money on it, but because he would embark only on long-term fundamental projects certain to benefit Ukraine. Quite frankly, neither I, no anyone else of the ethnic Ukrainian community (probably except the brilliant analyst Prof. Ivan Rudnytzkyj) could have predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. The empire had seemed so powerful, formative, built to last for ages. In practice most had been preparing for a long struggle, albeit without much hope for victory. And so Jacyk’s taskmaster’s approach, his demand for action, for specific projects did not inspire much enthusiasm. Ukrainian ОmigrОs could contribute a million dollars to another rally before the White House and consider it a big success. Jacyk, in contrast, would finance academic chairs, research programs, and publishing projects, for that was his vision of a tangible contribution Ukrainians abroad would and could make to the Ukrainian cause. As a practical businessman, Jacyk thought in practical terms and on a broad scale. He sponsored the publication of important books on Ukrainian history, including an English translation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus’. He was actually the financial center of numerous editions of the “executed renascence” of 1920s Soviet Ukrainian literature, although many of these books do not even acknowledge his sponsorship. He had deeds in mind, not personal glory. After powerful international corporations joined the publishing effort, books started to be published, slowly, with difficulty, but surely. It was then he turned to the children’s issue. His Ukrainian language contest marked the beginning of national self-identification, removing the question mark from Hrushevsky’s Who Are the Ukrainians and What Do They Want?
I first met Petro Jacyk in Toronto. I had been invited for him to see the strange American that had embarked on a study of the Ukrainian famine. At the time I worked with Robert Conquest at Harvard. Petro Jacyk was among those financing the project. He was friendly but on his guard. We met again on several occasions and the guarded attitude was no longer there. He invited me over. He had a gorgeous home. We spent a long time talking, even arguing. Too bad I cannot clearly remember that particular discussion. I was too young, jammed with information, and I must have talked more than I listened (he was a very good listener). Thus I will skip personal details because I simply fail to remember. Instead, I can recall everything we agreed upon or crossed swords in terms of history, politics, ideology, and culture. Also, I was always aware of his warm attitude toward me.
After many years we met again in Ukraine, already an independent state. What we had disagreed upon was completely forgotten, for the disputable issues had exhausted themselves. Jacyk had carefully read practically all my papers and closely followed my publications; he pointed out that my brief features in The Day helped him get his bearings in the goings-on in Ukraine.
For my part, I was very enthusiastic about his Ukrainian language contest. My wife, Ukrainian writer Natalia Dziubenko, and I had more than once discussed the idea of an all-Ukrainian dictation (the way they do it in Poland), a Day of the Ukrainian Language to be observed nationwide. However, it had never got any further than occasional media appearances; it could not, not without a powerful organization taking a comprehensive and serious approach. And then such an organization materialized: the Ukrainian League of Philanthropists, led by Petro Jacyk. I am only too well aware what the efforts of most Ukrainian benevolent foundations come down to eventually. Also, I know that Jacyk would have never ventured a hopeless project. He was not that much of a romantic.
At the awards ceremony I felt happy and sad at the same time. Happy because the winners were greeted by noted Ukrainian figures, because the children were overjoyed and looked resplendent, with my own laureate dancing with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin on a hundred dollar banknote. The very atmosphere was so festive, summing up the league’s consistent and strenuous effort; it would be long remembered by those young people coming from all parts of Ukraine, their parents and teachers, and by all those that had done so much to make the project a reality. Petro Jacyk was radiantly proud as its key founder; he was handed bouquets, the president of Ukraine shook hands and thanked him warmly. I could see that Jacyk was tired, but I could also see tears of joy in his eyes, and at one point he wept openly, embarrassed, confused, and deeply moved. He told me he had never believed he would live to see a day like that. He also thanked me for my work in Ukraine. There was much noise, hundreds of people crowding and pushing to get near him, so we could not talk. After all, everything had been said by his selfless work and my own humble endeavors to somehow benefit this young state. I was also very happy that day (some might wonder why, being a 100% American who only thirty years ago had no idea about a country named Ukraine and would probably have never learned without starting on the doctorate I did).
And I was also very sad, remembering Khvyliovy, Kosynka, Drai- Khmara, Epik, and all of those who died a violent death so young, and the hundreds, thousands, millions that had to die just because they were Ukrainians and spoke Ukrainian. Such a contest would have been unthinkable only fifteen years ago; its organizers would have been persecuted and made to live elsewhere in the Soviet empire; thirty years ago, they would have been arrested, tried, and sent to prison camps; earlier, they would have been shot without trial, and the “enemy of the people” brand would remain on their posterity. Today, our beautiful children receive rich awards, are greeted by the president, and are honored to pose with him for journalists’ cameras. Another thing that clouded my joy was wondering about what lay in store for all those children. How will they live in a country where the titular nation has become virtually a national minority and is continuing to dwindle; in a country where arrogance and aggressiveness are considered virtues, are envied, while an intellectual is scorned as a ne’er-do-well and dignity is laughed at, where an individual refusing to be a pawn in the hands of those wielding stolen money and power and using the political-criminal lingo, can easily be killed.
There were instances evil tongues and yellow journalism about the Canadian millionaire Petro Jacyk paying children to speak Ukrainian. But neither he nor Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky could have taught them grammar and literature, stimulating them to read the singular verses of Vasyl Symonenko and Vasyl Stus, sing The Mighty Dnipro Roars and Bellows..., stay up nights reading Lesia Ukrayinka’s philosophical poems, and mastering Ivan Franko’s most sophisticated works. Their parents and teachers could and did all this, and those children did so on their own. The Ukrainian language contest marked for those little Ukrainians the beginning of the road from inferiority and humiliation to self-accomplishment, pride, and dignity. I will never forget a little pretty girl, all white bows and shining blue eyes, standing by her mother and wincing and tugging at her hand at her mother’s use of the surzhyk mixture of illiterate Russian and atrocious Ukrainian, whispering please, Mom, speak proper Ukrainian, you can’t talk like that here. The contest marked the beginning of a struggle for the good name of the Ukrainian language and culture. I believe that this mass movement will achieve its purpose. Even a thick- headed bureaucrat can be made to learn to mumble diakuyu (thank you) and do pobachennia (goodbye), but no one can make him love the land he walks, or rather tramples. Yet there is the rising generation, these young people do care about their land and the way they live in it.
I know how much effort it will take the organizers of the contest (now bearing Jacyk’s name) — particularly its brain trust, writer Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, members of the jury, teachers, and children — to keep it alive. I know that its atmosphere is genuinely festive. I cannot understand Natalia Poklad, the poetess that branded it a duck decoy. Just two words reducing to nil the painstaking efforts of thousands of people, true patriots, and worst of all, hurting the dignity of the children that would display their diplomas for all to see at home; also, casting a stone on the grave of Petro Jacyk, the unforgettable and indefatigable champion of the Ukrainian cause. Indeed, strike at your friends so your enemies take fright.
All the same, I believe that the Ukrainian children now growing up will embellish his revered grave with only flowers and endless gratitude. And their memories.
