Kto Kogo?
Motyl, Alexander J.
tween having one car or two, I'm afraid I completely forgot it was the president of the United States who had uttered those words and I spoke a little sharply to him. I hope you'didn't mind my...
...There arc people who are cynical enough to use the People's Church for that purpose...
...But, unfortunately, all of this is theory...
...Not understanding the Ukraine means not understanding the Soviet Union and its place in the world...
...Why not "build bridges" to the Ukraine and Belorussia by establishing a consulate in the capital of a member of the Security Council and, perhaps, eventually requesting an exchange of ambassadors...
...Among other things, by breaking off negotiations for establishing a U.S...
...3. A consulate would also be to the advantage of Ukrainian dissidents...
...Kto kavo...
...I suddenly felt a great need to return to the real world...
...The Soviets insist that the Ukraine is a sovereign republic...
...Who really benefits from an American consulate in Kiev...
...it is not significantly different from what the Moral Majority is saying...
...But I'm afraid my excuse did not entirely explain my haste...
...as Lenin once asked...
...NEW CONSTANTINIANISM...
...Government officials, journalists, and academics still tend to confuse it with Russia -- an error tantamount to identifying Austria with Germany, or Canada with the United States...
...And particularly now, the need for American support is urgent and growing...
...A consulate in New York -- which means a few more spies to supplement those already at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations...
...John Paul II's manners in Nicaragua may have been perfectly terrible...
...Instead of traveling to Moscow to publicize their Commonweal: 134 cause, the dissenters could communicate with the West via the American diplomats stationed in Kiev and the Western journalists sure to follow...
...How...
...Oh dear," the president answered, with his disarmingly boyish grin, " I ' m afraid my joke must have made you think I'm callous and unfeeling...
...But that wasn't what his words made me think...
...consulate in Kiev outweigh the costs of a Soviet consulate in New York...
...The picture is, of course, a little more complicated than that...
...In practice, both Presidents Caner and Reagan have shown that they have little appreciation for the vast opportunities that the Soviet "'nationality question" offers United States diplomacy...
...So why not put the Soviets to the test...
...A CONSULATE IN KIEV H I ISTORY, as Ronald Reagan has conclusively demonstrated, does indeed repeat itself...
...And that, inevitably, means not understanding U.S.-USSR relations...
...These, then, are the pluses...
...I won't debate the point...
...But what do Americans know about the Ukraine...
...But consider the following points: 1. The Ukraine, with a population of fifty million and a territory larger than that of France, is one of the world's major economic powers...
...I hope you'didn't mind my taking an extra two minutes to tell him of some of the families I have come to know in the course of my work as a journalist who struggle stoically and desperately to make ends meet, and of great numbers of people living in my own neighborhood in New York who not only do not possess a single car, but for whom every subway ride is an expense that must be carefully weighed...
...The Ukraine, as Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer points out, is the key to the USSR's ethnic stability...
...PEOPLE'S CHURCH OR MORAL MAIORITY revolutionary Russia...
...She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine...
...Those who uncritically support such movements should look at the history of the Living Church in postIll t tion for the poor," which is seen as the vocation of the Catholic and other Christian churches in our time...
...It also gives the United States the opportunity to score substantial propaganda points against the USSR...
...After lunch I mumbled something about catching a plane and I left rather quickly...
...It is important to distrust those who know what is good for you...
...My objection to the Moral Majority is not to the fact that its politics are right-wing and mine are not, but to its willingness to use the coercive instrumentality of government to force its points home...
...Starting in January 1984, the Ukraine began serving on the UN Security Council...
...granted that its beginnings will be full of false starts, it has in some ways the marks of the kind of theology we have been taught to respect, one which develops from the grass roots and rises...
...Exile to the West may be considered less damaging to the USSR's image than imprisonment in Siberia...
...Who is punishing whom...
...As the largest non-Russian republic, with a long history of nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment, the Ukraine represents the greatest challenge to the Kremlin's policy of ethnic management...
...9 March 1984:135...
...On the one side were the lively, vibrant People, discovering the fresh truth of the Gospel and liberation, which was equated with socialism...
...Both presidents, evidently, appear to think it's the Soviets...
...Just as noteworthy is the Ukraine's political importance...
...Many Americans know about losif Begun, who was recently tried in Moscow, but how many have heard of Yuri Tarnopolsky, imprisoned in Kharkov...
...They don't trust your own searching or uncertainty, having forgotten their own or, worse, never having experienced such things...
...That something good is being done for me in Jesus's name whether I like it or not bothers me, whatever the ideology of the person who is doing me this heavy favor...
...consulate...
...What do the Soviets get in return...
...Angry at the Soviets Ifor shooting down KAL 007, he has done exactly what Jimmy Carter, angry at the Soviets for invading Afghanistan, did over three years ago...
...Surely, the benefits of a U.S...
...Rather, I had the unnerving impression that the president, and the others in his administration, are quite out of touch with the realities of life in America today...
...USSR KTO KAVO...
...There is a form of liberation theology which is Constantinian religion in a new guise...
...on the other side was the reactionary, heavily clerical Papal Church, identified with the establishment and oppression...
...Certainly not Americans, Ukrainians, and Jews...
...Only the United States and Japan exceed its output in tractors, and no country in Europe outproduces it in diesel locomotives...
...But it is important that the results of that attention do not lead to a new form of a recurrent Christian problem...
...While this is hardly going to stop the KGB from cracking down, it may give Andropov's successors second thoughts about the best way of approaching their dissident problem...
...Both presidents, in fits of selfdestructive passion, resolved to "punish" the Soviet Union...
...The answer, unfortunately, is next to nothing...
...In a word, dissident isolation from the world would lessen...
...I do not want to defend the role of the Catholic church in the present or past history of Latin America, or the behavior of John Paul II or any previous pope...
...together with the similarly privileged Belorussian SSR, it enjoys a seat in the United Nations and numerous other international organizations...
...And indeed, it has a ministry of foreign affairs and the formal right to engage in diplomatic relations...
...U.S...
...The attention which liberation theology has brought to the question of systemic evil, and our responsibility for social as well as personal moral questions, is entirely right...
...Who wins...
...And then there are Catholics who believe that the People's Church represents an important new development in the evolution of Christianity...
...Yours sincerely, MARIE WINN (Marie Winn is the author o f The Plug-In Drug, and the recently published Children Without Childhood...
...All of these points of view are held against the backdrop of a complicated history of oppression, much of it sanctioned or at the very least tolerated by the Catholic church...
...In arguing my point I am a little uncomfortable, because what I say can be used selectively and I certainly don't intend that -- I am not arguing for an option for the rich, or suggesting that the previous indifference of Christians to the violence and oppression created by unjust economic systems was at all justified...
...While William Clark may permit himself the luxury of such ignorance, a world power may not...
...consulate in Kiev, the capital of the Soviet Ukraine...
...The "Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public" has been let loose on Soviet Jewry, antiSemitic propaganda has been intensified, repression of refuseniks has increased, and Jewish emigration has all but Of several minds: I I John Garvey I stopped...
...In addition to the above products, the Ukraine exports trucks, metallurgical and mining equipment, lathes, precision instruments, and electronic and optical devices to over one hundred countries...
...Minimally, a Kiev consulate would provide invaluable moral assistance to this beleaguered Soviet minority...
...There are people who support~ the papacy and social change, and they worry about the manipulation of an anti-papal form of Catholicism which could be used as an arm of whatever government currently has power...
...2. But a Kiev consulate doesn't just serve an educational purpose...
...ALEXAPqDER J. MOTYL (Alexander J. Motyl, a preceptor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, is the author of numerous articles on Soviet and East European affairs...
...Kto kavo...
...A leader in the steel, chemical, and machine-building industries, the Ukraine also has vast reserves of iron and coal, and accounts for one-fifth of the USSR's grain harvest and more than one half of its sugar production...
...Like Ukrainian dissidents, Jewish refuseniks would more easily be able to publicize their plight and maintain a lifeline to the West...
...Must justified American displeasure with Soviet behavior be counterproductive to be convincing...
...What does worry me is an attitude which can be found floating next to ideas like the "People's Church" and some of what I have seen written about "the opD URING THE POPE'S visit to Central America there were reports, in the Nation and other places, of a conflict involving Nicaragua's "People's Church" more or less versus the Papal Church -- and stick figures were drawn to illustrate both...
...The Kremlin would face an unenviable choice: either grant the Ukraine and Belorussia greater international autonomy along East European lines or admit to the international community that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics really is just a facade for a modern-day Russian empire...
...Within the Soviet Union, it leads in the development of computer technology and know-how...
...4. Finally, the 634,154 Jews in the Ukraine would benefit from a U.S...
...What are the minuses...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 5
