UKRAINIAN FESTIVAL
Culture, heritage celebrated
COHOES, N.Y. » People arrived in early afternoon and sang, dance and enjoyed good food and friendships well into the night during the Capital District Ukrainian Festival on Saturday.
About 500 people turned out to enjoy the culture and traditions of this Eastern European state, which marked 27 years of independence on Friday.
An estimated 10,000 people of Ukrainian descent live in the greater Capital Region.
“This is a great way to put Ukrainians in the area on the map, and celebrate our heritage as a community,” said Dale Roman, the event’s program coordinator. “It’s also a way to welcome people from other backgrounds to take a look at what we’re all about, and expand their horizons.”
Performers from Montreal to Yonkers kept people entertained, while kitchen staff served up tasty dishes such as borscht, shashlyk (shish kabob) and holubtsi (stuffed cabbage).
“The thing about Ukrainian get-togethers is that they’re multi-generational. We all party together,” said festival Chairman Dr. Andrij Baran, a Saratoga Springs cardiologist.
His parents came to the U. S. after World War II as part of a third wave of Ukrainian immigrants. Two previous groups came around 1900 and again after World War I, primarily for economic reasons to better themselves.
“The reason Cohoes and Watervliet were such a big magnet is the work people found in mills,” Baran said.
But the post-WWII mi-
gration came to escape communism, after experiencing one of the worst genocides in human history, which is largely overlooked in American classrooms.
It’s believed the 193233 Holodomor claimed more than 7 million lives, from starvation, as the Soviet government allegedly closed off food supplies to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.
At Saturday’s festival, visitors could sign a petition calling on Congress to formally recognize the 85th anniversary of this tragedy.
The fourth and most recent wave of immigrants started coming to America after the Ukraine gained its freedom in 1991.
“They’re giving us new blood,” Baran said. “That’s why we can have a festival like this. We’re still alive, we’re a community, we’re coming back.”
Like many ethnic groups, church plays a vital role in keeping people united. There are parishes in Cohoes (St. Peter and St. Paul), Watervliet (St. Nicholas) and an orthodox church in Troy, also named St. Nicholas.
“A famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shechenko, said, ‘Learn everything about the outside world, but don’t be ashamed of your own,’” Baran said. “So we live with one foot in one world and one foot in the other. We’re proud to be Americans. Ukaraines have shed their blood for America in all the wars including Vietnam and Afghanistan. But we also like to keep our ethnic culture going. You won’t find any more loyal Americans than you do among Ukrainian-Americans, but we know where we come from.”
The festival was held at the Ukrainian-American Citizens Club, whose picturesque property borders the Mohawk River.
Vera Kushnir, of Troy, is financial secretary on the executive board of the Ukrainian National Wom- en’s League of America.
“The goal of all Ukrainians is to preserve tradition, culture, and language beyond the borders of Ukraine,” she said. “By having festivals like this, we not only enjoy the company of Ukrainians, we bring non-Ukrainians in and they enjoy our culture, our traditions, our dances, our food and everybody has a good time.”