By Mykhailo VASYLEVSKY, The Day
"Our Narkevychi inhabitants are extremely exasperated by the situation,
which forced Ms. Madeleine Albright to announce financial aid cuts for
our country. We promise to present a bill to the United States," Mykola
Yarchuk, Narkevychi Sugar Plant director, told The Day.
What kinds of claims can an ordinary village, which is twenty miles
from the district center of Volochysk, (Khmelnytsky oblast) have to distant
North America? "We do have claims. They are connected with the Hudson River",
Yarchuk explains. But, according to dictionaries, the river owes its name
to the British sailor Henry Hudson who "carried out four research expeditions
in 1567-1611 trying to find a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Ocean and discovered the river, the strait and the bay, which were
later named after him."
Narkevychi also owes its name to one Mr. Narkevych. In order "to forget
and never recall the exploiter class" the settlement was renamed Yasne
in 1966. Later on the historic name was returned to the settlement. And
the railway station stayed the same - Narkevychi.
In 1905 Yotko Narkevych returns to Narkevychi from St. Petersburg where
he studied. He had scarcely come home when an express train brought to
his minor motherland a telegram from the northern capital. Yotko was said
to not only have learned engineering, but actively participated in revolutionary
events as well. Criminal charges were brought against him. To escape Narkevych
sailed through the route pioneered by Henry Hudson.
Shortly thereafter, overseas, the ОmigrО's finances begin, so to say,
to sing songs. This "participant of the revolutionary events of 1905 in
Russia" was almost desperate. And suddenly he reads about a tender for
a project of bridge across the Hudson River in New York.
"Yotko took part and won. He became wealthy man." The Narkevychi plant
director Yarchuk tells the real historical truth. This Yarchuk has been
having the same problem as Yotko before he read the tender advertisement.
So he continues on about the man, after whom the settlement was named:
"When Narkevych got rich, he made inquires and found out that his 'Petersburg
period' had been forgotten, so he returned home with clear conscience.
And he had a railroad stop built here in Narkevychi..."
This is the historical subtext of the problem, which inspires 2000 people
from Narkevychi to continue the dialogue, unsuccessfully began by the Prime
Minister Pustovoitenko with Ms. Albright.
"We will die out like the mammoths, if there is no dialogue," plant
director Mykola Yarchuk continues. He considers the dimensions of his native
land: "In better times the oblast sowed 140,000 hectares with sugar beet.
Last year this area was halved. The sugar sector wound up flat on its back
financially. This year's projections are even worse: they harvested hardly
fifty hectares and consequently will be able to sow the same area. So,
sugar beets will not be sown this spring. What then? Collective farms have
nothing to go out into the fields with - they are naked and barefoot. Hence,
the sugar plants will also be unemployed. And if there is no sweet product,
they will not have funds to pay pensions. There's nothing left..."
Figuratively speaking, precisely for this reason they hope and expect
in Narkevychi that almost a hundred years later some American would sail
and travel Yotko's route from the Hudson River to Narkevychi to rebuild
the railway stop. Perhaps a situation similar to Narkevych's during his
engineering studies would arise there, overseas, so that there would be
something to run away from. Meanwhile everything is quite the opposite."
"They have to settle accounts for the bridge somehow," Yarchuk stands
his ground. Two thousand residents of Narkevychi support him. He is convinced
that the time will come when a settlement, connected with New York by the
bridge across the Hudson, will be named New Narkevychi. It could happen
as early as this fall, the villagers of the original Narkevychi predict
confidently. They are becoming oriented in time and space.






