Ministry of Truth?

Vyacheslav Pikhovshek’s worries that as head of the State Committee on Information Policy Ivan Drach might be tempted to decide what is and is not Ukrainian are absolutely without foundation. I have been on a first name basis with the poet who became first head of Rukh for ten years now. There were periods where we met virtually every day, and, although we rarely see each other these days, I think I know him pretty well. I have seen how he runs organizations and have a pretty good idea what he will do.

While an ardent national democrat who does want Ukraine to become more Ukrainian, Ivan Drach is extremely tolerant to the views of his subordinates. I recall once pointing out that one publication sponsored by the Ukraine Society he heads was expressing some pretty far out ideas, neopaganism to be exact, and that particular trend is anathema to most of the Ukrainian Diaspora, which the Ukraine Society deals with. The issue, it seemed to me, was not the editor’s right to express such views but that by expressing them in a magazine published in three languages by his organization, such views could be understood as those of the organization. This could obviously lead to problems.

He replied, “Yes, Jim, I also think some of the stuff in it is pretty strange.”

“But it’s an organ of your organization,” I reminded him.

“Why should the editor have to think like us?”

And I doubt he even said a word to that editor, who continues to publish the same kind of material. Fortunately, hardly anybody reads that particular journal.

The point is that someone reacting like Ivan Drach did then is not about to start imposing ideological strictures on his own accord.

Given the shocking figures Volodymyr Yavorivsky cites on the miserable percentage of Ukrainian language television programs, newspapers, and books published, something should clearly be done to foster the use of the Ukrainian language in the realm of information and culture. And Ivan Drach has been appointed to an excellent post to do just that. After all, in the last census (1989), two-thirds of all inhabitants of the then Ukrainian SSR cited Ukrainian as their native language. Maybe someone should remind the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Incidentally, Orwell’s fictional Ministry of Truth did not deal with information; it was the Institute of Party History.