eneration Ukrainian-Americans: Saturday morning Ukrainian language and culture classes, summer scouting and sports camps, and hearing remarkable stories about how our grandparents fled Ukraine during or after World War II.
However, there was one consistency that I did not become aware of until I became a young adult: the majority of our parents and grandparents were staunch Republicans. The reasons for this were relatively simple. Republicans during the Cold War were avidly anti-communist while Democrats were perceived as socialist and communist sympathizers. Since Ukrainian immigrants came to the U.S. to escape communism, often with no money or knowledge of English, their political ideals coincided with those of the Republican party at the time. Many built successful lives with little financial or social help from the government. Almost all dreamed of the day when the Soviet Union would fall and Ukraine would become independent.
Republican values from the 1960s to the 1980s emphasized self-sufficiency, little government involvement in peoples’ lives, low taxes, and low government expenditures, among others. Thus, it was of no surprise to see Ukrainian immigrants and their offspring vote Republican – these were values that did not exist under the Soviet Union.
However, with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and the subsequent election of George W. Bush in 2000, the Republican party has evolved into a party no longer primarily driven by the values my parents and grandparents supported Instead, it now is driven by a neo-conservative philosophy bent on an aggressive, arrogant foreign policy and a domestic policy that vehemently fights the ‘evils’ of abortion and gay marriage.
Gone are the days when Republican candidates for Congress would prioritize their campaign strategies and attempt to appeal to the small businessman and members of the middle class. Instead, the Republican candidates pander to the vote of the millions of evangelical Christians, whose priorities lie in upholding and fighting for moral values. Republicans claim to have brought moral values back to Capital Hill, even though one by one Republican leaders are being indicted or resigning because of corruption charges and sexually-explicit emails to 16-year olds.
To be perceived as too moderate within the Republican party today is to be considered weak, and therefore, committing political suicide. The bottom line is that the Republican party that my parents and grandparents supported for decades is gone. What remains is an extremist right-wing ideological party whose interests lie in the vote of Evangelical Christians and the money of the super-rich who seek ambassador posts in Bermuda.
This is why it absolutely pains me to see the Ukrainian Diaspora and expatriates continue to vote Republican. The Cold War is long over. Communism is no longer a threat. President Bush spends money as if he holds a blank check, raising the U.S. deficit to astronomical proportions. You no longer hear Republicans claiming they are the champions of small business and the middle class, emphasizing the self-sufficiency and hard work my parents and grant-parents used to build lives for themselves. And I haven’t even mentioned how incompetent, virtueless, and clueless the Republican leadership has been in dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once one of the most respected, trusted, and reasonable countries in the world, the United States has become one of the world’s most feared, distrusted, and irrational.
I believe that my grandparents would be ashamed at the current course taken by the United States, a country that rescued them from communism and gave them the opportunity to build successful lives. They would also be embarrassed by the Republican party, which bears no resemblance to the party that best represented them when they arrived as poor immigrants. Although Democrats may still not best represent their values and priorities, as well as those of the Ukrainian Diaspora, it is time to reanalyze our traditional political allegiances. Stephan Vitvitsky is a US Fulbright Fellow 2006-2007 in Kyiv
