The Showman and the Ukrainian Cause

Folk Dance, Film, and the Life of Vasile Avramenko

Orest T. Martynowych

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780887554728
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

A quixotic figure, Vasile Avramenko (1895-1981) used folk culture and modern media in a life-long crusade to promote Ukraine's struggle for independence to North American audiences. From his base in New York City, he built a network of folk dance schools and produced musical spectacles to help Ukrainian immigrants sustain their identity. His feature-length Ukrainian language films made in the 1930s with Hollywood director Edgar G. Ulmer, the "king of ethnic and B movies, " were shown throughout North America. Orest T. Martynowych's The Showman and the Ukrainian Cause is a fascinating portrait how culture can become a political tool in a diaspora community.

Notes

Chapter One: The Man and His Mission

1 Irena Knysh, Zhyva dusha narodu: do iuvileiu ukrainskoho tanku (Winnipeg: the author, 1966), and Ivan Pihuliak, Vasyl Avramenko a vidrodzhennia ukrainskoho tanku (Syracuse: the author, 1979), provide two brief and celebratory sketches of Avramenko’s life and work prior to his arrival in Canada. Researchers may also wish to grapple with Avramenko’s virtually undecipherable handwritten notes, “Moie zhyttia ta spohady, 1895–1915,” at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Ottawa, Vasile Avramenko Collection, MG 31 D 87, vol. 1, file 10.

2 O.L. Steshenko et al, eds., Istoriia mist i sil Ukrainskoi RSR: Cherkaska oblast (Kyiv: Instytut Istorii Akademii Nauk URSR, 1972), 397–400, contains a brief sketch of Stebliv at the turn of the twentieth century.

3 Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 371–74, 380–81; Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 29–31, 39–45, 54–61.

4 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 9, file 1, contains Avramenko’s revealing correspondence between 1928 and 1934 with Liuba Maistrenko.

5 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 9, file 32, Avramenko’s 1971 correspondence with Joseph Schwarz.

6 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 18, file 3, Avramenko’s brief undated note, “How I Conceived the Idea of Ukrainian Film” (in Ukrainian).

7 Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/default.asp, maintained by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, contains concise and informative articles on the Ukrainian theatre and all of the personalities mentioned in this chapter.

8 M.T. Rylsky, ed., Ukrainskyi dramatychnyi teatr: narysy istorii v dvokh tomakh, vol. 1, Dozhovtnevyi period (Kyiv: Akademiia nauk Ukrainskoi RSR, 1967), 267–71, 330–32; Myron Shatulsky, The Ukrainian Folk Dance (Toronto: Kobzar, 1980), 48–49.

9 Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 305.

10 Valerian Revutsky, “Sadovsky’s Theater,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=/pages/s/a/sadovskystheater.htm.

11 George S.N. Luckyj, Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917–1934, revised and updated edition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 129, citing the critic P. Rulin writing in 1929.

12 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 1, file 31, brief undated “Biography of Vasile Avramenko.”

13 Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers Revolt, March–April 1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 101.

14 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 9, file 32, Avramenko’s letter to Joseph Schwarz, 1 February 1971.

15 Pihuliak, Vasyl Avramenko, 17.

16 V.M. Verkhovynets, Teoriia ukrainskoho narodnoho tantsiu, 5th ed. (Kyiv: Muzychna Ukraina, 1990), 13–35, contains an informative sketch of the life and career of the ethnographer and choreographer by Yaroslav Verkhovynets that is the source for the next few paragraphs.

17 Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute and Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, 1999), especially 134–40, which provide a balanced discussion of this episode.

18 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 1, file 31, brief undated “Biography of Vasile Avramenko.” Also see Vasyl Avramenko, “Ukrainskyi natsionalnyi tanok,” in Klenovyi lyst: kanadiiskyi almanakh (Winnipeg: T-vo opiky nad ukrainskymy pereselentsiamy im. Sv. Rafaila v Kanadi, 1929), 11–17.

19 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 15, file 9, “Tribute to Washington: Press Releases,” 1932.

20 Pihuliak, Vasyl Avramenko, 17–62, provides the most thorough account of Avramenko’s efforts to teach and popularize Ukrainian folk dancing in western Ukraine (then part of Poland), Czechoslovakia, and Germany between 1921 and 1925. The remainder of this chapter relies on his narrative.

21 o.H.P. “Soroklittia slavnoi diialnosty: Do biohrafii prof. O.A. Koshytsia,” Dnipro (Philadephia), 1 and 8 March 1937.

22 Oleksandr Koshyts [Alexander Koshetz], Z pisneiu cherez svit, vol.1, Podorozh Ukrainskoi respublikanskoi kapeli (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre, 1952), and vol. 2, Iz “shchodennyka” O. Koshytsia (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre, 1970), contain descriptions of the tours. The Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre Archive (UCECA), Winnipeg, Alexander Koshetz Collection, box 15, contains an album full of reviews clipped from European newspapers.

23 New York Tribune, 1 October 1922.

24 Winnipeg Evening Tribune, 12 December 1923, citing reviews published recently in the American press.

25 Manitoba Free Press, 12 December 1923.

26 UCECA, Alexander Koshetz Collection, box 14, “Shchodennyk.”

27 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 7, file 19, Avramenko’s correspondence with Ivan Bobersky (1925–34); vol. 12, files 1–28, announcements, programs, and brochures; vol. 16, files 4–14, schools; and UCECA, Ivan Bobersky Collection, box 1a, contain a wealth of information about Avramenko’s teaching and performing in western Ukraine and Czechoslovakia.

28 Subtelny, Ukraine, 427.

29 Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 121–34, provides a concise and cogent analysis of Ukrainian-Polish relations during the interwar years.

30 Pihuliak, Vasyl Avramenko, 36.

31 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 8, file 11, Avramenko’s correspondence with Andrii Kist (1922–27).

32 LAC, MG 31 D 87, vol. 7, file 19, Bobersky’s letters to Avramenko and Hassan, 21 January to 5 October 1925; vol. 8, file 3, Hassan’s letters to Avramenko, 30 April to 2 November 1925; vol. 7, file 11, Biberovich’s letters to Avramenko and Hassan, 13 July to 6 October 1925.

Chapter 2: Dance Master

1 Toronto Evening Telegram, 27 February 1926.

2 For a discussion of Canadian imperial sentiment, see Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970).

3 E.D. McLaren, “On National Aspirations,” in Empire Club Speeches: Being Addresses before the Empire Club of Canada (Ottawa: Dent, 1906), 136.

4 Reverend James Robertson, a Presbyterian, cited in Michael Owen, “‘Keeping Canada God’s Country’: Presbyterian School Homes for Ruthenian Children,” in Dennis L. Butcher et al., eds., Prairie Spirit: Perspectives on the Heritage of the United Church of Canada in the West (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985), 186–87.

5 Cited in Vivian Olender, “The Canadian Methodist Church and the Gospel of Assimilation, 1900–1925,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 7, 2 (1982): 68.

6 Jonathan F. Vance, A History of C...

Table of contents

• List of Photographs
• World Premiere at the Orpheum
• The Man and His Mission
• Dance Master
• Motion Picture Producer
• Fugitive
• The Legacy Tour
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Photographs