Annual Year Book


Book Description




Stalin's Apologist


Book Description

"A beautifully researched life of the high-living, cynical journalist who helped cover up Stalin's atrocities in the 1930s" --New York Times Book Review. Considered the greatest foreign correspondent of his time, Walter Duranty made his reputation by being foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power. But S.J. Taylor shows how vanity and ambition led him to identify with the dictator, as he covered up the extent of the great famine and took at face value the infamous show trials--a tragic tale of abandoned journalistic integrity.




The Polish American Encyclopedia


Book Description

At least nine million Americans trace their roots to Poland, and Polish Americans have contributed greatly to American history and society. During the largest period of immigration to the United States, between 1870 and 1920, more Poles came to the United States than any other national group except Italians. Additional large-scale Polish migration occurred in the wake of World War II and during the period of Solidarity's rise to prominence. This encyclopedia features three types of entries: thematic essays, topical entries, and biographical profiles. The essays synthesize existing work to provide interpretations of, and insight into, important aspects of the Polish American experience. The topical entries discuss in detail specific places, events or organizations such as the Polish National Alliance, Polish American Saturday Schools, and the Latimer Massacre, among others. The biographical entries identify Polish Americans who have made significant contributions at the regional or national level either to the history and culture of the United States, or to the development of American Polonia.




Alexander Dovzhenko


Book Description

Along with Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, Alexander Dovzhenko became one of the major pioneers of Soviet filmmaking. During his thirty-year career, his films (including Zvenyhora, Arsenal, Earth, and Ivan) won international acclaim and have become influential classics of the silent and early sound eras. Combining images from Ukrainian history and folklore, stark realism, visual poetry, propaganda, and gentle humor, his films celebrated nature and man's relationship to the land. From his humble beginnings in the Ukrainian peasantry, Dovzhenko developed into a volatile artist with a great belief in cinema as an art form for the people. Fearing arrest and execution, he had to come to terms with the Stalinist order and compromised his vision for his later films (Aerograd, Shchors, and Michurin). Despite his concessions, his creative work inspired the first post-Stalinist generation of filmmakers and writers to challengeprevailing Soviet and artistic orthodoxies. Based on archival research in Moscow and Kiev and interviews with Dovzhenko's colleagues and students, George O. Liber provides the first definitive account in any language of this important director's personal and professional life. Liber's biography explores the political context of Dovzhenko's filmmaking, investigates the divisions between his public and private worlds, and analyses his contradictions, illusions, misrepresentations and struggles within and against the Stalinist system.




Lesia and I


Book Description

Lesia and I is a progress report of the fifty-year marriage of Myron and Lesia Kuropas which produced two sons and six grandchildren, as well as a memoir of a Ukrainian-American whose varied career included working as a school principal in Chicago’s inner-city, a regional director of a federal agency in Chicago, a presidential special assistant in the White House, a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate, and an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Dr. Kuropas reviews the major events in his fascinating life, his travels throughout the world, and his successes and failures in both his personal and professional life. Provided as background are historical sketches of the episodes that had a profound impact on Myron and Lesia’s life as well as the lives of their parents.







Toledo's Polonia


Book Description

Located on the western edge of Lake Erie and at the mouth of the Maumee River, Toledo developed rapidly as a port and industrial and transportation center in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning in the early 1870s, Polish immigrants were found among the German settlers. By 1882, there were two Polish parishes established in two distinct Polish neighborhoods (Lagrinka in North Toledo and Kuszwanc in South Toledo) that continued to grow and expand through the mid-20th century. Toledo's Polish community was numbered among the 10 largest in the country and was home to the Paryski Publishing Company, which printed more than three million books in the Polish language. This book illustrates how people lived, worshipped, socialized, celebrated life, and maintained their ethnic heritage while also becoming patriotic Americans.




Caught in the Current


Book Description

"Caught in the Current" takes the reader on a magical mystery tour of Eastern and Western Europe during the summer of 1970, a tumultuous period of free love, equal rights demonstrations, and Vietnam antiwar protests in America, but an equally revolutionary period in Alec's life. Raised in Chicago as Ukrainian, Alec is caught between identities-- is he American or Ukrainian? His personal beliefs are pushed to the limit as he undertakes a risky mission to learn about political dissidents in Soviet-dominated Ukraine. Detained, interrogated, and finally deported from the Soviet Union, Alec seeks refuge in earthquake-ravaged Banja Luka where he begins to see the world from a different perspective. Questioning himself and his values, Alec finally finds his anchor in Stefi, his girlfriend from Chicago, who helps him discover his true identity.




My Boyhood War


Book Description

Bohdan Hryniewicz was only 8 when war broke out and 13 when it ended. In those years he saw more than most men would in 10 lifetimes; and his recall is extraordinary. He cites three days as defining this period: the saddest, 19 September 1939 as Russian tanks rolled into his home town of Wilno; the happiest, August 1 1944, when the Polish flag flew once again from the highest building in Warsaw; the most bitter, October 3 that year, when his commanding officer forbade him to join the other members of his battalion as they entered a prisoner of war camp. The Warsaw Uprising lasted 63 days and was the largest single military effort by any resistance movement in the war. Throughout, Bohdan was the personal runner of lieutenant Nalecz, CO of the battalion of the same name. Betrayed by Stalin, all the Poles were expelled to camps after surrender and the city dynamited. Bohdan is probably the last witness to this tragedy.