Yarema Kosak, Ukrainian-American Artist Shines Light on his Cultural Heritage

Yarema Kozak, "October," 1980s

There are Cossacks living and working in and around Detroit, those Ukrainian warriors whose history is as complicated as any Eastern European country, as conflicted and torn between East and West for centuries. The Yarema Kosak family descends from a long line of Cossacks, but they are not fighters. They are cultural warriors who have made great art across several generations. The Detroit area has been a recipient of their talent. 

An exhibit of Yarema Kosak's work at the Ukrainian-American Museum in Hapensack, MI, is bringing these Ukrainian-American Cossacks to light. His brother Yurko was also an artist and some of his paintings are included. Yurko was a designer for Buicks at General Motors for many years, thanks to the wisdom of GM managers who recognized the value of his versatile talent. Yarema embraced his life as an artist. 

Yarema's Roses

Yarema was born in 1941 on the border between Ukraine and Poland. That's part of the region of eastern Europe that Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls "the Bloodlands," caught for ages between the vicious rivalries of Western and Eastern Europe and the Russian empire. Snyder writes: "Between 1939 and 1945, Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany committed mass killings of an estimated 14 million unarmed non-combatants, the majority outside the death camps of the Holocaust." Snyder's thesis is that the "Bloodlands," a region which comprises what is modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and the Baltic states, is the area where "the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler interacted to increase suffering and bloodshed many times worse than any seen in western history."

After the war, Cossacks were "repatriated" back to the Soviet Union, where they were sent to the Gulags and murdered. The same fate befell millions of Ukrainian children who were kidnapped and sent to concentration camps to build bombs for Hitler.  (https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-book-philip-gave-me-making-bombs.html)

Is it any wonder that after the war, Ukrainians sought refuge anywhere in the world that would have them. Many settled in Canada, many in various countries in western Europe. The Kozaks moved to the US and settled in Detroit in 1949.  And so Detroit became "the seat of the entire American Kozak enclave, which embraced various professions and a host of civil and cultural initiatives. Most of all, the Kozaks influenced the artistic and intellectual life of the Ukrainian diasporan community beyond Ukraine." 

(Ukrainian-American Archives and Museum)

Yarema Kozak, Hutsul Woman. 
 The Hutsuls are a Ukrainian ethnic group
spanning western Ukraine and Romania.
The Kozak family is from this region.

While Yuri worked designing Buicks, Yarema devoted himself to his art. Between 1968 and 1975 he headed an art school for youth at the local Cultural Community Club. At the same time he acquired his individual traits as a graphic artist and painter. His first exhibit was held at the public library in Hamtramck, Michigan, in 1969.

Yarema was a university-trained artists. He followed the most recent trends in American and world art and showed interest in abstract art, "exploring ways to synthesize modernism with his ethnic Ukrainian background."   I found his paintings, the few I've seen, to show different styles depicting a range of subjects, from beautiful roses to Orthodox icons to abstract landscapes and profiles.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Kozak family was involved in creating the large decorative memorial wall honoring Ukrainian heritage at Wayne State University in 1976.  I first saw it in 2013, after participating in friend Laura Kline's Russian language and culture class in Manoogan Hall, talking about what I learned about Ukrainian history and traditions as a Peace Corps Volunteer. After the class, we had a tour of "The Ukraine Room," where a huge map of Ukraine with motifs from Ukrainian history and national culture filled the walls; it was colorful, upbeat, patriotic. The project was completed by another Ukrainian-American artist, Volodymyr Mayorchak, who added a full-wall mural, hutsul-style wooden benches, and a variety of lovely carvings. The Ukraine Room, which served as a classroom for the study of Ukrainian language and literature, was updated and restored in 2003, reflecting the ongoing devotion of Detroit's large and active Ukrainian community. My Ukrainian friends from Starobilsk visited them when they were in the US for an Open World project. I'll always remember that time.  Я никогда не забуду время, проведенное в Украине.

Sadly, Laura informed me, the language classes, always a struggle to sustain, are now taught only sporadically, victims of the declining support of humanities study on colleges campuses across the country.  America is paying dearly right now for this decline in the study of history, literature, philosophy, and the entire liberal arts curriculum that makes for "informed citizens."   . 

The Yarema Kozak and Kozak family heritage, however, lives on, gaining in public and scholarly recognition. Their artistic efforts to preserve Ukrainian culture, along with organizations like the Ukrainian-American Museum and Archives, represent the extent and depth of America's multi-cultural heritage. In this chaotic time, we really do need reminders that this is what America is all about. 

Parts of the mural in The Ukraine Room at Wayne State University.
 I love the quote from Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, below, who longed for Ukrainian
independence. There are Shevchenko statues all over Ukraine,
including in Lenin Park in Starobilsk, where I served with the Peace Corps.

Sources

http://www.thehamtramckreview.com/ukrainian-museum-features-works-by-local-ukrainian-artists/ by Roman Yatsiv.

https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/close/american-kozaks-mission-and-individuality  Good the Kozaks work was recognized in Ukraine, mainly through various exhibits in various cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks, for a complicated article on a complicated subject, the Cossacks of Russia, Ukraine, eastern Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after_World_War_II, "repatriated" to the Soviet Union, which sent them to gulags and murdered them outright. A few managed to escape, among them the Kosak family of  Detroit. Not surprising to learn that this story was hidden from history until 1974, with the publication of "The Last Secret" by Lord Bethell. It was made into a documentary that year.  That same year, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" was published. 

 https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/teaching-about-ukraine.html At Wayne State, April 2013.

Talking about my experience in Ukraine for Laura Kline's
Russian Class at WSU, along with a presentation about
Chernobyl.

This artwork is by Yuri Kozak, Yarema's older brother.
St. Trinity Church in Kyiv, 1980s. It takes me back to Ukraine.