Minister Freeland's Grandfather,
Michael Chomiak,
the Nazi's Top
Ukrainian Propagandist:

Fake News,
Mighty Wurlitzers,
Historical Amnesia and the
Elephant
(or Bear) in the Room

Go to online report about the propaganda careers of Chrystia Freeland and her grandfather

These four articles from 1989 show that Chystia Freeland, her family, her community of ultranationalist Ukrainians, and the mainstream corporate media all agreed that involvement in a foreign government's political process was not only acceptable, it was to be encouraged. 

Contrast this with Chrystia Freeland's 2017 allegations (supported by these same communities) that the exposure of her maternal grandfather as a Nazi propagandist was an example of Russian meddling in Canada's political process.  In reality, it was not Russians who exposed her grandfather. 

City woman in U.S.S.R. tells KGB to get lost

DON RETSON Journal Staff Writer. Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]28 Apr 1989
: B6.
An
Edmonton woman studying in Ukraine is alive and well after thumbing her nose at the Soviet secret police.

Halyna Freeland said her daughter Chrystia told the KGB to get lost when they invited her in for talks in
Kiev earlier this month.

"Am I proud? You bet," said Freeland, an unsuccessful NDP candidate for Edmonton Strathcona in the last federal election.

The younger Freeland, a Harvard University student studying Russian language and literature, is on a one- year exchange program in the Soviet Union. She's due to return to Boston early next week.

Freeland phoned her 20-year-old daughter Wednesday after hearing "through the grapevine" that Chrystia had been arrested and detained.

In fact, she said Chrystia told her she'd refused the KGB invitation to meet with them. That angered the Soviets, who fired off a letter to the Canadian embassy in Moscow, saying: "Your national is a well- known troublemaker and you should keep better control over your citizens."

Freeland said Chrystia had been fined three rubles (about $5 Canadian) for being found on a subway without a ticket.

She believes the KGB planned to use the fine as a pretext to interrogate her daughter about a Ukrainian organization fighting for greater political freedom. Chrystia was elected to the organization's board of directors after speaking at a recent conference.

Freeland said she didn't ask her daughter about the ticket. She said Chrystia was reluctant to say much on the phone, figuring the Soviets would be monitoring the call.

Freeland said she's convinced her daughter made the right decision in refusing to meet with the KGB.

She noted a second Edmonton student on the exchange program, 27-year-old Ostap Skrypnyk, was recently detained by police for allegedly interfering with Soviet elections.

Skrypnyk, a University of
Alberta graduate student, was detained for an hour March 25 for allegedly carrying posters calling for residents in the Ukrainian city of Lvov to boycott the March 26 elections.

But his sister, Xenia Bubel of Edmonton, said her brother denied having put up the posters, and said Soviet officials later apologized to Canadian authorities for what they termed "an unfortunate mix-up."

University of
Alberta professor Bohdan Krawchenko, who arranged the exchange program, said the idea of the program is for Canadian students to interact with Ukrainian society.

But, he added, "it's the kind of thing the local boys in the KGB don't like. They'd prefer to have people who go there and drink beer all day."

Credit: THE
EDMONTON JOURNAL

Word count: 415
 

 




Student `glasnost' chilly

RETSON, DON. Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]20 May 1989
: B2.
Chrystia Freeland is thrilled to be back in
Edmonton after a student-exchange program in Ukraine -- that goes double for Soviet authorities.

One Soviet newspaper vilified the Harvard University scholarship student as an "anti-Soviet bourgeois nationalist."

Soviet authorities also complained to the Canadian embassy in Moscow that Freeland, 20, was "a well-known trouble-maker."

That's not how it began, though, for the feisty, free-spirited daughter of Halyna Freeland, New Democrat candidate for Edmonton Strathcona in the last federal election.

Freeland said Soviet officials couldn't say enough good things about her when she arrived in Kiev last October to study Russian history and literature.

But her personal "glasnost" with Soviet authorities cooled after she accepted an invitation to speak at a Ukrainian language conference in February.

Handsome young Russian men started showing up at her door unannounced: one night it would be a blond hunk, the next night a suave, dark-haired man.

They'd gaze into her eyes, she chuckled, then start talking about Western technology, or inquire what she knew about certain Ukrainian nationalists.

A trip outside Kiev by the aspiring journalist to interview a Ukrainian dissident turned into a particularly chilling experience.

When she left the man's home, a local militia man was waiting outside his door wanting her to sign some sort of statement. Freeland talked long enough to find out what he wanted, then excused herself saying she didn't want to miss her bus.

Police were waiting for her in the next town, but Freeland avoided them by jumping off the bus in the middle of nowhere, hitch-hiking part of the way back to Kiev. Before getting off the bus, Freeland said she handed notes of the earlier interview to a travel companion, who stuffed them down her bra.

Back in Kiev, Soviet authorities began phoning her, demanding she come in for an interview. Freeland politely told them to get lost.

Her scariest encounter, she said in an interview, was also her last night in Kiev. Four men, two of them KGB officers, showed up at her dorm demanding that she answer their questions.

Again, Freeland refused to talk, ignoring threats that she wouldn't be allowed to leave for Moscow the following day if she didn't co-operate.

The four Soviet agents also threatened to confiscate her passport, but Freeland said they backed off when she told them it was the property of the Canadian government.

"I was incredibly nervous," she recalled of the lengthy stalemate.

Despite her numerous run-ins with police and authorities, and despite the fact university courses were spiced heavily with Marxist dogma, Freeland said she gained a great deal from the exchange program.

Illustration
Black & White Photo; Edmonton Journal; Harvard University exchange student Chrystia Freeland . . . Soviet authorities labelled her `a well- known troublemaker'

Credit: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL

Word count: 465

 

 


Soviet trip a nightmare, student says

The Ottawa Citizen; Ottawa, Ont. [Ottawa, Ont]24 May 1989
: E3.
EDMONTON (CP) _ University student Chrystia Freeland is thrilled to be home in
Edmonton after her student exchange in Ukraine.

Soviet authorities may be just as thrilled.

One Soviet newspaper vilified Freeland, a Harvard University scholarship student, as an ''anti-Soviet bourgeois nationalist.''

Soviet authorities also complained to the Canadian embassy in Moscow that Freeland, daughter of former Edmonton federal NDP candidate Halyna Freeland, was ''a well-known trouble-maker.''

The 20-year-old aspiring journalist said Soviet officials couldn't say enough good things about her when she arrived in Kiev last October to study Russian history and literature.

But her personal glasnost with Soviet authorities cooled after she accepted an invitation to speak at a Ukrainian language conference in February.

She said handsome young Russian men started showing up at her door unannounced, talking about Western technology or inquiring what she knew about certain Ukrainian nationalists.

And a trip outside Kiev to interview a Ukrainian dissident turned into a particularly chilling experience.

When she left the man's home, a member of the militia was waiting outside his door wanting her to sign a statement, which she refused.

She said she left by bus, but suspecting police would be waiting for her in the next town, got out in the country and hitchhiked part of the way back to Kiev. Before she left the bus, she gave the notes from the interview to a travel companion.

She said that when she was back in Kiev, Soviet authorities began phoning her, demanding she come in for an interview, which she refused.

She said that during her last night in Kiev, four men, two of them KGB officers, showed up at her dorm demanding that she answer their questions. She said she refused to say anything and ignored their threats that she wouldn't be allowed to leave for Moscow the following day.

She said they also threatened to confiscate her passport but backed down when she told them it was the property of the Canadian government.

''I was incredibly nervous,'' she said. ''It was just terrifying. ''

Credit: CP

Word count: 343

 

 


Ukraine facing real challenge

Freeland, Chrystia. Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]20 Sep 1989
: A16.
I am an Albertan, but according to PRAVDA UKRAINY, the organ of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian republic, I am an agent of bourgeois imperialism intent on destroying the Soviet state. My crimes include interpreting for foreign reporters, writing articles in Western newspapers, meeting dissidents and riding a bus without paying the five-cent fare.

When these allegations were first made last May I was certain that I would never return to the U.S.S.R. and that my Soviet friends and family would suffer for their association with me. Instead, I was allowed back into the
Soviet Union two weeks ago to attend the founding congress of the Ukrainian People's Front.

People whom I had expected to shun me embraced me and apologized for the perfidy of their press. I was warmly applauded when I greeted the congress in the name of the Ukrainian-Canadian Committee [since renamed the Ukrainian Canadian Congress] and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

Six months ago Ukrainian party bosses were uniformly critical of the fledgling people's movement. But many have since decided that the time has come to make conciliatory noises. One Ukrainian apparatchik went so far as to call for the resignation of his own boss, the general secretary of Ukraine, in his address to the congress.

Even within the army, the ultimate guarantor of party control, rifts are beginning to appear. An Armenian colonel, who was elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet for the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, assured the delegates he had "heard rumors that some forces were preparing to turn the army on the people, but so long as there are colonels like myself this will never happen. We will never turn our armies on our people."

The apparat's control of the press is also slipping. Many foreign reporters noted how little media coverage the Ukrainian People's Movement congress received in comparison with the live television broadcasts of the founding meetings of the Baltic Popular Fronts.

But Leonid Kravchuk, the ideology chief of the republic, denied that the critical and scanty reporting of the congress was in obedience to his directives. But his words to the congress were undermined by a rebel newspaper editor who said that Kravchuk had ordered him to use only material from the official press agency.

Just as splits are beginning to appear in the leadership, opposition forces are working hard to present a unified front. Delegates at the three-day founding congress regularly broke into chants of "Unity! Unity!" Miners from the Donbass who went on strike in August vowed that they would support the movement led by writers and academics.

Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Armenians, Koreans, and Hungarians addressed the congress as representatives of Ukraine's minorities. Eager to avert the development of political groups opposed to the popular movement, like those which have formed in the Baltics and Moldavia, delegates cheered non-Ukrainian speakers with particular fervor.

There is no doubt about who this broad coalition has united to oppose: the party apparatus which controls Ukraine and the
Soviet Union. But opposing the apparatus is a delicate business. Despite signs that the apparatchiks' grip on power is wavering and the increasing number of party careerists who are gambling on the opposition, everyone fears a crackdown.

Some believe the only safety lies in supporting Mikhail Gorbachev's initiatives. As Ivan Dziuba, a Ukrainian writer who enjoys tremendous public support for his courageous opposition to Russification in the 1960s explained: "We must support perestroika because the alternative to perestroika is not a gentle dissolution of the union, as some people think, but rather the creation of a fascist state under the guise of orthodox communism."

Other delegates were less trusting. They accused Gorbachev of being no more than the modernizer of a despotic state and pointed to his reaffirmation of the leading role of the Communist party as proof of his reluctance to embrace genuine political pluralism.

But even Gorbachev's critics prefer him to his conservative rivals in the Politburo. The challenge for the Ukrainian People's Movement is to find ways of pressing for democracy and sovereignty without playing into the hands of reactionaries or diluting its own program. A lot depends on how skillfully the Ukrainians manage to reconcile these conflicting demands.

Chrystia Freeland is an Edmontonian studying history and literature at Harvard University

Credit: FREELANCE

Word count: 713


Go to online report about the propaganda careers of Chrystia Freeland and her grandfather