KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Pump your
own runs
out of gas
C
alifornia may have its Silicon
Valley and Hollywood. Ohio
gets all those new high-pay-
ing computer chip manufacturing
jobs for Intel. Washington state may
have no income tax. But here in
Oregon we don’t have to pump our
own gas.
Those aren’t fair comparisons. We
are not of a mind to be fair, hearing
that once again a bill to let Orego-
nians pump their own gas is dead.
We get it if you don’t want to
pump your own. If you appreci-
ate the bond Oregon has with the
only other no self-service state,
New Jersey, so be it. If you worry
about people who would find pump-
ing their own difficult, if you worry
about safety, if you want another
opportunity for jobs in Oregon,
those are all real concerns.
But remember the bill as it was
written, House Bill 4151, would not
have removed the requirement to
have attendants ready to pump gas.
It would have made it optional for
people who want to pump their own
gas.
Is that so bad? We don’t think so.
The undoing of HB 4151 was
the need for some $543,000 for the
Oregon Fire Marshal to regulate
consumer pumping. Time became
too short to come up with that in this
session.
We think the fire marshal may
need even more money, if we under-
stand the concerns. The worries
about people pumping their own
transfer to people plugging in their
own electric cars, right? Especially
those higher voltage charging ports.
In the 2023 Legislature shouldn’t
there be a bill to require Oregonians
to be assisted with a paid profes-
sional when plugging in their elec-
tric vehicles?
We can’t claim it as our idea. It
would, though, create jobs. It would
be very helpful for whom such effort
can be difficult. It would be safer.
And just because Oregon would be
the only state to make this require-
ment, shouldn’t be a reason to stop
us. Maybe New Jersey would join in.
Russia and Ukraine, a complex relationship
BRIGIT
FARLEY
PAST AND PROLOGUE
T
his month, there is only one histo-
ry-related episode to discuss
— Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Pundits, pols and smart phone users
have bombarded us with words and
images addressing the “whats” of this
story: Russian troop movements, heroic
Ukrainian defenders, Ukrainian Presi-
dent Zelenskyy livestreaming resistance
all over Kyiv. But coverage of the “whys”
or “hows” of this war is lacking: How
did Russia and Ukraine come to blows in
2022? Like East European history gener-
ally, it is complicated, but the fundamen-
tals are worth trying to unpack.
Russians and Ukrainians are closely
related geographically, ethnically and
culturally. They both trace their origins
to Kyiv “Rus’,” as it was known then,
the cradle of Russian/Ukrainian civi-
lization. Prince Volodymyr (Vladimir,
for Russians) accepted Eastern Ortho-
dox Christianity in 988, the monks of the
Kyivo-Pechersk’a monastery compiled
the first work of Russian/Ukrainian liter-
ature there and the Kyivan state was a
model of good governance for its time.
But episodes of internal conflict, followed
by the Mongol invasion, shattered Kyiv’s
unity and fatefully scattered its succes-
sors.
The founders of what became Russia
— “Rus-sians” — went northeast from
Kyiv and eventually located their capital
in Moscow, circa 1325, and later Peters-
burg, by edict of Peter the Great, in 1703.
The Russian state expanded south, with
the defeat of the Mongols, and east, into
Siberia, becoming in effect a Eurasian
nation. By contrast, other former Kyiv
residents, who would become known as
Ukrainians, passed under the control of
the Polish-Lithuanian state and later, the
Habsburg Monarchy. Those governments
were more diverse and subject to western-
izing influences than Russia. Over time,
moreover, the language spoken in 10th
century Kyiv evolved. Those who had
gone north spoke a language we know
today as Russian. Ukrainians in Poland
and later the Habsburg Monarchy began
to speak a language heavily influenced by
the Poles and Slovaks living among them.
Today, Russian and Ukrainian both use
the Cyrillic alphabet but differ signifi-
cantly in vocabulary and pronunciation.
Think Spanish and Portuguese.
Several centuries after their common
beginning in Kyiv, Russians and Ukraini-
ans were different people, speaking differ-
ent languages.
Fast forward to the 18th century:
Ukrainians living close to Russia became
subjects of the Tsar. The Russian empire
had a hard going through the centu-
ries — far-flung territories, dynastic
conflict and foreign invasions, notably the
epic war with Napoleon in 1812. These
struggles inclined it to prioritize unity
— one leader, one truth, one religion,
one language — over diversity. Russia’s
rulers believed acknowledging difference
risked disunity and danger. By the 19th
century, they ordered Ukrainians and
other non-Russian peoples leave their past
behind and become Russians.
But Ukrainians resisted, believing
their culture and language to be distinct.
19th century Ukrainians in Russia
found inspiration across the border, in
the Habsburg monarchy, where Ukrai-
nians spoke and wrote in their mother
tongue. Ukraine’s Shakespeare, Taras
Shevchenko, followed suit in Russia, writ-
ing poetry and plays in Ukrainian. Like-
minded individuals published newspapers
anonymously in Ukrainian. In response,
the Russian authorities criminalized the
very use of the word “Ukraine.” This
policy could prove fatal, as in 1907, when
Kyiv experienced an outbreak of typhus.
It was decreed that all warning signs be
written in Russian, but many Ukrainians
could not read Russian. Thousands died.
1917 brought revolution to Russia. In
the wars and chaos that followed, Ukrai-
nians campaigned for an independent
state, but Communist forces fought to
control all the former Russian territories.
Ukraine thus became a republic of the
Soviet Union in 1922. A few years later,
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin — believ-
ing Ukrainians’ desire for indepen-
dence constituted treachery — plotted
revenge when he launched his drive
to bring all agriculture in the country
under the control of the state. He insti-
tuted a policy of food and grain confisca-
tion, in effect guaranteeing a famine, in
the Ukrainian countryside. About three
million Ukrainian peasants died of star-
vation. This outrage, the Holodomor in
Ukrainian, is considered a crime against
humanity, on par with the Holocaust.
Crucially, Stalin then moved Russians
into the vacated Ukrainian countryside,
to make it difficult for Ukrainians to
break away in the future. And he contin-
ued to deny Ukrainians their culture and
language.
There was worse to come for Ukraine.
When Nazi forces invaded the Soviet
Union in 1941, they targeted Ukraine’s
large Jewish population, killing nearly a
million Jews well before the Polish death
camps became operational. After the war,
Soviet authorities continued to repress
Ukrainian culture and language all over
Ukraine, despite official denials. I will
never forget a young Ukrainian man in
Kyiv engaging me and some American
colleagues on a bus in 1987, declaring
he could never use Ukrainian language
in school and his teachers taught only
Russian literature. “Don’t believe what
they tell you about our culture being
respected,” he insisted. “Ukrainian
language is outlawed here.” We tried to
quiet him, but he became more and more
agitated. It wasn’t long before the bus
driver reached for his radio. Soviet police
intercepted and stopped the bus, dragged
the young man off and broke his spine
with a billy club. We were too shocked to
speak.
When the Soviet Union of Mikhail
Gorbachev was headed for a breakup
in 1991, Ukrainians understandably
jumped at the chance to vote for inde-
pendence. In the first decade after the
Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin’s independent
Russia showed no interest in dominat-
ing Ukraine and the former Soviet states.
Independent Ukraine accordingly looked
to cultivate closer ties to western Europe
than Russia. Fatefully, Yeltsin proved
unable to cope with the challenges of a
transitioning Russia and stepped aside in
l999 in favor of Vladimir Putin, a former
KGB major, now a player in Russian poli-
tics. As the world would learn, Putin’s
views on Russia’s destiny differed dras-
tically from Yeltsin’s. This automatically
put Ukraine’s aspirations to join Europe
in jeopardy. The road to Russia’s war
with Ukraine will be the subject of next
month’s column.
———
Brigit Farley is a Washington State
University professor, student of history,
adventurer and Irish heritage girl living in
Pendleton.
work. California has the canals, etc., to
take it from Lake Shasta. This would not
help immediately, but could be part of a
long term solution.
This drought problem is not going to
go away. The sooner we start working
toward a long term solution, the sooner it
can be done.
Bob Mattila
Brush Prairie, Washington
Award of Merit at the Distinguished Citi-
zens Awards.
Second, we are grateful to the selection
committee for recognizing this program.
Countless volunteers have supported
this program financially, physically, and
even spiritually over the 53 years, it has
existed. Our intent is to provide a hand-up
every Christmas season.
Once a year, the mayor and members
of the Hermiston City Council meet
with department heads in a goal-setting
session. For the last couple of years, we
have talked about taking a pause and
recognizing a “win” as they occur. We do
this not in a braggadocious way, rather to
give credit where credit is due.
The Christmas Express program is a
win for this entire community, and we are
blessed to be a part of it.
Chief Jason Edmiston
Hermiston Police Department
YOUR VIEWS
EDITORIALS
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Possible drought solutions
Now that we again have a drought in
south-central Oregon and the southwest
United States, it seems like it is time to
seriously think of long-term solutions.
One of these could be pumping water out
of the Columbian River to that area.
The ocean does not need that water.
Power companies could be compensated
for the loss of the electricity that would
be generated by that water at the Bonne-
ville Dam and The Dalles Dam. A good
place to take the water out of the Colum-
bia River would be somewhere between
The Dalles and Biggs, using two large
pipes along Highway 97, dropping off
the necessary amount at Klamath Falls
and pumping the rest to Lake Shasta near
Redding, California. Two pipes would
be better than one, in case something
happens to one, the other one still would
Hermiston Police
Department says thank you
It is always easier for me to put words
on paper versus trying to say everything I
want to say to a room full of people.
First, on behalf of the Hermiston
Police Department Christmas Express
program, we would like to thank Mayor
Dr. Dave Drotzmann for nominating
this incredible annual event for the 2021