A Weak American in Russia & Ukraine: Adventures and Misadventures Living among the Natives
Walter Parchomenko, a distinguished college professor and civil servant in Washington, D.C. for more than 25 years, was born in a German refugee camp. He is the son of Ukrainian peasants, World War II refugees deported from their war-torn Ukrainian village to forced labor in Germany. After a grueling crossing of the Atlantic in the storage of an ocean liner packed with Slavic refugees, he entered the US (just 12 months old at the time) through Ellis Island's newly reopened reception center. Parchomenko grew up in snowy Rochester, New York and eventually fled his Slavic mother's strict regime, KGB-like Gulag to simultaneously work and attend graduate school in Washington. He directed a U.S. government, graduate school program in Russian and Eurasian Studies in Washington for 16 years. Over the past 20 years, he has spent a great deal of time living and working among the natives in Russia and Ukraine. Parchomenko's writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The Kyiv Post, and numerous other publications. A Georgetown University Ph.D., and Fulbright Scholar, he currently divides his time between Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, where he works as a consultant and advocate for disabled rights groups.