Volodymyr Kaluga is associate professor of the department of history and political science at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine.
“It is a rhetorical question whether the world knows Ukraine as it is. Most Ukrainians are unaware of their country’s history. The country remains undiscovered for its people because they have lived in captivity of the imposed impressions and stereotypes about the past compiled under the label “history of Ukraine”.
In the conscience of the most Europeans and Americans, Ukraine is projected as an obsolete fragment of the former USSR or Russia, deprived of one’s identity, a stick-in-the-mud land culturally and economically retarded somewhere on the map of Eurasia. Surprisingly the bound folk and its rude, greedy, quarrelling leaders look like a perfect match. Others view the country as politically instable and economically unattractive abandoned land with quite undeveloped history and traditions, especially in the sphere of social and legal life. Our Shevchenkos, Klischkos, folk songs, embroideries, vodka and salo function as an entourage wound by the ‘efforts’ of the ruling oligarch bullies or modern Ostarbeiters in the bitter background of the omnipresent Chernobyl.
Though this is just a part of the problem. The trouble is that the majority of the Ukrainians follow the same foreign pattern concerning one’s motherland and, hence, treat ‘Ukrainian’ with latent or demonstrative disgust or indifference. First of all it concerns the language which is neglected and substituted in favour of foreign habits and traditions or popular fashion. They are ready to point a finger of blame on everyone justifying one’s variable nature to claim that it is not they but the world. In other words they do not accept guilt and take zero responsibility because modern world dictates the corresponding actions to survive.
At the same time most of the household-bound Ukrainians think that the reason of their misfortunes and the country itself is the very representatives of the government, oligarchs, power in general. And they pay double price indeed: they enjoy the right to blame “man and princes” (Psalm 118) who are guilty of their miserable existence, they unconsciously give them up en masse not only private economic prosperity but one’s own conscience, honour and dignity.
For the oligarchs or their protégés within ruling circles, or likewise cultural, art or intellectual ones, Ukraine is a product to consume, a sort of fail-proof overproducing of ‘manna’ which can be cynically exploited until exhausted. Considering themselves as world citizens or rather ‘world lords’, groups of oligarchs guarantee immunity to their fortune and ones’ comfort.
Those at their service as a rule keep their funds abroad and accumulate property, business, etc. It is natural that such people do not care about Ukraine and they are interested in keeping the population in the state of indefiniteness and psychic pressure to cherish among masses vileness, greed, envy and negligence and treachery as such. We are dealing with a precedent of rejection of the national identity, one’s roots and true history, contempt of one’s uniqueness for the sake of pittance and a fake sense of comfort of belonging to the mass.
Wise people say “Dum spiro spero” - “hope dies last”. It is indeed very difficult to spot a glimpse of improvement behind the veil of never-ending misfortunes and routine in Ukraine. Routinely tamed and with their small joys, Ukrainians seem to be too lost during the past decades to notice deep processes within themselves. Though it is right to state that despite that existential neglect and lack of motivation to change something in ones’ lives, these are not the arguments that can prevent the above-mentioned processes from the advance of the life of a man, ethnos, and mankind in general. Moreover, what we have been witnessing recently in Ukraine is a forging of human spirit, a shaping of a new identity, and an awakening of the thirsty soul to give birth to a new world outlook based on the grounds of truly human principles and virtues.
It is obvious to admit that to be civil and honest is easy, but what we are exposed to here is to be civil under the Big Brother surveillance that follows you 24/7 via law, public opinion, neighbours, the ones who act on behalf of the state, and people. It is easy to advocate one’s rights when tradition and state machine is by your side. It is easy to be civil and humane when one does not need to put at risk one’s comfort, life advantages or life itself; one does not need to counteract the established norms of respectability and false values; one does not have to betray oneself to earn a living.
It is too hard to change something when one needs to move against the stream of general norms and principles, expectations and fashion. And the price is different when it concerns the virtues that are generated inside a person despite hardships, trials and menaces of the surrounding world. Such a person does not look for the guilty, does not expect compassion, but the whole bulk of responsibility takes upon oneself despite the fact that one is not the reason of the events and conditions of one’s existence. Such a person has enough power and inspiration to keep and reproduce inside the very humane core alongside unfavourable conditions like in Ukraine for instance. Such a person has a stimulus to help others to step onto the path of enlightenment and spiritual revival serving them as a model and steadfast basis. Such a person is full of true love towards people and world giving more and taking less in return. These are the people of the new generation and time; and they are responsible to pave the path forward to create future.
We tend to believe that such people do appear in Ukraine every day and they are the treasure that has no geographical borders.
Hence, in Ukraine there has been a genesis of people of the spirit, their unity into one family, which is strong and new. This is a true face and image of Ukraine seen though the stereotypes and obsolete history of Ukrainian folk imposed by communist and ecumenist ideologies. Respectively, Ukraine is not Chernobyl, Yanukovytch or Yushchenko, oligarchs, corruption, etc., but spiritually strong, emotionally healed people who create a space of comfort and love together.
The time has come to re-discover Ukraine both by Ukrainians themselves and by the ones who seek the truth despite the place they live.
The history of Ukraine is full of passionate pages sealed by the magic in the universe: glorious governors and heroes (and not only some famous princes of doubtful reputations and legends from the times of Kievan Rus), honourable Cossack chivalry headed by harakternyks, people of the true rank, kobzars and prophets, all those who have been methodically persecuted, prosecuted and exterminated by the imperial Russia and Soviets.
A true history of Ukraine and the veracious culture of its folk has been reproduced not by academia and biased historians and scholars, but by people of the spirit and truth - the esoteric people. Ukrainians and together with them the whole wide world discover the names of Andrian Kaschenko, Serhiy Plachynda, Lev Sylenko, Yuriy Shylov, Vasyl Chumachenko, Anatoliy Kondratiev and many others. We discover true Ukraine, the country where according to some prophetic legends the spirit will revive and good, love and beauty will flourish to cease the present consummation and desecration of human spirit and soul, body and mind.”
