Ukraine is an exceptionally beautiful country – and you’d have gotten quite familiar with it due to the extensive media coverage of the unforgivable war Putin started on the 24th of February 2022. Yet, I would argue that this conflict began much earlier, with the unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014 being a memorable example of the aggression towards Ukraine.
To the world, Ukraine became synonymous with bravery, resilience, and incredible fighting spirit against all odds. It became a symbol of the fight against the darkness of an uncivilised world, for the values of the modern one: justice, community and most importantly freedom. Ukrainian soldiers, alongside international volunteers, are defending their right for independence, their homes, and families, and doing so fearlessly and valiantly in the spotlight.
Now, I do not wish to bore you with yet another article on the recent developments; I’m sure you are aware of them anyway, as they are on the front covers of every western newspaper. So, here is a short history lesson from a passionate STEM student, who happens to be Ukrainian.
What even is Ukraine?
An important question – I’ll try my best at answering it. To me, Ukraine is my childhood, it is the culture and tradition I was brought up with, simply speaking – my homeland. But for many years, my answer to a simple question – Where are you from? – Oh, I’m from Ukraine – brought several different replies ranging from the normal ‘cool’ to the dreaded ‘Is that in Russia/ a part of Russia?’. Knowing nobody had an evil intention behind their remarks, I couldn’t do much more than politely explain that Ukraine is an independent country with its own language and traditions, and isn’t in Russia (apparently, a lesson that was never taught to Putin).
Its history:
Let’s go back in time to 482 AD, the year Kyiv – the capital of Ukraine – was founded, which was 665 years before Moscow came into existence, so Putin better check his facts. Anyhow, the founding of Kyiv is a bit of a mystery, with many legends surrounding it. From Viking settlements to another more popular version involving three brothers, Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, and their sister Lybid, from a nearby Slavic tribe.
Now let’s fast-forward a couple centuries, along with several different invasions and changes in empires it was part of. It is 1917, the Russian revolution just overthrew the Tsar, and the Civil War has started. In these turbulent times, Ukraine became known as the Ukrainian People’s Republic and in 1918, after the October revolution, it proclaimed its independence from the Russian Republic (not the Soviet Union, the red army has not won yet). Many changes of government later, in 1921 Ukraine became a part of the USSR. Or simply, the dark ages are upon us.
Holodomor – a man-made famine created by the ‘brilliant’ tyrannical mind of Stalin – is experienced. Prior to the 1930s, Ukraine was largely an agricultural society, people lived and worked on their own land. Picture a charming little village with colourful shutters and flowers in the front yard, but here comes Stalin with his plan of industrialising the agricultural system. I won’t go into detail here, but what I will say is that he forced a whole nation into famine, essentially, a genocide.
Throughout Stalin’s decades in power, his philosophy was of terror, blind belief and trust in the party and its ideology. His tyrannical plan also included destroying the cultural identity of the republics within the USSR, including Ukraine. This meant that in schools, Russian was the primary language and Ukrainian faded into the background in the major cities, as it simply was becoming obsolete. Now, I hope this snippet of history helped you to understand why so many Ukrainians speak Russian, including me (as, even though I lived in independent Ukraine, the effects of the decades long oppression of national identity could be felt in the 2000s).
From 1930s we will jump thirty years into the future. It’s the early 1960s, on one side of the Iron Curtain, Beatles and miniskirts were taking over, and on the other, Khrushchev Thaw was at its peak. Here, we meet the Sixtiers. They were a group of the intelligentsia (educated people born to educated and Bolshevik parents), born between 1925-40. A generation born into USSR, their ideology was practically ingrained into them since birth. Some became poets, some were Ukrainian – the ones relevant to this article. As children, they whole-heartedly believed in the ideology, but changed their minds once some lost their parents, when they were murdered or sent to Siberia by the state’s execution of Stalin’s ‘cleansings’. So, as you might have guessed they became an oppositional force. They wrote books, which were banned as they didn’t agree with the soviet philosophy, often speaking about Ukrainian nationalism and the eternal struggle of protecting Ukrainian culture and identity.
I’ll end the story here, for now. It is a tale of oppression, geopolitical tension, and tyranny, but also one of a rich culture and beautiful lands. If you are interested in what happened after, there’s always opportunity for a sequel.
