This time (Jan. 13) it was an article about scholarly research on the subject of the Ukrainian language. My attention was drawn by its sweeping title: “Halychyna will always be Ukraine’s Piedmont,” which may invite all kinds of commentary, wisecracks included.
Actually, it is difficult to disagree with that claim. Having lived most of the first five years of life in the Tomsk area of Siberia, the awareness of the geographic distance lingers on and imparts some objectivity concerning Ukraine’s regional mindsets.
A cogent argument can be made that it would be good for Ukraine if the people in places like Makeivka and Kakhovka (”Rodnaya Vintovka”) in the southeast felt closer to Ukraine’s west than to the Eurasian space. Most of the Donbas region was Ukrainian-speaking as late as the 1920s, before its native rural population was decimated by the 1932-33 Holodomor.
The notion of restoring the Ukrainian character of that area was verbalized on various occasions by Vyacheslav Chornovil before he was rubbed out in politically charged circumstances.
Money and economic power of Ukraine’s eastern regions owned by the oligarchs has recently trumped the national interest. The result is a systemic paradox, in which some of the nation’s the best and the brightest have been persecuted and imprisoned for blatantly political motives.
Part of the same paradox has been the recent attempt of the oligarchs and the government to bulldoze their way under the Ukrainian flag into a European partnership – without actually representing the interests of the Ukrainian nation.
And so, when the people of Ukraine as a whole appear to be numbed under the present regime – which represents arcane powers of repression — Ukraine needs a Piedmont.
And when the typical urban “kvartyranty” have not learned to speak Ukrainian at home and much less in workplace — after 20 years of independence — Ukraine needs a Piedmont.
The language thing is not as silly as it may appear to be. The czars had an obvious reason to fear the Ukrainian language as a natural impediment to russification and to their power in Ukraine. Since the year 1720 there have been 23 official edicts prohibiting official use and printing in Ukrainian, beginning with Czar Peter’s ukaz.
The defining credentials of Halychyna as Ukraine’s Piedmont are undeniable. Over the centuries, and especially during the sway of Russia’s interior minister Valuev’s regime – when even the printing of the Bible in Ukrainian was outlawed — Halychyna, as part of the Austrian empire, was a sanctuary of Ukrainian learning and discourse.
Its role went far beyond the linguistics. Among the first military units that defended Ukraine’s National Republic against the Bolshevik invasion in January 1918 were the regiments formed in Kyiv by Ukrainian POWs of the Austrian army taken earlier by czarist troops. The same regiments – the all-volunteer Sich Riflemen — were the key component of the Ukrainian army until the end of 1919, when it was defeated in a triangle of death, pressed by Russia’s Reds, Whites, and the Poles.
Would the dedication and courage of these, poets would say, knights of the absurd be possible if their speech were not Ukrainian? Think again. And where is the shame of today’s Ukrainians who make Russian their language of choice?
Shame disappears in a better company, better job, and maybe better living. This is an onset of a second nature that opens the doors. There is a name for this behavior – that is easy to forget. And when this behavior is massive, a nation dies.
When a Piedmont rises to condemn such behavior patterns, hate is born against its founders. Sounds familiar?
This is not about forsaking things Russian that are likable — be it the works of literature, music or good people. This is about self-respect.
Without the tradition of fighters for independence, kept alive in Halychyna between the two world wars, there would be no Ukrainian Insurgent Army to challenge the Soviet yoke and, most likely, no substantive stimulus in the central regions for the revival of Ukrainian independence, to speak of after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Today the directions of the ruling party and the government’s agenda don’t seem to reflect a vision of Ukraine’s survival as a nation. Consequently, the national interest needs to be expressed by the opposition and by the re-emerging symbols of a Piedmont at some location — within the geographic map of Ukraine.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
