That puzzled me, since my answer to that question was much simpler.
Then something else happened when I searched the University library for anything on Ukraine and found Andrew Wilson`s “Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation.” The title fascinated me as a rather silly one. How can we be an unexpected nation if our glorious history dates thousands years back to Trypillian culture? I picked up the book just to make sure the author is a complete idiot. But when I read it from cover to cover, I was shocked as it provided a complete brainwashing-free look at my country’s history – something which my education in Ukraine did not provide.
Of course, I knew that parts of Ukraine came together only in 1954, but I never thought about my country in terms of how artificial it really is.
With parts under Russia, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Romania and Turkey, I guess this country was never really meant to be the way it exists now. So are many other countries on the map in their present boundaries.
Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Poles, Crimean Tatars, Romanians, Roma, Greeks and many more. These are all in Ukraine and Ukrainians, to a huge extent, are a mixture of them all.
I know it feels good to be proud of your country (especially if there is something to be proud of like a powerful geopolitical position, large gross domestic product or at least great football players) and to have that identity of belonging with something bigger than yourself.
Until I went abroad for the first time I was, like many other Ukrainians, sure that Ukraine is unique because of its landscapes, language and greatest culture. Having travelled a lot, I can say that if I was a foreigner without a particular interest in post-Soviet reality I would never even come to visit Ukraine simply because there are hundreds of more interesting, exotic and fascinating places on earth.
Many young educated people in Ukraine love other countries, study or work there or even move there, which is perfectly fine with me, a huge Asia fan. I don’t think that where you are born, or where your parents are born or what language is your native one makes you obliged to anything.
People fall in love with other cultures, see opportunities in other places, move to other countries and are happy with it. If they will remember their country only by dumplings their grandmother used to make, that’s fine. Somebody else will surely fall in love with Ukrainian culture and promote it. As a person who knows Japanese and Indian people who are in love with everything Ukrainian and speak perfect Ukrainian, I do not worry about traditions of my country vanishing.
Unlike foreigners in love with everything Ukrainian, there are those with roots in Ukraine who are very critical of people with views like mine. They are usually people whose grandparents or parents left this country for good and who live their comfortable lives elsewhere, thinking it’s their duty to go online every now and then and trash Ukrainians who actually live in Ukraine for “not being brave enough to fight for their country,” being “cowards who do nothing for Ukraine” and so on. Ironic, isn’t it?
Unlike foreigners in love with everything Ukrainian, there are those with roots in Ukraine who are very critical of people with views like mine. They are usually people whose grandparents or parents left this country for good and who live their comfortable lives elsewhere, thinking it’s their duty to go online every now and then and trash Ukrainians who actually live in Ukraine for “not being brave enough to fight for their country,” being “cowards who do nothing for Ukraine” and so on. Ironic, isn’t it?
I am sure the world would be better off if more emphasis was put on people, instead of states. Facing global economical and ecological troubles, nuclear threats and severe human rights violations in so many countries, we should really spend more time sticking together instead of dwelling on dividers like who has more what blood and who must live where.
So what a motherland means for me personally? It is two villages in Vinnytska Oblast where my grandparents lived their lives and where I spent the happiest childhood months of my life. Motherland is also Vinnytsia, where I was born and where my parents live. And it is Kyiv, where I studied and lived large part of my life.
Apart from that – if I go to, say, Crimea, Donetsk or Lviv, I don’t feel at home much more that I do in Sweden or India. Passports, TV channels and some brands are surely the same but the language, landscapes, traditions and people are different.
I surely do not agree with Yuriy Andrukhovych and those who argue Ukraine should split. Unless most of the people in this country want it to, it shouldn’t. I surely want people of Ukraine to get out of their misery and have better lives which they deserve.
For that to happen, Ukraine should become an idea, apart from being a territory and a sentiment. As we have none currently, how is cosmopolitism for an idea? I believe in the popular saying that the more you hold on to something, the sooner you lose it. So can it be that in cosmopolitism countries can actually rediscover theirselves?
Back to my friend Lena, the more I thought about her background the more I envied her. Probably it is people like her who are so cosmopolitan they can actually be citizens of earth.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]
