Still I do have a reminiscence, confirmed by my mother, in 1991. That autumn, only weeks after independence was claimed, I remember spending a lot of time in my red baby carriage in the middle of long line of people in our city of Dnipropetrovsk.
The point of being in that line was to buy some butter. They were selling it right from the huge dirty trucks. My mother took me with her in order to be able to buy more – it was sold per-person. And fortunately, a 2-year-old child was considered as an equal butter consumer, so everyone took their kids to the line.
That’s what I’ve associated the first year of independence with – warm butter of a bright yellow color, nothing like the butter that they sell nowadays.
And still, in spite of that silly association, the idea of independence is as serious as it can be. I cannot imagine Ukraine being just a dependent part of something. No way.
Even though my early childhood was full of old-school Soviet attributes (like books about Vladimir Lenin’s life), I honestly have no warm feelings about the USSR and I never identify myself with it.
What irritates me a lot is identifying oneself as “Russian” when it means “the one who belongs to one of the ex-Soviet nations.”
And I know that many in my generation feel the same way. A couple of weeks ago my friend, also 22, and I walked past a beggar, indifferent to her demands for money, and heard her grumbling angrily: “What sort of people you are! Not Russians or what?”
“No, we are not,” we answered simultaneously.
Sometimes I notice that independence doesn’t seem really precious to me. But that’s because I can’t imagine not having it. Living in an independent country, being a part of a unique nation, feels natural. Like breathing, actually.
And I’m afraid that there is a big danger coming out of this naturalness. Not realizing the value of independence can easily lead to forgetting the point of it. And when that happens, we can find ourselves close to losing it one small step at a time.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected]
