At 35, I’m younger than many things – such as the internet or Apple computers. And yet I’m older than my country’s independence.
For most people, the independence of their birth state is so ironclad they rarely get to really think about it. Others won independence centuries ago and mark it as a general occasion for a fun celebration, rather than one focused on thinking about what they as a nation sacrificed to be free.
I believe there are few, if any, nations in the modern world where independence means as much today as it does in Ukraine. Ukraine’s fight for independence took centuries. And when we finally got it after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, its successor, Russia, soon tried to subjugate Ukraine again.
For my generation, an independent Ukraine was something we first took for granted, and then learned the hard way to cherish.
I was two years old when the Soviet Union collapsed. My early years took place in the tumultuous 1990s, when a newborn state was stumbling its way into democracy and market economy. It was a rocky transition, and that’s how it felt, even for children. Our 1990s were marked by poverty, unemployment and uncertainty about the future.
Things soon got better economically, but a different issue remained: while being an independent country on paper, we were still deeply connected to Russia. For my generation it meant that we were figuring out who we were at the same time as the nation around us was figuring itself out.
A lot of this had to do with discovering Ukrainian identity, slowly carving it from the ever-present Soviet cultural legacy. There is no bigger manifestation of it than the language we speak.
I’m Ukrainian but my first words were in Russian. In fact, all of my words were in Russian until I started school. Like many other Ukrainian families, mine used to be Ukrainian-speaking once, but was Russified over recent generations.
Our bookshelves were filled with Russian literature. Our TV showed Russian and Ukrainian channels, which I didn’t distinguish – both aired mostly in Russian. Every new year we raised our glasses twice – first, on Moscow time, and an hour later, on Kyiv’s.
By the time I started school, I was reading avidly – but only in Russian. First grade brought a lot of confusion. I tried reading Ukrainian as if it were Russian – because they use a similar version of the Cyrillic alphabet – and failed. When Ukrainian literature classes started, all the names were new for me. I knew European and Russian classics well, but was discovering Ukrainian – my own – in the classroom.
Like many Ukrainians of my generation, I felt an urge to discover more of our culture in my late teens. It’s something about this time in life that encourages one’s search for meaning and sense of belonging. For me, it meant discovering modern Ukrainian writers such as Serhiy Zhadan and Irena Karpa, and listening to Ukrainian bands. But Russian and western ones still dominated my MP3 player.
I don’t think that we, the kids, gave much thought to the fact that we lived in independent Ukraine. Neither did the adults around us. The post-Soviet years were about adjusting and surviving, not identity-searching.
Our family didn’t celebrate Ukraine’s independence day, and I didn’t know anyone who did. It was a state holiday, marked on 24 August, and that was about all I knew about it. The independence was just a fact, and didn’t seem to call for celebration.
The big bang that changed it all happened in 2014. Our country underwent a great awakening – the Euromaidan revolution, a popular uprising that ousted a corrupt pro-Russian president.
The revolution changed Ukraine’s relationship with Russia in an instant. Rejected by Ukraine, the former empire reacted with force. It occupied and annexed Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea and started a war in eastern Ukraine.
The revolution and Russian aggression kickstarted a renaissance of Ukrainian identity.
It manifested on the first post-revolution independence day in August 2014 – the celebration was nothing like what it was before. The streets of Kyiv were flooded with people in vyshyvankas, Ukrainian traditional embroidered shirts that became a way to show patriotism. I had never owned a vyshyvanka before, and bought my first one for that celebration. Many had tears in their eyes as they watched the military parade – for the first time, the people marching in front of us were the ones that were defending our country on the battlefield.
It took a threat to our independence to start cherishing it. Suddenly, what was just a word and a state holiday got a very tangible meaning – the kind of meaning that my people were ready to die for.
When eight years later Russia escalated its aggression to a full-scale war against Ukraine, it sealed the deal. In their attempt to end Ukraine as an independent state, Vladimir Putin and his army of blood-lusting Russians inadvertently finalised the formation of independent Ukraine.
Thousands of people volunteered and joined the battle to defend Ukraine and its freedom from the force that tried – and is still trying – to take it away.
What was driving them? What drives one to fight, not flee, when the risk of being killed is so high?
Many stood up to defend their freedom not simply out of patriotic pride or duty, but because they knew that a life worth living begins with freedom. Being invaded and occupied by Russia meant the end of freedom, independence and the right to choose one’s future.
This Saturday, we will be thinking about their sacrifice, and the battle for the freedom and future of Ukraine. It will be a bittersweet celebration of a defiant nation that refuses to bow to a tyrant and his armies. Every independence day we get to celebrate now is cherished because it is paid for with the blood of our people.
It would not have been possible without the backing of millions of freedom-loving people from around the world – people for whom independence and freedom mean something, like it does for Ukrainians.
We often say that Ukraine is fighting the battle for the future of the free world, for the democratic values that Russia antagonises. I think it’s simpler than that. What’s at stake in this war is freedom in all its forms. Any individual who cherishes their personal freedom, as well as the freedom and independence of their community, should know that they, too, have a stake in this war.
If you support Ukraine, if you donate, if you demand from your politicians that they send military aid, if you stand with us in this existential fight for freedom – you should know that Ukraine’s independence day is yours to celebrate, too.
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