As an American I did not much like Ronald Reagan as President. In fact, I voted against him twice. However, he was right about one thing: the Soviet Union really was an empire of evil. Its demise, along with the birth of independent Ukraine in that empire's death throes, is something worth celebrating. Still, there is something somehow out of place in this year's hoopla, complete with a hired sorcerer to ward off any threat of rain, something like a feast during a plague.
Perhaps the week's most disturbing document was the open letter to the President, Premier, and Speaker of Parliament by 34 delegates to last year's Second World Ukrainian Forum, among them a number of my personal friends, published on August 20 in Literaturna Ukraina. These people, leaders of the Ukrainian Diaspora, spent decades dreaming of the evil empire's destruction and the independence of their ancestral homeland. When things seemed most hopeless they seemed to be creating their own little Ukraines in the lands to which they had emigrated. There are, in short, no more dedicated advocates and defenders of Ukrainian statehood. And now, they address the leaders of the nation they dreamt of as their highest ideal in despair and perplexity: they see their beloved homeland and cannot recognize it. True, they are most upset by the lamentable decline of the Ukrainian language, literature, and culture, but their criticism can also be extended much farther: according to virtually every index, living standards continue to decline, while the authorities become ever weaker, more desperate, and find their options for improving the situation reduced daily. When even the most dedicated patriots despair of their patrie, the fatherland is in clear and present danger. Oleh Polturai's story about local enterprises selling their wares for peanuts is but the inevitable result of the environment the state has created, where nobody but a fool or a fast-buck artist can do business, and we all know where that leads.
The question is not whether Ukrainian independence is worth celebrating; the question is whether the people and government of Ukraine have the will to make it something worth celebrating for most of this country's citizens. Unfortunately, on that one the jury is still out.






