We Have Only Partly Opened the Window to Independence
In due time, Independence Day might become a true holiday — if not for us, for our children — when we will be proud of our state, the way United States citizens take pride in their country on July 4 and the French proudly sing La Marseillaise on July 14. As time passes, we will perhaps become wiser and understand what was expected from our independence, what we might have got, and we in fact wound up with. Perhaps we will be happy not just because there is another late summer day off, when it is still warm and you can relax and enjoy the last rays of the sun, while, deep in your heart, getting ready for work or studies.
Perhaps we will then be confident that our country is the best to live in for us, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Maybe then we will simply believe in this country, our leadership, and trust our hryvnia.
Perhaps we will then not be irritated every year that the state spends money on August 24 parades, for they will become not only natural but showing that everything here is in order and that we only need the army to feast our eyes on during the annual parade.
Maybe this country will then enjoy authority on the international stage and we will be telling “those Westerners” that this place is better, nicer, more comfortable and democratic. Then it would never occur to a petty Nigerian chieftain that a Ukrainian seaman can be taken hostage. We would have long forgot that in olden times almost every Ukrainian ship’s captain was afraid to call at foreign ports because the ship could be easily impounded for debts. We would have long forgotten that the Ukrainians were once trying to go at any cost for a fast buck to any place, be it Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, or Russia, and on the contrary, the Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, and Russians would be legally working for the Ukrainian economy.
“What do you mean by nonpayment and visas?” our descendants will ask with surprise the meaning of such unknown words. “What do you mean by gas traders and oligarchs?” Quite possible.
Nobody would then be saying that Ukraine is a bankrupt state. Nobody would dare threaten it with an international court, nobody demand that it make the final choice of its strategic partner, nobody say that this state pursues a spineless policy. To the contrary, the policy will be highly esteemed for its clear stand. Quite possible.
Maybe all this is fantasy prompted by the old reflections on what kind of an independent state Ukraine might have become — or on what it is today. Or perhaps these are the realities that will come with time — if we not only want all this but also do something to get it, if we know for certain that we are citizens and, to start with, simply force the authorities to respect us.
Nine years ago perhaps none of us wanted what we have today.
Over the past nine years, we have only begun to become aware that Ukraine has come into existence as a state and that in fact no one but we ourselves seem to be threatening it. Perhaps in the next nine years, we will become more mature, clever, and experienced. Perhaps we will at last become one nation and understand that it is not to our benefit to pray to the same God in the temples of warring denominations. Everything is still possible.
Whatever the case, Independence Day greetings!
