Ukrainian youth: We should continue fighting for freedom!

For most of young people, the Soviet Union, Cold War, FRG and GDR are pages from textbooks on history. However, this is living history that has affected the lives of their parents and given a chance to the new generations. One should give a deep analysis to the way Ukrainians have used their chance.

The Day asked young people the question, “What does the fall of the Berlin Wall mean to you?”

Serhii STUKANOV, Ph.D. student at Donetsk National University, member of the Ostroh Free Youth Intellectual Exchange Club:

“In my opinion, emphasis should be made, above all, on the symbolic meaning of this event. However, it cannot be viewed outside the broader historical context. Clearly, profound worldview changes experienced by the Soviet population nearly 20 years ago were caused by the overall decay of Soviet ideology and the collapse of the socialist system in which this event was momentary. Its symbolical meaning — not only in the sense of the confrontation between totalitarianism and democracy — is of paramount importance.

“The thing is that from a certain angle, namely from the viewpoint of the genesis of cultural-historical types (term offered by Nikolay Danilevsky), the erection of the Berlin Wall does not look as the establishment of a symbolical border between antagonistic social-political systems. Rather, it emerges as the culmination of extensive (expansionist) development of the Russian civilization, whose self-identity was shaped through opposition to ‘Europe,’ at least in the 19th century, even though it was implicitly there, perhaps, before the times of Peter I. The fact that this antithetical nature is still being preserved and cultivated in the consciousness of Russians, now with the same — capitalistic — way of production supports the opinion that the struggle between socialism and capitalism was only a sort of decoration of the real fighting that still continues.

“In this light the liquidation of the Berlin Wall was a significant symbol for many countries of Eastern Europe (to a smaller extent, for Ukraine), which proved that belonging to Russia’s sphere of influence is not their inevitable historical fate and that the ‘lost period’ (Mykhailo Drahomanov’s description of the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire) had finally come to an end. Unfortunately, Ukraine has taken a dim view of this aspect: unlike their western neighbors, for most Ukrainians the worldview aspect of the event in question remained far from the plane of Ukraine’s geopolitical self-determination.

“I think I won’t make a serious mistake by saying that against the backdrop of this country’s economic decline in the 1990s, the worldview aspect in the comprehension of the current changes has been moved to goodness knows what place, yielding to reckless immersion into momentary needs (the problem of individual survival) and/or escape from this world’s avidity (the problem of individual salvation that had developed into an avalanche-like emergence of all kinds of religious sects and communities).

“By the irony of fate, it was inertness of geopolitical thinking that later crossed out almost all possibilities that had been opened by the fall of the Berlin Wall before Ukraine. Perhaps, the best illustration of this is the example of freedom of travel, which was used by many of our — former — compatriots, who left the country for good in the 1990s. Europe, for which the fall of the Berlin Wall became an impetus for most active internal integration, quickly consolidated and ‘tucked’ (like before an economic or political leap, etc.) and suddenly Ukrainians faced a new curtain, not iron but stiff — the visa regime, and Ukraine, for the umpteenth time in its history, was left ‘on this side’ of the barricades.

“I think that the following didactic conclusion may sum up all of the above, and young Ukrainians would do well to learn it: one should struggle for the truth and freedom, and then, sooner or later, justice will come.

“As for Germany, it is a good example for present-day Ukraine. Split into two parts, the country managed to overcome the consequences of this catastrophe, and in spite of all the difficulties, it is confidently advancing to harmonized existence as one unit.”

Artem ZHUKOV, fourth-year student, Ostroh Academy:

“Like any turning point, such as precedent as the fall of the Berlin Wall despite having purely positive moments — unification, consolidation, and practical economic benefit — also has its drawbacks. Sometimes society feels deeper the negative consequences of abrupt changes than the gradual polishing of established principles. In its entire history, Starting from the times of Otto I and Holy Roman Empire and finishing with Bismarck’s unification, Germany was not a single political organism, which, I am sure, had caused the peculiarities of German mentality.

“In 1918 Ukrainians failed to achieve unification as it happened in Germany where young people played a huge role and which has colossal practical meaning even today.

“We got another red-letter day our calendar, but this event remains a symbol of failed promises until Ukraine gains independence. The reformation of the bipolar world and the loss of the main symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, simultaneously brought about the change in the world outlook of the European youth at the time. We, Ukrainian students, need to adopt the positive aspects of this experience and, possibly, apply them in the future in order to refute confrontation sentiments concerning Ukraine and within Ukraine and, like Germans did back in 1989, we should take peaceful steps toward a consolidated country in which we are proud to have been born.”

Denys PODIACHEV, sociologist, member of the Ostroh Club of Free Intellectual Youth Exchange, Kharkiv:

“For Ukrainian youth such event as the destruction of the Berlin Wall is, above all, a symbol. However, they perceive it in a different way than the majority of people who focus on the reunification of the disunited parts. For young people, this is, so to say, a symbol of the beginning of freedom of communication, interaction, and living side-by-side with those who had been separated by someone’s cold and cruel will.

“Finally, this is a symbol of the victory gained over destiny, because nothing is more important for young people than to be able to influence one’s own life, without asking for permission. Young people cannot always understand that they are the most active part of their people, their nation, but they are keenly aware that they are likely to be suffering the worst from any unnatural borders within the nation.

“The young people of Germany, a country that experienced a rebirth in 1989, were on November 9 that year in the vanguard of destruction of the odious barrier separating Germans. And it was namely the position of young people that served as a guarantee that the new state formation, which was having a hard time reviving the ties between its two parts, wouldn’t split. Likewise, Ukraine’s youth of today does not always understand that it is, in fact, marching in the front ranks of the internal unification of the mentally split Ukraine. Indisputably, this category will resist the most if any masters of puppets … will hatch a plan to draw a borderline to separate the Ukrainian people.”