Lukyanenko Gives Test

Unfortunately, these people remain spiritual dissidents in today's Ukraine. Have you ever seen Levko Lukyanenko, this genuine intellectual and philosopher, on any of Ukraine's television channels? Is the fact that this living legend is never given air time not a real test of the Ukrainian regime's soundness? Precisely because of such attitudes toward people rating places in the nation's ethical pantheon during their lifetime one can only assume that the regime in Ukraine is not Ukrainian, and not by any ethnicity, but simply because it is not aimed at providing normal living conditions for Ukraine's people.

In Moscow - which many of our patriots refer to as "imperial," sometimes driven by emotion and other times with reason - a monument to Andrei Sakharov was unveiled recently. And we all know what it cost the Crimean Tatars to erect a monument to General Petro Hryhorenko.

Russia is now, albeit with great effort, ridding itself of many vestiges of the past. By a whim of fate Ukraine has turned into the last bulwark of all the worst things inherited from the Soviet Union and empire. However, this year offers us a crucial opportunity to finally turn the historical vector of Ukraine's development in the direction leading to a better future. For this reason it is especially important for us to hear those whom 25 years in Soviet prison camps could not break and who have not been deceived by the past several years of false freedom.

Look up the Persona column for the Lukyanenko interview.