Ukraine was three and a half years.
Certainly, there are those who will argue about the starting point. Those who will remember 1991, or 1918, or at all to dive into the past for several centuries.
But all the talk about thousands of years of history good as useless. Because now Ukraine can not be build from recipes Yaroslav the Wise and Khmelnytsky. Even recipes of the mid-twentieth century historians, not politicians.
And real — not imitation — independent Ukraine emerged only at the turn of 2013-2014.
The current war is a war postponed. Which would have happened twenty years ago, if 1991 was a real Rubicon and not a transition point “from USSR to SSR with private property”.
And all the current “dispute” to the accompaniment of artillery is a discussion about where Ukraine ends.
The Ukrainian question in Imperial discourse had to evolve. From the textbook “Ukraine does not exist” (“Ukrainians are spoiled Russian”), in “Ukraine is Galicia” to “Ukraine is our “new Russia””.
Appetite claims decreased to the extent that, as Ukraine was moving to the East and South.
And all the ambition of Empire today lies in the fact that the process to freeze. To slow down. To draw a line of demarcation with a clear mental “ours-yours”.
Before the war Moscow was very fond of “Galician separatism”. Not for nationalism — of which there were plenty. And not for the sincerity of the deficit which was not there. Namely for the fact that its adherents were willing to narrow the Ukraine. Rejecting all that do not fall in resonance with their understanding of “Ukrainian”. All that was washed away, as they thought, the concept of “real Ukraine”.
And the “Galician separatism” played into the hands of all those who sought to find in the country a foothold for the Imperial revenge.
Any attempt to divide Ukraine is not just a game. It is also the inability to see the dynamics of the process. Because the last twenty-six years is nothing like the diffusion process in Ukraine. Expansion of the Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian view of history. The process of the expansion of Ukrainian political, in the end. Ask yourself the test question: where would front, if the current war began in 2014 and 1992?..
In addition, the square became one of the main stages of formation of Ukrainian political nation. Same for which is important not the blood and not soil, not the end of the names and not the language of the lullaby that you sang in childhood.
Ukrainian political nation was born, when the total outweighed the difference of nepohojesti.
When the Ukraine on the streets and in the trenches began to fight ethnic Ukrainians and Jews, Russians and Crimean Tatars, Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
This war is not ethnic and not religious. It is based on different pictures of the future.
And because on the other side of the trenches similarly, there are ethnic Ukrainians — just their difference is that they want the Empire and the “little Russia”.
You need to be aware of: Ukrainian independence is real, not imitation — is very young. And horizon the solution of many questions are sometimes able to last for two generations.
Surely, someone would like tomorrow to discover the widespread use of the state language in everyday life — but this desire’s too much emotion. Ukrainian flag and language appear there, where comes the Ukraine. But first she needs to go.
Loyalty to the language, appears immediately after political loyalty. As inclusion in the Ukrainian state project new areas for them will be those who will choose the state language as the language of everyday communication.
This procedure change will not work — it would be naive to think that indifferent and hesitant to decide to change their living habits before I begin to perceive Ukraine as their state.
And therefore anyone who is trying to divide the country on any subject except political loyalty — just freezes the process of “Ukrainization of Ukraine.”
Anyone who does not understand that Russian language is often a tool for ideological missionary work in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine is making a mistake.
Anyone who puts in the forefront ethnicity, blood and soil — plays into the hands of the Kremlin.
Because “narrow Ukraine” — this is the goal that is trying to reach Moscow.
Ukraine to become such as we want — we must first win the war.
Anyone who wants to win the war and looking for allies. Anyone who wants to lose chasing them.
Some issues are resolved quickly. Some don’t. Some Gordian knots can be cut. Others need to learn to unleash.
Every inclusion is good. Any exclusivity is evil. Heroic defeat can create a good epic. But victory is able to create a history textbook.
As well as the ability to see the processes in dynamics.
