Ukrainians react to Moscow's intimidation

By Aussiegirl

According to this Reuters report from Olena Horodetska, Ukrainians weren't too worried about the gas cutoff, but have changed their attitudes about their relations with Russia.

It is high time for Ukrainians to get out from under the delusion that Russia is their friend and their "big brother." This psychology of contemporary Ukrainians to consider themselves second-best and inferior to Russia, and to speak Russian in preference to Ukrainian because they consider it a more "cultured" language, must stop.

Ukrainians must discover their own identity - their Ukrainian-ness.

This is perhaps the prime reason that Yushchenko insists on speaking only Ukrainian in public -- and now even in private, will conduct interviews only in Ukrainian.

In order for a country to prosper, it must not only have democracy and a free market and enforceable laws, it must have a sense of identity and pride in its own language and culture. In France they speak French, in Spain they speak Spanish, in England they speak English. How is it that in Ukraine they speak Russian? This cannot be.

This sense of their own identity has been beaten out of Ukrainians over the many centuries of Russian domination. And the communists, in particular, managed to exterminate an entire class of intelligentsia and people of conscience, the people who would have formed the soul of the nation and become its natural leaders. Instead, the people who managed to survive that criminal system are those who learned how to accomodate themselves, one way or another, to the "dhimmitude" of Russian domination.

This is why there is still often some degree of friction between emigre Ukrainians, who, like me -- are extremely patriotic of their cultural heritage and who value their "Ukrainian-ness" highly, and some present-day residents of Ukraine, many of whom are heavily Russified and have very different values because of how they grew up, and because in many cases they do not know their own true history.

This will take decades and generations to fully heal. I believe that one reason President Yushchenko is such an aware Ukrainian is due in no small measure to his wife, Katya, who was raised by emigre parents in the United States in much the same way as I was raised -- steeped in our great cultural heritage and with that sense of obligation to carry the torch of culture and language until such time as it could be relit in Kyiv.

It seems that with this latest shock, especially coming on the heels of the blatant Russian interference in the last election which led directly to the outpouring of national protest on the streets of Kyiv during the Orange Revolution last December, Ukrainians have finally woken up from their hypnotic slumber and have taken their rightful place in the family of free nations as proud citizens of Ukraine -- not a Russified provincial backwater looking to its "big brother" for approval and sustenance.

It's high time!

[...]some in the capital Kiev see the gas dispute with Russia as another example of aggression from their "big brother" under the Soviet Union, and say relations will never again be the same.

And others further east, in Ukraine's Russian-speaking industrial heartland, say their once-trusted ally has let them down.

"We will have champagne without gas. Let Russians choke on their gas," has become a favorite joke during the New Year and
Christmas holidays, which started on December 31 and run until January 14 -- when most Europeans are back at work.

"Our flat is warm. The holiday is in full swing. I just do not understand Russians. Why are they so hostile?" said Svetlana, 31, walking with her small daughter in Kiev's main street, decorated with Christmas trees and lights.

Others were more direct. "It is an unprecedented provocation. It is an attempt to break Ukraine on all issues -- economic, political, social," said Albert Dyachenko, a pensioner and a former military officer."It amounts to a war against the Ukrainian people."

The Fifth television channel did a survey on January 2 in which over 93 percent of people said the cut in gas supplies
was a hostile act.