An Ambivalent Relationship

“ Украины нет, не было и быть не может!” (“There is no Ukraine, there was no Ukraine and there can be no Ukraine!”) is a phrase I heard repeatedly as a child, although then I was too young to pay attention to it or to realize its significance.

The time was the 1950s, the place was Casablanca, and the sentiment was voiced to my parents – both Ukrainian, “ новые иммигранты” (new immigrants) from the Soviet Union – by old aristocrats, or what was left of them. These latter had fled Russia after the revolution and settled in French-speaking Morocco, where they were known as “ старые иммигранты” (old immigrants), aging admirals and fading “grandes dames” who scolded my mother for speaking to me in that peasant “ muzhik” language (i.e. Ukrainian).

In that settlement of Slavic refugees, my parents were the only ones who admitted to being Ukrainian, thus fueling more than one heated discussion with old and new immigrants alike, about Ukraine or “ Малороссия” (Little Russia) as some called her disdainfully, and her right to autonomy.

And yet, we had Russian books and music in our home and I grew up with the two cultures intertwined in my consciousness: I learned Russian, but spoke only Ukrainian with my parents.

In Morocco, my parents formed close friendships that lasted decades, transcending both space and time and continuing after everyone had moved on and settled throughout the United States.

Despite the disagreements about Ukraine’s right to exist, there was mutual affection and admiration for each other’s culture. I remember more than once, during parties where the vodka (of which both Russians and Ukrainians are equally fond) flowed, someone would ask my father to sing a song “ которая начинается на О” (which begins with “O”) – many old Ukrainian folk songs begin with a wistful “Oh!”

This ambivalent relationship between Ukrainians and Russians is nothing new. It was Russian aristocrats and artists who raised the money to buy the poet Taras Shevchenko’s freedom from serfdom and who listened to his verse with tears in their eyes. It was Gogol who wrote (in Russian) so lyrically about Ukraine, her folklore and her nature.

And today, in Kiev, one hears Russian on the streets, Ukrainian signs notwithstanding. One is actually more likely to hear Ukrainian spoken in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village than in the capital of Ukraine. Upon my first visit to Kiev some 20 years ago, I, a child of immigrants, spoke better Ukrainian than my relatives who had been born there. They all know Ukrainian, but are much more fluent in Russian, and that’s their language of choice.

This prevalence of spoken Russian throughout Eastern Ukraine underscores the absurdity of Putin’s contention that he annexed Crimea because he needed to rescue Russian speakers from evil Ukrainians. But then, look at Krylov’s fable about the wolf and the lamb – any argument, even the most outlandish and absurd will do if you are the stronger one. “ La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure” (The reason of the strongest is always the best). La Fontaine said in his fable on the same subject.

Thus far, I’ve been speaking of Eastern Ukrainians, “ східняки,” and their feelings toward Russians. Their Western counterparts are another story altogether, and it is important to note the differences in their attitudes. Traditionally, “ Галичани” – from Galicia, as they are called, have little use for Russians and not much use for Eastern Ukrainians either. One such family who had become friends with me because I am Ukrainian, stopped the relationship upon finding out that I teach Russian.

Will Ukraine ever be “ самостiйна” – independent? Despite what those “old immigrants” asserted many years ago, will the message of the Ukrainian national hymn become reality? Will we “become lords in our own land?”

As a Ukrainian proverb has it, “God is not without mercy, a Cossack not without luck!”

One can hope.