I left Ukraine in 1998 because I hated it.
I hated the passivity, the fatalism, the triumphant gloominess inherited from the Soviet times, the cynicism that was a way of life, the corruption that everybody saw as the only possible response to reality.
I hated the indifference to politics, the self-hatred, the contempt for one’s own culture and the fawning adoration of the uncivilized and uncultured neighbor.
I hated the endless wait for a good tsar, the stagnation, and the adamant refusal of absolutely everybody to accept responsibility for absolutely anything in their lives.
I saw no hope that this would ever change, so I left. I wasn’t one of those fortunate immigrants who stay in touch, travel back to their country every year, and proudly answer the question of where they are from. But of course, I always wanted to be one.
And in December of 2013, I realized that I’d been wrong. Something had been happening, brewing, changing, and the Ukraine I was sure would never be reborn suddenly came into existence. I’ve never been more eager to recognize that I made a huge mistake in my analysis. Finally, my country of origin was shedding the Soviet legacy and recovering the greatest traditions of its pre-Soviet existence.
This hopeful, enthusiastic, joyful, bustling and active Ukraine had come together in 1918 to work on a shared project of independence, social justice, and civilizational advances and was crushed by its enraged and confused neighbor. Now that drive towards change and civilization re-emerged, but the irate and jealous neighbor was bent on destroying it once again. Ukrainians had finally shaken off their inner Russian – a lazy, fatalistic, cynical and useless creature – and the actual Russians couldn’t forgive that.
It is absolutely devastating to see history repeat itself this way. But Ukraine’s is also a very inspiring story. Because if you can come back from the kind of history Ukraine has been cursed with, then anything is possible and anything can be overcome.
Clarissa's Blog 
Here’s a provocative, probably wronghead idea I can’t get out of my head when thinking about Ukraine.
A lot of Russian hissy fits seem, on the surface, to be about language (like the non-existant repression of Russian specifically). I think that Russians sub-consciously even more than Ukrainians see a strong Ukrainian language as a threat and I kind of agree, but not necessarily the way they think.
Cultivation of the Russian language for Ukrainians more or less equals cultivation of eternal victimhood (the main role Russians have for them) while cultivation of Ukrainian seems more like a search for a new identity (which is an unknown and therefore felt to be a threat for the innovation adverse Russians).
It’s an idea that occurred to me sometime during my vacation and it’s not very well developed and I’m not sure how much I believe it myself but it’s been something I’ve been thinking of….
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You are absolutely spot-on in this analysis. This is SO about the language. Putinoids (both in Russia and in Ukraine) go into veritable fits over the language. They hate the Ukrainian language so passionately that it borders on an organic pathology.
Keep going on vacations and we might find out all of the reasons why the language is so problematic for these folks. 🙂
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This is interesting. Do you think the Russian gloom predates USSR, though? In Tolstoi, Dostoievski, Gogol, the place sounds fairly bad as well. Especially Tolstoi somehow, he seems to be incredibly twisted, scary.
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Oh yes. The Russian empire was really horrible before the October Revolution. The revolution was actually an enormous improvement over what existed before it. It was just a horrible, hopeless place, an evil empire in the truest sense of the world. The revolution at least liberated women and gave full rights to Jews.
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Won’t speak for Clarissa, but my take (contrasting it with Poland which I know well).
Poles are prone to wallowing in misery and thinking there’s no honest way to get ahead, but will work hard when they think their work will be rewarded.
Russians are prone to wallowing in misery and thinking there’s no honest way to get ahead and they think that makes them somehow morally superior to the rest of the world (and are driven to blind fury when the rest of the world doesn’t agree).
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“Russians are prone to wallowing in misery and thinking there’s no honest way to get ahead and they think that makes them somehow morally superior to the rest of the world (and are driven to blind fury when the rest of the world doesn’t agree).”
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“A lot of Russian hissy fits seem, on the surface, to be about language (like the non-existent repression of Russian specifically). I think that Russians sub-consciously even more than Ukrainians see a strong Ukrainian language as a threat and I kind of agree, but not necessarily the way they think.”
Here’s another consideration – although Ukraine and Russia are geographically close, they just don’t communicate with each other and leads to misunderstandings of each other’s intentions which over time leads to conflict, both culturally and ultimately militarily. An analysis of linguistic patterns of communication between various languages displays issues which may not be as apparent in more conventional investigations.
One project is the Global Language Network, an undertaking by the MIT Media Lab Macro Connections group in collaboration with Aix-Marseille Université, Northeastern MoBS, and Harvard University. It uses computational techniques in conjunction with large scale data mining of intra-language translation to produce visualizations of the extent of communication between various languages.
A bit of explanation – the diagram below is a visualization of communications between various language groups using classic tree diagrams. The size of the node represents the number of people speaking the particular language and the thickness of the lines represents the degree of intra-language communication. Various linguistic family groups are identified by different colors. Some considerations that come out of this diagram are Russians don’t have many issues with groups whose main communication lines are solely with the FSU and the Ukraine whose location on the diagram is related to its cultural self identification is closer to Poland and equidistant between English and Russian. This shines a spotlight on the current conflict given its geographical location. I realize that the picture is a bit blurry but you can find a high resolution and interactive graph at:
http://language.media.mit.edu/visualizations/books
http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/thumb_article_l/public/sn-languageH_2.jpg?itok=k5_cR4Kv
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