Weigh anchor and rig new sails to the mast of your virtual boat. Or imagine new wings attached to your back and fly forth, where everything is new. Where everything is so simple. Just go! Stop for rest now and then, reaching farther up the vertical of life. On the road you learn things very quickly, time flies faster, and your impressions are sharpened by perilous situations. Not all are destined to be winners, but Vyacheslav Chornovil once said, “If I’m to die, I want it to happen quickly and on the go.” On life on the go is especially interesting, for one is able to create both oneself and the world. And the world is how you want to see it; seen through the prism of idleness, it seems lazy; seen through the prism of good, it seems virtuous; seen through the prism of inspiration, it looks inspired and interesting. Take what you want and go... Keep your goodbyes brief, for words can never express what you have in your heart, what you feel embracing and kissing your near and dear ones; words are too insignificant before the past, present, and future; words will never suffice to convey one’s gratitude to Heaven, parents, trees, grass, or friends. Words dissolve into deeds, the way organ music reaches up to the vaults of the cathedral and dissolves there. It is good when words are filled with lofty and pure feelings. But where is the temple?
EACH CHOOSES HIS OWN ROAD
You will remember the first steps to your dying day; those steps were bitterly disappointing and humiliating; you had mixed feelings, and there were pangs of conscience. Those steps were perhaps the hardest ever, as though your feet were made of steel and stone, because they were crucial, and there was no turning back. And everything around you was gray, like an overcast sky, like that asphalt driveway from your home to the runway. The morning was lurked through the windows, a sight so painfully familiar, and there was grief in that farewell look. A plane taking off looks gray because you watch it through tears or with a mind heavy with thoughts.
Parents have to leave small children for the sake of their future. Everything would have been normal — this world has long lived in a interpenetrating assimilated structure of different cultures, religions, languages, skin colors, and so on — but for one difference. It is so small, such a trifle, as useless as things can be. I mean the color of one’s passport. The problem of problems for Ukrainian nationals crossing the border is getting through the maze of visa red tape (single VISA, multiple entry VISA). Crossing the border is controlled by authorities, of course, meaning a whole array of consecutive procedures requiring additional efforts.
We are all children of a single planet. Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull reads, “if you want to be there, be there...” In other words, if want to be here, be here, because everything is so relatively close and so faraway that everyone can choose his/her own road. Success is never condemned. Win if you can, but most importantly you must do something creative; you must prevail over yourself and create yourself, never mind how, where, or under what circumstances.
When the victory is close, there are always people knowing everything that will happen. Some will say just look at the fool, staying that home just wasn’t good enough for him... But then luck smiles on the brave, and others will say, just look at him, he gets away with everything and is always on the winning side, even if worse comes to worst.
The new generation of Ukrainians living abroad is increasing, their children grow and their Ukrainian has a distinct English or other accent. However, the experience of past Ukrainian settlements overseas shows that the third generation does not write or even speak Ukrainian; these young people do not know about homesickness, this does not bother them; the need to communicate with ethnic countrymen and to know the mother tongue fades as the rate of assimilation rises. The only thing left is perhaps an interest in one’s family tree and ethnic culture. But that’s all, followed by long silence.
But enough looking back and twisting the knife. Those who want to be offended and humiliated will be; those wanting to be proud and dignified as well as those determined to preserve their national identity will do so.
Ukrainians everywhere have one historical homeland, Ukraine, and they know it. It is an old and painful awareness. Too bad we are all compelled to look for a better living elsewhere in the world, yet Solomon had an inscription on his ring reading that this too will pass.
DO WE FEEL UKRAINIAN?
Ukrainian citizens abroad do not always feel Ukrainian.
First, the new homeland is not always historically friendly to us, and often in order to survive and settle somehow, we have to become Russian-speaking.
Second, many Ukrainian citizens adopt a nationality-free but primarily Russian-speaking line of conduct even before crossing the border. This fake cynical cosmopolitanism and real ignorance are easily exposed owing to the lack of knowledge of any languages or history and also because they use obscene Russian indiscriminately, for no good reason except for what they believe is their belonging to Russian culture. Such a humiliating attitude toward Ukraine is shown by genetic Ukrainians, those of mixed Ukrainian-Russian parentage, and by Russians living in Ukraine. They do so at home and abroad. Yet I wish to stress that this derogatory attitude is displayed most openly by people originating from Ukraine.
Esteemed Russian-speaking Ukrainians, if you consider yourselves cosmopolitan, don’t bother to study Ukrainian, don’t bother to learn anything of the nation’s history. Just remain apolitical and switch to languages spread wider across the world: Chinese, English, and other languages of international communication. If you do, you will at least become more democratic and thus more tactful when referring to Ukraine. After all, belonging to a nationality-free world community, being just a man of the world is fine. Try it and good luck!
Tolerance of other nationalities is a norm of conduct in the multiethnic communities of North America and Great Britain. It is a process and it takes time, of course. But the greater people’s respect for other nations and skin colors, the more democratic and civilized a given society becomes. Everybody benefits in the end: British, Germans, Americans, Canadians, and everybody else. Democratic multilingual, religiously heterogeneous, and mixed color societies turn out to be the most progressive.
For various reasons, Ukraine with its inherent tolerance of all ethnic groups — Russian, Jewish, Polish, German, etc. — has inspired lamentably little tolerance of itself as a state and of Ukrainians as a body politic. We will have to bear this heavy legacy for a very long time.
WHY SHOULD ANYONE BE WAITING FOR US ANYWHERE?
The first О migr О generation finds it difficult to assimilate in a strange society, and the language barrier is always there, all their lives. Being the first is always the hardest; the first immigrants are like the first people in outer space; these are people estranged from the earth, there is lingual vacuum, strange traditions, different laws, and they are haunted by such trivial questions as: Who needs you here? Who is waiting for you? New arrivals have to make themselves useful.
Actually, why should anyone be waiting for us anywhere? Over the years those different nations have developed their own states, and here we are coming to get something ready-made; we enjoy the benefits of their well-being. In order to make ourselves useful, we must at least have some useful skills; we must be original professionals and survive severe competition. Those other nations have enough problems without us and every newcomer adds more problems. One can understand how they feel.
The degree of assimilation in the public life of a new homeland is miserable even after a long period. We are simply like that, most of us: practically impractical. Sooner or later we become members of communities, start going to church, clubs, or at least frequent restaurants serving Ukrainian meals.
Small Ukrainian communities abroad are like miniature islands of Ukraine. They are headed by kind-hearted and dedicated volunteers. Dominant in their efforts is a sincere desire to help ethnic Ukrainians. Of course, they cannot help everybody with everything, for the whole thing is a lengthy process on a vast scope. Yet they all do everything possible, providing temporary homes, helping newcomers find jobs, writing letters of reference to various institutions, explaining laws, translating and certifying documents, and offering friendly advice in Ukrainian and Russian.
Ukrainian citizens abroad also keep close to people from the former socialist states. First, this is because such people are often encountered in many countries; second, they are easier to deal with, for they can understand your problems; and third, their cultures are similar, and they have similar problems assimilating, for all of us are from out there, with the same surviving mentality.
With time, having learned the foreign tongue or at least being able to communicate in it, people from all countries are happy to use this language among themselves. This makes the assimilation process easier, attesting a certain degree of adaptation to the new homeland. Formerly Russian-speaking people find it easier to understand each other in English. This is only natural, all things considered.
WE NEED A UKRAINIAN STATE
No one is sure about the precise number of Ukrainians livings abroad, in any given country, for people cross the border legally and otherwise, with genuine and fake identity papers, and often stay abroad, left alone with their problems. All civilized countries help their citizens anywhere in the world adapt to new conditions, materially as well as morally. In contrast, Ukrainians abroad do not feel protected by their state. Ukrainian officials do not like to be bothered with the problems confronting Ukrainian citizens at home, so how can they be expected to bother about Ukrainians abroad? This would contradict their being positioned on a given rung of the hierarchical ladder. But they respect Ukrainians with British passports. One such Ukrainian, when asked — through an interpreter — by an Evening Standard reporter whether he felt British or Ukrainian, replied in English: “British.”
The success of any undertaking is money — an objectively practical, albeit somewhat simplistic observation. Are there many wealthy people among Ukrainians? Some ten millionaires all over the world, according to statistics from the early 1990s. Theirs is not stolen but lawfully earned money, but their number is so very, very small.
The new wave of Ukrainian immigration, beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, is bigger than previous ones. These people are apolitical, generally better educated, and business oriented. Even now this generation remits to Ukraine considerable sums in hard currency, feeding and clothing their families back home. Those that return provide new jobs, write, speak about, and generate various new ideas, including ways out of the crisis in Ukraine. Political and business leaders, as well as creative personalities quickly emerge from among these young and inspired people. They study abroad at Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford, and less celebrated universities, learning to think progressively, analyze and compare things; they can uncover their individuality and realize themselves in various fields of endeavor.
Money is an important factor in immigration, especially at the start, but not the sole one. The new generation encompasses a broad spectrum. It is a small reflection of our large stratified Ukraine; here one finds patriots and their antipodes. But the Ukrainian state is needed by all of us — whether Ukrainian Ukrainians, Ukrainian Russians, Ukrainian Jews, Ukrainian Poles — so we can feel proud about our citizenship, so we can be dignified.
WE ARE A SMALL PART OF UKRAINE
There is no stopping Ukrainian immigration, and the process is gaining momentum. Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians are leaving Ukraine en masse, mostly able-bodied adults with university diplomas and academic degrees, as well as ordinary tillers of the soil. At first, they all sincerely believe that they will eventually return to their beautiful Ukraine, that their stay abroad is something like a business trip. Yet there is nothing more stable than things temporary. Most of these will never return home for a variety of reasons. “But there is no way everybody will leave Ukraine,” a squinting Ukrainian bureaucrat convinced in his omniscience will object. Naturally, this exodus is a negative phenomenon in the process of state construction. Regrettably, the fact remains: mass emigration is an objective reality that one must treat with understanding.
All Ukrainian strata are represented abroad; Ukraine exists wherever even one Ukrainian lives and remembers it with warm words. Love for Ukraine can be shown in various ways, be it helping the country develop it at home or while abroad, as a Ukrainian citizen or foreign national. The main thing is to act rather than tearfully complain about bad living conditions; the main thing is to build one’s own life, for that means building one’s country. Stay in Ukraine if you like or travel abroad to learn about the world from a different perspective, so you can bring back something useful, some knowledge you have borrowed from others. Not all in or outside Ukraine are destined to be winners; not all will become geniuses or immensely rich, yet some are bound to be lucky, show extraordinary talent, and win fame. Some of you that are especially hard-working and inspired will be among the best on the world arena. Remembering one’s Ukrainian or other parentage, always and everywhere, is only natural. Forgetting it is abnormal.
Unlike previous waves of immigration, the current generation is free to visit Ukraine anytime or stay there. This is encouraging and somewhat consoling.
Ukrainian children will be born abroad and in Ukraine; they will speak two, three, or more languages and continue on the flight to eternity, on the DNA spirals started by our ancestors and continued by our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Will they do so with love and pride? Yes, they will. We and our children are a small part of Ukraine and will remain so wherever we are. Feeling Ukrainian is a mark of class. We exist and we shall exist millennia later, as do our ancestors do in us, and as we will in our posterity. We are not the best of all nations on earth, we are not one chosen by God, but an ordinary normal nation with a viable strong gene pool. Our roots are traced back at least ten thousand years, all the way to the Trypillian culture, so we cannot inherently be weak, because we are what we are, a strong and robust nation. We have given birth to and will beget excellent athletes, musicians, artists, poets, and writers. Our land is potentially programmed to produce and nourish geniuses like Shevchenko, Koroliov, Sikorsky, and Poliui.
Let us love and respect one another and all others, so that we can expect to be respected in return on all continents.
