January 22, 1918 was proclaimed the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic. We can think long about Kievan Rus, King Daniel, Cossack military democracy and other events of the Middle Ages. But the modern Ukrainian state - our state - began exactly 100 years ago. It is this century that is most important in the fate of the Ukrainian people and in the fate of all those who live on Ukrainian lands and become (or, conversely, did not want to become) part of the Ukrainian political nation. Now it is difficult to imagine that even that first independence is like and the second, proclaimed in 1991, was born not as a result of battles and a clear recognition by the majority of citizens of the need for the emergence of their state - and by the will of circumstances. The February revolution in the empire, the inflexibility of the Provisional Government in the Ukrainian question, the Bolshevik revolution. Something similar happened in August 1991 - the August putsch, the inability of the Union leadership to listen to Ukrainian wishes, the actual Yeltsin revolution. And the result of all this is independence, the success of those who did not want a Ukrainian autonomy, not a "special relationship" with Moscow, but their own state.

Thus both in 1918, and in 1991 independence was as though "postponed". That is, it was proclaimed, but at the same time it was meant that if the empire "comes to its senses" and understands the aspirations of the Ukrainians, then it is possible for it to have some special relations. Even in the famous Fourth Universal on January 22, 1918, it was pointed out the possibility of considering in the future the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly a "federal link" with "the people's republics of the former Russian state". Federated communication! Does not it remind you of anything? In 1991, after the proclamation of the second independence, Ukraine joined the CIS and for many decades consolidated in the consciousness of the surrounding world its belonging to the post-Soviet space and special ties with the metropolis. We do not know what the leaders of the UNR would do, since Lenin started the war against Ukraine almost immediately, and Putin - 23 years after the proclamation of independence. But I'm not sure what needs to be proved: Ukrainian society, the Ukrainian political elite are infected with a bad Moscow illness. This political syphilis recedes only when Russia begins to kill and burn. But as soon as they calm down in the Kremlin, they start thinking again in Kiev how it would be better to agree. This is reminiscent of a marriage to a rowdy, who drinks without a break, beats relatives and neighbors and is almost hopeless. But it is worth the piakas "tie", as neighbors immediately come to visit him with a cake and fig and offer friends at home. And what if he is in the next room and he has gas?.

Of course, this perception of independence - I would call it a national tendency to collaborate - makes Ukrainian statemen terribly lonely in their own country throughout this century. I would not wish anyone such a fate - to live at home, to have all opportunities for state building and constantly face terrible national indifference, obstinate misunderstanding of priorities and the very meaning of Ukraine's existence. But this attitude towards independence is also generated by the international loneliness of the Ukrainian state project. Both in 1918 and in 1991 Ukraine was treated more like a misunderstanding in the world than as a real state. In 1918, the Allies appeared only when it turned out that it was possible to use Ukraine as a buffer in the confrontation with Russia - as the German generals thought in the last months of the monarchy's existence, and so, apparently, Pilsudski reasoned when he decided to support Petlyura. But in general, the attitude to the very idea of ??Ukrainian statehood is absolutely impossible to compare with the then attitude of the West to the independence of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic countries. Of course, Poles, Czechs or Lithuanians could talk about the restoration of statehood. However, Latvians or Estonians had no more state tradition than Ukrainians. Still, there is no doubt that they - not part of Russia - were not. And even when Stalin occupied these countries in 1940, they remained on political maps. And Ukraine - disappeared, was replaced by a simulator of the Ukrainian SSR. Because very few people doubted that they are dealing with the continuation of Russia. Something similar happened in 1991, when we were persuaded for a long time - incidentally, at the level of the US president - to take part in the "renovation" of the USSR, and then for a long time perceived as the territory of the CIS as a ".

Of course, you can blame the West for everything. But it's not in the West, but in ourselves. The constant struggle of supporters of independence with supporters of capitulation, Ukrainians "hohlami" occurs in front of the civilized world at the most crucial moments of our history. Our citizens - and by no means ethnic Russians - are publicly lamenting the disappearance of their favorite Russian TV shows and the inability to join the great Russian culture. We always try to come up with some second Russian language instead of switching to Ukrainian. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians continue to live and work in Russia, to travel to Russia even in those years when Russians kill their compatriots - both after 1918 and after 2014. The occupier manages to find a sufficient number of collaborators to design the "face" of Little Russia - from Yuri Kotsyubinsky and ending with a variety of Yanukovych and Zakharchenkov. The Ukrainians themselves are ready to look into the mouth of any visiting gastarbeiter who teaches them how to live - as if this is not an independent state, but the Kursk region. The tasks of state building are constantly replaced by economic needs. This is now in the forefront of the challenges for society - the war. But few people understand that the only cure for war is a strong state. Strong not only by the belly, but also by the spirit. First of all - the spirit. Poor countries that were aware of their specialty survived in confrontation with the strongest enemy. And rich states with an uncertain mentality were simply falling apart and becoming prey for predators.

These are the elementary truths. But they define the Ukrainian age. And while we do not understand that we should not speak the right words, but do the right things for the sake of our country, we will remain for some a fragment of their former empire, for others - a buffer between them and this empire, for the third - a tool to curb the ambitions of this empire. Ukraine we will not be for them until the day before we become Ukraine for ourselves.

Original.