A Crimean Looking for Freedom from the Past — opinion
NV publishes an excerpt from Pavlo Kazarin's book The Wild West of Eastern Europe
It is easy to be Ukrainian if your mother is from Lviv and your father is from Poltava. If the language of your lullabies is Ukrainian, and you have the Kobzar hanging in your embroidery at home.
When you don't wander between identities since childhood and clearly understand where you belong in the country.
In Crimea, it was the opposite.
Few of our parents were born on the peninsula. We were a generation of immigrants. Moreover, the "golden age" of Crimea was in the Soviet 70s and 80s. Under the Iron Curtain and the planned economy, the peninsula was the most bustling Soviet resort. This is what turned it into a decade of nostalgia after 1991.
The annexation of my home was a defibrillation for the country.
This nostalgia was everywhere. The cause-and-effect relationships were broken. My fellow compatriots did not perceive the collapse of the Soviet system as a natural consequence of the defeat in the Cold War, or as the result of the inefficiency of the socialist economy, which could not withstand competition. Instead, many preferred to believe that the cause of all the misfortunes was an independent Ukraine, which pinned Crimea to the social bottom with a trident.
The issue was not the language of everyday communication. The bigger problem was that the peninsula continued living in the past. It clung to the past. It canonized the Soviet past. It was difficult to find oneself under such conditions. However, some people still tried to build a space of shared meanings. Those that could connect the peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland.
Then the Maidan happened.
It was a story about values. That personal choice is more critical than "blood and soil" and that the Ukrainian nation is no longer limited to ethnic categories.
Read also: Top Ukrainian leaders celebrate Crimea on Day of Resistance to Russian Occupation
For me, the Maidan was also a story about a Ukrainian train trying to break out of the post-Soviet depot. Our Crimea was supposed to be one of the cars of this train. Maybe from time to time, someone would call for a stop, but in the end, it would be heading to the "western" depot along with the other cars.
Then Russia came along, unhooked my native carriage, and attached it to its train, which is not even heading east, but to the past. It is to the past that has no more prospects than a sailing ship. That is, none at all.
The difference between Crimeans and residents of Donetsk and Luhansk is that we were driven from our homes for political reasons. We were not hit by shells; we were not running away from the war. When we meet fellow citizens in any region of the country, we know in advance that we are like-minded people. A pro-Russian Crimean has no place in Ukraine. Our residence has become a marker of identity.
It is an evil irony. The annexation of my home was a defibrillation for the country. It had to wake up from the post-Soviet coma. The peninsula's occupation deprived us of a small homeland and gave us a big one. One in which neither "blood" nor "soil" nor the endings of surnames nor the language of lullabies are essential. You can not only be born a Ukrainian, but also become one.
Now, I know for sure that the future should not be held hostage to the past. It took me thirty years to realize this. A rather late epiphany, I must admit.
However, it is better late than never.
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
