My Ukraine

I am torn between writing about the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and writing about the current violent turn of events in Ukraine. Ukraine wins out. Most of the time it's easy to feel that what's going on across the globe is too bad, but since we can't really do anything about it, it's somehow not our problem. Tonight when I saw the police in Kiev banging their riot shields together as they stood shoulder to shoulder and the protestors setting tires on fire and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, my heart sank. This is how the horrible strife in Syria started, I thought. If it grows, I have no doubt that Viktor Yanukovich will move to ever harsher methods to put down the protests. Two people were killed today, and the escalation of violence on both sides scares me.

Eight years ago I arrived in Kiev to start three weeks as a State Department sponsored "Teacher-Ambassador." I lived with a very dear family in Southwest Ukraine, near the Carpathian Mountains, in an area geographically much like New Hampshire. I was the first American that people in the small town of Kelmentsi had ever seen. In my short stay there, I became another member of the family and a member of the teaching staff at the local high school. It was a life-changing experience for me, and I have followed any news from Ukraine with great interest. Now I follow it with great dread.

When I arrived, a year had passed since the non-violent Orange Revolution had taken place, bringing Viktor Yushchenko to power. He had managed to survive Dioxin poisoning that nearly killed him in the lead-up to the election. The overnight train ride from Kiev to Kelmentsi gave me the chance to talk (through the interpretive ability of my host teacher) with others in our train car, and it became apparent right away that people were disillusioned with Yushchenko because he hadn't been able to spur the economy in his first year of power. Given all that had transpired since the break-up of the Soviet Union, my opinion was that they would be lucky to turn things around in ten years. When the Soviets left, they took all their heavy farming equipment with them, and the system of collective farms had completely collapsed. What I remembered of Ukraine from my grade school education, was that it was known as the bread basket of the USSR. No more. Massive unemployment and no clear idea of what it meant to suddenly be a democracy had led to a difficult situation by the time of my visit.

It is probably too simplistic to say this, but my observation of the educational system which emphasized rote memory and offered no chance for critical thinking was not preparing younger people for citizenship in a democracy, and older people were used to being told what to think and how to carry out their daily lives. Couple that with the fact that the country seemed divided down the middle, with residents on the eastern side favoring ties to Russia and those where I was on the western side leaning much more toward Europe. In my family, the oldest child had found employment in Austria, and I met many people whose spouse or child had found work in Italy.

Yushchenko lasted about one more year before he was unseated by his former running mate, Yulia Tymoshenko. She survived about two more years, when Yanukovich, who had originally been the Russian puppet leader before the Revolution was voted back in and Tymoshenko was thrown in jail for alleged corruption. The pro-Russian faction was too entrenched, and from this far away, and not knowing much, I never thought he would go along with joining the European Union. I'm sure he is under terrific pressure from Putin, but he has apparently turned a completely deaf ear on his people. I've been wondering how the leader of a country (namely Assad in Syria) could deliberately kill his own countrymen rather indiscriminately, it seems to me. I fear the same outcome in Ukraine. Will my host family, who were pro-European be forced to flee? Will the protests spill out into the countryside? Will Russia send in tanks to help put down this new "Revolution?"

I am sick in my heart as I think of how proudly I was shown Independence Square in Kiev (spelled in Ukrainian Kyiv) and how it has become a place of violence and bloodshed. This is not a small stone moment, but a large boulder moment for me.