That is the translation of a line from the Ukrainian national anthem. Ukraine, the name is soaked in dreadful suffering, historic and now. But the name Ukraine also resonates with the joy of dancing, music, song, beautiful national costumes, of pirogues and Easter bread and traditions such as the decorating of the pysanka eggs. A people of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity that seem to live in harmony. A land that is rich in agriculture and natural resources. And today we live with turbulence and distress as this independent democracy is being wantonly attacked with the death, maiming and destruction that comes with war.
How can this be? But it is. I look on with horror and disbelief. We survived the USSR, sometimes on the brink of war with close calls. We had glasnost and perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev understood, the Berlin wall came down, the Warsaw Pack dissolved and all those countries gained their independence along with many former soviet states. But now the Russian bully is back, attacking neighbours, annexing lands. A cruel crazy dictator with visions of the old Russian Empire of Peter the Great. This is no empire of brotherly love and universal respect, no, this reality is an outdated oppressive centralized tyranny.
As I struggle with this news I look back on my part of history, in particular the life of my parents. They were small children in World War I and they lost uncles and cousins and I never got to meet my maternal grandfather. Citizens were killed, wounded, surviving only to die early deaths. As children, my parents were scared by this in many subtle and haunting ways. And then as, not-quite-newly-weds, the Second World War broke out. My father survived the battlefields of Europe but lost his sister in a civilian wartime death. I was born in 1946 and for me and my brothers, the war was the backdrop of our early years. We had rationing and bombed-scared cities. We had the nuclear threat but eventually, that fear faded. My life has been the golden age of the UN. NATO, the EU, NAFTA and other hard-won international treaties that bound the interests, the protection and economies of countries together. These agreements were reached with long hard hours of talks with compromise and consensus for the greater good. These treaties tied nations together for mutual help and also mutual dependency. Over the last 70 years, there have been dreadful wars in Africa, Asia and South America. In eastern and central Europe uprisings were brutally suppressed, but on the great battlefields of Europe, there has been peace. Until now.
I see these people of Ukraine on TV, online. I grieve as I see the old people, the women and the children, the men fighting. The children are there in their snowsuits looking like my grandchildren. And here in Alberta where I live, I can safely say we all have friends of Ukrainian heritage who are woven into our community. I feel for them. The first people came from Ukraine in the early 1900s, perfect pioneers, tough strong farmers. They came with their skills and their resilience with the grain and seeds from their homeland ready to plant and survive.
“The glory and freedom of Ukraine has not yet perished.”
(Opening line of the national anthem)