Realtors tell us it’s all about location, location, location.
They also tell us timing is everything.
Political analysts, I’m sure, would agree.
When my daughter was in college she became friends
with a fellow student, who our family quaintly refers to as, Mary from Ukraine,
to distinguish her from Mary from Princess Anne High School. Since graduating,
they correspond regularly and have visited each other on several occasions in
Ukraine, France, Morocco. The two are on similar journeys that began as college
students and has continued as they’ve become single working girls, newlyweds
and now with their own families.
Had either gone to another school or enrolled in
different semesters they never would have met, and both would have missed what
looks to be a lifelong friendship. Life certainly is all about timing and
location.
That is what I told Mary’s father in my only
correspondence with him. When Jessica returned from her visit to Ukraine she
delivered a gift to me from him—a pewter glass holder. Before sending him a
thank-you letter I researched the significance of the image portrayed on it.
It seems that in the 1600s, Poland was a powerful
nation controlling much of Eastern Europe. The people of Ukraine resented
living under what they considered to be a repressive regime, much the way a
century later we would resent being under England’s thumb.
In 1648, under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitsky,
Ukraine Cossacks successfully revolted and gained their independence from
Poland, just as we would one day do from England. His image is the one on the
glass holder. He was Ukraine’s George Washington before there even was a George
Washington.
Ukraine wanted what the American colonies would later
desire and they were willing to put everything on the line to gain their
independence. Like the American colonies, they were successful. But unlike the
American colonies, Ukraine was unable to sustain lasting independence, mostly
because of its location and 1650stiming.
It was a different time and a different place. The
politics of the day demanded they align with a bigger, stronger nation or risk
falling back under Poland’s control. By the mid-1650s, Ukraine was under the
protectorate of Tsarist Russia. In the end, their fight for independence had
resulted in merely escaping the grasp of one European powerhouse only to fall
into the repressive realm of another. Their alliance with Russia would, in the
long run, prove more destructive than if they had remained with Poland.
In the first few years after our victory over England,
we experienced many hardships of forming a new government, but our independence
was never threatened. Again, timing and location made the difference.
As a nation, we had room to breathe. Our borders
weren’t at risk. Something else existed in 1776 America that did
not exist in 1648 Ukraine—fresh ideas.
In the period between Ukraine’s revolt and the
American Revolution, something happened. Something that changed the world.
John Locke was born in 1632 and in his lifetime, he
would propose doctrines that would change the world and the way people thought
about themselves. He, along with Rousseau, Voltaire and others would shape
politics and the approach to governing.
Before these men, revolutions were about replacing
repressive governments with similarly repressive ones. But the American Revolution
was about revolutionary ideas like life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness—ideas first put forward by John Locke. In 1648, Ukraine did not have these
forward-thinking ideas as a resource.
That is what I wrote to Mary’s father when I thanked
him for his gift. At the time Ukraine, like many other former Soviet states, had
broken away from the Soviet Union and seemed to be making a move into
mainstream Europe. But as we watch the pictures coming out of Independence
Square in Kyiv, we realize the Ukrainian people are again at a crossroads and
faced with the same problems it had in 1648—whether it will align with Europe
and gain a greater degree of independence or return to being a Russian
satellite.
This time it has the benefit of revolutionary ideas,
but it must also overcome 400 years of Russian influence. The struggle is also
being fought in an area of much unrest and turmoil and at a time when where
they wind up will have major repercussions for all the nations involved.
No one knows where this current struggle will end, but
again, as always, the times and the location will play a major role.
This was written in 2014 at the time of Ukraine’s last
struggle with Russia. Putin was Russia’s leader then and continues to be today,
so again, Ukrainians find themselves at war with a man willing to destroy them in
order to control them. Maybe now is the time and place to finally gain the independence
they’ve been fighting four centuries for.
And now is the time for Bogdan Khmelnitsky to be replaced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine's latest hero in its fight for independence.
