USSR-Light and place in history: why Putin Ukraine

Maybe this will seem to someone blasphemy, but Ukraine as a state does not cause me any particular interest or enthusiasm, and its existence from Russia does not seem to me something bad or even strange. Well, Ukraine and Ukraine, and what is it? He wants to go to NATO-let him go to NATO, does Russia live somehow, the borders with Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland? And nothing, no one attacked, despite a short flying time.

In general, in the USSR there were as many as 15 republics, and it is completely incomprehensible why it is the independence of Ukraine who should bother more than others. Putin, on the other hand, the fate of Ukraine obviously excites much more than any of the former Soviet republics. Why?

Imperial memoirs

This is not to say that I do not understand some ardor of a part of Russian society (to which Putin belongs) about Ukraine. I myself was born in Kazakhstan and in adolescence, which coincided with the collapse of the USSR, also suffered for some time about the fact that Russia suddenly turned out to be abroad, and Kazakhstan - Kazakh. I solved this question for myself relatively simply: I moved to Russia, where my other relatives moved and all the rest. I now have the warmest feelings for Kazakhstan, but I clearly share children's memories and geopolitics: a happy childhood in a warm, southern and completely Russian -speaking city will forever remain in my memory, and I have no questions, no comments, only good wishes and moderate interest in the news from the small homeland.

But back to Ukraine. I was there only once, although now it is difficult to write about it without committing crimes: when I was a teenager, my mother and I went to Crimea, which then, in the late 80s, was part of the Ukrainian SSR. So from the point of view of the modern Russian state, I have never been to any Ukraine, but from the point of view of the Ukrainian state and a large part of our world, I was in Ukraine. But this, I repeat, is my only experience in contact with this country.

As I suspect, for many residents of the Western part of the former USSR and especially Moscow and St. Petersburg, Crimea (as, by the way, Latvian Jurmala) make up a significant part of the personal memories of happy childhood and have always been perceived as something close and their own. Therefore, I can’t understand their passion, but they are my indifference: for those places where my childhood passed, a trip to Moscow and Leningrad was a whole trip, and even the Crimea and, especially the Soviet Baltic states-and at all some abstract concepts. It is logical that changes in their political status could not be so much concerned. But those who went there every summer, this, of course, could have upset for the rest of their lives. And, apparently, many were upset.

Memories of the future

I really miss those happy times when Ukraine in the domestic and worldwide information stream was occupied by the place that, it seems to me, it should occupy-somewhere between the news from Poland, Latvia and Hungary. The elections were held, some kind of kuchma was replaced by some Kravchuk, who said that in the Rada, as the surname of the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs and what the name of the Ukrainian oligarchs in Russia was known only those who were supposed to be by the genus of activity. It would be great to ever return to the same state of affairs-so that the average Russian layman knew about the political life of Ukraine no more than about the debate in the Parliament of Slovakia, while at the household level no problems with the movement of people, money and goods would not exist.

Now, at the end of December 2021, it seems an incredible utopia-just to sit on a plane in some Russian city, fly to Kyiv, Lviv or Odessa, walk, sit in a cafe, rejoice that you can do it in Russian, and experience no more anxiety about who is worth a monument on the square than from the Vandum column in Paris-well, it’s worth it, well, what's the difference, who has once fought with anyone And who was talking about whom and wrote. The analogy with Paris here, by the way, is more than appropriate: the entire center is laid down by monuments to the noble Russophobe and aggressor Napoleon, and many streets are named after the victories of the French army, including over the Russian - and what, did this prevented at least one Russian person walking along the Seine embankment?

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