How 'bout them Cossacks!

We've been watching in horror the bombing and brutalization of Ukrainian civilians for twelve days now. And following in frustration the arguments for why the NATO nations cannot impose a no-fly zone, something Zelenskyy has been begging for repeatedly. If Ukraine were in NATO, Putin would likely not have invaded, because Article 5 of the NATO treaty is a promise that all NATO countries will come to the aid of any fellow NATO member who is attacked. Ukraine and Georgia tried and failed to get into NATO years ago but were rejected. There was too much corruption at the top and those countries simply didn't have their shit together. At least that's how I understand it. The tragedy is, with Zelenskyy being seen as a hero around the world, and a no-doubt-about-it inspirational hero to the Ukrainians themselves, Ukraine now has a virtual Mr. Clean at the helm. There's a terrible irony in the fact that if Putin gets his way he'll kill this heroic man and substitute one of the old corrupt guys. It's like something out of 1984, where the clean guys have to suffer the aftereffects of the dirty guys they're now fighting with their grandmothers' Molotov cocktails.

We once watched in despair how innocents went off to join ISIS. These days people are lining up to get to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians fight off invaders and we cheer them on. It's been a long time since even people inclined to pacifism have been cheering for the good guys to go to battle. Not since World War II, arguably. There were the wars in Yugoslavia, but they involved the breakup of a patched-together multi-ethnic nation that had to sort out decades of internal rivalries and grudges. Outsiders, most of us, had a hard time distinguishing really good good guys from really bad bad guys, even when we did take sides. This Ukrainian war is a different story. This is an invasion by a would-be czar who has created a version of history to justify his power-grab. Just read a small portion of that twisted narrative and you'll see the arbitrariness of Putin's version of the story of Kievan Rus and the complex interactions of the Poles and the Lithuanians and the Russians and the Ruthenians and the Swedes and the Germans, the Jews and the Cossacks, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Uniate Church, the holodomor - the Stalinist genocide inflicted on the Ukrainians, the fictive Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine in needs of saving from neo-Nazis and the actual Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine who are Ukraine loyalists - work your way through that history, I dare you.

I've been reading that history for the past ten days now and the only thing I can tell you for sure is that my grasp of the history of Ukraine was abysmal. I can't believe how much I didn't know. Ukrainian history did not loom large in the public schools of Winsted, Connecticut. That's no surprise. What does surprise me is how little I learned about the Ukrainians in Russian history courses. During the year I was at the Russian language school, I did a lot of Russian history. In one skull orifice and out another, evidently.

Nor did I get a lot of non-Russian Slavic linguistics, which I'm now trying to catch up on. I have managed to get a better grasp on the distinction between Ukrainian and Russian after all these years, and that's been satisfying.

Enough to be able to handle the Ukrainian national anthem, for example, which I've heard now several dozen times. Imagine my surprise that there's a line in there where the Ukrainians celebrate their Cossack history. Again, who knew?  Most of my knowledge of the Tartars came from our Russian teachers at Monterey. "Oh, how we suffered under the Tartars!" they would repeat, as if "the Tartar yoke" was imposed only yesterday. And the Cossacks I learned about through the lens of my Ashkenazi Jewish friends and such sources as Fiddler on the Roof. Not good guys by a long shot.  

"I didn't know your father was Ukrainian," I said to a friend the other day. "I thought he was Polish." 

"He wasn't either of those things," she responded. "He was Jewish."

Goes to show you, when you read history, you've got to keep in mind who's telling the story.

If anybody out there is, like me, caught up in the current desire to show solidarity with the Ukrainians, I thought you might like to learn the Ukrainian national anthem, so I've transcribed it. The first line is the groups of three lines below is the Ukrainian original, the second a rough gloss for pronunciation purposes for English speakers, and the third line an English translation.

The link is to the version done by the Veryovka Ukrainian Folk Choir under the direction of Anatoly Avdievsky.  He died in 2016, so it's been a while, but I think it's still an impressive performance for the ages. If you put it on a separate tab and follow the words on this tab, you can do a sing-along...

Ще не вмерла України, ні слава, ні воля,

Shche ne vmerla Ukrayini, ni slava, ni volya,

Ukraine is not dead yet, neither glory nor freedom,

 

Ще нам, браття молодії, усміхнеться доля!

Shche nam brattya molodiyi, usmikhnetsa dolya!

Fate will smile on us, young brothers!

 

Згинуть наші воріженьки, як роса на сонці,

Zhinut nashi vorizhen'ki, yak rosa na sontsi,

Our enemies will perish like dew in the sun,

 

Запануєм і ми, браття, у своїй сторонці!

Zapanuyem i mi brattya, u svoyii storontsi!

Let us, brothers, reign on our side!

Refrain (sung twice):

Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу

Dush’i tilo mi polozhim za nashu svobodu

We will lay down our souls and bodies for our freedom

 

І — покажем, що ми, браття, козацького роду!

I pokazhem, shcho mi brattya, kozats'koho rodu!

And - let's show (them) that we are brothers of the Cossack family!

For the sake of comparison, here's a Russian translation. If you're comfortable reading Cyrillic, you'll see the remarkable similarity.

Еще не умерла Украина, ни слава, ни воля,
Еще нам, братия молодежи, улыбнется судьба!
Погибнут наши враги, как роса на солнце,
Воцаримся и мы, братья, в своей сторонке!
Душу и тело мы положим за нашу свободу
И покажем, что мы, братия, казацкого рода!
Душу и тело мы положим за нашу свободу
И покажем, что мы, братия, казацкого рода!

Which makes me wonder how Russians feel these days when they hear the Ukrainians singing the line: Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу...

which is, in Russian: Душу и тело мы положим за нашу свободу, i.e., almost identical. 

(We will lay down our souls and bodies for our freedom.)

photo credit: https://www.123rf.com/photo_124912419_khortytsia-ukraine--july-03-2018-young-boy-ukrainian-cossack-with-saber-in-zaporozhian-sich-it-was-i.html - not used for commercial purposes; do not reproduce.