Last year, on August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day, President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed to introduce a new state holiday and immediately issued a corresponding decree.
July 28 – the supposed day of the baptism of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus – was designated the day of Ukrainian statehood to draw the world’s attention to the fact that Ukraine as a state did not simply appear 30 years ago but is over a thousand years old.
What is statehood and how did it appear in Ukraine?
As the well-known Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Alfyorov explained to me, the meaning of the term “state” has varied depending on the geographical area and historical period in which it has been used.
“Today, for an ordinary person, the state is when a territory has borders, an army, its own currency, its own laws. But, for example, in the days of Kyivan Rus, states might not have had clear borders or their own currency, or even written laws. And yet they were states. In the same way, even while empires divided our land, we still had a state,” the historian explains.
The history of Ukrainian state formation is evidenced by the first mentions of the foundation of the capital of the old state — the one centered on Kyiv. And although the baptism of Kyivan Rus by Volodymyr the Great took place in 988, the state actually existed even earlier – at the beginning of the 9th century. However, source materials, including dates, from that earlier period are scarce.
Another reason why we chose the day of the baptism of Rus is because it is a certain marker. It was during this period that the concept of statehood changed. Having adopted Christianity, our people joined the family of European nations.
How did Ukraine defend its statehood in different periods of its development?
“There were periods in our history when we lost our independent status, but we did not lose our statehood. Because there were elites, there were states, there were societies, there were people, there were representatives of the church who dragged this statehood through the gallows, imperial overcoats, and bayonets… so that at the right moment these elites could revive the state,” the historian added.
It doesn’t take long to find examples of attempts to liquidate our state as a whole system. There were many such cases. The Polish, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires s wanted to dismantle the territories of Ukraine and add them to their possessions. and the Ottomans, Crimean Tatars, Hungarians and Romanians to control some of its regions.
However, the most vivid example can be seen right now -Russia trying to destroy an entire state and its people for the sake of its “phantom” ideas.
However, we have never abandoned the struggle for freedom and statehood throughout our long history. Ukraine declared its independence on January 22, 1918, and that remains the key date connected with the establishment of a modern independent Ukrainian state.
Arguably, it should be the main date on which Ukrainian independence is celebrated.
However, in 1991, for various – mostly political – reasons this date was pushed into the background by the communist majority in the up till then Soviet Ukrainian parliament. It did not want to acknowledge the fact that, while the Soviet Union was falling apart, Ukraine was renewing, or reaffirming, the independence that had been declared by its democratic and non-communist Ukrainian parliament – the Central Rada – in 1918.
For 30 years we have celebrated the proclamation of the union of central and western Ukraine which occurred on January 22, 1919. The celebration of this “Day of Unity” has been fostered under presidents as diverse as Kravchuk, Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Zelensky and allowed to overshadow the significance of the declaration of independence in early 1918.
Many still consider this a very regrettable concession to forces that sought to revise and distort Ukraine’s modern history – a mistake they would like to see rectified.
Yes, in the 20th century, Ukraine gained sovereignty several times and lost it due to internal disagreement and especially external aggression. But on August 24, 1991, it was finally restored. And today no one will give up the fight for it.
Why didn’t we mark Ukrainian Statehood Day before?
There is no clear answer to this question. But certainly, first of all, the political will for this was lacking as the political leaders did not want to rock the boat in a complex political environment constantly being pressured up by a rapacious Russian neighbor.
But Russia’s war against Ukraine, buttressed by the absurd imperialist arguments – revived by Putin and his “rashist” (contemporary Russian fascist) ideologues and propagandists – that Ukrainians don’t exist as a distinct nation and have no right to self-determination, statehood, their own language, culture or history, or identification with the rest of Europe, has precipitated matters.
Just as breaking free of Russia’s imperialistic would-be political and economic stranglehold has become imperative, so has the need to confront and purge Ukraine of Russian historical and cultural narratives that have been imposed for centuries and thwarted the development of Ukraine’s self-identification and perception of it from abroad.
Today, while Ukrainians are fighting back heroically against Russia’s barbaric military aggression, the nation and its leadership are asserting Ukraine’s history, culture, language, and democratic principles. The new holiday is important to counter Russian disinformation and historical fakes about the origin and purported unity of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples.
President Zelensky and his people are reminding the world that when the forerunner of today’s Ukraine – Kyivan Rus – was already a mighty state with solid connections to western and eastern European Christendom, Moscow did not even exist as a village.
When Moscow was founded in the twelfth century, in proto-Ukraine the Magdeburg law was already being implemented.
Russia, for that matter, was initially known as Muscovy and spent centuries under the oriental despotism of the Mongols and Tatars, separated from Europe. When the Ukrainian Cossacks established a Ukrainian state in the seventeenth century and the famous Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Muscovy was still waiting for a ruler to come along and “Westernize” it.
In 1918, the Ukrainians opted for independence and democracy – western-style. Russia chose totalitarian Bolshevism and aggressive anti-democratic communism.
So, for me, as a young Ukrainian born after 1991 in an independent Ukraine, today’s new holiday will be as important as Ukrainian Unity Day, Ukrainian Constitution Day, the Day of the Renewal of Ukraine’s Independence, and as important as January 22, 2018, when modern Ukraine made its first declaration of independence.
Happy Day of Ukrainian 1000-year Plus Statehood!
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
