 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. In 1866 Tsar Alexander II of All the Russias came to visit the greatest city in his restive province of Ukraine... and there he almost died at the hands of an assassin determined to prove that progressive thinkers are the most tempting targets of all. Tsar Alexander had liberated the serfs and so gained the opprobrium of the Left for not going far enough and of the Right for going too far. Thus he supplied any number of stealthy killers with grounds for murderous action. And so what came to be called the "Event of April 4, 1866" took place. This time, however, his imperial majesty survived... and he wanted that fact commemorated in the most public and grandiose of ways. A design competition was decreed. Hundreds of ideas poured in from inspired loyalists sincerely grateful Father Romanov had survived... and from starving artists who would have taken a commission from the Devil himself, whatever strings were attached. However one design stood out from the rest, artist Victor Hartmann's majestic vision for The Great Gate of Kiev. It was a great structure for the capital city of a great people, and Hartmann poured himself and his artistic distinction into a work designed to amaze the world and thrill Ukrainians everywhere, the supreme manifestation of how they saw themselves despite every vicissitude and how they wanted everyone else to see them. The sketch for stone gates to replace the wooden gates of Kiev incorporated a cupola in the form of a Slavonic helmet. In the design, the archway rested on granite pillars and its peak was to be decorated with a huge headpiece of Russian carved designs including the Russian state eagle, the very symbol of Ukrainian subservience and despair. But it wouldn't be an authentic story of Ukraine unless there was heartbreak and woe, for here is lamentation indeed. Upon reconsideration the Tsar decided to cancel the competition. A memorial seemed to be tempting fate, motivating any of the numerous opponents to his reign to try again... and again... until at last in 1881 they succeeded in blowing him and his entourage to bloody fragments, the very steps of the palace smeared with gore and death. As for Hartmann, he died prematurely, just 39... his friend Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) devastated but determined to commemorate the one gone before. And so he composed a classical piano suite of genius ("The Great Kiev Gate") as part of his magnum opus "Pictures at an Exhibition", memorializing Hartmann's final exhibition of over 400 works demonstrating mastery of line, form, light, and color. The work commenced in sorrow and profound grief was finished in triumph... then neglected by all, thrust aside, unheard until the great French musician Maurice Ravel in 1922 took the matter in hand, arranging the music so that ignoring it was no longer possible. It was grandiose, soaring, stately, bombastic, at once as intimate as prayer and as adamant as God's will... a work of insistent hope for each, hope for all, hope for the nation that still was in bondage, patient, biding its time, expectant, sure their day of deliverance would come... the resounding bells, audacious, bold, majestic, surely meant that if they meant anything at all for this land, this charnel house of centuries, a chimera, so rarely a country and never for long. Gloria in excelsis Deo... Go now to any search engine and play it at once. Listen as the great bells call you to action, for if you believe in freedom then you must heed this tocsin. There cannot be freedom until there is freedom for all. And that is why the actions of the Ukrainian people in recent days are so important to us. No matter where we are, we are all Ukrainians today, hearts beating for a single goal: Freedom here! Freedom now! Freedom forever! Geography is destiny. This is the first rule of international politics, and there is no better example on Earth than Ukraine, rich, accessible, disorganized, ineffectual, internally divided. To look at the history of Ukraine is to see God at his most ironic. Pick any time in its checkered history, and you will find the same tragic tale, repeated over and over again; the theme established long ago. You will see a numerous people (46 million today) of intelligence, ingenuity, hard work and solid habits. A massive territory of some 233,000 square miles, making it the largest in Europe. And you will find above all the good earth, incomparable, fertile, productive, a treasure trove which enables Ukraine to be the third largest grain exporter on Earth. >From this blessed asset has come every good thing... and every bad, for the good earth promised everything but ensured it would be stolen by others, near at hand, voracious, rapacious, masters of avarice and thievery and every attendant toxin. Ukraine has had, has now every element necessary for greatness... except the secret to building and sustaining a nation, the coherence of a united people fiercely dedicated to one overriding objective, united to produce one nation under God. This is, of course, just the way their greatest enemy likes it. That enemy is Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, the Spider of the Kremlin, working day and night to subjugate Ukraine to his will, not to the silly notion of the people's will. Thus every step towards Europe Ukraine takes is automatically perceived by Putin as a thrust against him and the good old days of robust Moscow- driven Communism, the good old days he cannot forget and which he yearns to have again. He has the drive, the resources, and the resolute determination to make it happen. We must never forget this... for Putin is our most dangerous, most energetic opponent, without moral limits, without scruples, with nothing to lose and an empire to (re)gain. He remembers Moscow is just 450 miles from Kiev; it is a statistic constantly on his mind. The saddest day of Putin's life: December 26, 1991. On this day the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the gravest menace to human rights, personal freedom, capitalism and private property collapsed forever; it was the biggest Christmas present the West and its peoples have ever received. There was literally dancing in the streets and near universal joy. "Near" because people like Putin sat in morose darkness nursing cheap liquor, wondering how it all went so very wrong... vowing revenge and restoration, a vow that they made over and over again as they watched all the former Soviet Republics leave like so many rats from the sinking ship; once comrades, now renegades, contemptible, budding antagonists. Nowhere was this more true than with Ukraine, once the jewel in the Red crown, now Putin's chief obsession in whatever office he currently condescends to adorn. Of course this was known to every notable Ukrainian politician and every such politician played the game of centuries. They were more pro-Russian in eastern Ukraine; more pro-European in western Ukraine. This was the formula for survival, and as every Ukrainian knows survival is the most important thing of all... until now... Time for history. For months now the Ukrainian government, headed by President Viktor Yanukovych has been engaged in serious negotiations to integrate the nation into the European Union. It had been expected that these far-reaching policies would be released to the world at an EU summit meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, just the other day But the Spider of the Kremlin had other ideas...and so Ukraine President Yanukovych had to make very different arrangements, including being summoned to Putin for his instructions thereby showing the world just how little power he had, how much a puppet he was. Really, it might have been 1956 all over again. I expect Yanukovych demurred on this point or that; tried to argue for a less public humiliation. But that is not the Spider's way and after all the Spider is just 450 miles away... Thus did Yanukovych choose to do the Spider's bidding, the interests of Ukraine and its valiant people be damned. Riots, a people incensed, determined, provoked. The Events of November 21, 2013. As news spread of how Yanukovych had betrayed his nation and kow-towed to the Spider in the Kremlin, nefarious webs suddenly starkly apparent, the people of Ukraine exploded with wrath, mighty and long suppressed ire, and a purpose pure and exalted. It was the majesty of the people... and it was glorious to behold. The Spider no doubt offered his pathetic servant every soothing bromide but both must have soon known that this was no ordinary event... this was the fury of a great people... and it was directed at them. "I want the authorities to know that this is not a protest; this is a revolution!" said former interior minister Yuri V. Lutsenko on December 1, 2013 as he addressed a crowd of over 300,000 people in Kiev's Independent Square; a crowd demanding the fall of Yanukovych and new elections. And so it was... "Worse than a crime. A blunder." What did Putin do? He told his minion in no uncertain terms to disperse the people by any and all means. And so the police weighed in with force majeure, truncheons augmented by lethal chemical gas.This is the Spider's way, for he fears just one thing... a determined, united people... no spider, however poisonous can endure against that. And so he made it clear to his toady of Kiev that the severest methods be applied to disperse the protestors, all of them, wherever they meet, for all that these are a calm and reasonable people seeking nothing more than their right to assemble and to petition their government for redress of so many grievances, including their clear and unmistakable desire for the closest relations with Europe. However, as Napoleon's foreign minister Prince de Talleyrand once quipped on another matter, "This is worse than a crime. It's a blunder", for now the naked truth has been exposed for all the world to see, and it will continue to be seen so long as the people of Ukraine are determined to prevail, for they too have earned life, liberty, and the pursuit of their too long delayed pursuit of happiness. Now is the moment to seize your future. It is waiting for you in the streets of Kiev... |
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