Quote:
Originally Posted by Home Guy[_3_]
nestork wrote:
My mother is Ukrainian. My father was born in Ukraine.
All four of my great grandparents on my father's side were born in
Ukraine (the western part) but only two emigrated to Canada after WW1.
My father's mother was thus born in Canada. My father's father was born
in Ukraine and also emigrated to Canada well before WW2.
On my mother's side, her parents were Slovak and I think also at least
half of her grandparents, and they (my grandparents and at least two
great grandparents) also emigrated to Canada before WW2.
I visited Moscow and Kiev and Czechoslovakia for a month back in 1978 as
a teenager during a family trip. We brought lots of consumer goods to
give away, and I felt pretty cool being around other kids there -
wearing my Levi blue jeans.
But growing up, I never got a clear sense of Ukraine in terms of east vs
west, or "true Ukrainian" vs Russian-Ukrainian. Same goes for my dad.
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My father (before he died) told me a great truth:
Who hates Communism the most?
Is it the Generals in the Pentagon?
Or the investment bankers on Wall Street?
Or the Archbishops in the Vatican?
No. It's none of those people.
The people that hate communism the most are the people that have lived their lives under it.
They're the only ones willing to risk their lives to be rid of it.
Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were East Germans risking their lives every year trying to get across the Berlin Wall. And the same thing would have happened in every Soviet Republic if the freedom to do and say as one thought were only 300 meters away; across a 300 meter wide strip of ground saturated with land mines.