Greetings from Ukraine.

[BigNorm]

I appreciate everyone here who has taken the time to learn English. I know very little about where you are from and would welcome any conversation at all from your part of the world. I have learned much about the world from the members here. Mostly that there are good people everywhere.

 

[Dr.D]

This is a great worldwide forum one of the great things is reading of those having a great time riding when it’s rediculous cold her and I’m garaged up. I only half way mean that as true. I’m jealous .

 

[Navigator]

I had a grandmother who was born there, Mike.

What part of Ukraine Phil?

 

[TriumPhil]

My long-departed grandmother, Sarah, was born and raised in Kiev, Mike. When she was six years old, about 15-20 years before the end of WW I and the Great Revolution my maternal great-grandparents moved their family to the USA. We also have some family roots that originate from St. Petersburg, Russia.

 

[Navigator]

Whoa! Keep 'em coming.

I really have second thoughts on whether I should say things about ladies here... I mean, they ARE great (well, many of them), yet I've met some really good looking women around the globe. And yes, there is a such thing as sex tourism here. And yes, there are many girls and women that dream about marrying a guy from the US or EU. Can't say I judge them, can't say I support them.

As to any hints and jokes on Russians. That's a touchy topic. I don't know if you've heard or not, but we have a conflict (that we prefer calling war, because that's what it is) in the east of Ukraine. It's not a civil war as Russia would want everyone to think. It's what one would call a hybrid war. There are few ****heads that are being supported by Russia. Unofficially. Still, those are Russian troops on our territorry.

To be honest, the situation is not that easy to explain. Would take more than one paragraph, to say the least.

I am Russian-speaking Ukrainian. It has so happened that my native language is Russian. I speak and write English, I speak and write poor Serbian, I can read some German, and I have an extremely fractured knowledge of German and Italian. Having said all this, I hate Russia with all my heart. I would really appreciate if you would not associate me or my country with Russia. Trust me, we are different. Despite the sad fact that we might have many things in common.

I hope you don't take it as me being *****y or anything like that.

It hurts when you're being associated with a country that kills your countrymen. And friends.

I wondered how you felt but didn't want to ask. I've been following the turmoil in your country and have tried to understand the complexity of the relationship with Russia going back to the times of the Czars. Within the last few years I learned that some of the Cassocks were Ukrainian who fought the Poles and that in itself is a fascinating and confusing history.

While my mother identified the language she spoke as Russian, it was not. She was not an educated woman and roots back then, with ethnic identities, were sometimes confused. They came over before WW I when the Austro-Hungarian Empire controlled much of eastern Europe. My sister and I determined that she spoke an eastern Slavic language which was probably Ukrainian. Although many of the words were the same as Russian, it was different. Her family moved from from Mukachevo to the west side of the Carpathian mountains at some point before emigrating to the US. This is where it gets sticky. They also referred to the peoples in the Transcarpathian region as Rusyns. To an outsider looking in it is an extremely complex ethnic history, thus trying to find out what my mother's family was has been extremely difficult.

In the Navy we used to train our Russian linguists in Serbian during that tragic conflict with the break up of Yugoslavia.

I hope you didn't think I was suggesting that my son was referring to the Ukrainian women as prostitutes. To the contrary, they were wives of Ukrainian officers that he met as well as just the average beauties he saw on the streets, stores etc.

Would still love to get there one day.

 

[Dr.D]

Our family history is obscure but i do know my grandfather, whom I never met, worked for the Czar. He left the area due to some "minor turmoil" and came to the New World with a different name and a Ukrainian bride.

PS if KGB is listening this is fiction.

 

[TriumPhil]

So, the common thread would seem to be that we all share a great disdain for Putin the Oligarch and the direction he has taken his once, nearly estimable country?

 

[Navigator]

So, the common thread would seem to be that we all share a great disdain for Putin the Oligarch and the direction he has taken his once, nearly estimable country?

I don't think we can have a disdain for Putin Phil in that he, like most Russian nationalists, are proponents of greater Russia which includes the Crimea, Sevastopol and other areas of Ukraine like Odessa. This is a complex history in which we have little understanding, or at least do I.

We should probably fly into Budapest, rent some bikes, and ride into the Ukraine to discover our "roots" and hopefully not get our asses kicked along the way.

 

[Dr.D]

I will not comment about the politics of this area of the world as I am ignorant and irrelevant to them. I will say I have a certain mistrust of any large government. Sometimes we just do the best we can where we are at.

 

[TriumPhil]

I don't think we can have a disdain for Putin Phil in that he, like most Russian nationalists, are proponents of greater Russia which includes the Crimea, Sevastopol and other areas of Ukraine like Odessa. This is a complex history in which we have little understanding, or at least do I.

We should probably fly into Budapest, rent some bikes, and ride into the Ukraine to discover our "roots" and hopefully not get our asses kicked along the way.

The answer is over my pay grade and I shan't attempt to respond online other than by parroting a great and wise, yet deeply flawed, man;

The Russian Enigma





Broadcast




1st October 1939


I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south eastern Europe, That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.

Thus, my friends, at some risk of being proved wrong by events, I will proclaim tonight my conviction that the second great fact of the first month of the war is that Hitler, and all that Hitler stands for, have been and are being warned off the east and the southeast of Europe.

Here I am in the same post as I was 25 years ago. Rough times lie ahead; but how different is the scene from that of October, 1914! Then Russia had been laid low at Tannenberg; then the whole might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in the battle against us; then the brave, warlike Turks were about to join our enemies. Then we had to be ready night and day to fight a decisive sea battle with a formidable German fleet almost, in many respects, the equal of our own. We faced those adverse conditions then; we have nothing worse to face tonight. We may be sure that the world will roll forward into broader destinies.

We may remember the words of old John Bright, after the American Civil War was over, when he said to an audience of English working folk: "At last after the smoke of the battlefield had cleared away, the horrid shape which had cast its shadow over the whole continent had vanished and was gone forever".



BBC Broadcast,
London,
1st October 1939.



The past, as it invariably seems, is prologue...