 The Quest for Peace By Scott LEWIS |
Our cover cartoon this month conveys a simple wish that is traditionally expressed at this time of year: Peace On Earth.
To it, we've added the postscript: Especially Ukraine.
December is a time of short days, ice and cold for this region, but that's nature's calendar. Man's calendar marks this as a holiday season, of Christmas as celebrated in the west, and New Year's Day, followed by Orthodox Christmas and Old New Year's.
All of these holidays share a common sense of purpose. They urge us to reflect and to forgive. They provide the opportunity to repair frayed relationships and strengthen those bonds that are already strong.
These holidays remind us that what's done is not truly done so long as the opportunity to give and receive forgiveness remains. They teach us that the past is not a sealed room behind us to which return is forbidden. Forgiveness, hope, charity and love provide keys that can unlock the door to the past for the limited purpose of reconciliation.
As much as these holidays give us time to reflect on the year that was, they just as significantly inspire us to look foreward, to the days that lie ahead.
As this magazine goes to press, Ukraine is a country divided along political and philosophical lines, as well as by language, by ethnicity and by region. Even so, and despite the passions ignited by November's presidential campaign, the nation's sense of unity is stronger than its sense of division. Over the years, Ukraine has been conquered many times, only to struggle for its freedom - a tribute to the Ukrainian spirit and desire for independence. Above all else, this is a land with a common history and a deep desire for independence and prosperity.
At this writing, nobody knows how, when or where the political struggle that ignited in November will end. We only hope that it will end soon, and peacefully. In earlier times, Ukrainians have spilled their blood to defend their homeland from invaders who sought the expansion of their empires to include Ukrainian soil. Some succeeded, for a time, in their attempts to subdue the people and claim the territory. But over time, they have been driven out, often at great cost.
Repelling invaders in one thing. Fighting Ukrainian brothers and sisters is another. It would be tragic to see Ukraine enter a period of civil unrest, where police and students and miners and office workers take to the streets to combat one another.
Since the crisis began, Ukraine has been on display to the world like never before. Readers and viewers around the globe have been fixated on developments in a country that mere weeks ago many probably couldn't locate on a map. While news organizations concentrate on reporting the day-to-day events, it really isn't the headlines, updated hourly, that will be important in the long term. What matters is that men and women of good will come together - with or without mediation from regional leaders - and find a solution that defuses the crisis and gives the highly charged passions on both sides a more constructive direction.
The whole world really is watching, and the divisive conflict that threatens the nation may present an opportunity for Ukraine to shine on the world stage. More than any other achievement, resolving our internal differences peacefully and democratically will show Ukraine as a progressive, enlightened state that has embraced the reality of democracy, rather than merely given lip service to it.
President Leonid Kuchma can still salvage his legacy as a leader who left office during a peaceful transition of power - the same legacy that Leonid Kravchuk gave him a decade ago.
High-profile foreign visitors like EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, and Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament can facilitate meetings, but only Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko can effect change.
These men know their nation's history well. They know that the Ukrainian people have historically been beset by troubles, and that they have largely been united only in the misery they have been compelled to endure. Despite their suffering, the Ukrainian people - all of them, be they from Donetsk or L'viv, Kyiv or Yalta - are fine, good people. They deserve a collective future better than their collective past. And the three men conferring at Maryinsky Palace have the power to make it so.
It's December and the holidays are upon us. Traditionally, we are filled at these times with a sense of anticipation for better days ahead. That same hopeful anticipation, blended with the wish that patriotic Ukrainian men and women of good will can act with calm and thoughtful reason, gives us hope that this will be a time of peace on earth, and that Ukraine will fully share in it.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Tourism: Ukraine's Greatest Lost Opportunity
Cars, Cars - and More Cars
The Long Slide Into Instability
Sex, Money and the Modern Dacha
How to Stop Worrying and Love the Property Market
Separating Chornobyl
Fact and Fiction
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