It was 2014, the time of the so-called Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. I was fourteen and felt some sort of excitement mixed with deep-seated melancholy. As a post-Soviet child, you grow up thinking that life in Europe is superior, and you want your country to become a first-rate state with democratic values, a modernised economy, and prosperity for all. But in reality, Ukraine has never been a typical Western nation.
Since the collapse of Kyivan Rus in the 13th century, these lands have functioned as a “Wild Steppe Frontier” against the Mongol Empire. Even after the empire fragmented, the region remained a borderland where steppe raids and warfare were constant. Yet this frontier, and in particular the south-eastern part, became the cradle of Cossackdom: free communities of warriors, peasants, adventurers, and runaways who formed a semi-autonomous military republic on the border of three empires – Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy.
Until the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, ordered the quasi-military republic to be destroyed in 1775, Zaporizhian Sich fought to preserve its autonomy. From that point, and essentially until the establishment of the USSR, the territory of modern Ukraine remained divided between two imperial powers: the Russian Empire in the east and centre, and the Habsburg domains in the west. And as a result, Ukraine’s regions developed divergences in their historical experiences and institutional structures.
The period of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic represented a unique opportunity to shape national integrity. However, seventy-two years is insignificant compared with the centuries-long formation of the unified national identities of Britain or France. The dissolution of the Soviet Union gave Ukraine the essential components – institutions, independence, infrastructure and resources – offering a foundation on which the process of nation-building could continue. But when people are uncertain about how to use their freedom and fail to grasp the realities of geopolitics, the consequences become inevitable.
It is 2025, and my deep-seated melancholy has only grown. Yes, partly because of the war, but mostly because of my own realisations and reflections. In Ukrainian school, you are taught the heroic image of the Cossacks, yet in reality they were also mercenaries and Black Sea pirates. Their loyalties were unstable, their alliances shifted with circumstances, and they were driven by extreme militarisation rather than peaceful order; they resisted centralised state-building, rejected bureaucratisation, taxation, and permanent institutions – the Sich was simply too free to evolve into a nation-state. And perhaps the most striking part is that we embraced this romantic image so much that, without noticing, we began to replicate it: turning Ukraine itself back into a new Sich, with the same instincts, the same values, and the same tragic destiny.
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