By Walter Kish

The Winter Olympics got underway this week, and like many hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, I watched the opening ceremonies unfold on my television screen. Despite all the glitter and the hype, there is something stirring in watching the athletes of each country enter behind their respective flags. There was pride and hope and dreams reflected in joyful, eager faces. I could not help but be touched as the Ukrainian flag made its entrance. Ukrainian athletes marched in, in their understated designer grey winter outfits contrasted with beautiful, embroidery patterned scarves. They marched in under the banner of Ukraine, not the Soviet Union or the CIS. They marched in as Ukrainians, proud and confident, and to me it brought back the bittersweet memories of all the other marches throughout history that Ukrainians have endured on the long road to their own future.

A thousand years ago, the inhabitants of Kyiv were marched by Volodymyr the Great down to the Dnieper River to be forcibly baptized in a symbolic break with their pagan past.

In the thirteenth century the tribes and clans of the Rus marched out to defend their lands against the Mongol onslaught that unfortunately brought to an end the golden age of the Kievan-Rus kingdom.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, fleeing the oppressive rule of the Polish-Lithuanian and Russian nobility, the escaping serfs marched to the far reaches of the steppes where they established Cossack settlements and created a new society free from feudal rule.

In the seventeenth century, Ukrainians of all classes rallied around the inspiring leadership of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and marched in revolt against their Polish overlords, creating a free Cossack state.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Ukrainians rallied behind Ivan Mazepa, who, allied with Charles XII of Sweden, marched against the forces of Peter the Great who was determined to create a great Russian Empire. Overwhelmed by superior forces and Peter’s military genius, Ukraine fell under a Russian domination that was to last for almost the next two centuries.

In 1917 disenchanted Ukrainian peasants and soldiers joined their Russian counterparts and marched in revolution against the repressive and obsolete Tsarist empire. On January 22, 1918, the Central Rada declared a free Ukrainian National republic.

On January 29, 1918 a hastily organized force of some 500 students and cadets marched to defend a strategic little railway station called Kruty against an attacking Bolshevik force numbering approximately 4000. More than half were killed trying to prevent the capture of Kyiv.

For several long and bloody years, Ukrainians marched behind the Ukrainian flag under the leadership of Simon Petliura, before they were overwhelmed by Bolshevik and Polish forces.

During the Second World War and for many years afterwards, the valiant and enterprising members of the UPA waged partisan warfare, marching through forests, swamps and mountains, staying one step ahead of both the German and Red Armies as well as the ruthless reach of the Gestapo and NKVD.

Throughout the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, a long string of Ukrainian dissidents made the long march into exile and forced labour in the frozen wastes of the Gulag.

Finally, on August 24, 1991 Ukrainians marched triumphantly through Kyiv to the Verkhovna Rada to celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of a free and independent Ukraine.

To march proud and free behind the Ukrainian flag, is to march in the footsteps of a long, difficult, painful and often bloody path. That pride and that freedom has been dearly bought and paid for.