politclub every saturday for espresso. on the fourth , the independence lecture takes place thanks to the joint work of the institute of cultural strategy and our partner, the zmin foundation. the zmin foundation has been with us from the beginning, from the idea of ​​this event to today. also, we... would like to thank the lviv city council for its constant support, and i invite mr. vitaly portnikov to the independence lecture. vitaly portnikov, publicist, journalist, analyst, political commentator. thank you, friends, i congratulate you on the independence day of ukraine. and i want first of all

to thank the organizers of this event for the opportunity for all of us to meet today under this blue lviv sky. i am all the more sincerely grateful that you and i are meeting here at the heavenly hundred memorial, at the place of memory of the people who were the first in the recent history of ukraine to give their lives. for ukraine to be free, sovereign, for the ukrainian people to have the right to choose their future, here, among these people, are many of those with whom i spoke personally, whom i knew even before the maidan of 2013, 2014, with whom i spoke or corresponded completely. young people

who could live and build the ukraine of our dreams, they died on one cold day in 2014, and this grief for someone who loses a reader or viewer, this is real grief, it cannot be compared with the grief of a mother who loses her child, his cannot be compared with the grief of children who will not see their parents, but it is still grief, because we work so that the ukrainian audience can build this country, we work primarily for living people, not for crosses on cemeteries, and that is why every loss is a loss. times of the maidan,

loss during the struggle for ukraine in the period 2014-2022, every loss during this great war, for me it is a personal experience, when i see a person in military uniform approaching me, i only dream that this person.. . from the front so that i can continue to work for this person, because if this person is not there, for whom will i be, for whom will i work, why was all this necessary, and this is my main emotion these days. times, these years, i ask you to honor all those who these 10 years fights for our freedom and independence. thank you, at the end of the 80s, at

the beginning of the 90s, in the main communist newspaper, the pravda newspaper, an article appeared by its correspondent in ukraine, entitled, what kind of ukraine do they want, well, it's for you and me, what kind of ukraine. i want, of course, the person who wrote this text, she generally wanted that there would be no ukraine, that our state would remain this moscow colony, which it was transformed into, after the perayaslav council. and after the bolshevik occupation of ukrainian lands in the first half of the 20 century. but this is an important question.

the question that we need to answer and answer, what kind of ukraine we want, and of course, every person answers this question. itself, but we need a general opinion, a common view of what kind of ukraine we want to see in the future, during the war and after the war, such a ukraine that could survive, develop, that would be a strong, self-confident country, in families of european nations, in the civilized world, ukraine. which we would all be proud of and whose future we were sure of. so, which one do we really want ukraine? first of all, we want a sovereign ukraine, a ukraine that would decide its own future.

ukraine, the people of which would choose their own path of development, their alliances, their opportunity. to develop on this land on which he lives, if you think about it, the entire conflict in the epicenter of which we are, not even the last 10 years, but one can say the last centuries, since the times of mazepa, since the times of petlyura, since the times of bandera, this is a conflict of connected with the fact that the ukrainian people are not given the opportunity to develop as they want to develop, that they are constantly trying to prove to ukrainians... that their free choice interferes with someone, that in order to live peacefully, they do not have the right to their own civilizational and national voice, and this is one of the most obvious manipulations that

the ukrainian people have faced throughout throughout their history, i am sure that the ukrainians, and this is exactly what this war is about... will assert their right to choose their own path in their future history, and prove that what happened in the past was preparation for just such a free path. what ukraine do we want i would say, ukrainian ukraine. this is also an important point that we should never forget. of ukraine for those who consider themselves ukrainians, and this is not about ethnicity or gossip, it is about the civilizational choice that everyone who lives on this earth makes or refuses to make,

so the future ukraine must be a country of exactly this ukrainian choice, us constantly, and i i have been hearing this almost all my conscious life . some kind of nationalists, and i don't really understand, first of all, why to be nationalists shame why if you nationalism in any other nation it is honorable and nationalist parties win parliamentary elections in many countries of the world and it is not an insult, our neighbors have always used the word nationalist as some kind of insult about the views of people who live on this land, because you don't have to... be a nationalist in ukraine, it turns out that you can be a nationalist only somewhere in moscow, a person who wants to speak his native language, and wants that on the land where he lives, to speak this in the language that has been spoken here

for centuries, it is not a nationalist, it is just an ordinary normal person, so in all countries, in poland they speak to poland, in russia... russian, in france, french, in italy, italian, and why only in our country, we do not have the right for the ukrainian language to be heard on all the streets of the cities and towns of this country, why do we constantly need to prove that this is a normal state of affairs, why are we reproached for being nationalists, when we create a percentage norm for performance of works in the ukrainian language. in his own television or radio broadcasting, because in reality everything should be the opposite, the norm should be for artistic works in other languages, the languages ​​of foreigners, this happens in all civilized countries, they create special quotas for

the languages ​​of national minorities so that these minorities can develop freely in countries, where there is a national and linguistic majority, and only in ukraine quotas were introduced for the national and linguistic majority, and we... considered it our huge achievement, ukrainian ukraine is not a simple country in which people speak ukrainian, it is a country in which people first of all... remember what ukrainian history is. for centuries , ukrainians were convinced that their history does not exist at all, that their history is part of the history of other peoples and other states. it got to the point that a neighboring country simply stole our history before stealing ukrainian lands. and ukrainian children in their schools... were forced to learn not the history of ukraine, which was stolen from ukraine, but the history of

russia. this is how we lived for many decades, or many people who are now in this audience, they have exactly such a story and taught, and that is why it is so difficult for us to return to the real ukraine, especially in those territories that were part of russia for centuries. empire, where everything ukrainian was deliberately forbidden. what kind of ukraine do we want? we want a democratic ukraine. but democracy is not just an opportunity to vote. this is a free media that is not controlled by the super-rich, but by those who really consider the honest information of their compatriots to be their vocation and theirs. business, and not an element of protection of those enterprises and the resources they have accumulated

during the first decades of ukrainian independence. without honest media, there can be no democracy, because then the citizen does not vote for the one he really chooses as his leader, but for the one offered to him by the oligarchs. and in ukrainian history, there were already many testimonies of how the vast majority of the population committed suicide. a choice not because it was correctly informed, but because it was processed in the right way for those who tried to illegally maintain power and influence in this state. democracy is also a competition in concepts, not just trying to vote for someone you like, who looks nice on a campaign poster. who can make promises that will never, ever be implemented,

but in order for such a democracy to really begin to exist, you and i need a society of responsible citizens, that is , citizens who really invest in this country, citizens who are interested in their own development in this country, not because they are part of this economic. the post-soviet type structure that was built here and which gave the opportunity to rule in this country not to those who work in the branches of our economy, but to those who privatized these branches in the 90s of the last century. democracy always relies on responsible owners, and i really hope that this is exactly what ukraine will be, because we... want a european ukraine, and these are completely different standards

of behavior and the behavior of our own structures, and the behavior of those who are engaged in business, and the behavior those who work in the economy. european society, as you well know, is a society of conscientious payers taxes, this is not a society of people who are trying to solve something so that... their lives are different from the lives of their compatriots, it is first of all a society of solidarity, but you and i quite often see how our compatriots show this solidarity in times of crisis, and with this we can only to be proud of our volunteer activity, our willingness to collect money for all the needs of our army, our willingness to help people. but if we were a country with a civilized economy and a country in which

taxes would be fairly distributed, all this would be dealt with not society, but the state itself, but quite often ukrainians remind me of people who themselves created ships with many holes, and then constantly try to somehow plug these holes either with their own money or with their own bodies, for... you need a whole ship of ukraine, you understand , whole, which will never sink again, in which we will feel safe, and this is the most important thing. the last moment in which you and i must be sure, and this must be the obvious result of this war, in which we are now with you, and may be, unfortunately, for a long time, but this time should also be used so that you and i realize what the ukrainian state should be,

how it should function, how it should... develop, how it should be close to everyone who is its a citizen and you and i must realize a rather important thing, that ukraine and ukrainian is a choice. this has always been the case, not only during this war. people who were involved in ukrainian culture, they... always chose ukrainian, because they always had another choice in front of their eyes, when i talk about the multilingualism and multiculturalism of ukrainian lands, i have nothing to object to, there have always been people on ukrainian lands who worked for russians and

poles, hungarians and germans. for anyone, but the one who worked for the ukrainians always knew that if he worked for some other environment in our close time with you, primarily for the russian-speaking one, he would have a much more comfortable life, he would not have big problems, and he will have a much wider environment, both geographically and culturally and... than the ukrainian environment that he could count on, and i always remind of this when we talk about the ukrainian world that we have to build, each of those whom we are proud of today in history could have made a completely different civilizational choice

and lived much a more comfortable life, taras shevchenko... if he had simply been an outstanding russian artist and published russian works in the leading periodicals of the empire at that time, he probably would not have joined the army, he would probably have lived longer , probably his portraits could now be would be seen in russian art academies, but what would happen to ukraine. if taras shevchenko had made such a comfortable choice, it turned out that his willingness to create a ukrainian soul was, by and large , a journey to golgotha, but he made this choice because such a choice is made only out of love, maybe it is not even a choice, maybe it's a calling you can't refuse, but in

any case we know that each of these people i'm talking about had their own option, ivan. in the morning could be an outstanding polish a publicist or an austrian politician, as was the case with many of his contemporaries in then lviv, in then galicia, they became deputies and presidents of cities, they wrote polish-language works, but what would happen to ukrainians if ivan franko made such a choice, what would they look like modern galicia and modern ukraine, if... we didn't have shevchenko and franko. olga kobylyanska could have become a german fiction writer, but her choice of ukrainian literature created the image of bukovyna that we all know very well. mykola lysenko could write operas on russian-language libretti, and it was offered to him by composers who are now

much more famous in the world than he is, because if he... had made this choice, his operas would have been put on the stages of the most important theaters in st. petersburg and moscow . but if lysenko had made such a choice, we would not have ukrainian opera. this list can go on and on and on for hours. therefore, i always ask to appreciate those who chose ukraine, chose the ukrainian world as their own. the civilizational reference point gave us the opportunity for all of you to develop and to be proud of, gave us the opportunity to understand that this country... exists not just as a territory, but as a civilizational project, as a real land

whose inhabitants share common public, national, and cultural interests. in the end, i want to remind you that people who perceived ukraine exclusively as a bridge. welfare building was sufficient in pre-soviet, soviet and post-soviet times. franko wrote about this: you love russia like bread and a piece of lard, simply as a territory on which you can get rich, on which it is convenient to get rich, on which can solve problems. a territory where it is convenient to deceive people, but ukraine is not about that, in every country people want to live better, in every country welfare is

an absolutely normal moment of development of citizens who live everywhere, from the united states or canada to european countries , but us... first of all, people are united by common values, people who left great britain and sailed from plymouth to the shores of unknown america on a rickety ship, they were in a hurry, first of all, for religious freedom, for the right to believe as they considered necessary. if the main thing for them was simply to get some more piece of land where there were vague expanses of the future

united states, then i want to ask you, who would help us now, who would supply us with weapons, who would stop russia? yes, maybe not as fast as we wanted to go into it. can be seen, but was still willing to spend money on his own taxpayers in order for you and i to survive. if it was just about wealth, about another skyscraper, about another house with a car, would american society be as we know it? no, it wouldn't be. yes. with european countries, people were ready to sacrifice themselves and their future, for the sake of their countries rising from the ashes,

even when it seemed that nothing could revive them from history, our neighbors the poles rose to revolt even when their territory was divided among several empires, and these empires together were ready to fight their national contests. and what was wrong with the ukrainians themselves, that there were quite a few in this territory uprisings that seemed hopeless, but carved the ukrainian spirit, and that these uprisings were solely for the land, for the opportunity to get rich, for the opportunity to build a more prosperous future, no, it was primarily about dignity, and dignity is also the opportunity to remain in ukraine. then, when it would seem that the whole world is against it, the whole world denies it to you. when did it

start? in one of the annals of ancient russia, a thousand years ago, when the death of one of the princes of pereyaslav was reported, it was written that all of ukraine in... according to him, this the first memory of the word ukraine in the history of our future state. 1000 years ago, the land that was kyiv, that was pereyaslyv, that was chernihiv, was already perceived by contemporaries as ukraine. and why? and because unlike all the surrounding lands, it was a country. it was the center. statehood, it was the center where the future nation was nurtured, so long ago that we do not even imagine it, and

so long ago that it was always hidden from us, and our neighbors always explained that, what do you want, ukraine, it's just because it's our neighborhood, no sorry, it's you the neighborhood, and this is the center, was, is and will be, and why is it the center, but because it was a land in which the culture of discussion has always been a part of development in... kyiv and veliky novgorod, which has not yet been destroyed by moscow, in chernihiv and pereyaslov, people gathered forever and were ready to express their opinion to the princes at a time when, throughout medieval europe, this tradition had long been lost and replaced by the full right of the sovereign. we recall the english charter

of the free. as the highest achievement of civilization, as an agreement between the nobles and the king, which limited arbitrariness royal power, but this was already after the ancient rus itself, which later became ukraine, began to lose its age-old tradition, that is why this tradition gave the lands of the ancient rus the opportunity to develop, that is why statehood appeared later on these... lands , in which ukrainians were participants and which also meant the exchange of opinions and positions between those who were concerned about this statehood, the statehood of the grand duchy of lithuania and even the statehood of the crown were always those states in which there were opportunities for discussion between society and...

power, between the sovereign and those who determined the future development of the country. and what happened to our neighbors who are now trying to destroy us? from the first days of the colonization of northern russia, from the first days of the creation of the volodymyr-suzdal principality, which later became the moscow principality, and later became the moscow kingdom, and later became... the russian empire, and later became the soviet union, and later became the russian federation, which there, from the first years of the development of this land, there was a dictatorship, a person who essentially created the statehood of volodymyr suzdal, and therefore moscow, which was a border fortress in this. principality, andriy

bogolyubsky was a dictator, killed by his own subjects, who were tired of his dictatorship, and who simply threw his body to be eaten by dogs, and only because there was some random person from kyiv, that prince... buried with dignity, because this kyivan, as the ancient russian chronicles also tell, believed that it was necessary to treat the institutions of power with respect, and there in these lands it was very simple: as long as you are the master, we are you we obey and do whatever you want, but as soon as we kill you or get rid of you, then let the dogs follow you. this is

such a statehood, the statehood of idlers who dream of revenge, and not the statehood of free people, and therefore the question always arises, how can we coexist on the borders with such a statehood, where dictatorship and slavery have long since become symbiosis, and here again i have to answer to the question, what kind of ukraine do we want, we want... a ukraine in which we would not mention russia at all. i still am i keep hearing from my compatriots that the situation with the russian-ukrainian war and with the future of ukraine will change exactly when russia changes, disintegrates, putin dies, and maybe there will be democracy at all. of course, much better.