When beginning a discussion about Yellow Ukraine — the far eastern outpost of our people — we nevertheless consider it necessary to first make a brief excursion into the history of Transcarpathian Ukraine, no less distant western outpost of Ukrainianness. At first glance, these two regions, separated by thousands of kilometres, seem almost incommensurable; yet in the plane of the formation and evolution of national consciousness, several common features can be discerned between these two remote groups.
In the 19th century, a national movement emerged in Transcarpathian Ukraine. However, the specific features of the region’s socio-economic development — backwardness, isolation from other Ukrainian lands, weakness of the intelligentsia — gave rise to a distinctive form of this movement: Rusyn-Muscovite. In that era, the people of Transcarpathia understood that they were some distinct people, that they differed from the other people of Hungary, but they did not yet understand that they were Ukrainians. The local intelligentsia, consisting mainly of priests and teachers, was educated on ecclesiastical-monarchist russian literature and sought salvation not in the self-organisation of the people, but in support from Tsarist Russia.
This movement, which arose on the wave of the 1848 revolution, was openly reactionary in its character. It not only failed to serve the liberation of the Ukrainian masses of Transcarpathia, but even sided with the tsarist regime, the executioner of the revolutionary aspirations of nations. For this reason, Muscovitism in Transcarpathia played an objectively anti-Ukrainian role: not because of a rejection of the “Ukrainian name” as such, but because it was a political ally of the forces of reaction.
The language of this movement — the so-called “yazychie” (tongue)— was an artificial mixture of Church Slavonic, Russian, and local Ukrainian dialect, which did not correspond to the living language of the people and could not serve as a means either of cultural development or of national awakening. It was an instrument of ideological enslavement, the “Esperanto” of russian imperialism on Ukrainian soil.
After the 1918 revolution, a new, progressive stage began in the history of Transcarpathian Ukraine. With the awakening of the political consciousness of the Ukrainian masses of Transcarpathia, the understanding of their unity with the entire Ukrainian people increasingly took hold. Peasants and workers more and more often called themselves Ukrainians and fought for their national and social rights within Czechoslovakia. At the same time, remnants of the old intelligentsia, stuck in the ecclesiastical-monarchist tradition, tried to conserve the concept of “Rusynism,” presenting it as a separate nationality. In reality, this was an attempt to halt national development and perpetuate a state of national indeterminacy.
Thus, Rusynism in the conditions of Transcarpathia should be viewed not as a manifestation of a separate ethnicity, but as a historically conditioned form of national unconsciousness, caused by the colonial position of the region, the weak development of economic relations, and the influence of ecclesiastical-monarchist ideology. Muscovitism, which arose in this environment, acted not as an alternative to Ukrainian identity but as its negation in favour of imperial integration. At the same time, Rusynism, despite its contradictory political orientation, acted as a transitional form, the first and inevitable step on the path to the formation of Ukrainian national consciousness. The awareness of their difference from the Hungarian, Slovak, or Romanian population created the preconditions for further national self-differentiation. Only with the change in socio-economic conditions, the activation of political life, and the rise in the cultural level of the population did the transformation of Rusyn identity into Ukrainian identity become possible. This process, which began at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, was bound in perspective to culminate in the complete national integration of Transcarpathians into the Ukrainian people.
At first glance, we observe a similar, in many respects, almost mirror-like situation in Yellow Ukraine — among the Volga Ukrainians. Like the Transcarpathian Rusyns of the 19th century, they formed under conditions of distant periphery, severance from the main massif of Ukrainian lands, and prolonged existence in a foreign state and cultural environment. This led to a specific, incomplete, and contradictory form of national consciousness that does not fit directly into either the framework of Russian or general Ukrainian identity.
Volga Ukrainians, similar to Transcarpathian Rusyns, clearly recognise their difference from the dominant ethnos — “Muscovites” — but at the same time do not always identify themselves with Ukrainians in the general national sense of the word. Self-designations such as “khokhly,” “perevertni” perform the same function as Transcarpathian “Rusynism”: they record the fact of separateness but do not reach the level of full national self-determination. The language that the speakers themselves define as “neither Russian nor Ukrainian” plays the role of the main marker of this difference; yet, like Transcarpathian “yazychie,” it does not become a means of national consolidation but rather reinforces local isolation.
The name “khokhol,” which in the external, imperial discourse often carries a pejorative colouring, within the community itself is devoid of negative meaning. For the local population, it is a neutral, and sometimes even positively marked self-designation that records their own difference both from “Muscovites” and from “real Ukrainians” from Ukraine. In this sense, “khokhol” acts not as an ethnonym in the strict national sense, but as a designation of a local community with its own history, language, and cultural norms.
A characteristic of Volga Ukrainians is also a multi-level fragmentation of identity: “we are khokhly,” but at the same time “we are khokhly of this village,” in opposition to “other khokhly” of neighbouring settlements. The conditions of colonial settlement, weak development of urban centres, and absence of their own national intelligentsia contributed to local consciousness prevailing over national consciousness.
Pride in their “khokholness” manifests itself in a system of oppositions: “we are not Muscovites.” This opposition is not always articulated in national-political categories, but is clearly traced in evaluations of everyday life, morality, linguistic behaviour, even food and religious practices. Khokhly “bake bread differently,” “do not wear slippers,” “sing differently,” “speak in their own way.” All this forms a dense complex of local identity supported by collective memory and daily practice.
However, if in the case of Transcarpathian Ukraine Rusynism historically acted as a step forward — from complete national amorphousness to primary awareness of one’s own difference and, ultimately, to Ukrainian identity — then in the conditions of Yellow Ukraine we observe the opposite, regressive process. Volga khokholism is not a stepping stone to Ukrainianness, but rather a form of retreat from it, the result of prolonged and systematic pressure from the russian language and culture, which gradually displaces the Ukrainian linguistic and national foundation.
The khokhol language undoubtedly exists in the consciousness of Volga Ukrainians as a separate, self-sufficient linguistic variety. It is not perceived as “spoiled Ukrainian” or “bad Russian,” but as “our speech,” organically connected with the village, family, and everyday life. Speakers clearly distinguish situations of use: in school, before “strangers” — Russian; among themselves — the speech.
How did the khokhol language arise? The first settlers from Left-Bank and Sloboda Ukraine brought with them full-fledged Ukrainian dialects with a stable grammatical system and lexical stock. During the 18th–20th centuries, these dialects functioned as the main language of everyday life, family, community, and religious life. However, already then, they found themselves in conditions of an almost complete absence of Ukrainian cultural space and under constant administrative pressure from the Muscovite state.
The russian language, from the very beginning, occupied the position of the language of power, court, army, and education. It did not immediately penetrate the core of linguistic practice, but gradually displaced Ukrainian from all prestigious and public spheres. It was in this situation that the Ukrainian language lost its function as a general national code and was reduced to a local dialect. Its grammatical system began to collapse, its lexicon was displaced or replaced by russian elements, and its phonetics adapted to the dominant linguistic norm.
Thus, the khokhol language formed as a residual form of the Ukrainian linguistic system, deprived of conditions for independent development. It preserved numerous archaic Ukrainian features while becoming increasingly saturated with russian vocabulary and syntactic models. This was not a conscious choice of linguistic “hybridity,” but a forced adaptation to the imperial environment, in which the full reproduction of the Ukrainian language became socially and institutionally impossible.
It is important to emphasise that in the consciousness of the speakers themselves, this process was not experienced as linguistic degradation. On the contrary, the speech was perceived as a natural, “home” language inherited from ancestors and distinguished both from “bookish” Ukrainian — with which they had almost no contact — and from official Russian. That is why the khokhol language became entrenched as a separate symbol of local identity, despite the fact that from the point of view of historical linguistics, it is a form of gradual extinction of the Ukrainian linguistic foundation under the pressure of the victorious language.
It is here that the imperial mechanism of linguistic enslavement is exposed with particular clarity, well described by linguistic science as “crossing” of languages under conditions of inequality. The khokhol speech, despite its external variegation and significant presence of Ukrainian elements, is not a separate, independent linguistic organism. It is not the fruit of free development, but the field of violent collision of two linguistic systems, in which, from the very beginning, the advantage was on the side of the language of the empire. The Russian language, relying on the state apparatus, school, army, city, and all channels of social advancement, not only preserved its grammatical system and basic vocabulary but also aggressively imposed itself as the “norm.” The Ukrainian linguistic element in Yellow Ukraine was deliberately displaced from the public sphere, artificially reduced to the level of “domestic speech,” and as a result lost its integrity and was doomed to gradual extinction along with the older generations.
As is well known, linguistic “crossing” under conditions of imperial domination never produces a “third,” neutral language. The khokhol dialect is not a synthesis or equal combination of Ukrainian and Russian, but a transitional state, a painful symptom of the destruction of the Ukrainian linguistic system under the pressure of the metropole. The fact that the khokhol language today is spoken mainly by elderly people, while youth almost completely switch to Russian, is direct and irrefutable proof of the colonial defeat of the Ukrainian language in this region, and not of its “natural evolution.”
Unlike Transcarpathia, where Rusynism for a long time maintained distance from the dominant linguistic centres and thereby, despite all obstacles, created conditions for the future Ukrainian national revival, Volga khokholism exists in the midst of a continuous Russian-speaking space, deprived of any mechanisms of self-defence. Here, the formation of a Ukrainian intelligentsia was deliberately prevented, cultural institutions were destroyed or not created, and political forms capable of supporting the Ukrainian language and national tradition were blocked. Under such conditions, khokhol identity, despite its historical resilience, naturally turns into a relic — not through its own fault, but as a result of systematic imperial pressure.
From the point of view of modern language theory, this means that the victory of the Russian language in Yellow Ukraine does not have an accidental or superficial, but a deeply structural character. The Ukrainian elements that remain in the khokhol dialect do not form an independent grammatical system but exist as fragments of a destroyed linguistic integrity. They can temporarily penetrate everyday practice, partially “colour” russian speech, but are incapable of changing its imperial essence. The russian language, establishing itself in Yellow Ukraine, suffers no losses — while the Ukrainian language is consistently displaced, marginalised, and deprived of the right to full existence. This is precisely the essence of linguistic colonialism disguised as “natural development.”
Thus, Volga khokholism appears not as a path to Ukrainian national consciousness, but as a tragic symptom of its deliberate suppression. If in Transcarpathia Rusynism, despite all its contradictoriness, was a historically inevitable stage in the maturation of Ukrainianness, then in Yellow Ukraine khokhol identity fixes another moment — the moment of defeat imposed from outside. This is the defeat of the Ukrainian language under conditions of violent linguistic “crossing,” where the Muscovite language acted not as an equal competitor but as an instrument of state pressure, assimilation, and national disarmament. The weakening of national consciousness here is not an internal “choice” of the community, but a direct consequence of Moscow’s colonial policy aimed at severing Ukrainians from their own historical and cultural roots.
At the same time, khokholism in no way denies the Ukrainian origin of Volga Ukrainians — on the contrary, it is a silent witness to who they were before imperial intervention. The very fact of preserving a separate dialect, memory of “non-Muscovite” origin, household and ritual differences is a fragment of the destroyed Ukrainian integrity. However, without a living connection to the national centre, without their own schools, press, intelligentsia, and political forms of self-organisation, Ukrainian identity in Yellow Ukraine was deliberately driven into a dead end. Under such conditions, local identity inevitably degrades, turning from a potential basis for national revival into a surrogate convenient for the empire, which easily dissolves into the Muscovite sea.
In short, Volga khokholism is not “another identity” and not a “special path,” but the result of many years of a denationalisation policy aimed at making Ukrainians cease to be Ukrainians without becoming full-fledged “Russians.” This is precisely where the cynicism of Muscovite imperialism lies: to leave the subjugated people without a name, without a language, and without a historical perspective.
This situation did not arise suddenly and is not an accidental “cultural shift.” It was formed over centuries — through deportations, coloniіation, conscription, school, church, administration, through the consistent displacement of the Ukrainian language from all spheres where a people’s historical continuity is formed. Volga Ukrainians were deprived not only of their own statehood but also of elementary instruments of self-reproduction as a nation. Their language was reduced to domestic use, their memory to family legends, their identity to the pejorative label “khokhol,” which was meant to finally fix the state of namelessness.
The only exception in this long history of systematic destruction was a few years (1929–1932), when the objective needs of revolutionary restructuring forced the local leadership to go against the inertia of Great Power chauvinism. Collectivisation in the Volga region ran into a simple and humiliating reality for the imperial centre: it was impossible to speak “in state language” with millions of peasants because they did not understand that language. The Russian administrative language proved deaf and powerless before the Ukrainian peasant masses. That is why Ukrainisation appeared — not as a gift from the empire, but as a step dictated by practice.
Mykola Skrypnyk (the leader of Ukrainisation, who also cared about the situation of Ukrainians in the RSFSR) clearly understood: without returning the Ukrainian language to school, council, newspaper, agitation — there would be neither collectivisation, nor mobilisation, nor conscious participation of the masses in Bolshevik politics. And the experience of the Lower Volga region brilliantly confirmed this. Where a Ukrainian newspaper, Ukrainian likbez [literacy campaign], Ukrainian activist appeared, there the “khokhol” within a few months again became a Ukrainian. Linguistic confusion disappeared, historical memory revived.
But this breakthrough was short-lived. Already after 1932, the imperial instinct took revenge: Ukrainisation was curtailed, cadres were eliminated, linguistic initiative was declared a “nationalist deviation.”
The experience recorded by Mykola Skrypnyk in the 1920s shows what can save the Ukrainian population of the Volga region — and not only there (as well as in Kuban, Siberia, the Far East). It is not the collection of folklore or sentiment toward “dialect,” but the full return of the Ukrainian language as the language of education, politics, organisation, and modern life. Only where Ukrainian ceases to be “domestic” and again becomes the language of power and the future is the restoration of national subjectivity possible. This historical experience of Ukrainisation in the 1920s, despite its brevity, left us an invaluable lesson: national identity is not a monolithic or unchanging “given.” It is dynamic. If, within a few years of systematic work, a “khokhol” could feel himself part of a great modern nation, this means that the process of denationalisation in Yellow Ukraine is not irreversible. Khokholism is not a genetic diagnosis, but a historical trauma that can be healed.
To return Volga khokholism to Ukrainianness, it is necessary to change the very optics of perceiving this region and act in several strategic directions:
The main trap of khokholism is the conviction that the local language is “incorrect.” The return to Ukrainianness begins with the legitimisation of the dialect. Instead of shaming the speaker for Russian borrowings, it is necessary to show him the Ukrainian root of his speech. The khokhol dialect must be recognised not as “spoiled Russian,” but as “wounded Ukrainian” that needs rehabilitation through contact with the modern literary language. Under the condition of correction, purification from imposed layers, and conscious comparison with the literary norm, this linguistic tradition is capable not only of integrating but also of enriching the standard. The literary language is not a frozen canon. It lives exactly as long as it is able to absorb the experience of the provinces, rework it, and elevate it to the general level. When a Volga Ukrainian sees that his word can become not a “mistake” but a variant, not a “shame” but a contribution, then motivation appears to move toward the norm rather than flee from it. Only in this way is a linguistic community formed without an inferiority complex: not through denial of one’s own dialect, but through its conscious transformation. Ukrainian revives not where everyone is forced to speak “correctly,” but where people are given to feel that correctness is a path, not a verdict.
The empire accustomed the Volga Ukrainian to the fact that his “Ukrainianness” is only varenyky, songs, and funny words that have nothing to do with serious matters. The return of subjectivity is possible only when the Ukrainian language of the Volga ceases to be the “language of the village” and becomes the language of intellect, technology, and urban culture. It is necessary to break the chain where “success = russian language,” by demonstrating that Ukrainian identity is the key to a broader European and world context, and not only to local everyday life.
Khokholism rests on isolation — “we are khokhly of this village.” Ukrainianness rests on solidarity and sobornist — “we are a people from the Carpathians to Sakhalin.” The return of consciousness requires overcoming local isolation. This means creating information and cultural bridges between mainland Ukraine and the diasporic centres of Yellow Ukraine. When a person in Saratov or Samara feels that his “speech” is the same instrument with which laws are written in Kyiv and music is created in Lviv, the wall of alienation will fall.
Without an organisational structure, national revival is doomed to defeat. Khokholism is a state of defenselessness. The return to Ukrainianness requires institutional protection: from Sunday schools to media projects. Even under conditions of severe pressure, the preservation of historical memory about who came to the Volga and from where is that smouldering ember from which the fire of national self-consciousness can flare up again.
The facts do not deny that it is possible for even a small people living in compact masses on foreign territory to unite into a certain state entity and bring about the development and elevation of nationality not only on its own territory, within the given state, but even among this nationality throughout the entire globe.
Rusynism in Transcarpathia once also seemed a conservative and dead-end path, but it became a cocoon in which the modern Ukrainian nation matured. Volga khokholism today is the same kind of cocoon, though significantly damaged by imperial rust. The return to Ukrainianness is not the denial of local specificity, but its filling with new, worthy content. It is the transformation of “ethnographic material” into a conscious citizen who understands: his ancestors brought to the banks of the Volga not just “speech,” but a great culture that has the right not only to memories, but to a future.
Russian culture in the Volga region was and remains “higher” only from the point of view of the material advantages granted by the empire. It was higher in the culture of the city than in the village, as the language of administration, the army, and the ruling stratum. It seemed higher even to the Ukrainian settler of that time because the apparatus of coercion stood behind it. This is a general law: in a country where two national cultures collide, a new, viable culture can develop only through struggle. Even when the Ukrainian population of the Volga region is under the pressure of assimilation, even when it “carries out not its own cause” by speaking Russian in official institutions, this is only a temporary retreat before the onslaught of imperial capital.
The future of Yellow Ukraine depends not on how “pure” the language of the local peasants is today, but on whether we can once again infuse this “khokhol cocoon” with the energy of national dynamics. As soon as Ukrainian culture ceases to be merely “rural” and again becomes the language of progress, administration, and the future, imperial superiority will dissipate like smoke, giving way to the living right of the people to their own face.
But here we run into the most painful question: who will become the subject of this transformation? Who is the force capable of breaking the imperial rust on the “khokhol cocoon” and leading its inhabitants onto the path of conscious state-building?
Any national dynamics requires its engine — a national intelligentsia. It is precisely this that is the ferment that turns the spontaneous discontent of the masses into a coherent political programme. Unfortunately, in the case of today’s Volga region, we must state a tragic emptiness. Today, the Ukrainian intelligentsia of Yellow Ukraine is practically absent as a cohesive social stratum. It is either assimilated, dissolved in the Russian scientific and cultural environment, or driven into marginal frames of “folklore ensembles,” where it is allowed to be “khokhol” but forbidden to be Ukrainian.
Under current objective conditions, the Ukrainians of the Volga region cannot at once throw off Muscovite power and proclaim their own statehood. For this, there is a lack of a critical mass of nationally conscious cadres, a lack of their own media, and most importantly, a lack of a powerful political organisation. The gulf between “khokhol everyday life” and “Ukrainian state form” today is too deep. To throw an unarmed mass of consciousness onto the barricades against the imperial machine is the path to the final destruction of our people on these lands.
Since Volga Ukrainians today cannot act as an independent force, their path lies through alliance with those forces that strive for the complete dismantling of the imperial vertical.
The Volga region is a cauldron of people from different nations. Alongside Ukrainians live Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Moksha, and Erzya. All of them suffer from the same hammer — Muscovite centralism. Yellow Ukraine must become part of a broad anti-imperial front of the Volga region. When the “khokhol” and the Tatar realise that their common enemy is not the neighbour in the village, but the Muscovite official who sucks out resources, a force arises capable of shaking the foundation of the state.
The first step toward the liberation of Yellow Ukraine must be a complete break with illusions about “democratic Moscow.” Russian liberals are merely “an empire with a human face.” Their rhetoric about “human rights” ends where the question of territorial integrity and the right of nations to full separation begins. For them, the “khokhly” of the Volga region are simply an electorate that must speak the language of the metropole for the sake of “civilised unity.” They will never give Ukrainians schools or power because they fear the disintegration of their sacred “federation.” A conversation with Russian nationalists is even shorter. Their ideology is the direct denial of our existence. For them, the “khokhol” is a “spoiled Russian” who must be finally “corrected” through assimilation. Alliance with them is a voluntary step into the noose.
If we reject those who want to preserve the status quo, we are left with the only natural ally — those forces that see in the modern state apparatus absolute evil. These are radical advocates of social upheaval for whom the right of nations to self-determination is not a “gift” from above, but an inalienable element of the destruction of exploitation. These forces understand: it is impossible to liberate a person if he remains nationally oppressed. That is why the Ukrainians of the Volga region must seek support in independent trade unions and grassroots movements.
Where people unite to fight for bread and decent working conditions, imperial myths are destroyed fastest. We need those who are not afraid of the slogan “Down with the empire!” Those who recognise that Yellow Ukraine has the right to its own political subjectivity in alliance with other oppressed nations. This is an alliance with those who are ready to build a new community on the ruins of centralism — on the principles of full self-government of communities.
Historical experience suggests: when in a critical moment a small but disciplined group of people appears capable of clearly formulating a common goal and organising the masses around it, then local discontents grow into a powerful movement that changes reality. Without such a core, even the sincerest desire for freedom dissipates, remaining only an emotional flash rather than a historical force.
But so that this alliance does not fall apart into local quarrels and does not dissolve in general chaos, a core is needed — that part of the people who already today live in the greatest dependence on the imperial machine, who feel it upon themselves most acutely every day and therefore have the most grounds not to compromise with it. It is in the industrial centres, among those who hold the keys to real production with their own hands, that the understanding ripens fastest that without organised, consistent leadership, the common cause will not win. They can become that vanguard around which the other oppressed will rally, because it is precisely their position in the system that makes their consciousness sharpest and their organisation most necessary for the entire cause.
Then the oppressed nationalities of the Volga region will cease to be merely victims or separate communities — they will become part of a broader force that does not beg mercy from the empire but dictates its terms to it.
Since we recognise the absence of our own intelligentsia, we must support the creation of such a political entity on the Volga that will become an incubator for our revival. It does not necessarily have to be a purely Ukrainian state on the first day. It can be a broad anti-imperial coalition where power guarantees Ukrainians full control over the cultural and educational sphere of Ukrainian districts. Only in such an alliance, where national liberation goes hand in hand with radical social restructuring, can the “khokhol” leave the workshop or the field, feel himself the master of his fate, and finally speak his true name. This is the path through the common barricade to one’s own future.
If Russians sincerely wish to take part in this struggle, if they are ready to fight against Great Russian nationalism, then we will see them in our alliance as well.
But we must be extremely honest: the participation of Russians in this process is possible only through full, irreversible “repentance in deeds.” This cannot be an alliance with those who dream of a “beautiful Russia of the future” within the old borders. Our ally is only the one Russian who is ready to take up arms (or the instrument of political sabotage) against the very idea of “one and indivisible.” Only through radical negation of his own imperial nature, through recognition of the right of every Ukrainian hamlet on the Volga to be part of the Ukrainian world, does the Russian revolutionary become our brother on the barricade.
We have historical grounds to hope that such people will be found. After all, it was precisely the Volga region, this turbulent crossroads of nationalities and free ideas, that gave the world figures whose russian identity did not despise but rather compelled them to be patriots of Ukrainian freedom.
We remember Nikolai Ogaryov, who from the banks of the Volga carried an indomitable hatred of despotism and was the first among russian thinkers to directly and unconditionally recognise Ukraine’s right to self-determination. We remember Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a native of Saratov — the heart of Yellow Ukraine — who in his works opposed national oppression with the same passion with which he fought for social justice.
Thus, the anti-imperial front of the Volga region is not a temporary tactical alliance and not an escape from one’s own identity. It is a historical corridor of opportunities. It is precisely this that creates the space in which Ukrainianness in the Volga region can, for the first time in a century, breathe without a noose, think without self-censorship, and speak without apologies. Not under the patronage of the metropole’s “tolerance,” but under the guarantees of real power from below.
In this common struggle, the Ukrainian language ceases to be an ethnographic relic and again becomes the language of action. Schools, press, city councils, trade unions, cooperatives, cultural institutions, political parties — all this grows not as a gift but as a consequence of the joint pressure of the oppressed. The anti-imperial front breaks the main weapon of the metropole — isolation. The Ukrainian of the Volga region ceases to be alone. He sees others beside him, equally oppressed, and understands: his struggle is part of a broader process. In this solidarity, the fear of being smaller, ridiculous, or “inferior” disappears. Dignity appears. That is why this front is not the final form but the starting platform. It does not dissolve Ukrainianness — it creates the conditions for its gathering, correction, and elevation. Through common struggle, the capacity for separate political life matures. Through alliance — the path to independence.
When on the Volga the Ukrainian language again becomes the language of organisation, education, and resistance, when the word “Ukrainian” means not origin but position, then Yellow Ukraine will return from the historical shadow. Not as a victim of the empire and not as its adornment, but as a living part of the Ukrainian world that itself creates its future.
Borys Hunko
