Throughout history, Ukraine has had only several small periods of independence, which our community honors a lot. And even now, in the 21st century, neighboring countries are eager to take our freedom away. But Ukrainian people are born to live independently because we are freedom loving.

The first period of independence was Kievan Rus. Our society honors it by remembering this time and erecting monuments. Kievan Rus was over a thousand years ago.

The next period is Zaporizhzhya Sich, especially Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s ruling, which has been honored so far. For instance, my family gathers every year to honor courage and unstoppable cossacks and Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s rebellion against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which has affected all of East and Central Europe. We usually visit memorials, take part in different celebrations, and watch my father participating in reenactments of battles. The bravest cossacks are still our national heroes and they are even displayed on banknotes.

The past is also celebrated at our school. My class gets together annually and has a meeting with a history teacher on the 29th of January. In this lesson we recall the battle of Kruty and honor young students who were executed by Soviet bolsheviks. We make some projects on this topic, to remember those heroes who fought for their ideas, and also watch a film about this event. This meeting makes me proud of those courageous patriots.

In the middle of the 20th century World War II broke out and caused a lot of deaths and damage, the consequences of which not only our community but the whole world can still notice. The majority of our people know about their relatives who fought in one of the cruelest wars in history. Nowadays we don’t celebrate the victory at all but we get together to visit the graves of fallen soldiers and hand down stories of heroic feats to younger generations. Everyone in our country is sure that you can't celebrate victory when millions of your friends, relatives, and comrades died. Never again!

As a matter of fact, Ukraine has gone through an abnormally severe way to get freedom and I’m sure in the future we will continue honoring our fallen soldiers who defend our country, heroes of revolution and wars. And now we are looking forward to our long-awaited victory.