Dear friends, Polytechnicians!
There is the second week of Ukraine’s unprecedented resistance to the Moscow invasion, which attacked our land at dawn on February 24. The Moscow Empire is killing thousands of civilians, flooding our land – cities, schools, kindergartens, hospitals – with deadly fire from missiles and bombs. The mad Fuhrer of the racist state with its imperial ambitions, doesn’t leave the paranoid thought to see a restored empire on the map of Europe. In the age of space research and computer technology he became a medieval barbarian and a mad dictator at the same time. Russia has covered itself forever with disgrace for this unjustified attack on a sovereign state.
And Ukrainians, our army have become an army of light, the Ukrainian flag is wrapped as a talisman of the peoples of the world. At the Freedom barricade, Ukraine is at war with the darkness of ideological stupidity and ideology distorted by imperial ambitions.
We will survive this terrible war, because in our genes, in our minds live the heroic spirit of our ancestors, the greatness of our struggles, the power of the word of the great son of the Ukrainian people, Genius and Prophet Taras Shevchenko. His national power, spiritual disobedience to the northern aggressor has always been with us in the most difficult times of Ukrainian history. According to him, Ukrainians survived in the most difficult conditions being deported by the inhuman regime to Siberia, Karaganda, logging camps and the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal.
Sich riflemen and Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought in his name, the people defended Ukrainian values, culture, customs, because the huge creative world of our genius was an expression of the world of the people. The Armenian Nigoyan, beaten in his Ukrainian heart with an enemy bullet, fell, saying the words of the great Kobzar «Keep fighting – you are sure to win! God helps you in your fight!»
The students of Lviv Polytechnic stood on the Granite Revolution with the ideas of our Prophet, his faith and truth; the whole town of truth and freedom was formed on Khreshchatyk by Lviv Polytechnic students and academic staff at the Orange Revolution; the Revolution of Dignity did not do without us, without Polytechnic. It was then on the Maidan we saw our great Poet, who later became a Cyborg and remained in this image on the stands of Prosvita and the walls of the renovated Polytechnic.
In memory of 1961, 1964 the Jubilee years of the Poet, the years of national resistance against the Soviet regime. At that time, students and academic staff were pressed in universities for their love to Shevchenko and participation in actions. In fact, the patriotic works of the Poet «Cold Ravine», «Subotiv», «Irzhavets», and first of all his brilliant poem «My friendly message to my dead, living and unborn compatriots, in Ukraine and not in Ukraine», written on December 14, 1845 in the village of Viunyshche (unfortunately, this village was flooded by the waters of the Kaniv Reservoir in the 1970s), were banned. It is like a space laser scanning the ages, giving reasons for our statelessness and shameful decline, renunciation of our national meanings, while pointing out ways to overcome this shame. In his brilliant «Message» to both the dead and the living, the poet proclaimed a spiritual psalm, a great idea that has become a political guide for hundreds of generations of Ukrainians:
In your hut is your own truth,
And strength, and will.
For this sacred call, for our State we defend our country, our faith and our national essence.
In the ruins of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, we pray for Kyiv, for our shrine Sophia of Kyiv, for our heroic defenders, we pray to the great Creator to protect the inhabitants of Bucha, Volnovakha and Melitopol. This terrible war has united us all, we are one nation. The tears of mothers for innocent children killed, the residential quarters of our cities and villages shot by the Moscow occupiers, hospitals, schools and kindergartens are calling for revenge.
This is not only a war against the mad dictator and his camaraderie, it is the fault of all Muscovites and their people, who elected and supported the maniac for decades, who demanded to «subdue the Ukrainians» and shouted enthusiastically «Russia», which invaded Ukrainian territory.
In distant, inhospitable and cold St. Petersburg, built on the Cossack bones of enslaved Ukraine, the poet understood the essence of the empire, which would later be called the «empire of evil», from him hitherto unknown word «Moscowshchyna» came to us. In the poem «Kateryna» he wrote about the tragedy of the Ukrainian girl, but if you look at the history of Russia from a distance, it is about the conquest of nations, the audacity of a liar, a vile rapist.
«Oh, green field, Why have you turned black?»
«I have turned black because of blood,
Which was spilled for freedom…
In these sacred days for every Ukrainian Shevchenko’s days, we believe in our victory, in the power of Shevchenko’s word, in our heroic people. Today, Ukraine has risen to the enemy-executioner and the whole world marvel at Ukrainian courage, bravery, honour and desire for freedom.
We believe that from under this ruin, which was made by the cursed Muscovite on our land,
A new Ukraine will rise
To end the night of slavery;
Injustice will be gone..
We will survive! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Heroes!