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14 OUR LIFE • June 2022 DIDO'S LETTER Kozaky, Striltsi, Party - sany: warriors steeped in legend who crossed dark seas, rode into battle laughing, and stood their ground in the face of a larger, better equipped foe. As a Ukrainian American growing up in the U.S., Ukraine’s soldiers existed for me in the rich terri - tory between history and myth. These were the men whom we saw in paintings, about whom we read in poems, and whose names we sang around the campfire. Marianna Tretiak , Member-at-Large, Philadelphia, PA The hilltop memorial military cemetery at Makivka, in the Lviv oblast of Ukraine, the final resting place of 50 Sichovi Striltsi who fought there during World War I. For most of my life, my paternal grand - father, Konstantin Tretiak, a former Sichovyi Strilets (Sich Rifleman), occu - pied a similar place in my mind. He passed away before I was born, and my knowledge of him was based on family stories and a handful of photographs. I used to pore over the photos, hoping to uncover some aspect of his personality. I gleaned little from these explorations – most of our pictures portrayed him as an older, slim man with a permanently se - rious expression that traveled with him from Ukraine, through Germany, and to America. The most fascinating photo of all, the one of him in his Ukrainski Sichovi Striltsi uniform during World War I, offered the fewest clues. Small, the size of a passport photo, it featured a young soldier staring off camera, his face serious, his eyes full of emotion. I could never figure out what he was thinking or how he felt. Dido Kost, to me, was as inscrutable as the Mona Lisa. Around the time that photo was taken, my Dido wrote about the war to his friend Yosyf Hrytsai in New York. His friend, in turn, shared the letter with the newspaper Svoboda , which pub - lished it on January 6, 1916. My father found out about the letter’s existence only in the 1970s, after my Dido’s death, when a friend of his stumbled upon it while doing research in Svobo - da ’s archive. He was finally able to track it down more than 40 years later, after the newspaper was digitized and made searchable. "They added their young blood to the blood of the Cossacks-Zaporozhians who, centuries ago, fought Ukraine's enemies to the last drop of blood." For me, it was a gift like no other, an - other dimension of knowing my Dido. All these years I’d heard about him; reading the letter, I actually heard his voice – a voice to all of those hidden emotions in his photo. The letter was bold and poetic, with literary allusions I would not have expected from the grim-faced man or the blank-faced soldier. During our most recent trip to Ukraine, in 2018, my father and I hiked to the top of Makivka. There, next to the memorial for the Sichovi Striltsi who perished, we read his letter aloud. Standing where he’d fought “the tsar’s countless hordes,” listening to his words fill the mountain air, I felt more connected to my Dido than ever. "The Carpathians, where our Striltsi fought for eight months and which are full of monuments to them, will be un - forgettable in the history of not only the Sichovi Striltsi, but the whole of Ukraine." Analysts are calling the current war the most connected in history. No need to wait months for letters sent across an ocean – thanks to ubiquitous cameras, we can see Ukrainian soldiers in almost real time. In their exuberance to fight for Ukraine and protect the freedoms of her people, I hear echoes of my Dido’s voice. Since February 24, the world is discovering what Ukraine has long known: this may be a new cen - tury, but it is the same horde. Fortu - nately, Ukraine has the same heroes. The same bold, humorous, poetic, and patriotic heroes. The author’s paternal grand- father, Konstantin Tretiak, who served with the Sichovi Striltsi (Sich Riflemen) during World War I.
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