Quotable notes

"In my original profession [as manager of a rocket-building plant], I used to launch the most sophisticated products of human genius into outer space. But it [also] has fallen to my lot to feel the greatest happiness that can be bestowed upon a man - to launch my native country into a circumterrestrial orbit of modern civilization when, following a call of history, the imperishable genes of great and proud ancestors resounded suddenly in the Russified heart of the son of a soldier from the Chernihiv region. Even today I am not indifferent to how the decade of my presidency will be recorded in history. ...

"We have raised our state from ruins, we have raised our people from their knees. It was a back-breaking task, but it has elevated us, the first Ukrainian state-builders."

- President Leonid Kuchma in a speech in Kyiv on August 23 to mark the 13th anniversary of Ukraine's independence, as quoted by Mr. Kuchma's official website (http://www.president.gov.ua/) and cited by RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 5, 2004, No. 36, Vol. LXXII

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