By Scott Graber
It is Friday, Nov. 28, and I’m sitting on my unevenly bricked patio pleasantly diverted by a small fire in my Solo-brand fire pot.
The elongated Thanksgiving weekend has a special place in my unreliable memory. As I push and probe the burning logs I remember road trips and hitch-hiking and taking a 3 a.m., cup of coffee with a world-weary waitress in Shreveport, La.
Later, in my law school years, there were trips northward into Manhattan, Queens and Connecticut.
Then, when my son came along, trips to Cumberland Island, Itchtucknee Springs and Gettysburg.
The four-day Thanksgiving weekend was not freighted with gift-buying, finding a tree, or going through miles of small, Chinese-made lights trying to replace those that had died. It was getting up, getting caffeinated and moving toward a place where one would find friends, perhaps a dusting of snow and, sometimes, the job of splitting firewood that maintained a minimal level of warmth in a rustic room usually accessorized with vintage Hudson Bay blankets.
In the last 15 years, Thanksgiving has not involved a road trip, or a walk through the Gettysburg Battlefield. It now features a communal meal taken with two dozen friends hosted by David and Terry Murray.
The Murrays live in Hundred Pines and have a house that commands a view of Battery Creek which is most impressive, almost magical, at high tide. In recent years, most of those who attended were older, Pleistocene-era friends — people who once kept Beaufort functioning.
But yesterday I was visited by a seasonal pathogen, and spent Thursday in bed, mostly listening to National Public Radio. And while NPR told us about turkeys and traffic, it also tried to explain the Ukrainian peace deal.
But other than periodic, predictable White House pronouncements saying, “We’re making tremendous progress”, there were few details on their Thanksgiving menu.
We do know, however, that the first, 28-point proposal insured that Ukraine would be dismembered; much of its army demobilized; and whatever remained would insure a weakened, forever neutered buffer for the perpetually paranoid Russian people. It reminded me that Joseph Stalin had tried to do the same thing in 1932.
In 1932, Joseph Stalin, believing that “nationalistic tendencies” were making the Ukrainian people dangerous, exported their entire grain harvest in order to finance the industrialization then underway in the Soviet Union.
This removal of grain — reminiscent of what the Brits did in Ireland in 1740 — triggered a famine that killed five to 10 million Ukrainian peasants.
You might think that five to 10 million deaths would lead to a natural antipathy; a lasting resentment of Stalin and all things Soviet.
Well you would be wrong on that score.
In 1941 — when Hitler invaded Ukraine — an estimated 4.5 million Ukrainians joined the Red (Russian) Army and fought the invading Germans with uncommon fierceness. In the meantime, the Germans killed an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews and deported about a million more.
Vladimir Putin argues that when Hitler invaded, Ukrainians supported the Nazis — this being his current rationale for wanting to dilute and disarm the Ukrainian armed forces.
But if one really wants to understand the Ukrainian psyche, one must go back to 1240 — and remember the arrival of Batu Khan and his Golden Hoard. These horsemen from China laid siege to Kiev and thereafter occupied what is now Ukraine for the next two centuries.
This long running Ukrainian nightmare explains why these besieged people are still in the trenches fighting for their sovereignty. And this unhappy history might also explain why they look to the United States — once a diverse, loosely knit colony that somehow won its own independence in 1781 — as a country that would naturally understand and empathize with their desire to control their own destiny.
But those who took their turkey and pecan pie yesterday at David and Terry Murray’s banquet understand that Vladimir Putin will never agree to a ceasefire — even when 25,000 Russian men are dying each month – until the prospect of winning all the chips on the table is impossible.
As long as Donald Trump vacillates about Tomahawks; as long as the UK, France and Germany decline to confiscate the Russian bank assets in Western Europe; as long as these same European actors decline to put their infantry into the field; or put their tanks and missiles into the pot; Vladimir will stand his ground.
Nonetheless — on this crisp Thanksgiving weekend — I pray I am wrong on these matters..
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
