Winds of Change

By Алан Грейтлак

 Perhaps, this book is a single chance to get freedom by money.
What could you do when the darkness of dictatorship came to your country? You would protect your right to be a free man. That is what happened in Ukraine in the cold and deadly winter of 2014 year. People, who have nothing except their courage, hope, and remains of liberty, fight for their rights.
Two absolutely different men battled on the opposite sides for their ideals and dreams. White snow mixed with red blood, bringing a certain question: who would win that battle for future and stay alive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Afonin
• Release date: Feb 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386593164

Book preview

Preface

What defines our destiny restricts secret desires by chains of laws and the prejudices of society? Is it the opinions of other people, iron set of rules and legalized norms, status in society and financial position, or unpropitious providence? For each person, the reasons will be as different as the flowers of divine plants, which refresh our eyes in the spring after an icy winter cold. However, one factor holds great influence on our mortal lives and on many forms of our thinking and mechanisms of decision-making. How it isn't surprising – it is a state system where we carry our existence through the eternally flowing steam of time.

Unfortunately, our world is not governed by spiritual ideals. Only material benefits and rules of dirty deceitful money lead govern officials to lie to the people. However, when a government doesn't hear the voice of the begging public and continues to rob them, taking everything to the last kopeck, social changes occur. This process can be called as „historical justice". When a nation is driven into a cesspool of poverty and slavery, it is necessary to be ready it will purge the dirt of false pretense from the rocky coast of government as a fiery hurricane. Social life passes along the path of an invisible spiral, having its own physics laws and unshakable trends. Fetters of poverty and hidden slavery can’t confine the human spirit. As a trickle of water, it will find a way out and will break through even the strongest of tyrannical barriers and immense, absolute power.

However, enough dissertating, it is time to say a few words about this book. This result of the author's imagination and historic facts is devoted to the revolutionary events in Ukraine that stirred up most of her citizens and attired indelibly the destiny of the state. Fiery confrontation in the bitter winter of two thousand fourteen engulfed the unstable society, transforming its secret discontent to open revolution which swept over the country and crumpled the power of the rising dictator.

The history of humankind has always taught us one interesting and majestic fact: a small ray of freedom is able to dispel the dense darkness of slavery. Just remember the Greco-Persian wars, when disparate embryos of democracy successfully resisted the strong hand of the empire. After all, freedom distinguishes humans from other earthly creatures. We are the only one creature who cannot exist without it. We are free to think, to dream and to live as our thoughts dictate to us. Since immemorial time, people have fought and died for freedom and equality, and this struggle is continuing nowadays.

When I started to write this work, I did not fully understand the meaning of this word: freedom. What is hidden after this term? Is it a material wealth of free communication of thoughts? Maybe, is it the ability to move around the country without any restrictions? Only after finishing the book, I concluded that freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want. Perhaps this definition is incomplete or even wrong, but it is true for me. I hope you will find your termination of the word freedom by reading this book.

The burning cities and dark ranks of the police sniffed from past days to the snow-white pages of this novel, dancing again their round dance of winter collision. The destinies of two different people are depicted by a chain of the interconnected story describing their twin struggles in the national revolution from opposite banks of Ukraine’s river. Heated events confront the different sectors of society, compelling people to rush into street fights for the sake of thing each of them called freedom. Someone preferred to battle with illusory fascists and extremists, the majority decided to resist to the arising totalitarianism, having cut down it in a root of the beginning.

In these lines that riddle clean sheets of paper set out one period in the life of two different people who became a tiny part of epochal events. Pain, blood, tears, and hatred would mix up with pride and prejudice, generating fiery opposition between nation and defenders of the authority. The eyes of two heroes behold at the brightest events of the revolutionary process, transferring the thinnest details of Ukrainian battle for independence to the reader. They discern freedom differently, reading opposite sense in it and managed polar acts. One of them was the employee of Special Forces who obeyed to the authority and the law but recited the oath to people. The second is the aspiring writer which only comprehending the way and trusting in ideals but. Different views on the same process, whose hostages they became.

A certain part of this story – is „nude veritas"(truth) veiled only by other names and the changed appearance of heroes. Another section – is a fruit of the author's imagination that based on gossips and the embellished facts of the secret past. It is impossible to separate the truth from fiction, which is hidden under the screen of art, but believe me, the lion's share of this novel is a gloomy reality of what occurred on streets of revolution. The sea of a grief and the ocean of pleasure, imaginary despair and iron belief – all these feelings were felt by hearts of people, which walked, in an open flame of a new era.

When I began to write this book, I had only one certain mind – to tell the true story to readers from all over the world, the novel that had happened with me and invested many destinies of the citizens of my country. I strongly believe that each person on the Earth was created for some reason, and its meaning is to change our world for something better. The mission of any writer is to tell an interesting story in which people will believe and take some useful advice that will modify their lives. Maybe it is the best purpose for any living human – to change this planet only by words.

I hope this book will bring some light into closed hearts that buried in the darkness of ignorance, which is an eternal companion of evil thoughts. Unfortunately, without a conception of our past and correct conclusions from it, we won't be able to see that future which is drawn to us by our imagination. Once, everyone should begin to look clearly, having learned truth in the developing realities and cruelly scolding himself for the nonsense and limitation of views. However, way to the future is impossible without this cold sobering which comes on us with ignorance avalanche with each step. The wind of epoch is always invisible for a human eye, but it eternally raises sails of people’s dreams. Sometimes, it is represented to us as collapse incinerates human hearts with a flame of fear. Nevertheless, new world that is full of our dreams gets up from ashes and fragments of an old age.

So, my dear friend, sit down in your soft chair more conveniently, turn on the gentle light of a lamp and be going to plunge into the storming world of street war which, fortunately, won't touch you. You will see the opposite worlds where two sons of one great country will appear in the middle of the flashed fire of war, blazing until hitherto. This story will take you on the wings of something that illuminates the path of humanity in the darkest days of dictatorship and feudalism, during the endless tyranny and torture of freethinking. We always talk about it but never know the meaning of this word. This book will tell you what real freedom is.

P.S. I wish you would be able to find hope on these sheets, which will give strength to finish all your rudiments. And remember: our life is very fleeting and suddenly. It is not always filled with so much sense that we want but it would be empty at all, if there is not hope, faith and love. We will become fully creatures who do not know their place in this beautiful world without them.

– Alan Greatluck

„I have given them life instead of death, freedom instead of the cords of superstition, beauty and truth instead of corruption and exploitation. The old bad days are over for them, the Light of the Aton has risen, and they can dwell in peace and harmony freed from the shadow of fear and oppression. "

– Agatha Christie

Who are we – people without a right to live with dignity? Condemned to poverty but dreaming of wealth and freedom, will we have enough power to change ourselves and to change our country?

Chapter 1.Inspiration

The boundless fields are covered with odorous cones of wheat. Golden colors of this cereal breed stretch far for the horizon, gently caressing a look of any human who feels a connection with nature. Easy, the gentle breeze blows these thin cones, creating yellow sea, as vortex raging on the earth. Quiet noise of these ears flies on serenity wings through wide fields towards to eternity through legends of ancestors.

Somewhere far away the wheat field meets clear blue, almost transparent sky, creating the blue-yellow ensign, which is calmly waving on a breeze. It seems that nature has created this symbol especially for Ukraine, striking the nation with the indescribable beauty forcing to beat millions of patriotic hearts. Marvelous grace fascinated by its simplicity and deep meaning embedded in this image by generations. Eyes of many great thinkers, poets and philosophers admired the allure of wild, almost untouched nature, noticing deep originality in each small detail, which belongs to its people …

The sudden bell of alarm clock interrupted his dreams, forcing him to wake up and wipe sleepy eyes. Late autumn comes to the room with bright beams of the sun, caressing the pale skin of his face. A new day could not bring anything, except routine. The sleep had ended and now he had to face reality, that closely surrounding his person. However, there was one smaller thing greasing action of the world around – dream. Whether is it possible to survive in a stream of rough everyday life, without thinking of something pleasant or so desired to your heart? How can we walk without essential target with name „dream" through cruel reality?

He lowered his feet from a bed and propped up his head by hands, thinking – when hopes could be embodied in such illusive reality. Of course, it was silly to dream about accomplishments in such behindhand in development country. The experience of his trips abroad opened his eyes onto his soul, having shown a picture of beauty that captivated his imagination, but it could not show the road to the planned top. There, over the ocean, he had been able to earn several thousand dollars a month as simple labor, and satisfies himself with the received money, meeting simple desires. Came back to the native land, he could not find the way to achieve the similar income. The small enterprise, which he began with his friends on the financial market, reaped the fruits, leaving him a small stock of money but quickly leaked away in connection with the unpredictable events. Working when his moral work would be usurped by the administration and wouldn’t bring fair remuneration – it seemed the last option adjoining with madness. There was only the last hope – his book.

He had been working on it for a half a year already, creating his own literary work – the novel devoted to the 2 World War. Almost all his thoughts were occupied with the composition of its plot and selection of the facts from widespread sources, data of many words in one story that was impregnated with sense and the tragedy. Scenes of great battles, columns of the receding people and the simple human drama that unfolded against the backdrop of large-scale hostilities appeared in his imagination. He was burning in hope to achieve success with this book, to climb to the literary Parnassus and to gain laurel of the winner, having published the book. However, it was only dreaming and he had to write a lot, and, even more, to live through. His eyes were not able to see cruel life being under the misty of the dream.

The door of his room suddenly opened and figure of his mother passed inside to interrupt a thread of his dreams. He returned to the fatherly house after the fiasco on the financial market, had left the rental apartment to the new owner. His hearing instantly caught familiar words:

 – Oh, you already woke up. Go to eat, breakfast is curdling.

These routine words brought him in a certain condition of awakening when the person recovered after a dream. He had to get out of bed and meet the new day, which didn't promise any achievements.

He woke up on his feet and his body slowly walked into the bathroom, where he took the daily procedure. While he was brushing his teeth and looking at himself in the mirror, his thoughts flew in a whirlwind of a creative process, reborn the intriguing plot in his imagination. Something exiting and great must come from human mind if he or she decides to make it. However, we are too great in our imagination and too lazy in it embodying. People love to dream and do not like to work and this is the main problem of the modern world.

The young person which appearance exposed twenty-year age looked at him from the glass mirror. His figure was slender, but long years of workout postponed on it the print of easy relief appeared through a night t-shirt. His face shrank in a gloomy grimace, very clearly exposed recent awakening from sleep. Deep wrinkles of discontent cut up a wide forehead, drifting together with fat lines on its center. Dark hair hung down near the ears as slovenly haystacks, adding negligence in his portrait. Blue eyes looked in a mirror with a tired gaze, not peculiar to young nature. Unknown indestructible grief froze in these two crystalline lenses of blue glass, pouring over his congeal soul by an elusive breath of the wind of life. Beautiful eyes were sparkling with sad indifference to his future. It was the uncertain track of the sadness of new generation trying to find its way in the cloudy reality of human being.

Plate with food stood on the wooden table, fluttering on a small kitchen with a pleasant smell. He sat down at the table and moved up the plate to himself and slowly begun to eat its contents, blowing his thoughts on the political future of the country. However, there was a reason for it, which soared over the heads of Ukrainian people as an invisible aura. That day, the summit of European Union must be held in Vilnius where the president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych had to sign association with the EU. That fatal day was November 29. That event influenced the destiny of each person living in the country, which was exhausted in the torment of last century, dreaming of passing into a new era of prosperity. Ukraine, having a high potential for growth in different branches of human activity, suffered fail because of damnations of human soul – avarice, vanity, and defect that possessed souls of almost all officials. The country that was one of the biggest in Europe had more than thirty percent of world reserves of the black earth lay near the feet of insignificant the small people who were tearing it apart with bloody claws. The avarice that precedently directed Judas to betray Jesus Christ, Gobsek who was dying in the cold