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Influence of Globalization on Ukrainian Society Photo: Yuliya Melnyk We accept some of their holidays (like Halloween, St. Valentine’s Day), but forget about some of ours. Why do we act in this way? Maybe because it is fashionable and prestigious.   Olena Aliyeva from Ukraine  Kirovohrad State Pedagogical University School of Ukrainian and Russian Languages Since Ukraine became independent, everything has changed in our country. The reason is one: we became more open to the influences of different countries and cultures. The first place among these trends belongs to the USA. You may ask why, but the answer is obvious. Nowadays the USA is one of the most developed and powerful countries in the world. So, its foreign influence is very tangible in most countries and Ukraine isn’t an exception. This influence was reflected on each side of Ukrainian life. We don’t only accept their habits, style of life, the attitude to reality, we take over their customs, their traditions which have been forming for ages. Their sources are deeply in history and everything would be fine if we weren’t too fond of them. The overloading of various innovations in Ukrainian cultural life leads to humiliations of our traditions and habits, to forgetting them. This way we indicate their inferior quality; we are ashamed of our culture and at the same time of our history. We can see the manifestation of Americanization nearly every day and we got used to this. We try to celebrate our holidays as Americans do; thus, we decorate our apartments and houses as they do. We dress up our children and ourselves (on birthdays, for fancy-dress balls) in their costumes (policeman, mermaid, cowboy, etc.), but not in our national costumes. It’s very unnatural and unusual when we try to adapt our habits and holidays to theirs (like it happens at our Orthodox Christmas and New Year’s Eve), to make them look like each other. We accept some of their holidays (like Halloween, St. Valentine’s Day), but forget about some of ours. Why do we act in this way? Maybe because it is fashionable and prestigious. Or is it that we don’t respect our customs and history? I think the reason is in both. The Americanization changes our mentality. We are so happy that we can use American help which was unavailable in the Soviet period. And we use it without thinking what is good for us and what is not. We see American films, listen to American music and songs, wear American clothes; we begin to adapt completely to foreign culture and don’t support the development of Ukrainian culture because we think it is less valuable. Of course, it doesn’t mean we have to protect our society from the innovations and to be mistrustful of them. They can give us plenty of good and useful things: for example they can extend our knowledge or our outlook, change our attitude toward different things and phenomena to a better one. In the pursuit of fashion, Ukrainians appreciate the influence of the American world in order not to fall behind others. But when we do this we become less respected in the eyes of other nations. We Ukrainians should preserve the best we have and try to inherit from the West only advantages of American society. Read more pages from this project. What the teacher says about this project See Professor Yuliya Melnyks own web page Return to: Collaborative Projects Integrating Technology | Home Page TOPICS Online Magazine - ©1997-2007 topics.mag@gmail.com Published by Sandy and Thomas Peters