Serge Bosyk’s mother remembers her friends smuggling Levi jeans and bottles of Fanta soda into her country, Ukraine, when she was a college student. Under Soviet rule, Ukrainians could not purchase imported goods — if it wasn’t made in the USSR, it wasn’t sold. Although Ukrainians enjoy various soft drinks and denim pants now, freshman Bosyk thinks his country’s government still has a long way to go.
Bosyk was born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, one of the largest cities in the country with a population of 700,000 people. His parents still live in the city where they import materials for the printing industry.
“Lviv is the nationalistic capital of Ukraine,” he said. “True Ukrainians are from there. On the other side, the eastern side, most people who live there are Russian.”
Even before the annex of Crimea last year, most eastern Ukrainians have spoken Russian. Bosyk’s own family is a product of the cultural mix seen throughout the country. His father is Russian and his mother was born and raised in Ukraine. Although he is half-Russian and learned Russian as his first language, Bosyk identifies as a Ukrainian.
When he was 14, Bosyk asked his parents to attend school in Poland where the education would better prepare him for American universities. He left for Poland when he was 15 and lived there for three years. After he finished high school, Bosyk heeded the advice of his friend and English tutor and applied to two colleges in the United States: Hillsdale College in Michigan and Monmouth College in Illinois. Although Bosyk started his first year of college at Monmouth, a lackluster orientation week convinced him to return home for a year and attend Hillsdale College the following fall.
In 2014, Boysk returned to the states and started classes at Hillsdale. He joined the Sigma Chi fraternity and declared his economics major soon after his arrival to campus. Although he was unfamiliar with the cultural dynamic of joining a fraternity, the idea of brotherhood attracted him.
Junior Adam Kern, a brother in Bosyk’s fraternity, admitted that what was once an occurring story in the news means more to him now that he has a friend from the area.
“Serge makes you appreciate the situation in Ukraine a lot more because his life is affected by it,” Kern said. “I know his dad’s business is suffering because the currency over there has depreciated so much.”
While Bosyk loves his home, he said life in the United States offers a lot more than what he could find in Ukraine.
“As soon as I moved here everything looked so much brighter,” Bosyk said. “It’s always cloudy, gray, and dirty in my home town. Here people smile. At home people never smile. If you smile at someone in Ukraine they think you’re either crazy or you want money from them.”
In his first year of college, Bosyk was impressed not only by his courses in economics, but also his Constitution 101 class.
“So far Constitution has changed me a lot,” Serge said. “It was totally new for me. The Ukrainian Constitution is similar but there is still inconsistencies and misunderstandings. There are not division of powers in Ukraine.”
While Serge studies in the states, he keeps up on news from home by reading Ukrainian and Russian newspapers, even though he acknowledged the bias in Ukrainian and Russian media. He even cites government control of the news as the most powerful tool Russian President Vladimir Putin has at his disposal.
“I am convinced that information rules the world,” he said. “Putin keeps hold of our information sources, all of the news. All Russian and Ukrainian news is propaganda.”
Although Bosyk called the Russian president a criminal, he also respects his political genius.
“He has to be the greatest politician of this time even though he does some dumb stuff,” Bosyk said. “I can’t be sure if it’s dumb or if it’s a part of his plan. His popularity went up after Crimea was annexed because it was seen as patriotic.”
Last year, Bosyk and some friends traveled to Kiev, the nation’s capitol, to join the early stages of the protests demanding Ukraine’s full integration with the European Union.
“Even though I did not, and still don’t, support full integration of Ukraine with the EU I felt like it was a good chance to overthrow the old regime and direct my country to the new path of prosperity,” Bosyk said. “The outcome is not very satisfying but it is a slight shift to a positive direction.”
Bosyk left Kiev before the violence erupted in the protests that has killed more than 5,000 people to date.
Early in the academic year, Bosyk met with President Larry Arnn to discuss his experience of living and protesting in Ukraine.
“Serge was calm and resilient,” Arnn said. “He seemed surprised that I thought it remarkable that he had been in that square and seen that violence. I asked him his opinions about the issues behind the demonstrations and their suppression, and he was thoughtful more than angry or intense. Of course these things must matter to him very much, and they seemed to do so. I found him very impressive.”
After graduation, Bosyk plans to attend graduate school and eventually return to Ukraine and pursue a career in politics.
“I want to bring change to my country,” he said. “In the United States I really see how it is easy to live a good life. Ukraine can do this. We just need another approach.”
