themselves, together with the higher officers. there was diplomatic service. they were corresponding... ..correspondence with hungarian tsar, with turkish sultan. there were... there was a legal system. probably, it was also corrupt, but it was completely independent from russia. ukrainians never had a tsar, never had a king or royalfamily. i don't think any... yeah, i take your point. i don't think many independent historians saw much validity in a lot of what putin was claiming about ukraine's history. but, nonetheless, are you not in danger of going too far the other way when you say, and i think you said it to me pretty much earlier in this interview, you seem to say, "oh, we ukrainians are fundamentally different from russians because russia has a sort of collective mind—set which is very reflective of a sort of soviet approach. and we ukrainians are highly individualistic, maybe chaotic, but ultimately much more akin to a european individualist way of thinking."