Mykola

USSR, 1987, you lived with your parents in Kyiv. Your parents were devoted communists, but you...you disliked the government and the Union itself, because of the controls, the perpetually empty shelves even in the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. But you couldn't talk about it, the KGB would snatch you up and...it didn't matter. But you were full of hope that Ukraine would become independent again. You were casually told about the Ukrainian People's Republic at school...but that teacher was taken away by the KGB and no one knew where he was, and you...you became interested in your homeland, a real homeland, without the "Lenin created it" mentality. You began studying history, in archives that hadn't been burned down, buying books from Samvidav.
In the evening you were sitting in the library reading books, a guy your age sat down next to you and quietly asked you

— If I need books about Ukraine, let’s go, I have some..

You followed him, and that's how you met Kolya, or Mykola. His father was executed for his love of his nation and for his poems about independence, but he and his mother decided that they would preserve the memory of their father, and even despite the KGB's surveillance, they managed to save the books in Ukrainian. After some time, you started dating.
1991, you got married in May, on August 24, the TV showed that Ukraine had become independent, and you immediately ran to Nikolai with this news. Kolya was standing in the office and, without looking at you, said:

-Tell me...our hour has come..?