Bogdan Stupka has died... Taras Bulba's last address to descendants...

– I would like to tell you, gentlemen, what is our association. You’ve heard from fathers and grandfathers, in what honor all our land was: let know itself to the Greeks, took gold coins from Tsargrad and the cities were magnificent, both temples and princes, the princes of the Russian sort, the princes, instead of Catholic persons with distrust.

The infidels took all, everything was lost. Only there were we, orphaned as widow after the strong husband, orphaned our land, as well as we! Here in that time we applied a hand on a brotherhood to the companion! Here there is our association! There are no more sacred bonds than association! The father loves the child, mother loves the child, the child loves the father and mother. But it is not that, brothers: the animal loves also the child. But only the person can to become related with relationship to the soul, instead of birth.

There were the companions in other lands, but there were no such companions as in the Russian land. Have you vanished not alone in the foreign land for a long time; you see – there are the people there! Also the God's person and also you will get to talking with him as native and as will reach before to tell a warm word, – you see: no, clever people and not those; same people and not those! No, brothers, so to love, as the Russian soul, – to love by not that mind or than another, but everything the God gave you and … – Taras told and waved a hand and shook by the gray-haired head and blinked mustache and told:

– No, nobody can love in that way! I know that the lowdown is on our land; they think only that there were the bread stack, ricks and horse herds and the sealed honey was safe in cellars. They adopt the devil knows what infidel customs; shun the language; one doesn't want to speak with another; one betrays the other as a callous creature is selling in the trading market. The favor of another's king and not the king and foul favor of the Polish magnate which beats them in a muzzle with a yellow boot is dearer to them than any brotherhood. But the last mean man, though rolled all over in soot and in worship, has a particle of the Russian feeling, brothers.

Also it will wake up some day and will hit, the hapless, the hands about floors, will seize itself by the head, having damned the mean life loudly, ready to expiate the shameful matter with torments. Let all of them know what such association means in the Russian land! For that matter, in order to die, so nobody from them can die so! Nobody, nobody! They will have no their rat nature on that!

What, have you took, the devil Poles? Do you think, is something in the world that the Cossack would be afraid? Wait a little, the time will come and you would get to know what is the orthodox Russian belief! Already now the distant and close people feel: the tsar gets up from the Russian land and there won't be the force in the world which wouldn't obey him!