Volodymyr Fesenko offers to look and analyze whether leap years are really as bad as they are used to talk about. To do this, let's turn to recent history - both ours and the world's.
The New Year is a time of predictions, various divination and omens. The demand for professional fortune tellers is growing, from tarologists to astrologers. They also mention various omens. This is especially noticeable in times of war.
One of the common superstitions is about unlucky leap years. Fans of bad omens will immediately remember the last leap year - 2020, which brought us the Covid-19 pandemic. Accordingly, they prophesy that the year 2024 (also a leap year) will bring us something bad.
Are leap years really that bad? To answer this question, let's look at recent history - both ours and the world.
I already mentioned the year 2020. But 2016 was not marked by anything special, except for the victory of Trump in the presidential elections in the USA. Then it turned out that his presidency, although it was very specific, was not catastrophic. If someone says that Trump can win again in this leap year, I will just remind you that presidential elections in the USA generally take place in leap years. That's how it happened.
The year 2012 for Ukraine and the world was also not marked by anything special. In our country, the most notable event was the parliamentary elections, in which the Party of Regions won, but the opposition, in particular, the Svoboda party, for which that year was the most successful in its electoral history, also stood out.
The year 2008 was remembered by the world for the global financial crisis. But in our country, the peak of this crisis fell in 2009.
2004 was marked by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. But she was both bloodless and successful. In the world, this year was remembered for the huge tsunami in the Indian Ocean, as a result of which about 230,000 people died.
The year 2000 is the Millennium. "The end of the world" did not happen, nor did something extraordinary and globally bad. Although there were enough significant events. In Russia, the Second Chechen War and Putin's first victory in the presidential elections. We have an all-Ukrainian referendum, the results of which in no way affected the political situation in the country; the murder of journalist G. Gongadze and the tape scandal — events that laid the foundations for subsequent crisis trends.
In 1996, nothing extraordinary happened. In Ukraine, the Constitution was adopted, in Russia, Yeltsin was re-elected as the President of the Russian Federation.
The year 1992 was remembered for numerous wars - in Yugoslavia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Transnistria, civil wars in Algeria, Tajikistan and a number of other countries. But there was also a peaceful "separation" of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. For Ukraine, it was the first year of independence, not easy, but calm enough.
I will not continue further. It is enough to understand that not every leap year can bring something bad, just as not every "Friday the 13th" is a day of horrors. Something and somewhere can happen. As can happen in any other year, both bad and positive news. The First and Second World Wars did not start in leap years. And the significant events of recent history in relations between Russia and Ukraine did not take place in leap years, starting with the collapse of the USSR and ending with a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. 2014, by the way, was not a leap year either.
For sports fans, leap years are associated with the Olympic Games. In this connection, I will tell you about a mystical conspiracy theory that I heard ten years ago from a former Lithuanian deputy (unfortunately, I don't remember his last name). This is not for supporters of purely rational thinking, although many Ukrainians may like this "theory".
The essence of this "theory" is as follows. Authoritarian (totalitarian) regimes that held the Olympic Games collapsed after a certain time, and their countries even disintegrated. We are talking about Hitler's Germany, which in 1936 held both the summer and winter Olympic Games, and in 1945 ceased to exist. Then such a fate befell the Soviet Union (in 1980 the Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow, in 1991 the USSR ceased to exist) and Yugoslavia (in 1984 the Winter Games were held in Sarajevo, in 1991 the disintegration of Yugoslavia began).
However, Russia (the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014) and China (the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022) do not fit into this “theory” (perhaps yet). However, let's not rush to conclusions, let's see what happens next.
Finally, a bit of New Year's political numerology. In the political history of independent Ukraine, the decisive (turning) role was played by the years that ended with a four — 1994 (Leonid Kuchma’s victory in the presidential elections, which determined the political development of Ukraine for the next 10 years), 2004 (the Orange Revolution, followed by ten years of struggle between pro-European and pro-Russian forces), 2014 (victory of the Revolution of Dignity, seizure of Crimea by Russia and the beginning of military-political confrontation between Russia and Ukraine). By the way, in all these years there were also presidential elections in Ukraine. Will 2024 continue this pattern? Let's see.
