Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
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Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
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Killing more people than the First World War on all sides put together, the famine of 1932–3 was, and still is, one of the most under-reported atrocities of human history, a fact that contributes powerfully to Ukraine’s persistent sense of victimisation.” This is the final sentence of the first part of the book written in the 90s and it just breaks one's heart. The original book is really good. The history is well divided in time as well as in regions. We get to know more about each area of Ukraine, their history and their "present" (in the 90s).
For Ukrainians, the war was fratricidal. Caught between Stalin and Hitler, they split three ways. The vast majority of direct participants – 2.5 million men 13– were conscripted straight into the Red Army. Several tens of thousands – known as ‘Hiwis’ – short for Hilfswillige or ‘willing-to-helps’, joined the Nazis in various capacities.” Many Ukrainians pondered whether life might be better for them under Nazism than or under Stalinism. In Rivno, 17,000 Jews were murdered and “those who refused to undress beforehand had their eyes put out.” In Odessa, 19,000 Jews were herded into a fenced square sprayed with gasoline and burnt alive. It’s hard to imagine much hope in the Ukrainian soul while caught between the worst of both Stalinism and Nazism. Slavs at the time knew they were Untermenschen, when the Jews were gone, they would be next. The head of the Reichskomissariat Ukraine (Erich Koch) said, Ukrainians were “niggers” fit only for vodka and the whip”. Goring sought to kill all Ukrainians over the age of 15. As during the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013–14 Maidan protests, which came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine’s fierce self-defense today is a defense of values, not of ethnic identity or of some imagined glorious past. Knowing the "future" makes it interesting to see how the author was predicting it will work out. As we see she had some positive expectations but she also looked in the less optimistic outcome and Russia's interest in Crimea as well as an option of Donbass separatists. This already shows that the book is intelligent and reliable. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes that ‘ without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.’ - This seems to be at the heart of what is motivating Russia today.Indulgent’ is not a word the author would use to describe any period of Soviet rule in Ukraine, including in its most peaceful and prosperous period - despite the low-level and sometimes more significant relapses into the persecution of Ukrainian dissidents, like of literary critic and dissident communist Ivan Dzyuba who criticised the USSR’s nationality policies, or the Ukrainian general Petro Hryhorenko, who took up the cause of the Crimean Tatars as his own and suffered for it, and so on - that managed considerably better with dramatically improved living standards indicative of a modern and developed industrial society than that particular time, or probably any other time under Austrian control (early 1960s to late 1970s/early 1980s or so).
Loveday, Barry and Anna Reid (2006). Size Isn't Everything: Restructuring Policing in England and Wales. Policy Exchange. ISBN 0-9551909-2-4. Just as flourishing, law-abiding, genuinely democratic Poland helped inspire the Maidan, a flourishing, law-abiding, genuinely democratic Ukraine might hold out the prospect of a freer future to Russia’s boxed-in young, and give heart to her persecuted liberals. And for Russians in general, nothing would better demonstrate the benefits of Western-style government than to see their ‘little brothers’ next door doing well – which is exactly why Putin is so determined not to let that happen.”Ukraine could finally enter the contemporary world, and become just like Poland - a modern, liberal, and cosmopolitan European country; such assertions are particularly indicative of a liberal 90s myopia (even though the section where such assertions are made - Poland as ‘flourishing, law-abiding, genuinely democratic’ - are in an updated 2015 version of the book). When Chernobyl exploded, the Ukrainians were kept in the dark about the dangers, and unnecessarily exposed to high levels of radiation. Gripping history ... [Reid] writers with authority having lived for three years in Kiev as a reporter ... [she] is remarkably clear-headed about the many competing versions of Ukraine's history and its mostly invented heroes. A wise and generous government in Kiev would give her a medal * The Times *
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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