As many of you, I have heard the Ukrainian national anthem in the meantime so often (and actually also sung along more than once), sung and played by orchestras around the world, but also as a sign of defiance, for example by Ukrainians in Berdyansk while it was occupied by Russian troops or by MPs of the Ukrainian Rada who continue to meet during this war to do their work in a democratic parliament. This applies in particular in his “Waiting Room Trilogy”, mainly in Erfolg (Success), 1930 and Geschwister Oppermann (The Oppermanns), 1933. with the hope that Ukrainians were set for a happier future, and the observations that ‘after thousand years of one of the bloodiest histories in the world, they surely deserve it’. Despite its problems [Reid] says, the country has the potential to be one of Europe’s greatest states.

Photographs (some cooked up by Soviet propagandists,) show smiling Galician peasants running out of their houses to welcome the Panzer crews with bread and salt. The first part was published in 1997, where she seems disparaging and condescending towards Ukrainians. Santa Sofia Cathedral in Kyiv was built in 1037 by Prince Yaroslav to celebrate his father Volodymyr’s conversation to Christianity. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. It is probably difficult to appreciated that at the moment, because since the beginning of the war and because of the strong presence of Zelenskyy in the media and in particular on social media his picture is everywhere.

As we now know, Russia first did the second from 2014 onwards and then at the beginning of the war tried the first. The earliest sections make for sometimes eerie and often queasily ironic reading in light of recent events.

I think that this link between a specific place and a specific chapter in history works generally really well.You don’t have to read this book to check out maps, but the great virtue of a slow burn read is that the geography is highlighted with the book’s focus on different regions in Ukraine. There were in particular Rose Ausländer, Alfred Margul-Sperber, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger and many others. She mentions that there was a whole room full of Yanukovich portraits – “in beaten metal, dried beans, tapestry, porcelain and amber. After I had booked my trip to Odesa in 2020, I was thinking about suitable books to read before and while I would be there.

This is an ongoing issue, but judging from the current war and all the years through independence of Ukraine, it is clear that Ukraine wants to solve this issue in favour of Europe. There was also a special ministry for Jewish affairs and the banknotes were printed in Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Yiddish.The post is absolutely absorbing, especially if you would like to learn something about Ukraine and its history as well as the ongoing events. After the independence of Ukraine the majority in Crimea voted in favour of joining Ukraine, but according to Anna Reid this was on a “low turnout and by a margin of only 4 per cent. Not only was it not mentioned in the local papers in the Soviet Union, but also the West did not take any notice.

In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centureies, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Centre of the first great Slav civilisation in the tenth century, then divided between warring neighbours for a millennium, Ukraine finally won independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union. She mentions that most of the Ukrainian men fought in the Red Army, some fought with the Germans and some fought as part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, both against the Russians and the Germans.

The Ukrainian army now is much equipped than in 2014, but the support of the Ukrainian people for their army and also the urge to donate and raise funds to help the army is incredibly strong. He spoke at the beginning of his acceptance speech of the region where he came from and mentions that it is probably unknown to most of the audience. Anna Reid describes which important role the Ukrainian language plays in the Ukrainian’s sense of national identity and speaks about the relationship to Russian. Though its modern national movement dates back to the early nineteenth century, it did not win real independence until 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.