Books to understand Ukraine

 

The Guardian offers a list of books to understand what is happening in Ukraine. 

'Beyond the fog of war: books to help us understand the invasion of Ukraine' is compiled and annotated by Oliver Bullough, himself a very good writer on Russia/Ukraine (The Last man in Russia, Moneyland and others).

From his list, I've read most and am looking forward to reading the rest. 

In the latter category, Serhii Plohy's history of Ukraine seems the most interesting. I am getting rave reviews and enthusiastic recommendations from my friends in Russia and Ukraine. Andrei Kurkov's 'Death and the Penguin' is a must read, as well as the classic Ukrainian novellas by Nikolai Gogol. 

To Bullough's list I would add Terry Martin's 'The Affirmative Action Empire', an exhaustive, thought-provoking study of the bolsheviks' nationality policy and how it backfired. It includes a well-balanced analysis of Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine during the collectivisation of individual farms in the late 1920s - early 1930s. 

Another very good summary of the history of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland and their relationship with the Muscovite Russia is in Norman Davies' 'Vanished Kingdoms. The History of Half-Forgotten Europe'. It contains a long chapter on the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian Commonwealth and its legacy — it only ended in 1795. And of course, there is a chapter on the 'ultimate vanishing act' — the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  

Here is the Bullough list as published in the Guardian:

1. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy

2. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder

3. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West by Catherine Belton

4. Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution by Chrystia Freeland, who worked as a journalist in Moscow and is now deputy prime minister of Canada.

5. Kyiv-born Peter Pomerantsev in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,

6. Joshua Yaffa did a fantastic job of exploring how ordinary people navigated the system Putin built in Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.

7. Kleptopia by Tom Burgis.

8. Nikolai Gogol’s short stories. Raised in Ukraine, discovered in Russia, adored in both, Gogol conjures up the absurdity of life under autocracy better than anyone.

9. Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin

©Alexander Anichkin/Tetradki 2022

Corporal Widow.

Nikolay Gogol.
(Daguerrotype photo, 1845)

Russian Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the new extension of the EU sanctions with the head of the FSB security service and the president of Chechnya now on the list. (TASS report in Russian here, smoothed out English version here, BBC, without the colourful expressions, here)

The language of the MID comments is so flowery that it comes close to Nikita Khrushchev's legendary Mother of Kouzma, or Kuzkina mat' ("кузькина мать").

In one paragraph the diplomatic riposte uses a very slangy drug-world expression сесть на иглу, literally 'to sit on the needle', meaning to become addicted to intravenous drugs. This is used to describe the EU's seeming willingness to take as truthful the information coming from the US and Kiev.

Even more confusing might be a reference to "унтер-офицерская вдова", the non-commissioned officer's widow, or the sergeant's widow. It is a well-known Russian phrase, "унтер-офицерская вдова сама себя высекла" — 'the sergeant's widow flogged her herself.' It comes originally from Gogol's The Inspector-General, the 1836 satirical comedy describing corrupt and inept officials in a provincial town.

In the play, a lying Governor suggests that a complaining NCO's widow lies herself and improbably claims that it wasn't him who ordered her flogged but the woman flogged her herself. As often happens with quotes it became detached from the original and is now used in the meaning 'to punish oneself.'

Here is the original quote from The Inspector-General:

Гоголь, "Ревизор", Действие IV, Явление XV:

Городничий. Унтер-офицерша налгала вам, будто бы я ее высек; она врет, ей-богу, врет. Она сама себя высекла.

(The Government Inspector, Act IV, Scene XIV, translated by Arthur A Sykes, 1892)

GOVERNOR. The sergeant's wife lied when she told you I flogged her—it's 

false, yei Bohu, it's false. Why, she flogged herself ! 

(The Inspector-General, translated by Thomas Seltzer)

GOVERNOR. The officer's widow lied to you when she said I flogged her. She lied, upon my word, she lied. She flogged herself.

(Le Révizor, traduction par Marc Semenoff)

LE GOUVERNEUR. — La femme du sous-officier vous a menti, menti, j'ai ne l'ai pas faire fouetter. Elle s'est fouettée elle-même.

Read the Russian version of this post here.