| In the footsteps of Ukrainian Nationalists |
[08 Mar 2008|10:30pm] |
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On Sunday, 4th of June, Liouba and I boarded the 10 am train to Lvov at the Simferopol Central Station. The plan was to get to Budapest through Lvov/Chop/Zahon’ and also see something of Ukraine.
Once upon a time – and historically speaking not such a long time ago, too, Russia and Ukraine were constituents of Kievan Rus’ – a kingdom pulled together by Riurik, a Varangian (Scandinavian) prince. Kievan Rus’ extended all the way to Yaroslavl in the north, Nizhny Novgorod in the north east and included in its cultural and physical space Novgorod the Great, Ladoga and Pskov. Since the historical sources have always been sponsored by the powerful and thus have mostly been biased (otherwise they would neither be “authoritative”, nor “sources”, nor “historical”) so, they often praise and glorify might and wealth and we know that those qualities depend on quantities, particularly on the extent of exploitation of land, sea, sky and people. That often means that the experience and the point of view of the majority (peasants, for example) is rarely present in the accounts we read.
“Hitler did”, “Charlemagne won”, “Napoleon lost”, “Alexander the Great conquered”…
“Really?” I sometimes respond. “HE did it all by himself! Just walked over, bullied and grabbed? Wow! Impressive!”
“No, silly,” am usually told. “He raised an army. He was a good strategist. A firm commander. A true leader. And so he conquered”.
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