“My difficulty in taking Ukraine seriously goes deeper than just my cosmopolitan suspicion of nationalists everywhere. Somewhere inside I’m also what Ukrainians would call a great Russian and there is just a trace of old Russian disdain for these little Russians. ”
“From my childhood, I remember expatriate Ukrainians nationalists demonstrating in the snow outside performances by the Bolshoi Ballet in Tronto. ‘Free the captive nations!’ they chanted.In 1960, they seemed strange and pathetic, chanting in the snow, haranguing people who just wanted to see ballet and to hell with poltiics. They seemed fanatical, too, unreasonable. Hadn’t they looked at the map? How did they think that Ukraine could ever be free?”
In an interview Mr. Ignatieff describes Ukrainian culture as “embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots.”
Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging
Post a Comment