Learn more about Ukraine and the ongoing Russian war

Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine

Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day.  What does it mean for a nation to exist?  Timothy Snyder explores these and other questions in a very timely course.

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He speaks five and reads ten European languages.

Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day.  What does it mean for a nation to exist?  Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both?  Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy?  In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge?  For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge?  Why some and not others?  Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive?  If so, whose, and how?  Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

Youtube playlist link 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_

Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia

In Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, investigative journalist and Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times Catherine Belton tells a dark tale of how Vladimir Putin rose to power and consolidated his rule. Belton traces how an alliance between Putin, the KGB, and organized crime came together in St. Petersburg and expanded its influence to the Kremlin, across Russia, and eventually reaching Western markets and institutions. Belton’s extensive research reveals how Russia’s president and his allies co-opted national industries to transform a collection of wealthy entrepreneurs into a kleptocracy aided by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), seizing control of the economy to enrich only themselves under the veneer of a renewed Russian nationalism. This compelling and contemporary account of Putin’s Russia paints a grim picture of a country where freedom, private enterprise, and liberalism are forced to take a back seat to cronyism capitalism.

Catherine Belton, author of Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, discusses her new book alongside Clark Gascoigne, interim executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, and Anders Åslund, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council, moderates the discussion.

Pushing Pushkin: the imperialism and decolonization of Russian culture

The primacy of “high” Russian culture in foreign eyes creates a near-hegemonic control of narratives and discourses involving non-Russians living within the Russian Federation, and impinges on the languages, cultures and even sovereignty of neighbouring countries. The “low” or backward nature of these other cultures is exemplified by the annihilationist approach to Ukraine taken by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and it also extends to Russia's declared superiority over “the rotten West” and its culture. “Paradoxically, while being anti-European and contemptuous of Western ideas at its core, Russian culture is perceived as part of a common European heritage by many Western countries,” argues Dr Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, a leading Lithuanian cultural critic.

In discussion with the British writer Edward Lucas, Dr Sabaliauskaitė, the most internationally read contemporary Lithuanian author, will scrutinise the tacit and sometimes overt imperialist message of Russian cultural “greats”, citing examples from cinema and art and literature. These include Pushkin’s venomously polonophobic poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” and Joseph Brodsky’s “On the Independence of Ukraine”. Deconstructing the origins, subtexts and signifiers in Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet Russian cultural production highlights the links between imperialist statecraft and supposedly innocent visual and literary works. What are the next steps? Can or should Russian culture face the same “decolonisation” currently promoted in western countries? If so, is this a task for the Putin regime’s foreign critics, or must it be done by Russians themselves?

The event took place on 7 March 2023 in the European Parliament in Brussels.

The event was co-organized by MEPs Rasa Juknevičienė, Raphaël Glucksmann, and the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the EU.

How Russia REWRITES history in its favor

The first episode of the "Big Russian Lies" series shows how Russia has been using history as a propagandistic tool to advance its political interests for centuries. Russia employs the historical myth of direct descent from Kievan Rus to claim a millennia-long history and justify territorial claims on neighboring states.

Russia asserts special geopolitical rights in Europe by exploiting the historical theme of victory in World War II, creating a myth of a unified, Russian, victorious people. Russia has already printed thousands of textbooks where historical facts are manipulated to fit political expediency.

Why can you still find the term "Kievan Russia" in Western encyclopedias as of 2023? Why does the study of Eastern European history in the world remain so Russia-centric?

Professor Jason Stanley of Yale University, Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Western Ontario Marta Dyczok, Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Volodymyr Viatrovych, PhD in History, Public History Researcher Anton Liagusha, Senior Associate of the Russia Studies Department at the Center for Eastern Studies (Poland) Maria Domanska discuss how historical manipulations work and how destructive their consequences can be.

Russian literature is FAKE!? How the Kremlin uses it for war

Instead of revising the imperial literature of previous centuries, Russia still uses the xenophobic narratives embedded there as inspiration for its wars of aggression. This is discussed in the episode "Literature" from the cycle "The Big Russian Lies".

Literature was never out of politics either in the Russian Empire or in the Soviet Union. Due to political decisions, desirable authors were published and translated, undesirable ones were repressed and destroyed. Through propaganda literature, Russia discredited the Ukrainian national liberation movement to the whole world.

Why is Pushkin not out of politics? Which "good" Russian writers were struggling on the Ukrainian issue, why is Russian literature not as old and not as great as they are trying to convince everyone?

Why Russian literature is not great, as they are still trying to "sell" to the world, they say:

• writer Serhii Zhadan;

• literary critic Eva Thompson;

• professor of Ukrainian Studies at University College London William Blacker;

• philosopher Vakhtang Kebuladze;

• writer Andriy Kokotyukha;

• literary critic Rostyslav Semkiv;

• Nataliya Kruchuk, research associate of the Museum of Propaganda;

• Yulia Lipske, deputy director of the Museum of Propaganda.

How the Kremlin pushes its «Russian world» using cinema

The episode "Cinema" from the series "The Big Russian Lies" tells about the cinema as a platform for promoting the political interests of the Kremlin.

Modern Russian cinema from year to year reflects the public policy of the state and shapes public attitudes. The world of Russian films and TV series normalizes arbitrariness, romanticizes cruelty, and glorifies power structures and the apparatus of repression.

For years, the Russians dehumanized Ukrainians through cinema, forming an image of the enemy out of them. And with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia continues to make propaganda films, continuing to deliver its big lie to the audience through cinema screens.

The experts of the episode were:

• President of the Polish Film Academy Dariusz Jablonski;

• film distributor, producer Denys Ivanov;

• the founder of the YouTube channel "Squad of Cinematographers" Vitaliy Hordiyenko;

• film reviewer Lena Chichenina;

• journalist, TV producer, writer Peter Pomerantsev;

• political technologist Serhii Haidai;

• Maria Domanska, senior employee of the Russian Studies Department of the Center for Oriental Studies (Poland);

• writer Andrii Kokotyukha;

• Lyubov Tsybulska, an expert on countering hybrid threats.

«Swan Lake» on the ruins: how does Russia loot art?

The episode "Art" from the cycle "The Big Russian Lies" shows how Russian art is used as a screen for Russian crimes. How the Kremlin orchestra plays Tchaikovsky on the ruins of the bombed-out Mariupol Drama Theater. As in 2014, the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev organized a charity concert in Rotterdam in memory of the victims of the MH-17 disaster, which was shot down by Russian mercenaries. As in 2015, he is coming with a concert to Palmyra, to Syria, which before that was bombed by  Russia. Journalistic investigations prove how Russia used cultural institutions and financed music festivals in Europe for years to promote its business interests. Russian museum institutions are looting in the war, taking art treasures out of Ukraine and holding pseudo-historical exhibitions to legitimize the conquests of the Russian army.

The speakers of the episode are:

• ballet soloist of the Lviv Opera Theater Viktoriya Zvarych;

• cultural columnist Axel Brueggemann;

• composer, co-founder of the laboratory of modern opera OPERA APERTA Ilya Razumeyko;

• author of the channel "Kulturtriger" Bohdan-Oleh Horobchuk;

• Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, culturologist Nataliya Kryvda;

• art historian and critic Kostyantyn Doroshenko;

• Professor of Ukrainian Studies at University College London William Blacker;

• Rena Marutyan, doctor of public administration, professor of Taras Shevchenko National University;

• the founder of the info-hygiene initiative "How not to become a vegetable" Oksana Moroz.

Matryoshka of Lies

Ukraine's not the first one. Russia's colonial grip has choked nations for centuries. Gaslighting, invading, erasing. But this time, the world is watching.

Dive into "Matryoshka of Lies" with Maksym Eristavi, a Ukrainian author, and Ukrainska Pravda. Unpack the myths and expose the truth. The empire will fall.

Youtube playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4NlA-dQT6yqrUcfDlkLXbwdbsBxXBwoT

How to Fight (and Win) an Information War

How do you reach people trapped in a reality shaped by propaganda? Exploring the dark psychology of disinformation, author and academic Peter Pomerantsev draws on lessons from a forgotten World War II operation to suggest strategies for cutting through misinformation and rebuilding trust in facts today. (Recorded at TEDxMidAtlantic on June 8, 2024)