Ukraine’s Post-Colonial Future
For now, Ukrainians are pulling Tolstoy off their shelves, and toppling Catherine the Great from her plinth in Odesa. Once Ukrainians have won a peace they can live with, a free Ukraine will have to own the imprint of the Russian past on its soul, and then wrestle free of that past.
VIENNA – Thirty years ago, in a Ukrainian churchyard where my Russian ancestors are buried, I knelt beside a very old woman leaning on a stick, her hair covered in a black kerchief. Behind us stood the Russian church that my great-grandfather built on his estate and where he lies buried.