Cross Word

From Kievan Rus to Putin's War: How Russia Manufactured Ukraine's Erasure

• Michele McAloon

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Michele McAloon:

Hi, you're listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and my name is Michele McAloon, your host. You can find out more about me at bookclues. com and I actually do now have a YouTube channel @ Crossword Author Interviews. It's very nascent, so we'll see where that goes from there. And you can find me on Michele McAloon, one over at X Michele McAloon, one over at blue sky and true social, and I only have one

Michele McAloon:

Welcome to Cross Word. This is one of my most consequential and substantial interviews, and that is to speak with Professor Eugene Finkel, author of Intent to Destroy Russia's 200-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine and put out by the wonderful Basic Books. Professor Finkel, welcome to the show, thank you Thanks for having me.

Eugene Finkel:

Welcome to the show.

Michele McAloon:

Thank you, thanks for having me, and Professor Finkel is currently sitting in Bologna, italy. And Professor Finkel, tell us a little bit about your background, because your background is so pertinent to this story?

Eugene Finkel:

Certainly, thank you. So I'm now a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in our European campus in Bologna. Before that, I taught at Johns Hopkins in Washington DC. I'm originally from Ukraine. I was born there. We left when I was 13. It was still Soviet Union, went to Israel. I came to the US to do my PhD. I did several jobs at Yale, George Washington, Hopkins, and now I'm teaching. I'm an expert on Russian and Ukrainian political violence, and so, unfortunately, those two streams of my research came together in 2014, but even more so, 2022.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, you wrote this book for a very specific reason. Can you share with our audience why you wrote this book? This is interesting.

Eugene Finkel:

Absolutely. Yeah, it's not a secret because it's in the book. It's in the book itself. I got very angry with the Russian intelligence Well, many of us are for these reasons, but I had a very personal reason.

Eugene Finkel:

When I was teaching Johns Hopkins in Washington in 2018, 2019, I had a student who took two of my classes. He was officially a Brazilian, an undergraduate degree from Ireland and a German background. He took several of my classes. After he graduated, he asked me for a recommendation letter for the International Criminal Court, which I happily wrote for him After all, he was a good student and then I haven't heard from him for several years and fast forward to June 2022, the first months of the war.

Eugene Finkel:

I'm very busy talking about the war, writing about the war, dealing with well helping Ukrainian refugees some of them are my friends and then I get an email from one of my colleagues back in Washington telling me that you know a story is going to run in the media later today that thatch security services exposed one so-called illegal in other words, russian intelligence officer operating on the fake identity, and he was a student at size. I might know the name and it was the name of the student, so he got a job at the international criminal court, came Hague and was deported. He is now in a Brazilian jail for 15 years. I hope he stays there for as much as possible. And for me it was deeply personal because, teaching in a policy school in Washington, I know that there are spies from everywhere. But the combination of me, 22, a recommendation letter for the International Criminal Court that just started investigating Russian violence in Ukraine and Russian intelligence, it was just too much, so I decided that I would write a book and donate the money to Ukraine.

Michele McAloon:

Wow, and I mean the irony on that is just tragic on every level of concept. All right, there's some things that before we talk about your book to the average, I think, reader who hasn't maybe followed Ukrainian history, we have to make some definitions. And Ukraine has always straddled the area between, has always straddled the area between, really between Russia and Western Europe. And there's a couple geographic areas to Ukraine. There's the Donbass, which, well, let's talk about it in the bigger picture. There's the Dnieper River, and the Dnieper River basically divides the country one-third and two-thirds, correct? Yes, okay, so if you're looking north, on the right-hand side is the Donbass that you'll hear about in the news and the other side is Galicia, which I think a lot of people may not have heard of. Could you talk a little bit about this geography because it's important to your book?

Eugene Finkel:

Right. Yes, essentially we talk about Ukraine. We talk about several areas. There is the east, or the Donbass, which historically is Russian-speaking, more politically pro-Russian, not necessarily wants to be Russian, but sympathetic towards Russia. There is the south and the Crimea, which were part of the Ottoman Empire and Crimea, which were part of the Ottoman Empire and Crimea and became part of the Russian Empire only In the 18th century. There is the central Ukraine and the more western part, where I'm from, the region called Galicia, which has very different history from the rest of Ukraine. It was part of the Polish Kingdom and then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland itself. It was for many centuries part of Central Europe's thoughts, geographically, politically, intellectually, much closer to Slovakia, poland, even Austria. Then the Russian Empire became part of the Soviet Union only during World War II. The Russian Empire became part of the Soviet Union only during World War II.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, one of the things that has marked your Ukrainian history has been the diversity of people, and you just spoke of a geography that is extremely diverse and it holds a lot of people Ukraine is a huge country and it holds a lot of different people and sometimes that has worked for Ukraine and sometimes that has worked against Ukraine in trying to find an identity.

Eugene Finkel:

Do you agree with that place? Partly because of history, partly because of geography. So you spoke about it being, you know, borderline between Central or Western Europe and the Russian Empire. It's also a borderline on the North-South axis, between the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim world and more northern part of Europe Empire and the Muslim world and more northern part of Europe, and it means that it has always been a crossroads, has been controlled by different people, populated by very different people.

Eugene Finkel:

So when I started writing this book, I had to make a list of all communities that made Ukraine home and it ran to about three to four lines of text, and I'm talking only about the large, established ones.

Eugene Finkel:

It's not so much the case anymore, because of assimilation, because of World War II and the Holocaust, because of, you know, it varies, it declines, but it's still an extremely diverse place. It's been for many years an advantage because diversity broke, you know, Cultural renaissance. It made Ukraine extremely vibrant culturally, intellectually, economically. But it also made Ukraine weaker internally when different communities within Ukraine turned on each other, and it also always gave opportunity for external powers being the Polish kingdom or the Hungarian Empire, but especially the Russian Empire to use this diversity to find local agents who would do their bidding on the ground and control Ukraine, essentially like every other empire. For Russians, there have always been local agents or local allies they could leverage in their quest to control Ukraine up until 2014-22, when this pattern starts breaking down and we see a more political, more unified Ukrainian nation, a civic nation of Ipuan emerges and Russians cannot use those leverages as effectively as they did, and that's when they decide to invade.

Michele McAloon:

Okay. So we have today in Ukraine, there's much more unified voice, thanks to Putin. He's brought the people together. From what I can see, there really is a much more unified voice. As you say, I think one of the tragedies of this war has been the immigration out of Ukraine. I know the population has dropped by about 15 million in a very, very short period of time. From what I've read of people leaving Ukraine, which leaves Ukraine in a much more vulnerable position, and probably some of the problems why they're having of being able to prosecute this war, being able to fight this war, your work has to do a lot with something called genocide, and genocide is actually a word that came out which, ironically, from a Ukrainian scholar, I believe. Is that correct? A Lemkin?

Eugene Finkel:

Yes, and not just genocide, actually, but also crimes against humanity. So as legal terms, they both associated scholars, jewish scholars from Lviv. Genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, who was a graduate of Lviv University when it was part of Poland, and crimes against humanity were coined by the British scholar Kierkegaard, who grew up in Lviv.

Michele McAloon:

How do you define genocide?

Eugene Finkel:

Well, how I define genocide doesn't really matter, because we have a legal definition of genocide. What is a legal definition of genocide?

Michele McAloon:

What is the legal definition of?

Eugene Finkel:

genocide, yeah, coined by the UN in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948. And here genocide is defined as acts taken with the intent to destroy and follow in part a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.

Michele McAloon:

Okay. So with that in mind, because a lot of Americans watched the unfortunate interview between Tucker Carlson and Putin. When was that? About 18 months ago or maybe sooner than that, but it was unfortunate. Putin loves to talk about Kiev Rus. Why is that so important in this story? And it's always been important. It's been important for 200 years, this idea of Kiev Rus' and your book points out that it was actually manufactured in the kind of the 19th century, this Kiev Rus' mythology. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Eugene Finkel:

Right, absolutely so.

Eugene Finkel:

One of the reasons for this war and for the genocide that Russia perpetrates I'm sure we'll get to that a bit later it's Russian history and Russian understanding of what Russia is and what Ukraine is, and it builds on several, and the most important of those myths is the origin.

Eugene Finkel:

Essentially, russia traces its history to the Kievan Rus', which was a medieval state that encompassed most of contemporary Ukraine, belarus and Western Russia.

Eugene Finkel:

It was a large medieval empire, but it got destroyed in the 13th century by the Mongols, and then the western parts of the areas which are now Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated by Poland and Lithuania, but the more eastern parts went to the Mongols and out of those parts, moscow, which was originally a completely minor, tiny principality, eventually emerged as the next large power in the area. But with its emergence it also started perceiving itself as a natural heir of the state which was the capital of this medieval state, and started believing in its natural right not just to continue the legacy but also rule all those lands. And you know, many states have those histories of an ancient capital and you know a state that got destroyed. But here the problem is that Kyiv is not just some mythical history, it's also a capital of a different country, ukraine, and Prussians believe that they have a natural right to control this territory, which they tried to do when they had this belief for many years.

Michele McAloon:

And you said that the Russians are motivated by two things security and identity. This Kiev, rus is somehow crucial to their identity. I mean it's kind of like in their DNA. Right and security touch upon that a little bit.

Eugene Finkel:

So the key of tracing the history of Russia, what Russia is to Kiev and Ukraine. It's definitely part of the identity component, not the only one, but the key one. And for the security. There are two components here. First is state security.

Eugene Finkel:

Ukraine is absolutely crucial, has been absolutely crucial for the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union for defense reasons, because there are natural borders between Ukraine and the rest of Europe. There are the Carpathian Mountains, there are the Pripyat Marshes, there are rivers. There's pretty much nothing but an open stem between Ukraine and Russia. So historically, many Western invasions of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union went through Ukraine. So the government in Moscow historically obsesses over the region. But even more importantly is the regime security.

Eugene Finkel:

Russian regime is an autocracy and they always fear that you know at some point they will be overthrown, that people start demanding democracy and rights and historically all those radical democratic ideas came through or from Ukraine. They need to control this area, you know, to stamp out those ideas. And Russians also believe because of history, that Russians and Ukrainians are the same, also believe because of history that Russians and Ukrainians are the same. So if, from the Kremlin's perspective, if Ukrainians are capable of building a democracy, then, god forbid Russians were the same people, white won the same. So it's very important for Russia to control Ukraine and to prevent it from being democratic, simply so that it will not be an example for people within Russia itself.

Michele McAloon:

Let me ask you a question, and this is very mythical because of the Russian mentality, but if government was ever to change, if it was maybe a parliamentary I mean truly a parliamentary representative government, it was not an autocratic government. Do you think the same attitude would hold with the Russian people about Ukraine?

Eugene Finkel:

That's a wonderful question, and, you know, we actually have an example. We have a short period in the 1990s and then in 1917, when Russians did try to build a democracy, but democracy does nothing to change, you know, the identity perception of what Russia is and who Russians are. What does change, though, is the willingness to use force to achieve that. So, for instance, I do not believe that Russians would have invaded Ukraine had Russia been a democracy, but in terms of belief that Ukraine is not a real state and Russians have a right to dominate Ukraine, yeah, we've been there during a democracy, and those views also persisted, so they would not have invaded, but they would have used political pressure or economic pressure to turn Ukraine into a client state, but there probably would not have been a war.

Michele McAloon:

Russian violence against Ukraine, you write, is neither unprecedented nor sudden. It is a product of a 200-year history. So this war in 2014, that's when it started, 2022, the actual invasion well, more of an invasion actually has a 200-year history. When did Russia first say man, we got to keep Ukraine, we are going to, we're going to, we're going to grab Ukraine, and Ukraine is going to be a part of the Russian empire.

Eugene Finkel:

Right. What they try to do in this book is to show that we cannot understand what's going on, or this invasion by 2022 or even 2014,. We need to go back, because the ideas of what Russia should do in and to Ukraine are quite stable over time, and they trace them to the early-mid 19th century. Well, russians control the eastern part of Ukraine since the 17th century and the western parts of Ukraine or central Ukraine, with the exception of Galicia, since the late 18th century, the partitions of Poland. When Russians partitioned Poland, they got most of Ukraine, but they also got Poland itself and the Polish national movement that tried to fight back and establish independence.

Eugene Finkel:

So people in the US obviously know Kostyshevsky, who played an important role in the American Revolutionary War, but in Europe he is remembered as the leader of the Polish uprising against the Russians, and the fear of the Russian government was that, you know, if those Poles managed to reestablish their statehood, they will take Ukraine as well. And even worse than that, they turned people, peasants in Ukraine, who Russians started perceiving as Russians At the time. They turned them into Catholics, into Poles, and it should be prevented by any means. So in mid-19th century, we see a shift from just controlling the territory to trying to make people in the area purely Russian. That's when it starts.

Michele McAloon:

That's when it starts. And one thing that has perplexed me until I read your book is that and you bring this out very well this division of the diversity of people. It is added to the Ukrainian culture but it's actually kind of worked against Ukrainian unity and the Ukrainian political state and that, I think, is hard to understand until you actually read about it. One of the things that I also didn't understand is how critical Ukraine was to the beginning of World War. I, and I think most Americans, are not familiar with this story. They think of you, know Serbia, but talk to us a little bit about how this area of the world was so key and so critical to the beginning of World War I so key and so critical to the beginning of World War?

Eugene Finkel:

I, absolutely. And it's not just Americans, I think. Most people, including in Ukraine itself, often stand out critical. Ukraine was for the beginning of World War. I, yes, you're right, we tend to think about, you know, destination of Arzhenik, ferdinand and Bosnia as a starting point. But when we actually look at what Russians thought, why they did go to war, why they supported Serbia against Austro-Hungary, it wasn't because of the Balkans, it was because of Ukraine. Why? Precisely because of this part of Western Ukraine, galicia, that I'm from and we talked about. That was the only part of the historical Kievan Rus' that was not controlled by the Russian Empire when Russians and Prussians and Austrians partitioned Austro-Hungary.

Eugene Finkel:

And while in the Russian Ukraine the government tries to russify people by force by banning the Ukrainian language, by investing in Russian education, in Austro-Hungarian Ukraine, in Galicia, the situation is different.

Eugene Finkel:

There they can establish their parties, there they can speak their own language, there they have the educational system, and for Russian Empire it's a deadly threat. They fear that if those people in Galicia will be able to so-called corrupt quote-unquote, the Ukrainian in the Russian Empire Not just the empire will be literally gone. Why? Because if Russification of Ukrainians in the Russian Empire succeeds and those people perceive themselves as Russians, then Russians are about two-thirds of the empire's population. If those people in Ukraine decide that they are not Russians but something else, just share the percentage of Russians in their own empire. It goes to about 44-45. In other words, they become a minority in their own state. And in the early 20th century, when Russia moves to parliaments, parties, elections, that's absolutely essential and they're willing to do whatever it takes to crush this Ukrainian movement in Galicia. That's why they go to war, not because of Bosnia or the Balkans.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, you brought up a good point there, too, that we need to talk about. Let's talk about the Ukrainian language. All right, so the Ukrainian language is not a dialect of Russian. It is Ukrainian, it's its own language. But the Russians have repeatedly and especially I think you wrote during the 19th century, where they really tried to yank out the Ukrainian language They've done everything they can to kind of diminish the Ukrainian language, and we saw this again in the years between 2014 and 2022, where they have tried to squelch the language. Why is this language issue so important and why is it so offensive to Russians that people speak different languages? Because the Kazakhs speak a different language and the Azeris speak a different language and the Tajiks speak a different language, although Russian was the administrative language. But why are you so hateful towards Ukrainian Right?

Eugene Finkel:

So here, unlike with the Tajiks or the Azeris, it gets personal and it goes back to this idea of Kievan Rus that is the source of both states. So that's one key component of how Russians view themselves and Ukraine. Another one that we mentioned briefly is that they view Ukrainians and Russians as the same people, and the derivative of that is that if they're the same people, they need to have the same language, and this language is always Russian. So if you want to be an educated person, if you want to do science and literature, you have to do it in Russian period. Ukrainian is just a peasant dialect. It's a vernacular. It doesn't deserve its own literature. You can't do science or politics or administration in Ukrainian. It all needs to be in Russian. That's how you ensure that those people do become Russians period.

Eugene Finkel:

So historically, one of the key focus on russifying Ukraine was the language, banning the Ukrainian language, promoting Russian education, because the belief was that if those people do keep speaking this from the Russian perspective, peasant dialect, they might start developing their own politics, their own identity, and they will decide that they're actually not Russian but something else. So that's why it's crucial for the Russian state and for the Russian public to make sure that Ukrainians speak Russian, and it also comes with a lot of not just prejudice or arrogance. They look down on this dialect. That's something that only uneducated peasants would speak, so there is also a sense of imperial superiority kicks in here. But cracking down on Ukrainian language was absolutely crucial for Russian attempts to make Russians out of Ukrainians.

Michele McAloon:

Russian south of the Ukrainians. Yeah, the little Russians right is what they refer to them. I can't imagine anything more diminutive than that Russians calling Ukraine little Russians. The thing we have to talk about is the Holodomor. Did I say that right 1932 to 1933. And I think it was genocide and the deep scars that that has left on Ukrainian society. Can you tell our listeners what this is and why this is so important?

Eugene Finkel:

So a lot more. The man-made famine of the 1930s is actually not the only famine in which millions and millions of people died in Ukraine. Ukraine historically has been the breadbasket of Europe. It was extremely important for the Russian state and also for the Soviet Union. Without Ukraine, you cannot keep the country, and that was another reason why Russian and Soviet authorities were always held bent on controlling Ukraine. What happens in the 1930s? The Russian Empire collapses, it's replaced by the Soviet Union, but the Soviets still keep the imperial mindset of looking at Ukrainians as Russians, and they're also much more aware of the geopolitical importance in Ukraine. So the goal becomes to protect, to russify those people culturally and by force if needed, and also to protect the Soviet Union from any future Western invasion.

Eugene Finkel:

Stalin and people around him were absolutely certain that, you know, not Germany at the beginning, but France, poland, the UK will invade the Soviet Union to crush down communism. So the Soviet Union needs to mobilize, it needs to advance, it needs to industrialize. How you do it, how you get the financing for this industrialization? Well, you take what you have, and what you have is grain produced in Ukraine by Ukrainian peasants, sell it and instead buy industrial equipment, and that's exactly what Stalin tried to do in Ukraine. So it was a two-pronged approach to force Ukrainian peasants into collective farms where they will be rucified and they will be controlled by the state, and the state will tell them what to produce and how to produce and also extract as much as possible from Ukraine to sell it in the West, as much as possible from Ukraine to sell it in the West, and then, with the money, build industrial equipment for the industrialization of the Soviet Union, especially defense industry.

Eugene Finkel:

The result is that the state starts forcing peasants into those collective farms where they own nothing, zero incentives, superloops, and the state also takes what it wants to take, without caring about whether peasants have enough to survive to the next year or even the next day, and the result is a massive famine throughout Ukraine. We still don't know how many people actually died in this famine. The estimates are somewhere between 3.5 to 5.5 million. But it's clearly focused on breaking the Ukrainian peasantry which speaks Ukrainian, it's keeping the Ukrainian tradition and also use Ukraine to feed the Soviet Union and to provide for the industrialization of the Soviet Union, no matter the cost for the people. And we also know that Ukrainians were treated differently for the industrialization of the Soviet Union, no matter the costs for the people, and we also know that Ukrainians were treated differently from the rest of the Soviet Union. There was famine elsewhere, but recently we started understanding that it was specifically targeting Ukrainians as Ukrainians, not just peasants.

Michele McAloon:

Present-day Russians have just absolutely rebelled against and revolted against any explanation of this and that terms. Okay, now we got to talk about the big guy Putin. He comes in in 2000. What is in his mind that drives him Again this interest? I know it comes down to security and identity, but he takes it on with a fervor. What is his main motivation, do you believe?

Eugene Finkel:

Right. So what's in his mind? I don't know. I wouldn't want to go into his mind. That's right, Dark place. It's a very dark and scary place, so I would rather keep out of there.

Eugene Finkel:

But actually what we know about Putin is that he personally has absolutely no connection to Ukraine when he comes to power, unlike many other members of the Russian Union. So in his first official biography, Ukraine is mentioned only once. He doesn't care about Ukraine. But at the same time we are pretty certain that he comes with the same cultural and ideological baggage that the rest of the Soviet security apparatus or the Russians more generally. He also believes that Ukraine is part of the Russian state. It's Russian land and Ukrainians are essentially Russians. It's taken for granted in those circles and among the vast majority of the Russian population.

Eugene Finkel:

The question is what he does about it? And he clearly wants to bring Ukraine back under Russian control, not necessarily by violence. He starts promoting or supporting pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine. He starts financing their campaigns. He starts pushing Ukraine away from its pro-Western orientation by economic deals or economic pressure. He clearly wants to control Ukraine, no questions about that. But he is willing to keep Ukraine formally independent as long as it is a client state, so something similar to Belarus, and for many years he tries that, he tries again, but eventually he fails. Eventually, in 2014, Ukrainians rebelled and said no, we don't want to go over to Russia, we want to build a European democratic, liberal country. And for Putin, in 2014, that's the rapture moment when he realizes that he can no longer control Ukraine through peaceful means. He has to use violence, and that's why Russia invades for the first time.

Michele McAloon:

And you know, one thing that has just perplexed me is how people have focused on the violence that the Israelis have perpetuated or so-called in Gaza, but they have not focused on the violence that the Israelis have perpetuated or so-called in Gaza, but they have not focused on the violence which has been horrific in Ukraine. If you look at the UNHR reports, you look at the different international observations about the level of violence, especially like in Bucha you know the cities outside of Kiev in the initial part of the war. It just amazes me, folks, this is a violent, violent war and he has used violence to actually try to reach his goals. In very much the same way, we've seen the level of violence between Hamas and Israel.

Eugene Finkel:

I'm also asking myself those questions why violence against civilians and not as known of people? People tend to overlook it. Well, maybe one reason is that, beyond this violence against civilians, it's an extremely bloody war and we tend to focus too much on the front lines Maybe just the question of access. There are no independent journalists behind the front lines or Western journalists in the areas that Russia occupies, so we don't really know what's going on there. We know about what happened in Bucha and some other places simply because they were liberated, so we could see their bodies, we could talk to people who survived it and get a sense.

Eugene Finkel:

But what happens behind the Russian front lines? We know that it's horrific, but we actually don't have that many details and we'll probably never have them until and unless those places are liberated. Partly it's because Ukraine is a large country and it's geographically scattered, partly because people don't care that much about Russia, or they tend to focus on violence that is perpetuated by people in the West, by Western countries or countries in the West. So there can be many explanations, but you're absolutely right. Violence against civilians is an absolute key feature of this war at horrific levels, and we still don't know the numbers, but we're talking about tens and probably hundreds of thousands of people who are killed and injured in this war.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, and last night there was a tremendous attack on the energy grid in Ukraine. So it really is. It's about suffering, it's about breaking Ukraine, and that is no joke. I have to ask you I'm going to ask you a loaded question here I have to ask you I'm going to ask you a loaded question here Do you think there can ever be any kind of agreement between Russia and Ukraine?

Eugene Finkel:

And I have to tell you, after reading your book, I have some serious doubts. So yeah, it's not a happy book.

Eugene Finkel:

You can focus on the 200-year history of Russian attempts to dominate Ukraine. But I'm also optimistic. I think yeah, I think it is possible, for several reasons. First, what I show is this obsession with Ukraine and attachment to Ukraine. It's not God-given, it's manufactured. It's a product of political decision and education, and what has been done through education and propaganda can also be undone through education and propaganda if there is a political will. The question is how we manufacture this political will among Russians, anything that can be done.

Eugene Finkel:

Actually, we know that Russians have abandoned claims and attachment areas that they control. For instance, they no longer claim Alaska. Right, it was a part of the Russian Empire, not anymore of Finland or even parts of Ukraine, like Western Ukraine, where there was a bloody war against the Russians, and Russians for many years believed that you know Western Ukraine and people that are actually Russians. They don't believe it anymore. They don't want this part of Ukraine. So I think that you know.

Eugene Finkel:

Maybe I'm optimistic, but my sense is that this discussion of you know whether those people Russians, whether we need this territory. They might be already happening on the ground among Russian soldiers or their families when they see the level of Ukrainian resistance, but we can also, I think. I think we also have tools to change Russian attitudes. For instance, you know, something that I'm arguing for several years now is that no sanctions on Russia should be lifted unless Russians change their rhetoric, which is their curriculum. They start teaching their children that Ukraine is actually a separate state. It's different. You can declaim it or decide its fate behind it. Now, whether it will happen I don't know, but I think it is possible.

Michele McAloon:

Not anytime soon, probably not within my lifetime. I need to be optimistic because it's just too dark and scary and hopefully our politicians and our diplomats can understand that and see a way forward that comes out with agreements, that includes Ukraine in the agreement talk, which just seems crazy that it wouldn't be. It's a hard problem but it's not a unsolvable problem and I still contend that what happens to Ukraine, what happens to Russia, affects the world, affects not just Europe, but it also affects the United States and it's unfortunate that we're at a time period where people don't really see that as clearly. But if you look to the past, it is very clear. It's just at this moment. It's probably become less clear because of just politics.

Michele McAloon:

So, professor Finkel, I really appreciate your book. I really I cannot encourage the readers enough to read this book. It's not a hard read, it's pretty short, but gives a great synopsis of the history of Ukraine, the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations, and also has a great bibliography in the end of it if you would like to read more about this problem. And I encourage readers that knowledge, you know reading, knowledge, wisdom and that we need to be smart on this subject.

Eugene Finkel:

Thank you, thanks for having me.

Michele McAloon:

Thank you, thanks for having me. Thank you, thank you.