think

"and though they did not yet call themselves ukrainians, the term, unlike the ancient word ukrania, was not widely used until the end of the [19th] century, they knew very well that they were somethlng different from the loathed muscovites, the moskali...the little russians have widely used proverbs such as: 'be freindly with the muscovite but keep a stone under your coat' "_____"it was not until the end of the [19th] century that he stared thinking of himself as a 'ukrainian'. asked his identity, he probably would have replied that he was a muzhik, a peasant, or 'orthodox', or simply one of the the tuteshni, the 'people from here' ". anna reid "borderland" a journey through the history of ukraine"______________""the carpathian mountains marked the border in the southwest, but the gentle forests and fields in the northwest part of the country could not stop invading armies and neither would the wide open steppes in the east."___"more to the point, russia relied on ukraine's sugar, grain, and coal..."anne applebaum. "red famine: stalin's war on ukraine"___"little russians were always a tribe and never a people and much less a state" vissarion belinsky____________this isn't the first time ukraine has been invaded and ukrainians have ample reason to dislike and distrust poles, gremans,russians, hungarians, austrians, swedes,certainly georgians, and americans as well...geography alone hasn't been the reason they have had so much difficulty in establishing nationhood....the land and its resources have always tempted outsiders...from "russia relied" to the violent exceptionalism of the germans, the ukrainians have paid a huge price...ukraine is much in the news these days...

however i am disinclined to follow the times' advice on thinking...

since they want to influence ( if not control ) how i approach this...i would rather pick up a number of books...

and try to muddle though on my own...but i have more than books to go on...my maternal grandfather was born in uzhgorod in western ukraine and came to the united states as an adult ( my maternal grand mother was also born in eastern europe and shared my grandfather's ethnicty...we are just getting to that )...he was born in ukraine but wouldn't have identified himself as "ukrainian"...he was carpatho-rusyn and would have called himself "hutsul"...anna reid's "colorful mountain shepards" and spoke a dialect different from ukrainian...those invasions developed a variable population which didn't really help unity any more than what my great uncle called the more important divide between catholic and orthodox...my grandparents were orthodox and read and wrote ( peasants and shepards they may have been but they were literate ) in the cyrilic alphabet...other than the russians the bulk of the invaders who controlled ukraine were catholic...religion didn't help here...except for very brief intervals ukraine has only been an independent state since 1991 and, it would appear, that is at an end as russia reasserts its control over what it considers the breakaway province of southwest russia ( and let's not forget that vlad the impaler was kgb...paranoid spookworld weirdness in control of the state apparatus )...go back ninety or so years...read anne applebaum's book and you will have just one line of evidence concerning the ukrainian desire for independence...geography, ethnicity, and economic resources have seemingly always united to defeat that desire...call me "kulak" if you like, my sympathies are with ukraine...with or without the times' meddling...vlad wants to be stalin...the world is a miserable place and the dialectic grinds on...human cognition cannot grasp all the variables in contingency and there are always consequences.